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Jason Lee: As Reagen astutely pointed out in his Weekend Forecast (and as confirmed by my own memories at the time), the consensus leading up to The Phantom Menace was that the prequels would be AWESOME. So one cannot attribute the result to the widely held sense that "things will be different this time around." I believe we saw something very similar this time around, but a few factors led to a very different box office result. First, the film turned out to be "good" (though that's not my own personal opinion). Second, you had a Star Wars superfan director - the type of person who fans and geeks could trust with the franchise. Third, as noted by everyone, a great marketing campaign by Disney (geez, that film was EVERYWHERE). And fourth, one cannot ignore the impact that social media had on fan anticipation, which built on itself like waves before a tsunami.

David Mumpower: I stated the other day that if it broke the record, it would be the equivalent of wearing leg and arm weights while running a three-and-a-half minute mile. It...actually ran the mile in three minutes flat. What resonates with me about this entire turn of events is how desperate Star Wars fans were to feed a hunger that had festered for 32 years. For all the then-love directed at the release of each prequel, people eventually came to their senses about the quality of those titles. Still, their passion for the original trilogy remained undamaged by the ravages of time.

The promise of those original characters returning, no matter how large a role they'd take in The Force Awakens, enticed virtually everyone even passingly familiar with Star Wars as a franchise to take an interest in the project. For this reason, it didn't just break the record but out and out destroyed the previously amazing Jurassic World numbers. This is one of the ultimate examples of delayed gratification. The failures of the Star Wars concept, George Lucas, more than doubled demand over time by failing to satisfy people in 1999, 2002, and 2005. A decade later, one of his disciples, JJ Abrams, steps in and instantly does something that many Star Wars fans would argue hadn't occurred since 1980. He made a great Star Wars film.

Kim Hollis: Star Wars: The Force Awakens behaved like no other major December opener has before. In fact, it really didn’t follow typical blockbuster trending at all, as its Saturday increased from its true Friday number and Sunday didn’t deflate significantly, either. And I don’t really know how to explain what happened other than to say there was a “feeling” surrounding it. People who denigrated the prequels were still eagerly anticipating The Force Awakens, and that includes a lot of people who generally don’t go to see movies in theaters. The ubiquity of the marketing was practically unnecessary. It self-marketed. With the return of Han, Chewbacca, Leia and Luke, there was a nostalgia factor and excitement that you simply couldn’t capture with the prequels. People were just ready for a movie that they could unite around – I’ve never seen as much discussion for a movie (with a relatively simple plot) as I have for this one. It’s all about recapturing that moment when you saw one of the original films in the theater, or if you didn’t see them in the theater, truly experiencing it for the first time. People wanted to be part of that communal experience.

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