Were "fan expectations" the problem?

Based on statements from Disney people the issue with Solo wasn't the hardcore fans. They came out to see the film. That's why it nearly did $400M in the US (a good number relatively speaking). The film failed convincing the general audience to see it. They probably could have overcome this apathy had the reviews and word of mouth been spectacular, but both Deadpool 2 and Infinity War had better reviews and word of mouth. Average movie goer sees 4/5 films a year. Can you blame them for ignoring a recast Han Solo film that had okay reviews when they can can catch it on NetFlix a few months later?

We're way off topic here, but I see this a lot when people dismiss numbers the don't like. It also requires people forgetting what happened. In 2016, the polling averages showed Clinton with a 3 point lead. She ultimately won the popular vote by 2 points. That's with the margin of error. That's hardly a reason to dismiss polling.

@Jayson has written about the numbers for TLJ a lot over the last 15 months. The data isn't confusing and the conclusions aren't complicated.

 

Solo only did 213 million US Domestic, and did 179 foreign so it didn't crack 400 million worldwide (You said it did 400 million US Domestic alone). Not sure where you got your numbers, mine are from BoxOfficeMojo. So your assumptions are wrong as diehards didn't turn out for this film either (trust me, I know many diehards who didn't see Solo til it came on Netflix). I kept telling them it was a good/fun movie, and they actually liked it when they finally saw it, but they contributed nothing to the box office in May. Now I do agree with that casual fans (which usually jump on the bandwagon) didn't go once the movie tanked the first weekend, so it was a total miss for Disney. But the diehards and SW fans (who are big fans but not diehard) really set the tone for this movie bombing.

But again, it goes to show that Box Office means nothing because Solo is my favorite Disney SW film, and grossed the least of the 4 movies.

 

I think the big problem with TLJ is that it must constantly subvert expectations wether or not it makes any sense. As of right now, my feelings on the film are that it’s an awkward combination of Animal House and Battlestar Galactica (2004).

MOD EDIT

 

They projected 1.6 billion for TLJ. They did 1.3 billion. I cannot prove that the short fall was directly and solely due to long term fans electing not to do several repeat views (as many of us indicated that we did for TFA), but I suspect that it played a major role.

And while I think regardless of whether you liked TLJ or not, none of us were expecting SOLO to do Episodic numbers, it is a stand alone. We do not however expect it to do 600 million less.

That all said, I can't think of a commercial industry off the top of my head where meeting or exceeding the customer expectation isn't the goal. It's seems only when it comes to the discussion on TLJ that this changes and we actually litigate whether or not the performance of a movie franchise was the fault of the fans.

 

Can we get back on topic? This is thread about expectations. There's other threads about box office stuff and frankly it's the same dead horse everyone is beating.

Ah, "subvert expectations." I don't feel like The Last Jedi had many crazy twists. The biggest surprise to me was the throne room scene. Not because Snoke dies, but it happened in the 2nd act. It seems some people were caught off guard by Rey's parents stuff, but that was what I was expecting after the TFA anyway.

 

But the term sounds cool, like 'mary sue', therefore.....algorithm!!!!

 

So, just a sort of ray (Rey?) of hope here...

Let's say fan expectations really were the main issue here.

Let's also say that, as is a common complaint of Episode IX, that it's kind of hard to speculate on what'll happen in the next film.

Theoretically, if both of those suppositions are true, then we should expect that the next movie will be much better assuming the exact same level of quality, right?

I know that this sounds like I'm saying "yay, our expectations are lower now", but I don't think that's really it. I think it's just that we live in this world where people like their Game of Thrones/Walking Dead twists, and JJ was pretty fast and loose with his breadcrumbs in TFA. Now that the trail has gone relatively cold, we can truly be surprised by (and hopefully enjoy) what's to come.

Of course, this would especially requite some of the more disillusioned fans to be open to giving the film a chance.

So I guess that's my question to people who disliked TLJ- Are you going to be willing to set aside your less than positive feelings about The Last Jedi and watch IX as objectively as possible?

 

I don't base only on the internet, but originally I was responding in adjunct to @DailyPlunge's post which was about how it has favored in polls. I supplied an array of such polls as an example.

Then it came up about money. *sigh*....this tangent is annoying to me because we've literally covered that in the most ridiculously granular detail I've ever seen anyone demand for a film over the course of a long series of months.

I'm not interested in rehashing that same conversation again, but in regards to polls, that was also part of that same ridiculously long conversation and I'll stick to my conclusion from there.
After scouring through a wide range of polls, data samples, examining multiple methodologies, debating the validity of varying approaches that are used, the best poll in my opinion is still Cinemascore.
That doesn't mean that cinemascore hasn't its flaws; EVERY polling method has its flaws. The only one that wouldn't is if you could ask every individual who saw the film what they thought, and even then THAT poll has its flaws because there's always an issue with the context of the survey and how you asked the questions, and whether you asked the questions to scrub out auto-pilot answers (asking the same question in opposite ways with opposite grading for the answers so that if someone just sits down and fills out all 5's, you can toss that in the garbage because clearly "I really love this soda" 1 - 5 with 5 strongly agree and "This soda isn't that great" 1 - 5 with 5 strongly agree can't both be true).

That said, Cinemascore does the job right.
They apply all demographic modeling controls the right way, which most polls don't, they collect the survey using random sampling by soliciting people at the theater, and the interesting thing that I find about their results, unlike so many other options, is that regardless of the volume of money the film makes, their ratings more often align with the legacy of a film after theaters much more than other polls out there, and they aren't reliant on the internet as their pool, so it gets a much broader and more diverse demographic capture than internet polls such as IMDB or RT.

Cinemascore polls resulted in an A for TLJ.
It also resulted in an A- for Solo.
It resulted in an A for TFA.
It resulted in an A- and B+ for Transformers films.
And I think it does really well at capturing a fad burst film that won't likely stick around through the ages; for example Fifty Shades of Grey was a huge marketing boom that had every new outlet plugging it everywhere you turned, and scores of people saw it, and it made huge volumes of dollars (compared to the production cost), but when people were surveyed at the theater, it came in at a C+.
Or Blair Witch, which was a huge pop culture moment, but the film doesn't have lasting impacts in the zeitgeist of the general audience - the general audience isn't likely to see it multiple times over the years. And you see that in the D+ that it earned.

The thing most folks get mixed up with Cinemascore is that they think that it means the film was good or bad.
It doesn't mean that.
They sometimes also think that it means that Cinemascore isn't reflecting scores of people who didn't like the film.
It doesn't mean that either.
They also sometimes think that it means "You should like this film".
It doesn't mean that either.

It means that the general audience had a general opinion after seeing the film, and the impression they were left with upon leaving the film with it fresh in their minds and emotions was what you get on the score.

That's all it means.

I think it also speaks volumes that the score that the Hollywood machine sits on the edge of their seat for is the Cinemascore after opening weekend.
They don't give a damn what IDMB or RT say too much outside of marketing potential to brag if there's a good score.
No, what they look at is the Cinemascore because time and time again, that plus the earnings tell them whether they've got something that merits doing that again.

Things that have a tiny budget can accept lower Cinemascore values and still walk away with verification that they should make another like that, while films that have massive half-billion dollar budgets need to see higher Cinemascores to go with those revenues to push them towards repeating that same approach.

Basically, anything under a B is likely going to be a very bad moment for any film that has a half-billion dollar budget these days. If you can yank something at or above that, game on. You may not like the revenue that you got, but there's this pattern in Hollywood where there's a much higher tendency to make a follow-up or remake film than there is to crack open an original because your odds on revenue earnings wins on follow-ups and remakes is much greater than an original title.
So if you don't do well at the box office, but you do well in the Cinemascore, then you don't just throw the film in the bin and stop - like everyone seems to think Disney will do for anthologies as a result of Solo.
Instead, it means that you need to reexamine your monetary vehicle for the film because something didn't work right even though the film itself worked right.

I'm fairly certain that Disney full well knows what went wrong with Solo, and it wasn't TLJ, and it wasn't the final film of Solo.
It was the horrible mess they had in the first round of shooting that film that just absolutely blew money out the door and radically inflated the budget beyond what it should have been, and caused an absolute nightmare to the point that when Ron Howard came on set for the first day, he literally had to hold an all-hands meeting on set and give a pep talk about how they were going to survive and make any kind of worthwhile film at all because everyone (by many accounts) had pretty much lost hope and was in the mindset of the film being a horrible mess that wouldn't even be a good film; regardless of earnings or not.

The only reason that film ended up rated well by those who saw it is because Howard rescued that film in a simply miraculous way. I don't even think Disney at that point expected it to win at the box office; I think by the point they reached out to Howard the thought was, "F***, we need damage control for this train wreck! We at least need a good quality film!" and knew they were going to bite the bullet to get that.

The bottom line for me is that man...folks liked TLJ. A portion really friggen hated it. Cool.
The difference between TFA and TLJ in this respect is that TFA didn't have as much passionate hate in the same volume. Oh, it had the same hate...man, I remember the massive hate for TFA after it came out. It was insane! TLJ just had at least the same and likely some more.

Absolutely nothing either of these films has had in terms of hate even comes close to the level of hate that TPM had. That film response spread its hate across the internet like wildfire in an era preceding major social network platforms and the iPhone.

People picketed! Jesus. They made commercial grade documentaries; not youtube rants...full on commercial documentaries that they spent a sizable amount of money on to produce and release. Jesus.

And look at the PT now. Look around here. There's all these folks who have grown up and they're here on these boards and there's this rebounded voice that says, "We like these films", and in some cases, love them.

Imagine what's going to happen in a decade and a half when the current generation grows up and starts sharing their opinions about the ST. For some reason, considering the history of complaining and "doomsday talk" the entire Star Wars saga has experienced, I doubt they'll be showing up to say that these films were hated. As Hamill put it, "People complaining about a Star Wars movie? Imagine that!" *eye roll*

Hell, these films converted my wife to being a Star Wars fan. Good lord!
She's always been a Trekky and thought Star Wars was just bland and uninteresting. She's seen them all; she just found no real soul to them that chimed with her writing sensibilities. I never imagined a world where my wife would be invested in Star Wars at all, and here she was in the theater crying over Han in TFA, and crying over Luke....LUKE in TLJ...yeah...dude, this is a person who thought Luke in Star Wars was the most annoying character and shallow as all living hell for character development, and she was suddenly absolutely hooked to the point where she was crying as he was walking to meet with Kylo.

If a film can do that to people; then it's not a bad film. It might not be a film that everyone likes, and that's totally cool. But clearly this film has emotional power.
It clearly left people with an impression of emotion when they left the theater.

And those that hated it...well...they hated it.
Johnson knew that well in advance; that he was going to make a film and it was going to be a powerful film that either someone loved, or someone hated - not many would fall in the middle of just saying, "meh". Some would, but not many.

And he was fine with that, and so was Disney. They bragged about it before it even launched! lol

And the majority of the general audience loved this film.
For subset questions about the fanbase...well, hell...just look around here. We have these conversations that go and go and go about it in debate of whether the fanbase loved it or hated it, and how big the fanbase hate was, but every time there's a poll around on SWNN the larger percent falls into the favorable range (however the poll categorizes that).

So not interested in that tangent again.
If you want to read about what a crock that 1.6 billion is as some goalpost that indicates that TLJ was a box office failure, then go read the thread that spans 64 pages on the subject of the TLJ earnings, and you'll run across tons of posts about how the media making a projection doesn't mean a damn thing, that that value wasn't Disney's estimate, and that the media has made the same kind of projections with a general error of being roughly 200 to 400 million off on average for their estimates for films over the past decade.
Which means you'd have to go back and say that a whole score of films were failures because they didn't hit the media predictions, even though they still popped into the top 30% of earnings over the past decade.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

hey all ~ !

any more posts about box office numbers or polls will be deleted as off-topic.
talk about fan expectations here or find a more appropriate thread (and please don't make a new one, there are plenty on these subjects already). XD

 

No, thank YOU

 

Funny that China loves those movies and doesn't really care for SW

 

Speaking only for myself (and anecdotal, close family and friends), I'm leaning on giving E9 a pass. To my family and friends, SW hasn't really come back since the PT, the ST is more some weird parallel universe, think Star Trek Discovery.

I'm curious to see how E9 does and what direction it goes in, but I think I can get most of that through spoilers. After TLJ, I have no issue with spoiling this SW movie before watching it, actually, it's a requisite. If it has good word of mouth, there's a solid chance I go watch it 2nd or 3rd week. This is why I keep saying for the ST and E9, Disney should discount fans who didn't like TLJ for the most part. I think many of us who didn't like TLJ have at least temporarily left the franchise until the next trilogy, or at the very least won't be clamoring to see it early on.

I don't think fan expectations were the problem for TLJ, I do think, from my anecdotal observations, that it will be a problem for E9. We'll see, previews have yet to come out, there is time to change my mind.

 

Well, that's honestly kind of sad, I guess.

Not in like a "too bad, so sad" way, but sincerely.

I hope EpIX gives you a reason to be passionate about it.

 

It is sad. In my family, I'd say I'm one of the more positive "haters" lol, though that's a bit of an oxymoron, but I'm trying my best to keep an open mind, and forums like this mostly help. Looking at my family though, E9's challenge will be, probably insurmountable challenge, will be speaking to those who hated it and completely disengaged from the franchise. I admit my observations are purely anecdotal, I never tried to imply otherwise, but as an example, I have a nephew who bought a 1000+$ storm trooper suite/costume (OT version) 5 or 6 years ago, during TFA hype. He bought that costume before buying a car, and that hadn't been the only SW stuff he'd buy. To me, that speaks to a fan with a lot of commitment to a franchise. However, he no longer has any interest in even talking about SW. He still loves the OT and PT, and he mostly enjoyed TFA but TLJ has ruined TFA and the ST for him, as well as for other fans as we've seen talked about on these forums. To my knowledge, he doesn't go online to voice his displeasure, he's just moved on and is willfully ignoring the ST.

It's not as hard to move on from SW now as it was in the past, our options for sci-fi abound. I read somewhere, sure if it's this thread or another, but that fans like me seem to be perceiving the ST's attempts at drama instead as attempts to shock the viewers. There's similarity there, but it isn't entirely the same. Maybe it's the execution, idk for sure, I just know that I feel the ST lacks depth, it doesn't earn things the same way the OT did imo. Maybe that's expectations, I think some people interpret it as such, but that isn't my definition of expectation. It may be that my family and closer friends share an artistic inclination and TLJ didn't meet our tastes, and though art can't be "wrong", it can certainly not appeal to some.

I convinced one nephew(18) to come check out this site, if only to lurk and read comments and responses. When I spoke to him later, he told me he tried, but his dislike of TLJ is so great that he felt like those who loved it were trolling. I'm not sure what he read, but I did my best to get him to moderate his opinion, to understand that it's okay if someone loved the movie, but it seems his dislike for TLJ is so great that he can't be bothered. He watched Solo, and enjoyed it, most of my nephews did, as did my brother, all who disliked TLJ. That gives me hope that at least they haven't given up on SW, only on the ST. To me, that's why projections fail to convince me, because when I'm faced with these anecdotal scenarios, that's what leads me to believe the issue runs deeper than surmised. None of my nephews, the last I spoke to them, went online to discuss their issues or voice their opinion, they just slammed down a wall or utter rejection on the entire of the ST after TLJ.

How common this reaction is/was among fans, I have no idea. I do know in the past my brother and I would get together with the kids and make viewing a SW movie, opening weekend, a family event. I passed on Solo at least partly due to TLJ last year. I don't hold much hope that they'll be inclined to watch IX, and since planning beyond opening weekend always lessens the hype.

Honestly, I hope that if I skip on watching E9, it's a great movie, it elevates the trilogy and saga, and I regret not watching it on the big screen. That being said, SW has dropped in my estimation as just being a movie, as has been pointed out at the ridiculousness of the outrage. I can agree with that, and with so many options, it's one series of many. But for a time, I have to say I regarded SW as more than just a movie, it was THE movie series, as ridiculous as it sounds, SW losing that importance is like drifting away from an old friend.

 

the deletions have begun, folks.

if i have to delete your posts again for being off-topic in this thread (you know who you are), you will get a formal warning.
so please get back to "fan expectations" and keep it there. : D

 

I believe expectations absolutely played an important role in some fans being disappointed. JJ’s mystery boxes are tailor-made to get the mind thinking that each individual has got it figured out what’s coming up and that taps into the ego of our minds. LOST was most popular when everything still seemed possible and everyone’s theories seemed like they might happen, too, at the start.

People start imagining that and talking about it and in some cases even debating it like it is likely to happen. Some become entrenched in their positions on these theories. Rey Solo fans think it’s better than Rey Skywalker. Reylo fans think Reylo is coming opposite some people who think it can’t happen at all. And on and on it goes. I was on a LOST message board during that show’s first run. Leading into the hatch reveal everyone was so hyped for LOST. Everyone had a hatch theory they liked best or a smoke monster theory they liked best or a Jacob theory they liked best and as it came time to pay out on these there were consistently people underwhelmed or downright angry that not only their theory didn’t happen, but that an inferior theory (in their minds) did happen and that other posters they knew and had argued against had been right.

VIII probably played best for fans who speculated the least and who saw some of the clues of a troubled Luke in VII’s Han dialogue and prepared for it.

 

Yes for some there were some expectations. In fact some outrageous expectations. TLJ was quite different in that it was tailored more for a universal audience and adults than like the Pre-quels was sort more towards kids to adults. The OT was the same. There is a lot going on in TLJ than a simple story.

 

First post in this particular forum.

It is absolutely true that fan expectations - and the fact that said expectations were either not met or subverted outright - are at the core of the backlash against The Last Jedi, because we have ample documented evidence of various individuals directly involved with the Sequel Trilogy spending nearly two years telling people to temper their expectations and directly debunking various fan theories concerning the primary topics of complaint that most of those who didn't end up liking The Last Jedi cited as their primary complaints (Luke's involvement in the narrative insofar as his exile was concerned, Snoke's identity and importance to the story, and Rey's parentage), among other aspects of the story as presented by The Force Awakens, and yet most of the filmmakers' efforts were either ignored or dismissed as obfuscation or lies.

 

The LotR had huge expectations from the fan base of Tolkien's books and despite massive global success there are those whom view the films as a travesty against Tolkien's vision. I'm pretty sure there are fan expectations for the MCU. I'm also pretty sure financial success doesn't always make a good film (looking at Transformers.....). Despite a few complaints made against TFA in regard to originality it was never as divisive as TLJ, or as talked about, so clearly despite its blockbuster success there is something not right with the film. I've heard complaints of fan-service being a bad thing, and yet with TRoS we see not only the DS, but also have Palpatine back in some form. JJ will I'm sure both entertain the fans, but also give a great story for the film.