Posted on 01/22/2015 5:20:24 AM PST by SJackson
Hollywood’s War Against American Sniper
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On January 22, 2015 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 8 Comments
American Sniper is the movie that should not have existed. Even though the book was a bestseller, nobody in Hollywood wanted the rights.
And why would they?
The Iraq War already had an official narrative in Hollywood. It was bad and wrong. Its veterans were crippled, dysfunctional and dangerous. Before American Sniper, Warner Brothers had gone with anti-war flicks like Body of Lies and In the Valley of Elah. It had lost a fortune on Body of Lies; but losing money had never stopped Hollywood from making anti-war movies that no one wanted to watch.
Even the Hurt Locker had opened with a quote from leftist terrorist supporter Chris Hedges.
An Iraq War movie was supposed to be an anti-war movie. There was no other way to tell the story. Spielberg’s own interest in American Sniper was focused on “humanizing” the other side. When he left and Clint Eastwood, coming off a series of failed films, took the helm, it was assumed that American Sniper would briefly show up in theaters and then go off to die quietly in what was left of the DVD aisle.
And then American Sniper broke box office records that had been set by blockbusters like Avatar, Passion and Hangover Part II by refusing to demonize American soldiers or to spin conspiracy tales about the war. Instead of pandering to coastal progressives, it aimed at the patriotic heartland.
In a sentence you no longer expected to hear from a Hollywood exec, the Warner Brothers distribution chief said, “This is about patriotism and all the things people say the country is lacking these days.”
The backlash to that patriotism and the things the country is lacking these days didn’t take very long to form and it goes a lot deeper than snide tweets from Michael Moore and Seth Rogen. Academy members were reportedly passing around an article from the New Republic, whose author had not actually seen the movie, but still denounced it for not showing Chris Kyle as a bigoted murderer.
Hollywood progressives are both threatened and angered by American Sniper. And with good reason.
The most basic reason is the bottom line. Between Lone Survivor, Unbroken and American Sniper, the patriotic war movie is back. Hollywood could only keep making anti-war movies no one would watch as long as that seemed to be the only way to tackle the subject. Now there’s a clear model for making successful and respectful war movies based around the biographies and accounts of actual veterans.
Hollywood studios had been pressured by left-wing stars into wasting fortunes on failed anti-war conspiracy movies. Matt Damon had managed to get $150 million sunk into his Green Zone failed anti-war movie before stomping away from Universal in a huff. Body of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe had a real budget estimated at around $120 million, but had opened third after Beverly Hills Chihuahua whose titular tiny dog audiences preferred to either star and their political critiques.
But why spend over a hundred million on anti-war movies no one wants when American Sniper has already made over $120 million on a budget only half that much?
Hollywood progressives don’t look forward to having to write, direct and star in patriotic pictures and if they can’t destroy American Sniper at the box office, they can taint it enough that no major star or director will want to be associated with anything like it.
Adding to their undercurrent of anger is the way that American Sniper upstaged Selma at the box office and at the Academy Award nominations. Selma is a mediocre movie, but it was meant to be a platform for the usual conversation that progressives want to have about how terrible Americans are. Instead audiences chose to see a movie about how great Americans can be even in difficult times.
There’s nothing that threatens the left as much as that.
In a Best Picture lineup that includes the obligatory paeans to gay rights and the evils of racism, American Sniper distinctly stands out as something different. It displaces Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, the previous sure winner which had its obligatory drunken Iraq War veteran claiming that the war was fought for oil, with an authentic veteran instead of Hollywood’s twisted caricature of one.
American Sniper and Lone Survivor signal a shifting wind in which the focus of movies about the War on Terror moves from the organizational conspiracy theories that Hollywood liked to make to the personal narratives of the men who fought in them. Many of the smarter progressive reviews of American Sniper grapple with the fact that the time when they could even have their favorite argument is going away.
Progressives would like Dick Cheney to be the face of the war, but are forced to deal with a world in which Chris Kyle and Marcus Luttrell will be how America sees the conflict. The lens through which the left liked to view the war, its obsessions with WMD, Bush and the path to war, have been eclipsed by the rise of ISIS and the return of American veterans. Their worldview has become outdated and irrelevant.
It’s easier for the left to vent its anger on American Sniper than to deal with its own irrelevance. The most shocking thing about the movie is not any political statement, but its presumption in dealing with the Iraq War and the men in it as if it were WW2. It doesn’t confront the left; instead it acts as if the left isn’t there. It fails to acknowledge the entire worldview through which Hollywood dealt with the war.
The left spends most of its time living in its own bubble and is shocked when events remind it that the rest of the country does not really share its opinions and tastes. American Sniper’s success is one of those explosive wake-up calls and the left has responded to it with all the expected vicious pettiness.
A billboard for the movie was vandalized and attacks from lefty outlets like New Republic and Vox not only target the movie, but the dead man at the center of it. The smear campaign against Kyle has reached new lows, because in death he has become an even more powerful symbol of everything that the left hates.
Hollywood tried to “Vietnamize” Iraq in the popular imagination. American Sniper shows they failed.
Whether or not American Sniper wins the requisite number of Oscars, its impact on Hollywood and on ordinary Americans will not go away. The anti-war movie is in eclipse. The movies that tell the stories of the sacrifices that American veterans have made in the war against Islamic terrorists are rising.
The American Left is an enemy every bit as dangerous as Al Qaeda. They are a vile, foul, Satan-revering Orc army. They are odious, hideous slime-covered slugs, they are vermin. They are not even human beings. They are demonic, child-killing pedophiles and murderous rapist pigs. They are genocidal lechers and leaches that have sexual intercourse with corpses, and they love it. Each and every one of them should be stricken with painful pancreatic cancer. If every one of them was wiped off the Earth, it would not be enough. They are heinous, twisted, demented evil demons of putrescence and corruption.
I understand your feelings on going and seeing this movie. my brother in law I am positive will never see this movie because of the fact that it will give him flash backs when he goes to sleep at night. I don’t know what he did when he was in the army and only rarely has he ever talked about it. I do know that he has probably read the book but for him the visuals of any war movie is just to much for him. I wonder how many other veterans that is the case for.
Kind of an odd headline and story given that Hollywood (Warner Bros, specifically) put the movie out.
Some Hollywood stars may be speaking out against it, but Hollywood (the business) loves it and the money it is bringing in.
Besides, after 50 years of anti-war movies, is there really anything more to be said? Yeah, we get it. War is bad. Uh huh. But there is a little more to it than that ...
I liked Body of Lies. Russell Crowe and Mark Strong were both great in it.
There’s nothing that threatens the left as much as that.
Ping
“His Soviet Union actively connected with and supported Communists within the Hollywood elites “
The communists formed ‘Hollywood’ after they couldn’t get control of NYC media.
The contest is between American Sniper, Boyhood, and Birdman. I think Boyhood wins Best Director, Birdman Best Picture. Clint gets the consolation that his picture is a smash hit, and maybe Bradley Cooper gets Best Actor (Michael Keaton and Benedict Cumberbund being the main competition. Cumberbund playing a Hollywood favorite - the tortured persecuted gay genius. And Keaton because he's back.)
How many anti-slavery movies do we have to get? Yeah slavery is bad. Tell it to the parts of the world (where, coincidentally, the pedophile prophet is worshipped) where it is still de facto practiced...
But they don’t seem quite as handy with guns yet.
As for islamists however....
“Some Hollywood stars may be speaking out against it, but Hollywood (the business) loves it and the money it is bringing in.”
And that is what is scaring the bejesus out of the lefty kooks in Hollywood. For years their money loser agenda movies were tolerated by the business side because there was really no alternative. Now, along comes these movies that not only fly in the face of the lefty kook agenda, but also make huge profits. The kooks are nervous that their agenda driven money losers will no longer be tolerated when compared to the hugely profitable patriotic and Christian themed movies.
In short, free market competition might prove to be too big a force for the lefty Hollywood kooks to overcome.
I saw the movie and it’s great. Highly recommend it.
I don’t think “Hollywood” id totally against it. The academy constitutes all of the powerful folks and the movie received several nominations. Don’t see any snubs except Eastwood. Cooper did a great job in his portrayal and putting the values up on the screen. He was nominated.
They may not in, but all the nominations do not support a conclusion that Hollywood is slamming the movie. Just the usual idiots.
I liked Whoopie Goldberg’s comment yesterday about seth rogen.
“We supported your right to make your movie snow be quite and do the same for others.” Good line.
If you look at Fox News, Ailes realized that there was an unmet demand for something different in the realm of hard news and commentary. Every other network was no more than a liberal carbon copy with no conservative choice being available. They capitalized on that vacuum and have been rewarded handsomely.
In many ways what Eastwood and others are doing is akin to what Fox News did. They are meeting a huge market demand for movies that convey the values of (really) a majority of Americans. The studios are catching on and want their piece of the pie.
Selma may or may not be a quality movie. Haven’t seen it. May see it sometime on cable.
I am burned out on the black cause. Ferguson and the rest of the demonstrations for legitimate police actions and destroying neighborhood businesses, Al Aharptongue, Holder, OB, all leave me feeling like it’;s their problem and quit bit chin and get a job.
Not in the mood and not empathetic.
Thanks, I’m sure that you know more about this than I ever will. I have noticed that the correlation between truly good movies and Academy Awards is somewhat lacking.
Yikes! No kidding. Someone's gone off their meds.
And all this time, I thought I was the ONLY one who felt that way.
And, their DOGS are UGLY too!
***Don’t see any snubs except Eastwood***
Don’t forget Eastwood was responsible for “The Chair.” Hollywood will not reward someone who mocked Obola.
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