From a reader:

Hi, Jonah
I’m a conservative screenwriter working toward my master’s degree at the University of Southern California. I enjoyed your article today on the current spate of anti-war movies. I certainly agree with your central point – that Americans are every bit as anti-anti-war as they are anti-war – but your piece fails to address the most salient factor in the failure of these movies: they’re terrible. Such is always the case when stories become sermons. This is the exact same reason evangelical Christians (of which I’m one) haven’t been able to crack Hollywood. When you just can’t contain your righteousness, your art suffers miserably.
It’s actually rather comforting to see that Hollywood secularists are as susceptible to this problem as we religious rubes are. Just thought I’d add my two bits. Keep rockin’.

Me: I agree with this entirely and in an earlier drafter I discussed this point (the badness, not the evangelical thing) at some length, but thought it too subjective and distracting given my other points. And, I think it sort of goes without saying that these movies are doing badly in part because they’re bad. Why they’re bad is a longer conversation, but I think this reader gets at an important part of the story.