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Was just talking to my Chinese acquaintances, apparently Last Jedi bombed overseas.

Oh boy, and their hate on Rose is pretty profound.

Well to be fair....the star wars franchise was apparently never very big in Asia anyway?

Also, as much as Americans like to talk about realistic body image, the reality is that actual Asia living Asians really don't give a damn;;; We like our things pretty and unless you have charm or humor bleeding out of your ears to a spectacular level nobody's gonna want to watch you. Especially when you aren't even local talent;;;;

Speaking of local talent, Last Rogue One benefited from Donnie Yen immensely.

OTOH, Japan is ripe with many SW fans, but Last Jedi did pretty bad there, too.

On a side note, for some odd reason I saw Hostel.

My only thought from that experience... what the fuq did I just watch?

Yeah, torture porn seemed icky shit to me as soon as I ever heard about it.

Rose did not really click with me as a character and the acting was not all that great, either. Not as bad as the guy playing Hux, but still. What complaints did the Chinese audience have, exactly?

Bitching a bit more about TLJ, aside from my prior complaints I come back to how badly the bad guys are presented as ineffectual idiots and how almost everybody from the good guys has to behave like a moron to make the plot happen at all.

I thought Hux was a shit character, but the actor did a pretty good job at being absolutely childish.

Disney apparently spent a lot of dough on advertising the movie. But from my conversations on QQ & elsewhere and reading a couple posts reveal that:

Long term fans despise how Luke Skywalker changed. This one was expected.

Some felt sorry for the Empire being run by two teens...

New audiences complained about bad acting, general bad acting.

Ugly, or plain looking people. Well... ok, this sort of makes sense, because aren't movies meant to be a form of escape?

Oh yeah, Rose... there is Rose. The folks I've been talking to have a serious complaint about Hollywood pandering towards Chinese audiences. They find it insulting that Hollywood would throw a random Asian person into the movie, give said actor/actress some speaking roles and expect Chinese audiences to like it. Whether Rose is meant to do that is up for another discussion, but many people I spoke to felt they could do away without her. To add insult to injury, she may be the only Asian on-board but she isn't even Chinese. One person I spoke to was not very happy that Hollywood 'couldn't figure this out', and if Rose must be in the movie, why not hire local Chinese talent to handle the job?

On the other hand, Rogue One did pretty well in China, being the top box office hit for 2 straight weeks (while Last Jedi just died). Also because it had Donnie Yen, who is big over there. Moreover, I was told because Rogue One reminded Chinese audiences of their own Communist revolution.

Of course, whats usually untold from the aftermath of that event was the deaths of some 40 - 60 million during the so-called 'great leap forward', but that, is another can of worms.

Thanks, good info.

Aside from the acting, the reason I dislike Hux is the same why I dislike the First Order in general: They are incompetent boobs. It's like you gave a bunch of Empire fanboys a set of toys and then they do a really shitty job at trying to be as menacing and cool as the originals.

Whatever dread I felt in The Force Awakens was effectively decimated in The Last Jedi. As I said before, I absolutely feel sorry for the Empire at this point...

^ Do we have good pics of Vader or Emperor facepalming? I think the Last Order deserves that. And yes, I will keep calling them the "Last Order" instead of "First Order" coz it's like the Empire has ran out of competent people and is now scraping the bottom of the barrel, which is weird considering their seemingly unlimited resources.

Also, based on this article, the Japanese reaction to TLJ have been pretty mixed. But it looks like the box office is pretty okay.

As for Rose, well, Finn's reaction after Rose kissed him pretty much sums up many audience members' reaction toward her character . Finn's face pretty much screams "Why??".

WTF are you guys talking about? Rogue One BOMBED in China, too. It didn't even break $70 million! The opening weekend of TLJ is almost the same as Rogue One's, as well ($28.702.843 to $30.078.393)... People just like to bitch and moan...
Star Wars was just never big in that Democratic Republic. The original movies never played theatrically, there, either! Thus, they don't have the nostalgia most of the rest of the world does...

There were people trying to figure out why the hell that audience didn't connect with the film, even though there were TWO famous chinese leads in it and - GUESS WHAT? People complained online that the movie was too confusing!
You can never please everyone and, honestly, you should never try to do that, IMHO.

While you're at it, TFA did a bit over $124 million, there, as well. Not the most spectacular showing, either. Another bomb, for ya.

I almost never get why people say a story is “too confusing“. People said that about the prequels and I just don't get it.

Are you... confused?

I don't understand when Hollywood begin to believe their films are somehow entitled to break box offices in China, or to relieve them of their budget strains? By Chinese standards, Rogue One and TFA weren't bad performers, and both were box office champs for at least a week or two. Yeah, they were pretty good by Chinese standards, and couple times better than Last Jedi could have ever been, because the latter just.friggin.died (it also had no strong competition, to boot).

Also goes to show that if the new trilogy did not have its Star Wars tag, it would have been $hit.

Moreover, I am talking to real people overseas about their feelings of the movie, and only posting what they told me. Quite frankly, I find articles on this matter written in major English websites to be half-assed and deliberately avoiding the full story. Hell, the stuff I posted are pretty mild, I haven't even conveyed the worst of it.

OTOH, Obelisk's video is a good summary of how Last Jedi came about. Yeah, I can never get over that huge disconnect between TFA and TLJ. What the hell happened there? After watching TFA, I did toy with the idea of 'The First Order' becoming something akin to Neo-Zeon in Gundam, that never came to fruition, unfortunately.

Tak, you can talk to whomever you want, mate. Cold, hard numbers Just. Do. Not. Lie.

But, you're absolutely right. Star Wars will most likely never fly in China. I, for one, have accepted that fact. Hollywood executives, on the other hand? They'll probably just keep trying to crack that nut. And failing. Other movies - way worse ones, to boot - do way better. They think that, with just the right idea, they'll do gangbusters, someday.

Did I just not say by Chinese standards? Really, domestic Chinese movies themselves (even local blockbusters) rarely even make as much. To give you an example, the movie: Founding of a Nation is considered a major box office hit in China, with all the things relevant to recent Chinese history and over-advertised. Do you know how much that movie made? 60 million. Thats a box office hit for ya.

Right, cold hard numbers don't lie, and the fact is, TLJ went to the deeper end of oblivion compared to TFA and Rogue One. If we must use Mojo, its TFA's 124 million vs TLJ's less than 30 mil. Thats sad.

Again, what do people expect? That China must make every force-fed Hollywood BS a multi-hundred million box office hit or at least recover its production budget? Thats another major complaint I received when talking to my Chinese contacts. China is not Hollywood's ATM. Simple as that.

You do realize TLJ opened just a couple weeks ago there, right? January 5th, to be precise. The Box Office Mojo people don't even seem to have updated the opening weekend count. Or are you seriously offering the narrative that the movie didn't make a single cent since then?

And, okay, I'm not saying that's not possible - because it may very well be - but I just don't think it's all that likely.

Thats fine, except Chinese theaters also pulled 90+% of TLJ's showings, so we will see.

I am not saying it won't make more money since then, but... considering what had just transpired? I think we should be anticipating counting changes. Personally, I am expecting a $60 million box office, but thats me being optimistic.

Again, it may be possible the movie fizzles even more spectacularly in the chinese market.
Stranger things have happened, IMHO: they have patronized Warcraft, for one. The Transformer movies are still HUGE there - granted, they're big everywhere, but they're bigger THERE, right? Some things are still a mystery, to me.

The one Transformers movie that made it, as it, really making it in China was Transformers: Age of Extinction. Its very obvious that would be the case once you seen the movie. The last scene involved the Chinese defense minister calling for air strikes against the antagonists, yeah... totally fueling Chinese nationalism. Everyone I spoke had fond memories of that one particular scene...

Then again, this is also one of few movies where Hollywood actually made certain research into what make Chinese fans tick.