TopHatCat64

Two of the most popular franchises ever. Who's gonna sell more?

KTIK

Original movies or Extended editions (Star Wars' Special Editions)?

PixyJunket

Duh..

REL77

It also depends on if Lucu$ releases them all in a trilogy set (Indy Style) or individualy (LOTR), cause alot of people wont buy all 3 SW movies, I would, easily, but I dont think J6P would

ctyankee

My bet is LOTR trilogy over original Star Wars trilogy.

My logic:

Star Wars 4,5,6 had wide release in the video days - LOTR is the DVD age. Many will not double dip and think their video copies are good enough.

The demographic of the average Star Wars fan is much older than the average LOTR fan. Young people tend to purchase more DVDs (or get them as gifts). Further, kids certainly are aware of Star Wars but it is their parents thing, not theirs.

The double dip of regular and extended editions make for more sales too. My guess is that even just counting EE editions only - LOTR will still do better. SW - original trilogy is 20 year old stuff ...

C Roberts

The Star Wars SE's were kind of a disappointment to a lot of fans, but a raging success when compared to the more recent SW films. The original SW movies won't ever be released on DVD (unless as easter eggs *crosses fingers*) for fans to buy them. Whereas LOTR has seen fit to release both theatrical and extended versions on DVD. LOTR will be the clear winner in my opinion.

El-Kabong

The one thing that folks overlook is the Star Wars brand name. Rings, although a sucessful series of movies, is hardly a blip on the cultural radar.

Everyone and his dog, on the other hand, knows Star Wars. Backwards talk you do and nearly everyone on the planet instantly knows who youre talking like. TV shows qoute it. DJ's sample. Other movies steal from it. Its dominated the action figure isle for decades. Like it or hate it, people know the brand.

Now - the Special Edition vs Original Edition. We're a nich audiance - might as well accept it now, our demographic is amazingly small. Our demographic's refusal to buy won't change the big picture.

The Man on the Street however doesnt give a rat's ass about who shot first or if they've upgraded the Death Star explosion. All they know is "Yeah - the one with the green muppet guy talking backwards." and get it for their kids.

Long and short - when it comes out, Star Wars will make Rings it's bitch.

JoeyOhhhh

Star Wars will cover the spread.

DavidH

I don't think the J6P's of the world - who are the vast majority of DVD buyers in total sales - will even know or care of the difference between the original or SE Star Wars films. J6P will see " Star Wars" and will be sure NOT to get the version with the black bars when s/he goes to Walmart to buy the release.

To answer the poll, yes, I do think these would outsell LOTR.

costanza187

I am guessing Star Wars

matome

I gotta go with LOTR here. The series is newer (at least the movie versions) and fresher in everyone's mind, and those who were too young to have seen the original Star Wars and were turned off by the recent prequels, won't bother picking up the originals.

RoboDad

I'm not going to comment on which series will ultimately sell more (because, quite frankly, I have no idea), but the notion that The Lord of the Rings is only a blip on the cultural radar is a rather bizarre statement. The only book read by more people than LOTR in the twentieth century was the Bible. I'd say that makes it a tad more culturally significant than a mere blip.

DrMcKittrick

They will market the hell out of the SW films when it's time to release them in 2006. The question is how many dips are we going to get of them??

Personally, I've seen 4,5,6 so many times it's not a big thing for me. We've lived this long without them so do we actually need them??

doc

milo bloom

I think I have to agree with El Kabong. I never expected the mass appeal that LOTR has attained. I am certainly glad of it, for it's own sake, and to show Lucas he can't just keep coasting on his former successes.

I know that sounds petty, but the Prequel Trilogy, though I do like it a lot, is decidedly underwhelming.

darkside

Probably Star Wars because of its history, but I've lost a lot of my love for the series. I have the originals on LD and they won't be released on DVD from what is currently being said by Lucas only the Special Editions so I will probably stick with those. The prequels have been awful so far. I don't know about DVD sales, but the LOTR trilogy has far outshined anything Lucas has ever done include Indy and Star Wars for me.

Terrell

These statements are truly laughable. What are you smoking?

No more than you will get of LOTR. 3 seperate releases in a span of 4 months for FOTR. At least 2 seperate releases for TTT. The same for ROTK, and a box set with them all. Don't kid yourself. They were done for no other reason than to get as much money from them as possible.

No offense, but that's ridiculous. You know good and damn well you and everyone else here will fork out their money for the DVDs. By this logic, why do you need any movie that's older that hasn't been released on DVD yet. If we didn't need these films on DVD then why has there been such an uproar and bitching over their release all over the internet?

Uh, we're talking movies. Stick with the movies. You can't compare books to movies. Two different mediums. You can argue about which series you like better, but you can't argue which series has had the biggest impact. The LOTR movies while successful, don't come within a million miles of the original trilogy in terms of cultural impact, impact on society, or the film industry in general. He's right.

As for LOTR being read by more people than any other books except the Bible. This is a fallacy created by LOTR fanboys. You can't prove how many people have read a book. All you can go buy is book sales, and even that is not 100% accurate. The book "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung" first published in 1966 sold a hell of a lot more than LOTR. Show me a credible source that absolutely proves LOTR is the highest selling book other than the bible?

Here's a source about Mao Tse Tung's book.

http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/greatest/alltime

GuessWho

Jackson has it MUCH MUCH easier than Lucas though.

He's just rehashing a book & story with a proven success record.


That's a lot different than if he'd be making up a story by himself as Lucas is. For that, Lucas gets the creative edge and therefore, the more difficult job (Pete's just throwing a lens in front of someone else's ideas)

Gilgamesh1082

Dude, PJ had to deal with fans' expectations. To say he threw a lens in front of someone else's ideas just totally spits on everything the man did. He turned what is arguably the most well known book after the Bible into a living breathing world. Had he not gotten this trilogy to this level of greatness, his head would have been on a pike in front of The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. To film this trilogy, the man has been working tirelessly on these films, and these films alone, for the past what, 5 years. And he'll have another year to go in front of him for RotK.

Lucas, on the other hand, had only studio exec's expectations of him when he filmed the OT.

DarthVong

Nuff said.

Spooky

Star Wars easily...LOTR just hasn't had the kind of cultural impact (and I know people are going to argue with me about this), but you ask the average person on the street who Frodo is, they may or may not know. You ask the average person on the street who Luke Skywalker is, and EVERYBODY knows. It's what I'd like to call the "grandma" test. Grandma knows who Darth Vader is...Grandma ain't ever heard of a guy named Sauron.

El-Kabong

And did the Rings fans nail Ralph Bakshi or Rankin/Bass to a cross for their failed attempts? It would appear not. No, if Jackson had dropped the ball, the first movie would have simply slipped beneath the waves without a sound two weeks after release, never to be seen again.

It still doesn't change the fact that he had a roadmap all laid out for him. A little bit of pruning here and here, and - Tah-dah! One finished script. Sure there was a lot of work in the production and effects and whatnot, but he was simply adapting someone else's work.

(as a side point, I'd say that being forced to adapt was the films biggest weakness. There were about a thousand ways that the movie could have been improved if it hadn't had been shoehorned into the literary mold that Tolken put forth.)

Michael Corvin

There are many good points in this thread, and I tend to agree that LOTR(films) is minor in comparison to SW.

I also agree that PJ adapting something already written is (like it or not) a whole lot easier than sitting down for a few months and coming up with something(an entire universe) on your own. If you are going to compare the two trilogies, it should be Tolkien and Lucas on par. Peter Jackson (while he has done a fabulous job) is akin to a rapper ripping of a classic rock song and making millions off of it claiming it is their own work of art. Tolkien and Lucas both created worlds of magic, mystery, intrigue, adventure, peril, love, and more. Peter Jackson is just the wizard behind the curtain.

Flame on.

ctyankee

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black ... can you say "Hidden Fortress" ...

quote:
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SW - original trilogy is 20 year old stuff ...
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Hopefully nothing that hurts my eroding math skills. The Return of the Jedi (the last of the original trilogy) was in 1983. You do the math. Btw, excuse my foggy thoughts but the word is spelled 'separate'

Unfortunately, the average Grandma doesn't buy many DVDs ...

Sigh. It was an interesting question. Should have known it would turn into a fanboy argument by some ...

Jackskeleton

Regardless of SE or Original, SW will go past it. the name SW will mean everyone will get 3 of each just to hold for a collectors item


One thing I don't get.. People scream to high heaven about double dipping dvd's and original vs. newer editions. the whole longing for what the directors image of the film is when it comes to everything Except SW. folks hate the SE even though they are what Lucas wanted.

LOTR and SW both have that Nerdy image tagged to them, but SW has had more exposure in the masses opposed to LOTR's exposure before the films.. I have heard plenty of folks never even reading the books.


I love both series, but star wars will outsell LOTR's. simple as that.

Oh come on now. You create a "SW vs LOTR" thread and you expect the folks on both sides to take it lightly? this is a community that kills over inserts mind you..

El-Kabong

I seem to have missed the flying cars and planet destroying space stations in Hidden Fortress. It must have been a director's cut you saw.

Yeah, Lucas indeed drew from archetypes from just about every mythology on the planet. From Buddhist teachings, Japanese cinema, the Arthurian legends, and old Flash Gordon movie serials - it's all in Star Wars in one form or another.

(Hell - he was even thinking of casting Toshiro Mifune as Obi-Wan at first)

But that's why the movies are so timeless, why they've endured for 26+ years now and are just a popular today as they were back in the 70's. It's how in how Lucas put the pieces together that made them fresh and new.

Doesn't matter if Grandma buys DVDs or not - it proves the market saturation that Star Wars has. If someone as out of touch with pop culture as 'grandma', then you can bet your bottom dollar that everyone else is knows about Star Wars too.

Ask 10 people in the street who was Luke Skywalker's father. It's a good bet that 8 of them will answer Darth Vader. Ask those same 10 people who made The Ring and you'll get eight people going "Huh?" back.

That's why the Star Wars DVDs will fly out the door come 2006.