10 Times Movie Franchises Totally Broke Your Trust
3. A 20-Year Wait For This? - Star Wars
It's the ones you love that hurt you the most. The original Star Wars trilogy was such a significant pop culture phenomenon that even if someone hasn't seen the films, they know Darth Vader, they know Luke Skywalker, and they probably even know Empire's big twist.
16 years after the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, the Star Wars franchise made its own return with Episode I - The Phantom Menace. The movie was so hyped and anticipated that it hit the one billion dollar mark way back in 1999, becoming just the third movie ever to do so.
Everyone flocked to the cinemas to see how George Lucas would follow-up Return of the Jedi. How could the rise of Darth Vader, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, and literally limitless storytelling opportunities go wrong? Well, trade taxations, Senate meetings, and Jar-Jar Binks unfortunately saw to that.
The fact that Attack of the Clones mustered only $650 million, which is one hell of a drop from three years prior, shows just how much people felt let down by Star Wars. Anyone expecting the prequel trilogy to be anything near the same wavelength as the original was greatly disappointed. The franchise arguably didn't recover from this hit until very recently.