For the lovers, how much is too much?

This is a rose-colored glasses take on things. Star Wars merchandise sales are doing very poorly. Demand for new SW products is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down (trust me on that one). TLJ underperformed relative to expectations, and Star Wars is no longer the top movie franchise as it is getting trounced by Marvel left and right. Solo (A Star Wars Story) is going to have to work hard just to get in the top-5 box office of 2018. Is it still profitable? Yes, it is. But it is hardly the unmitigated "better-than-ever" success you paint it out to be.

 

The age of people collecting objects is down anyway and toys are more digital. It used to be that older kids would play with physical toys, but they tend to be set for younger set. Collectors are older now. Toys R Us out of business. Those Pops! do well as people can put them on their desks or something. They aren't really toys. That seems to be the way of it now, over the action figures. Though I like those, I often see them sitting on the shelves.

 

The funny thing is people hating Disney Star Wars because they see it as nothing but a corporate business entity who are just making a buck as opposed to George Lucas, who they believe only saw it as a passion project. When this is the same man who created Ewoks for marketing, and didn't want Han to die in RotJ because that wouldn't sell toys.

 

"Star Wars is getting beat by Marvel at the Box Office".

*Checks box office opening weekends...


I mean, sure it'd be cool to still hold that top spot, but I think this kind of thinking...


... is kind of silly. Topping the charts should obviously be a metric of success, but it's a bit Chicken Little to think that the sky is falling right now.

 

LOL! Why in the world would you check opening weekends and not the final numbers??

Oh wait.... maybe because checking the final numbers doesn't support the point you're trying to make so you cherry picked your stats. You know full well that if we looked at final numbers, we'd see that a main-episode Star Wars movie was beaten by a February-release, single character Marvel movie just 2 months later (to say nothing about how soundly it will be trounced by Infinity War when those final numbers are in.

So yeah, Star Wars is getting beat by Marvel at the box office.

--- Double Post Merged, May 1, 2018, Original Post Date: May 1, 2018 ---

I understand there is a societal change from 40 years ago, but Star Wars merchandising sales is down considerably from 2015. Heck, 2017 - a year in which a main episode movie was released - was down versus 2016. That's not good, and it can't be blamed on societal changes.

 

Yeah, let me check Infinity War's final numbers. I'll get right on that.

And again, if it's getting beat, it's getting beat only by Marvel's record breaking numbers. That's nothing to be ashamed of.

 

Not only that, they are being beaten by films from the same studio. All of this money goes to the same pockets. To quote DJ: "It's all a machine, partner." The same machine.

 

But it's not really the same studio, just the same parent company (i.e. they are under the same umbrella of Walt Disney Studios but Marvel Studios and LFL function as distinct production entities).

Furthermore, I don't care whose pockets the $$ goes into, what I see is one production entitiy clearly outperforming the other production entity by light years. I would do anything to steal Marvel's top level creative talent and storytelling units and bring them over to the SWG. Instead we are stuck with Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson.

It's nothing to be ashamed of but if I told you 2 years ago, in the aftermath of TFA, that by 2018 Marvel was going to far and away surpass Star Wars in terms of prestige and dollars, I'd be laughed out of the forum. However, that has indeed come to pass. One studio is clearly on the way up, and the other is clearly on the way down.

 

Depends. If your argument was "Star Wars has slipped so far that it'd doing significantly worse than Marvel, I'd be worried.

But if it was "Marvel is doing so well that it's currently outperforming Star Wars," I'd be excited. I can enjoy multiple franchises and celebrate their successes.

I'm glad that the latter is more reflective of the reality of the situation. What a time to be alive!

 

Speak for yourself. Even at it's worst (in my case, with Rogue One) Disney-distributed SW are better and way more rewatchable than the vast majority, if not all, of Marvel films. Also, a reminder - here are the only Marvel films that outperformed Rogue One, the "worst" (if you consider one billion dollars a bad result) performing new SW film:

• Iron Man 3 ($1,214.8 mln)
• Black Panther ($1,333.7 mln)
• Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1,405.4 mln)
• Avengers ($1,518.8 mln)

PS. For the record, I enjoy Marvel films, most of them, at least.

 

Right.

This all looks really good.


The rest is still good, but hardly comparable (with the obvious caveat that Infinity War is certainly going strong).


We've recently been in a strong Marvel run lately. Ragnarok was fantastic last year, hot on the heels of the much anticipated Spider-Man and GOTG films.

Then, Black Panther, which was frankly a phenomenon that taught the movie making industry an immensely important lesson. Oh, and now the freaking Avengers. That's big stuff.

We'll see how well Ant-Man holds up this summer in sustaining that run. And trust me, I'm rooting for it. I loved the first film. But I think we've seen that the lower tier heroes tend to not perform nearly as well in their solo runs (not unlike the spinoff films in Star Wars performing not quite as well as the Episodes). Though, again, hardly something to scoff at.

 

Marvel is on an upward trend, whereas Star Wars is going downward - and it is Star Wars' downward trend which scares me. SW has clearly fallen behind Marvel, it's not even close. Will it also fall behind Jurassic World? Pixar? Disney Animation (or live action recreations)? Star Wars has a 3 year streak of taking the top gross of the year. Not only is it obvious that streak is over, I think Solo (A Star Wars Story) is going to have to work hard to come in the top 5, and even Episode 9 slipping out of the top-3 for 2019 is not out of the question.

Star Wars puts out 1 movie a year and I hear a lot about "Star Wars Fatigue." Marvel puts out 3 or so a year and people can't get enough. I wish we could swap creative teams. If Ant-Man outperforms Solo, I think I'll dry heave for most of the summer....

 

I don't really care how Star Wars is doing, honestly.
All I personally care about is whether I like the film in front of my face.
I don't have to have a Star Wars out there that I like; it's cool if there is, but eventually there's going to be a Star Wars that I'm not all that interested in.
Hell, it already happened. I was not very much entertained by the PT. I didn't think, "Whelp! There goes Star Wars!", but I didn't buy any of them, and I don't really watch them.

From a film appreciation point of view, I think they are wonderful. It's fascinating to study what Lucas was attempting to do and watch them from that lens, but as pure entertainment, I don't enjoy them personally.

I also don't find any interest in Rebels, or Clone Wars. I'm just not at all interested in an animated medium of Star Wars. My daughter is, and that's cool. I put it on for her, and I've tried to get involved, but I honestly find no interest in the content of those stories, nor the way they are told (and I don't mean animation by that).

I like analyzing things so jumping into topics about the financials of a film, since I'm here, is going to be something that I'm likely to do (at least once), but I don't personally care if any of the films tank or blow the roof off of world history, and I really don't care if some other film comes along and passes them up in earnings.

All I care about is whether or not I enjoyed the film.
I enjoyed TFA and TLJ. I enjoyed RO pretty well, but I'm unlikely to watch it repeatedly because it's sort of a null-sum plot line. Ultimately, the plot of RO doesn't really matter. Everyone's dead by the end of it, and I already knew the results of the film's story as an impact upon the other films because those results were in ANH.
So it was just a neat filler, but that's all that it was for me.

I don't find Marvel and Star Wars very comparable, either.
They're two stories that don't run anything alike to each other. You can't build the Marvel model around the current Star Wars because the Marvel model, which is brilliant, is (in general) to make films about individual characters or small sets of characters, who then develop fans around that character (or that set of characters), and then those individual characters are grouped together into an alumni cast film and all of the disparate fanbases collide into a super-fan group for the big shows.
So your venn diagrams of the fanbase increases by factors as a result, because if you were a fan of character A, B, C, D, E, or F's films, then you'll probably show up to check out the big show with everyone in there, and if you didn't see one of the other character films, and you find that you found one of those characters interesting, then you'll probably go check that out afterwards.

Star Wars can't, currently, do this because it's, currently, a Saga that already exists dangling unfinished.
Where Star Wars is at this moment in Disney's flexibility options is about on par with where Marvel was by the third X-Men movie.
You had the big show, and now you want to ad-hoc in individual character films.
So if you were a fan of main big shows, and you liked Wolverine, then you might go check it out.
Your chance to get as big of a pool is just less by default logic than the other way around.

You're basically banking that folks like a character from the big show well enough to want to go see them in a side-tangent film that doesn't inherently, or directly, link into the big show main plot line.

Star Wars is currently stuck with this. You can make a Solo film, or a a Yoda film, etc..., and the chances are good at this point that a decently sized audience will indeed show up for that due to their iconic status, but it would be entirely different if Star Wars was written from the ground up such that you saw a Solo film, and later that year you saw a Yoda film. The next year you saw an Obi Wan film, and etc... and eventually you found out that A New Hope was coming out.

Maybe that's something Disney will look into later on, I don't know.
But Disney isn't crying over Star Wars' successes.

A success is a success.
The success of Star Wars' financial obligations doesn't suddenly flip to being less successful than it was for Disney if a Marvel film beats a Star Wars film.
That's a flaw in logical thinking called relative privation, and that means you shift the success from an established standard to a comparison with the merits of another even though such a comparison is not the means by which the success is determined.

Now, all that said...I really do not care how well Star Wars is doing.
I won't ever be found to be worried or afraid how well Star Wars is doing in the record books of film grosses.
Hell, I don't care if it flops. There's plenty of cancelled shows and flopped films that I enjoyed. There's plenty of hit films, even record setters, that I really can't stand to watch. And there's a very large count of films between these extremes that I equally enjoy...because most films don't flop or break records. Most films just suffice well enough.
Ultimately, all I care about is whether I'm enjoying them.

I'm enjoying them, so I'm having a good time.

If I wasn't enjoying them, I wouldn't be thinking that Star Wars was falling apart. They're making money. Disney's fine; more than fine.
You don't pick the same directors to do more of the same property for you if you're not happy with the results they delivered.

So if I wasn't happy with the films, I would just be bummed that it was going to probably be a while before there was a Star Wars that I enjoyed because if they are succeeding, then they'll likely continue making the same kind of films.

But even here, this doesn't bother me much. I've been in that position with Star Trek TV shows since TNG ended. I'm still waiting for the Star Trek I'm interested in to show back up on the small screen. It hasn't, so...meh...on I move.
Clearly Star Trek is doing fine and will continue to exist regardless. Hell, it'll probably still be pumping out more content long after I'm dead.

I think, perhaps, there's a bit of an issue of context and hyperbole floating around.
It's film...not laws governing life for the next X years. It'll be OK.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Your analyses are brilliant.
Reading through the more critical posts here I have to think of a possible scenario where somebody will stand up, maybe after we have seen a SW film that "only" earns about 300 to 600 Million Dollars in the theatres, with the headline:"The ultimate breakdown of Lucasfilm"; followed by proud words how perfect his/her predictions are fullfilled now.
BUT what is the goal of all this. Who wants to be right about "the death of Lucasfilm" or SW?
I love to see a good (and even a just quite good) space fairy tale every now and then.
For me, that is the only thing that matters

 

If you think Toys R Us is going out of business just because of Star Wars? It's not just Star Wars toys that are down, just fyi. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...les-fall-in-2017-as-movie-tie-fatigue-sets-in
From the article:
"Even more toy-licensed films are scheduled, including the prequel “Solo: A Star Wars Story” and new Transformers, “Fantastic Beasts,” “Jurassic World” and superhero fare. The lesson toymakers will draw from the 2017 slate is that they can’t just rely on the movie to do the marketing anymore."

“There is a new paradigm,” Johnson said. “Just because there is a movie with a toy tie-in doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work. It used to mean it would work.”

Also from the article:

"While “Star Wars” was still the top-selling toy line during the nine-week holiday period, sales fell from 2016 and the brand lost its No. 1 position for the year, according to data from market researcher NPD Group shared with Bloomberg News. Full-year 2016 numbers benefited from the pent-up demand from “Star Wars” fans who started buying merchandise after Walt Disney Co.rebooted the franchise with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in December 2015, as well as a second film, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” released a year later.

“Star Wars is a force to be reckoned with in the toy industry,” Disney said in a statement. “It remains the leading film-driven property for the entire year.”

--- Double Post Merged, May 4, 2018, Original Post Date: May 4, 2018 ---

Look, you hate Star Wars that's just it. Cause where is this "fatigue" coming from?

 

To be fair, part of the reason Toys R Us tanked was because of poor and misleading financial decisions. It wasn't totally due to slower toy sales. In fact, R Us was doing a pretty good job of adapting to the times and reaching out into the more popular digital market.

Though there is definitely still plenty of data to support the claim that toy sales have still tanked across the board.

 

If that's what you believe, then you clearly aren't reading my posts.

I'll be happy to continue this discussion if you actually read my posts, but otherwise it would be pointless to draft one of my typical long-winded responses.

 

So, then were are you getting this Star Wars is on a downward trend from then? Cause it's clearly not from a financial point of view.

 

I mean, the one thing we can say is that yes, TFA outperformed both Rogue One and TLJ.
But, I mean, that's to be expected. TFA was an event, the first Star Ware movie in about a decade, and the first time we got to see many beloved characters in a lot longer.

Rogue One was a spinof, so I don't think we can really even count it (though it still did incredibly well for a movie- best box office run in 2016, if I remember correctly, and best in 2017 for quite a while too). TLJ did really well still, but not quite as well as TFA of course.

I really don't think we have the data to say that we're on a downward trajectory when we really only have two major data points and one has built in factors that make it an outlier. That's like if you manage to score 110% percent on a test with bonus points, and your parents get mad that you only score 95% the next time around, claiming that you're now failing.