“Bros,” a RomCom billed as “the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio,” tanked at the box office over the weekend. The film, which markets itself proudly on its gay content and predominantly LGBTQ+ cast, brought in a depressing 4.8 million in sales, that’s 40% less than anticipated.
While you may have never even heard of the movie, by now it’s safe to say you’ve heard about Billy Eichner, comedian and co-writer for the film, who took to Twitter to complain that “straight people just didn’t show up” despite glowing reviews.
Highlighting his perspective of those who didn’t watch the movie, he followed up with another telling tweet.
“Everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo…”
Some, ostensibly including Eichner himself, have laid the blame of Bros’ failure squarely at the feet of homophobia. How couldn’t it be, with glowing scores on Rotten Tomatoes, an A on CinemaScore, doting reviews from legacy medias, and the recommendations of famous celebrities like Seth Rogan, Chris Evans, and Mariah Carey?
Of course, this is easily countered with much more practical explanations. RomComs are something of a dying breed; they may as well have gone the route of the Western in terms of major blockbuster releases. It’s not like the film had any heavy hitters either – most RomComs thrive on the chemistry of already well-known and beloved actors to sell the show. In fact, the only marketable talent this film can lean on is Judd Apatow, but let’s be honest, his producing credit isn’t bringing asses to the seats. Likewise, the film’s R rating may have made it less accessible to under-eighteen audiences, as well as the casual moviegoer as it puts the film in the “raunchy-bin” along the likes of American Pie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and the 40-Year-Old Virgin. Put simply, this was a niche production that likely flew under most people’s radars.
Obviously, all anyone needs to do is point to the success of Brokeback Mountain or Modern Family to pull the loose threads of this lazy claim, but I like to hear myself type, so there you go.
But there is something a bit deeper at play here that I think isn’t getting quite enough sunlight. To get into that, we need to reach back a few years.
In November of 2019, the most recent iteration of Charlie’s Angels saw its Box Office release. Like Bros, the film suffered a dramatic loss, failing to crack the $9 million mark on its opening weekend.
Leading up to its release, director Elizabeth Banks placed her movie on a kind of identitarian pedestal, all but pleading for tickets to sell:
This, of course, ignores the successes of the original show and its subsequent film debut, but this is the industry of revisionist history, so let’s forget about that.
Banks certainly saw a difference between male and female space in cinema, citing the successes of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel as female leads in a “male genre.” She was likewise very vocal about her female-centric approach.
In an interview with Collider, Banks emphasized her sense of the film’s target audience:
“It’s important that women, the audience for this movie, sees themself in some part of this movie. … It’s a movie that I want to entertain all audiences but I did want to make something that felt important to women and especially young girls.”
Not just escapist entertainment, there was certainly the implication of activism as well.
“One of the ingredients of this movie was supporting and believing women … we literally have a character who is essentially working at a big corporation and is not being believed or listened to by her bosses.”
Neither men nor women had much interest, it turns out. This could have been related to a plethora of concerns, again due to casting, issues with the script, or that it is all but a dried-up franchise to name a few, but regardless, the issue wasn’t about men at all. Despite being Charlie’s Angels’ target audience, more women actually went to see Rambo: Last Blood.
Just last month, however, Banks reversed her stance on Charlie’s Angels, telling The New York Times, that the film was poorly marketed.
“I wish that the movie had not been presented as just for girls, because I didn’t make it just for girls … There was a disconnect on the marketing side of it for me.”
In a stunning demonstration of actual gaslighting, she added:
“…when women do things in Hollywood it becomes this story. There was a story around ‘Charlie’s Angels’ that I was creating some feminist manifesto. I was just making an action movie.”
Amusingly, Eichner himself had his own marketing pirouette, just in the other direction. Before the release of Bros, he said on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take Podcast, that the movie was just a comedy, not a political statement.
“When Nick and Judd and I sat down to write it, we never thought, alright, let’s write a historic movie … we just thought, let’s just write a really fucking funny movie.”
Something certainly seems shifty here, and it’s not just the narratives surrounding these productions.
Reasonably, one could say that neither Banks nor Eichman explicitly blamed an “-ism” for their failures, but the implications are strong enough. Certainly, the audience felt as much, and that alone goes a long way. And it’s far from isolated; this trend can be seen in a lot of modern movies, not least of which the likes of the disastrous Ghostbusters 2016 or Terminator: Dark Fate, just to name a couple.
Now, perhaps my savvier readers will have noticed a glaring omission in my analysis: I haven’t referenced Wokism. There’s a reason for that. Three, in fact.
First, I’m very cautious of my use of the term, as it’s invaluable in this zeitgeist, and misuse is to our detriment. Indeed, I’m writing a series on the subject, which you can find here.
Second, while that certainly plays a role in many of these kinds of Hollywood blunders, and arguably did with Ghostbusters 2016 and Charlie’s Angels 2019, I honestly don’t know if Bros is woke — I just haven’t cared enough to look into it. If Eichner did write a movie that was a comedy first, and gay second, that’d be fine: simply having a romantic comedy with gay characters isn’t woke (though I’ll admit that the marketing emphasis on the gay aspect, the heavy handed gay-cultural themes of the trailer, as well as Eichner’s behavior, certainly don’t bode well).
Third, Wokism doesn’t even need to apply to reach the crux of this piece.
Mulling over these films, their failings, and the marketing strategies, it’s easy to think it’s just for an agenda, to change the world. Activism before creativity. And I’m certain there’s legitimacy to that. I can’t imagine it’s for monetary gains when it fails like this; as the saying goes, “go woke, go broke.” Yet, I’d argue there are two clandestine factors at play as well, and these are perhaps at the core of this brave new world of tone-deaf, identitarian content and narratives.
Perhaps the most insidious is what’s known as ESG scores, but I’ll save that for a separate article.
The other is…psychological.
To the elites in Hollywood — as well as the powerful who run our medias and major industries, even those controlling our shipping, manufacturing, health, and so on — there is a natural order. In this, you are the deigned consumer. Mind you, this isn’t an anti-Capitalist observation, but rather an exploration of out-of-touch hubris. I believe that to Eichman, Banks, and Feig, it’s your job to show up. When you don’t, you’re the one in the wrong. The knee-jerk reaction then is to shame, gaslight, punish…
This is easiest when they can lean on an “-ism.”
While their egos are certainly strong enough to believe they may just be saving the world, one ticket at a time, I think it’s always more about them than the message. Regardless, to these people the problem is never what they create or the choices they make; there’s no accountability, self-reflection, or personal growth. For their part, the order is the agenda, the yes-man bubble, the way things always have been and always will be in these incestuous industries. They think for you, speak for you, and you’re supposed to like it.
Indeed, many do.
To their credit, despite how poorly this reflects on them, it does work. People do feel pressured to prop them up, to watch their films, to show up. On one hand, it’s to protect yourself, to signal that you are not an “-ist;” while on the other hand, it’s to feel like you are making a difference, sticking it the deplorables that taint otherwise civil society, even if none of this is real.
It therefore speaks volumes when, for whatever reasons you may have, you reject their delusional worldview, the sociocultural demand to consume their content, the fallacious labels used to reduce you to a bigot, and simply say, “no.”
“I’m not buying it.”
Not the product. Not the narrative. Not the agenda.
And the louder they are, the more they repeat this trope, the more obvious they become.
So, while we see stories of all you “-ists” making the rounds of legacy media, regardless of what is stated and what’s implied, make no mistake that at the heart of their weaselly gaslighting is petty entitlement. The raging emotion on full, beautiful display is a perfect testament to how indebted Eichner feels you are to his work, and I have to say, his elitist tantrum is fucking glorious.
You can just smell that desperation…