Wrath

Yes, it would be. But not terrible, merely unworthy of comment and disappointing. Despite being a 38.5m tuesday.

Absolutely. I bet its a paltry, uninteresting 38.5M today. Hardly worthy of mention.

What?!? I saw AoU twice and both times that scene got by far the biggest crowd reaction. And it was a shocked gasp, not laughter. It was the biggest moment of AoU, imo.

Sure he did. He was "Ben" Kenobi. A crafty example of hiding in plain sight!

Sure. Why shouldn't TFA's 2nd weekend be the 7th largest weekend of all time?

When has that ever stopped you before?

Out. The Force will not be denied. My prior, misinformed opinion: (In. Makes me sad to be In, but there's just no getting around that huge preview number. But a 52% decrease is still a huge win. Heck, DH2 barely made more in its second weekend than it did in midnight previews.) Edit - I just saw the Monday actual. Holy crap. It more than doubled DH2's Monday? Sure, Winter Break is now here for the kids so the December vs July thing is no longer an issue. Instead of good to the point of bending space and time its merely outrageously good. So, I'm reversing my prior "In" to an "Out".

Yeah. Though I think any of these films would be delighted to have Wolf's legs, and I think Point Break wouldn't be sad with 47 Ronin's run, such as it was.

Dirty Grandpa 20%

A fun weekend, and one of our best ever in predictions. Force Awakens Prediction: 234.3M +/- 38.01M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 248M (off by 13.7M, so 0.36 stndev) An astounding BO result and a solid prediction by us. Plus, solidly better than anyone else as the folks who did predict mostly went low except BO.com who simply didn't go as high as we did. Grats to DAJK as best predictor on the biggest opening movie ever by guessing 248M. Road Chip Prediction: 12.9M +/- 3.44M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 14.3M (off by 1.4M, so 0.40 stndev) Another solid predict by us, and once again we had the best predict as everyone else went just a touch lower (12-12.5M). Mrs Wrath absolutely made my weekend by promising me she wouldn't even try to make me take the kids to go see this thing. But I do seem to have a connection of sorts with this franchise, as I had the best predict for it, at 14.5M, albeit just barely over 4 folks who all predicted 14M. Sisters Prediction: 13.3M +/- 4.69M (1 standard deviation) Actual: 13.9M (off by 0.6M, so 0.13 stndev) Outstanding prediction and once again the best predict of the lot. Impressively, we weren't the highest guess this time, we were just the closest. Best predict was by Krissykins at 14M.

That final 5 is repeating, of course. Edit - Here, 9 of today's 14 showings are sold out or nearly so (1-2 seats remaining), so I'm guessing holds might be ok.

Ouch, sorry to hear that. Hope you feel better.

Was that as good for you as it was for me? I hope so, because it was really good for me. Lets all just take another moment and enjoy how great last weekend was. . . . Ahhhhhhhh. . Ok, that's enough. I think we actually had a pretty good predicting weekend, though we'll see what the actuals say. In factoid fun, it wasn't our biggest predictor turn-out ever (I'm doubtful we'll ever beat our very first weekend on that score), but it was the biggest since the 9/18 Black Mass/Scorch Trials weekend which itself was our biggest weekend since early August. Now, back to the normal, day-to-day levels of box office prediction fun. This week we've got a lot of stuff coming out, some of which are pretty interesting. I'm including The Big Short going wide as punchy enough to include unless someone knows that its "going wide" to like 150 theaters or something. On the other hand, Hateful Eight is only opening in 100 theaters (and even that's subject to a fair bit of wrangling) so its not included. Please provide your 12/25-12/27 Opening Weekend predicts for: Big Short Concussion Daddy's Home Joy Point Break Deadline will be sometime between Wednesday 5 pm (EST) and Thursday morning (EST), depending on when I get to it.

If theyre renamed from Jaacen and Jaina it would square with the books, though Im not sure its canon. However, Im not in that camp because of the age difference.

Holy mother of god. Don't they usually shoot low?

True. If you think back to ANH, Luke was basically semi-incompetent at everything. Sure, people *said* he was a great pilot and a great shot, but he spends most of the first half of the movie getting saved by everyone and tripping over his own feet.

Well, distance in Star Wars has always been a very fuzzy thing. They made the Kessle Run in 12 parsecs? A parsec is distance, not time. Now I get that maybe they're measuring it in distance because he was plotting jumps to land dangerously close to stars and was able to get the distance impressively low or something. That's a possible explanation. But its an explanation that kinda doesn't mesh with anything else we're shown about how FTL travel works in Star Wars. Also, combat in SW has always happened at visual range distance. Wtf would you do that? If they have faster than light-speed drives, why do they have weapons that have less range than the guns of modern battleships? Now, JJ is certainly not one to let physics stand in the way of story (Did the planet travel from sun to sun, recharging? How did all the trees and stuff survive the planet jumping into hyperspace?) so I don't want this to come across as a defense of him. Instead, I'll sum it up by saying that Star Wars has always been really loose with the laws of physics, and JJ managed to bump them down a notch from there. So, kind of a SW thing and kind of a JJ thing.

As a minor aside, it occurred to me last night that I like the term Space Opera for Star Wars. Because, imo, Star Wars isn't really very science fiction-y. Yes, they have blasters and starships and stuff, but it doesn't really follow most of the tropes of science fiction. It follows some, but not nearly as many as, say, Star Trek. Star Trek is science fiction. Star Wars, imo, has a lot more in common with the fantasy genre and is much more of a mix of the two than folks generally acknowledge. I think Space Opera isn't a very precise term, but I like it a lot better for Star Wars than Science Fiction.

That's a Star Wars thing as much as a JJ thing. You've probably see the various "The Physics of Star Wars" pieces folks have written? Like half the turns the Falcon does should have turned its passengers into paste, yet all they have to do is lean slightly.

Sure, but I wasn't one of them. I liked JW. I didn't think it was amazing, but I thought it was fun. Look, if you see a movie in the JP series, you see dinosaurs getting free and eating people and its competently executed (at least half the time). If you like that sort of thing, you watch it. If you don't, you don't. Saying the whole "dinos running amuck" thing is getting old is missing the point of the movies. With Star Wars movies, you're going to get jedi-sith conflict (with light saber duels), the Skywalker family soap opera, and the Empire's love of building gigantic planet-destroying bases. 42% of the movies have had one, so its safe to say its a thing at this point. If you like that sort of thing, you watch it. If you don't, you don't. Edit - As an addendum to the "planet-destroying bases" bit, its worth noting that this point comes up in the books almost as often as it does in the movies. Before TFA came out, there was a big debate over *which* of the book-mentioned planet-destroying threats the Empire (First Order) would use in TFA, because there are quite a few of them.

Good point. Now that I think about it, yes, we got that plot line in 4 and 6, but there really wasn't anything comparable for the entire prequel trilogy. So its been 3 movies AND 32 YEARS since that plot device was used. That's a pretty long time.

Ours too. We clapped at all those moments, plus when Leia showed up and a few other points as well. I'd guess it was close to double-digits. It was a fun crowd.

Very true on time of year, but I think the fanbases are decently comparable. I mean, sure, Star Wars fans are different from Trekkies (though there were a few folks dressed up like Trekkies last night. And there were a *bunch* of people dressed up in animal costumes. I was unsure what was going there. Maybe a furry convention in town?) and they're both different from Harry Potter fans, but they're similar enough to be comparable.

Yeah, don't do that. Its plenty spoilery. It was funny, after seeing it, the kids kept wanting to talk about key plot points, and we kept telling them to be quiet until we got to the car. I think the lines of people waiting to see the later shows would have beaten us to death if we'd had the full discussion right there.

Random example of why seeing something on opening night is so cool (Thursdays are the real opening nights, imo). We got there about 40 minutes early, just in case there was anything interesting going on, and Wrathette #1 was in full costume (conveniently, she was Obi Wan for Halloween because there was no way she was going to wear the Ahsoka costume). In front of the theater there was a guy with some really cool light sabers, and he was sparring with anyone who came along and was interested (they were really good light sabers, cool looking and sturdy enough for real sparring). Turns out he's offering classes at one of the local martial arts places incorporating light saber dueling into a fitness and martial arts program (the guy was doing a lot of teaching during the sparring and mixed in some capoeria). Both Wrathettes were fascinated and took turns with the guy. As it happened, while Wrathette #1 (in costume) was sparring with the guy, a photographer asked if he could take her picture for the paper. We said sure. Then after we saw the movie, a TV crew came up to us and asked her if she was interested in being interviewed on her reaction to the movie. She's actually kinda shy, plus it was already 10 pm on a school night and we'd have to stick around for at least another 20 minutes before her time slot came up, so she passed. Then, this morning, the big picture above the fold on the front page was her, fighting the guy with a caption that read "The Force is strong with this one." She wants us to frame it. If she'd done the interview, she'd pretty much be the face of Star Wars in our town. As a bonus, there were a couple middle school kids, one with a clarinet, one with a tuba, I think, playing the various songs from Star Wars (not very well I must say, but they kept at it and raked in a lot of cash) so they even had theme music for the whole thing. And that's why going to opening night is fun. You never know what'll happen.