From our friend Christian Toto at The Daily Caller:

Conservatives are up in arms that a film celebrating the Navy Seals who killed Osama bin Laden will hit theaters less than a month before the 2012 presidential election.

Hollywood routinely produces left-of-center content, but a cinematic reminder of the Obama administration’s crowning achievement smacks of an unpaid political ad, a cinematic October surprise.

But conservatives should partially blame themselves for the paucity of GOP-friendly films in the marketplace.

To paraphrase a great baseball film, when they show them, they don’t come.

Yes, some recent blockbusters like “300” and “The Dark Knight” were embraced by the right for their conservative strains. But unabashedly conservative films have a lousy commercial track record.

Movies like “The Undefeated,” “Atlas Shrugged,” “I Want Your Money” and “An American Carol” failed to ignite the box office in ways that would make movie studios scratch their chins with interest.

“The Undefeated,” the most recent pro-conservative film, used a guerilla marketing campaign to spread the news of its theatrical release. Yet after 28 days, the documentary highlighting former Gov. Sarah Palin’s political ascent earned only $116,381, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.

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Is Harry Potter now or has he ever been a communist? Just kidding. . . he’s no Smurf. When I first read the books, I recall some conservatives screaming that Potter sends the wrong messages. Imagine my surprise to discover the exact opposite. Indeed, at its core, the Harry Potter series is a truly conservative work, and it seems to me Harry should be considered a conservative hero.

"You are charged with being an inconvenient truth."

** SPOILER-AMUS **

Let’s consider the various themes that run throughout the books and movies. Do you remember the individual v. collective thing from my prior post about what makes a film conservative (Portus)? Potter has it in spades:

• Anti-Government Themes. A common theme throughout the books is that the government not only cannot help you, but will abuse its power to harm you. The Ministry of Magic is hopelessly bureaucratic and ultra-intrusive. It regulates every trivial aspect of wizards’ lives, e.g. caldron sizes, but it cannot protect the people. Instead, it gets brutal trying to cover up its ineptitude. When Dumbledore warns the world that Voldemort has returned, the MOM tries to discredit Dumbledore and then Harry. When this proves ineffective, it tries to drive Harry from the magic world through a Soviet-style show trial. It then drums up fake charges against Dumbledore and chases him from Hogwarts, where he is replaced with a bureaucrat (Delores Umbridge) who imposes an educational agenda designed to lower all children to the lowest common denominator. The government also seizes key industries, hides behind a veil of secrecy, denies the truth, and locks up its opponents. Frankly, this sounds like something Ayn Rand or George Orwell could have written.

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Ed. Note: Please welcome longtime commenter Andrew Price to the front page. — JN

It may sound strange to assert that many conservatives don’t understand what makes a film conservative, but the evidence is all over the web.  More and more conservative websites are listing their top conservative films, but few of the films they list can actually be considered conservative.  It’s as if they just picked films they like and then struggled to find something. . . anything they could call conservative within each film.

Indeed, you’d be amazed how many people identify leftist propaganda as conservative because “that film rocked” or because it has a tough guy or advocates revenge. When was conservatism ever about revenge?  And many are mistaking errant lines of dialog for conservative themes. . . a serial-killing, eco-terrorist Marxist does not become a conservative hero just because he spouts off that he doesn’t trust the federal government to provide quality health care.

“I’m just not sure ObamaCare will work?”

So what are conservative values?

Well, surprisingly, this is where people get lost.  Many simply want to attribute everything good to conservatism and everything bad to liberalism.  Others claim things like patriotism, bravery, and even religious belief as conservative values.  But these aren’t uniquely conservative values. Indeed, many liberals have fought bravely and died for this country, and there are even leftist churches, and the truth is that both sides claim to believe in these things. . . they just see them differently. It’s in that difference where we need to look to decide whether a film is conservative.

To bottom-line it, conservatives believe in the individual over the collective but temper their belief in individuality by requiring people to act according to a code of conduct based on traditional morality.  Liberals believe in the collective over the individual and, where they allow individuality, they disdain traditional morality or personal responsibility.  Thus, uniquely conservative values tend to be centered around:

(1) faith in individual rights over collective rights,

(2) an acceptance of cause and effect, and a willingness to let people bear the good and bad consequences of their actions,

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It’s hard to say this, but say it I must: one of the reasons that so many current conservative films don’t get distribution or gain success is that they stink.  You heard that right.  Many of them simply suck.

Yes, political bias is the main reason conservative films don’t get distribution; there are a ton of crappy liberal films that get distribution.  But that doesn’t change the fact that some of the most highly publicized conservative modern entrees into the field of film have been total artistic and popular bombs.

Filmmaker Michael Pack

When a conservative film gets made that is actually high quality, it’s a surprise.  So when I saw new documentary, The Last 600 Meters, I was shocked.  It’s gripping, engrossing, enthralling.  It’s a movie every American should see.

The Last 600 Meters tells the story of the two deadliest battles of the Iraq war — the Battles of Fallujah and Najaf — from the perspective of the soldiers who fought in them.  We see through their eyes – the footage and stills were taken during the actual battle.  We meet the strong, resilient, sensitive and brave men and women of the armed services who do the fighting and the killing and the dying that we won’t do. (more…)