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Lonely_Dolphin on 09 January 2020
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Jaicee said:

I'd like to briefly resurrect this thread to declare victory on a point I had made earlier that was baselessly disputed here.

Among the topics we debated here on this thread was that of whether and to what extent moviegoing audiences enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker. I pointed to exit polls of opening weekend theater attendees (as in sources like Comscore's PostTrak survey and the CinemaScore letter-grading exit poll), all of which indicated this to be the most disliked entry in the current trilogy. Some people (I believe it was originally @Hiku specifically) disputed by highlighting the 86% audience approval score for the film on Rotten Tomatoes. I pointed out that, unlike exit polls, the Rotten Tomatoes "audience" approval score is just an online system that doesn't verify you actually saw the movie. People responded to this with non-quantified claims of the opinions they're seeing on their social medias, and it went on from there. It was a debate over how public opinion about movies can best be gauged.

Alright, people can argue with the findings of surveys I guess, but it's tough to argue with what actual ticket sales suggest. Trends in ticket sales over time are the most concrete proof there is as to just what kind of word of mouth is getting around about a given film. Opening weekend ticket sales can be written off to pre-release hype and maybe even second weekend ticket sales to an extent too, but by the third weekend, we're definitely mostly talking about the impact of word of mouth. And we now have that data. Here are the trends in domestic ticket sales for The Rise of Skywalker so far, measured on a weekend-by-weekend basis, compared to The Last Jedi:

Opening Weekend

The Last Jedi: $220 million
Rise of Skywalker: $177 million

Weekend 2 Drop

The Last Jedi: -67%
Rise of Skywalker: -59%

Weekend 3 Drop

The Last Jedi: -27%
Rise of Skywalker: -52%

In other words, The Rise of Skywalker is now dropping twice as fast as The Last Jedi did at the aligned point relative to original release, and from a lower baseline at that. It definitely won't catch up to The Last Jedi's total ticket sales. And that breaks with Star Wars tradition, it's worth noting. In both of the previous Star Wars film trilogies, the third and concluding installment outsold the middle one. This will be the first Star Wars trilogy wherein the middle installment, which always leaves you hanging, is more commercially successful than the 'satisfying' finale.

This trend aligns with the exit poll data I highlighted before. It does NOT align with the 86% "audience" approval score on Rotten Tomatoes. Case closed on which sources are more reliable gauges of audience opinion.

Once again, you're reading something the data doesn't actually show. Ticket sales are just that, ticket sales, they are not thoughts or opinions. They can only definitively show how many people went to see the movie. They do not show whether or not those people enjoyed the movie in the way a review site can. You claim bad word of mouth from people who saw the movie is what made the difference in sales, a fair assumption, but an assumption nonetheless. I can similarly say that it's the TLJ to blame for lower interest in TROS.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm only here to point out what I said in my first sentence. I've no interest in debating which movie is worse when both are trash, and arguing over audience reception is just silly.