The Fifth Estate, the upcoming film about the document-leaking website WikiLeaks, would seemingly be the perfect movie for young, freedom-loving Americans. Unfortunately, many of them are either too young to remember the rise and fall of WikiLeaks or won’t appreciate the portrayal of the organization’s founder in the Dreamworks film.
The movie endeavors to portray the history of the website and the fears, struggles and challenges of its creators, Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg. In choosing to leak secret documents online, the two men must weigh revealing truth against the possibility of endangering lives. The Dreamworks representation is based on books by Domscheit-Berg and British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, who both worked for The Guardian when the news organization worked closely with WikiLeaks.
The story should appeal specifically to young Americans. They’ve experienced firsthand the National Security Agency scandal involving leaker Edward Snowden, an individual whom many of them believe is a hero. The work of WikiLeaks paved the way for people like Snowden, creating a whole new ‘check and balance’ to the government. Young Libertarians and progressives especially should be lining up to see this film. Yet after watching it, I don’t actually believe it will pique the interest of Millennials.
An advance screening of the film at a D.C.-area theater last Wednesday night was only half-full. Ironically, viewers’ phones were confiscated at the door because the WikiLeaks movie is an “anti-piracy film.”
But perhaps the theater was more worried about people texting or playing games on their phones than capturing illegal footage of the movie. Reactions to The Fifth Estate weren’t good.
“I almost fell asleep,” one person said.
“I should have gone to the other movie,” another moviegoer expressed.
“I knew it was going to be boring,” a woman admitted.
The audience feedback skirted the edges of the real hinderances of the film, however. Here are three reasons The Fifth Estate probably won’t draw the youth crowd it should:
1. No star power
Actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Brühl don’t have the pull of some of the bigger Hollywood stars. Cumberbatch, know primarily for his role in the British TV series Sherlock, is especially at a disadvantage in this film. Normally somewhat of a cult heartthrob, Cumberbatch is creepy at best in the role of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He has no love interest in the film and is portrayed as having questionable moral and ethical judgment. Yikes.
And despite appearances in Inglourious Basterds and The Bourne Ultimatum, Brühl simply isn’t a well-recognized actor. His other film this year, Rush, opens prior to The Fifth Estate, and that could help give him some more visibility â if people don’t get too distracted by his co-star Chris Hemsworth’s gorgeous face.
The other ‘names’ in the The Fifth Estate, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci, don’t have major roles and definitely not ones that would entice people to see film.
2. Young Americans don’t remember â or care â much about WikiLeaks
Young Americans keep up on current cultural events, but their knowledge of the world news cycle is often lacking.
WikiLeaks likely didn’t break into the consciousness of many Americans until at least 2010, with the release of the ‘Collateral Murder’ footage from Iraq War. And even then, Millennials probably don’t know much about the early days of WikiLeaks or why it caused such international drama. They know Assange exists and are familiar with the name of Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier arrested for leaking classified military documents to WikiLeaks, but, for many of them, that’s about it.
Even NSA leaker Snowden is less familiar to some young people than Kim Kardashian’s baby.
Are young Americans, who spend countless hours on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, going to go see a two-hour movie about a major news event of the last five years? Likely not. That’s probably more time than they’ve spent reading the news in the past three months. The Fifth Estate is simply not something that a lot of young Americans are going to spend their time and money on.
3. WikiLeaks supporters won’t like the portrayal of Assange
The two groups of young American most likely to appreciate a film about WikiLeaks are Libertarians, who strongly believe in government transparency, and young progressives, who booed Nancy Pelosi for calling Snowden a traitor. But what they won’t appreciate is The Fifth Estate‘s portrayal of Assange. As mentioned previously, the founder of the website is depicted as having questionable moral and ethical judgment. He’s the main character of the film, but not the hero. While debatable, that title is most aptly given to Domscheit-Berg, who destroyed the submission platform on WikiLeaks.
In typical WikiLeaks fashion, the website released what it called a “mature” version of the Dreamworks script, then condemned it, saying it was “irresponsible, counterproductive and harmful.” It’s possible that young Libertarians will take their cues from WikiLeaks and Assange on this one, choosing not to give their money to “a work of fiction masquerading as fact.”
