As Sony continues to lick their wounds from the dismal performance of White House Down at the box office, some conservative groups are celebrating the studio’s pain.
White House Down stars Jamie Foxx as a liberal president who is under attack from a formidable group of pro-military government detractors disgruntled over the commander-in-chief’s plan to withdraw troops from the Middle East.
Reacting to a perception that the film was inundated with liberal propaganda, some conservative commentators called for audiences to boycott it.
“If you spend one damn cent on this crap, you’re spitting on our troops,” wrote Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com on Monday. “Repeat after me, conservatives: Not one damn cent.”
The Hollywood Reporter wrote:
“Schlichter, a veteran of Desert Storm and the NATO Kosovo campaign of the 1990s, reminded readers that Foxx once compared President Barack Obama to Jesus. He wrote that White House Down is evidence that. ‘In the eyes of Hollywood, the military is an all-white, all-male organization so dedicated to unfocused imperialism that it is willing to commit mass murder of fellow Americans for the chance to die in some Middle East hellhole.’”
White House Down director Roland Emmerich, was also a target of conservative ire. THR further reported that Breitbart.com’s Christian Toto, described Emmerich as being known for “dumping ideological sludge atop his bloated disaster films.” He also called it “unrelenting liberal propaganda.”
On the other hand, more objective analysts had different reasons for White House Down failure. It didn’t help that the plot is very similar to Olympus Has Fallen, which grossed $161 million worldwide since its opening. White House Down cost $150 million to produce and earned $32 million worldwide since debuting last Friday.
The timing was likely off given the abundance of male-centric action films currently playing, like World War Z and Man of Steel. Let’s not forget to mention what one objective-sounding conservative radio host said: The film is “drearily, predictably bad.”
