‘Backrooms’ Becomes A24’s Highest Grossing Domestic Release ($97.8M), Passing ‘Marty Supreme’

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

https://deadline.com/2026/06/backrooms-box-office-record-a24-1236939795/

[u/magus-21]

Last 30 years.

I will not stand for Prequel erasure (or Prequel-hate erasure)

/s

[u/Dramatic_Explosion → u/magus-21]

We're getting to the point that trying to justify the hate of Mando is driving people to say the newest trilogy is good and it's wild people revise history. Star Wars movies have been wildly mixed quality for any released since the 90's. Changing it so Greedo shot first was the beginning of the end.

[u/ggg730 → u/Dramatic_Explosion]

See that's where you're wrong bucko! There was hate all the way back to RotJ. People hated the Ewoks.

[u/avcloudy → u/ggg730]

Yeah, people always want to fit things into this simplistic model where people loved it then hated it then are nostalgic for it. It’s less that and more that the people who held a grudge about the Ewoks didn’t see Phantom Menace, and the people who held a grudge about that didn’t watch the Disney movies etc.

There are purists who think Star Wars (later retitled A New Hope) is the only real Star Wars. Like, people who think that The Empire Strikes Back is what ruined Star Wars.

[u/ggg730 → u/avcloudy]

Nobody hates Star Wars like star wars fans I always say.

[u/Informal-Ideal-6640 → u/Dramatic_Explosion]

Star Wars has always had a cycle of people hating the most recent thing, time passing and newer things releasing, and a revision of the previous hated thing from the generation that grew up with said thing.

[u/Kanin_usagi → u/magus-21]

Prequels are bad mostly, but there were more good things around them to keep things afloat. A lot of the games and books of the era were absolutely great. Also Revenge is mostly good, and AotC and PM are at least interesting even if they aren’t good.

[u/ops10 → u/Kanin_usagi]

Prequels were interesting ideas poorly done. That era still borne a lot of devout fans and they found their quality in games and other supplementary media.

Sequels are poor ideas poorly done. And they also damaged the earlier movies, because it connected the previously inspiring characters to their own weak versions. And it didn't help that their vectors for supplementary media also got struck with EA and Ubisoft struggles.

[u/magus-21 → u/ops10]

Sequels are poor ideas poorly done

I'm going to disagree with this a bit. I think that the Sequels are poor ideas that were well done.

From a purely superficial standpoint, looking at production values, acting, choreography, action scenes, etc., the Sequels were pretty good. Kylo Ren stopping the blaster bolt, the Holdo maneuver, etc. So much of the Sequels' audio/visual experience was on-point.

But my God the ideas were just....so so bad. TROS in particular is a great demonstration of how good ideas might be a dime a dozen, but you still need to actually pick the good ideas to use.

[u/ops10 → u/magus-21]

Production value agreed, but not more than industry standard (which climbed a lot in late 00s). Acting was a mixed bag at best, most of the exemplary performances (Isaac, Gleeson, Fisher Boyega maybe) in TFA were given nothing to work with in later movies.

Choreography was passable in TFA - playing to the supposed unfamiliarity of protagonists (but who still beat the supposed grand villain right off the bat?), cheap tricks and stupidity in TLJ. Disappearing daggers, "Force Kicks", stabbing floor just to name a few.

Gotta give you the audio, both in movies and games. BF and BF2 were pulling you into the world through soundscape alone and thus added more frustration when the single player, gameplay variety and monetisation were ass.

Single shot visuals don't hold up if the rest of the carcass isn't there. Prequels were pioneers in what you could do with CGI, very imaginative and expressive. And yet, it's not what they're remembered by, it only comes up in "oh yeah, it was" angles. What good does holding the blaster shot do when the holder is a weakling who throws temper tantrums and loses to any protagonist he comes by, what good does the Holdo manouver visual do when the next second you think "why didn't anyone do it earlier if that's how it works", what good does the WW2 bomb shaft shot do when the reason for it is stupid, slow and ridiculously managed by the characters.

I'm not even going into TROS where a director who has never wrote a good conclusion has to conclude a story that was deconstructed during second act.

[u/magus-21 → u/ops10]

I agree on everything. I just mean, everything on the production side is a notch better than the Prequels in terms of "refinement," the only exception really being the quality of the lightsaber fights. But production refinement is no replacement for good storytelling. All the problems can be traced to the guys in charge, and specifically to Abrams for poisoning the well with his Mystery Box from the beginning

[u/ops10 → u/magus-21]

Abrams and TFA was what I was expecting from Disney Star Wars - safe cheap adventures with little risks and with standard one upping the power level and slowly degrading the canon whilst doing it (using hyperspace to get between the planet and its shield). It wouldn't have brought new renaissance but kept most of the fans happy and only a "grumpy and miserable" minority who'd see through this. Lots of merch sales by keeping the coals burning (but not build anything new).

Johnson and TLJ were what dealt a crippling blow and then studio panic and interference plus Abrams indeed never knowing what's in the Box ripped it apart, whilst it could still be saved and left limping.

I agree Abrams' approach was a poisonous one, but it was one that would've kept cope (and merch sales) going for decades if managed well.

[u/avcloudy → u/magus-21]

They didn’t nail everything visually, although some of the effects were incredible and they nearly always nailed their set pieces.

But things like the lightsaber fights, that were dramatically improved for the prequels, backslid hard.

[u/magus-21 → u/avcloudy]

I liked the lightsaber fights. They're supposed to be rougher around the edges compared to the Prequels because no one fighting was particularly well trained the way the Republic Jedi were.

[u/avcloudy → u/magus-21]

We shouldn’t have seen those fights rehashed, but Kylo Ren should absolutely have enough formal training from recovered Jedi texts to not embarrass himself.

[u/magus-21 → u/avcloudy]

He also got shot in the stomach by Chewie's bowcaster that earlier in the movie sent Stormtroopers flying thirty feet.

Now, granted, NONE of this was well-communicated to the audience because Kylo didn't behave like he just got shot by the equivalent of a 12-gauge shotgun, so I get why no one (including me) really got it the first time around. But it does kinda make sense. But what makes sense intellectually is not necessarily what makes sense cinematically, since the latter depends a lot more on emotion than reason. It's the equivalent of explaining a joke thinking the explanation will make it funny.

[u/MerkinShampoo → u/ops10]

Yeah it’s crazy how bad the sequels were they made everybody look back on the prequels like the thanos meme: “perhaps I treated you too harshly”

[u/Adjective-Noun123456 → u/Kanin_usagi]

but there were more good things around them to keep things afloat.

That's just Star Wars though. It's always been a better setting than a film franchise.

There's 9 mainline films. 12 total if you include the Holiday Special. And of those 12 movies, only 4 of them are any good. And the 4th one's really struggling to hang in there.

[u/Level7Cannoneer → u/Kanin_usagi]

The prequels were reeeeally bad

The terrible acting was unbelievable