Solo "bombs", so what happens next?

... key words “every market”.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s their job too.
But I think they’re going to dig marketing strategies, demographics and such.

 

Maybe they sold a lot of less toys than they did for TFA.

 

They should start with "now killing off everybodies childhood heroes, was that a good idea?".

And while there at it how about a future BLOOD RELATIVE Skywalker for a future film set in the future?

 

Finally, now I regained hope. And reading "various markets" give me relief. The world is much bigger than US/Europe and franchises like the MCU, Fast and Furious and Pixar movies know it very well and make a lot of profit from it. Time for Star Wars grow even stronger, thank God.

 

They all had plans for Memorial Day weekend. Everyone wants to get out to see the Saga films before the spoilers get out, but I never got the sense that anyone was in a rush to go out and see this right away.

This isn't an excuse for the box office this weekend. Had the reviews been better the opening would have been higher. More anecdotal stuff... I just got out of my second viewing here in Florida. Pretty much all the showings today were close to sold out. Our audience clapped at the end of the film.

 

I know that many will disagree, but I do not think it's entirely related to what the fans thought about TLJ (I do not think the fans have more impact than they think they have, at least as significantly), but frankly I think it's due to several things: First place we have all this drama behind scenes, in which the two directors were fired, because the issues with the filming, so Lucasfilm hired a new director who start to do re-shoots which costs a lot of money, and besides this drama generate bad press, which it could take away their potential customers (not just fans, but the general audience). Second, and in relation to the above, because the extra money spent, there was too little marketing, they did not generate much "hype" for the movie, they did not generate enough interest in the people Third, having little marketing, they decide to release the film too close to the last premiere of the saga, not generating the time to continue promoting the film. Fourth, related to point 3, they decide to release the film in a period where the competition is tight with films like Deadpool 2, Infinity Wars, and the upcoming releases like Jurassic World 2 .. etc, which could take away their people.

So this was a very bad planning of Disney and Lucasfilm in releasing the film in this period with little marketing, where it could not hook to the general audience, which is busy watching other movies, and only depends on the fandom this time.

 

I would point out... he asks.. WHILE CASUALLY DISMISSING the fans that don't agree with him.

Seriously.. just wow.

Per the subject... there are two ways this can go and either has a chance of happening.

1) Disney soldier's on to finish out 9 and places the blame for Solo on Solo. 9 doesn't even make a billion dollars. At that point, their failure will be complete. They'll clean house at Lucasfilm and pick and choose product to make for the IP.

2) Disney takes a good hard look at what happened with TLJ and recognizes and admits the problems therein. Rainy's trilogy is cancelled straight-up. They likely fire Kathleen Kennedy, at best let her stay until 9 release.. but for sure they clean house at Lucasfilm. Mea culpa's all around. They flat out admit The Last Jedi was a catastrophic divisive mistake that they're in the process of learning from. 9 is announced that it will now conclude The Saga, with future stories to have their own arcs or be standalone, rather than being dependent upon the main one.. but any potential trilogies will be dependent on the success of a first film.

Personally? I think they're beyond the point of #2 ego-wise, and will likely send Star Wars into the night via #1. They're literally so far beyond the point where they should have started #2, that even DOING #2 may not save it, and they literally need to just let it burn. After all, Darth Rainy said... get rid of the past.. destroy it if you have to.

 

is dangerous listen to the sections of the fans that are being vocal, because you risk to piss off another section of the fans. they are kinda in a difficult position

 

or at least gone hey people have been dreaming about seeing Luke Skywalker as a fully fledged Jedi Master for 40 years, maybe not letting fans at least go one one adventure(ONE JUST ONE THATS ALL I WAS ASKING) with him as one before we kill kim off, an instead have him as a grumpy hermit just so we can subvert expectations.... might really annoy a large section of the fan base.

and lets not even mention next time they actually mange to get a new generation of star wars fans and casual fans talking and speculating about the series and what might happen next... maybe don't answer them with answers that again feel like they have been cooked up just to subvert expectations rather then tell a fulfilling story.

 

Fatigue is a Hollywood euphemism for having made a bad movie. That's the new word they use.

 

It's not so much they should of listened to Abrams, it never should have got to the point where Abrams had to ask for the film to be pushed back, they where about to make a series of films people had been looking forward to for over 3 decades.... you get the story right before you put the film into production. Not set a release date then knockout a script. That should of been common sense.

From their they have pretty much gone from crises to crises, personally I'm just happy we've done so well as we have, i've had fun with 3 out of the 4 films released, considering the way its been ran, it could of been much worse!

Again, if they-had their head screwed-on from the start it should of been obvious, that wouldn't be what star wars fans wanted, it felt like a decision made by executives sitting around in a room, "going that solo guy was popular why don't we make a film about him been young."

I do have a certian level of sympathy for Disney, I mean fans have been looking forward to seeing these characters back on the big screen for 3 decades, i'm 33 and I can't honestly remember a time when i wasn't excited by the Idea of seen a big screen adventure with Mark Hamill playing Luke Skywalker as a fully fledged Jedi Master. So putting these characters back on screen came with an incredible amount of baggage that was always going to be hard to over come, (another reason why the should of spent more time planning). But still they must of known not giving fans what they had dreamed of seeing for decades and just having Luke as a grumpy hermit, was bound to upset a large chunks of the fan base, so my sympathising is limited.

so yeah I agree they need to stay away from Mark and co, if Disney wants to be successful it needs to start something fresh in the star wars Galaxy, and get fans excited in that.

 

I think in hindsight, Disney is going to regret doing 7,8,9 and should have focused on standalones. The PT and ST are just too divisive because everyone has their own story, all of them have to connect to the OT, and it’s hard to look at them as their own each entity.

If Disney would have focused on good standalone movies then fans can take each one as is. Maybe some fans liked R1 and didn’t like Solo, or vice versus, but that wouldn’t affect the next movie because that would be it’s own entity. Solo has definitely been affected by TLJ backlash and in some ways it’s not fair. The Saga movies divide the fans because it all goes back to the OT and they’ll constantly be compared so they are married to them for good and bad.

 

Then this -

Apex, with respect, Disney does NOT owe you the movie you want. And just because Kathleen Kennedy didn't call you up personally and ask you to help with the script does NOT mean she's disrespecting you.

I enjoyed TLJ. That's okay. You didn't like it. That's okay, too. But this habit you have of calling it a hate crime every time you get on a keyboard? That's disrespecting fans. That's disrespecting me and every other movie goer who enjoyed watching it.

I'm not asking you to like it. I'm not even asking you to stop disrespecting your fellow Star Wars fans (although that would be nice). I'm asking you to think twice before calling Disney out for "disrespecting fans" while you're doing the same thing you accuse them of.

Nobody likes a hypocrite.

--- Double Post Merged, May 29, 2018, Original Post Date: May 29, 2018 ---

Star Wars has ALWAYS been political, from the very first movie in 1977.

A group of hippies, guided by the wisdom of an ancient mystical religion, take on the greatest weapon the Galaxy's military-industrial complex can make. Production started in 1975, during the Vietnam War. Star Wars started out as a leftist political statement.

This friendly history lesson brought to you by an old geezer. Cheers!

 

I want Rey to have no legacy in this franchise

 

I vote that we scrap everything and start all over!!! Just have Luke wake up and say: "What did Han put in those drinks?"

 

Hey look, another SOLO box office thread.....

 

I want an L3 action figure.

 

When we discussed Shakespeare and Dickens in college Brit Lit class we focused on how well the plays did on their opening weekends. We also talked about the fanboy boycott after Billy Shakespeare botched Hamlet and why Charlie Dickens didn't ask Joe Q. Fanboy how to make the ghost of Christmas Past more badass.

 

You're right Disney doesn't owe me anything but here is the part you miss: I don't owe Disney anything either.

So when the powers-that-be at Disney/LFL try to evaluate why Solo bombed and how Star Wars has gone become just another cinematic universe with absolutely nothing special about it, it might be wise to find out why both the hardcore fans and the casual fans have abandoned them in droves.

Disney has been very disrespectful to the long-time, hard core fans - although I don't like to say it is "Disney" so much as it is Kathleen Kennedy and the producers at the highest level of LFL. The long timers have been taken for granted. This is proving to be a poor business model.

I keep seeing people in here trying to defend present day Star Wars by saying it was "always like this" and that E4 was a commentary on Vietnam. I am not going to talk about what the original vision of Star Wars was because that can be debated into infinity but fact is the final product we got on the screen was not an analogy to the Vietnam War. If anything, it was an analogy to WW2. Nazi imagery is prevalent throughout the OT and even E7 for that matter. The end product was not a leftist statement and you really have to stretch to find comparisons to Vietnam in the OT.

@Finn is a Jedi said it perfectly so I will just quote him here: "the point is that nothing in the OT or the PT was so blatantly George spouting his beliefs that it takes you out of the movie."

 

Please don't assume that just because you can't see the parallels that they don't exist.

George Lucas has admitted that one of the biggest influences on the series was the Nixon era. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Lucas said Star Wars “was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships? Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...al-than-you-think_us_590b663de4b056aa2363d298

See also

https://nypost.com/2014/09/21/how-star-wars-was-secretly-george-lucas-protest-of-vietnam/

and

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...ti-war-protest-and-how-R2D2-got-his-name.html