Help men understand this.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has been one of the worst reviewed Star Wars films EVER (based on nothing more than the vitriol directed at the movie. And I recall the reception the prequels received. It wasn’t great–though initially was surprisingly positive–but nor was there such a consensus around their not-so-goodness) and as far as Rise of the Jedi is concerned, that was mauled in the media too, though with a significant difference: Namely the criticism over ROTJ revolved more around the choices made (or not made), more than the movie in and of itself.

In other words, ROTJ was less a bad movie because of any shortcomings in and of themselves than the director was given more leeway than he should have been, combined with little in the way of overall direction (because believe it or not, directors need direction as well, which is typically the job of producers).

The point being that so far TROS has earned just over $500 billion worldwide after six days of release.

And that’s not too shabby for a $275 million production spend, though nor has it broke even either.

And I’m not at all sure it’s going to hit a billon, which it has to if it’s going to be profitable because this movie feels very front-loaded to me (namely, it’s going to blaze brightly for a short period, then fall off).