Star Wars: The Rise of... Stuff... and Things...

[Daryk]

So... mind reading on both sides?  ???

[Lorcan Nagle]

So... mind reading on both sides?  ???

The best metric for audience reaction is the Cinemascore rating, which was a B+ for Rise of the Skywalker, while Force Awakens and Last Jedi both got As, and the prequel trilogy each got got an A-.  Other audience reaction surveys also gave the movie positive marks, but again not as high as the prior two movies.

[Daryk]

Isn't the Cinemascore rating based on a self-selected base too?  ???

[Lorcan Nagle]

Isn't the Cinemascore rating based on a self-selected base too?  ???

They have operations in 25 cities across the US, and for any given film five are selected to survey, where audiences on the opening day are given survey cards to fill out. They generally get 400 responses per movie.  It's not exactly full rigour, but it's a hell of a lot more reliable than the Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews.

[Daryk]

"Better than Rotten Tomatoes" isn't exactly rigorous by any definition.  I think "mind reading" is still an accurate description.

[Sartris]

Until people stop going to the movies I doubt any metric is going to speak louder than cash.

[dgorsman]

Until people stop going to the movies I doubt any metric is going to speak louder than cash.

If there were refunds of ticket price if you don't like it, maybe (assuming fully altruistic viewers though).  Lots could pay to see it and think it's complete garbage  after the fact - ticket is still sold.  Or a good movie could get unjustly bad mouthed early and not earn as much.

[Sartris]

Disney seems rather insulated from any of that. Stock dips due to shrinking profit margins will get their attention. The rest is useless noise made by dorks like us on the internet

[Wrangler]

That's sad part of all this.  Disney won't care, as long as the Film's performance will likely keep pace with it's cost and exceed it.  Corporately, they won't care how quality of the franchise is.  As long they get their returns on their investment.

[Lorcan Nagle]

I'm willing to bet I'm one of the people here who actually votes with their wallet - I haven't paid to see a Star Wars movie since Phantom Menace.

[Daryk]

That makes at least two of us... I gave up after Episode VII.

[Tymers Realm]

I'm actually seeing TLJ for the first time tonight.
TNT is airing it tonight...

I felt TFA was a good Star Wars Film, but it didn't deserve the hype around it when it hit the theaters. I've herd enough of TLJ and I'm not entirely looking to watch it, but I figure I might as well...

As to TRoS...?  I'll have to see...

[Daryk]

I gave TFA a chance after skipping II and III... Rogue One was great, but TFA put me off the franchise again.

[Ruger]

[spoiler]Jedi Voices towards the end included Ashoka Tano (and both Obi Wan actors). Guess she died some time after Rebels.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Well, let’s see. She was about 14 when introed shortly after the Clone Wars began in 22 BBY, and about 17 at their end in 19 BBY.

That would put her in her early 30’s during Rebels (started 15 BBY, ended about a year before BBY).

Add another 5 years from the end of Rebels to RotJ, so she’s nearing 40.

TFA is 30 years later, so she’d be around 70 if she were alive. Not sure we know the typical life expectancy of a Togruta.

And nothing says that all those Jedi chiming in had to be dead just because most were.
[/spoiler]

Ruger

[garhkal]

I'm willing to bet I'm one of the people here who actually votes with their wallet - I haven't paid to see a Star Wars movie since Phantom Menace.

In the theater, i didn't see TLJ, nor will i see RoS.  On dvd, i rented TLJ the first day it hit redbox..
I'll probably do the same with RoS.

Oh and on another note..  one of my adnd sites, someone who's wife is a die hard SW comic/game fan mentioned that
"Gee, it seemed palpaltine was on a secret hidden sith world out in the middle of no-where, with a mass of ships around him.
Sounds strangely like the Star-Forge artifact, which according to comic legends, was able to MAKE ships via the force...."

[Deadborder]

The best metric for audience reaction is the Cinemascore rating, which was a B+ for Rise of the Skywalker, while Force Awakens and Last Jedi both got As, and the prequel trilogy each got got an A-.  Other audience reaction surveys also gave the movie positive marks, but again not as high as the prior two movies.

And this needs to be mentioned. Despite all the people raging online that TLJ was somehow the worst thing since cancer, it got overwhealmingly positive critical reviews and audience reviews. Plus it took something in the order of $1.33 billion. None of that is a "failure" by any means.

The problem is that the ragers are far more visible, even if they are a tiny minority.

[Kidd]

I did vote with my wallet, and watched neither TLJ nor Solo with my own money.

Well, after the horror of the last one, the family had decided we were not going to watch it. But then our extended family had some unexpected time to kill, and we wanted to do some group activity together, all of us, for Christmas. And my youngest cousin, the littlest boy wanted to... well... so there we were.

The 10 year old kid gives it 10 out of 10 by the way. So there's that. Yay.

Everyone else... was less than impressed.

I went in desperately trying to keep an open mind. There were a few good points, mainly related I think to JJ delivering a more consistent storyline and meandering less into irrelevancies like Rian did. But there were also many bad points, leading to an overall highly negative outlook.

In short, the positive points would be - plot threads generally tied off, set design mostly good with one glaring exception, CGI par for the course

The negative points would be - very bad camerawork, forgettable dialogue, rushed execution (not entirely the film's sole fault because it had to redress TLJ a bit), a couple of Rey's decisions were extremely frowned upon by all and sundry, and the general feeling of nothingness. The movie could be an episode of Star Trek, or Battlestar Galactica, or The Expanse, for all that it really matters; non-fans would not be able to tell. As far as they were concerned, "the Force is chi" (quoted).

1/10, would not watch again.

And this needs to be mentioned. Despite all the people raging online that TLJ was somehow the worst thing since cancer, it got overwhealmingly positive critical reviews and audience reviews. Plus it took something in the order of $1.33 billion. None of that is a "failure" by any means.

The problem is that the ragers are far more visible, even if they are a tiny minority.

In this day and age reviews are suspect. We know there are reviewers with agendas on both sides, for and against.

Gross worldwide give only a rough idea of audience sentiment. Second weekend and total domestic figures are more useful as they provide clues to audience word-of-mouth review.

Last but not least, we don't truly know the proportion of the "ragers", they could be a "tiny minority" or they could be more than that. Worse than "ragers" are the "indifferent", who were not sufficiently moved either way to write and post a positive or a negative review. The "silent majority" is a real thing and you will really only see their effects on the box office.

Speaking for my own family, as I said, most of them disliked TFA so much they didn't even bother with TLJ. And they didn't post any reviews for either TFA or TLJ.

There was no plan for the original trilogy either.

If that were true, that makes the clowns behind the Sequel trilogy even worse, dunnit? Since there is no excuse for them not having a plan and no excuse for delivering shoddy product without a plan either.

[Lorcan Nagle]

If that were true, that makes the clowns behind the Sequel trilogy even worse, dunnit? Since there is no excuse for them not having a plan and no excuse for delivering shoddy product without a plan either.

By the metrics that count, the product wasn't shoddy.

Hell, by the metrics that count, the prequels weren't shoddy either.

[Ruger]

Flying isn't jumping.
As for jumping; traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

1) Luke had to fly through hyperspace to get from Dagobah to Bespin. The old Legends continuity did not have astromech droids with built in full blown navicomputers to calculate routes. R2 unit’s could simply contain 10 sets of hyperspace routes.

But that is Legends continuity.

2) Just looking at the films, Luke did not take R2 with him. Either he had another astromech droid with him, used the force to navigate hyperspace (which I covered in a previous post) or he modified his X-Wing to have a navigational computer. Any of these three things could them be used by Rey to travel to Exegol.

Edit: here’s a link to the wookiepedia entry for “instinctive astrogation”, the power Force users can use to navigate hyperspace in the Legends continuity:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Instinctive_astrogation?mobile-app=false

Ruger

[JadeHellbringer]

Well, we made it a whole week and a half after release before people decided to throw mod directives to the wind and begin bickering and arguing...

Don't get this thread locked. Seriously.

[Moonsword]

Thread locked for moderator review.

The fact I had to do this less than an hour after an administrator told you people to stop bickering?  That's why we can't have nice things.

[Moonsword]

+++MOD NOTICE++

Okay.  I'm unlocking the thread now.  The attentive among you might notice some posts have been excised.

Let me make this perfectly clear:
The discussion on critical ratings and box office take is over.  It contributed to the back and forth that caused the moderation staff to step in last time, so you're done.  Look it up on your own time, debate it over PMs if you really want to, or take it to a Star Wars fan site.

This is a forum for BattleTech.  Other subjects exist at the sufferance of the forum administrators and as the moderators have noted, Star Wars threads have a tendency to turn into dumpster fires.  You were warned we're not going to be patient about it.  If certain specific people seem to be a problem, they'll be told to stop discussing certain topics.  That step has already been taken.

Stop the petty bickering and toxic sniping at each other.  If you can't behave, the forum moderators will handle that problem.

[Brother Jim]

I plan to see it on Saturday.

[rebs]

I still haven't seen it yet, waiting for the crowds to die down.

[marauder648]

[ArkRoyalRavager]

Which is most of the gripes many have had about these new disney made films.  THEY Totally ignore prior film canon, to just tell "THEIR story"..

Yeah. The sequels have a long list of errors. For example, Rey's lightning destroys a ship but Palpatine's planet-wide force storm merely disables little starfighters like ion cannons.

All (IMO) cause he was probably an after-thought...

Unfortunately. But then, TLJ was the same movie that also messed up Luke.

[marauder648]

In my opinion ROTS is..at best adequate. And, if you don't think about it, its quite the spectacle with huge set pieces galore. But these are lobbed at you in such a flurry that it almost overwhelms you and basically you don't have time to think about what just happened because X is now happening.

Visually it was spectacular and there was some nice callbacks but its trying to do 2 movies in one. Episode 8 made a mess and this trilogy will probably be a warning to future film makers on how NOT to do a series of films. IE without an overarching idea. Episode 7 laid the groundwork, 8 ripped it all up and tried its own thing, 9 then has to re-tell the story that would be the follow on from 7, as well as tell its story and stick the landing. Hence the large amount of maguffins and exposition deluge to try and force the story along to get it to an end.

Yeah its not bad, its not terrible, we're not talking Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull here. But its sure as hell not great, better than 8 but that's not a high bar to meet, getting kicked in the head by a horse would be better than 8 so saying 'its better than 8' isn't much. About as good as 7, but when you think about the plotholes, the maguffin hunts the sheer number of things that don't just nudge the story along but ram it along like a nuclear potato gun. It lands not with a boom or a wet messy squelch, rather a 'eeeeehh...'

[worktroll]

I was entertained. It was worth going. The music failed to be particularly memorable, except for older Williams cues (like the Palpatine cue), but workmanlike.

A lot of box ticking going on, agreed. And most things had one answer. "So, why Snoke?" "He was a clone puppet." "Why?" "You had your answer." Which in a light entertainment - not a philosophical work, not a religious opus, not a life-changing story - is entirely fine.

And I just figures that one person's force lightning could destroy one ship. By the time it was spread out over dozens, it was capable of zapping their electronics. No biggie.

[marauder648]

The music failed to be particularly memorable, except for older Williams cues (like the Palpatine cue), but workmanlike.

That's a very good point, for this trilogy the music seems to largely be forgettable, I can't even remember how any of it went outside of the classic series queues.

[jimdigris]

The music did not break any new ground, but you need to remember that John Williams is 87.  All things considered, he did well to do two new themes for this trilogy.  He may have also been hamstrung on what the director wanted.