OFFICIAL NEWS A Lasting Record Of TLJ's Financial Performance.

Not paraphrasing this is what you said...

End of story? No right to challenge? Stop arguing? Looks like you are telling people to stop talking, or in other words to shut up...

I dunno about you, but, when I tell my kids to stop arguing with me, or their mother, or each other, I am telling them to shut up. Not sure how that can be seen any other way....

 

In regards to the instance you outline--
Stop arguing in no way = Shut up.

Shut up implies a ceasing of speaking all together
Stop arguing implies a ceasing of arguing, not speaking

Shut up also has a negative tone about it-- to elevate ones wording of stop arguing to 'shut up' would be incorrect.

 

stop arguing = stop arguing

Dear god, you're combative sometimes

 

That's not fluff.
That's adding an asset that wasn't mentioned previously, and changing the phrase, "revenue was due to", to, "results reflected the success of".
Fluff would be stating that TLJ was a success when it was something that under-performed.
That is to say, make it seem fuller than it really is; to fluff up.
Which is illegal to do.

Disney cannot claim that TLJ was a success, nor claim that it was a strong success, when in fact it under-performed its financial obligations.

Now, if what you mean is that even though Disney is pleased with the earnings and considers it strong in performance, that TLJ should have made more, well...I can't argue with your opinion. That's your opinion. Well, I can argue with your opinion, but I can't tell you that your opinion is not allowed.

It's not fact, but it's opinion.

I don't claim, and never will, that anyone should "shut up", or stop holding their opinion about how much TLJ should have earned.
I will debate that with people. I've asked a few times what level is the right level; what is "enough" to not be under-performing.
I've seen quite a few differing answers to that idea, and I've asked why should that be the bar, and I've received various answers to that as well, and I've debated those reasons that were offered where I did not agree.

In regards to whether it actually is an under-performing asset to the asset holder, however; no, it is not. None of us can argue with that fact, and you are correct that you have never argued against that. I am not suggesting that you are.

This current iteration spawned from me posting the quarterly report that shows Disney's stance on the subject. We can all hold our own opinions, and regardless if I agree with anyone's opinions or not, Disney considers the situation to be that TLJ did not under-perform.

Not only did they state that it was a success and a strong success, but they also boasted about giving Rian Johnson three additional films to make for them.
I don't know many large business models which include boasting to shareholders about giving hundreds of millions of dollars for more product creation to someone who made an asset which under-performed, nor do I know of a business model which includes doing the same when your ledgers indicate that there was a shortfall of any level to the product they supplied you.
Typically faith of this level is only given when there is a strong confidence that the product created will be capable of delivery due to an already extant evidence in their product catalog.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It appears that Black Panther Box office total will beat TLJ domestically and World Wide. BP is at $575 million domestically and will be at $600 by Tuesday. I think BP could outperform Avengers Infinity War as well domestically. I do believe Star Wars Episode IX will outperform The Last Jedi, since it will be the last Skywalker saga film.

 

Black Panther (2.86) already has a better domestic multiplier than TLJ (2.82) does and it came out 2 months later. And TLJ was a December release and got the holiday boost that BP didn't get in February.

 

Black Panther is also an event film.
It has the perk of having the boost The Force Awakens, Avatar, Titanic and Jurassic Park got.
It's a cultural milestone event.
And fwiw if you are going to play the holiday card, Black Panther was released in BLACK HISTORY MONTH.

 

This! I'm glad someone said it. I love how people who bring up BP and Episode 7 fail to take in account the "X-Factors" that TLJ didn't have. Like what you said, BP was a historical cultural milestone event. That along will bring in more people who normally wouldn't see SW. Also Episode 7 was the first SW movie in 10 years and the first SW movie in 30 years that featured the original big 3 cast. Those 2 factors alone creates the hype and we'll never see another SW movie that will create those numbers. Infinity War might make close to Episode 7 numbers due to 10 years of building and anticipation. Anyone who thinks TLJ was going to equal or surpass TFA is a fool to think that.

 

Yep. Avatar, Jurassic Park and Titanic were all milestones of technological achievement and that drew record crowds.
Avatar had a solid but unspectacular opening and the technology Cameron used is what got people to go and give it the most impressive long run in cinema history.

Infinity War could be special. It has the 10 year build up. But it's also the only film shot ENTIRELY with the new IMAX cameras. So every scene will be in full IMAX glory.

 

I'll take the moment to restate a perspective I brought up earlier, regarding the BP comparison, or any comparison.

The success of a new film does not depreciate the success of an old film.

Just because TLJ surpassed Beauty and the Beast didn't suddenly make Beauty and the Beast less successful than it was.
Just because Avatar surpassed Titanic didn't suddenly make Titanic less successful.

Equally, if BP does pass TLJ, that wouldn't mean that TLJ is suddenly less successful.
It's just as successful as it was before it.

Films don't exist in some concept of "reigning world champion" like boxing where they need to stay at a specific ranking spot to maintain their success status.

If BP surpasses TLJ, what should happen is that everyone cheers for a job well done (provided they're fans), because that's no small accomplishment to do!
But no one should effectively steal BP's success narrative for the purposes of attempting to belittle TLJ; that's just wrong to do to BP.
Using BP to attempt to prove that TLJ under-performed effectively states that what BP does is less impressive than it really is, meanwhile letting BP exist on its own success with no interpretative relationship between its success and TLJ's let's BP retain its success as being as impressive as it is and earned on its own merit.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yep. And almost no two circumstances for release are the same.
People are really arguing a top 10 ALL TIME grossing movie as being unsuccessful. Lol

4 of the top 5 movies all time can be classified as event films.
Avatar, Titanic, Force Awakens, Avengers. And then some how Jurassic World sneaks in there. Love but...this might be the most surprising one of all of them.
The rest of the top 10:
Furious 7 - similar to JW but still a 7th film in a big franchise that made 77% of it's money overseas. Wild.
Age of Ultron - Sequel to Avengers
Deathly Hallows 2 - Huge overseas numbers and big finale to long loved series.
Last Jedi - Sequel to Force Awakens
Frozen - no comment.

Sequels to the top 5, insane overseas hauls and monumental moments in film making.
Getting there is an achievement that can only be seen as wildly successful

 

To be fair, the debate isn't about unsuccessful, it's about a much more hazy and moving target concept of "underperforming".
That's why there's any debate at all. If we were talking about a binary successful/unsuccessful discussion, I think it would have ended long ago.
However, we're talking about this abstract concept of, "...as much as it should have."

The problem with that concept is that it's a moving target person to person. Some think it should be better than -~30-40% drop of predecessor, others think the legs should be >= 3.0, others think the gross should be >2/3rds of the predecessor, others have hard values like 1.5 or 1.7 billion (or 75% - 85% of the predecessor), or measure it domestically as 700 million, or even compare it against other titles than the predecessor as the measuring bar.

That's my general difficulty in accepting a should have (or the even more abstract could have) approach to non-underperformance in this conversation; there's not really a single unified metric to measure against, but a range of differing concepts of what would have been enough.

That's why, from very early on, I was regularly proposing the perspective of only looking at earnings to Disney and nothing else, because at least with that you have a solid measuring bar to grade against.
Before we had any actual report data from Disney to work with, I employed an equation that generally does alright enough for ball-parking, but I knew that wasn't going to be all that convincing because it's really incapable of delivering solid data...because there isn't any actual data input into it really (aside from if you know the domestic share rate). It's really a wide lens, but it's better than nothing and better than the other approaches in my opinion because at least you're asking what the net earnings are like instead of comparing against a wide range of varying conceptual performance indicators that aren't actual key performance indicators to the asset holder.
That's also why I favored looking at the financial report when it became available, as again, the position is proposed that the most concise and consistent metric is the earnings themselves unto the asset holder who stands to lose or gain from the performance, and the report is capable of replacing the ball-park equation previously used with actual perspectives of the asset holder.

But that doesn't fully settle it because even though this may be the case financially, those conceptual performance indicators are favored through fan culture variously among differing folks, so even while the financial report delivers a solid metric and goal to grade against, others still find that unsatisfactory because the numbers of their personal performance indicators still don't look the way they would prefer them to look considering their grading scales.

So, unfortunately, it's not so much about "unsuccessful", but instead about a concept almost nearly as slippery as "beauty", the aesthetic of personalized "performance expectation".

Cheers,
Jayson

 

The Last Jedi is a success in every way. I love the Last Jedi, so I am not trying to bash the film or say it underperformed. It was the number one film for 2017. I am also impressed by how Black Panther is super successful as well. Like I said earlier, I wouldn't be surprised that Black Panther could outperform (domestically) Infinity War, because of the competition in May that Infinity War will have to go up against. the "House of Mouse" has two high performing franchises on their hands. I think it will be obvious that Disney will dominate 2018 box office (Black Panther, Avengers Infinity War, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Incredibles 2, Antman and the Wasp, Wreck-It Ralph 2, Mary Poppins Returns).

 

Define success.

The Phantom Menace. A "bad" film. It made 1 billion in 1999 money. No IMAX. No 3D. No Dolby. No $37.00 premier tickets.

The Last Jedi. A "good" film. 19 years of inflation. IMAX, 3D, Dolby, $37.00 premier tickets. Just 300 million more.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Something is a miss.

 

It's a sequel film. They never do as well as the first. TPM was "successful" because no one knew how it would be. However AOTC was a bomb by SW standards, because people's dissatisfaction with TPM.
Notice the advertising wasn't what it was for TFA, because TFA is TLJs advertising.

 

That has been a constant point I have been making in a variety of manners.
That is this tangent's entire problem.

See my most recent summary: https://thecantina.starwarsnewsnet....nancial-performance.53377/page-47#post-489345

It's a slippery target.
Take for example your point.
You implied that TLJ didn't succeed when compared to TPM's earnings given the gross by comparison to the difference of inflation, which is fine to bring up, but you didn't then set a target that TLJ should hit to be successful in your mind in this regard.
1.5 times TPM? 2? 4?

And then there's the problem, as I mentioned before, that even if you do set a target, that's your personal target, but not a standard.
Even if someone agrees on the idea you bring up, they may disagree on what the "success" target is.

Which is why I continue to propose that the only target for success which is both fixed regardless of personal favor, and technically meaningful statically is whether or not Disney received earnings from the film in good enough volume for their finance to consider it a success.

By any other measure, the targets slip around due to opinion, and any success found another way can be deemed not, and any shortfall can equally be deemed not to be.

If Disney wrote it off as lower than they expected, then that would be it for a fixed measure, and if they deemed it successful or more than successful, then the same is equally true.

However, as I mentioned before, this doesn't solve the issue of individual thresholds because anyone can simply dismiss Disney's satifaction level and state that their own requirements were not met and so therefore to them, the success stands different than Disney holds.

In essence, there's no solid answer if the measure isn't based on Disney's holdings.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

hmmmm.....how many of those people would see a movie in the theaters back then vs now who wouldn't go to the movies due to of the high ticket prices? Ticket prices in 1999 were cheaper than 2017. Also, how can you compare a 1st SW movie to a sequel? Episode 1 was the first SW movie in 16 years. How can you compare that to a movie that had 2 previous SW movies before it? Now if you used Episode 2 as your point and it had the same numbers, I could see that argument but I would also argue that Episode 2 is worse than Episode 1. Episode 2 is the only SW movie that I have to press the "skip" button when I watch it. Once you start factoring in other factors, your argument doesn't hold weight. See the above several posts that talks about the X-Factors that makes your argument even weaker.

 

Great points! I was going to rate your post great until I read the AOTC part, I do like AOTC, films are subjective, great post nonetheless.

 

I understand. Don't get me wrong, there are some great moments in AOTC but the Anikan and Padme romance scenes kills it for me. I honestly enjoy Episode 1 and I really don't have an issue with Jar-Jar (I do understand why people don't like him). Maybe it's due to Episode 1 being my first SW experience in theaters, I was in the 5th grade when it came out. I grew up watching the OT on tv and VHS but never saw them in theaters including the SE. Even as a kid, I always enjoyed Episode 1. The Funny thing is, I didn't really enjoy ESB as a kid. Funny how our taste change as we get older.