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Comment by freddie_mercury | Hacker News Reader

Are China, North America, and Europe the only places in the world?

I live in Vietnam. Population 100 million. More than any country in Europe. It is not popular here. Or anywhere in Southeast Asia -- population 660 million -- from what I can tell.

I mean, it is popular in the way any big budget, CGI spectacular is popular. But it's not this big cultural thing it is in the US or Europe. Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing. They think of Rogue One in the same way they think of Train to Busan. A fun enough foreign movie they watched that one time a few years ago.

The vast majority of my friends and family have never seen any of the original trilogy or even most of the prequels. They definitely aren't watching any of the Disney+ series, since it says "Sorry, Disney+ is not available in your region".

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Very few IPs are truly universal in a way that strongly resonates across all cultures. That's a really high bar that is seldom cleared.

Disney is likely not focusing on Southeast Asia because, despite of the population, box office receipts and licensing deals must be fairly low in dollar terms. Most companies would rather be extremely successful in China, North America and Europe alone than be mildly successful everywhere, so content is optimized for these regions.

> Nobody cares in the slightest what the next Star Wars movie will be about or how the IP is doing.

Of course nobody cares about how the IP is doing. That is for the corporation to worry about.

On the other hand people, individualy, will make up their mind about buying a ticket or not. There are many different things which go into that decision, but one of those is how much they enjoyed the earlier movies in the franchise.

Caring about the IP is the forest. And individuals making a decision to go to the cinema to watch the new star wars thing or doing literally anything else with their free time are the trees which make the forest.

Agree. As asian in US I once told my colleague in office "What's the big deal about Star wars? Isn't it little clownish with funny looking characters spouting cheesy dialogues." And he was stunned into silence. Apparently big fan of star wars with all paraphernalia in his home office.

There was nothing like Star Wars when it appeared. I watched it outside the US and remember being absolutely blown away.

My kid doesn't care about Star Wars nearly as much as I do, obviously - but the big thing about it are the memories from when I first watched it. It would be great to see a new Star Wars movie that can engage kids today in the same way it engaged us so many years ago.

Also, have in mind that a lot of old blockbuster movies can look silly today (Sound of Music is one I watched recently), but you have to appreciate them with the proper time period context.

Doesn't that make sense though? Most Gen Xers in China grew up with Monkey King from Taiwan, not Star Wars from America. Japan has its own culture that has largely invaded America rather than the other way around, Korea is starting to do the same.

Europeans are completely different. My German co-worker (well, when I was working in China) reminisced about the Original Battle Star Galactica, which was featured as a movie for his East German market. Star Wars of course, was popular, it helped that Lucas cast a lot of stars from the UK.

Isn't it little clownish with funny looking characters spouting cheesy dialogues.

A lot of Asian pop movies and shows are exactly this. Child of Korean immigrants here, married to a Chinese wife. Lots of stupid fun that plays in one culture is just a non-sequitur in another.

It makes perfect sense. The only exposure China had to Star Wars when it came out, were bootleg comics where they drew the Star Destroyers as Space Battleship Yamato.

I have never met a non-European culture that had a frontiersmanship attitude towards space.

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