Hard though it may be to believe, American film-goers still don’t seem to want to watch anti-American movies:
In Team America: World Police, the first Hollywood-financed movie inspired by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its attendant political controversy, South Park‘s Trey Parker and Matt Stone dispatched a squad of U.S. guerrillas — all in marionette form — to take down an Axis of Evil dictator and, in the process, slaughter the real villains of the piece: a bunch of self-important celebrities who had publicly opposed the U.S. policy. One of these stars is Matt Damon, who’s portrayed as such an idiot that all his dialogue consists of his grinning stupidly and saying, “Matt Damon!” The puppet Damon ends up dead, his head snapped by a Team America hero.
The real Matt Damon didn’t fare much better as the star of the new Green Zone: he went looking for the truth about Iraq’s WMDs, and got blown up by the IED of public indifference. The box-office curse of movies about the U.S. Mess-o-potamian escapade remained unbroken, as Damon became the latest star — after George Clooney, Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, not to mention the South Park guys — whose attempts to address the blood and blunders in our Mideast wars tanked with the mass audience.
Green Zone, reteaming Damon with Paul Greengrass, his director in the last two, very popular Jason Bourne films, earned just $14.5 million in its first three days at North American theaters, according to early studio estimates. That’s way below industry predictions (in the low to middle $20 millions) and less than a quarter of the $62 million amassed this weekend by the defending champ, Alice in Wonderland, which has leapt like a White Rabbit past the $200 million mark in just 10 days.
Full disclosure: haven’t seen it, almost certainly won’t see it. I’m not much of a movie fan, especially the type of movie with heavy-handed “message” overtones. Even though I’m well-read in military history, I rarely watch war movies (I suspect I have a touch of “extreme empathy“, honestly).
Update: Frank J. thinks it’s not all bad:
I’m sure Green Zone will make up the money in the merchandising like the McDonald’s Happy Meals tie ins.
