ST The Development Of The Sequel Trilogy

BO Mojo only has one additional re-release for ANH, in 1982 and it made 15 M domestic, no overseas given.
ESB has also one re-release in 1982, it made 13 M, again no overseas.
RotJ had a re-release in 1985, it made 11 M, still no overseas.
For all OT films, the overseas has been less than the domestic.
So the impact of these would be small, likely about 10 M or less. And it would not change that ESB made more overseas than RotJ.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

The question was wether the figure you linked to included or excluded figures for worldwide re-release. If it excludes them, then we can be more confident of the numbers, and don't have to depend on arbitrary assumption of what numbers a film would get for an international release. I have an original quad poster of ANH/TESB double bill, which was a re=release of the films in circa Dec 1980.... so 1982 wasn't the first re-release for TESB.

 

We have the total WW for ANH, ESB and RotJ. This include all releases, including the SE.
Neither BO Mojo nor the-numbers.com have a breakdown of ALL re-releases.
BO Mojo has three for ANH original, 1982 and SE. Same with ESB. RotJ also has three, original, 1985 and SE.

BO reporting was not as exact back then as it is now or back in the late 90's

We have the domestic figure for each OT film for each of these releases but often no overseas numbers.
So in order to get an idea what those are, I have subtracted the domestic figures from the WW numbers and as good an approximation of the SE numbers as I could find. RotJ SE has an overseas number, ESB does not.

Based on that, ESB made more overseas than RotJ.

The total WW number show that clearly.
ESB WW: 550 M, Domestic 291 M.
RotJ WW. 475 M, Domestic 309 M.

ESB has bigger WW despite a lower domestic, so the overseas is bigger, That can't be disputed.
The difference just from these numbers are about 90 M.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

So in short, the figures you quoted probably include any re-release up until the Special Editions. And given that there have been more re-releases for ANH/TESB, any 'cumulative' total for that period, probably skews favourably towards ANH and TESB respectively, given they had more opportunity for repeat business.

 

ANH likely had many rereleases that are counted as one yes but ANH is not under discussion.
And its gross is notably higher than the other two.

The-numbers.com have some weekly numbers for all OT films, again domestic.
From May 1977 to April 1978, ANH made 215 M.
From May 1980 to Aug 1981, ESB made 200 M.
From May 1983 to Mar 1984, RotJ made 252 M.

So in the first "year" or so of release, RotJ actually did better than the other two.
And the difference between ANH and ESB is not that big.
Yes one obvious reason is inflation, tickets were more expensive for RotJ than for the other two.

ESB was given one rerelease in 1982, RotJ was given one in 1985. The domestic gross of these are very similar.
13 M vs 11 M.
Given, as I've said, the overseas for all OT films is less than the domestic, then the impact they would have on the pre-SE overseas gross is minor.

The one area where we can see that ESB did better than RotJ is with the SE.
ESD did 67 M, RotJ did 45 M. Again domestic.
But what is being discussed is that RoS broke a trend, that the third SW film in any trilogy did better than the second one. This was the case for RotS but not so with RotJ. Better domestic yes, not so overseas and WW.
And the SE showed that ESB did better than RotJ.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Looks like Bob Iger has been frozen out of the creative process by Bob Chapek according to Variety. Karma after what he did to George Lucas.

 

Nothing to do with actual final numbers. But in 1979 / 1981 Fox had a rather unfriendly relationship with LucasFilm. The heads of Fox were jeolous that George Lucas owned the characters and rights to Star Wars. They greedily wanted them back and hope Lucas would fail to get empire financed and would need to trade his ownership for Fox to bail him out. Fox fired everyone who was an advocate for Star Wars. When Lucas had the money to finish the movie Fox was not pleased.

The way profits were split on Empire, the more money it made the more favorable the profit split was to LucasFilm. LucasFilm thought when the box office crossed a certain point Fox stopped properly promoting the movie. Either out of spite or because they didn’t think it was profitable enough for them to continue to promote. Because of that there was more money to be made on Empire that Fox left on the table.

Three years later all the executives at Fox in 1980 were gone. An oil tycoon with no movie experience bought Fox. LucasFilm’s lawyers were able to make very favorable contracts at this time. For Return of the Jedi Fox’s percentage of the profit went up the more money the film made, so the studio had much more incentive to have Jedi make more money and support the longest possible theatrical run.

 

A strawman argument is where you purport to refute someone's argument by refuting a cheap distortion of it (i.e. hence knocking down a strawman). There's no distortion intended here really.

I think we're basically not disagreeing with each other and I don't think you're wrong about anything you're saying above, to be clear - well, with the exception of the following:

The reviews of professional critics are an entirely different category - they're a much smaller group and can be curated as being 'like with like' accordingly. As a general rule, the same group of critics will review the same movies, so when someone says "TLJ's critical reception was far superior to TROS", it's not statistically meaningless, its a generally true statement of how it was received by the more or less same group of critics, with minor variation. You can't do that with audience scores. Nor are critic scores subject to obvious brigading attacks being directed by things like alt-right Youtube grifters.

Got a link?

Without knowing anything about Chapek - good. His decisions set up the ST for stagnancy from the start, and he clearly influenced TROS most of all* - and that influence was certainly entirely malign.

*Thinking about that interview where JJ was on the phone to Iger daily

 

I didn't think you were purposely trying to 'distort', rather than 'deflect' an assumed criticism of TLJ... which wasn't my intent anyway...

But that professional critics are a 'much smaller group' means, by definition, that they will not necessarily reflect the wider view across the cinema going population (and indeed... the view of a critic can be much more prone to politics). Sometimes those opinions jive with the wider audience, sometimes they don't, and sometime they help shape audience perception. But one can't really make a case that polling circa 500 critics is any more objective, or reflective of a reality, than polling 500 fans. Like I say, the only objective indicator of 'popularity' is reflected in box office takings (and obviously box office is mostly a result of branding/marketing etc. etc.), but popularity is in no way a measure of quality.

 

Disney have essentially thrown the Skywalker saga under the train to promote their new theme parks, but unfortunately the pandemic has meant that they have taken a huge hit financially.
So as the song goes 'Who's Sorry Now?'

 

You don’t toss out 90% of your franchise to promote a theme park based on that franchise.

I just think DLF’s top brass didn’t know WTF they were doing.

 

Yes... 100%... that and hubris... that they could never fail as long as they could stamp a SW logo on it... and that it was bound to be better than whatever Lucas had devised.

 

We'll see what impact this has to LFL.



And I think this is a good sign that SW going to be under one person like MCU

 

What about witchcraft? The DOTF script had 'nightsisters speeders' in it, and the final draft (according to MSW) featured Sollony Ren, female and 'maul-like' and from Dathomir. The witches from Dathomir.

Dark Rey is maul-like in a way. Also:

Spoiler

But in the released film, some FX makeup has been added:

Spoiler

If one looks closely, 'they' are Rey and not Rey. (Rey Baggins is another not-Rey variation apparently. Those are cannibal teeth)

This, and not the TLJ cave, is Dagobah. There Luke fought both Vader and Dark Luke.

Dark Rey is maybe some perception in disguise; someone else related to her path. Someone older. Dark Rey speaks like Leia ('don't be afraid of who you are')

Again, it's almost nothing, but the idea behind it would be three-faced Hecate at the mythological level, goddess of crossroads and of witchcraft. Also the Parcae/Morai and the Norns - and the witches in Macbeth (to whom Kylo -'kill the past'- resembles at times. They prophesize him the throne/crown of Scotland)

 

Dark Rey was an interesting concept; I would have liked to have seen more of her. And I much prefer the sabrestaff to the yellow lightsabre - in fact, the first two films seemed to hint at Rey having a sabrestaff as she was more experienced with that type of weapon.

Terrio again, I suspect.

 

Blame the studio for making him rewrite the script so much. I imagine one would stop caring so much after being made to redo one’s hard work so many times.

 

She would've had a saberstaff if Trevorrow had made Episode IX, JJ for his part (bizarrely) considered saberstaffs a dark side weapon (?!?! - because of Maul I guess) and so rejected the idea.

He's also responsible for the saber staff design having Vader-type cladding, which makes no sense at all since Rey has nothing to do with Vader, but oh well.

Or his script just wasn't very good in the first place and he chose to keep rewriting it over and over and over.

 

TROS visual dictionary:

It was either a jedi or a sith wayfinder. The notion, anyway, is that of Alderaan as a hidden planet, thousands of years in the past - as some kind of Exegol/Ach-To from, say, the UR perspective. The Hidden Fortress.

Maybe 'our' Alderaan was in fact New Alderaan once, or some kind of twin but distant planet.

And maybe Leia knew, hence her strange ring.
She wears her RO/ANH dress as a FG. 'Hope'. Alderaan had not been destroyed yet.

'The princess of Alderaan has disrupted my plan'. That's maybe ambiguous, and there's also the general(Poe)/royalty(San Tekka) thing in TFA, with Leia wearing that royalty dress when saying goodbye to Rey at the end, and then a similar dress in TLJ.

Rey appeared, and then so did 'royalty'. Was it Rey's hair? Jodie Comer (Rey's mom) seems to be wearing those same buns in the film. Did Leia knew her? Luke went after Ochi, around the time Rey's parents were taken.

There's also the Anastasia connection. The mirrorbright song in the bloodline novel and the 'journey to the past' song (that Carrie Fisher wrote) in the 1997 film are similar.

Bloodline. But some things are stronger than blood. That's why Leia remained Organa. Alderaan.

 

Is it possible for the Sequel Trilogy to be threaded into a more cohesive, better connected story? I feel that by connecting the ST to the Original Trilogy (their golden goose) under the name of 'The Skywalker Saga' that they would have to at some point, or risk "tainting" the OT.

 

My guess is they actually believed that the SW name meant more than the characters themselves did in terms of profitability. Not an uncommon business error. Sort of like buying a burger chain and recreating the menu with mostly poultry and salads and expecting the same customers to frequently come back. That sort of thing even works sometimes, but with SW it had no chance.

 

Well Disney obviously wanted a very bright future for Star Wars outside of the skywalkers. they did pay alot for it after all. and they couldn't bank on the skywalkers to repay it all. but obviously the skywalker story still carries a certain nostalgic weight for the franchise.

 

Its not like the theme park won’t reopen and make those profits.

 

I think that’s a key part of it.

MANY SW fans are primarily “setting fans” - they love the trappings of SW but may not care about the established characters. And I would not be surprised if some influential folk at LFL are primarily setting fans and/or think the most profitable audiences are primarily setting fans.

 

With an aging lead cast, they sort of have to be "setting fans" (I like that) BUT they could have catered to both audiences, easily. They thought the way to go was "remake the OT as a soft reboot" without reckoning with the idea that if they didn't honor the past, people would get angry.