Why Do Iraq War Movies Tank at the Box Office?
Another season of Hollywood big budget releases is grinding onward and, as Deadline Hollywood Daily tells us, the latest in a long line of films about the Iraq War (and/or the Global War on Terror) seems set to take a dive at the box office.
I’m told #7 Stop-Loss opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays and should eke out $4+M. Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn’t expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office.
This is hardly the first time we’ve seen this. In the Valley of Elah, Redacted, Rendition and Home of the Brave, among others, were financial disasters. But why is this so? If you ask some of our friends from the Right leaning side of the sphere, such as the excellent Republican blogger Rick Moran, it’s simply a case of America rejecting the leftist Hollywood liberal elite anti-war (or even anti-American!) message in these films.
But this type of reaction seems a bit short-sighted, failing to take into account the success of films critical of the Vietnam war, such as Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and others. And any theory of wholesale rejection of anti-Iraq war films fails to take into account the blockbuster success of Michael Moore’s Farenheit 911, which broke all records for documentaries at the box office and won wide critical acclaim along with an Oscar.
I put this puzzling question to author, film critic and Hollywood radio talk show host Betty Jo Tucker.
Jazz: Betty Jo, Why do movies about the Iraq War or the Global War on Terror fare so horribly at the box office?
Betty Jo: 1. Most people go to the movies for escapist entertainment, and the Iraq War & Global War on Terror are too serious for this type of viewing.
2. Because information and/or visuals about the Iraq War and the War on Terror run almost 24/7 on television news, the internet and radio, we are less likely to pay money for a film about them.
3. Our current “enemies” seem inferior technologically, so many of these movies lack dramatic presentation.
(Guess that explains why my husband and I chose to see a silly comedy called Superhero Movie instead of Stop-Loss this weekend!)
Jazz: Is it just American attitudes about the war which sink these films, or are they simply bad movies in terms of acting, directing, cinematography, etc.?
Betty Jo: Two films in the categories under discussion deserve more support and recognition than they’ve received to date. I’m talking about Rendition and In the Valley of Ellah. Both are high-quality in every respect — as well as entertaining. Rendition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon, depicts how using torture to get information can backfire on the torturers – and it does so with excitement and suspense. The compelling In the Valley of Ellah, with Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron, adopts a kind of detective story format as it shows the Iraq War’s impact on an ordinary guy and his parents.
Other movies about the Global War on Terror haven’t fared as well critically or at the box office. Despite its star-studded cast (Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise and Robert Redford), Lions for Lambs ended up being too talky and preachy, and even with George Clooney’s Oscar-winning performance, Syriana came across as too complicated and overly ambitious, while Redacted, from respected filmmaker Brian De Palma, was practically unwatchable.
As a side note, if you would like to hear more on this from Betty Jo, we’re going to go into more detail on this question when we have her as a guest on Mid Stream Radio, hosted by myself, Ron Beasely of Middle Earth Journal and Cindy the Lady Logician of Lady’s Logic, this Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 1:00 pm Eastern / 10:00 am Pacific. (Click on the link for the radio show’s home page, where you can – if you wish – sign up for a free BTR user account. By selecting our show as a “favorite” you can opt to receive e-mail notifications prior to upcoming shows, participate in a live web chat with other listeners during the show, and/or call in with your own questions. If the timing is bad for you, you can catch a replay of the show at any time using iTunes.)
Another point to ponder is exactly what types of movies Americans generally like to watch, and how do these Iraq war films fit into that formula? Yahoo conducted a poll on that recently and found that the most successful genres ran a wide range.
- Gangster films
Dramas (including courtroom dramas)
Suspense / Horror
Comedy (including romantic comedies)
Action and Sci-fi
Where exactly would Iraq war films fall in that list? War films covering conflict of any era don’t even make the list these days, though they were immensely popular in decades past. There may simply not be a market for this subject no matter how negatively or positively the conflict is portrayed. This too may be a reflection of shifting national attitudes. Long ago, World War 2 films were almost always sure-fire box office gold. But Americans seem to have a very different perception of that era. First, it is a war that we most definitely won, against a well defined, evil adversary. Support for the war was massive across the nation, regardless of the cost in blood and treasure. Wars since that time have become more muddled in American discussion, with the good guys and the bad guys not being as clearly defined by who was wearing the white hat.
In a recent Washington Post article, Paul Farhi sought to put the same issue in perspective.
Film historian Jonathan Kuntz of UCLA points out that most memorable war films appear many years after a conflict ends, when the nation has had time to reflect on the experience and a historical consensus emerges about the war’s successes and failures.
The classic films about Vietnam — starting with “The Deer Hunter,” “Coming Home” and “Apocalypse Now” in 1978 and 1979 and ending with “Born on the Fourth of July” in 1989 — came out years after the last U.S. serviceman had left the battlefield. “M*A*S*H,” which was essentially an anti-Vietnam film but set in the Korean War, was released nearly 20 years after the Korean armistice.
But the outcome in Iraq remains an open question, with America’s military commitment to the country under constant debate.
For now, Kuntz agrees with Bochco: “We’re bombarded by information about [Iraq] 24 hours a day,” he says. “We already know plenty about it. We don’t need to learn more about it from the movies. Right now, it’s something people want to forget and escape from. I speak for the American public when I say, ‘What a bummer.’ “
No matter what the reason, whatever Hollywood is selling regarding the Iraq war, the American public isn’t buying. Is this a good or bad thing? I see it as a free market case study. If you spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars producing a movie you are taking a huge risk. And for that risk to pay off, you’d better be quite skilled at predicting what your audience is willing to consume.
16 Responses to “Why Do Iraq War Movies Tank at the Box Office?”
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This is a fascinating post, JazzShaw, on an under-reported topic. However, your analysis is faulty.
For example, you cite “any theory of wholesale rejection of anti-Iraq war films fails to take into account the blockbuster success of Michael Moore’s Farenheit 911, which broke all records for documentaries at the box office”
A more complete analysis — based not upon the skewed box office numbers Moore initially trolled out to reveal how successful his picture was in ALL the US — reveals that this box office success was actually heavily dependent upon the Canadian (and notoriously anti-American) market (please see below). Without Canada, Fahrenheit 911 would have been a marginal success.
As an indication of Canadian values in this regard, the liberal fantasy of Bush's assasination – “Death of a President” – won the Critic's prize at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006…and tanked totally in the US market.
The Anti-Vietnam war movies you cite – with the exception of the surreal FMJ – did at least cite some US soldiers as trying to do the right thing. Find a moral compass like the Sheen or William Dafor characters in “Redacted”?
You cannot argue away the central facts:
(1) All Iraq-themed movies produced by Hollywood have a liberal/progressive/anti-US government (and even anti-US troops) theme.
(2) All of these movies have tanked (some, like Redacted, being EPIC scale tankings!).
(3) While some people on the Left claim Hollywood is only interested in Box Office, why does Hollywood ONLY Green Light anti-war movies despite the historic record of tankings?!!
Why has there never been a pro-US (or reasonably pro-troop movie like Black Hawk Down) made about the Iraq War?
Below FYI: The reality behind the “blockbuster success” of Fahrenheit 911 was spreadsheet doctoring (a dark Hollywood art):
“an Excel spreadsheet of numbers — compiled by Nielsen EDI, a division of the famed Nielsen media measurement firm — which revealed a picture of Fahrenheit 9/11’s performance that bore almost no resemblance to Michael Moore’s hype.
One is that the picture overperformed only in blue states, and even then only in the most urban parts of those blue states. And the second is that it did very well in Canada. Fahrenheit 9/11 consistently overperformed in Canadian cities; without that boffo business, the film’s gross would have been significantly smaller than it was.
That’s the upside of the story. The downside revealed by the Nielsen EDI numbers is that Fahrenheit 9/11, far from being the runaway nationwide hit that Moore claimed, underperformed in dozens of markets throughout red states and, most important — as far as the presidential election was concerned — swing states. Dallas/Fort Worth, the ninth-largest movie market, accounts for 2.07 percent of North American box office but made up just 1.21 percent of Fahrenheit 9/11 box office, for an underperformance of nearly 42 percent. In Phoenix, the tenth-largest market, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 29 percent. In Houston, ranked twelfth for movies, it underperformed by 38 percent. In Orlando, it underperformed by 38 percent; Tampa-St. Petersburg, by 41 percent; Salt Lake City, by 61 percent.”
http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/micmhael.htm
I cite “Black Hawk Down” and its huge box office success as counterpoints to your theory that
“War films covering conflict of any era don’t even make the list these days, though they were immensely popular in decades past. There may simply not be a market for this subject…..”
Black Hawk Down was the Number One film in North America for the first three weeks of its wide release in 2002…and went on to gross over $108 million domestically and over $64 million internationally.
BHD was the only reasonably pro-US war film of modern times. It was a Box Office hit.
Hollywood has ignored this, and Green Lighted countless anti-war films that have tanked.
Plus, Black Hawk Down's serious and factual content — a notorious US disaster that featured considerable heroism by US troops on the ground — undermines Betty Jo Tucker's attempted explanation:
” Most people go to the movies for escapist entertainment, and the Iraq War & Global War on Terror are too serious for this type of viewing.”
Why is it hard for Hollywood to swallow the idea of US troops as idealists, or even capable of heroism?
It's hard for me to follow Marloweccan's comment, as it indulges too heavily in talking points rhetoric. When “anti-American,” apparently a synonym for 'liberal or anything not pro current governnment policies is used as the basis for an analytic statement, I tune out. We would need a separate session to sort out what it really means to be anti-American.
I think Paul Farhi is onto something, though. The Iraq war is still an open wound, so painfull still that it takes courage to unwrap the bandages to really look at it up close. It's ongoing, so we lack an endpoint to get a foothold on perspective.
In a word: we are scared.
In a way, the ascendance of politicians talking about withdrawal has increased the fear and anxiety. If there is one thing we've learned , it is that unforseen circumstances in the ME far outnummber consequences one can reasonably foresee. That goes both ways, btw., in the stay-or-go debates.
Fahrenheit 9/11 was a movie in a different time. It gave voice, in its emotional and melodramatic way, to those who believed passionatley that the war was a horrible mistake but had no means to stop it or reverse it. That movie was an expression of frustration.
Years have passed, and the issue of this time is different: what should we do now, and what will happen as a consequence? Our frustrations and anxieties have a different framework.
Betty Jo Tucker also has a corner of the explanation. The public does suffer from ADS. Wwe are in the middle of severe shocks to our economic situation, which has been felt by many for a long time, while being denied by the government. Anxieties about the pocketbook can overshasow allmost anything else.
Put all the fears, anxieties and frustrations together, and escapism might just become extremely attractive.
Runasim said: “It's hard for me to follow Marloweccan's comment, as it indulges too heavily in talking points rhetoric.”
Alas, I cited numerous facts and figures…one link…to substantiate my arguments.
Runasim, you have not addressed the key point.
All of these movies have a similar theme…all have failed at the box office. Some, such as Redacted, have failed spectacularly!
Hollywood has refused to make Iraq movies on any other theme. Name me one movie Greenlighted on Iraq that had a pro-US POV.
There is not one.
I offered Black Hawk Down to contradict BJ Tucker's point about escapism.
Of course, as it is a signficant objection to your view, you simply ignore it.
“Put all the fears, anxieties and frustrations together, and escapism might just become extremely attractive.”
Utterly absurd. In WW II the US was in war against Nazism and the Empire of Japan. In Great Britain in 1942…the country was in a life or death struggle with Nazi Germany and being bombed day and night by the Luftwaffe. Brilliant movies on the war…critical of the conduct of the war…such as “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” (in the view of some critics, the finest movie ever made in Britian…look it up. Criterion has an excellent DVD out)….were made.
FYI: “Blimp” is hardly propaganistic. Churchill tried to ban its production, and it was only made by stealing equipment from the British army.
Runasim…I am not making “talking points” but am making a complex argument, supported by considerable detail and knowledge of cinema history.
I would argue that the public is willing to go to movies on the Iraq war that are critical of the war, and critical of Bush. However, they have a low tolerance for appalling ideological pieces of trash like “Redacted” that are represent American troops as rapists and murderers and incompetents.
As a liberal who hates America and hosts annual Hugo Chavez birthday parties (oh, Hugo, how I love thee), I don't go to see most of these movies because I'd rather see something fun.
Pacatrue…You forgot to note in your descriptive list the critically important fact that you live in Hawa'ii (as I have gathered from your other posts)!
For us conservative who are freezing ours tails off digging out after blizzard after blizzard this winter, the thought of an arch-liberal such as yourself
enjoying the blissful surroundings of the Pacific climate while we scrape the bloody car off for the 100th morning 
is truly reason to doubt the existence of a just and caring deity.
Maybe God is a liberal. Disturbing thought that. Ah well…it would explain a great many things…..
Funny you should mention that, marlowecan. Because, let's see, I have this list I made up at my second Bleeding Heart Retreat a couple years back…
Here we go.
#3. Move to Hawaii just to piss off conservatives.
What else is on here?
#6. Take away health care options from hard-working God-fearing Americans.
#7. Send $5000 checks to 100 million random people all over the world just so they feel good about themselves. Special Note: Exclude Americans and anyone white.
Wait, this is crossed out with a crayon and there's a note: Still cheaper than Iraq War. Make it $500 to everybody – but not Americans.
#12. Build a 200 foot mural to Stalin's positive contributions. Mount it on Bunker Hill.
#18. Encourage teens to have rampant, unheeded sex by distributing birth control.
#8 Re-animate Che Guevara's head and found a new state in North Central Nevada with Che as Minister of Finance.
#2. Attach eletrodes to conservatives' brains and zap them when they get within 100 miles of Hawaii.
And, of course
#1. Elect Hillary Clinton to Presidency, just to piss off conservatives.
Marlowecan,
It was not my intention to insult the court case you have so carefully constructed..
You should know that 'runasim' is the reincarnation of 'domajot', so it's not surprising that we see the world from different angles.
For my part, when I see a movie, I don't worry whether it's a 'conservative' or a 'liberal' movie. I don't pigeonhole my experiences that way. Each movie presents one slice of the human experience, and it's up to me to evaluate them and put my experience of these slices together into a coherent understanding. It doesn't even have to be all that coherent, life is often too complex to force into arbitrary cubbyholes.
I think the mood of the public, the prevailing psychological perception of conditions, is the strongest determinant of what will succeesd at the box office.
It occurs to me that we've also been under a political news and commentary siege for a long time now. Just tuning it all out for a few hours and looking at flowrers and trees instead of war movies seems like an excellent idea to me.
I'll let you decide if the trees are leaning left or tight.
Malowecan,
God is not only a liberal, she is a woman!!!
pacatrue said: “#3. Move to Hawaii just to piss off conservatives.”
Yah, I just know you did that too. Grinding and gnashing your teeth as you lay on the beach in the sun…not enjoying the waves and the vista at all…just getting pleasure from the thought of pissing us off. Of course, it is all about us conservatives…as we well know.
“And, of course…#1. Elect Hillary Clinton to Presidency, just to piss off conservatives.”
You might be shocked to learn I have officially…well as of the weekend…become a Hillary supporter. Mainly because she scores strong seconds on a number of points, and firsts on 2 key ones: the economy and health care.
Is that not bizarre? I can hardly get my mind around it myself. This is not being strategic or anything…I doubt she can win the nomination, but maybe…just that I think she is the best “all-around” candidate of the three. Nuts, huh? If you had told me I would be doing this a year ago I would have laughed at you.
Runasim said… “It occurs to me that we've also been under a political news and commentary siege for a long time now.”
This is totally true. I do get that aspect for sure. When I read of Dean's July 1st “ultimatum” the other day I felt almost sick at the thought of 3 more months of unrelenting Democrat fratricide (not cuz I love the party, just because it is hard to take as it dominates the news media).
You know, as Domajot you seem to be the only idealist I have ever encountered in the blogosphere. Pretty bizarre that, but it is true.
“God is not only a liberal, she is a woman!!!”
I hear that refrain continually from my partner…a lifelong Democrat from a strong family of Democrats.
I hope at least that Satan is a man…and a conservative (Oh wait…yes…Karl Rove!)
Marlowecan,
Wrong again.
I am not an idealist, in the least.
I am a pragmatist with ideals, which makes for different politics altogether. .
Komrad Marlow – Your NRO meme doesn't make any sense at all. Canada's population is 10% of the US population. Canadian sales don't amount to overall squat.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-wo…
Canada
Population:
33,390,141 (July 2007 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 17.3% (male 2,967,383/female 2,824,189)
15-64 years: 69.2% (male 11,604,723/female 11,490,839)
65 years and over: 13.5% (male 1,927,035/female 2,575,972) (2007 est.)
Now a EU and US comparison would have some merit. With population and wealth near equal. Why not throw in Mexico…
3 Factors that I see.
1) All the recent films that failed in the Box Office have depicted the troops badly.
2) The audience that usually goes to war movies are usually people with interest in the military, and usually supportive of it. (I don't consider Farenheit 911 a military movie, it is a political one centered around Bush. While the failed box office movies are centered the military.) These movies are isolating the audience.
3) It is too soon for people who normally would see a military movie to see an anti-troop movie. It still matters, it is not in the past it is in the present. We can be more callouss about the past than the present with views on life.
On a final note, I am one of these people who enjoys military center movies. And I can not wait for Lone Survivor to come out in 2009. (Depicting the heroism and Tragedy of SEAL team 10 in Afghanistan.)
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