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!
Is Daniel Craig in this movie? ??
I will make a point of seeing it, if he’s in it. Really like him.
Daniel Craig has a cameo as a stormtrooper (but at least he has a few lines). So, not much, sorry.
I just saw the movie. I’ll try not to spray too many feels into one post. Let’s start with: this movie is awesome, and anyone who says it’s only making money because of the brand name is a fool. The name gets people to watch it once. I know too many people watching it for the 4th time tomorrow to think quality doesn’t sell.
Re: Finn
Finn was, personally, my favorite character. Having a black protagonist is of course really nice, but it was also interesting to see such an un-macho protagonist in a semi-serious space action movie. Boyega portrays genuine panic more effectively than anyone else in the franchise; his cringes are also excellent. I thought Luke was great for the New Hope/ESB pair because having someone geuinely freaked out on board heightened tension. The prequels didn’t have that.
MAJOR SPOILERS!
When I saw the movie, everybody in the theatre cheered when Rey did the Force Pull to get the lightsaber. This might be a regional thing, though. I suppose there are parts of the world where people pay good money for a ticket to see “Star Wars” and then just sit there sulking and nitpicking and just generally refusing to accept anything. The best advice I can give you is to move someplace less toxic. (I saw the movie in the greater NYC area if that helps.)
Other than that:
There are at least three fan theories explaining Rey’s skill with the Force: Either she trained at Luke’s Jedi Academy as a child and suffered partial memory loss when she was abandoned on Jakku, or else a crash course in Force use had somehow been imprinted onto Luke’s lightsaber and it transferred to Rey when she picked it up, or else the title “The Force Awakens” is meant to be taken literally, and the Force is actively training her.
Kylo Ren was only half-trained as a Sith, was in the middle of an emotional breakdown, was just shot with a weapon with the approximate power of a grenade launcher, and was trying to capture Rey rather than kill her. I think the fans can forgive him for losing.
raysa:
I think that your position is entirely fair. While Leia is definitely a pro-woman character compared to other female action movie characters, that’s a pretty low bar to meet. In fact, though, she is treated differently than a male character in a similar position; we know this, because Han is put in a similar position, but isn’t placed into any situation analogous to the ‘slave Leia’ routine, nor is there nearly as much emphasis in discussions, fandom, etc. on his time as a prisoner relative to how he spends all the rest of the movies.
STANDARD SPOILER ALERT FOR BELOW
Re: all the carry on about the lightsaber duel, let’s keep a couple of things in mind. Firstly, Finn is NO stranger to hand-to-hand combat. Heck, we even see the kind of combat he might have have trained in when he fights the storm trooper at Maz’s. Clearly he’s trained in armed combat beyond just shooting blasters.
Secondly, Rey. They make a HUGE point of showing just how skillful she is at wielding a staff. It’s not a big leap to suggest she knows quite a bit about armed combat in a self-taught way. So the quibbles about her being totally untrained sound, to me, like whiny nitpicking. She’s super-duper force sensitive, has combat skills, and has everything to fight for. Her opponent is weakened (they make a big deal of showing that, too). It’s quite believable, in a movie/Hollywood sort of way.
On Rey:
I have to give 1 point to Slytherin. Bryce and Aurini made a couple of factually-correct observations.
Rey is nothing like Luke. Rey is among the most fantastical, superheroic, joyously-implausible heroes in the Star Wars film canon. Luke is good at a small number of things, it’s explained how he learned them, and he used the resources of his middle-class family to do it. Rey is good at lots of things, several of which she explicitly has not done before, and none of which are explicitly explained. Luke had no Force powers until he was explicitly trained, and minor ones thereafter. Rey has extraordinary Force powers with no training whatsoever. These are true statements about the movies.
I must now deduct 30 points from Slytherin for the following errors.
–Asserting without argument that female protagonists must be plausible.
–Asserting without argument that Star Wars protagonists must be like Luke
–Failing to discern that if you are bothered by Rey’s hypercompetence, the solution is more feminism and not less.
I can’t really expand on the first point. Rey is one of those action heroes that’s good at everything for no reason*. It’s not the end of the world.
On the second: Rey is clearly not intended to be Luke 2.0. Rey is Anakin 2.0. Like Anakin, she is a self-taught mechanical genius and an unpracticed ace pilot. Like Anakin, she has been hardened by a harsh childhood and deeply wounded by loss of family. Like Anakin, her powers are so great that everyone force-touched on both sides immediately recognizes her as the key to the whole conflict.
On the third: My first attempt to explain this got really long. Basically, to characterise Rey as a competent woman, the writers have to overcome our cultural presumption of incompetence. They do this both by writing scene after scene where she solves hard problems with a level head, by showing multiple characters underestimating her, and by faking the audience into thinking she might need a rescue before letting her solve the problem herself. That doesn’t leave a lot of space for learning or vulnerability or humanity.
I think the real question is: how come Finn can actually hit what he aims at if he was trained as a Stormtrooper?
I don’t think bad aim is actually the stormtroopers’ problem. I think it’s a difference in muzzle velocity. I never noticed it before, and maybe I’m imagining this, but in this movie I felt like when the good guys shoot at stormtroopers, the stormtroopers are zapped almost instantly, but when the stormtroopers shoot back, the bolts drift slowly across the room while our heroes step out of the way. If so there’s pretty much no way the stormtroopers could hit anyone no matter how skilled they may be.
Stormtrooper helmets are also commonly described as being hard to see out of. There was a joke about it in a recent episode of Rebels, even.
Also, possible minor TFA SPOILERS below:
I’m going to nitpick here a bit, but Kylo Ren is not a Sith Lord. He’s a Knight of Ren, which is a different order within the broad category of Dark Jedi. The Sith Order is a specific dark side philosophy which quite possibly died along with Sidious and Vader on the second Death Star (though there’s always the possibility of some Dark Jedi discovering an old Sith Holocron or something, and deciding to revive the Order).
I’ve seen a few comments about the price of movies in different countries such as Canada and Aus.
It’s a common misconception outside of economics circles that exchange rates have a lot to do with relative prices of the same things in different places. While they do have an effect it is much more minor than one would think.
The biggest influence on price difference across borders is that we live in a semi-competitive (as in not perfectly) market economy where businesses are charging what they believe people will pay for their product.
The second biggest influence is often price stickiness, the relative difference in pricing may have been set decades ago in circumstances no longer as relevant (distance, red tape or exchange rates differences that may no longer exist) and once set it can be difficult for any one business to budge it. (Customers throw a fit when it goes up faster than inflation and bosses throw a fit if a price cut doesn’t increase profitability)
There is a massive list of factors that influences what “people will pay” in different countries, depending on the industry/product in question. Higher Minimum and median wages tend to create a wider class of people who can afford a $15 ticket over a $9, Canada/Australia has a more concentrated population than the USA which provides each theatre with a bigger client base.
Sorry for the essay.
Not sure if this was ever confirmed but Disney were looking at ending “Slave Leia” merch (apparently) – http://comicsalliance.com/star-wars-slave-leia-merchandise/
Even if you think Ren is less plausible than Luke Skywalker, a point I’m not willing to concede, if you draw the line between them so that it’s totally fine when the farm boy who we never see pilot anything except a speeder turns out to be the best ace pilot in a spaceship he’s never flown before, but it’s completely unallowable for Ren to use a lightsaber, you have an agenda.
If you like your sci-fi heroes realistic and plausible, Luke doesn’t make the cut. If you like your sci-fi heroes larger than life, Rey does make the cut. Insisting that Rey has problems that totally ruin her but Luke is completely okay just shows that you’re looking for reasons to hate Rey.
After all, if there’s one thing Star Wars fanboys are good at, it’s finding ways to justify every detail in those movies, however ridiculous. If you can come up with a reason “did the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs” is a meaningful statement and not a bit of bad technobabble from a screenwriter who obviously didn’t know what a parsec was, you could find a reason why Rey is so good at force powers.
The other thing fanboys don’t like to acknowledge is that filmmaking has changed in the past 30 years. It’s gotten a buttload less subtle. A new film is never going to seamlessly fit together with one made in a completely different social context, and modern audiences wouldn’t enjoy it if it did.
@ Katz
Isn’t the whole point of that scene that Han is just bull-shitting what he thinks are some country hicks?
The look Alec Guinness gives suggests (to me at least) that Ben has seen right through him.
@Alan
That was probably the intent of the original script, but the EU established that the Kessel Run involves swinging by a ton of black holes that make hyperspace in the region virtually unnavigable, and the Falcon was able to skirt much closer to them than the typical smuggler ship and take a shortcut.
The figure is repeated in this one in a context that makes it likely that’s what they’re going with.
@ Guy
Aww, I liked the idea that Han was just a scam artist with the space equivalent of an old Transit Van.
What about Anakin in The Phantom Menace? No amount of natural talent or practice or Force ability would allow a nine-year-old to win a pod race. Even Luke would have been splattered against the first wall. And yet, for all the (many, many) complaints surrounding the prequels, I’ve never seen anybody complain about that. Because it’s a fucking movie.
Look. You’re either the sort of insufferable “Fanboy” who can’t enjoy anything without whining about it (hence the snark quotes – if you don’t like it, you’re not really a fan, bro) or you’re a misogynist. Which is it? Your posting history suggests the latter, but I’ll be generous and let you answer.
Yeah, in retrospect I’m disappointed that the fiction felt it had to uphold Han’s claims about his fast ship. If it looks like he’s BSing Our Heroes it contributes to the tension about whether he can be trusted. It’s like him shooting Greedo, only more subtle.
In practice, it certainly doesn’t seem like the Falcon is all that fast, at least in realspace. He says he’s outrun the “big Corellian ships” but he has trouble staying ahead of them in Empire. Of course, the limitations of the model work make all the ships in SW look sluggish, especially compared to ROTJ.
Ah SFHC
Don’t know if you saw my post about this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00xfdmt
Try and find a way of seeing the three programmes; I think you may appreciate and enjoy them.
I just watched this yesterday. He “sees things before they happen”. That’s why he “appears to have” such great reflexes. He’s “the only human” who can pod race. 🙂
@ Falconer
I’ve gone into geek mode a bit and looked at the various screenplays. The 4th Draft (Revised) has this:
But that was published by Lucas after the film was released, so who knows what they were originally thinking.
Yeah, I think I’ve seen that bit of the script, or something similar. When I was a wee Falconer, I think Guinness’ expression was too subtle for me, because I missed it entirely for years.
The original intent of the line is beside the point; the point is that fanboys have bent over backwards to make that line Absolutely True.
@ Falconer and Katz
I suppose it’s just an extreme example of ‘death of the author’.
I prefer the bull-shitter with a piece of junk interpretation because then it makes Han’s change of heart at the end more heroic and there’s something satisfying about the Empire’s state of the art technology being taken down by ‘the little spaceship that could’.
While the Star Wars EU does have a strong tendency to make everything in the movies the absolute best ever at whatever they do, the Falcon is indicated to be pretty good; Lando owns a city and thinks highly of it, and it’s used by Jabba’s top smuggler. I think in the original plan it was supposed to be a very good ship and Han just said some bullshit to wow the local hayseeds because he thought it was funny. According to Wookiepedia, the shorter route explanation actually dates back to Lucas in 1977.
Anyways, the Maw may have been made up to justify that line, but it’s a cool plot element and I am happy to keep it.
BEGIN NERD EU RAMBLING
The Falcon actually was originally a stock YT-1300, a fairly unremarkable interstellar freighter. The YT series is popular because it’s pretty receptive to aftermarket modifications, and the Falcon itself has a long and semi-glorious history. Prior owners augmented its stock weaponry with missile launchers, added shields, and the scan-shielded compartments they hid in when captured by the Death Star. Han won it off Lando in space blackjack after he rescued Chewie from slavery and was dishonorably discharged from the Imperial Fleet. He spent a while smuggling in the semi-autonomous Corporate Sector, during which he met with Doc, who’d been the star engineer of a major corporation before being framed for design problems, who made experimental modifications to its hyperdrive. Its hyperdrive is now actually the fastest in known space, beaten only by lost technology and the cybernetic ships of Zomna Selkot. The sublight engines are also souped up, but apparently not to the same extent.
Incidentally, Star Destroyers come from Kuat Drive Yards rather than Corellia. Han was presumably referring to the Corporate Sector Authority fleet’s preferred patrol cruisers.
END EU NERD RAMBLING