From "Top Gun" to "Lions for Lambs"

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 50 years, you know that Hollywood has changed considerably since the Roosevelt era. They are turning out one film after another where the bad guys are not the terrorists, but Americans. This has gone on since Vietnam, but now the movies are coming out while the War in question is still in progress. Of course, Al-Qaeda couldn't be happier, but Hollywood is paying a price for it. Literally. Maybe I shouldn't gloat in their misery, but lately these films are all huge box office disasters. The reviews for Lions for Lambs are particularly dismal. Professional reviewers overall give it a score of 47 (out of 100). Rendition, and In the Valley of Elah have garnered only slightly better reviews and fared just as poorly in ticket sales. The Kingdom's reviews were also sub-par, but while it did a bit better (perhaps more action and less preachy then the others) it still came in way below expectations, making $50 mil on a film that cost $80 mil to produce.

To Hollywood, this must have been quite counter-intuitive. Polls show that the country is disillusioned over the war, and the President's approval ratings are at an all-time low. How could an anti-war film miss?

After all, in the 1980s, when the country was riding a wave of patriotism, you could hardly strike out with a patriotic film. Just throw in some stars, and you had a hit, even with a simplistic script and mediocre acting; movies like Top Gun come to mind, which, ironically, starred the very same Tom Cruise from Lions for Lambs. Essentially in 21 years, Cruise has gone from playing a self-assured jingoistic patriot in one film where he's the hero, to another where he's the villain. Maybe we can assume that pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell eventually retired from the Navy, changed his name to Jasper Irving, and ran for Congress. And there you go - an unofficial Bush-era sequel to the Reagan-era film.

I see several potential reasons why these films are not doing well right now. It's probably a combination of several factors:

1) Burnout. The Global War on Terror is still a current event, and saturating the media from all sides. Do people really feel like they need more? Yes, during WWII there were all sorts of films about the conflict, but there was no television or Internet for people to turn to.

2) Perspective. Audiences may be a little leery of films that are critical of the war right now; they know the war should be over for at least a few years to look at it from a proper historical perspective. Once again, there were war films released during WWII, but every single one of them (Casablanca, Destination Tokyo, Why We Fight, Anchors Aweigh, etc) unwaveringly supported the mission of the war. Having a pause of several years also brings a new audience into the mix; I was too young to know much about the Vietnam War while it was happening, but by the time anti-war films like Apocalypse Now or Platoon were released, I was more than interested to see them.

3) America is far more patriotic than Hollywood. Hollywood may be misinterpreting the results of these polls; just because many Americans are disappointed over the war, doesn't mean they don't believe in the mission. Many of these folks are simply disappointed over the way the war was handled, not necessarily because they believe propaganda that the United States is to blame for all the woes in the Middle East or that we brought 9/11 on ourselves. Jonah Goldberg said:

The public doesn't get to decide what movies are made. As President Bush might say, Hollywood is the "decider." The public determines which movies are successful. Perhaps the studios of yesteryear knew something today's moguls don't. Maybe Americans don't like to see America and her troops run down, even during an unpopular war.

A standard Hollywood formula is to introduce a villain, and then go with a plot twist that shows the United States is either just as bad - or worse, then the villains they were fighting. Need proof? Try Clear and Present Danger, The Core, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, The Siege, Dr. Strangelove, Born on the 4th of July, Heaven and Earth, Casualties of War, Crimson Tide, No Way Out, Spy Game, Syriana, Manchurian Candidate (the 2004 remake) and of course, Fahrenheit 9/11. And the list could go on and on; these are just a few I came up with after a short reflection.

I'm not saying we need to go back to the days of government-funded propaganda films or outright censorship (some of the above films were wonderful), but why can't Hollywood do one Global War on Terror equivalent to Sands of Iwo Jima, Bridge on the River Kwai, or The Longest Day? Is that too much to ask?

Bruce Willis once mentioned that he was going to make a pro-American movie about the Iraq War. It never got off the ground.

I would have watched it. Heck, right now, I'd settle for "Top Gun II".





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