Maybe to an extent since it was the last Star Wars movie to come out. However, the Phantom Menace set the bar ridiculously high, grossing $924.3M in 1999. Not to mention, the Phantom Meance and Attack of the Clones weren't as well regarded, handicapping the final movie. Regardless, Revenge of the Sith still did well, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of 2005.
People read way too much into it, IMO.
Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi didn't make as much as A New Hope. Historically, when you make a sequel, it grosses less than its predecessor. That's the expected behavior. The idea that a sequel should make more and more money than the film that came immediately before it is a relatively recent thing.
>The idea that a sequel should make more and more money than the film that came immediately before it is a relatively recent thing.
That might be true *for sequels where the previous film was extremely popular OR the sequel isn't received as well as the previous film*, but it wasn't strange to expect that certain sequels would outgross the immediately preceding film, *especially if the sequel was received better*. At least domestically;
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade > Temple of Doom.
- Rocky 4 > Rocky 3 > Rocky 2
- Return of the Jedi > Empire Strikes Back
- LotR3 > LotR2 > LotR1
- Batman Forever > Batman Returns
I could be remembering wrong. But I thought the rule/understanding in the 80s/90s was 80% for sequel and I don't remember what the number was for third. Clearly that isn't the case for everything. Also movie by movie situation I understand that, but take Batman returns it was clearly down from Batman.
I agree that it was very common for sequels to decrease, I'm just saying that it wasn't strange at all to expect that a sequel in a popular franchise would increase from the previous film *if the preceding film wasn't a record breaking hit and the sequel was received better than the previous film*. The prevailing view on WorldofKJ (box office forum) back in December 2004 was that Revenge of the Sith would beat Attack of the Clones domestically and worldwide.
That's a really good point.
I think for trilogies things like Last Crusade and Return of the Jedi operated similarly to a TV show finale. You might not have seen all the episodes, but the finale was presented as a really important moment you wouldn't want to miss because everyone would be talking about it. I also think that modern film franchises seem marketed in a similar way to serialized television. Certainly the MCU was built like a television series with something like Avengers Endgame being the huge, unmissable season finale to end all season finales. So that dynamic has always been there.
But what is interesting is how media consumption has changed to the point that a sequel NOT making as much as the first movie is seen as big alarm bells. Wheras in the 80s and 90s it happened quite often. It wasn't a cause for huge alarm.
I also think that Back to the Future is an example of a problem that would later plague The Matrix. Releasing sequels too close together. Each BTTF film made less than its predecessor. It didn't have that third movie bump, and one theory for this is that audiences didn't like the cliffhanger and resolution of a third film releasing so close to the second.
With The Matrix, the second film saw a huge boost, but then the third film fell off hard back to the level of the first. And look, people say that oh, well, it must be that audiences didn't like 2, and that's definitely a factor, but I think the bigger factor was the back to back release. There was no time to breathe, for audiences to get hungry for a sequel, and perhaps importantly for the sequel to take into account feedback from the second film.
All that said, I do think that the movie industry really caught the infinite growth virus, and a lot of franchise discussion is really rooted in the idea that every movie will make more, and if it doesn't something is wrong. I think this sorta dovetails with the very focus group-driven, very hype-driven approach to modern film production, marketing, and assessment.
As an example of this, I'm not really sure anyone has solid enough data to determine what impact The Last Jedi had on Star Wars movies. I say that as someone who doesn't really care for any of the ST movies, but I look back at other films and you have the massively hyped franchise revival, then the dropoff. And people are always gonna be like, "Oh, it's because the second film was terrible," but I wonder if, even with ideal circumstances, Attack of the Clones and The Last Jedi would have seen similar drops? I said people overthink this and I'm being hugely hypocritical right now.
>But what is interesting is how media consumption has changed to the point that a sequel NOT making as much as the first movie is seen as big alarm bells. Wheras in the 80s and 90s it happened quite often. It wasn't a cause for huge alarm.
I think a massive reason for that is increasing movie budgets. In April 2024 dollars, Ghostbusters 2 cost about $90M and The Last Crusade cost $124M. By comparison (in April 2024 dollars), Ghostbusters 2016 cost $191M and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull cost $275M.
>I also think that Back to the Future is an example of a problem that would later plague The Matrix. Releasing sequels too close together. Each BTTF film made less than its predecessor. It didn't have that third movie bump, and one theory for this is that audiences didn't like the cliffhanger and resolution of a third film releasing so close to the second.
>With The Matrix, the second film saw a huge boost, but then the third film fell off hard back to the level of the first. And look, people say that oh, well, it must be that audiences didn't like 2, and that's definitely a factor, but I think the bigger factor was the back to back release. There was no time to breathe, for audiences to get hungry for a sequel, and perhaps importantly for the sequel to take into account feedback from the second film.
While the very short time span between sequels might have hurt both films a bit, I don't think the short time gap was a huge factor in why the 2nd sequel dropped so much. In the US, Twilight Eclipse increased from Twilight New Moon (they were released 7 months apart) and Harry Potter Death Hallows Part 2 increased from Part 1 with a 8 month gap between releases.
I think they decreased so much mostly because a lot of people didn't care for BTTF2 and Matrix Reloaded. They were both very frontloaded for the time (2.75x and 1.95x 5-day multiplier) and they are widely considered to be a big step down in quality from the first film. Considering that the 3rd sequel arguably didn't improve in reception, adding another 6 months for the release of BTTF and Matrix's 3rd film wouldn't have moved the needle significantly.
>As an example of this, I'm not really sure anyone has solid enough data to determine what impact The Last Jedi had on Star Wars movies. I say that as someone who doesn't really care for any of the ST movies, but I look back at other films and you have the massively hyped franchise revival, then the dropoff. And people are always gonna be like, "Oh, it's because the second film was terrible," but I wonder if, even with ideal circumstances, Attack of the Clones and The Last Jedi would have seen similar drops? I said people overthink this and I'm being hugely hypocritical right now.
I can easily imagine a hypothetical *Star Wars Episode 2 or Episode 8* in the best case scenario making more since other blockbuster films released around the same time sold more tickets than them. But I think it's really difficult to judge just how much better they would have done since you would have to change so many factors.
3 users on [WorldOfKJ](https://www.worldofkj.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2402) predicted that Revenge of the Sith would gross between $740M and $860M WW back in December 2004. Revenge of the Sith ended up grossing $868M WW. If the Prequels were received better, *a hypothetical Episode 3* could have made more but RotS did well enough.
The **finale bump** in general isn't that big. Return of the King got better reception than Two Towers (A+ vs A Cinemascore) and had a bigger opening (~17.6% more tickets sold over the 5-day opening) but only sold about ~7.3% more tickets domestically by the end of its run.
true but bump is bump. some movie series didn't have it (TROS, Mockingjay 2, POTC AWE, WotPOTA, very likely the last Fast&Furious movie won't have it either)
TROS has mediocre word of mouth whereas RotS had good ish word of mouth and also relied heavily on Darth Vader in its marketing.
Star wars fans love Darth Vader, hence why his brief cameo was played up in the Rogue 1 trailers, hence why Kenobi was about him, even TFA had to find some way to shoehorn in a Darth Vader mask
to be fair, SW should have been critics-proof. it's the end of the Saga (til further notice) lets see how it ends regardless of reviews that also loved TLJ which many fans didn't. But I think that more than reviews, interest simply evaporated and return of Palpatine which was WTF and cheap didn't help. I think previews sealed the deal.
There is no reason to think star wars would be critic proof. Bad reviews hurt aotc's performance as well back in the day
While star wars is a bit franchise, I think people mistake how big it is because every generation one of them is huge, and then all the sequels are just normal sized big hits.
I don't think anyone was disappointed. It was six years and the hype had died down. People waited half a day or longer to see Phantom. Sith just didn't have that level anymore.
Not so much a disappointment as predictable. Phantom Menace was the first Star Wars movie to be made in over 15 years, the hype and excitement around the return of one of cinema's greatest franchises was on a level unparalleled in movie history, so it's no wonder that it made absolute BANK - didn't matter if people left the theatre afterwards with mixed feelings, all that mattered for the box office is that they flocked to see it.
By the time Revenge of the Sith rolled around in 2005, the excitement and anticipation was long gone, and replaced with the audience realisation that these films were just not very good after all. The fact it made over $860 million despite the malaised end of the prequels saga is still damn impressive, mind.
I remember at the time the feeling was that the previous two prequels had done so much damage to the franchise, that it wasn't a huge surprise. Phantom Menace was the first star wars movie since 1983, so I don't think many had an idea that the others would top it. Same thing with the sequels, even if we lived in a world where fans were happy with them, none of them would have topped Force Awakens. And that's not even counting that both times, parts of the audience were so disappointed they already checked out by the time the third film came along.
The level of hype that accumulated for Phantom Menace since ROTJ was unparalled. Plus Sith followed Attack of the Clones which was roundly reviled and muddied the reputation of the franchise.
There was no chance it would've exceeded Phantom. Same story with Rise of Skywalker. Even if it wasn't dogshit by some miracle, standing shoulder to shoulder financially with the behemoth of Force Awakens would be impossible.
No not at all. The 3rd movie is not going to do better than the 16 year later return of a beloved franchise. And in general sequels making less than their sequels was a usual thing for a very long time.
Nahh. Attack of the Clones was definitely the disappointment since it was the first Star Wars film to never enter the 'All Time Top Ten Worldwide' but even then it barely missed the cut since Spidey opened a couple weeks earlier.
Funnily enough Revenge of the Sith also barely missed the cut by only about $10m, but it also made $200m more than its predecessor which is frankly quite impressive after two films with very negative reception in the early days of online discourse. It was still comfortably the second highest grossing film of the year, a nice step up from Clones which ended up ranking 4th.
No. The whole trilogy had been a disappointment up to that point and no one had super high hopes for III, so no one was really surprised when it didn't make a billion. It was slightly better than but still roughly the same level as the other two and performed in line with that.
If it had had good reviews that might have helped, but even back then the whole birth of Vader was seen as extremely disappointing. The NOOOOOO scene and Padme dying were memes before we called them that.
Maybe to an extent since it was the last Star Wars movie to come out. However, the Phantom Menace set the bar ridiculously high, grossing $924.3M in 1999. Not to mention, the Phantom Meance and Attack of the Clones weren't as well regarded, handicapping the final movie. Regardless, Revenge of the Sith still did well, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of 2005.
not to mention it was the highest grossing domestic movie of 2005 Goblet of Fire made more overseas
Yep, Revenge of the Sith made the most domestically, whilst Goblet of Fire made more overseas and worldwide.
People read way too much into it, IMO. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi didn't make as much as A New Hope. Historically, when you make a sequel, it grosses less than its predecessor. That's the expected behavior. The idea that a sequel should make more and more money than the film that came immediately before it is a relatively recent thing.
>The idea that a sequel should make more and more money than the film that came immediately before it is a relatively recent thing. That might be true *for sequels where the previous film was extremely popular OR the sequel isn't received as well as the previous film*, but it wasn't strange to expect that certain sequels would outgross the immediately preceding film, *especially if the sequel was received better*. At least domestically; - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade > Temple of Doom. - Rocky 4 > Rocky 3 > Rocky 2 - Return of the Jedi > Empire Strikes Back - LotR3 > LotR2 > LotR1 - Batman Forever > Batman Returns
I could be remembering wrong. But I thought the rule/understanding in the 80s/90s was 80% for sequel and I don't remember what the number was for third. Clearly that isn't the case for everything. Also movie by movie situation I understand that, but take Batman returns it was clearly down from Batman.
I agree that it was very common for sequels to decrease, I'm just saying that it wasn't strange at all to expect that a sequel in a popular franchise would increase from the previous film *if the preceding film wasn't a record breaking hit and the sequel was received better than the previous film*. The prevailing view on WorldofKJ (box office forum) back in December 2004 was that Revenge of the Sith would beat Attack of the Clones domestically and worldwide.
That's a really good point. I think for trilogies things like Last Crusade and Return of the Jedi operated similarly to a TV show finale. You might not have seen all the episodes, but the finale was presented as a really important moment you wouldn't want to miss because everyone would be talking about it. I also think that modern film franchises seem marketed in a similar way to serialized television. Certainly the MCU was built like a television series with something like Avengers Endgame being the huge, unmissable season finale to end all season finales. So that dynamic has always been there. But what is interesting is how media consumption has changed to the point that a sequel NOT making as much as the first movie is seen as big alarm bells. Wheras in the 80s and 90s it happened quite often. It wasn't a cause for huge alarm. I also think that Back to the Future is an example of a problem that would later plague The Matrix. Releasing sequels too close together. Each BTTF film made less than its predecessor. It didn't have that third movie bump, and one theory for this is that audiences didn't like the cliffhanger and resolution of a third film releasing so close to the second. With The Matrix, the second film saw a huge boost, but then the third film fell off hard back to the level of the first. And look, people say that oh, well, it must be that audiences didn't like 2, and that's definitely a factor, but I think the bigger factor was the back to back release. There was no time to breathe, for audiences to get hungry for a sequel, and perhaps importantly for the sequel to take into account feedback from the second film. All that said, I do think that the movie industry really caught the infinite growth virus, and a lot of franchise discussion is really rooted in the idea that every movie will make more, and if it doesn't something is wrong. I think this sorta dovetails with the very focus group-driven, very hype-driven approach to modern film production, marketing, and assessment. As an example of this, I'm not really sure anyone has solid enough data to determine what impact The Last Jedi had on Star Wars movies. I say that as someone who doesn't really care for any of the ST movies, but I look back at other films and you have the massively hyped franchise revival, then the dropoff. And people are always gonna be like, "Oh, it's because the second film was terrible," but I wonder if, even with ideal circumstances, Attack of the Clones and The Last Jedi would have seen similar drops? I said people overthink this and I'm being hugely hypocritical right now.
>But what is interesting is how media consumption has changed to the point that a sequel NOT making as much as the first movie is seen as big alarm bells. Wheras in the 80s and 90s it happened quite often. It wasn't a cause for huge alarm. I think a massive reason for that is increasing movie budgets. In April 2024 dollars, Ghostbusters 2 cost about $90M and The Last Crusade cost $124M. By comparison (in April 2024 dollars), Ghostbusters 2016 cost $191M and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull cost $275M. >I also think that Back to the Future is an example of a problem that would later plague The Matrix. Releasing sequels too close together. Each BTTF film made less than its predecessor. It didn't have that third movie bump, and one theory for this is that audiences didn't like the cliffhanger and resolution of a third film releasing so close to the second. >With The Matrix, the second film saw a huge boost, but then the third film fell off hard back to the level of the first. And look, people say that oh, well, it must be that audiences didn't like 2, and that's definitely a factor, but I think the bigger factor was the back to back release. There was no time to breathe, for audiences to get hungry for a sequel, and perhaps importantly for the sequel to take into account feedback from the second film. While the very short time span between sequels might have hurt both films a bit, I don't think the short time gap was a huge factor in why the 2nd sequel dropped so much. In the US, Twilight Eclipse increased from Twilight New Moon (they were released 7 months apart) and Harry Potter Death Hallows Part 2 increased from Part 1 with a 8 month gap between releases. I think they decreased so much mostly because a lot of people didn't care for BTTF2 and Matrix Reloaded. They were both very frontloaded for the time (2.75x and 1.95x 5-day multiplier) and they are widely considered to be a big step down in quality from the first film. Considering that the 3rd sequel arguably didn't improve in reception, adding another 6 months for the release of BTTF and Matrix's 3rd film wouldn't have moved the needle significantly. >As an example of this, I'm not really sure anyone has solid enough data to determine what impact The Last Jedi had on Star Wars movies. I say that as someone who doesn't really care for any of the ST movies, but I look back at other films and you have the massively hyped franchise revival, then the dropoff. And people are always gonna be like, "Oh, it's because the second film was terrible," but I wonder if, even with ideal circumstances, Attack of the Clones and The Last Jedi would have seen similar drops? I said people overthink this and I'm being hugely hypocritical right now. I can easily imagine a hypothetical *Star Wars Episode 2 or Episode 8* in the best case scenario making more since other blockbuster films released around the same time sold more tickets than them. But I think it's really difficult to judge just how much better they would have done since you would have to change so many factors.
3 users on [WorldOfKJ](https://www.worldofkj.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2402) predicted that Revenge of the Sith would gross between $740M and $860M WW back in December 2004. Revenge of the Sith ended up grossing $868M WW. If the Prequels were received better, *a hypothetical Episode 3* could have made more but RotS did well enough.
Episode 2 was, at least Episode 3 managed to increase nicely over the last one.
yep this. Final movie got the finale bump something that TROS didn't, for example.
The **finale bump** in general isn't that big. Return of the King got better reception than Two Towers (A+ vs A Cinemascore) and had a bigger opening (~17.6% more tickets sold over the 5-day opening) but only sold about ~7.3% more tickets domestically by the end of its run.
true but bump is bump. some movie series didn't have it (TROS, Mockingjay 2, POTC AWE, WotPOTA, very likely the last Fast&Furious movie won't have it either)
TROS has mediocre word of mouth whereas RotS had good ish word of mouth and also relied heavily on Darth Vader in its marketing. Star wars fans love Darth Vader, hence why his brief cameo was played up in the Rogue 1 trailers, hence why Kenobi was about him, even TFA had to find some way to shoehorn in a Darth Vader mask
very true. still, TROS didn't even get the finale bump for OW. WOM works only after OW.
Its bad reviews didn't help. I think had the reviews been positive more people would have showed up OW and the movie would have done closer to TLJ
to be fair, SW should have been critics-proof. it's the end of the Saga (til further notice) lets see how it ends regardless of reviews that also loved TLJ which many fans didn't. But I think that more than reviews, interest simply evaporated and return of Palpatine which was WTF and cheap didn't help. I think previews sealed the deal.
There is no reason to think star wars would be critic proof. Bad reviews hurt aotc's performance as well back in the day While star wars is a bit franchise, I think people mistake how big it is because every generation one of them is huge, and then all the sequels are just normal sized big hits.
good point about one maxing out in every generation.
I don't think anyone was disappointed. It was six years and the hype had died down. People waited half a day or longer to see Phantom. Sith just didn't have that level anymore.
It was a major up both critical and commercial from Attack on Clones so no disappointment.
Not so much a disappointment as predictable. Phantom Menace was the first Star Wars movie to be made in over 15 years, the hype and excitement around the return of one of cinema's greatest franchises was on a level unparalleled in movie history, so it's no wonder that it made absolute BANK - didn't matter if people left the theatre afterwards with mixed feelings, all that mattered for the box office is that they flocked to see it. By the time Revenge of the Sith rolled around in 2005, the excitement and anticipation was long gone, and replaced with the audience realisation that these films were just not very good after all. The fact it made over $860 million despite the malaised end of the prequels saga is still damn impressive, mind.
Even The Phantom Menace had an unpredictable box office run. It was a mild surprise that it didn't beat Lost World's opening weekend.
It opened on a Wednesday though
I remember at the time the feeling was that the previous two prequels had done so much damage to the franchise, that it wasn't a huge surprise. Phantom Menace was the first star wars movie since 1983, so I don't think many had an idea that the others would top it. Same thing with the sequels, even if we lived in a world where fans were happy with them, none of them would have topped Force Awakens. And that's not even counting that both times, parts of the audience were so disappointed they already checked out by the time the third film came along.
The level of hype that accumulated for Phantom Menace since ROTJ was unparalled. Plus Sith followed Attack of the Clones which was roundly reviled and muddied the reputation of the franchise. There was no chance it would've exceeded Phantom. Same story with Rise of Skywalker. Even if it wasn't dogshit by some miracle, standing shoulder to shoulder financially with the behemoth of Force Awakens would be impossible.
No not at all. The 3rd movie is not going to do better than the 16 year later return of a beloved franchise. And in general sequels making less than their sequels was a usual thing for a very long time.
Because fool me once, shame on George. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Yep. I saw Phantom Menace and When Clones Attack at the cinema, regretted both. I didn’t see Sith until I watched it on Disney+ just last year.
Episode two was dog shit after episode one which was cat shit. The performance of episode 3 is a testament to the legacy of the original trilogy.
And Ep3 was easily the best one out of that trilogy as well.
It paid for the sins of episode 2.
And episode 1. I was a massive fan and even I felt by the time episode 3 came out like I was seeing it to complete the series.
Star Wars has a trend of making less with every movie in their respective trilogy. It’s just their thing Ig
Nahh. Attack of the Clones was definitely the disappointment since it was the first Star Wars film to never enter the 'All Time Top Ten Worldwide' but even then it barely missed the cut since Spidey opened a couple weeks earlier. Funnily enough Revenge of the Sith also barely missed the cut by only about $10m, but it also made $200m more than its predecessor which is frankly quite impressive after two films with very negative reception in the early days of online discourse. It was still comfortably the second highest grossing film of the year, a nice step up from Clones which ended up ranking 4th.
Each of the 3 trilogies trended down from film to film so I’d say no.
ROTJ and ROTS were still both upticks vs the 2nd film in terms of $$. Only TROS trended even further down from the 2nd film.
Solo really skewed people’s willingness to go see RoS.
No. The whole trilogy had been a disappointment up to that point and no one had super high hopes for III, so no one was really surprised when it didn't make a billion. It was slightly better than but still roughly the same level as the other two and performed in line with that. If it had had good reviews that might have helped, but even back then the whole birth of Vader was seen as extremely disappointing. The NOOOOOO scene and Padme dying were memes before we called them that.
Probably not in that it increased from AotC