The adjusted gross revenues of the Star Wars movies make the first disappointments seem much more impressive, and recent success stories seem completely inferior. However, while it could have been hugely profitable and perhaps even grossed close to a billion dollars, there is no way it would have reached the figures that previous Star Wars movies have achieved. Adjusted for inflation, the ranking of the highest-grossing Star Wars movie looks very different. This makes early disappointments seem much more impressive and recent success stories seem completely inferior.
All of the original box office figures are taken from Box Office Mojo, and the official inflation calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was used to adjust the figures. Disney was doing something right or something drastically wrong when its Star Wars spin-off film, Rogue One, ended up making more than one of the films in the Skywalker saga proper. Unfortunately, it turned out that was the latter, as the sequel trilogy ended up being too incoherent. However, that doesn't detract from the success of Rogue One, which features some great new characters and has been the closest thing to a true Star Wars.
The Last Hour is an epic battle and a visual spectacle, and it can be argued that it is the best Star Wars movie made by Disney. But it would be interesting to see how much less the film would have won at the box office if it hadn't presented that creepy and fascinating hallway scene. The film still has the typical problems of the entire prequel trilogy, such as poor green-screen effects and harsh interpretation, but it's an epic conclusion to a narrative that fans had been following for nearly 30 years. And even though it made hundreds of millions less than a couple of Disney's Star Wars movies, let's adjust it for inflation, it's technically much more successful.
With the prequel trilogy as an exception, which is largely due to being a big reward for a decades-long promise, there seems to be a small trend in the Star Wars movies. The final films of the trilogies are the least successful. Just as Rise of the Skywalker was the least successful, Return of the Jedi was also the lowest grossing of the original trilogy. The reasons why both films didn't do as well as their predecessors aren't that different.
Even though Rise of Skywalker is a much more obvious example, it's incredibly difficult to make a trilogy. And no matter how perfect the ending of the movie is, there will always be a group of fans who wanted it to end differently. The 1983 three-sequel has become as much of a classic as the first two movies, but at the time, Ewoks and the Emperor weren't enough to make the numbers for A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back. But compared to other non-Star Wars movies, the resounding success of Return of the Jedi is a phenomenal success.
It seemed like everyone was so excited about the first Star Wars movie in 16 years that emotion clouded their judgment at the time. But even though the film is riddled with uninteresting conversations about taxes, it's still full of exciting sequences, such as capsule races. And Darth Maul had already become an icon thanks to the film's incredible marketing campaign. It's an incredible feat that The Force Awakens achieved more than Empire, even when adjusted for inflation, and that's largely because, as with The Phantom Menace, fans were hungry for new Star Wars movies.
But it's also due to a lot of marketing, fan service, and doing something new. For an intergalactic space opera, Star Wars can sometimes feel a bit claustrophobic, so the amount of time Rogue One spends on gigantic space battles blowing the horn seems refreshingly like calling ROTJ all over again. This first Star Wars Story anthological film includes the ticking of time and attempts to break a shield on several fronts, and few things are as much fun on screen as two star destroyers that launch at full speed into NASCAR and hit the paint. It is also one of the few times in which the public sees some of the rebels as true fanatics, such as Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and his band of violent partisans, the pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), who deserted the imperial army, Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) as guardian of the sorcerers after The Force with Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), and the rebel Andor (Diego Luna) who doesn't skimp much sympathy for those outside politics.
Jyn Erso, from Felicity Jones, does an admirable job focusing the story on hope, which serves as a bridge to the next film in the chronology, although we know that there is none for her or the rest of the team. Overall, the film divided Star Wars fans, but that, surprisingly, couldn't stop the film from remaining a box-office beast. But his most important contribution to the Star Wars canon is the presentation of Anakin Skywalker's padawan, Ahsoka Tano (voiced by the wonderful Ashley Eckstein), who would become a fan favorite who will soon have her own live-action series starring Rosario Dawson. Between the Trade Federation and the ever-questionable Jar-Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), this is still the most purely offensive Star Wars, which overheats the stereotypes of the 1950s on the eve of a new millennium.
The graph shows the box office revenues of the highest-grossing Star Wars movies around the world, adjusted for ticket price inflation. But what set Star Wars apart from its predecessors (and from the numerous imitators that followed) was its heart and sense of wonder, from the first moment Darth Vader boarded Tantive IV until Luke gazed longingly at Tatooine's twin sunsets. Even if it didn't give rise to the greatest movie franchise of all time, reshape 20th century pop culture, or expand the galaxy even further, Lucas' original Star Wars would still be a masterpiece. The second Star Wars film, a sequel that is also the definitive film expansion, takes the retro and garbage space opera style of the first film to cosmic glory, while incorporating new and transformative notes of romantic comedy and haunted Greek tragedy.
Considering ticket price inflation, the original 1977 Star Wars movie remains the most successful. Clone Wars jumps freely between the main character's story (in which Asajj Ventress becomes an instantly memorable villain) and individual battles across the galaxy, many of them amazing without words of pure imagination. . .
