PT Should Lucas Have Done More to Ensure TPM Didn't Disappoint Some Fans?

The point of looking at attendance figures was get an accurate picture of the size of the audience. Why would anyone want to look at unadjusted dollars which are subject to currency changes?

Also Cryo I wasn't being mendacious at all (nice word, glad to see you always have your thesaurus at the ready). I could only post North American attendance figures bcs that's all we have to work with when comparing the whole Saga. There was very little record keeping of cinema attendance in other parts of the world back in the 70's & 80's. So when looking at the NA attendance, most of your above points aren't relevant. Also, regarding you 4th point, TPM opened to a vacuum of movies. Other studios kept the next couple of months free due to the behemoth that Ep I was always going to be. It also had an enormous marketing drive & the benefit of being the first SW movie following the iconic OT. Everything was set up perfectly, & it was hugely attended. It also had a re-release in 2012 to further boost its numbers. That's why TFA, after just one release being so far ahead in terms of attendance is astonishing.

Star Wars cinema attendance (Nth America):

1. ANH - 178,119,600 tickets sold
2. TFA - 108,105,800
3. ESB - 98,180,600
4. RotJ - 94,059,400
5. TPM - 90,312,100
6. RotS - 59,324,600
7. AotC - 53,468,500

Forget TPM though, the most glaring outliers are the other two Prequels. They simply didn't perform like Star Wars movies. All we can do is speculate as to the reasons. Personally I think a huge reason is TPM. I blame it more than I do AotC. From '99-2002 a common consensus became that TPM wasn't particularly good & that the PT was shaping up as a lesser version of SW. Rightly or wrongly I'm sure that was a big factor.

 

That was exactly my point, though. Worldwide or domestic, direct, mechanical, A-to-B comparisons are beset with problems. Essentially, you are advocating for a simple side-by-side tally between seven different movies, in several blocks, spread across forty years. Such comparisons aren't really feasible, for a variety of reasons. I will quote this beautifully succinct post from Tyranus_Reborn, in a related thread:

But you can't take the "adjusted for inflation figures", point to tickets sold, and then use that as an empirical measure of a film's popularity. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison. It ignores exogenous variables that are specific to the time of release - cultural factors, economic factors, etc. Just as 1977 is not comparable to 2005, 1939 (Gone With The Wind, all time box office champ, adjusted for inflation) is not comparable to 1977. Now please keep in mind that I am not referring to inherent artistic worth of a given film, nor am I referring to its cultural impact or any other issue of that nature - that is an entirely different matter.

Source: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...o-the-embittered-fans.50034387/#post-52815137

If, by thesaurus, you mean my head, then yes -- that one is already lodged in the ol' brainbox. Sorry, but it's deceptive to only cite domestic figures, when the worldwide figures, for films with the same release date (or year), are right there, serried together in a multitude. Put another way, TFA is part of a train with several carriages. Its own carriage may be a bit shinier and more prestigious, with a few more passengers in it than the other ones, but there isn't a great deal between them. Yes, TFA did exceptionally well State-side, but its lead isn't nearly so impressive when you realize that, on the worldwide chart, it is one of four movies from 2015 alone in the Top 10, which suggests its crown won't last long. In fact, it slightly takes the shine off it, in my opinion. What does it mean to dominate when that dominance looks pretty relative and transient?

Convenient. Those figures aren't needed for my point:

Look at the worldwide chart, where TFA's territory is impinged upon by several other tentpole flicks from the same year, and its alleged glorious success begins to a look a bit illusory.

"Victory? Victory, you say? Master DD, not victory. The shroud of the Disney side has fallen." Global commerce: ain't it beautiful?

TFA has done very well for itself at home. But then, frankly, the original movie dwarfs it, and all the others. There isn't much of a gap between TFA, TESB, ROTJ, and TPM. The sharp drop-off, in accord with your red highlighting, is only seen with ROTS and AOTC.

Now, I'll admit, that's new to me, as I hadn't really looked at the domestic takings or attendance figures of the Star Wars movies before this thread, but then, maybe I'm more of an international guy -- when I can be bothered to care about box-office takings and number of bums-on-seats, at all, that is.

Also, if you're going to say that TPM "had the benefit of being the first Star Wars movie following the iconic OT", then it's fair to point out that TFA was obviously coming off the weaker box-office of AOTC and ROTS, and exploited the lesser reputation of the prequels, and the higher reputation of the OT -- more or less equated in TFA's marketing campaign with the "authentic"/"quintessential" Star Wars experience ("Chewie, we're home") -- to the hilt.

Could TFA have thundered to financial success without the other movies, without the strong yet-still-mixed success of the prequels, without slyly repurposing so much of, at least, ROTS, in between all its OT quoting?

In an odd, but very real, sense, all the Star Wars movies need each other; and TFA certainly needs them.

"You cannot deny the truth that is your family."

Overall, Star Wars is an extremely venerable franchise -- originals, prequels, and sequels.

And there is no denying that.

 

Again, that's why I posted attendance figures for the only market where we can make a comparison across the whole Saga. Attendance does indicate popularity - literally. It's a factual representation of the cinematic audience & it's free of misleading factors like inflation.

Sorry but it's not deceptive when I supply the link that points out we're talking about domestic figures. And when I'm replying to QRB's post here which introduced those figures. And when only domestic data is available for the OT & I'm making a Saga-wide comparison. So what's with your deception accusations?

As for the overseas performance of TFA, it was far better than any other SW movie we have o/s records on (ie the Prequels). Here's the % of the total gross that came from outside NA:

TPM: 53.8%
AotC: 52.2%
RotS: 55.2%
TFA: 54.7%

So these are all roughly the same, & as we know TFA performed far better than TPM & around twice as well as Eps 2 & 3 domestically. So some simple math tells us that TFA's o/s performance dwarfs that of the PT by around the same ratio as it does domestically.
If we could get worldwide attendance figures I'd guess that TFA was seen by triple the no of people as eps 2 & 3.

You started slowly but finished on a high Cryo. Good point

 

I loved TPM, and I have no respect for the "George Lucas raped my childhood" people. But I can certainly understand why some fans were disappointed. What could George have done?

He could have explained the situation better prior to the release. He could have explained that the GFFA was very different a generation earlier, and that this difference is supposed to be part of the story. The lived in universe became a little less lived in, partly on purpose and partly due to the new cgi technology. Rather than have everyone react badly to what looked different he could have prepped the fans and put it in a context.

He could have also explained that due to the nature of prequels, and considering TPM was first and thus many movies behind what we wee familiar with, the movie was not going to feel like a sequel . The characters would be almost entirely new, and in what should have been considered artistically interesting, even the characters we knew were very different. This was on purpose so that we could track character arcs over three films until we finally led into ANH. Even the plot would merely introduce the players and would have very little direct connection to the OT. In general TPM was its own story.

He could have explained that just like watching video of people in the 1960s on tape, basic human rhythms in terms of speech, humor and tone in TPM were meant to appear stilted and old fashioned. It's what made the dynamic between Obi wan and Han so interesting. The generation gap is real, and as Lucas has said, TPM was a period piece.

Would any of that stopped the haters? Probably not

 

I would say that it's not the comparisons themselves that are not feasible, but rather the definite conclusions people often draw from them. I mean, these aren't scientific studies where you can control for things like cultural factors, economic factors, etc. They're just plain numbers. But on the other hand, it's also not fair to say that any variation in attendance between the Star Wars movies is absolutely meaningless. I think that comparisons are possible, but we should keep those other contextual factors in mind before we jump to definite conclusions. For example, I could say the following: "perhaps the reason TFA's domestic attendance more than doubled that of AOTC's is because people liked it more, which was also evidenced by the reviews; but maybe there were also other factors at play, such as TFA reviving the Star Wars franchise or AOTC following up a movie that was critically regarded as disappointing". I think something like that is a fair comparison because you draw your own conclusion whilst also keeping in mind that there may be more to it than meets the eye. That's how it often works in the scientific world as well. Scientists design an experiment and then at the end they say something like "the study seems to suggest [x], but more research needs to still be done because of [y]".

I'm still not seeing the point in looking at TFA's worldwide figures. No Star Wars movie has dominated the international box office the way it has with the domestic box office. So what you've really demonstrated is that TFA, internationally, has done what we would expect it to given Star Wars' previous track record: it got to number 1 for the year it was released, but not by too impressive a margin, and will likely be beaten in the near future (although, it should be noted, that neither AOTC nor ROTS accomplished this feat).

So given that TFA performed how we would expect it to against recent competition, let us now try to compare it to previous Star Wars movies. Now I know you think that it's "deceptive to only cite domestic figures", but the reason is that we simply don't have worldwide attendance numbers. So it's really hard to make a worldwide attendance comparison between movies like TESB and TFA, for example. The only thing that I really know for sure is that AOTC and ROTS both had lower worldwide attendance than TPM since, even with inflation, their worldwide box office was still lower than that of TPM's. I'm not an expert on inflation, so I can't say much more than that on the worldwide front. On the domestic front, we do have reliable data, which shows that TFA is the second most attended Star Wars film in the US.

I feel like I'm rambling so I'll try to sum up the key takeaways:

1.) Worldwide, TFA has performed as we would expect it to for a decently successful Star Wars movie: it reached number 1 worldwide for the year it was released, but not by too impressive a margin, and will likely be dethroned in the near future. For what it's worth, neither AOTC nor ROTS managed to accomplish this.

2.) In terms of worldwide attendance, we don't have those figures, unfortunately. Although I'm pretty sure that TPM had greater worldwide attendance than either AOTC or ROTS since neither could outperform it even with inflation.

3.) In terms of domestic attendance, TFA is the second most attended Star Wars movie in the US.

4.) Despite all these numbers, there are other factors at play to keep in mind when looking at the box office for any Star Wars movie. Was it the first Star Wars movie in a really long time? Was it the first Star Wars movie period? Was it the sequel to a "disappointing" movie? Was it marketed as the final Star Wars movie? Did it come out in a time when the home video release would come out mere months later? These kinds of factors are really intangible so there's no concrete way to measure them. Nevertheless, they are important to consider.

5.) Can we draw conclusions from these numbers? Probably, but it's more along the lines of "the data seems to suggest [x]" rather than "we have proved, without a shred of doubt, that [y] is true". We probably won't ever have enough data to make 100% accurate conclusions. But that also doesn't mean that comparisons are inherently meaningless.

 

I think we should all agree that it is good that Star Wars is as huge as it is right now. I mean, come on, at least this isn't freakin' Star Trek. You know?

 

I think you win this discussion -- just for that avatar alone!

 

Actually, it doesn't completely do away with the inflation factor, since inflation is also hidden in other economic properties like insurance, road tax and running costs, gas/petrol prices, food, housing costs and energy bills -- all of which have to be taken into account in any serious discussion concerning attendance figures in any given year/epoch.

You've been trying to imply that TFA is a soaring success -- above and beyond all the other Star Wars movies, barring the original. But, as with almost everything "Star Wars", that depends on your point of view.

Worldwide Box-Office figures present a slightly more sobering reality. Yes, TFA has done tremendously well both domestically and overseas, but it's not as striking internationally and risks being knocked a long way down the worldwide rankings in years to come. Which doesn't make it the unqualified success you're trying to pound it as being into the heads of others.

No...

It didn't actually perform "far better" than TPM domestically. The difference, based on the statistics you yourself cited earlier, are as follows for the two movies:

1. ANH - 178,119,600 tickets sold
2. TFA - 108,105,800
3. ESB - 98,180,600
4. RotJ - 94,059,400
5. TPM - 90,312,100
6. RotS - 59,324,600
7. AotC - 53,468,500

Source: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

TFA did 20% better than TPM in terms of raw attendance figures domestically -- hardly the vast difference you're trying to claim.

Similarly, if it were possible to correctly adjust the overseas grosses against inflation and the more-than-inflation rise in ticket prices over that same span (which is at least true of the U.S. and U.K.: e.g. --> http://www.statista.com/statistics/...-at-north-american-movie-theaters-since-1980/ ). For inflation calculation, place the ticket price you see on the chart for 1999 into the following calculator, and then select 2015 as the bottom year: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

You'll see there's a marked disparity. The average U.S. ticket price, according to that chart, increased from $5.08 in 1999 to $8.43 in 2015. But, using the inflation calculator, something costing $5.05 in 1999 would cost $7.18 in 2015 money -- a difference, therefore, of $1.25 is still to be made up. That's why the domestic attendance figures between TFA and TPM are closer than their domestic revenues, even adjusted for inflation, would suggest. Now apply this to the overseas/combined takings (I think ticket prices have, more or less, gone up everywhere higher than inflation), and you'll realize that that big difference you're touting isn't quite so big, after all.

In summary, the success of TFA is broadly comparable to the success of TPM (though TFA certainly received rosier reviews on the whole). Notice the modifier: "broadly". As I said before, and wish to reiterate, it isn't possible to make like-for-like comparisons, because there are any number of variables that confound apples-to-oranges comparisons with artistic entertainments (and much else in life, too).

Now, I know what you might say at this point: TPM had a re-release. It did! But after all the picking apart -- nay, hammer blows -- it took in the intervening years, along with the other prequel installments, it's frankly a wonder it made any money, at all. The gap does widen between the two films a bit if you take off its 3D earnings, but it's not that great, really.

Oh, and the thing I find most ironic about all of this...

In other discussions, you kept protesting, not too long ago, that TFA shouldn't be compared to the prequels as a whole; only to TPM. It wasn't fair, you objected. But you're only too happy, it seems, to compare TFA to all three prequels in this discussion, where you bend numbers to your will. How is that right? You can't elevate TFA a grade extra over AOTC and ROTS because -- using your own former logic -- they're the 2nd and 3rd installments of their respective trilogy. The proper comparison (if there be one) is to compare the second and third sequel installments, but that'll have to wait.

Yes.

Star Wars is a cultural juggernaut, a box-office titan, a mythological megalith.

TFA has only done what it rightfully should have done -- put Star Wars completely on the map again.

Not all variations are meaningless -- unless you consider box-office takings, or an obsession with box-office takings, to be meaningless, of course. Which I kinda do.

I mean, it's great that Star Wars is still popular with audiences (albeit, it seems, more with North American audiences above international ones), but popularity, in and of itself, means little to me.

I appreciate you trying to argue with force and clarity, however.

Exactly. Star Wars, on the international stage, faces stiffer competition. So, the idea that TFA is some runaway success, wildly leaving the prequels in the dirt, and doing all kinds of things they couldn't, isn't exactly right, in my view. Even though TFA clearly did a lot better than AOTC and ROTS -- but so? As I said above, if there be an apt comparison, it's between TFA and TPM, and there's not exactly a Grand Canyon of difference between them, once appropriate adjustments are made.

1. As I have said, I think comparing TFA to AOTC and ROTS is not especially cogent -- comparing it to TPM is better (and yields a not-gargantuan difference).

2. Comparing TPM to AOTC and ROTS is no more appropriate, in my opinion. They did worse, but TPM was a super-hyped, long-anticipated movie, and TFA had a ton of hype and anticipation swirling around it, too.

3. Yes, TFA is the second-most-attended Star Wars movie in the U.S. It's cool that it did well in the land where all Star Wars movies do well, featuring the most "American" character in the series, the sarcastic "chi" of Star Wars, the cowboy/outlaw/smuggler Han Solo, and veritable institution Harrison Ford, as the star attraction. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that HS/HF puts the "star" in "Star Wars" --> and he "dies" on "Starkiller Base". Geddit?

4. Important-to-consider factors, all weighted in favour of TFA doing well, except your last one, curiously. The last one turns out to be irrelevant, though, since it's true of virtually all modern blockbuster movies: they all come to home video shortly after their theatrical releases. And as the stats show, this hasn't really hurt their takings very much (or, if it has, it's hurt them all just about equally). Perhaps you could argue that TFA would have done even better in an OT/VHS-only world, but I hope you immediately grasp what a non-sequitur that is.

5. Comparisons aren't so much meaningless, at the end of the day, as they are subjective. Show five people the same cloud of numbers and they'll likely reach five different conclusions. What deep truths about Star Wars, humanity, and the multiverse (aside from sounding like a good title for a book) are we meant to extract from all this number-crunching, ultimately?

6. I have the answer, actually. The answer is 42.

42. Thanks to the wonderful and incomparable ( ) Douglas Adams.

 

No they don't. You simply need to take the total gross in any given year & divide it by the average price of a ticket & that gives you the cinema attendance. Easy peasy. That's why attendance figures are the most pure & reliable metric.

Actually in my original post I barely mentioned TFA. Made one solitary comment about it. It was your good self who made this all about TFA here. The rest of my comments were about TPM & its effect on the following two movies. Which is relevant to this thread.

I didn't use the term "vast". I said it did "far better" in terms of ticket sales. 20% is far better. 2% would be slightly better. Are we going to quibble over semantics? Like you said, TPM also had a re-release in 2012 which added to those numbers. Be assured, when TFA gets another release in a few years the gap will widen significantly.

Forget about inflation. Like I said, all you do is take the total gross in any given year in any currency & divide it by the avg ticket price for that year (or period). That = attendance. If the gross were $100 & the avg ticket price was $20 you'd know that 5 people attended. There's a margin for error with this method but a small one. In the case of NthAm they have direct attendance numbers, so no calculations are required.

Agreed, that's why I didn't highlight TPM in that nasty red color.

Come on Cryo. I was talking about in-universe story matters. Not people attending the movie. Unfortunately Eps 2 & 3 were drastically less popular at the cinema that all other SW movies, incl eps 2 & 3 of the OT.

There is some validity to your argument. On the other hand it's still mind blowing that TFA was attended by around the same audience as AotC & RotS combined. RotS was the key episode of the Saga. The film where we see the creation of the Empire, of Darth Vader, & the birth of the twins. It contained everything fans were anticipating ever since a PT was announced, & for many years before that. For TFA to almost double that movie's audience is incredible. Also, around the same time as the PT we saw other film series grow or maintain its audience for its sequels. Harry Potter, TLOTR, Spiderman, X-Men all increased their numbers as their series progressed. The PT lost half of its audience following the first installment! Given the juicy story elements to come after TPM I'm not sure I buy that it was natural & expected for that to happen. Not to the degree it did anyway. What my point was in raising this at all, & how it applies to this thread is that I contribute alot of that drop-off to the Phantom Menace Effect. Everyone saw it, far too many didn't like it.

Any Hitchhikers reference earns a like from me!

 

Trek's doing well enough to get new material. Not sure it was ever capable of the brand power of Star Wars.

Personally, though, these days I find there is a quiet dignity in older properties remaining a thing of their time. I love Aliens and Bladerunner, but I'm not terribly excited by the prospect of upcoming sequels.

 

Yeah it's doing about how we would expect it to for a decently successful Star Wars movie: super great in the US, and just great worldwide. This is in line with the OT and TPM to a degree. But not caring about box office is a different, yet fair, topic; after all, deciding where to place importance is a personal decision.

Perhaps it would be more fair to compare each episode with its corresponding episode from each trilogy. So ANH with TPM & TFA, TESB with AOTC, and ROTJ with ROTS. Right off the bat, I notice here the huge difference in attendance between TESB & AOTC as well as ROTJ & ROTS. And even if we remove TFA from the equation, leaving only the original 6-episode saga, we see that that the clear outliers among all the movies in that original saga are AOTC and ROTS. Now I'm not trying to say anything in particular about this difference (after all, I quite enjoy ROTS) other than that it is statistically significant. My own conclusion about TFA is that, based on US attendance numbers (and the international % of the worldwide gross being similar to the other SW movies) it has returned to the box office success of the OT; whether the subsequent movies can do the same remains to be seen.

Sure, but at the same time, why discuss anything about Star Wars at all? What deep truths can we extract from the "Unpopular opinions" thread? What deep truths can we learn from speculating about if Snoke is Plagueis? Not many, but it's still fun to do. For me, and probably many others, it's very interesting to analyze box office figures and trends. They're, of course, not the final word for any definite conclusions or generalizations but they are capable of telling a story. And their merit is probably strengthened when they're used in conjunction with other factors.

 

What you've just said is tautological. Obviously, from a purely mathematical point of view, that's how one derives attendance figures. I wasn't talking about that, however. I was highlighting some of the variables underpinning cinema attendance in general. It's fine to focus on takings, attendance numbers, etc., but it lacks nuance; there are exogenous factors (to steal the wording of Tyranus_Reborn) to consider when you take on the task of trying to derive or imply wider meaning from a limited data set. Remember, in general, the more meaning you try to accord to a cold list of facts and figures, the less valid that meaning is likely to be. To echo Dex, it's something the difference between knowledge, and... wisdom.

Strange, then, isn't it, how you still had to mention TFA, quote the attendance figures, and even highlight them in TFA's case?

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...disappointment.50040234/page-12#post-53585788

And the post of mine you link to was me responding to theMaestro, who had happened to discuss TFA in their first paragraph. It is true, though, that I made reference back to your earlier post -- and other posts by you, in fact -- where I felt you had been specious in focusing on domestic grosses to the exclusion of TFA's worldwide takings. In the latter circumstance, TFA is still strong, but the picture is different (as discussed earlier: TFA, in worldwide terms, occupies a Top 10 with no fewer than there other movies from 2015, and a total of four other Disney movies). My contention being that, while TFA did very well both domestically and overseas, its overall takings aren't that special, given the high-earning potential of contemporary blockbuster movie franchises on a world stage (especially those under Disney).

I'm not quibbling semantics -- or, at least, I wasn't earlier.

Generally speaking, I don't think a difference of 20% warrants the term "far better"; though, you're right, I suppose, in that it is largely subjective. As an example, I just bought a new personal computer, to replace my earlier one which developed a fault, was eventually fixed, but then given away. My earlier computer had an Intel i5-2320 microprocessor in it. My new one has an Intel i5-6400 inside of it. These microprocessors, having a similar price point in their respective years of widespread consumer availability, are a good match. Yet technology marches on. Theoretically, the i5-6400, being a fair bit newer, should also be a fair bit faster, all other things being equal. But it isn't. Guess what the rough improvement in performance is? You guessed it: 20%. Would you call that "far better"? In the computing world, at least, I would not. When you consider that my newer i5 CPU has about 30% less power consumption than the older one, the term starts to become warranted; but even then, I'd be reluctant to use it, myself. If you marry the lower power consumption with the moderately better performance, then maybe it is "far better", overall, than my old one; but I'm still teetering, in my head, on whether to really call it "far better", in actuality. My new i5 is better, certainly, and I appreciate the advancement, but it's not really a drastic improvement, in my eyes. I like the thought of having a faster, more energy-efficient microprocessor, but it's nothing like the advancements previously seen in microprocessor development.

Perhaps it depends on the field. In biology, for example, even tiny differentials can be enormously important (hence the various "arms races" in nature and the tremendous diversity of the biosphere). If, say, a human being was born that happened to run 20% faster -- even 2% faster -- than any other human being that has ever run the 100m, that would be significant. Similarly, such a difference in height would be enormously significant, as would an improvement of that kind in lifespan. Of course, even here, the term "significant" needs a certain amount of context to make sense, but I hope you follow me this far.

So which of the two is it for TFA? In my eyes, it's kinda between the two. After all, the movie business is an extremely competitive field, like biology (or the natural world). Small differences may well matter. On the other hand, I struggle to see how in this case. It's more a case of aesthetics, I think. You clearly find it appealing that TFA is second only to the original -- which we can both accept, in terms of cultural impact, is in a category all its own. Cool beans. But in relation to TPM, there's not nearly so big a difference. Personally, I could accept you calling TFA "far better" in terms of audience attendance if you're making a straight comparison with AOTC and ROTS (even though, as I have already said, such comparisons are a bit kinked, in my mind) -- I mean, according to those stats, TFA had almost twice as many people go see it (or twice as many tickets bought for it, at least) as went and saw ROTS, and more than twice as many as bought tickets for AOTC. It is a wonderfully successful movie on a financial scale. No doubt about it.

But again, TFA is utterly thumped by ANH (even though, yes, that movie had multiple re-releases), and it's not too far in front of TESB's attendance numbers. The subsequent gaps between TESB and ROTJ, and then ROTJ and TPM, are very small -- there is only a significant drop (there's that word again) between TPM and ROTS and AOTC. And I'll return you to what I said at the start. There are numerous factors involved in why people see a film; and why they don't. Direct A-B comparisons are fairly vapid, in my opinion.

And getting hung up on box-office numbers and attendance figures, in general, is actually pretty pointless, and misses the whole purpose of art, in my view.

Okay, well...

Let me just point out something a little interesting here:

TFA actually cost a lot more to make than TPM -- a lot more. No, wait: far more.

TFA's production budget was almost double TPM's. From that point of view, it had damn well better have out-performed TPM!

See, there are always a few more pixels one can add to the picture...

Well, we both like to highlight, it seems.

Ah, yes -- always in with another anti-prequel dig.

I know you were talking about story before. But how about you swallow your own logic and save putting AOTC and ROTS down, again and again, until you have matching middle and end installments from the sequel trilogy to compare those episodes to?

Yeah, but, again, you're not being true to what the prequel trilogy is at root: a tragedy in space; Sophocles for the Atomic Age. Lucas said all along that he felt each episode would perform more poorly than the last, due to the increasing darkness and severity of the tale. Did he hope a decent slice of fans would love ROTS? Probably. But he knew he was potentially facing a quiet exodus: a grim downturn in viewership in parallel with the morbid and somewhat staunch/remote nature of the story. As mikeximus quoted earlier, there's a tremendously insightful passage in "The Making Of" book for ROTS where Lucas avers that he won't alter Anakin's turn, despite being confronted by the fact that some of his own employees had a hard time accepting the way he chose to depict it.

I won't say that Lucas wasn't working to please the crowd with ROTS, however. Like I said before, he mainly makes films for himself, but he's certainly sensitive to the film having to "work", by both its own logic and the demands of a large audience. But perhaps the takings were good enough for him. He certainly seemed vindicated at the time. Moreover, ROTS consistently ends strong on fan polls, and is among the most-watched of all the Star Wars movies, based on rental statistics. Even TFA decides, in some "Dark Side Of The Moon" way, to basically re-tell ROTS, from the helmet-haired smouldering punk of Kylo Ren, to his tragic confrontation with his father; even to the likes of Kylo bumping off the old guy with a noble bearing, following some elliptical taunting, at the start of the movie, just as Anakin kills Dooku roughly ten minutes into the opening sequence after similar goading about him being in denial of some essential aspect of himself.

You could be right that it soured people on the follow-up installments -- if so, that's sad.

But you could also say that the ticket sales for AOTC and ROTS represent that trilogy's real audience, after X number of people decided Star Wars, or the prequels, weren't really for them.

You owe me 42 likes, not just the one.

Well, fine. People should have at it all they like. Discuss takings and other financial aspects to their heart's content.

But I just don't find it all that interesting, ultimately; despite feeling a need, a twinge, a desire (whatever) to pipe up here.

Some of my favourite movies have a crap box office. I suppose I do care that Star Wars see success in its time -- and it has certainly done that.

Nevertheless, there comes a point, perhaps, as alluded to by ezekiel22x, when it might be more fitting and dignified for a movie, or set of films, to gently diminish, and pass into some ephemeral category, part-way between respected cult classic and quirky, misunderstood gem. And this seems most apt in the case of the prequels, which have always occupied their own niche.

BTW... Must admit, Snoke/Plagueis stuff, while "cool", doesn't hugely interest me, either. We do, indeed, all have our particular affinities. It would be a boring world if we all liked the same stuff, wouldn't it?

 

Cryogenic

I can easily explain why ANH & TFA are #1 & #2 in tickets sold among the 7 SW movies. The are made to appeal to the general audience and are the least Star Wars'y of the 7 films if that makes any sense.

My argument has nothing to do with what SW movie is the best, I'm just talking that ANH & TFA really appeal to the general moviegoing audience compared to the other 5 movies. ANH & TFA are just fun movies that don't delve too much into the SW lore like the other movies to the average movie goer, yet for SW fans like us we see the mythos in them as you have to look a bit deeper.

ESB & ROTJ really delve into the SW lore & mythology surrounding Luke & Vader, while the PT is all about the rise and fall of Darth Vader. Those are pure SW type mytho's that SW fans like us love. But the average movie goer doesn't care about the real nitty gritty of the SW world, so ANH & TFA appeal to them most. Lets put it this way, I expect Episode 8 & 9 to be more in the vain of ESB/ROTJ/TPM/AOTC/ROTS that really explores some SW mytho about Rey & Ren, and in the end they won't make as much money as TFA because of that.

I know the argument these days is TFA copies ANH with StarKiller Base, etc, but that is a seperate debate. What JJ did was copy the style of ANH that translates more to the common movie goer who may not be the biggest SW fan. As Bill Moyers said on the SW DVD Documentary, "Star Wars (The Original) is just a fun movie in the end." And that is exactly the way I look at TFA, and the general audience did too.

Kind of why Star Trek 4 is the highest grossing Star Trek movie, it appeals to the average movie goer who may not be a ST fan because they come to Earth in present day time (1986) and anyone can relate to that, not just Trekkies.

 

Yeah I think there is something in this - otherwise if you are going to throw figures around ad nauseum as some kind of science, then you are going to have to explain why according to this methodology, TFA is a better film than ESB. ***cough***.

It is interesting, but that's all. Lucas was more than happy to get just get his money back and profit enough to make the others, maybe get another record breaker or whatever, but he is quite candid, and actually a little aprehensive in some of the behind the scenes stuff about being succesful at all - acknowledging the critical panning his of last films ...

These are bizzaro films if you think about it. They go backwards, ending with the blond cute kid melting in lava. Nobody wins. Everybody loses.
Not even many serious 'art' films dare to be so bold.

So figures, shmigures - they all did just fine. In fact thinking of the mad concoction that is AOTC it is amazing it did so well.

 

No nuance is needed. We were simply talking about audience numbers. Specifically the huge volume of the audience that bailed out after TPM. Roughly half of the audience didn't want to come back for AotC. The reasons for this are a separate issue.

It's not that strange. Mentioning Revenge of the Nerds would be strange.

Hardly. Apart from one comment (that set you off for some reason) the rest of my observations were about the SW Saga & the PT. TFA wasn't the main point, & we only have NA figures for the whole saga.

Of course it's special in terms of its worldwide gross. It's only the 3rd film to ever gross over $2bn & those other Disney films you mention are around half a billion or more behind!

Not going to get into whether a 20% increase is "far better" or not. In general 20% is a significant proportion.

TFA in one release had a far bigger (20%) audience than TPM across two releases. The bigger story is AotC & RotS which had around half the audience of the other sequels incl TFA.

Are we film industry accountants? I thought we were talking about the size of the audience. The public interest in each movie, not gross profit.

Problem is, during the 2000's "dark" was all the rage. It still is to a degree. Contemporary movie series like TLOTR, Harry Potter & others also got progressively dark but they managed to grow their audience as their sagas unfolded. Not lose half of it after the first installment! In fact in those series the later films had the biggest audience, despite some very dark content. Same with the likes of the Spiderman trilogy & the X-Men trilogy back then. All grew their numbers as they went along. The PT was the one series which went south in terms of attendance. And I'll say again, if there was one SW film that should've been a slam-dunk in terms of appeal it was the one where Darth Vader is created. Where we get the foundation of the Empire, the classic Emperor from RotJ & the birth of the twins. Indeed LFL milked the Vader imagery in its marketing for all it was worth. It worked, a little bit. A 10% increase in attendance from AotC is something. In the end though, I believe TPM did alot of damage to the Saga (in terms of audience appeal) & the PT couldn't recover from it. RotS is an excellent movie & on its own merits should be up there with the other highly attended films.

 

You can't make that statement. Part of the audience didn't come back, wether they wanted to or not is pure speculation.

 

Roughly half of the audience didn't come back for Ep II. I assume it was a choice rather than armed guards preventing them from entering the cinema

 

Or a myriad of other reasons. There are many movies I wanted to go see in theaters, and the reason for why I didn't went wasn't an armed guard preventing me from entering.

You're also assuming that the people who went to see a movie are the same, you're only counting NA stats, and you're turning "roughly 60%" into "roughly 50%".

 

There are always individual circumstances, but there wasn't some kind of huge event like a nation-wide tsunami that prevented mass numbers of people from attending Clones & then Sith.

Yes I said we were looking at NA attendance numbers. Clones had a bit over half the audience as Menace. The gross outside of NA was $552M for TPM & $338 for AotC. The o/s result paints a similar picture doesn't it?

 

Well...

I think you have the best argument, overall. TFA actively courted bigger crowds and was extremely successful on that front. Mission accomplished, case closed.

But then, there are people trying to use its strong numbers (whether they admit or not) to "prove" how badly Lucas fumbled with the PT; as well as being gaudily pro-TFA in every other prequel thread...

It's a little strange when there are six other Star Wars movies, four non-prequel ones, and three that pre-date the prequels entirely.

Yet, for some reason, you had to highlight the one you're always defending around here and have become a major exponent of.

Well, I don't care too much about North America in isolation. Newsflash: it isn't the whole world.

Neither of us are North American citizens, either, so it's kinda funny, in my opinion, to dwell on TFA's "domestic" takings.

Technically, it's actually a British film -- according to Disney and Lucasfilm. It was shot here (soundstage and location work), has British leads (both Londoners), a British crew, and had to qualify as "British", based on these sorts of factors, in order to earn juicy tax breaks in my country.

Spiritually, though, I suppose it's still an American movie, if it has to be one thing or the other. And as I said before, Han is really the lead character, or the main draw, and is manifestly the most "American" of the leaders: the smooth, sarcastic Gary Cooper of the saga. Arguably, the absence of a "Han" character in the prequels is what a chunk of its audience recoiled against; with the bad vibes mutating into things like "TPM has racist characters" and placing a halo of shame around the whole prequel trilogy. Sad.

Typo there: I meant "three", not "there". Darn.

"Jurassic World", however, while not a Disney film, has worldwide takings of almost $1.7 billion, while TFA, approaching $2.1 billion, is a barnstorming success -- yet the difference is, again, in the area of 20%. Now, to you, as we've been over, that's apparently a major difference. To me, it is not. They're the biggest blockbusters of 2015. One just happens to be a little ahead of the other. What might the next ten years bring? The fact that there are two other movies from 2015 in the Top 10 further diminishes the big success of TFA, in my mind. It is likely to soon be surpassed.

Furthermore, Disney have poached the director of "Jurassic World" for Episode IX! Which underscores my wider point in mentioning there being a total of five Disney features (including TFA) in the Top 10: Disney have tremendous clout in the area of family entertainment and are rapidly consuming everything in their path. Lucas' success, in contrast, was achieved as an independent filmmaker, operating outside the standard Hollywood system. That he sold to Disney to tune of $4 billion gives you some idea of how popular his movies are; and how much of a genius he is.

A 10-20% increase in most things, in my view, is not "far better". It's simply better.

Context, context, context. The Worldwide Top 10 shows that TFA's success is relative: four other movies from 2015, one of which has takings only 20% below TFA!

But, again, that's a lot to you, so I expect we're not going to see eye-to-eye on this.

The second release of TPM was much smaller-scale than the first. It wasn't the Star Wars Special Editions all over again. It ended up ratcheting up its overall takings by something like 10%. Nice (especially for such a woefully derided movie), but not huge.

Yes, AOTC and ROTS have the poorest turn-out figures -- no denying that. But is it fair to compare TFA, or even the original films, to those prequels? I would say, no, it isn't. Wait for the Disney sequels.

My prediction, by the way, is that Episode VIII and IX will still do better than AOTC and ROTS, but that might not mean a great deal, either. They would be a slightly fairer comparison, however.

This whole topic is really rooted in numbers and "weighing up" each film according to how many tickets it sold: accountancy by default.

No, I'm not an accountant, have no desire to be one, and actually find this whole topic close to pointless.

You're not doing justice to the weirdness of the prequel trilogy. Those other franchises you cite, well... they might be darker than the prequels in some senses, but they're still straight-forward buddy-buddy "hero" narratives, at the end of the day. Also, as I said (you clipped that part out), Lucas was aware that some people within his own organization were having trouble with Anakin's turn. He said they wanted a real betrayal to push Anakin into the arms of Sidious; not a desire to save a loved one from death. I guess they were misled by the title ("REVENGE Of The Sith"?) and found Anakin's submission too abstract or wimpish. But, as Lucas says in the quote, that was the story he wanted to tell, and he decided he wouldn't buckle: the story, in other words, came first.

In any case, it's all kinda irrelevant. ROTS seems to have done okay for itself in 2005. It still topped the charts, outpacing the other "serious" fantasy movie of the year, "Batman Begins", and outdoing Peter Jackson's lush re-make of "King Kong" (almost forgotten about, now?). Neither of those movies, by the way, is anywhere to be found on the All Time Worldwide Top 100: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/ ROTS, meanwhile, still occupies a place half-way down: at precisely 50. Its one other competitor (not necessarily a true contender) that year was "The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe", and that is on the list, but currently sat at 73.

One might be tempted to reiterate (again, you removed it) the fact that ROTS is still being talked about, still being watched, and still a major part of the Star Wars franchise -- even to the point of Disney re-using various sound effects, plot motifs, and other design elements in TFA. Cinema attendance, in other words, doesn't tell the full story. For instance, "King Kong" may no longer be setting people's world on fire, but I'll concede that "Batman Begins" is probably looked at very favourably today, as part of a trinity of solid Batman movies. And you yourself just called ROTS "an excellent movie", despite how set-minded you are in bashing the prequels (by no means just TPM). And don't try and claim otherwise.

And TFA absolutely would not exist for you gloat over without the entire PT, without the Madness Of King George. That, my friend, is a stone-cold fact.

 

...along with blockbusters, sequels, prequels, episode cash cows, toy licenses to print money, everything Hollywood has seen fit to mimic from the 'man outside' - for good or bad - and of course - good old nostalgia - the days when movies meant something, the days when...you know that guy made those modern Flash Gordon type things. What we would give for some of that now. 'How much? $4 billion'.

Chears ! See ya dude {elbowed aside in rush to grab toys}

 

Darth Maul is one of the two most interesting characters in PT?

What? Maul is just a mere plot device. Just like Boba Fett in TESB.

 

One can also look at the total number of tickets sold in the cinema.
In the 70's and early 80's, cinema attendance was down considerably compared with the 50's and 60's. Later in the 90's there was an actual increase in no of tickets sold and a peak was found in 2002, 2003. And then the total number of tickets sold have gone down a bit.
So the OT, despite fewer tickets sold and thus fewer people going to the cinema, that they did as well as they did is considerable.
2015 has a lower no of tickets sold than either 1999, 2002 or 2005.
http://www.the-numbers.com/market/
So the number of tickets sold to TFA represents a bigger % of the total number of tickets sold than the PT films.

Well one could compare JUST the first release of the each SW film and see what happens.
TFA has had only the one release remember.
Sources differ what the initial release of ANH made, some have it at 215 M$.
If we divide with the average ticket price we get about 96 M tickets sold.
TFA beats that.
BOmojo has the initial release at 307 M$, from 1977-1979.
Dividing with ticket price we get around 125 M tickets. Now ANH wins.
A difference of about 15 %. Since you don't view 20 % as a vast difference then this isn't either.

So just going by first release, then TFA quite close to ANH in terms of tickets sold.

Only three movies have passed 2B$ world wide and only two have done so with a single release.
TFA is one of those two.

Also, see below.

Well, would you consider a 20% increase in your monthly salary a big difference?
I know I would. Usually the increase is between 2-6% per year in my country.
An increase of 20% would be considered quite huge.

One factor you are overlooking is the variation in exchange rates when it comes to the dollar.
In 2001, early 2002, the dollar was more expensive than a few years before and what it would become soon after.
This hurt the OS gross, as they are converted into dollars, of the first HP, the first LotR and to a lesser extent Spiderman and AotC. Had the exchange rate been the same in 2001 as in 1999, HP1 would have grossed over a billion dollars world wide.

The situation today is similar, the dollar has gone up against several currencies and some currencies have gone down a lot, like the Ruble.
Some people have tried to calculate this difference.
http://forums.boxofficetheory.com/topic/18043-adjusting-exchange-rates/?page=1
With todays exchange rates, for ex Avatar's gross would be over 300 M$ lower.
The third Hobbit film would have the highest WW gross instead of the lowest.

This exchange rate is hurting TFA's OS gross and they estimate that it would have been about 350M$ higher with the exchange rate that existed five years ago.
So then TFA's gross would be more like 2,4 B$ instead and thus quite close to Avatar.

They have tried to calculate the WW gross, with the adjusted for inflation domestic figures plus the new exchange figures.
TPM's gross is then, 1,262 B$, compared with 2,066 B$ for TFA. A difference of about 800 M$.
Which is considerable any way you look at it.

They have also tried to adjust the OS figures for inflation but this is, as you correctly pointed out, very hard. These figures are VERY crude but TPM adjusts to about 1,588 B$. The difference to TFA is then about 30%.

And when one makes the adjustment for exchange rates, the difference is now bigger.

Well, the VHS release of TPM was almost a year after it had been released in the cinema.
And the DVD release was over a year after that.
AotC was released on VHS/DVD about six months after the cinema release.
Same with RotS.
So TFA is comparable to AotC and RotS in that regard, less so TPM.

[/QUOTE]

Well some SW fans expected TPM to beat Titanic domestically, it didn't but TFA did.
It also put a SW film back at the top of the domestic BO list.
Those are not inconsiderable achievements.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

This is what I meant before about the difficulties inherent in comparing films released in different years/stretches of time. But it continues to go unheeded. Instead, people like you and Darth Downunder just dredge up a few factoids to argue your view, rather than fully grasping the broader point.

And the OT kind of stood out at the time, dude. Know why? It was bold and innovative.

If you want to claim the same about TFA, be my guest. I won't.

Sorry, but you can't do math. 125 million tickets sold is a 30% improvement on 96 million, not 15%.

30% starts to look significant, but it all depends on context. I went over that before.

But on the worldwide chart, "Jurassic World" comfortably smashes the $1.5 billion mark with takings of $1.670.4 million and it's a 2015 release. No love for the box-office might of JW?

Below that, there's "The Avengers", sitting pretty with $1,519.6 million, and below that is "Furious 7", with takings of $1,516 million, and below that is another Avengers flick, "Avengers: Age Of Ultron", with takings of $1405.4 million. "Furious 7" and "Avengers: Age Of Ultron" are also 2015 movies, and even "The Avengers" only dates to 2012.

So, what's all this jazz about TFA being some mind-blowing success? It did about as well as those other movies -- with a little spice owed to the fact that it's a Star Wars movie, bro. If TFA had been slightly less jammy on its home turf, "Jurassic World" might have come extremely close to equalling it. Who knew? Movies about spaceships and dinosaurs are still wildly popular twenty years later.

I'd consider that a big difference, yes. But that has more to do with the absurd cost of living (sky-high rents, fuel bills, the price of food), not to mention a shrinking labour market (and ever-more low-hour, temporary contracts), than an entertainment conglomerate pocketing a bit more for themselves, and the cinemas making a tiny amount more, too.

Frankly, I don't care that TFA netted The Walt Disney Company a small fortune. They did all the right things in marketing it. And it's Star Wars. The first Star Wars movie in ten years. With the original cast and some nice new faces (in politically-correct roles). It was never going to die on its arse.

Also, as I said before, and expounded on in some detail, context makes all the difference. Sometimes, a 20% difference is significant; sometimes, it isn't. I don't think it's a crazy difference in this case. If you do, knock yourself out with that.

I don't know. It all gets too windy and complicated. But as far as overseas grosses go, TFA opened in more markets -- fact.

And you've practically just conceded that AOTC could have seen a moderately higher box-office result in 2002, had the exchange rates been more favourable.

Again, TFA was released in more markets than TPM, and, again, you've just conceded something in favour of AOTC.

This is why all this box-office talk is stupid. There are so many things to take account of.

Okay, you make a reasonable point here. But as I said before, it affects all modern blockbuster releases.

For instance, the very-high-grossing "Jurassic World" -- the second-biggest movie of the year after TFA (and it was a summer release while TFA was a winter release; so they didn't ever go head-to-head, unlike, say, AOTC and "Spider-Man") -- came out on DVD/Blu-ray in October 2015. A mere four months after going on theatrical release in June, just like TFA.

Okay, great. We get it. We get it a thousand times over.

TFA is a very financially successful movie; and people are falling all over themselves to say how brilliant it is in its own forum!

Yeah, no insecurity there, whatsoever.

Swing low, sweet chariot. I need to be taken out of this dumb world.