The Sum of All Fears: Cowardice and Greed

To begin with, I don't understand what the big deal is with Ben Affleck. He's been involved in some high-profile projects and he's been sold as a wunderkind writer/director/actor, but I find him wooden and empty; when he scowls it's just that: a scowl -- I never see any evidence of gears turning under the surface.

Another strike this film has against it is that two other much better actors (Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford) have played Jack Ryan in the previous films and Affleck simply doesn't have the chops these guys have.

All that being said, The Sum of All Fears is based on a moderately successful Tom Clancy book of the same name and thus has the same built-in loyalty and fan base. So why did it fail at the box office?

Two reasons, probably, and only one overtly political. The first is the most obvious: the story posits a terrorist attack against a pro football game in Baltimore. Coming out less than a year after September 11th, this film was probably too intense a reminder of what terrorists have in mind for America. The fact that the terrorists are successful in the film is another problem (thousands of American citizens are killed); no one wants to see the bad guys win.

The second, deeper reason draws upon the first. In the novel, the terrorists are what 99% of terrorists are in the world today: fundamentalist Islamic fascists, intent upon creating a worldwide caliphate and forcefully converting, subjugating, or killing everyone else on earth. In terms of storytelling motivation for an antagonist, this one is unequaled (except for the movies where aliens want to eat us; you can't convert to alienism and avoid death, so it's worse).

So why change the terrorists to neo-Nazis? Because the filmmakers decided that Islamic terrorism was "cliched," and that it would be "incendiary" to depict Muslims as terrorists. Yet they would say their film was "timely" and "cutting-edge" (they always do). But they're cowards first and businessmen second. After all, the market for American films is now worldwide; it wouldn't do to offend the many movie goers living in 7th century Afghanistan, would it?

But Americans, seeing the truth, stayed away from The Sum of All Fears, and, adjusting for inflation, it places a distant third among the Tom Clancy adaptations.

If a book had a neo-Nazi terrorist and they wanted to make it into a movie, fine. But why not only destroy a franchise, but also be untrue to the book?

If you have a better reason than the ones I've given -- sheer cowardice and greed -- I'd like to hear it.