Commercial success; professional failure.
####Commercial success, professional failure####
That's a good way of putting it. Whether or not THE DA VINCI CODE is a success depends on which definition of success one uses.
Recall the abominable film FAHRENHEIT 9/11. Throughout the summer of 2004 we were told this film was a smashing success because A) it made money and B) it was going to defeat George Bush in the upcoming election.
Well, it did indeed make money. Being a documentary (allegedly) it cost relatively little to make it, and it earned a tidy profit. In that sense it was a success.
But all the hype about the film ending the Bush presidency went nowhere. News magazines put Michael Moore's bloated face on their cover, hyping him as some kind of presidential kingmaker. Liberal Democrat politicians attended F 9/11's world premier. Moore was invited to sit next to Jimmy Carter at the 'Rat convention. All summer long I listened to my liberal colleagues at work predicting that Moore's film would elect John Kerry, when the millions of people who saw the flick rushed to the polls to vote out the "incompetent boob" Moore depicted. Moore himself made the ludicrous claim that his film had a 100% effectiveness rate, meaning that every single person who saw the film believed it and would act on it at the polls.
But guess what? F 9/11 proved to be a total flop under this measure of success. Bush won re-election. The film, it turned out, just preached to the choir. It made no new converts.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a similar story. It cost little to make it, and it turned a tidy profit, so by box office standards it was a success. But the overblown claims that the film would "touch people's hearts" and "change people's minds" about the gay lifestyle were wrong. Like F 9/11, it preached to the choir. People this November will still vote to ban gay "marriage" on state referenda, just as they would have before BBM was released.
So, yes, THE DA VINCI CODE is a box office success. That can't be denied, though at least in America it won't do as well as predicted. I don't think it'll go much past $200,000,000, if it reaches that point at all. No doubt the people backing this film were hoping, for emotional and ideological reasons, to top THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. They won't.
But the movie is an artistic failure, and as such really won't have the negative impact on Christianity that those supporting it were hoping for. It'll preach to the choir (anti-religious bigots, airheads, etc.), but it'll have the philosophical impact of a Michael Bay "blockbuster" like ARMAGEDDON or PEARL HARBOR. Profitable, but lacking in quality or substance.