'Solo' stalls at the box office, raising concerns of Star Wars fatigue

[Shawn Knight]

Facepalm: A cornucopia of factors led to an underwhelming opening weekend at the box office for Solo: A Star Wars Story. It's not a complete disaster, mind you, and there's still time to recover but it does raise some interesting questions for Disney moving forward.

Solo: A Star Wars Story got off to a great start in May with pre-ticket sales that doubled that of another 2018 hit, Black Panther. Enthusiasm for the spin-off wasn’t quite as high as other entries in the once-in-a-lifetime franchise, however, especially considering this was the second Star Wars film in five months.

Such was evident in the box office showing over the weekend.

According to Box Office Mojo, Solo: A Star Wars Story brought in $84.7 million between Friday and Sunday (the figure climbed a bit to around $101 million when adding in Memorial Day sales). It led box office sales in North America and for many films, that’d be a very successful opening weekend but Star Wars isn’t your ordinary franchise.

As Rotten Tomatoes highlights, it’s the lowest debut for a Star Wars film since Attack of the Clones in 2002. So, what went wrong for Disney?

For starters, Memorial Day weekend isn’t exactly the best launch window. It’s warm out and lots of people would rather spend time grilling out with friends and family than occupying a theater. Also, the competition was stiff this year with Deadpool 2 and Avengers: Infinity War still lingering in theaters and doing quite well (Deadpool 2 brought in $42.7 million between Friday and Sunday while Infinity War collected $16.5 million during the same period).

Plus, as mentioned, this is the second Star Wars film in less than six months – could franchise fatigue be a real thing?

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https://www.techspot.com/news/74836-olo-stalls-box-office-raising-concerns-star-wars.html

 

[RaXoR]

More like the utter incompetence at making a decent star wars movie about han solo. They've butchered the franchise.

 

[Lionvibez]

Yes Disney's Star Wars is franchise fatigue all the new movies have been just average or underwhelming.

The only stand out has been Rogue One.

 

[Nima304]

Marvel has proven that franchise fatigue does not happen when you make great movies and TV shows. Solo did poorly because Episode VIII was absolute garbage. The analysis videos on YouTube that talk about all of the things wrong with that movie are better than the movie itself.

 

[Lionvibez]

Disney buying the franchise will be the slow death of something once great.

All they care about is selling toys anyways.

 

[Uncle Al]

It stalled because of all the negative reviews .... and they were right!

 

[SirDigby]

Half the people I know don't want to see it because the advertising campaign was shite, it looks crap and the year or so of news around the film's development was less than encouraging!

 

[dj2017]

The first time I saw the trailer, it was looking like a silly rock and roll movie for 15 years old kids that want to see a super cool young character riding a spaceship. It was smelling a failure all over the place.

Not to mention that it is way too stupid to release a scifi movie at the same time with infinity War and Deadpool 2.

 

[psycros]

Prequels are doomed from the get-go. In Rogue One we saw new characters who told the story from a different and very intriguing angle - and it even explained away one of the biggest nerd frustrations about the Death Star! The only reason Eps 1-3 worked at all is because most of the audience had never seen the original films (mostly because they hadn't been alive when Eps 3-6 were in theaters). Anyone who had ever truly considered themselves a fan up to that point thought the prequels were garbage. EVERYONE wanted a young Obi-Wan trilogy with him becoming a full-fledged jedi at the end, perhaps with a little kid named Annikan becoming his padawan during the third film.

 

[m4a4]

The first time I saw the trailer, it was looking like a silly rock and roll movie for 15 years old kids that want to see a super cool young character riding a spaceship. It was smelling a failure all over the place. .

Yeah, I didn't even know it was a starwars trailer until past halfway when they showed stormtroopers...

 

[mailpup]

I must be the only one who liked this movie.

 

[Shadowboxer]

I liked it. But I guess I can’t call my self a Star Wars fan because I actually like Star Wars movies!

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Yes Disney's Star Wars is franchise fatigue all the new movies have been just average or underwhelming.

The only stand out has been Rogue One.

I feel the same way. Rouge one was really good because it was world building, not just focusing on a single character. That kind of world building is also present in the original trilogy, and much less so in the prequels. When you make a believable universe with unanswered mysteries, you keep peoples attention.

Even then, I think rouge one was a fluke. The story itself has some rough edges, some characters will too much or little screen time, some pacing issues, but the last 30 minutes makes it ALL worth it. You could very easily see that movie being directed and made by the same team that did empire strikes back.

I havent seen solo yet, so I cant comment on the quality of the movie, but I was not all that excited to see it. The Last Jedi didnt help much by dousing the star wars fan fire, but something about a solo movie really didnt click with me, or a lot of people I know that lined up for force awakens and last jedi. Maybe solo will be better in a few months without all the media attention, but I feel that this kind of mediocre will be the standard until disney finally lets up on their directors and lets them have a little creative freedom, and actually sicks by a director/writer for more then 6 months.

 

[GreenNova343]

Disney buying the franchise will be the slow death of something once great.

All they care about is selling toys anyways.

You do remember that this was the major reason for Star Wars movies in the first place -- after all, it was one of the first (if not first) times you had a toymaker (Kenner) exclusively licensed to produce all sorts of products for the movie -- some of which made little sense whatsoever, or included vehicles & items that never even showed up in the original trilogy?

 

[GreenNova343]

I must be the only one who liked this movie.

I liked it. But I guess I can’t call my self a Star Wars fan because I actually like Star Wars movies!

Nope. Count me in among those that liked it. And my wife (who is also a big fan of Star Wars) liked it better than The Last Jedi (which I also liked, BTW). Considering how big Ford's shoes were to fill, I thought that Ehrenreich did a good job...& Donald Glover did an amazing job as Lando.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Wow... Star Wars haters?!?!? Thought this kind of vitriol was reserved for Apple and Microsoft....

The movie was good... at least, I thought so (and it still made over $80 million in a weekend, so plenty of others agree with me) - "franchise fatigue" clearly is NOT a thing, as Marvel Movie #20 and #21 are still raking in millions...

As the article stated, the opening weekend choice wasn't ideal and it had stiff competition... this was NOT a failure in any aspect... it's still the #1 movie of the weekend and will almost certainly make obscene amounts of cash...

I have to say that this has been a great year for blockbuster films - I've been impressed with each Marvel movie, and am very much looking forward to Jurassic World

 

[p51d007]

When you milk a cow so dry, that it turns into beef jerky...it's time to shut it down.
ABC/Disney has saturated the market year after year after year with Star Wars crap.
Let it go for a decade, THEN bring something "fresh" out.

 

[OutlawCecil]

Am I the only one that thinks this movie bombed because there's a bunch of no-name actors? I don't like seeing re-casted characters in any movie, let alone actors who are not well known. This feels more "TV show-ish" then awesome new Star Wars movie.

 

[Lounds]

I thought it was a good film and even if you didn't know star wars universe it would still be a decent sci-fi film.

 

[McMurdeR]

I blame EA!

 

[bohemond1099]

Better than any Star Wars movie since Disney took over; it was actually enjoyable instead of a SJW propaganda film.

 

[treetops]

A lot of people at work have been watching Dead pool 2.... I barely watched Avengers Infinity war last night. I still have the last star wars movie and have yet to finish it.... I'v yet to meet anyone excited about the new Star Wars.

 

[captaincranky]

Better than any Star Wars movie since Disney took over; it was actually enjoyable instead of a SJW propaganda film.

If you were looking for SJW inflammatory propaganda, you needed to see "Black Panther".

Just about everybody in it found a way to work, "II'd rather die jumping off a slave ship than live as a slave", into their dialog.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I must be the only one who liked this movie.

I'm sure I will once I watch it.

 

[Soulburn74]

I love this........ EVERYONE knew this movie was going to be underwhelming, and now that it actually has become somewhat underwhelming, we must write a story as if this is news......lol

Next after the break, water is wet, but first here's Jen with the traffic......