In a year where The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came along and swept everyone off their feet not only with its astounding sales, but also with the universal praise it garnered, most would have imagined that it would be hard for another game to reach that same level. And yet, Larian Studios’ recently-released RPG sensation Baldur’s Gate 3 seems to be giving Nintendo’s open world title a run for its money- at least right now.
The faith-based Sound of Freedom continues to be the most surprising movie hit of the year
25.07.2023 - 21:45 / polygon.com
While Barbieand Oppenheimerare the obvious breakout hits of the summer, a dark-horse movie calledSound of Freedom has proven to be its biggest box office surprise. The small movie from indie studio Angel Studios has grossed over $125 million in just three weeks, passing Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One for the third spot at the box office this past weekend. While the faith-based movie industry has had its hits, no one saw these kind of numbers coming. But the film’s popularity is at least somewhat explainable, in retrospect.
Directed by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde (Bella), Sound of Freedom stars The Passion of the Christ’sJim Caviezel as a fictionalized version of the very real person, Tim Ballard, a former agent for the US Department of Homeland Security. In the film, Ballard quits his job to rescue a kidnapped girl in South America, but ends up saving more than 100 victims of human trafficking. These events are inspired at least in part by stories of Ballard — though their complete accuracy is hard to verify.
Sound of Freedom’s resounding success can be chalked up to a combination of the usual (being a movie that people seemingly very much enjoy, social media word of mouth) and the unusual. Here’s how a bit of creative crowdfunding and a QAnon conspiracy theory factor in.
Sound of Freedom caters to an audience that’s often underserved at the movie theater — i.e., people who just want a straightforward thriller about an American being a hero and saving the day from an unambiguous evil. While there are plenty of movies interested in people fighting bad guys,Sound of Freedom keeps things significantly more grounded than most of the other movies in this summer blockbuster season, like Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One or Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny or any number of superhero movies. It seems that most folks who see it are having a great time, based on the movie’s A+ CinemaScore — an independently run exit poll of theater goers.
But as many spectators of the indie’s success have noted, the interest in the film may run deeper from a certain sect of people.
Sound of Freedom never mentions QAnon by name, but many critics say it has a lot in common with the dangerous conspiracy theory, which in many forms has suggested that there’s a secret cabal of evil elites around the world controlling global events and running a massive human trafficking and pedophilia ring (despite a lack of substantive evidence to support that belief). And that’s because the legacy of QAnon has formed an aura around Sound of Freedom that exists beyond the actual movie.
Both Ballard (the real person) and Caviezel (the actor playing him) each have their own connections to QAnon conspiracy theories.
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