Here's some more data showing what you are talking about.
In 2016, TFA was released on April 5th. And that year it was also the top selling BluRay of the year. It sold 5,565,734 units compared to TLJ in 2018 with 3,025,427 units. That's a difference of 2,540,3047 copies, with only a difference of time of 1 week (TFA on April 5th 2016 vs TLJ on March 27th 2018). How do you account for that? And please, we are talking hard copies, not Digital sales.
I'm simply using the numbers of copies on BluRay sold. You were the one saying how successful TLJ was on BluRay. I'm just using sales data and numbers to compare the two. I'm not saying TLJ is hated, but these numbers show a picture that proves many fans were unhappy with TLJ. Those same fans that bough the TFA Bluray the year it was released, did not buy the TLJ BluRay. 2,540,3047 of them. Also TFA currently sits at 5,928,596. So that means in the 2 years difference between TLJ and TFA, only an additional 362,862 copies of TFA have been sold on BluRay.
But you honestly feel in the next year or 2, TLJ is somehow gonna excite nearly 3 million people to go out and the BluRay? I highly doubt that.
No, you're absolutely right that TLJ will never reach the sales figures of the TFA blu-ray. Not even close, actually. But you were talking about all-time *rankings,* not total sales, and that's what I was replying to. You were saying that TLJ
ranks #27 in all-time sales, while the other SW movies are ranked higher. What I was telling you is that TLJ's and Solo's rankings will increase at a higher rate than the others because they're newer. TLJ is less than 100k away from RO at #23, but RO had a 1-year head start. TLJ will pass RO this year (most likely); and will likely pass many other films until it lands somewhere in the top 20 all-time. That's all I was saying.
I know that sales are not an indication of quality. I also know that TLJ will never be as lucrative as TFA. All I'm saying is that judging sales rankings right now is dubious, just from a mathematical perspective. It hasn't even been out on home video for a calendar year yet. Once it gets into the Top 20, if you still want to say that it wasn't a popular film, then you'd be arguing that anything below the Top 20 wasn't popular either. Make sense? And again, I'm not talking about quality; I'm merely addressing "popularity."
And since we're talking numbers, I'll toss this into the mix. Before anyone knew that going to watch TLJ was going to lead to their lives being ruined, the film took in $296.6 million (domestic) in its opening week (Dec. 15-21, 2017). That's based almost entirely on just the anticipation for watching the sequel to TFA. By contrast, when TFA opened based on the anticipation of nothing more than "what's this new Star Wars gonna be like?," it had an opening week (Dec. 18-24, 2015) of $390.9 million.
In other words, before anyone knew anything about the quality of TFA, it did $391M in its first week. But after TFA, and before knowing anything about the sequel, TLJ only opened to $297M. So TLJ was
never going to make as much as TFA, no matter how good (or bad) it was. Much like RO, which followed what should've been a hyped audience coming off of the TFA blockbuster numbers just a year earlier! Yes, RO ended up having better legs than TLJ based on more widespread approval, but it still made less total revenue anyway.
Long story short: TLJ was not as well received by hardcore fans as TFA was. No doubt about it. BUT, it's popularity at the BO was nothing to sneeze at; and then was backed up by substantial home video sales. If everyone had been as disappointed with it as many folks seem to believe, there's no way it could ever sell blu-ray copies at the clip it has. And that's with a blu-ray market that will see a decline in sales with every year that goes by as the switch to digital/streaming becomes more pronounced.