The Phantom Menace was not a flop

This NRO review of the new Star Wars movie says:

it wasn't until 1999 that Episode One, The Phantom Menace, appeared, and immediately flopped. A fan of the series told me how he and a friend attended a different movie just in order to catch a trailer for Phantom Menace. They were stunned; "We just couldn't believe how bad it was," he said. It was a bad sign. Just about everybody hated Phantom Menace. It seemed shallow and silly, and squandered the capital previous films had built up.

It would be hard to be more wrong. That movie was the 4th biggest money-grossing movie of all time.