There are some stories making the rounds talking about The Last Jedi’s historic money-making fall-off, dropping as much as 69 percent in gross from the previous week. These kinds of stories have always struck me as entertainment industry navel gazing. Inside baseball.

“He’s 3 and 2 pitching in July when there is a blimp flying over the stadium and a cat runs on the field. But 1 and 4 in July when there is rain and NO blimp.”

And yet, as limited the audience for a story about a movie’s take might seem, it has been showing up in my social media the past few days surprisingly often. Twitter shares, Facebook feed, online groups I frequent — typically flaunted by someone who didn’t like the film.

“What do you mean we’re not doing well in China?”

First of all, some perspective on the numbers (quoting Forbes:)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the third-fastest movie to reach $400 million ever, behind The Force Awakens and Jurassic World.

Based on current numbers, the movie is predicted to have a cumulative domestic box-office of at least $600 million on the low end meaning the film’s final tally would place it in the top five or six highest-grossing movies in the domestic box-office of all time.

Yes, that’s still way below The Force Awakens ($936 million.) Every Star Wars trilogy has seen a drop at the box-office in the second film with a rebound in the third.

Fourth-highest grossing picture of all time, Jurassic World, also experienced a massive drop in its second weekend, falling from an opening weekend gross of just under $209 million to a second weekend gross of $106 million before going on to be the fourth biggest film ever. Likewise, both The Avengers and Age of Ultron saw massive dips in the second weekend (albeit not as massive) and currently sit in the #5 and #7 spots respectively.

“If you let me on the damn door, I bet we do 2.5 billion instead of 2.1.”

Articles analyzing the numbers of insanely high grossing films are becoming more popular because they feed the nerd culture wars. Unless you’re in the industry you really only see them when they relate to nerd properties. Nobody gives a shit if Titanic didn’t do as well domestically between weeks 3 and 4 in the UK, or if Gone with the Wind (the highest grossing film of all time adjusted for inflation) didn’t do as well in the northern states on a Saturday. But the fact that Batman v Superman took a nose dive the second or third week in theaters is important because it validates my opinion that Marvel is better than DC.

In reality, even TOTAL gross is an almost irrelevant measure of a movie’s value, either personal or aesthetic. My favorite movie of the past few years, Blade Runner 2049, bombed. Edge of Tomorrow, now cult for being underrated, bombed. Children of Men, Fight Club, and Office Space all did terribly in theaters.

But the Fast and the Furious 7 is the sixth highest grossing movie of all time.