Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, December 20, 2019) Movie • Page 209

It was great in the moment but when you take a couple steps back and think about it as an actual film. Well.....

 

Fortunately I don't let the discourse affect my enjoyment so I take a few steps back, look at the whole picture, and realize I still love it.

 

Having done so the film is still great. 9/10 movie imo

 

I’ve already seen comments about Johnson and how “Star Wars is over” on Facebook so this is why the same people were not praising Joker today. The opening it’s tracking for will still put it in the top 10 of all time so..

Rise of Skywalker Tracking For Lowest Opening of New Star Wars Trilogy

 

I don’t really understand this. The movie outpaced VII and VIII in terms of presales, plus historically Star Wars trilogies dip for the middle film then rebound higher for the final film. Who does these predictions?

Hate having to read all these negative reports only to have them making excuses and trying to spin the narrative once the film crushes. I just don’t understand the internet anymore.

 

Sold the most tickets, but lowest projections. Sure

 

Surely people realise by now that pre-sale tickets are not directly proportional to box-office. I'm pretty sure Captain Marvel sold more pre-sale than Infinity War and broke the record at the time.

The record is broken all the time because more and more people are almost exponentially pre-booking tickets. It's a reflection on the rise of pre-booking a lot more than it is an indication of box-office

 

Atom and Fandango both had Infinity War selling more pre-sale than Captain Marvel.

Can you point to a time where the record was broken and there was not a massive box office success? Seems to be pretty highly correlated.

 

Have presales increased 2.5x over the past two years? Because IX sold 2.5x more day 1 than TLJ.

I understand where you’re coming from and agree that there are more factors, but I’ve found nothing to suggest ticket presales have more than doubled in the past couple years.

It’s definitely gonna be a huge success and will likely end up somewhere between TLJ and TFA.

 

We're not talking about "success". Obviously RoS is going to be successful. But having bigger pre-sale does not mean having a bigger box office. At all. Which is what is being talked about.

 

You said they’re not correlated, I’d like to see evidence of huge presale numbers not being correlated to a big big office number if that’s the case. I can’t think of one. Which one are you citing here?

 

And I see where you're coming from too. It's certainly a good indicator, and you'd rather it broke it than didn't. I just don't think it's fair to say projections are stupid because of pre-sales when pre-sales are not as accurate of a reflection of box office as you think they are. The projections I saw of $190-220m is totally fair imo. I've long thought this will come in at about 200.

 

I know people that wait until the movie is out in theaters before they get tickets and see it within the first week. Pre-sales don’t really tell you how well it’s going to perform overall. It will be the number one movie this holiday season.

 

I think it's very clear I was not implying big pre-sale tickets does not equal big box office. I was making the point a film having bigger pre-sale over another film does not necessarily mean bigger overall box office or even opening weekend than that film.

‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ Has Second-Highest First Day of Ticketing Pre-Sales

Rogue One was the second highest pre-sale ever and only became the 12th highest opening weekend at the time for one example. So it sold more pre-sale than Civil War did that year but made a fair amount less if you want to compare the 2 films from the same year.

 

First day isn’t the same as looking at a month of presale. Civil War held the record there from the first google article I found, and RO did best CW domestically despite being in theaters way less time by the end of 2016.

Movie Comparison: Captain America: Civil War (2016) vs. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

I think these cases still draw a strong correlation to presale and box office.

 

It did not best CW domestically opening weekend which is the important number for this. Overall total takes into play quality of movie, rewatchability and word of mouth after the movie is out. Opening weekend is the indicator for pre-movie buzz and anticipation and it is opening weekend figures we are discussing now for TRoS so that point is irrelevant. Anyway, even if we do take your comment you just contradicted yourself anyway by saying Civil War sold more presale but lost to RO domestically anyway...

And a month of presale is not the same as looking at a weekend of the actual film being out either. You can cut the line off wherever you want to suit your narrative. Take a bunch of films from within 2 years of Rogue One and it broke that record ahead of Age of Ultron, Jurassic World and Batman v Superman but it did not make as much opening weekend as those films did.

If you disagree fine, but you asked for an example and there one is. It's 2am I'm off to bed

 

But you didn’t give one? You have now changed your argument to be opening weekend only? I’m not saying they’re perfectly correlated or one to one, but they’re clearly strongly correlated, which is what I said, and which you’ve seemed to deny for some reason and I’ve been asking to see evidence there’s a weak or negative correlation. Is there some huge presale movie that failed at the box office I’m missing?

 

I did give one. And 4 movies corresponding to that example which showed my point. The argument was always about opening weekend because that's what the whole conversation about the projections are about and the main real thing that pre-sale tickets have an impact on anyway.

And I never denied that at all you clearly did not read my posts. I said from the start that having bigger pre-sale than movie x does not mean it will have a bigger box office than movie x. It obviously does not make it less likely and to imply that that is the point I was making is ridiculous. I have already said it's a good indicator but it does not mean the projections for the opening weekend are silly.

 

Where are the words first week here?

 

The topic of conversation in the thread was on the opening weekend projections and I was replying to that topic of conversation. It's really not difficult to understand.

 

Then why have all your examples shown high presales correlating with high first week *and* high box-office results? Each example had massively successful openings and full-runs? What’s the argument for weak correlation between the two? You’ve only given me movies that had huge openings and huge box office success. I’m not saying they’ve got an N=1, but it’s clearly pretty strongly correlated.

Top presales and top movies of the year and their opening weekends are very correlated in the last 5 years of data I can find information on.

 

I've explicitly explained what my point was at least twice now and you keep replying saying I said something else which I did not. The previous posts in the thread were implying it was ridiculous of the media to say that this film may open to less money than the other 2 in the trilogy because it had bigger pre-sales. And I replied saying that just because it had bigger pre-sales does not mean it will make more money at the box office (be that opening weekend or overall) and that it's not a reason to say the projections are wrong.

I never said that breaking the pre-sale record was a bad sign or that the film isn't going to be successful as you keep implying is what I was saying. It is obviously correlated but not enough to write off another source that contradicts that relationship because as we both agree it is not N=1. So if another piece of data says "yes, while the presales are this, this also shows that..." then that is another contributing factor and isn't irrelevant because of presales.

That's my last post in the matter now I'm going to sleep. You can either understand my point now or you can disagree.

 

I never implied that at all, I was asking to examples of movies with huge presales that were not successful at the box office, since the first post of yours says "It's a reflection on the rise of pre-booking a lot more than it is an indication of box-office" -- which I think you now agree is not really true, since it is an indication of box office success. And you said, "but having bigger pre-sale does not mean having a bigger box office" -- which we also now it seems agree is more correlated than originally stated: a big presale is pretty correlated to having a big box office.

It being the biggest ever presale may not mean it'll have the biggest ever opening, but if it's even in the top, I dunno, 5, that will still show a high correlation between big presale and big box office. And I was looking for any evidence to show a negative correlation, or reason to think this selling extremely well will not translate into actual success at the box office, or first week. I wasn't trying to be snarky, I was just genuinely looking for information or data on a negative correlation between the two.

What's the other piece of data?

 

Devil's Advocate: Just going to throw it out there that Solo was outpacing Black Panther in pre-sale and look at where those two films ended up.