Hollywood Stumbles in Foreign Affairs

"The Kingdom" poster. — “The Kingdom” is very topical, but that’s not what audiences seem to want.

As legendary Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn once said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”

These days, a slew of pricey movies set against the backdrop of the Middle East/Afghanistan cauldron and that project distaste for the U.S. are falling flat at the box office. More such films are in the pipeline, and so worried film distributors are crafting marketing campaigns to position some of them as thrillers or general-purpose dramas.

But the trouble is that audiences sense that the films are full of political connotations and don’t buy the switcheroo.

The box office disappointments include “Syriana” with George Clooney, bombing aftermath actioner “The Kingdom,” U.S. spy agency indictment “Rendition” and “In the Valley of Elah,” whose advertising uses an American flag as a backdrop for a movie that knocks the U.S. military. African genocide drama “Hotel Rwanda” from 2004 can be added to the list.

Coming soon to a theater near you are “Lions for Lambs” starring Tom Cruise with a $35 million production cost, and searing war crimes drama “Redacted.”

These are mostly well-crafted filmmaking. But Hollywood seems to be forgetting the audience, which shows little appetite for morality plays set in the murky Middle East. Surely, with so many of these Middle East downers in the movie pipeline, audience fatigue should have been an obvious flashing red light. (story continues after call-out text).

Attention Moviegoers! This is an engrossing character drama, not a political film with a preachy foreign-affairs message. Your cooperation is appreciated!
Your Friends in Hollywood

History consistently shows the audience doesn’t want edgy, topical movies with story lines that hit too close to contemporary newspaper headlines. Indications are audiences are fatigued by real life politics and they don’t buy Hollywood’s take on events. It took a decade after the U.S. withdrew from its Vietnam War before U.S. audiences accepted films on that conflict.

In 1979, when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident occurred 12 days into the release of “The China Syndrome,” box office for that nuclear plant thriller immediately plunged. That was widely interpreted at the time as an improbable storyline suddenly becoming all too uncomfortably real.

Films with edgy political visions can have an audience, but what Hollywood is learning is that it’s not a mass audience. Not reaching a mass audience means scaling down costs to match box office/revenue expectations. A $15 million film with preachy political overtones could work economically (if it has stars, they have to work for less than their regular pay), but not an $75 million major studio release, like “The Kingdom.”

The $72 million production of Gulf War actioner “Jarhead,” which would have been a dandy as a straight-forward action film, was a harbinger of things to come. “Jarhead” performing poorly in its 2005 release. As the 1990-91 first Gulf War ends in “Jarhead,” a soldier exclaims with joy, “We never have to come back to this s*** hole ever again!” that plays off the follow-up 2003 Iraq War.

The “Jarhead” creative team may pat itself on the back for delivering biting satire, but the message comes off as rather naïve. World War II was a re-run of WWI that, in turn, was a re-enactment of the Franco-Prussian War. It’s no profound commentary that history is littered with repetitive wars.

The notable exception to today’s economic carnage for politico films is “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which is the 2004 Iraq war documentary critique that cost just $6 million to make and grossed an astronomical $119 million in U.S./Canada box-office. Because “Fahrenheit 9/11” was in the first wave of today’s arc, its success likely blinded Hollywood to the true long odds for economic success for this genre. Sure, there will be some other box office successes, but experience indicates to expect more than its share of flops for this genre.

One might ask why is this disconnect between Hollywood and the audience happening now? After all, Hollywood has always been an insular place with its own take on off-screen morality and politics. The view from Sunset Blvd. has never really played well across America.

After a pre-release test screening of his “The Kingdom,” director Peter Berg professed to be taken aback after watching the audience cheer as terrorists were gunned down. Talent usually loves it when test audiences react favorably. But in this case, the director worried his movie was interpreted as a “jingoistic piece of propaganda,” he told “Entertainment Weekly.” The test screening was in a California farming region far from Hollywood.

In past decades, studio “suits” enforced a sort of adult supervision over the Hollywood sandbox. And those studio executives had a better pulse of the mood of Middle America, even if that mood didn’t necessarily mesh with their personal outlooks. In Hollywood’s golden era, studios churned out white-bread films presenting an idolized Middle America. And just who was responsible for these films? It was studio moguls who emigrated from Europe.

Whether highbrow Hollywood talent like them or not, uncomplicated films with easily-identifiable good guys and bad guys not only connect with U.S. mass audiences, but moviegoers around the world. These films give us characters that we want to root for and make the audience feel good.

Critics can argue those films also project a political viewpoint, but it is comparatively bland and in sync with mainstream audience. Today’s cavalcade of politico films relish heaping an ambiguous morality on the audience.

Hollywood talent asserts that the politico films simply represent artists creating signature masterpieces. The problem with that thinking is that it’s not just some misunderstood Van Gogh toiling alone on an inexpensive-to-produce painting. Today’s mainstream Hollywood movies cost tens of millions of dollars each to make and many more millions to market. That’s the reason that it’s called show “business.”

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