Movies
Flags of Our Fathers: Before I begin, let me say this is not a "review" of the movie, mainly an observation regarding the audience for this particular movie. I work around forty to forty five people who are under thirty five and to a man/woman they are simply not interested in seeing anything having to do with WWII. It's a generational thing and the WWII generation is simply not a bunch they connect with in any way other than wishing they were all dead so the VA hospitals could be turned into something useful. They have been "taught" that Truman should have been tried as a war criminal; that Ike was a raging incompetent who threw lives away in various battles, especially Omaha Beach and the Bulge (the very few who have any knowledge of those two battles); that the slaughter of our men in the Pacific was another war crime, this one committed by MacArthur (and the "planners"); and many feel that the combat vets who landed on those Pacific Islands were "stupid." Our colleges and universities have succeeded in castrating our culture; they have in fact, created another country, one in which we can have no pride at all. This audience will not attend this movie. Many of us, like me, just don't like war movies (if this is a war movie and not another Hollywood destruction of our past); many more don't want to shell out the twelve bucks per person to see anything unpleasant; and the people in my office seem to think that video games, football games, porn, and perhaps the election, are of more interest to them. For those who had relatives who fought in WWII---like now dead grandfathers and so on--- the period is of no more interest than is The French and Indian Wars. Flags etc. represents a story about a dead past, one that is of no interest to them. Any casual curiosity the younger audiences have will not translate into significant box office.

Another way of saying that this movie cannot make big money with today's audiences, young or old.