Hollywood And The War In Iraq

I had mentioned this in a previous blog, but I wanted to put some numbers up to support my claim. I had said that the current series of anti-American/anti-U.S.-military movies is completely tanking at the box office, which is an indicator that even though many Americans don't necessarily approve of the war in Iraq, but that doesn't mean they hate America or the military (like these Hollywood-types think). The New York Post took a whack at Redacted, in particular, but the same theory holds true for all of them. As the key indicator of any movie's success, take these opening weekend figures as a frame of reference:

Lions for Lambs: $6.7 million
Rendition: $4 million
Redacted: $26,000

To put things in perspective, check out the opening weekends of the top three movies of the past year:

Spiderman 3: $151 million
Shrek 3: $122 million
Transformers: $71 million

Now that's some huge success! The numbers don't lie - even the 20th highest grossing movie of the past year (Blades of Glory) had an opening weekend of $33 million, five times more than Lions for Lambs.

So, that begs the question: why? Why are these films tanking? The most logical explanation is that if there was truly such hatred of the military in this country, these anti-military films would be hugely popular. I've thought for a long time that a lot of the 'disapproval' of the war in Iraq referenced in polls was not simply people who disapproved of the war; instead, I believe a fairly high number of those who disapprove think -- like I do -- that we need to kick it into high gear, wipe the floor with those primitive 7th century barbarians, and come home. The surge finally did that. Roll on, U.S. military!

There's my two cents.