Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now in theaters but unfortunately, the conclusion to the nine-movie saga that began way back in 1977 isn’t exactly the hit that people thought it would be. Sure, it didn’t quite face the same backlash that greeted The Last Jedi, but fans and critics aren’t exactly showering J.J. Abrams’ trilogy-closer with praise.
For the most part, reviews have been pretty tepid, to say the least, which has resulted in a domestic opening weekend that came in at an alright but fairly underwhelming $175.5 million. While most productions can only dream of that sort of opening, you need to compare it to the previous Sequel Trilogy movies to get a perspective of just how disappointing that is.
After all, The Force Awakens ($248 million) and The Last Jedi ($220 million) both did significantly better than The Rise of Skywalker. But what’s perhaps even more alarming is that Avengers: Endgame made roughly double what Episode IX did during its first weekend.
That’s right, Marvel’s epic blockbuster scored an opening weekend of $357.1 million domestically back in April. And while no one ever thought that the latest outing from that galaxy far, far away would pass or even come close to the Infinity War sequel, it’s still a bit shocking just how far off from it it was.
As such, you have to imagine that the bosses at Lucasfilm and Disney are probably feeling a bit nervous right now, and the relatively low Cinemascore earned by Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t exactly bode well for it, either. True, it probably will get a bit of a boost over the next week or two thanks to the holidays, but for the most part, it unfortunately looks like the Skywalker saga has closed out with a whimper rather than a bang. And what a shame that is.
