Movies and GPUs aren't the same to where I would consider it reasonable to make the inference you have. The vast majority of sales of a GPU will take place outside of the initial launch period.
Yet pollers do not ask the majority of voters what they vote for, but their polling still tends to give a decent indication of how voting will go.
Hardware products that aren't popular at launch can become more so later as the price changes or other factors make them more attractive. Similarly a popular card that looks like it will sell well can become considerably less so if something else blows it out of the water. Similarly a launch might be lackluster just because people are waiting for a new CPU to launch before buying a GPU to go with it.
I think that anyone agrees that it would be more popular at a lower price, so what you say is not actually a rebuttal. The claim is that at the current price and current market conditions, this card does not seem all that popular and this will probably remain the case.
And the argument that people are waiting for a better CPU doesn't make sense now that the 7800X3D has just been released. There is no highly anticipated CPU on the horizon.
My own impression is that this is likely going to be the best or least bad card in Nvidia's line-up, unless Nvidia comes out with a 12 GB card lower in the stack with better price/performance, which the rumors suggest will not happen. Still, the 4070 is a bit of a toss-up compared to the upper tier RDNA2 cards, which have more memory, but are less efficient. It's not a great look when the previous gen is competitive with the new gen.
There's also a used market in GPUs that competes with new sales.
The biggest competition for new cards is presumably the option to keep the existing card, since many people keep card for multiple generations and now seemingly more than ever. Without a decent improvement in price/performance, there is little reason for many to upgrade.