Sound of Freedom is sailing toward $100 mil without breaking a sweat. It topped all Hollywood blockbusters, from Disney’s catastrophe, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, to Insidious, to Jennifer Lawrence’s middling sex comedy, No Hard Feelings. Only Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning could top it.
For a film that cost just $14.5 million, Sound of Freedom is rounding the bases and humiliating Hollywood by the minute, as if to say – what, like it’s hard?
They have one job in Hollywood: tell a great story. Why would they expect people to turn out if they can’t even do that?
Hollywood and those who cover Hollywood have lost the trust of the American public, who have begun to rely more on audience ratings at Rotten Tomatoes and word of mouth rather than critics. They’ve been burned too many times: mindless franchise movies or agonizing navel-gazing narcissism about identity – going to the movies has become a chore most would rather skip.
The disconnect here between the critics and the audience is laughable. And telling. “Yet not free of issues” is hilarious. The audience has it right. Hollywood would do better to start listening to them instead.
Listening to audiences is what Hollywood has done for decades. It’s only recently that they’ve decided to trust the gatekeepers more, to get those juicy headlines and online engagements with Gen-Z. But this has all but wrecked their brand.
It’s a little like this scene in a movie made at a time when Hollywood still told great stories, Bull Durham. Tim Robbins wants to “bring heat,” and “announce” his “presence with authority.” But he is not listening to his catcher, Kevin Costner.
Hollywood could learn a lesson or two from Bull Durham, both in its absolutely unqualified excellence and in its message in that scene, “don’t think, just throw.”
And that is what Sound of Freedom does. Its mission is not to scold its audience or to redefine how they see gender roles in society, but to tell a great story, not to mention celebrate Tim Ballard as an American hero who risked his life to save kids from the clutches of predators.
And therein lies the point of entry for the gatekeepers. The Left mostly exists huddled inside their fear bunker. They are consumed by paranoia, their imagination takes them to dark places, and for some reason, people give them microphones, jobs at media outlets, and cable news shows. In this case, because pedophiles are involved, and because the film was only given a chance to be seen on the Right, it must be Q’anon!
