As you may have heard, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has taken in more than a billion dollars worldwide, so far. $1.09 billion, to be exact.
But the folks over on Return of Kings still think that their “boycott” of the film was a HUGE SUCCESS. How’s that, you ask?
Well, as RoK contributor David Garrett figures it, if Return of Kings hadn’t warned the men of the world that The Force Awakens is “SJW propaganda,” the film might have taken in roughly $4.2 million more than it did.
That’s right: it could have made $1,094,200,000 instead of the paltry $1,090,000,000 it’s taken in so far.
IN YOUR FACE, SJWs!
So how exactly does Garrett arrive at that $4.2 million figure? WITH SCIENCE.
Fifty-five percent of respondents to a Return of Kings Twitter poll have said that online reporting of the social justice nature of The Force Awakens influenced their decision whether to see the film. Extended across our readership, with over 900,000 users accessing ROK between November 21 and December 21, this amounts to a potential direct impact of $4,219,456.54 (55% x $8.38 x 915,482) on total revenues. $8.38 is based on the average cinema ticket price in the US, which is now an all-time high.
Well, you can’t argue with that!
And that $4,219,456.54 figure doesn’t even take into account the other right-wing media outlets that warned their readers about the evil SJW agenda behind The Force Awakens. Add that in, Garrett suggests, and the total cost of the right-wing “boycott” is in the “tens of millions of dollars.”
I have done a similar calculation to determine how much of a financial effect my writings about their “boycott” have had on the box office of The Force Awakens.
8.38 (ticket cost in dollars) x 7,390,966,099 (the number of people who might have been influenced by my posts, based on total world population) + 0.47 (amount of change in my pocket) – 7.67 (estimated cost of lunch today) / 2 (number of cats in my apartment)
So that comes to $61,936,295,906 per cat in my apartment. In other words, without my influence, The Force Awakens would have lost $60,846,295,906 at the box office (per cat in my apartment), making it the biggest financial disaster in Hollywood history. (I think. I’m not really that good at math.)
A loss of that magnitude would have had a disastrous effect on the world economy, including my cats. And I have prevented it.
You’re welcome!
I feel a great disturbance in the Force.
As if a few dozen people had suddenly cried out, “We’re relevant, goddammit!”
And then stomped their feet to further illustrate the intensity of their tantrum
I…
I just…
Hahahahahahahaha! Oh, this makes this day of hiding from the weather and the world in general worth it. Thanks you deluded ding-dongs, I needed that laugh.
Again I say… if going to The Force Awakens means I won’t have to sit next to a Return of Kings fan for over two hours, then it is worth the ticket price.
Falconer I swear if there was a best comment award I’d nominate you, vote for you, then rig the whole election so you’d win.
Yes, Mr. Garrett, I’m sure all persons concerned are hurting as a result of your valiant efforts.
And crying all the way to the bank on account of us dastardly SJWs, too.
Wow. That’s just delusional.
Over 900,000 visits ≠ over 900,000 USERS. The site doesn’t actually have that many.
For a bunch of dudes who think men are just naturally superior to women in everything mathy and sciency, these guys flunk the most basic logic test.
Also: How many nimnuls actually responded to their silly little “Twitter poll”? Nowhere near 900,000, I bet. (And given how a lot of these trolls have multiple accounts, I smell a freep.)
I wonder what kind of success SWTFA would have been if it WAS the kind of movie these racist, sexist, ******** want. Probably not the massive success it has been, to say the least.
I mean, the market for Star Wars: Return Of The White Male Power Fantasy, is likely somewhat smaller.
First of all, a website poll is not remotely scientific so it tells us precisely nothing. Haven’t they ever heard of selection bias? Not only is this poll not a random sample of the population, it’s not even a random sample of RoK readers! These types of polls are really for entertainment purposes only.
Second of all, saying the RoK rantings had an influence on the respondents is not the same as saying that the respondents didn’t go see the movie or won’t see it in the future. It’s just saying that was one of the factors in their decision.
But what do I know? I’m just a silly girl with a ladybrain. I’m not a science expert like all the manly men of RoK.
And even if you take the poll at face value, it still doesn’t account for people who voted “Yes,” watched it anyway then lied about watching it.
Otherwise known as “Every non-sock respondent.”
They can hate the casting decisions all they want, but it has worked out for Disney. Women are seeing the movie and helping to drive its success.
Here’s a link if you don’t believe me.
I think it’s important to remember that this isn’t a new phenomenon. Remember Aliens, Xena and Buffy? Those were huge hits and in the case of Xena and Buffy much bigger than their male driven counterparts. Giving women lead roles in these kinds of movies works. It’s a good financial decision.
Hmm.. so the online poll asked whether the reporting ” influenced their decision”.. but neglected to state which way it was influenced?
As @Bina mentioned, lots of people were influenced in the a positive direction. But let’s assume that 100% of the response meant they were influenced to not see the movie. And due to an overabundance of charity, let’s assume that all of their numbers are just as correct.
It still makes more sense for the movie makers to be inclusive.
If you are influenced in a positive manner, you can (and likely will) spend money to see it multiple times – but if you’re influenced in a negative manner, you can only not see it once.
Devil’s advocate:
Let’s say their valiant efforts really did result in a loss of 4.2 million USD…
…That’s, what, about how much the production lost on beverage spillage while on location, right?
Right???
Also, I’m pretty sure there are way way WAYYYYY more women and non-white people than there are twitwiffles — oh sorry, Alpha Males — who tweet in the ROK-adjacent sphere.
When you’re claiming victory because you’ve cost the most successful thing in the history of things .38% of its success, you’ve also redefined success down in such a way that it looks a whole lot like failure.
This is incredibly anecdotal, but my decisions to watch both Spy and TFA were absolutely influenced by the MRA hate against those movies. I had very little interest in Spy and was extremely negative towards TFA because of the letdown that was episodes 1-3, but I *loved* Spy and really enjoyed TFA and would not have watched the former had I not seen all of the MRA hate against it. TFA I would have seen regardless, because I really had no say in the matter as someone else bought me the ticket without consulting me, but I was already leaning towards seeing it in the theater because of the campaign against it bringing the gender and race of the main characters to my attention.
But I’m a feeemale and an ugly one at that, so I’m sure I don’t count.
Current footage from Disney’s corporate offices:
I am not a star wars person. Or star trek. Or lord of the rings (although those movies were alright), or Battlestar Galactica, game of thrones, basically none of the fantasy stuff.
I’m a justified/supernatural/house of cards/roseanne/mad men person.
That being said, the manosphere is making me WANT to see this movie, when I wouldn’t have cared less otherwise.
Some addendums to my original post.
Not only does the poll suffer from sampling issues, but I’m going to have to assume the question is leading.
I’m way too academically rusty to go into the issues with the statistical analysis and what they’re extrapolating from the data. I know there are other Mammotheers qualified to it if they’re so inclined.
They also need to take into account the number of “SJWs” who went to go see it when they otherwise might not have thanks to positive coverage of the gender and racial diversity.
It would also be helpful to poll a control group that doesn’t identify with either the “SJW” or the “alt-right” side of things to see if they were impacted by coverage of the racial and gender composition of the cast.
Another thing I’ve noticed that we can mock is that only 55% of respondents were influenced by the RoK coverage. Apparently 45% of the respondents didn’t care and made up their own mind about whether or not to see it. For such supposed masters of manipulation and holders of frame, convincing only 55% of your core audience to even think about a boycott is pretty pathetic. If Star Wars: TFW was so horribadly misandrist and white genocidal, you’d think the manosphere/alt-right/dark enlightenment/whatever label these douchenozzles are slapping on themselves this week would be a bit more unified in a boycott of the film.
Imagine if ROK’s readership wasn’t dropping as fast as it is, and they had the same readership as a year ago. That stupendous figure might have been even bigger.
Yes, that 900,000 visits glared out at me too – NOT at all the same as 900,000 visitors.
Just another way to try and convince themselves that their views are very popular and influential.
Let’s say regular users of ROK check in once a day, and that a significant % have more than one account to vote on ridiculous polls – I reckon you could knock off a couple of noughts straight away.
Well, in all fairness, that visitor number actually seems relatively accurate; according to Quantcast anyway:
https://www.quantcast.com/returnofkings.com
But, the questions that come up include: How many people took this Twitter poll and why should it be regarded as accurate in any way (as WWTH mentioned, there’s massive selection bias at work in such a thing)? And, how many of the site’s visitors are people who actually share in the site’s general ideology, and how many are just looking out of morbid curiosity/rubbernecking/etc. (considering that a lot of their posts are of the clickbait-y outrage variety, I’ll bet that a lot of those visitors think that ROK is utterly full of shit; I just gave them a view by looking at the article, myself)?
I’ll actually go ROK one better and say that probably many of their dedicated readers – as well as those of other rage-fueled right-wing sites – did indeed stay away from SW:TFA because they don’t want to see a movie where the heroes are women or people of color (or both, as in SW:TFA). What ROK doesn’t seem to mention, though (I couldn’t bring myself to do more than skim the article and oh, god, there’s even an Anita Sarkeesian caricature in there) is that a great many folks probably sought out the film for exactly the reasons they want to boycott it. There are a lot more women and people of color than there are white men in the world, after all… And of course, as the post mentioned, 4 million dollars sounds like a lot of money on its own, but not when it’s stacked against the multi-billion-dollar merchandising and box-office bonanza that is The Force Awakens.
(Personally, I wasn’t crazy about the movie. Without spoiling anything in particular, I’ll just note that it frustrated me with its lack of originality and with how closely it followed the formula of episode 4. But, seeing these guys get all pissy about it has raised it in my estimation a bit.)
Although all of the problems you noted (self-selection bias, etc) are important wrt to the poll, this is the one that actually factors into Disney’s analysis. If you take an action that loses you 100 customers, but gains you 10,000, literally no company on earth is going to give the first shit about the 100 who objected to the action. “Sorry you didn’t enjoy our product. Hope you will give Other Thing We Do a try, but this message is polite and professional only for PR reasons, we’re not actually fussed about your not liking this thing.”
(nobody tell ROK that most of the showings, in my town at least, are 3-D which carries a way higher ticket price than $8)