Poor Fox News. Despite its best efforts to keep Benghazi alive via “13 Hours,” the movie has flopped at the box office. So, naturally, those “fair and balanced” patriots took it out on their fellow Americans who happen to be liberals.
On The Five, cohost Greg Gutfeld had this “humorous” commentary on the film's flop:
How odd, left-wingers are now interested in profit to gain success. Wasn’t seeking the almighty dollar evil?
…Suddenly for 13 Hours, it’s way different because it’s the one film in Hollywood out of thousands that escaped their grubby little progressive paws.
If the flick had been an indictment of America, then profit wouldn’t even come up. But they hate that a movie with western sympathies actually exists, so they delight that a movie chronicling the tragic deaths of four Americans was outsold by crud.
True, the Benghazi movie didn’t make as much money as others. But let’s use that metric of success on the sad lefty blogger. You’re still at home in your stained sweats, eating Top Ramen over the sink, waiting for the next comic book blockbuster to rescue you from your finger-sniffing misery.
That knee-slapper was followed up by a discussion in which cohost Eric Bolling argued, with a straight face, that it was the left that “injected” politics into the movie, thereby suggesting it was their fault the movie was unpopular.
Now, there’s the real joke. As Crooks and Liars pointed out, “Fox News was hyping this movie to their viewers on a constant loop, hoping to make it a major hit and in the process, help take down Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee.” That’s not counting the column Fox News’ conservative Democrat Kirsten Powers happened to write in USA Today “just asking,” "Can Hillary take ‘13 Hours’ of truth?" Media Matters did the math and found that Fox devoted “roughly three hours” of air time to promoting the film, “repeatedly characterizing the movie as a threat to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”
In fact, Bolling’s cohosts inadvertently disproved his theory. First, cohost Dana Perino interjected that the left avoided the film because they were “worried” about it. And as Bolling urged viewers to see the movie he described as “too honest, too sincere and too documentary-like” for the left, Putin-admiring cohost Kimberly Guilfoyle added mockingly, “Bad timing for her [Hillary Clinton], for Iowa and New Hampshire and good timing for Weekend at Bernie’s.”
Juan Williams, the lone liberal cohost, did a pretty good job of arguing that it’s the right that has politicized the movie. But he gave a great big pass to the politicization going on all around him by people pretending otherwise. Nor did he point out that maybe, just maybe, the movie's unpopularity might be a reflection of out-of-step Fox News is with the American public.
And even so Guilfoyle attacked him:
GUILFOYLE: You know what, Juan? You know what smacks of hypocrisy? …Your commentary, OK? …Because all you do is bash the right and say, “Oh, they’re politicising it.? Let me tell you something. Your side ain’t so innocent.
Gutfeld laughed heartily.
Watch the Fox News “patriotism” below, from the January 19 The Five.
You know it doesn’t bode well, when the time one network spends promoting a film (3 hours), is longer than that film’s running time (144 minutes)
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Michael Bay is expert at making guy flicks with a lot of things blowing up so I thought adding a strong dose of patriotism would ensure a huge hit.
The braggart self-promoters of Fox News love to pimp stuff like this then take credit for its success. So why not admit failure? Oh, sorry, lost my head! 😱
Maybe if Michael Bay got Sarah Palin to appear naked as a love interest it would have moved some tickets amongst the Republican set. Gotta go. Suddenly feel ill. 😉
According to IMDB, the movie cost $50 million to make and so far it’s grossed $22 million, so it hasn’t broken even and might not for all I know. And I would guess that the actual percentage of movie goers who base whether or not they’ll see a particular movie based on their political views is pretty small.
I went to see “The Revenant” yesterday and there were a couple of older white guys that I pegged (pigeon-holed?) as “FoxNoise viewers” and figured they were heading into “13 Hours” (which was playing in the theater across the hallway) but stopped to chat about something. I went in, got settled in, and a few minutes later, I saw those same two guys coming into the same theater I was in (they were later joined by another guy) so I guess I misjudged them. (That, of course, doesn’t mean they hadn’t seen “13 Hours” before or weren’t going to see it later, but still.)
And, there’s also “The Hateful Eight” still playing (when I went and saw it, there were a few folks I would’ve pegged as “FoxNoise viewers” but there were several African-Americans in the audience).
And, quite honestly, I wouldn’t really be surprised if some (stereo)typical FoxNoise viewers wouldn’t take in “Ride Along 2.” Granted, they might not be the most likely audience but you are talking about a “cop dramedy” (in which the trailers show a pair of Black cops beating up on minorities and foreigners).
Seriously, the transparent stupidity of “The Five’s” analysis never ceases to amaze me. But at least its popularity with Fox News’ audience clues me in to the source of The Donald’s near brain-dead supporters.
I am surprised “13 Hours” isn’t the runaway hit Fox News predicted. It is the sort of hero-building drama like “American Sniper,” “Blackhawk Down,” and “Lone Survivor” which has done very well at the box office.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GLD18JorwQ
In fact, even having just seen the ads, I’m still half convinced that this movie was Holy Terror set at a Benghazi-esque consulate, and not a NYC stand-in. It contains the same “might makes right, fear the other” message, in such saturated amounts that the ads celebrate it.
And because January release was already mentioned, let’s mention the other part: Michael Bay. There’s a reason he only makes movies based on nostalgic toy line cartoons now- His films SUCK. People are so hard-up to relive the good times that they’ll go see Ninja Turtles, or Transformers, knowing full-well that his name assures it’ll be awful. But that’s a nostalgia rose filter. Everyone under the age of 45 grew up with some incarnation of them, from the comics that pre-date the toys to the CG cartoons today, and walked away with mostly fond memories of their generation of the franchise.
Benghazi, on the other hand… was a terrorist attack, that turned into a taxpayer-funded Republican witch hunt, of which two head inquisitors (Gowdy and Issa) flat admitted they were wasting our money on because they were that scared of a Clinton presidency. Even if Bay was a good director, no one wants to relive that. And bay is the polar opposite of a good director. In fact, a few of his interviews have me ready to say he’s the polar opposite of a good person.
9/11 movies did as well as they did because they were about the heroes, and the miracle survivors. They were about the parts we wanted to hear about and remember years later. What does this movie have? It’s ugly, in every sense of the word. It doesn’t even look visually appealing- Just a lot of explosions in a mud toned day for night. Orange and teal trying to deny that it’s orange and teal.
But GOD forbid Greg Gutfeld stop listening to his own voice long enough to understand any of these points.
Hey! It’s the free market in action! They ought to be happy. There’s no pleasin’ Faux.
Ted Nugent was the only one munching popcorn in the theatre for this one.
