Gatsby77

Exactly. I *really* don't get the Luke criticism. In addition, the movies are entirely consistent since A New Hope that self-actualization as a Jedi -- and *true* mastery -- comes in embracing pacifism.

This ignores that it was Abrams who had Luke run away from the war and in hiding -- his idea, clearly articulated *and shown* in TFA. Johnson didn't contradict it, he simply played out that story thread. Also: https://images.app.goo.gl/MBCVtwNcNJ2UjrGi7

Oooh... Bait. Tasty tasty bait. Good analysis. And you're right - a B+ Cinemascore usually means the film sucks donkey toes. And - as I said - in this case, I agree. RoS deserves a B+. It was weak sauce. Far worse than The Last Jedi. Where your analysis is wrong is in the supposed negative WOM for The Last Jedi. Unlike RoS, it received an "A" Cinemascore. Audiences leaving the theater and rating it in real time *really liked it,* as did I. Far from "getting a beating" it continued to do solid business, ultimately surpassing $1.3 billion. Outside of the 40-something comics nerds on this board, the general public *liked* The Last Jedi -- it wasn't a mere retread of A New Hope like The Force Awakens, and it actually deigned to *take risks* and move away from the "only Skywalkers are special" narrative. So...why the confusion that RoS - which audiences didn't like nearly as much, is lagging the other films? It makes perfect sense -- because it's merely mediocre. Have you seen it yet? What did you think? Where would you rank it among the other 8 films?

Bookmarking this for later. Reported budget of $205 million, plus ~$100 million in marketing. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/christopher-nolan-is-being-given-a-ridiculously-big-budget-for-tenet-203123193.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAcIimfT5X2GNbNo7cgpojlydpyCgIDzXsQH2rhdaVImKiWM6yiwwhSEV-llRtYjG1yov1MRCVSm8reN4ax4sX1jTl5imOHPnByRUesanFj9fXDXnedq0mCYOY5JpIkZjQ6AOMCLF33RxVYqzJCR9S9h0NGTg5a3CojBkB8K0p7E

Nah. I would have still ranked Rogue One over Jedi even it had ended with Jyn and Cassion dying on the beach. The Vader & Leia stinger at the end was just gravy. If you go back and do watch the three trilogies today, it reveals how weak Return of the Jedi was. There's a whole 20 minute spot when they first get to Endor where the film grinds to a halt. The film is markedly worse than the prior two chapters.

Thanks for this insight. I'd wondered about that too -- that first, it was only a matter of time before the big corporate farming interests took over, consolidating the market; and what competition from other states would do to the market. It's now legal in 11 states plus DC, and even Virginia is considering legalization this year. Makes sense because the potential state tax revenue is *huge.* Still, $2.2 million mortgage for a converted warehouse in Denver seems excessive. $33.75 a square foot?

This. I'm not defending Rise of Skywalker -- I thought it was a weak sauce entry, the worst of the primary nine films but for The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. And it's better than Solo, but not by much. Nor am I defending its *overall* financial performance -- it deserves to get spanked at the box office by Rogue One, if only because Rogue One was a *far* better film. In fact, I think Rogue One was a better film than Return of the Jedi. But I am against people improperly using statistics to mislead. Which, in this case, was posting the 86% Wednesday - Wednesday drop without context or comparable benchmarks. Fact is, it's an average / expected drop, and was less than that of The Last Jedi across every metric. There are plenty of reasons to criticize the film -- from its story choices to its overall mediocrity to its overall lackluster (for a Star Wars film) financial performance. But its Weds. - Weds. drop ain't one of them.

Nope - numbers I quoted were reported specific to the Kaepernick ad campaign. Similiarly, their Kaepernick specialty shoe released in Dec. 2019 sold out in North America "within minutes" of release. Phil Knight's on record crediting the campaign as helping re-energize the brand.

While the risk is there, the pendulum has swung in recent years towards more and more brands taking hard, vocal stances and reaping the benefits. Nike's a key example, with its Colin Kaepernick ad. That campaign increased sales by 31% and made Nike ~$6 billion in the process. Today, Nike's stock price is less than 1% off its all-time record high. People today are increasingly *more* likely to buy from brands that take stances, overshare and are willing to take stands on uncomfortable topics.

? *Of course* Disney knows how to read a calendar, but that's irrelevant, and has nothing to do with the actual math. My point? It's absolutely disingenuous for either Scott Mendelson or you to highlight an "86%" drop from last Wednesday (New Year's Day) to this Wednesday as "whopping," let alone *unexpected* when the data show The Rise of Skywalker outperformed The Last Jedi both in absolute terms on those comparable days *and* on a % drop basis. If anything, the opposite's true -- Rise of Skywalker *held better* than did The Last Jedi over that period -- it made more money on New Year's day than did The Last Jedi *and* it had a smaller % drop a week later.

No. The film's aren't comparable on a count-the-days comparison because of the differences in the calendar and respective release dates. Compare each film's New Year's Day to one week later and you get the following: Last Jedi New Year's Day: $14.3 million 7 days later: $1.8 million (minus 87.5%) Rise of Skywalker New Year's Day: $17.1 million 7 days later: $2.4 million (minus 86.0 %)

I read Chuck's newsletter last night too, and am actually genuinely curious about his business model & finances. Two things (besides the gender fluidity) that stuck out to me: Am I reading it correctly that he's closed all his other locations, consolidating them into the single Jason Street location? Am I also reading it correctly that he's primarily been kept afloat the last decade simply because of his Jason Street real estate (which apparently has a $2.2 million mortgage outstanding, yet is worth far more now due to the legalized pot boom)? I'd be curious to see his finances vs. say, Lone Star's and Midtown Comics.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker earned another $2.4 million on Wednesday, dropping 40% from yesterday and a whopping 86% from last Wednesday. Wait - so it dropped a whopping 86% from last Wednesday, which was a national holiday with both kids off from school and their parents off from work? Oh the humanity! In other words, no mess, Sherlock!

BTW - I feel the same way about the Avatar sequels. James Cameron is one of the best sci-fi / action directors of the last 50 years, and yet he basically stopped working after the twin ridiculous successes of Titanic and Avatar. The man could have been pumping out new Aliens/Terminator/True Lies - quality original action films over the last two decades, but instead he's bet it all on four supposed Avatar sequels that took a full decade+ to make? What happens if the next one only grosses $800 million worldwide? On the one hand - yeah - he's more than earned the right to simply retire; on the other, I feel like we lost a great action voice because he's decided to go all-in on Avatar.

I agree with that. The way the holiday calendar played out this year, in particular, gave it an extra three days of kids & families off school that helped juice the early daily totals. But Mendelson also made a different point sometime over the past month: That maybe the beancounters are looking at the Star Wars franchise all wrong -- that The Force Awakens' $2.1 billiion was a once-in-a-generation fluke, and that there was no reason to expect a Star Wars film to do better than $900 million - $1.2 billion per.

Except...that if she wasn't truly *exceptional* at her job, Spielberg wouldn't have kept her around. After apprenticing on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Poltergeist, she served as a or the primary producer on the bulk of Spielberg's films from ET to Lincoln. That's an astounding track record. And doesn't count additional films she did with others like the Back to the Future trilogy, Twister, The Sixth Sense, etc. She's about as legit as it gets in Hollywood. Grossing $5.8 billion (and counting) from the last five Star Wars films is nothing to sneeze at either. That's an *average* of $1.16 billion per film, even counting the $391 million whiff that was Solo.

Here's to a speedy recovery, Joe!

And still is.

Yes - and she's arguably been a better caretaker of the Star Wars mythos than even Lucas was with his prequel trilogy. People here seem to forget how truly bad The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were. And with five movies in (in less than six years) and a hit live-action TV series, she's done *extraordinarily* well. Particularly as we've seen nearly every other massive universe attempt *other* than Marvel fail that time (including the Universal Pictures monster films, Worlds of DC, & non-Hunger Games dystopic YA films -- from The Giver to Divergent to Wrinkle in Time to Terminator to Fantastic Beasts, etc.) The only other unequivocally successful franchise during the last 6 years that even comes close to Marvel or Star Wars is Fast & the Furious.

I respectively disagree. Note that every single criticism you make in the above lies with the -script rather than with his performance. I firmly believe Hayden and Portman both did the best with what they were given -- but it was nearly impossible to make that dialogue sound realistic, let alone compelling. I blame Lucas for his ridiculous -script (esp. the dialogue) and poor direction rather than Hayden's acting per se. I've actually enjoyed Hayden's work in other films, including Shattered Glass and Takers. However, Jake Lloyd was *absolutely* miscast in The Phantom Menace. That movie could have been *almost* passable had Lucas gotten a solid child actor to play the role -- say, Haley Joel Osment, who was same age and nailed The Sixth Sense that same year.

Saw you've re-listed this at the same (cough!) optimistic price. Echoing FlyingDonut - when it *still* doesn't sell at that price, please consider listing it at a far lower starting price so we could actually witness some price discovery for a decent raw copy.

On the plus side, it's physically impossible for this to be worse than BvS.

Yes. The "Reylo shippers."

This. Also, since she's now struck down the Emperor, thus Highlander-style internalizing the power of "all of the Sith" I agree with one user on Twitter who noted how much stronger the ending would have been if she acknowledges this at the end. There she is, standing in front of Luke's childhood home, site of the execution of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and when asked who she is... Her eyes go red, she answers "Rey Palpatine" and disintegrates them. <Scene>

This. As I've said repeatedly on this forum, even when watching the film I thought we weren't supposed to *believe* Kylo when he said this. That he either was mistaken (easy, if indeed Palpatine was manipulating stuff behind the scenes) or the simpler explanation - that I thought at the time -- that Kylo was simply *lying* to Rey in that moment to help convince her to join him. That *eveyone* seems to have taken his word at face value bugs me, when the more obvious answer is that he was lying simply to manipulate her.