Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2018 20:11:06 GMT
Anyone else remember the massive amount of backlash against Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith back in 2005?
We all know the film was a giant bomb for the Star Wars franchise. But, it was on every Coca-Cola/Sprite/Vanilla Coke/etc. soda can the whole entire summer! So any time you'd see someone drinking a Coke, the can would have Obi-Wan Kenobi or Darth Vader on it or something LOL. Happy toys for the movie were being sold at every Burger King. The Coca-Cola deal was monstrous, $2 billion alone for that. The new movies have a had a lot of cross promotions, but nothing as large as that deal. Even and M&M's, Pop-Tarts, Cheez-It and PEZ candy advertised the movie to high heavens.
Even VH1 stopped all their other music videos to show world premiere of the "Battle of the Heroes" music video and I even remember my radio station did the same (kinda weird having a rock station all of the sudden playing orchestral film music). And this is back when VH1 actually played music videos.
The fact that Episode III only made $230 million domestic and $629,854,768 worldwide, making it the lowest grossing film of the Prequels and the whole entire franchise says a lot. If it had been at least good as the first two Prequels, I think it would have surpassed Titanic easily and if it had lived up to it's hype, Revenge of the Sith would probably have higher box office numbers than Avatar right now.
Keep in mind too back then too, there was *nothing* but Star Wars. It was the earth, the moon and the stars. There was none of the division with the new movies either because everyone LOVED The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. There was no such thing as a bad Star Wars film at that point. Star Wars was this untouchable almost "holy" thing back then.
They've even made movies about the Episode III disappointment and quality of the film (Star Wars: A Blast From The Past and so on). Revenge of the Sith was TERRIBLE!!! But the world was a completely different place back in 2005, people were expecting like a ... religious experience, and when that didn't happen, there was a giant backlash. It was definitely a more innocent time in a lot of ways.
It's actually somewhat jarring that later that Star Wars would end up being usurped by Harry Potter, Batman, and Narnia in that hype category.
We all know the film was a giant bomb for the Star Wars franchise. But, it was on every Coca-Cola/Sprite/Vanilla Coke/etc. soda can the whole entire summer! So any time you'd see someone drinking a Coke, the can would have Obi-Wan Kenobi or Darth Vader on it or something LOL. Happy toys for the movie were being sold at every Burger King. The Coca-Cola deal was monstrous, $2 billion alone for that. The new movies have a had a lot of cross promotions, but nothing as large as that deal. Even and M&M's, Pop-Tarts, Cheez-It and PEZ candy advertised the movie to high heavens.
Even VH1 stopped all their other music videos to show world premiere of the "Battle of the Heroes" music video and I even remember my radio station did the same (kinda weird having a rock station all of the sudden playing orchestral film music). And this is back when VH1 actually played music videos.
The fact that Episode III only made $230 million domestic and $629,854,768 worldwide, making it the lowest grossing film of the Prequels and the whole entire franchise says a lot. If it had been at least good as the first two Prequels, I think it would have surpassed Titanic easily and if it had lived up to it's hype, Revenge of the Sith would probably have higher box office numbers than Avatar right now.
Keep in mind too back then too, there was *nothing* but Star Wars. It was the earth, the moon and the stars. There was none of the division with the new movies either because everyone LOVED The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. There was no such thing as a bad Star Wars film at that point. Star Wars was this untouchable almost "holy" thing back then.
They've even made movies about the Episode III disappointment and quality of the film (Star Wars: A Blast From The Past and so on). Revenge of the Sith was TERRIBLE!!! But the world was a completely different place back in 2005, people were expecting like a ... religious experience, and when that didn't happen, there was a giant backlash. It was definitely a more innocent time in a lot of ways.
It's actually somewhat jarring that later that Star Wars would end up being usurped by Harry Potter, Batman, and Narnia in that hype category.