Insulted by last Jedi? Does Disney deserve anymore of your money after this?

Disney executive? No.

Someone who knows how these things work? Yes.

No need to thank me, I am happy to educate.

 

Thanks anyway, man. Your “inside knowledge” is vital for us Star Wars forum nerds. We can now mentally prepare ourselves for Disney’s imminent bankruptcy and the end of the SW franchise.

 

And the ultimate measure of that is the market's reaction. Disney is NOT run by Iger, it answers to shareholders. If you're going to go on and on about how things work, let's look at the data.

Disney now sits at 110 a share, with a 1.5% dividend yield and a steady flow of increase over the last five years and a general recommendation to BUY from almost all major stock advisers.

The film is the #1 film in the box office, both domestic and world wide. It made more money in 17 days, than the previous top grosser of the year made in 3 months. Toy and licensee data is strong and licensees continue to line up and want to sell Star Wars branded toys and games.

The stock has DOUBLED in the last 5-years and reviews of the stock often cite the acquisition of Marvel and Disney as a key reason why the stock has doubled in value in the last 5-years.

The theme parks are currently going under more investment and expansion than at anytime in their history. The key investment? Star Wars, which is such a strong brand that Disney wants it to be fully integrated in all of their properties.

Star Wars is a MASSIVE success. That isn't some lazy fan who didn't like that Luke Skywalker wasn't Rambo in Last Jedi talking...that's BUSINESS talking. That's the stock market talking. That's the Disney board room talking.

The Last Jedi is a winner. It was a massive success, well loved by critics, loved by most fans and brought in more money in 2017 than every other film produced, period.

It's ridiculous fans keep insisting TLJ is a box office disaster without an ounce of fact, just their own arrogant opinion. Just stop. You can hate Episode 8 all you want, scream about how terrible it is, and how much better it would have had a clear alpha male who solves all problems by punching them in the face. We are all entitled to opinion.

You are not entitled to your own facts. Disney is booming, the film was the greatest box office success of 2017 and retailers and licensees are ecstatic and lining up to renew their licenses.

Ka-ching, Ka-ching is the cash register sound that mocks your uninformed opinion.

 

No, it isn't. How a movie meets expectations is only part of that function. A film can outperform expectations, but still fail financially (mostly due to an overinflated budget e.g.: The Legend of Tarzan) or can fail to meet the expectations, but still be successful at the BO (for instance: Batman v Superman).

How a movie's success or faliure influences an entire brand is yet again a completely different question. I'm pretty sure Disney's well aware that not even Star Wars is going to be a constant monster at the BO. Especially by the rate they're rolling the films out... Star Wars is a virtually unchanged franchise centered around more or less the same story and the same characters. The fact that it still draws the attention of this amount of people is pretty much incredible and unprecedented in Hollywood's history.
The reason why it slightly failed to meet financial expectations is because of Asia. And even there it's not related to the quality of the film, but due to the disconnect between the brand and the local audience.

Btw, I haven't seen your sources regarding the decline in the toy sale numbers and how's it supposed to be connected to the film's reception in any means...

Except the general population dosen't vote on Rotten Tomatoes. A small, but active internet- audience does, like the ones on this forum. TFA sold an estimated 108 million tickets in North America (!) alone. The 226k votes on its RT page is less than a single percent of that number only...
But even considering that, when it comes to mega-popular franchises like this one, the positive reactions usually overwhelmingly outdo the (not less active) negative ones when it comes to online polls. Again, see Batman v Superman for a crystal clear example.

For a valid decline in a popular film's audience reception of this magnitude to manifest on the internet, the negative reactions must be objectively visible everywhere, especially including the very active fans on forums like this. We clearly see however the exact opposite. The fact that some Australian guy attempted to manipulate this forum's poll dosen't exactly help validating RT's position either, to say the very least...

The internet is full of trolls and people with too much freetime in their hands. That's all the story behind this Rotten Tomatoes "backlash".

Thanks for saving me the time from typing virtually the same things. The fact that some butthurt fanboys on the internet are trying to make up their own "facts" attempting to seem TLJ or current Star Wars anything less than a gargantous financial success is mind blowing... That level of butthurt, ignorance and cognitive dissonance is almost clinical...

 

I'm afraid you arrived at a truly erroneous conclusion. Yes, there is apparently still a disconnect between the brand and the local audience, but a good, coherent and well-told story could have compensated for that.

http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001531/chinas-die-hard-star-wars-fans-respond-to-last-jedi-flop

"The most upvoted review complains that “the whole film really insults the IQ of its audience,” and demands to know how the universe could possibly be ruled by such an incompetent Galactic Empire. “In Star Wars, it seems only Darth Vader had a brain — it’s such a shame he’s already dead,” the reviewer concludes."

Here is the reaction of one of my SW friends from Australia, after I had forwarded him the above link:

"The film closed 92% of showings early in China, after just one week. Jumanji has clobbered it there. Apologists are trying to blame a low PR spend but it’s not remotely true, there were tours, all kinds of promos, the whole shebang. China considered it a dull, talky, near-monochrome yawnfest with crappy lightsabre fights and soap-level drama."

Sure, TLJ still made boatloads of money, but I can't help but wonder if hiring a script doctor or establishing a competent and able LFL Story Group wouldn't have made a few million dollars more.

In terms of evaluating the box office success of TLJ as the second film of a trilogy, I need to look no further but to the second film of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy where The Two Towers clearly exceeded the box office numbers of the first film..

 

Copied from the article:

He points out that, for example, superhero films from Marvel — a Disney cash cow that has enjoyed great success in China — feature recognizable settings, such as New York and even China, and are filled with larger-than-life leads who meet the public’s aesthetic standards. The Star Wars characters, meanwhile, look ordinary by comparison.

“These actors aren’t very beautiful, which may deter a lot of Chinese from seeing the recent films,” said Chen. “We fans often joke that if Finn were played by Will Smith, Chinese people might be more inclined to watch it — because he’s very handsome.”


Okay. The level of superficiality we are dealing with here is immeasurable.

 

The points raised in the video are valid. Thanks.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 25, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 25, 2018 ---

I think the most important point to consider is "mass profit and delight[ing] Disney shareholders." The problem is that the movie did badly in China, and there is good reason that that is partly connected to complaints about poor writing. Given that, I'm certain Disney is considering those points carefully, especially given the point that the second movie should have topped the first (which earned $2 billion), and that of all things involved in production, writing problems are the least expensive to fix.

 

1. TLJ doing poorly in China is an indicator of bad writing?

Do you know anything about film trends in China......

-The Mermaid
-Fate of the Furious
-Furious 7
-Transformers: Age of Extinction
-Transformers: The Last Knight
-Warcraft
-Jurassic World
-Avatar

Seriously......


2. TLJ was absolutely expected to top TFA at the box office??? Seriously???

 

Rich witch KK never deserved my money.

 

It is not inside knowledge, it's knowing how things work

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now we have the answer people like you always fall back on: The tired old strawman that takes the observation that E8 underperformed and responds with "oh I guess you're saying it was a complete failure and Disney is going bankrupt!!!"

The fact that you have to take what I said and strawman-exaggerate it to such a ridiculous degree proves you can't respond to the actual point I made.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 26, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 26, 2018 ---

LOL!

The second I read you say that Batman v. Superman was successful at the box office told me the rest of the post wasn't even worth reading. Thank you for putting it in your first paragraph and saving me some time.

And for all you strawman people out there, please note I am not calling it an unmitigated failure or anything like that, just that it is not considered a successful movie either.

 

Just curious. Given it is almost at 1.3B, No. 1 movie of 2017 and a good critic rating, what part of it is not being considered a success other than some opinions of some fans?

 

Financially, it was a very successful movie. But okay.