In August, Deadpool and Wolverine became the highest grossing R-rated movie ever. It beat a 20-year record that had been established by The Passion of the Christ.
The movie was only the third feature directed by Mel Gibson and reportedly funding were from Gibson and his Icon Productions company. The final price tag was $30 million and had $15 million on marketing. It ended up grossing over $612 million worldwide. Gibson shopped the movie around to find a distributor in the little independent label Newmarket Films, which has since gone out of business. But there was a lot of controversy before the movie opened on Feb. 25, 2004, which also happened to be Ash Wednesday.
In some ways, I feel Gibson and his company orchestrated this. The context of the movie paints the Jewish people, mainly the High Priests of Jerusalem, in a negative light. Of course, the story is based on the gospel with how Pontius Pilate gave them the option of pardoning Jesus Christ (played here by Jim Caviezel) or Barabbas. However, the movie portrayed Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov) in a more sympathetic way. I saw the movie when it came out of DVD and I think I caught it another time when it was on Showtime or Starz.
I had heard a lot of people were going in droves to see it. The Oklahoma State Legislature all decided to go see it one day an activist group had been scheduled to meet. But I think it was just an excuse. However, I heard stories of people getting sick and going to the bathrooms to vomit. It is a very violent movie. Late critic Roger Ebert called it the most violent movie he had ever seen and argued that the movie would’ve been slapped with an NC-17 rating if it wasn’t about Jesus. I’d agree.
Religious movies, especially those of Christian faith had been struggling. Signs, which also starred Gibson as a Episcopalian pastor, questioning his faith after the death of his wife in a traffic accident, had made over $400 million. Some have argued the “aliens” are actually demons. But that movie didn’t market it as much of a religious movie as an alien invasion movie instead.
By the end of the 20th Century, Christianity was chic in the entertainment world with the Left Behind books and movies like The Omega Code. The latter got awful reviews but it managed to make $12.6 million on just a budget of $7.2 million with actors like Casper Van Dien, Michael Ironside and Michael York in the cast.
Then The Left Behind, with Kirk Cameron and Brad Johnson, was released on DVD and videocassettes in the Fall of 2000. People who bought the movie got a voucher to see it when it it played in theaters. (That’s if it played in a theater nearby.) However, the movie wouldn’t be released until the middle of winter 2001. And like Omega Code, it got a lot of bad reviews. I’ve never seen Omega Code, but Left Behind is just terrible. Even with a budget of over $17 million, it can’t get passed a schlocky made-for-TV look and feel.
And the Left Behind book writers, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, felt the movie’s style, look and lack of distribution in many theaters was a breach of contract when they sold the film rights to Namesake Entertainment and Cloud Ten Pictures. Only two other movies were produced (Left Behind II: Tribulation Force and Left Behind: World at War) before the writers obtained the rights back and wanted to reboot the series. (But more on that later.)
In 2006, Facing the Giants, a faith-based sports movie produced by Alex and Stephen Kendrick, of the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., was made for a mere $100,000 but grossed over $10 million. It was a hit. The movie is terrible. I mean, it’s awful and offensive as it portrays God as some genie who rewards people who pray to him more and more. I’m not the biggest Christian, but even I know that’s not how it works.
The success led to the Kendricks making Fire Proof, this time with Cameron in the lead, as a firefighter who is having marital problems. So they start a Love Dare. This is comical because it means you do something nice for your spouse each day for like 40 days. His first nice gesture is making her a cup of coffee. Wow! Slow down, Don Juan! You’re already putting the cart before horse as the old expression goes.
Fire Proof made about for about $500,000 grossed over $33 million. And like most of other faith-based movies, it was “encouraged” for church congregations to see. I have a friend who was going through marital problems at the time and watched it. But all it did was delay her separation and divorce a few years. The movie also has terrible dialogue, acting and a plot. It also justifies violence as long as someone is “talking” with your wife. But as other people online who are critical of the movie have noted, it seems that a lot of that $500,000 seems to have come from donations.
Under American tax laws regarding churches, they pretty much have carte blanche with how much money they take in. Now, obviously, of the millions they made, some had to go to the distributors and movie theaters. But the Kendrick Brothers walked away with some cool millions. The argument I’ve heard is they have tricked or guilted people into donating money to the church to make these movies. Yet, they don’t get a cut of the profits.
Do you want to be the lawyer or IRS agent who went after a church for making faith-based movies? Mind you this was the same time, church groups tried to prevent The Golden Compass from being shown in theaters. Based on His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, the movie made by Chris Weitz was a very watered down fantasy movie. Pullman wrote the books to be the Anti-Chronicles of Narnia as he didn’t like the Christian symbolism C.S. Lewis had used in those books.
Despite a boycott by many Christian groups including the Catholic League and its leader William O’Donohue, The Golden Compass made over $370 million worldwide, but a sequel was never made. However, His Dark Materials was later adapted into a series on HBO from 2019 to 2022 with little controversy. I’d find the Kendrick Brothers’ War Room to be their most offensive as they argue domestic abuse is based on a lack of faith. They also portray black people in a negative light as well.
During the mid to late 2000s, filmmaker Kirby Dick made and released This Film Is Not Yet Rated to criticize the then private and mostly Christian conservative ratings board of the Motion Pictures Association as it was called the Motion Picture Association of America at the time. Of course, Dick was showing how violence is more acceptable over sexual content. The movie itself was part of a ratings controversy and ending up unrated. I felt Dick exploited too big of an issue but the fact the ratings board was more upset over the sexual content, it shows he had a point.
For a while it seemed to go dormant, at least with mainstream movies. There’s a lot more bad religious movies that were being made. Jesus Camp with its creepy indoctrination of young children is one of the most scary things ever shown in a documentary. Then, there was Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring and co-written by Ben Stein. It was supposed to argue that there is a conspiracy at all levels of academia and education. to exclude the concept of intelligent design.
It made about $7.7 million on a budget of $3.5 million but got bad reviews. Expelled was released in the spring of 2008. By the Fall of that year, David Zucker had released An American Carol, which was supposed to be a satire with a conservative humor slant. It stars Kevin P. Farley (aka Chris’ brother) as a Michael Moore-style filmmaker who learns the importance of the Fourth of July by going through the same past, present and future realms like Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
The movie also features cameos by well-known conservatives such as James Woods, Kelsey Grammar, Jon Voight, Kevin Sorbo, Zachary Levi and Dennis Hopper in his final movie role. There wasn’t much humor to the movie. Zucker resorts to gross-out humor and fat jokes. Well all else fails, someone slaps or hits Farley’s character or he falls down. There are a few good jokes such as ACLU lawyers portrayed as zombies. That has some bite to it, but Zucker wanted to make the movie a middle finger to liberals in a post 9/11 era. But even by 2008, mockery of Michael Moore was old-hat and the housing crisis and economy was a bigger issue.
I also think the movie was released on an attempt to influence the 2008 Presidential Election. Yet litle saw the movie. Produced on a budget of $20 million, it only made $7 million worldwide. Instead, for the most part, it seems Tyler Perry had taken over the Christian-based movies at the mainstream level. And he made a lot of money off of those awful Madea movies. I sat through about half of Diary of a Mad Black Woman and couldn’t see the big deal. Was it trying to be a comedy or a drama? There’s nothing funny about spousal abuse. Yet, it’s obvious Perry has a sexist biased against woman. Kimberly Elise, who has never really impressed me as an actress, seems almost to read her lines for the first time.
But for a while it seemed Perry was doing the right thing as he made all those movies and TV shows, building a fortune. Barack Obama had been elected President and people were surprised that he never turned America in an America where Sharia Law is in place. However, the re-election of Obama in 2012 set off a charge from those on the right.
In 2014, we saw the release of the Left Behind reboot that tried to impress people by switching Kirk Cameron for Nicholas Cage. However, it would receive a lot of bad reviews despite turning a modest profit of $27.4 million off a budget of $16 million. But Cameron appeared in his own movie Saving Christmas which managed to gross near $3 million off a $500,000 budget despite many Christians criticizing the materialistic viewpoints Cameron and the director Darren Doane were expressing.
Finally, there was the blockbuster God’s Not Dead, which grossed almost $65 million on a meager $2 million budget. The concept of the movie is so laughable it’s amazing that anyone would think it could actually happen. Sorbo plays a bitter college professor who demands his students proclaim God is dead or else they will fail. First off, no non-Christian college would allow such a thing. Just like the psychotic music teacher in Whiplash, instructors/professors like this only exist in the narrow-minded imagination of filmmakers.
It was around this time the Duck Dynasty weirdos were becoming popular as they loved to talk about Jesus and God even though they had to grow beards and wear bandannas because no one would really believe clean-cut white boys who play golf are also duck hunters. And these same people could actually make a business that would turn a good profit. Pretty much the Robertson clan of Duck Dynasty lost their population once the clean-cut photos went viral.
And more and more people were turning their backs on the Duggars after it was revealed the parents had been enabling years of child abuse by their eldest son Josh. And the Saving Christmas “won” Worst Picture and Worst Director at the Golden Raspberry Awards. And Left Behind was also nominated for Worst Picture as was Cage as Worst Actor. He lost to Cameron, who criticized that his little movie shouldn’t be put up with the bigger movies.
Ergo, there is the classic double stand doublespeak they use. Saving Christmas had the smallest budget. Other nominees including The Legend of Hercules, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers: Age of Extinction were more big-budget features. However, you put yourself out there, you got to take what you get. Saving Christmas was distributed by the Samuel Goldwyn Company which releases art-house, independent and foreign movies mostly.
You can’t expect to get a free pass just because your movie isn’t big. And also, you shouldn’t expect to get praise just for subject matter. If you’re going to tackle a subject matter, you better do it the correct way to make it entertaining. Movies that have focused on child abuse, such as Radio Flyer, or romance among developmentally disabled people in The Other Sister, were met with ridicule and scorn from critics as well as a poor box-office return.
In retrospect, people are looking back at TV shows like 7th Heaven and Bibleman with questions about their quality. And considering the child sexual abuse claims against Stephen Collins who was on 7th Heaven, it’s hard to romanticize a show like that especially since sexual abuse crimes are prevalent in a lot of religious schools, churches and settings.
A lot of Christian and faith-based movies went under the radar. But movies like Red Dawn, the 1984 version and the Dirty Harry movies, seemed to push back against the political left. But movies like Not Without My Daughter, starring the more liberal Sally Fields, was criticized for its portrayal of Iranians, Persians and just about anyone from the Middle-East. Then, you have crazy movies like If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, an obscure 52-minute movie that was reportedly popular in some church circles during the 1970s and 1980s. It portrays a violent America where the Communist have taken over. There are many scenes of bloody children including a boy being decapitated. Even with bad special effects, it’s still disturbing.
Cameron, the Kendrick Brothers, and the makers behind the God’s Not Dead movies want to be put up on a pedestal saying their movies shouldn’t be held to the standards of other forms of entertainment because they are focusing on a religious subject, even though it’s controversial among Christians themselves. There’s even some Christians who don’t believe in the Rapture or Hell. Sorbo starred and directed Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist which was released in early 2023. It made just over $4 million, but many reviews from professional critics aren’t available.
Audiences seem to be divided with some liking the movies and others not. This begs the question who should we really be listening to. We all have different tastes as movie lovers. But I feel some people may be review-praising these movie based solely on the subject matter. Are they really watching them?
Over Labor Day Weekend, Reagan opened up in theaters after spending three years of being unreleased. It wasn’t screened in advances to critics. And most professional mainstream critics have lambasted it as “hagiography” portraying Ronald Reagan, played by Dennis Quaid, as a saint. It currently has a 20 percent critics score on RottenTomatoes, the aggregate website and 98 percent from audience members. But the people going to see Reagan are the people who are probably conservative and Christians. I mean, it’s not like Bill Cosby being forced to go to a concert. People are going because they want to see it.
Even though the movie was filmed in Oklahoma, I have no desire to see it. I tried to watch Reservation Dogs which I felt was horrible and couldn’t make it through the second season. (This show is another example of subject matter versus storyline that I don’t like.) Reagan only had a reported budget of $25 million and it may break even and turn somewhat of a profit. It’s already grossed almost $19 million in just two weeks. However, I doubt it will be the juggernaut Sound of Freedom was.
And that’s another far-right movie that I have refused to watch even though it did receive more favorable reviews compared to previous movies. That movie made about $250 million. And it’s still impressive to make a quarter of a billion at the box office. However, the life of Tim Ballard, who is also played by Jim Caviezel, has led some to question the accuracy of the movie. Most movies take liberties with biopics. But you can only stretch the truth so far before you’re doing some damage.
That was my issue with American Sniper, which made almost $550 million at the box office and is Clint Eastwood’s highest grossing movie. It was based on the life of Chris Kyle, a U.S. Navy SEALS sniper during the Iraq War. Much of Kyle’s life has been questioned and even criticized. The man stated in his autobiography he killed two carjackers in Texas, even though it wasn’t verified. Then he said he was hired to shoot at looters during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This also is a fabrication and it also makes Kyle into a racist since w know what he was really saying. And I’ll just be blunt, Kyle should’ve known better than to hand a loaded firearm to a person he was suspicious of in the first place.
When you start twisting the facts around, more and more people start believing it. The miniseries The Path to 9/11 and movies like The Passion of Christ had an agenda to blame one group or section of people, when the actual story was more complicated. Yet, movies that have more liberal biases are also hard to watch. I didn’t care for “that sumbitch Reagan” but I found The Reagans miniseries just to be about as bad as conservatives who romanticize him did.
I have no problem with filmmakers who want to make faith-based movies or movies like Reagan. Yet, there’s a way to tell a story and make it good. I was no fan of either Presidents Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush but filmmaker Oliver Stone actually made them into complex figures in the movies Nixon and W. I also admired the casting and performance of James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush in W.
Sebastian Stan is playing Donald Trump in an upcoming movie, The Apprentice, which is scheduled to be released on Oct. 11. It’s supposed to be about Trump’s earlier years in business and real estate along with his relationship with Roy Cohn played by Jeremy Strong. The movie is written by Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the biography The Loudest Voice in the Room, a biography of Roger Ailes and the formation of Fox News. So, there’s no telling what the slant will be but I’m guessing it’s unfavorable.
It’s very likely The Apprentice may receive bad reviews as well and be not as successful. Both Reagan and Apprentice could be contenders for Worst Picture and Worst Actor. But if you make a movie with a political slant, you got to accept the fact that feedback from the public. There’s always blame when a movie fails and sometimes it’s warranted such as interference from studio executives of an actor’s ego.
Yet, just maybe, sometimes a movie is bad because it was badly written, badly directed and badly acted.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 