Mar 16, 2012 2:39 PM EDT
Hollywood reporters say Disney's costly adventure is a flop, while
box-office results and moviegoers tell another story. Are media
outlets also missing the big picture on Romney?
When the media herd heaps premature ridicule on some presumed epic
failure, they'll seldom reconsider the available evidence and admit
that they've been wrong. Just ask John Carter—and Mitt Romney.
John Carter, an expensive Disney sci-fi spectacular released March 9,
provoked gleefully hostile comments from prominent press outlets that
seemed to celebrate the film's disastrous reception. A headline from
NBC New York asked, "Was 'John Carter' the Biggest Flop Ever?" while
Fox News proclaimed that "$250 million 'John Carter' Bombs at Box
Office." Entertainment reporters giddily compared the project to other
notorious disasters like Heaven's Gate—a bloated 1980 Western
immortalized in a 1984 bestseller I co-authored with my brother Harry
Medved called The Hollywood Hall of Shame: The Most Expensive Flops in
Movie History.
A New York Times report on John Carter's purportedly catastrophic
debut referenced another multimegaton bomb in its catchy headline:
"'Ishtar' Lands on Mars." The Journal of Record compared the new
Disney release about a Civil War veteran who flees Apaches and finds
himself magically transported to the Red Planet with the 1987
humiliation inflicted on Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty for their
wretched comedy about talentless rock musicians forced into a
high-risk adventure in North Africa. Reporter Brooks Barnes
acknowledged that John Carter "had suffered months of ridicule on the
Internet and had taken on a funereal aura" even before its Los Angeles
debut. Rich Ross, chairman of Disney Studios, told Variety: "I've
never had something healthy get treated like a corpse." As if to
confirm his pronouncement, The Detroit News ran a prerelease headline
proclaiming: "'John Carter' Set to Bomb Big."
Getty Images; Walt Disney Pictures
But how big did it really bomb?
Actually, the box-office returns in the U.S. and Canada looked
respectable if unspectacular, while the overseas grosses far exceeded
expectations. John Carter, which cost a reported $350 million to make
and market, earned $30.6 million in domestic ticket sales, with a
weekend per-screen average of more than $8,000, which earned second
place behind the smash-hit Dr. Seuss animated film The Lorax. In
Europe, Latin America, and Asia, the movie did much better—drawing an
impressive $70 million before even opening in China and Japan, two of
the world's biggest markets. Despite the ridicule from American media,
John Carter racked up the fourth-biggest Russian opening of all time.
The reputedly bland Romney seemed energized by the early-morning mobs,
leaping up on the stage to delight the overflow crowd, speaking with
passion and, dare I say it, crackling charisma.
Within five days of the film's release, dissenting voices began to
challenge the conventional wisdom that the film would lose major money
for the Disney Co. The Hollywood Reporter cited Tony Wible, a veteran
analyst for Janney Montgomery Scott, who projected that the most
likely write-down for the picture would be $53 million—far, far less
than Wall Street initially had feared—and even calculated a "best-case
scenario" in which the movie earned more than $50 million in profit.
Robert Levin in The Atlantic similarly insisted that "'John Carter'
Did Not Bomb," noting the boffo overseas business and the encouraging
B+ CinemaScore rating from filmgoers—suggesting that positive word of
mouth could sustain brisk business in the U.S. and Canada. In fact,
the Monday-through-Thursday take brought an additional $9 million in
North America, the sort of unexpectedly solid performance that
indicates that the film's second weekend take might not prove as
cataclysmic as giddy naysayers easily assumed.
Meanwhile, audiences and many critics seemed to enjoy the picture,
defying the prerelease assumptions of its awful quality. The Rotten
Tomatoes website showed a very slight majority of reviewers who
recommended the movie (96 positive reviews against 91 negative), while
civilian filmgoers delivered a good-but-not-great rating of 3.7 (of
5). A.O. Scott of The New York Times considered the movie "colorful
and kind of fun," while NPR liked its "utterly immersive and lifelike
characters." For the record, I also enjoyed the film and reviewed it
positively as a campy, energetic, go-for-broke hoot, irresistibly
unembarrassed by its own silliness.
Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom remains all but unshaken by
decent box-office performance and many favorable reviews, keeping
faith with the snickering narrative selected by most pundits before
they'd even seen the picture. Concerning John Carter and many other
heavily hyped but suspect projects, the most influential masters of
the media embrace the time-honored mantra: "That's our story, and
we're sticking to it."
The same questionable approach characterizes analysis of Mitt Romney's
campaign, where major media refuse to accept new evidence and
double-down on their initially dismissive reaction. Everyone who
follows politics knows the tired litany: the former Massachusetts
governor is too stiff, too plastic, too patrician, too inconsistent to
win the presidency. As a multimillionaire Mormon, he can't connect
with ordinary people and will never appeal to "born again" Christians.
He may win the GOP nomination by default, but he's inspired no real
enthusiasm from the party's rank and file and will lose in a landslide
to Obama.
For me, personal experience exploded those assumptions March 3, when I
introduced Romney to a wildly enthusiastic rally near my Seattle home
the day before the Washington state caucuses. More than 2,000 people
showed up at a community center in Bellevue on a damp, frosty Friday
morning at 8 a.m., lining up as much as two hours in advance,
overflowing the assigned room and then jamming into another hall to
listen to the proceedings through loudspeakers. The reputedly bland
Romney seemed energized by the early-morning mobs, leaping up on the
stage to delight the overflow crowd, speaking with passion and, dare I
say it, crackling charisma. The response proved deafening,
electrifying, exhausting—displaying the kind of intensity and emotion
I had last seen as a young volunteer in the Bobby Kennedy campaign of
1968 (no, I'm not kidding).
Of course, the press barely reported on this event—despite the
presence of camera crews from CNN and other major networks—because it
didn't fit their narrative of Romney as the pathetic, unloved Daddy
Warbucks trying to buy affection he couldn't earn any other way. The
media also largely ignored the next day's Washington state caucuses,
where turnout exceeded 2008's numbers fourfold (no, that's not an
exaggeration) and Romney crushed Santorum, 38 percent to 24 percent.
Similarly, the reporting on the primaries and caucuses of March 13
ignored all evidence of energy on Romney's behalf. In the Hawaii
caucuses, Mitt mauled Santorum 45 percent to 25 percent, with turnout
setting state records. Even in Alabama and Mississippi, where experts
initially declared that the Yankee governor stood no chance of
victory, he tied Gingrich (in Newt's home region) in percentage terms
in both states, while earning a near tie with both Santorum and
Gingrich among "born again" Christian voters in Mississippi, despite
presumed anti-Mormon prejudice. Meanwhile, after all the relentless
battering of the GOP frontrunner from both his intraparty rivals and
most of the media, he remains surprisingly competitive with President
Obama. According to the Real Clear Politics average of all the latest
trial-heat polls (as of Friday), Romney draws within 4 percentage
points of the incumbent—just outside the margin of error.
The media consensus discounts any evidence of Romney's progress for
the same reason it dismisses all indications of John Carter's success:
in both cases, it cost such huge piles of money to achieve even the
most dubious triumphs. It's instinctive for entertainment as well
political reporters to look askance at the most lavishly funded
competitors and to favor scrappy, low-budget upstarts.
But this inevitable bias shouldn't produce inaccurate scorecards or
shape unreliable predictions. John Carter, like the Mitt Romney
candidacy, may be clunky and clumsy and campy, requiring untold
millions to compete successfully. But both contenders, as imperfect as
they may be, stand a good chance of final victory.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment