Disney poured some $295 million into Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but the company will apparently scrape to make a profit off the fifth and poorest-performing film of the franchise.
Meanwhile, in an unexpected turn of events, the low-budget action flick Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel (who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ), overtook Indiana Jones in the box-office stakes on the day of Sound of Freedom’s release.
The Harrison Ford blockbuster made just $11.7 million on July 4 while Sound of Freedom made almost its entire budget of $14.5 million back that day.
Sound of Freedom is based on the true story of Tim Ballard, a Department of Homeland Security agent who becomes frustrated with his work because he isn’t able to actually rescue so many of the kids being trafficked globally. He decides to leave the agency to rescue children being trafficked from as far away as Mexico and Columbia.
Everyday Americans apparently love Sound of Freedom and are voting with their feet.
So why does the media hate it?
The Washington Post accused Sound of Freedom of “warping the truth about child exploitation and catering to QAnon conspiracy theorists.”
In its headline no less, The Guardian smeared the film as “the QAnon-adjacent thriller seducing America” and credited its success to an “unsavory network of astroturfed boosterism among the far-right fringe, a constellation of paranoids.”
In an even more bizarre rant, Rolling Stone dubbed Sound of Freedom “a superhero movie for dads with brainworms” and a “QAnon-tinged thriller … designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer.”
Jezebel called it “an anti-child trafficking fantasy fit for QAnon” while Media Matters accused its star Jim Caviezel of offering “little more than a fever swamp of right-wing conspiracy theories.”
If, like me, you’ve grown cynical of the legacy media, you may now be motivated to drop all you’re doing, drive down to the nearest cinema, and try to work out why the film is such a must-see.
Before you do, the allegations made about Sound of Freedom by the prestige press deserve to be addressed.
In various appearances, Jim Caviezel has spoken of the “adrenochroming of children”—an alleged practice in which the chemical compound adrenochrome is taken from the bodies of trafficked children and used as an elicit stimulant.
Adrenochrome also happens to feature in the conspiracy theory known as QAnon. However, that theory goes much further by claiming the world is run by an elite cabal of satanic, cannibalistic child molesters who are addicted to the drug, are behind the global child sex trafficking industry, and removed Donald Trump from office to avoid being brought to justice.
Caviezel has publicly distanced himself from QAnon, explaining that he hadn’t even heard of it when Sound of Freedom was being filmed in 2018.
To be sure, the film itself has precisely nothing to say about QAnon or adrenochrome.
Tim Ballard, the real-life hero depicted by Caviezel, has denied the film has any ties to QAnon and has branded such allegations as “sick.”
When asked by Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy about the alleged connection, Ballard replied: “I can’t explain it and neither can they. Every show I’ve seen they just like to throw the word out QAnon, they make zero connection to the actual story.”
Ballard emphasized that every child and villain represented in the movie were based on actual events. “Where’s the QAnon doctrine being spewed in the film and in the script?” he asked, castigating critics for smearing the film by comparing it to conspiracy theories.
It is understandable for mainstream news outlets to at least ask about Jim Caviezel’s adrenochrome comments. But their unrelenting efforts to trash Sound of Freedom—a film that accurately exposes a very real, very diabolical, and now very global scourge—are, frankly, bizarre.
As commentator Gina Bontempo has remarked, “You’d think child trafficking was the one thing everyone could agree on,” but the progressive media “would rather turn a blind eye to one of the most pernicious evils happening both globally and domestically than accidentally agree with conservative Christians.”
More bizarre still is that two of the news outlets that smeared Sound of Freedom offered glowing praise for Cuties, a 2020 movie on Netflix about a twerking dance crew of little girls widely seen as pro-pedophilia.
Over 600,000 people signed a petition calling on Netflix to remove Cuties from its platform for its sexualization of young children.
Nevertheless, The Washington Post showered the film in praise, calling Cuties “an unflinching look at what it means to be a preteen girl” and quipping, “no wonder people can’t handle it.”
And Rolling Stone headlined its review of the film by writing: “Thanks to a major marketing mistake, this award-winning French movie has been accused of sexualizing girls. It’s actually a sensitive portrait of growing pains that deserves to be seen.”
Cuties good, Sound of Freedom bad. Is everyone clear?
Mainstream news outlets are only chipping away at their own credibility.
The more they beg the public not to see Sound of Freedom, the more free-thinking people will want to.
So go on, head down to your nearest cinema and see what all the fuss is about.
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Image credit: Youtube
