Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars Pulls In $1 Billion At Record Speed (reuters.com)
New submitter henrydan798 writes to note that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has set a new record for ticket sales, becoming the fastest movie ever to earn a billion dollars at the till. As the L.A. Times reports, The latest installment in the "Star Wars" franchise grossed an estimated $153.5 million in the U.S. and Canada in its second weekend, beating the lower end of analyst expectations of $140 million. This drives the J.J. Abrams-directed picture to a to-date domestic gross of $544.5 million.
"The Force Awakens," which cost an estimated $200 million to produce, debuted last weekend to record domestic ticket sales of $248 million. It also grossed $281 million overseas for a global total of $529 million, topping the previous worldwide debut benchmark set in June by "Jurassic World" ($525 million). This week, with an international estimated gross of $546 million to date, the film became the fastest to surpass $1 billion globally.
Were any of those dollars yours? If so, do you think they were well spent?
Congratulations on the successful marketing! And still, I'm in no rush to see this movie. I'll wait until I can rent a BluRay in my local video store, to watch it at home, where already for significant time the image and audio quality is more pleasant than in most public theaters, not to mention the comfort of having control over volume, play/pause etc., and the absent mob of other people.
The new film was (a) far better than the train wreck of the prior three, (b) essentially identical to the first (1977) Star Wars plot, (c) decently acted, and (d) a mediocre movie, but one that felt better than it really was in comparison to the horrors of the prequels. It worked on a nostalgic level: it felt like the Star Wars universe again, and it didn't totally fuck it up. It didn't so well work on the level of being original or even fully making sense within its own universe.
Mixed bag. Not as horrible as the naysayers claim, but not as awesomely great as the fanboys claim.
But does the viewer?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
No doubt the film was popular. How to get all those people in and out a a record pace? Squeeze the theaters by requiring them to show the film on the largest screens for a long period of time, pushing out any other movies. The Hateful Eight was to be shown in a special 70mm roadshow presentation. The problem though was that it could only be shown on smaller secondary screens. Disney required their new movie to show on the largest ones, or else not show the movie at all, on any screen.
So while their film is popular, it's not just the marketing hype that got it the numbers. A bit of strong arm tactics to push aside other movies seems to have contributed.
Mild spoiler warning.
Of course it made a billion dollars, it's a decent Star Wars movie. They could have made a great Star Wars movie if they didn't just remake A New Hope. Of course that would also risk a bomb that would kill ticket sales for the further installments.
Better to shoot for mediocrity and guarantee billions than to shoot for greatness and risk the cash cow. Hopefully the next non-Abrams director will be willing to make a new movie.
I stole this Sig
Don't want to sound....whatever.....put any qualifier that comes to mind here....but I am done with cinema going in general and Star Wars in particular!!
I see now that the whole idea of what movie and movie going is, has changed. It is a much larger "consumer experience" that involves merchandizing, social media, a plethora of buttons being pushed cleverly on kids and their parents, social engineering, social media, stiffing political correctness.......and the quality of the actual film is not significant anymore! It is a product, not a movie!
The actual movie [only a part of the product]....ouch! Let's not bother repeating the obvious - just go to IMDB and read the top 50 "non-professional" reviews. 47 are negative and the points why TFA sucks tremendously are explained eloquently and in detail. The official reviews are an insult to our intelligence....my the gods even the guy who [hilariously] destroyed Ep 1-3 (red letter media) is buying the crap...I cannot continue...only curses come to mind :(
But man, the product worked like a charm! I watched it on 25th at 11:00 AM in the one of the only two places in NL where you get the 3D IMAX stuff. I had the best seat in the whole theater and was prepared to love the film. I did Ep.4-6 marathon the previous day, brushed my figures (R2D2, Imperial walkers) and posters - we are talking about a boy who saw the originals at age of 7 - a life time devoted fan!
Every family took a picture of their kids next to the model of BB-8! Merchandizing was everywhere....Every family kept on taking pictures inside the theater and sharing them in the last few minutes before the show. The cinema cleverly had a gallery of images form the trailers flashing on the screen starting from 10 minutes before 11. Guess what - everyone took a snapshot the moment they appeared like they'd been force mind tricked - I am sure that was the intention of showing the images. I honestly felt alien, like being surrounded by a herd of strange animals and you are not sure what they'd do next...
The show started at 11:00. Sorry , wrong, wrong , wrong....there were ....wait for it....25 minutes of ads of which only 3 for movies the rest was beer, the cinema chain, Coca Cola.....I got crazy!!! You pay premium for this and they give you half an hour of ads!!! Also - politically correct BS as beer ad that says to drink responsibly and that women do not like drunken men (fuck you, you are a beer manufacturer!).
And then the show starts and I realize that I cannot bare the loudness of the sound. Surely I am partially to blame - for some inexplicable reason my hearing has grown more acute in the last year or so (go figure!) but still I am sure it was already at the the very edge of what is tolerable...I though why are not the parents worried about the kid's ears?!? So I watched the show with my in-ear headphones plugged in and the sound was just loud enough (no kidding).
Shame on JJ, shame on the official reviewers for buying this (hey, Empire magazine, do you remember your wall of shame, giving Attack of the clones 5/5 (WTF!!) - you are about to repeat that if you are not honest), shame on the whole industry for turning movie going into this....I don't know what this is..., shame on all of us for still supporting this, shame , shame, shame...
I am so sorry that one of my most precious dreams is being destroyed....the kid from the former communist state walking with his father in the streets of Sofia in 1980 (that's the delay you got back then) and we see a poster with stormtrooper firing the rifle and the title Star Wars. My father goes "this seems like a movie in space, you like this kind of things, what with reading Jules Verne and such...shall we try" [no ads back then, no reviews - you go "blind" to a movie unless someone has seen it and tells you]. ....we watched it sitting on the stairs between the rows - there were no chairs left. We went out and I said "again"...and we went on the other side of the cinema to join the line for the next performance...RIP!
Star Wars is not a movie anymore. It is a heavily marketed brand. It can't even qualify for the label "science fiction", compared to the truly good SF movies around. Heck, Interstellar is a lot better than that, even with the hole(s) in the plot and the "Amurrica yeah!" spirit. I mean - I'm an adult. You'd literally have to drag me to a Star Wars movie, kicking and screaming.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I realize that exercise isn't a priority for most geeks
And having served as a Marine Corps Officer, I think I'm more familiar with physical exertion than most geeks. You emphasized the distance ran, I would emphasize getting shot, and from a noticeably high-powered weapon at that. If you shot me in the side with a Dragunov rifle (which fires the same 7.62x54mm rounds as the PKM light machine gun) and told me to run the Marine Corps obstacle course ( less than 100m), and THEN fight another Marine....I'd almost certainly lose, regardless of the melee skills of my opponent.
But Ren didn't lose, he won. The entire argument of "Ep7 sucks because the Dark Jedi lost a saber fight with a Stormtrooper" is moot...because it's factually incorrect.
Your money is gone
Speak for yourself.
I am. I didn't have any expectations and I had a great time. You guys are all the same you know, when something new comes out you ignore it because it's unfamiliar and when you get what you ask for you complain because it is.
You just can't sit back and enjoy it for what it is.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Not trying to sound like Jay Sherman, but if we keep going to bad movies, they will keep making them... I read all the reviews first, and went confident I was going to see an entertaining movie. I do not go to see a movie called 'Star Wars' hoping to it to be a philosophical experience, but man, it sucked big time... My main complaints: 1.) It is almost identical to the first movie. Desert planet? Check. Young, force-sensitive user that's unware of it? Check. Stranded, cute robot with a secret message to deliver? Check. Escape from said planet trying to deliver message? Check. Han Solo and Chewbacca conning the wrong guys? Check. 2.) The bad guys suck. In the first movie, Darth Vader intimidates. He is strong, powerful, and no one messes with him. Kylo Ren? A weak crybaby that is hit SEVERAL TIMES by a stormtrooper that never held a lightsaber before!!! And he is prone to tantrums. Even worse, when he removes his helmet, he looks like an idiot. I have the perfect Sith name for him: Darth Dumbo. You're welcome, Disney! 3.) The Emperor is replaced by Gollum. Enough said. 4.) Can someone explain to me why the zero-calories version of the Empire bother building a planet-sized weapon, and have thousands of armed soldiers, if they are going to leave the most vulnerable part of their humongous weapon completely unattended? Not a single guard? Han Solo & Co. just waltz in, plant bombs and there it goes! These guys are the galactic equivalent of the Dodo. I was 8 when I watched the first movie. I should have know better than to go to this kind of movie at my current age.
Haha, so true. If it had been any more different from the original trilogy then people would be complaining that it departed from the heart and soul of SW, that it was Star Trek rebranded, etc. I took my kids to it, we had a great time too - it was fun and it felt nice and Star Wars-y.
If I was to sit back and pick the movie apart then, sure, I could find problems with it. But what's the point of doing that? I exchanged some amount of money for some amount of entertainment, and in the end I felt it was a good trade. Me looking for flaws in the movie will just decrease the enjoyment I got out of it and will in no way improve the subsequent movies, so why bother?
We like the Star Wars universe, we got to see more of it, and now I'm cautiously optimistic about future installments. WIN!
I thought piracy was supposed to be killing the creative industries?
Are movie theaters in most cities really that terrible, or has it just been a long time since you've been to a movie theater? So many people gripe about having to put up with a theater experience and I just don't get it.
Within 20 miles of my home there are 4-5 "megaplex" theaters where, for a $5 matinee ticket, you can go see the very latest movies on incredibly good screens with terrific audio systems, you stand in no waiting lines, you sit in large, plush semi-reclining chairs with stadium (sloped) seating. The room is clean, the floors are clean. Heck, even the bathrooms are clean. Even if you pay a few bucks more to go at night, you still don't really wait in line and there's never any jostling for seats because you can buy your tickets online and choose your exact seat ahead of time.
At home we have a pretty nice setup for watching movies, but we still occasionally go to the theater not to "put up" with a movie theater, but because of it - it's a fun experience.
FWIW I'm not trying to rip on you, I'm just genuinely curious. :)
The fact that someone gave a lightsaber to a stomrtrooper and he knew how to.....swordfight is kind of ridiculous. If someone gave me a lightsaber and told me to use it, I swear I would chop my arm off. Or maybe my leg.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Is it a movie to be seen on theaters? Absolutely.
Now, is it a good movie? So... no. Not by a long stretch, i might add. Looks great, Harrison Ford is fantastic and it is loaded with iconic scenes... but man, the script is a poor rehash of EP IV, and ridden with glaring plot holes as well.
Biggs tells the rebellion, "Luke is the best brush pilot in the galaxy" and he knows how to fly tight combat situations having flown his T-16 Skyhopper in Beggars Canyon hunting Womp Rats which are the same size as the exhaust port.
In a deleted scene...
"You may be the hottest bush pilot this side of Mos Eisley, Luke, but those little skyhoppers can be dangerous. They move awfully fast for tropospheric craftâ"faster than they need to. Keep playing engine jockey with one and someday, whammo! You're going to be nothing more than a dark spot on the damp side of a canyon wall." âBiggs Darklighter to Luke Skywalker[src]
The T-16 Skyhopper
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...
Where it says...
"Even so, these airspeeders were often used as training vehicles by the Rebel Alliance, due to the fact that their flight controls were similar to those of X-wings. "
Womp Rat
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...
Thermal Exhaust Port
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...
"The target area is only two meters wide. It's a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system."
âJan Dodonna on the attack on the first Death Star[src]
So apparently Luke is already a trained flyer with years of experience flying in a dangerous canyon at high speed firing at 2 meter targets with a mounted weapon (on his T-16 Skyhopper).
So the mission is to fly down a dangerous canyon at high speed and fire at a 2 meter target with a mounted weapon! Sounds tailor made! lol.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.