Right Wing Nation

Partly inspired by Ed Driscoll (follow the links — there’s good reading there), and partly inspired by watching Over the Hedge this morning, I thought I’d check IMDB to see for myself. I divided movies into two categories: Moonbatty "message" movies, and non-moonbatty, non-"message" movies. In order to qualify as a moonbatty movie, the film had to display a lack of moral absolutism or left-wing historical revisionism in some fundamental way. So I picked Angelina Jolie’s recent stinker, A Mighty Heart, a movie that attempts to tackle the beheading of Daniel Pearl without going near the beheaders (cultural sensitivity, ya know); George Clooney’s Syriana, a leftwing fantasy that creates a non-existent evil corporate America exploiting all those poor oppressed Arabs; Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German (starring George Clooney), which attempts to paint a sympathetic portrait of Nazis suffering at the hands of evil American invaders; Steven Spielberg’s Munich, which attempts to paint a sympathetic portrayal of Palestinian terrorists; World Trade Center, Oliver Stone’s attempt to tell the story of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 without coming near the terrorists responsible; and Alexander (also Oliver Stone), starring Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, and Val Kilmer, which tried to portray a non-violent, politically correct, inclusive, sensitive, Alexander the Great. Note that all of the above movies had either to have a big name star for box office draw, or a big name director. I intended to include critic reactions, but that’s too messy: Some like a movie, while others do not. I also did not include any major cult movies in either category (like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings).

So here are the moonbatty movies, along with their US box office gross revenues:

In order to qualify as non-moonbatty, movies had to display no moral relativism or major historical revisionism. To give the moonbatty movies as much of an advantage as possible, I did not require that non-moonbatty movies have big name directors or actors to draw viewers to the theater. Here is the list:

Note that the mean gross for non-moonbatty films exceeded that of moonbatty movies by 655.73%. Of the twelve movies, The Good German, starring George Clooney, came in at the bottom, grossing only $1,290,623. Finding Nemo, which grossed $339,714,367, came in at the top. Unlike all of the moonbatty movies, it had no top Hollywood names, not even as voices. Yet, it managed to gross 483.67% more revenues at the box office than World Trade Center, the top grossing moonbatty movie. In fact, Over the Hedge, which came in at the bottom of the non-moonbatty movies, exceeded World Trade Center by 220.71%.

Hollywood executives like to blame their dwindling audiences on DVDs and cable television, and although both certainly have some effect on theater audiences, they don’t explain the differences between moonbatty and non-moonbatty movie revenues.

One might think that given the poor revenues of "message" movies, and the far better revenues of non-moonbatty movies, Hollywood would make fewer of the former and more of the latter. Whether they are or not is hard to say, at least until the end of the year. I suspect, however, that Hollywood will continue to beat us over the head with stupid, amoral, "message" movies — and we won’t go see them.