How different is too different?

[EmreY]

16 minutes ago, Katherine said:

So If I am using this as an example for WoT..... if Season 2 still has decent numbers, but the viewership is 46% less.... then the show will be in crisis mode, Just like Star Wars was after Last Jedi. Right now there is no reason for Amazon to panic.... really. THough I would argue that this IP is following the same trend that Star Wars did. 

 

I agree that it would be extremely problematic if viewer numbers (or minutes or however they're expressed) fell by half.

 

However, I would venture to suggest that if you dropped someone into the middle of the Taklamakan desert and mentioned Star Wars you'd find someone who knew what you were talking about.  On the other hand, the same person talking about the WoT might be wholly misunderstood and the books would be relatively unknown.

 

Star Wars has the advantage of having been watched by generations of fans, with little side projects keeping interest limping along (until very recently when they when full Marvel/DC).  IMO, WoT doesn't have anywhere near the same established base.  This is both an advantage (the purists are probably not even a sizeable minority) and a disadvantage (if interest is lost, no-one's going to watch through to the WoT version of The Mandalorian to weep tears of joy at the end of the second series).

[Gothic Flame]

18 hours ago, Katherine said:

Absolutely. This will follow the same course. The only difference is that DIsney lost money on Jedi and had to try to fix it with Rise (ugh). 

 

Amazon hasn't lost money yet. 

'Rise of Skywalker' box office bomb

Link goes into budget, expectations/ projections, how well a movie creates more interest, or in this case destroys interest. 'Solo' should have been a big hint but they either ignored it or were too invested to stop. If not for "Mandalorian" this franchise would be dead. As it is every project has been pretty much shut down. Including a movie trilogy by Rian Johnson. 

The only things I've been hearing is a possible movie trilogy dealing with "Mandalorian" and split offs of the show, notably "Ahsoka."

[Jake Sykwalker]

19 hours ago, Humbugged2 said:

How is making a $ 1 bn dollars a loss

 

Only making 1 billion is about a billion shy of The Force Awakens.  TLJ should have equaled, or beaten it as TFA was a very generic soft reboot.  Coming in at about half the take was a giant loss.

 

They also lost their rear end in merchandizing and Solo lost a ton of money due to Last Jedi backlash.   Granted Solo was a snoozer, but it would normally have been a profitable film without TLJ angering a huge portion of the fan base.  Side note the Kessel Run was explained better in the Thrawn trilogy.  

 

[Andra]

2 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

 

Only making 1 billion is about a billion shy of The Force Awakens.  TLJ should have equaled, or beaten it as TFA was a very generic soft reboot.  Coming in at about half the take was a giant loss.

 

They also lost their rear end in merchandizing and Solo lost a ton of money due to Last Jedi backlash.   Granted Solo was a snoozer, but it would normally have been a profitable film without TLJ angering a huge portion of the fan base.  Side note the Kessel Run was explained better in the Thrawn trilogy.  

 

Just to point out:

The $1 billion is profit.

The film cost a little over $300 million to make, and grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.  It's less profit than they expected given tFA's performance, but it isn't a loss. 

 

Only in a franchise like Star Wars could the most profitable movie of the year be considered a disappointment.

 

Hell, not even Solo actually lost money.  But it came close.  And it did the worst of all the Star Wars films.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Andra

[Gothic Flame]

From the posted link on the previous page regarding Rise of Skywalker;

 

That said, it did gross $515 million domestic and $1.074 billion worldwide on a $275 million budget, and that was with a laughable (but entirely expected) $20.5 million from China. Heck, on Deadline’s annual list of the previous year’s most profitable blockbusters, it ranked ninth with around $300 million in profits (factoring in marketing spends, post-theatrical afterlife, participation deals and the like).

 

Edited February 2, 2022 by Gothic Flame
Clarity

[Kleineg]

I'm just really hoping the right lessons are learned from this season. 

 

I understand that with Barney leaving and covid hitting, that better battle scenes were out of the question, and some quick changes needed to be made re: Mat

 

An important note is that the rewrites were not ran past Sanderson until after filming started. 

 

If they look at how episode 8 was the one with the lowest positive response, and take the message that they need to work closer with Sanderson and Sarah Nakamura, than I am hoping that the next season will shine. 

 

I understood a lot of the changes, why they were made, even if I didn't like them or disagreed with them. There are some I still don't understand and those are the ones I dislike the worst. Plus I think the execution of some plot elements was poor. 

 

The frustrating thing was actually how much I loved from the show. It swung so hard back and forth between awesome and trash fire for me, sometimes even in the same episode, and I still can't decide whether I love it or hate it. Either way, my disappointment with episode 8 was real, like everything else where I was like "let's see what they do with this" was just borrowed good will and the bill came due. 

 

I hope it takes off and lands on the right foot in season 2.

[Andra]

1 hour ago, Gothic Flame said:

From the posted link on the previous page regarding Rise of Skywalker;

 

That said, it did gross $515 million domestic and $1.074 billion worldwide on a $275 million budget, and that was with a laughable (but entirely expected) $20.5 million from China. Heck, on Deadline’s annual list of the previous year’s most profitable blockbusters, it ranked ninth with around $300 million in profits (factoring in marketing spends, post-theatrical afterlife, participation deals and the like).

 

While all true, the specific film mentioned was Last Jedi, not Rise of Skywalker.  But even RoS didn't "lose money."

 

The profits decreased with each of the main-sequence movies after Force Awakens, but none were losses.  The least-profitable of all the Star Wars films was Solo.  But it still made more than most other films could hope for.

[notpropaganda73]

I don't really think comparing TLJ to Force Awakens in terms of box office is fair really. TFA was a once in a generation event for Star Wars fans, just like Phantom Menace before it. The joy around having the saga back on the big screen, the pure excitement, the fact that it was an inoffensive, unthinking homage to the original movie - all that plus Disney's marketing machine, TFA was always going to have a ridiculous box office. TLJ is divisive and that impacted it's overall box office without a doubt, but I don't think it's a good example of fans being pissed at the movie and that impacting the the studio... Solo more so, although I would also put forward that Solo was a movie nobody really wanted, so it didn't surprise me that it didn't do well at the box office. I'm Star Wars crazy and I only went to see it a few weeks after release. I think Rise of Skywalker is the most indicative of how even a "home run" property can really suffer if they don't make good material, but I know many would put that on The Last Jedi as well. I'd put forward that if they made episode 9 a coherent movie, it would have done a lot better. Still would have suffered from fan backlash, for sure, but I think it just being a bad movie was the bigger problem in terms of box office. They tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing nobody.

 

Someone commented about the Mandalorian saving Star Wars... I think that series is actually a great example of the tension that often comes up with fans of these properties. Everyone loved S1, and it is really excellent - it had me so excited for Star Wars because it built out things totally separate from the original trilogy, we had new characters and worlds and stories, and a main character who was magnificent on screen. I was so excited for S2. But I actually ended up super disappointed with a lot of S2, whereas I know other fans loved it even more. I didn't really like the callbacks or links to other characters that we know from other Star Wars stories. It's a big galaxy, why did we need Ahsoka? The finale... Luke just shows up, really? Even Boba Fetts impact on the season was like... oh hey here's that guy we all loved from before, why's he here again? All of those things felt very forced (wayhey) to me. It was all cool, don't get me wrong - but forced. Even Luke's appearance in the finale where he slices through all of those droids - it felt really surface level, almost video-gamey. Like yeah this is cool, but I don't really care in the context of the story I've been following for 2 seasons. Whereas I know that other Star Wars fans absolutely adored it, one of my good friends at the time said "It was magic seeing Luke in his prime on screen". I think it's a good example of how subjective fan reaction can be. 

[wotfan4472]

3 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

I don't really think comparing TLJ to Force Awakens in terms of box office is fair really. TFA was a once in a generation event for Star Wars fans, just like Phantom Menace before it. The joy around having the saga back on the big screen, the pure excitement, the fact that it was an inoffensive, unthinking homage to the original movie - all that plus Disney's marketing machine, TFA was always going to have a ridiculous box office. TLJ is divisive and that impacted it's overall box office without a doubt, but I don't think it's a good example of fans being pissed at the movie and that impacting the the studio... Solo more so, although I would also put forward that Solo was a movie nobody really wanted, so it didn't surprise me that it didn't do well at the box office. I'm Star Wars crazy and I only went to see it a few weeks after release. I think Rise of Skywalker is the most indicative of how even a "home run" property can really suffer if they don't make good material, but I know many would put that on The Last Jedi as well. I'd put forward that if they made episode 9 a coherent movie, it would have done a lot better. Still would have suffered from fan backlash, for sure, but I think it just being a bad movie was the bigger problem in terms of box office. They tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing nobody.

 

Someone commented about the Mandalorian saving Star Wars... I think that series is actually a great example of the tension that often comes up with fans of these properties. Everyone loved S1, and it is really excellent - it had me so excited for Star Wars because it built out things totally separate from the original trilogy, we had new characters and worlds and stories, and a main character who was magnificent on screen. I was so excited for S2. But I actually ended up super disappointed with a lot of S2, whereas I know other fans loved it even more. I didn't really like the callbacks or links to other characters that we know from other Star Wars stories. It's a big galaxy, why did we need Ahsoka? The finale... Luke just shows up, really? Even Boba Fetts impact on the season was like... oh hey here's that guy we all loved from before, why's he here again? All of those things felt very forced (wayhey) to me. It was all cool, don't get me wrong - but forced. Even Luke's appearance in the finale where he slices through all of those droids - it felt really surface level, almost video-gamey. Like yeah this is cool, but I don't really care in the context of the story I've been following for 2 seasons. Whereas I know that other Star Wars fans absolutely adored it, one of my good friends at the time said "It was magic seeing Luke in his prime on screen". I think it's a good example of how subjective fan reaction can be. 

 

The big issue is that after TLJ came out, no sequel film following on was going to be cohesive and understanding enough to correct what TLJ did to the story and the characters.

Especially Luke, and how he turned out on screen. That impact speaks for itself.

But, even there, TLJ was not fully responsible for how Luke turned out, because that is the fault of TFA.

As far as I am concerned, Rand in the WoT show is in a much better space after the first season, than Luke was after two sequel films, and is in far better hands than Luke was in each of those.

I know, because I got Rand's key scenes eventually in Episode 7 that showed his place in the story.

For myself, Luke Skywalker was a total disaster, and that happened in TFA, then got worse in TLJ. I have not seen ROS, and do not wish to, after sitting through the TLJ in cinemas. 

Edited February 2, 2022 by wotfan4472

[Gothic Flame]

Favreau seems to know what fans want far better than those earlier that gave us sanitized kiddie crap. Kinda ironic considering; 
 

 And then there's that tasty in yo face violence. And Ashoka was fan service and testing the waters for her own series. 

and Luke...well, the story had progressed to a point where our formidable Mandalorian couldn't protect his son any longer, and Luke is the one person that "we" know is going to be safe with even as he can teach him responsible use of the Force.
 But more importantly, the growth of character in our hero, he's evolving into something beyond his creed and being a simple bounty hunter and a big wide interesting turn into "Mandolore." And an idea that could be epic in scope.

[Cauthonfan4]

9 hours ago, Kleineg said:

If they look at how episode 8 was the one with the lowest positive response, and take the message that they need to work closer with Sanderson and Sarah Nakamura, than I am hoping that the next season will shine.

Sanderson yes. Nakamura no. She utterly loved episode 8.

 

[Deviations]

10 hours ago, Kleineg said:

If they look at how episode 8 was the one with the lowest positive response, and take the message that they need to work closer with Sanderson and Sarah Nakamura, than I am hoping that the next season will shine. 

Sarah Nakamura stated that she was happy with episode 8.  I don't remember her words but it was MORE than happy.  My belief is that working more closely with her does not equate to season 2 shining.

[notpropaganda73]

2 hours ago, wotfan4472 said:

The big issue is that after TLJ came out, no sequel film following on was going to be cohesive and understanding enough to correct what TLJ did to the story and the characters.

Especially Luke, and how he turned out on screen. That impact speaks for itself.

But, even there, TLJ was not fully responsible for how Luke turned out, because that is the fault of TFA.

As far as I am concerned, Rand in the WoT show is in a much better space after the first season, than Luke was after two sequel films, and is in far better hands than Luke was in each of those.

I know, because I got Rand's key scenes eventually in Episode 7 that showed his place in the story.

For myself, Luke Skywalker was a total disaster, and that happened in TFA, then got worse in TLJ. I have not seen ROS, and do not wish to, after sitting through the TLJ in cinemas. 

 

I actually think the issues around a cohesive story in the trilogy stem from the decision not to have a unified idea from the beginning. So it all started with those early decisions and with TFA. TLJ just compounded it - but I personally think that most of the things people are really really mad about in TLJ are because of JJ Abrams and his stupid mystery box formula that he applied to TFA. I don't really want to get into the weeds seeing as this is a WoT forum, and I know it's divisive, but considering how things were set up and left in TFA, I think TLJ did a fantastic job with Luke. I loved his ending as well, it felt peak Jedi to me, like something (OT) Yoda would do. But I know plenty of fans absolutely hated it and how he was handled, so it is interesting to me the differences in those reactions like I say. I do agree with you that I think Rand is being handled better so far. 

 

2 hours ago, Gothic Flame said:

 And then there's that tasty in yo face violence. And Ashoka was fan service and testing the waters for her own series. 

and Luke...well, the story had progressed to a point where our formidable Mandalorian couldn't protect his son any longer, and Luke is the one person that "we" know is going to be safe with even as he can teach him responsible use of the Force.
 But more importantly, the growth of character in our hero, he's evolving into something beyond his creed and being a simple bounty hunter and a big wide interesting turn into "Mandolore." And an idea that could be epic in scope.

 

I guess my problem with the whole finale is this exact sentence that I've bolded. "We" know he's going to be safe - but nobody else in that room does? So it feels like the show is just showing us things for the sake of it and is way too self aware and fan servicey, instead of having Luke actually be involved in the story in a meaningful way. If Luke had showed up at the beginning of that episode and something built throughout it to Mando accepting that Luke was a safe bet, that would've worked much better for me. But as I say, I know that huge swathes absolutely loved that scene, it just didn't work for me personally.

 

But your last bit about Mando himself is why I love the show without a doubt, I'm excited to see where it goes going forward. Though apparently there were issues with the studio and Pedro Pascal, and he is meant to be filming The Last of Us pretty relentlessly for the foreseeable. 

 

This has probably veered sufficiently off topic at this stage haha

[Cauthonfan4]

1 hour ago, notpropaganda73 said:

I actually think the issues around a cohesive story in the trilogy stem from the decision not to have a unified idea from the beginning

considering the fact that we literally had lots of EU material out there for Star Wars as is, this sounds like Disney made themselves a problem they didn't need to create, simply by throwing lots of source material out. Kind of like Rafe and Company.

 

Edited February 2, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[notpropaganda73]

9 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

considering the fact that we literally had lots of EU material out there for Star Wars as is, this sounds like Disney made themselves a problem they didn't need to create, simply by throwing lots of source material out. Kind of like Rafe and Company.

 

I didn't mind them saying they were going to make their own story, but when they decide to go down that route they should have planned it out properly, for the sequel trilogy at the very least. Doing it like they did, it just made all of us pretty wistful about losing out on seeing the EU on screen. Plus the fact they link into Rebels and Clone Wars etc., it seemed a pretty strange decision to throw it all out anyways. 

 

Hopefully we'll see Thrawn at some point. The Timothy Zahn books were my intro to the EU, love them

[Gothic Flame]

Cad Bane...omg

[AdamA]

The Star Wars Skywalker film saga problem was just the tonal dissonance. JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson were clearly not on the same page and the story felt like it was fighting itself and Disney was unsure of where they wanted it to go, letting each director and writer do their own thing. Either all JJ or all Rian would have worked better than the jumbled mess we ended up with. It wasn't as bad when it was just The Force Awakens because it's only one movie and couldn't yet contradict itself.

 

We obviously didn't get the literal Thrawn trilogy because they wanted to employ the original actors, so the story needed to be 30 years later, not right after. I'm not sure removing the Thrawn trilogy as canonical backstory really made any difference. The new trilogy didn't suck because it had an incoherent or crappy backstory. It sucked all on its own.

 

I'd push back against the notion that this represented any meaningful setback to Disney, though. They dumped the Benioff and Weiss trilogy plans, but that likely had as much to do with how Game of Thrones ended as anything else. As far as I know, they haven't dumped the Rian Johnson trilogy plans; they just deferred the planned release to end of this decade. They shifted from trilogy sagas to television shows and standalone films and there is no slowing down there. Mandalorian and Boba Fett are already on. Solo and Andor come out later this year. Ahsoka and The Acolyte come out next year. Taika Waititi, Patty Jenkins, J.D. Dillard, and Kevin Feige are all doing standalone films. And that's just live action. They've got cartoons all over the place on top of those.

 

Star Wars is much safer and healthier than Wheel of Time right now. Look at the list of top-grossing all-time media franchises: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises. It's the only thing on the list that isn't explicitly targeting children and starring cartoons. It's in an entirely different world from Wheel of Time. It would take more than a couple of disappointing movies to wreck it. In contrast, if this show doesn't end up going well, it's probably the last attempt we see for the next 20 years. There's way too much of a built-in, guaranteed Star Wars audience for them to not just keep trying over and over.

Edited February 2, 2022 by AdamA

[Gothic Flame]

1 hour ago, AdamA said:

As far as I know, they haven't dumped the Rian Johnson trilogy plans; they just deferred the planned release to end of this decade. They shifted from trilogy sagas to television shows and standalone films and there is no slowing down there. Mandalorian and Boba Fett are already on. Solo and Andor come out later this year. Ahsoka and The Acolyte come out next year. Taika Waititi, Patty Jenkins, J.D. Dillard, and Kevin Feige are all doing standalone films. And that's just live action. They've got cartoons all over the place on top of those.

 

Star Wars is much 

From a few months ago:

 

Why Lucasfilm Reportedly Shelved Rian Johnson's Star Wars Movie Trilogy

Fueled in part by divisive reactions to The Last Jedi, there have been numerous rumors that the project has been cancelled. However, as recently as February 2021, Johnson assured his Star Wars trilogy is still in development. He chalked up the lack of concrete updates to his busy schedule. All's been quiet on the Johnson trilogy front since, and it could be because it's actually not happening anymore.

Matthew Beloni's newsletter for Puck (hat tip Den of Geek) details Lucasfilm's issues with creative differences with filmmakers, sparked by Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron movie being delayed. Beloni writes about the status of other Star Wars projects, noting similar incidents happened with David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, and even Johnson:

 

“It also happened to Rian Johnson, whose own planned trilogy was shelved.”

 

Edited February 2, 2022 by Gothic Flame

[Requiem]

5 hours ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

considering the fact that we literally had lots of EU material out there for Star Wars as is, this sounds like Disney made themselves a problem they didn't need to create, simply by throwing lots of source material out. Kind of like Rafe and Company.

 

The expanded universe was a mess, unsurprising given that it had virtually no oversight and writers freely contradicted each other often.

 

Wiping the slate clean was the right choice, it allows Disney to use those bits of the EU that were good and fit with the story being told, like Thrawn being reintroduced in Rebels, while throwing out plenty of really bad stories that would only clutter continuity otherwise.

 

The sequel trilogy was a mess for a variety of reasons but not being beholden to a few decades worth of expanded media that most would consider mediocre at best is not one of them.

[TheSmurf]

Off topic and criticism of Nakamura... 

 

How is this thread still alive ?

[Deviations]

10 hours ago, TheSmurf said:

criticism of Nakamura

Can we not criticize Nakamura in this thread?  "How different is too different?"  Isn't her role as book expert to tell them the implications of a change?

 

I'll never condone the threats she says she's gotten but criticism (positive and negative) is the main question of the thread isn't it?

[Katherine]

On 2/1/2022 at 4:45 PM, Andra said:

Just to point out:

The $1 billion is profit.

The film cost a little over $300 million to make, and grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.  It's less profit than they expected given tFA's performance, but it isn't a loss. 

 

Only in a franchise like Star Wars could the most profitable movie of the year be considered a disappointment.

 

Hell, not even Solo actually lost money.  But it came close.  And it did the worst of all the Star Wars films.

I concede that Jedi made extremely poor profits (in star wars terms) as opposed to a loss. That billion dollars profit was low enough to send the franchise into panic mode, then Solo came out. 

 

And Solo LOST 76 Million. Panic turns to crisis. 

 

Again, Amazon isn't here yet. But I think they will be with WoT, and already worried that LoTR will follow the same trend. 

 

https://deadline.com/2019/04/box-office-bombs-2018-solo-a-star-wars-story-mortal-engines-wrinkle-in-time-robin-hood-nutcracker-1202591271/

Edited February 3, 2022 by Katherine

[WhiteVeils]

Ratings:

From this thread:

For the full year 2021, #TheWheelofTime had the strongest series debut (greatest avg demand in the first 30 days) of any show in the US across all platforms. It was the most in-demand series across all platforms worldwide during its first eight days of availability.
 

 

I think it's probably OK. I hope.

[Andra]

18 minutes ago, Katherine said:

I concede that Jedi made extremely poor profits (in star wars terms) as opposed to a loss. That billion dollars profit was low enough to send the franchise into panic mode, then Solo came out. 

 

And Solo LOST 76 Million. Panic turns to crisis. 

 

Again, Amazon isn't here yet. But I think they will be with WoT, and already worried that LoTR will follow the same trend. 

 

https://deadline.com/2019/04/box-office-bombs-2018-solo-a-star-wars-story-mortal-engines-wrinkle-in-time-robin-hood-nutcracker-1202591271/

I believe Solo lost money that year, but has since turned a profit.

The source I looked at said it did eventually make money (by 2021).

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) - Financial Information (the-numbers.com)

 

And I agree with you on where Amazon's heading.

[Andra]

5 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Ratings:

From this thread:

For the full year 2021, #TheWheelofTime had the strongest series debut (greatest avg demand in the first 30 days) of any show in the US across all platforms. It was the most in-demand series across all platforms worldwide during its first eight days of availability.
 

 

I think it's probably OK. I hope.

 

Yes, it had a good premiere.

But demand decreased each week after that first three-episode release.

 

Whether that trend was alarming enough for Amazon to take note and step in to address any of the concerns mentioned here and elsewhere?  WAFO. ?