Box Office: ‘Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker’ Is The First $500 Million Disappointment
Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver in STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker played like a conventional frontloaded blockbuster movie, as opposed to a Christmas biggie or even a recent Disney biggie in terms of legs and post-release reception.
With $5.36 million (-36%) in its sixth weekend of domestic release,
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has now passed the $500 million mark. Even in an ever-expanding global marketplace where
The Rise of Skywalker became the 46th movie to pass $1 billion worldwide, there have been only 15 movies to pass $500 million in North America. And, yes,
Star Wars IX is certainly the first movie to pass this benchmark and yet remain on the defensive in terms of expectations and receptions. It is currently the 15th-biggest domestic earner of all time, just below
Beauty and the Beast ($504 million in 2017). In terms of inflation/tickets sold, it currently sits alongside
Finding Dory ($486 million in 2016/$501 million adjusted) and
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ($317 million in 2001/$501 million adjusted).
With a 2.82x weekend-to-cume multiplier (it debuted in mid-December with $177.363 million),
The Rise of Skywalker is now leggier than
The Last Jedi. Nonetheless, its post-debut legs fell well below the “normal for a big Christmas movie” likes of
I Am Legend (3.2 x $77 million in 2007),
Rogue One (3.4 x $155 million in 2016),
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (3.53 x $73 million in 2013),
The Force Awakens (3.77 x $248 million in 2015) and
Tron: Legacy (3.9 x $44 million in 2010). It also had the advantage, like
Force Awakens, of having its opening weekend directly bleed into the two-week “everyone is out of school and off work” holiday break period. Although, to be fair,
Force Awakens (like
Avatar) had Christmas and New Year’s occurring on a Friday as opposed to a Wednesday.
The film was firing on all cylinders for the first week, with a terrific $29 million first-Monday gross and a $32 million Christmas day haul. It didn’t really start to slow down until its second weekend, when it dropped 71% on Friday and 59% for the weekend despite being in full holiday break mode. Absent the first week (and, to a lesser extent, the second week) of holiday play, it would have possibly earned something closer to
Captain America: Civil War ($408 million domestic from a $179 million debut in May of 2016). What’s disconcerting, aside from the whole “mediocre reviews and online handwringing over what could have been/should have been” variable, is that the film didn’t play like recent Disney releases. It didn’t stick around like
Toy Story 4, Frozen II and even
Christopher Robin.
We all overreacted when
Toy Story 4 opened with “just” $120 million, only to watch the well-liked and well-reviewed animated sequel leg out to $430 million domestic. Ditto
Frozen II’s “fine, I guess” $41 million opening day which turned into a $130 million domestic debut and legged out to $470 million (and counting), making it the fifth-leggiest $100 million-plus opener behind
Toy Story 3 ($415 million from a $110 million debut in 2010),
Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936 million/$248 million in 2015),
Wonder Woman ($412.5 million/$103.5 million in 2017) and
Shrek 2 ($441 million/$108 million Fri-Sun and $128 million Wed-Sun in 2004).
Christopher Robin legged out to $99 million from a $25 million launch in August of 2018 despite mixed reviews. So when
Rise of Skywalker opened with “only” $177 million, there was little reason for alarm.
After all, the opening weekend was leading straight into the Christmas season, and even “for fans only” fantasy franchise flicks like
The Hobbit pulled over/under 3.5x multipliers over the holiday break period. And with
Wonder Woman 1984 and
No Time to Die moving out of November 2019,
Death on the Nile moving out of December of 2019 and
Cats,
Terminator: Dark Fate,
Black Christmas and
Spies in Disguise stumbling out of the gate,
The Rise of Skywalker and
Jumanji: The Next Level were essentially the only game in town for year-end four-quadrant biggies. So, yes, at least in terms of “Where does
Star Wars go from here,” it does matter than the film more or less collapsed after Christmas and ended up earning less in North America than
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
That’s not quite “
Man of Steel earns more than
Justice League,” but it’s in the same ballpark. To be fair, some of this could just be the calendar.
The Last Jedi struggled after its opening weekend, partially because the holiday break didn’t begin until its second Monday, only to rally during that two-week end-of-year period. Conversely,
The Rise of Skywalker rallied in those first seven days but then peaked exceptionally early to end up with a slightly higher overall multiplier. And, sure,
The Rise of Skywalker existing as the fifth
Star Wars movie in five years may have made it less special, even with the whole “end of the Skywalker Saga” hook. Although the fact that (comparatively) so few people showed for
Solo means that, to them,
Rise of Skywalker was the first
Star Wars flick in two years.
Subjective qualms with the story choices aside,
Rise of Skywalker suffered due to a lack of polish and narrative coherency (likely due to the rushed production and rewrites/reshoots related to that rush and due to the death of Carrie Fisher) and a lack of “gotta see it again” moments akin to the Throne Room fight in
Last Jedi or the first Rey/Kylo smackdown in
The Force Awakens. Unlike
Force Awakens, Rogue One and
Solo, it really looks like it went through production hell. Nonetheless, the first slate of Disney’s
Star Wars movies still earned $5.9 billion worldwide and $2.8 billion in North America alone on a combined $1.25 billion budget. The end result for
Rise of Skywalker is indeed a disappointment. But, as a whole, Disney and Lucasfilm’s
Star Wars relaunch has been a commercial success.
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E assim a falha da megera está completa.
O cara ressalta pontos que já discutimos anteriormente, mas gostei dele ter feito questão de enfatizar que o roteiro sempre escolhe a solução mais porca possível e que se foda a lógica no processo. Isso é especialmente verdadeiro quando imaginamos a absurda quantidade de recursos (materiais e humanos) necessários para construir a frota de Star Destroyers que Palpatine tira da bunda, após ter ressuscitado porque sim.
Em seu afã de entregar cenas grandiosas, Jar Jar Abrams simplesmente não se importa em insultar a inteligência da audiência. "Olhem para a quantidade absurda de naves, as múltiplas explosões e o tanto de
lens flare que utilizei nas cenas, mas não pensem a respeito do que está sendo mostrado, porque sou um escritor medíocre e nada faz sentido."