Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Labeled a “Box Office Disappointment”

By John F. Trent

·January 12, 2020

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is wrapping up its fourth weekend at the box office and the film has still failed to reach the $1 billion mark in world wide grosses.

For all intents and purposes the film is being labeled a “box office disappointment” with it possibly not even hitting conservative projections for its final domestic gross.

Box Office tracker Box Office Pro initially predicted the film would bring in between $185 million and $225 million in its opening weekend. The film failed to hit the low end, only bringing in $177 million according to The Numbers.

From there, the numbers get even bleaker. Box Office Pro predicted the film would end up grossing between $550 million and $750 million in its entire domestic box office run.

However, Forbes is now reporting the film won’t top Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s total domestic haul of $532 million. The Rise of Skywalker has currently grossed only $478 million.

What makes the fact that it won’t top Rogue One is that Rogue One had a much smaller opening weekend. It opened to the tune of $155 million at the domestic box office.

In fact, Forbes’ Scott Mendelson even points out that The Rise of Skywalker opened during “an advantageous holiday calendar” explaining the film opened right before a two-week holiday break.

Despite that advantageous calendar, Mendelson details the film “consistently dropped faster than its relevant predecessors.”

Mendelson is not the only one declaring Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker the “first $1 billion disappointment.”

Keith Noonan at financial website The Motley Fool declared the film a disappointment following its opening weekend take, already seeing the writing on the wall.

In fact, Noonan would go on to state what many Star Wars fans have been stating since Disney launched The Force Awakens and especially since they released Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, “Star Wars is declining.”

Noonan also raises a warning about Star Wars’ growth in China saying “Disney didn’t succeed at building an audience for the franchise in China.”

But maybe more importantly is that Noonan, when he’s analyzing why the film is performing poorly, echoes what many fans have been saying all along since Disney released The Force Awakens and more importantly The Last Jedi:

“It seems more likely that many fans lost interest in the world of the sequel trilogy because they were unimpressed with the quality of the output, and this spilled over into merchandise and theme park performance.”

This is quite clearly seen in audience scores for the film.

On Metacritic, The Force Awakens received the best User Score with a 6.8 with many of the reviews decrying the film for its derivative nature and what many see as ripping off George Lucas’ original films and repackaging them with new characters.

The User Score for The Last Jedi currently sits at an abysmal 4.4. Fans cite the disrespect shown to Luke Skywalker and the lack of understanding of basic principles of the Star Wars franchise like the Force as main problems with the film.

Finally, The Rise of Skywalker has a poor 5.0 with fans citing an empty plot that doesn’t actually mean anything for either the characters on screen or the audience watching.

What do you make of the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s box office performance?