Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

[Velorath]

Wait, a movie that's been out for five months hasn't sold as many copies as a film that's been out for two and a half years?  Crazy!

Hey, let's compare how TLJ has done in two years to how TFA has done right now.  5,927,719 for reference.

Or we could just use the power of the Internet Archive to see where TFA was at in Sept 2016:

5,110,652

[Cyrrex]

To what extent do these things address the fact that these things now get released on streaming services?  And that two years later, fewer people are likely buying blu rays at all?

[Sir T]

And why focus on just Blue Ray? The DVD market is still very healthy, at least here in Godless Ireland.

Anyway, did a quick search for Avengers numbers on toy sales. This article was talking about Black Panther, but it had some numbers for general Toy sales.

Disney has launched the largest product line ever for a Marvel non-sequel, including expanded categories, such as performance wear and high-fashion collaborations. Stocks of popular toys are low at stores, and fans on Twitter are reporting that in some cases they can’t find enough stock to satisfy their love for Wakanda.

However, some toy industry analysts say that box office success is not always a harbinger for strong merchandise sales, given the track record of two of 2017’s top-selling films: “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Wonder Woman.”

Those films were among the highest-grossing movies of last year, but toy sales for “The Last Jedi,” which has made $1.3 billion at the global box office, were a major disappointment for Hasbro, which has a licensing pact with Disney. One toy-industry analyst had predicted that “The Last Jedi” toy line would make roughly $500 million in retail sales last year, which would have been a 5% rise over 2016. Instead, toy sales amounted to about $350 million, down roughly 25%. Mattel, maker of Wonder Woman toys, reported in its 2017 full-year earnings report that while its entertainment business was up 12%, there were declines in sales of DC Comics products.

“It’s very case specific,” said Linda Bolton Weiser, senior research analyst for D.A. Davison. “It’s not always the case that high box office success relates to high toy sales.”

It can work the other way, too. “Transformers: The Last Knight” was seen as a flop, grossing just $130 million domestically, yet Transformer toy sales were up 50% from the year before for Hasbro, Weiser said.

Weiser said she expects retail sales of Marvel toys will exceed $500 million in 2018. That figure, however, includes toys for all Marvel properties, including “Black Panther” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” If the forecast holds, that would be a nearly flat increase of 2% year over year.

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/black-panther-toy-sales-1202706544/

[Velorath]

To what extent do these things address the fact that these things now get released on streaming services?  And that two years later, fewer people are likely buying blu rays at all?

It's a sales chart. It addresses sales. It doesn't address streaming in the same way sales charts don't address rentals or movies coming on cable either.

Here's a decent article from the start of the year on declining disc sales if you're interested.

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, that's kinda more what I was getting at.  If disc sales across the board are falling, say, 15% year on year, that by itself is a huge chunk of the explanation.  And it wouldn't surprise me if certain kinds of movies might be more susceptible than others, or any number of other factors.  I am not disagreeing with the general premise that TLJ was a relative disappointment for a number of reasons, but it seems disc sales is a poor metric.  That whole industry is in a nose dive.  I'd bet my spleen that the boomers are the only ones keeping that industry afloat these days, and there is probably also a correlation there in terms of what kind of movies they watch as well.

[BobtheSomething]

As new streaming services pop up and content is more thinly spread and unavailable, I've been buying more DVDs than in previous years.

[eldaec]

You are in a minority.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, my response has been to buy more stupid-huge hard drives.

--Dave

[Threash]

The last DVD I bought was the LOTR extended editions.

[jgsugden]

An article on Last Jedi video sales...https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/star-wars-weekly-the-last-jedi-blows-away-black-panther-and-lando-is-back

[MahrinSkel]

It unseated Black Panther from a #1 Blu-Ray spot it had occupied for over 3 months (and still managed to lose to BP in DVD's).

Think that TLJ will be the #1 physical formats video come Christmas? I think it's more likely that BP will be beating it again before then.

--Dave

[jgsugden]

TLJ has been on sale for 2 months extra.  TLJ has sold about 380,000 more Blu-rays than BP.    BP outsold TLJ by about 37,000 units last week.  If I had to guess, I'd say they'll end up very similar - As the top 2 movies of the year.

It isn't really a competition about TLJ versus BP - it is just saying that people are not en masse ignoring TLJ disks.  It looks like TLJ will end up about 2 million shy of TFA, but TFA was a special case.  It'll soon pass Rogue One's numbers from last year.  It is doing just fine.

It shouldn't do just fine, cause it sucked, but it is doing just fine.

[TheWalrus]

It's doing fine because a lot of people thought it was great. Pretty simple, really.

[Threash]

Eh, it's doing just fine because a lot of people thought it was just fine. Great is a bit much, but the sheer incomprehensible amount of vitriol it gets makes people who thought it was ok want to defend it more than its worth.

[Samwise]

Eh, it's doing just fine because a lot of people thought it was just fine.

That's about how I'd sum it up.  A lot of people thinking something is just fine will get you a lot more money than a small number of people thinking it was the best thing ever.

[Ironwood]

Name of your sex tape.

[TheWalrus]

Oh, that was great. 

[jgsugden]

There are also a lot of people with 7 episodes on disk that were going to get the 8th, regardless of how good it is, because they need all of them.  They may buy it themselves, get it as a gift, etc....

[Paelos]

TFA: Who are the Knights of Ren?
TLJ: ...

Note that none of these deal with gender/diversity issues or plot holes.

He actually gave an answer to this earlier in the year:

This was finally brought up to the director of The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson, who offered an explanation to the Empire podcast (via io9) as to why the Knights of Ren were left out of the film:

    “I guess I could’ve used them in place of the Praetorian guards but then it would feel like wasting them because all those guards had to die. And if Kylo had some kind of connection to them it would’ve added a complication that wouldn’t have helped the scene… Truth is, I just didn’t see a place for them in the movie.”

AKA - I didn't bother trying at all. Which is basically what he did with the entire movie. He had a weird vision and crammed it down everyone's throat.

[Threash]

There was nothing weird about it and nothing that needed to be explained about the knights of ren.

[Paelos]

There was nothing weird about it and nothing that needed to be explained about the knights of ren.

You mean besides story-lines on planets that make absolutely no sense, and the entire main plot of the movie happening in a slow-white-Bronco starship chase to nowhere.

[Samwise]

Did TFA even mention the Knights of Ren, beyond Kylo Ren's name?  I assumed they were some sort of EU thing.

[Paelos]

They were in Rey's vision. Standing with Kylo Ren in the rain.

[Samwise]

If they were only background extras that's probably why I don't remember them.  Did they have any sort of impact on the plot?  I have some vague inkling that after Kylo went all emo he had some gang he ran with, but since he doesn't have them any more they might as well have not existed. 

Is the mystery of the Knights of Ren anything that couldn't be solved by saying "they all fell into a chipper-shredder five years before the events of TFA"?

[Rendakor]

If they had said that, sure. But they didn't, so they're just looming out there in plot limbo waiting to be introduced (or not) in Episode 9.

[Samwise]

If they were pointless to begin with I'm fine with chalking it up to JJ being a fraud and just ignoring their existence.

[Khaldun]

Some of you guys are fucking nuts, really. You're fine with stuff like the Venture Brothers resurrecting shit that was mentioned eight years ago in passing and making it a huge part of its mythology, but you're going to cry all the time because JJ Abrams said something once and Rian Johnson decided not to go there. Like, what?

I mean, I would be tempted to think you guys think the whole thing has been a methodically planned series of clever teasing mentions followed by big payoffs up to this point, but that's like saying you don't pay any attention to anything. Vader wasn't even intended to be Luke's dad in the first movie, sorry to burst your bubbles, but that's some bullshit Lucas thought up later. That's why Obi-Wan looks like a sociopathic liar later on, in fact, which is actually kind of good considering how fucked-up the Jedi Order ends up being by the time we've gone through the prequels. But it wasn't intended at first. It was better in the end in terms of world-building but it wasn't planned. Darth Maul falls down a shaft cut in half; now he's back and that's canon. Sith? That was something in the side notes that eventually became a big deal. Eventually. Did you ever learn the story of the dudes in red armor in the Emperor's chamber in ROTJ? Nope. Now that the Inquisitors are canon, what happened to them all? Yet to be told. On and on and on and on, you name it. There are so many names and hints and things that in the movies aren't spelled out--you all only think they are because you've been marinating in things Star Wars since 1977. Who are the Mon Calamari? Did the movies ever tell you? No. Did you even learn Akbar's NAME? Yeah, once or twice, but he got almost zero characterization. Why are all the Imperial officers AND soldiers human? I guess because the Empire is racist--but was Palpatine that way when he assumed power? No. What happened to make every single damn Imperial officer into a white man with a British accent? Have you ever been told that in canon? Nope.

On and on. I don't mind people who are anal-retentive viewers. I do mind when they turn that off and on selectively for no reason. Call me anal-retentive about anal-retentiveness. Either you're unrelentingly that way or you're not. When you're not, you should be able to explain why not in the cases where you don't care so much.

[Lakov_Sanite]

In TFA it is shown Ren and a group of unnamed sith whatever defeated luke skywalker and burned his shit to the ground.  That's not an insignificant plot detail.

[schild]

khaldun,

serious question

why do you care both so much and so little about star wars, specifically tlj

like, please answer, we need answers

[jgsugden]

I think everything Khaldun is complaining about is addressed by the 34 pages before this one.

I really want the next movie to come out so that we'll stop talking about this one.   

[Khaldun]

I'm not even sure I care about Star Wars as much as I'm feeling OCD about the way people reconfigure what they need from a geeky movie so that this one film is guilty while a whole host of others--including the original Star Wars and ESB--are innocent.

It still makes complete sense to me to not like the film because of the awkwardness of the plot structure and especially the plot-mechanical weakness of the casino sidequest. That makes complete sense to me as a thing that can really mess with your enjoyment. But this whole, "I expected to get complete backstory on a briefly mentioned thing and because I didn't Rian Johnson is revealed to be a base betrayer who deliberately set out to hurt JJ Abrams and all the fans and it completely ruined my ability to enjoy the movie" is just a weird way to watch a movie, even if you do care about it.

[Phildo]

Maybe for me it stems from knowing that the last film was a JJ Abrams movie and he loves him some mystery boxes.  He sets up lots of mysterious things that will theoretically be explained later on, and now we'll never get explanations for any of them without major retconning in the third movie.  TLJ leaves us almost exactly where TFA left us minus Luke Skywalker, 90% of the Resistance and the big bad guy behind Kylo Ren.  Maybe that's not a bad place to be, but to my mind it's a weird one to be in after the second film of a trilogy.

[calapine]

Plinkett review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f83D18xL7VE

[jgsugden]

Maybe for me it stems from knowing that the last film was a JJ Abrams movie and he loves him some mystery boxes.  He sets up lots of mysterious things that will theoretically be explained later on...

Theoretically.

[Father mike]

Maybe for me it stems from knowing that the last film was a JJ Abrams movie and he loves him some mystery boxes.  He sets up lots of mysterious things that will theoretically be explained later on ...

Abrams may love his mystery boxes, but he doesn't give a flying fuck about explaining them later on.  Doubly so when he's working with Lindeloff