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Don't underestimate the power of the Force ... or inflation. Box-office analysts predict that in dollar terms, The Force Awakens will be the biggest earning movie with Star Wars in its name. But such measurements almost always fail to account for inflation. In real dollar terms, none of the sequels/prequels have surpassed the original Star Wars (later subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope).
A New Hope was a smash success financially, a bona fide blockbuster in the dawn of the blockbuster era. With cinemas screening the original Star Wars for most of 1977 and 1978, the film garnered $512 million in ticket sales. What's truly incredible about that figure is that movie tickets in 1977 cost just $2.23 on average. That means about 230 million people went to see the film, slightly more than the population of the U.S. at the time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:49PM
I won't argue with you that big budget movies have to fit the hero saga mold to get funded, particularly after the success of Star Wars, but I won't go as far as to say that Star Wars made that boilerplate. Even at the time it was called a "space western" for a reason - it fit the classic western motif story played out many, many times with Gary Cooper, John Wayne, etc.
However, for the sake of argument, let's say that you are right. Then too bad Lucas didn't stick to that boilerplate for the next two movies. The second (and NO, all you dipshits who may want to correct me, I am old enough to have seen the original and the following ones in the theater, and I really do mean the second one, not this "fifth one" bullshit) was just a bunch of action-y stuff going on, ending in a horrible serialized ending ("Will Han escape from the carbonite? Will Luke become a Jedi?? Tune in next year for the exciting conclusion!"). The third was a disappointing Ewok craptacular story with some other action-y stuff put in, but at least it came to a final conclusion (which Lucas had to go and eff it up with his later "improvements"). Really? You had to blow up the Death Star a second time? THAT is the best you could come up with for how to deal with the Empire in the last movie? What, you mean after the first movie, some Imperial wreckers came in an hauled the blown up wreckage to some secret part of the galaxy where it could be rebuilt, all in the manner of a year or so?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday December 18 2015, @05:10AM
Not that star wars isn't full of plot holes you could fly an imperator class star destroyer through, but they started building the second death star about the same time as the first it was just much bigger.