Am I remembering things wrong or did the whole film take place over 16 hours in-story time?

 

Yeah, that was one of the things that really threw me. Apparently FTL is now instantaneous? And compressing the story down like that really made no sense to me. Clearly it was an attempt to add tension, but it failed miserably on that score.

 

Not unlike TLJ.

 

Fuck this was just sheer stupidity. Yeah, we know he's in it but at least put some effort into it. This is literally a case of "Telling instead of Showing".

My own two cents, is anyone a bit annoyed as this being advertised as "The end of the Skywalker Saga"? Despite it being a sequel to the OT, I've always thought of the OT and PT standing separate to the ST. It seems like a case of the studio realising that reception for TLJ was shit and wanted to give the assurance that from now on (After the saga is finished) that it will be different (And presumably better).

 

That's totally what it was.

Really though, I'm kinda baffled how anyone at Disney thought the sequel trilogy was at all part of any alleged "Skywalker Saga". It's entirely separate on pretty much every level, despite Abrams' best efforts, and it really baffles me why they kept banging on about that in the marketing.

 

It was to make sure the old fans turned out to see the conclusion of the story, whilst they used the conclusion of the story to build a new fan base who they'll aim the next set of films at.

 

The Trades are now saying under $180 million for the opening weekend. They've been wrong the whole time so we are looking at a very possible opening at $175 million.

**************
And there it is:

 

45 mil behind TLJ. Now to see what the drop will be next weekend, that'll give an idea if it'll have legs to make up for the opening.

 

Kek. The crazy bastards did it. They killed Star Wars. Three years ago I didn't think that was possible.

 

Usually holiday releases have stronger legs than movies released at most other times of the year, since people don't feel nearly as much drive to go on the opening weekend when they've got time off work/school. At the same time, it's quite possible that Rise of Skywalker's largely mixed to negative reviews and the opening numbers being driven by die-hard Star Wars fans adds up to some very weak legs.

 

I mean, The Last Jedi was also a holiday release, released only a few days, relative to Christmas, earlier than Rise of Skywalker.

And in fairness, The Last Jedi had a bit of leg to it. If you check out here, there's some charts comparing the box office take over time, and TLJ had legs about on par with Rogue One (that is to say, it plateaued around 30 days post-release, with TFA, another Christmas release, plateauing around 60 days). Remains to be seen where ROS will fall on that scale, but somewhere in the 30-60 day range seems reasonable to me.

 

The timeline sounds right, the big question is going to be the multiplier. A multiplier on par with TLJ has it barely cracking the billion dollar mark, and given the amount of negative buzz and some other really bad signs for the movie's future like flopping in China it's definitely looking like it's on track to turn a profit (unless the rumors about an incredibly inflated budget are true), but perform "below expectations."

 

Or unlike JJ Abram's Star Trek movies.

 

Welp, the numbers are in, and it's not looking great for ROS. Official opening weekend box office is 175m in US and Canada, with another 198m internationally. It fits into the chart like so:

Episode VI opening weekend: $23,019,618 (Corrected for inflation to 2005: $45,137,865.42)

Epsiode I opening weekend: $64,810,970 (Corrected for inflation to 2005: $75,975,885.00)
Episode II opening weekend: $80,027,814 (Corrected for inflation to 2005: $93,814,118.09)
Episode III opening weekend: $108,435,841

Episode VII opening weekend: $247,966,675 (Corrected for inflation to 2005: $204,322,439.43)
Episode VIII opening weekend: $220,009,584 (Corrected for inflation to 2005: $175,293,210.49)
Episode IX opening weekend: $175,000,000 (Corrected for inflation to 2005: $133,258,491.18)

So about a $45m absolute drop, and a 24% drop in inflation-adjusted take.

It's kinda spectacular how it's dropped. Now to wait to see what kind of legs its got.

 

Well, I just came back from seeing it with a friend. While there was a wealth of pacing, inconsistency, plot development issues, and frankly abysmal choreography(!), overall leading to a rather lackluster film, at least I had a somewhat enjoyable time riffing on the movie and explaining some things with my friend during the walk home.

 

I hated the look of the sith planet, the idea of the with planet and the way the whole element was handled. Worst part of the movie. And it just didn’t feel like Star Wars anymore.

 

I should just release your running commentary. That was surely way more entertaining than the movie would be.

...not that I'd know. lol.