Actually, it made perfect sense. ROTF was ripped apart by critics and fans alike. Yet it's boxoffice take was enormous, in spite of that. Fans and critics and even audiences were apprehensive about seeing DOTM because they felt burned by the second one. This was reflected in opening day and first week haul totals. However, once people watched the film and found it to be nothing like they feared, the audiences grew and grew and it climbed up the charts and made money in record breaking time. It was the fastest to make $500 million. It beat The Dark Knight in the top 10 of all time. It is clear that the reaction to ROTF had no ill effect on DOTM.
Ripped apart by critics, sure. Ripped apart by fans? Ehh, not so much. I only know of 1 person I actually spoke with who didn't like it. Sure, there were lots of people who didn't like it. I'm guessing those people and the critics didn't have much of an effect on the movie going public, because they kept seeing it and seeing it and then bought it on DVD and Blu-ray. First of all, no one should ever feel "burned" by a movie. If you're putting that much emotional weight on a film, maybe you're making too things too personal. I didn't feel "burned", "let down", or "disappointed" with ROTF at all, there's lots of people who feel the same way. There was no doubt at any point that I was going to see DOTM at the first available show. You can't specifically point to any relation between ROTF and the opening of DOTM. Just as you can't specifically point to a down economy, a glut of summer blockbusters, higher ticket prices, etc. There's lots of factors that play into a movie's box office take. The audiences didn't "grow and grow"... the audiences pretty much followed the exact same trend of about 90% of summer blockbuster movies.... which is to say, they start out huge and then drop off about 50-60% every following week. As a matter of fact, this is where your entire ROTF vs. DOTM argument falls apart. If you want to compare the two, there have been very few days where DOTM has made more money then ROTF, even with the benefit of higher ticket prices. Given that fact, and adjusting for inflation, the audiences for ROTF (domestically speaking) were indisputably larger than DOTM during it's run. By your logic, then ROTF's audiences "grew and grew" and also made money in "record breaking time". Which is odd, considering how poor of a movie you think it is. Yeah - it was the fastest to an international total of $500 million... for about 10 days, and then HP&DH2 blew it out of the water. And so what about The Dark Knight? It beat Alice and Wonderland too. POTC4 too. and from earlier... OK, so which argument are you making? that ROTF's so-called "backlash" did have an effect or it didn't? So yeah, I do need a map, because you're all over the place, dude.
I'm not sure where he heard it, but the IMAX theater at an aquarium where I live (which shows mostly educational stuff) often gets Hollywood movies a couple months after they come out. For example, they got RotF in August of that year. I wonder if this is the kind of "re-release" being rumored? In case it is, I'm on the aquarium's email alert list for movies
