Thousands of active-duty military personnel may have been “pressured” into seeing the Melania documentary at cinemas around the country, a watchdog has warned.

The $75 million Amazon film opened last week to $7 million at the box office—despite universally terrible reviews.

According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, those numbers have been artificially inflated by pressure from MAGA-aligned officers leaning on their troops to buy tickets.

“People are scared,” Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the MRFF, said. Weinstein said he has received letters from members of the U.S. military at eight facilities worldwide, complaining that their superiors encouraged or pressured them to see the film.

“Nobody that I know wanted to go except for those that did not want to get jacked up by our unit commander for not attending,” one of those members told Weinstein in a letter seen by journalist Jonathan Larsen.

  • ceoofanarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 hour ago

    Even though I disagree with torture in all instances hard to feel bad for someone who agreed to help oppress and murder billions for the bourgeois.

  • AquaTofana@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    2 hours ago

    Thankfully this shit hasn’t made it to my installation. I’m guessing these eight bases “world-wide” have to be targeting the USMC.

    The Marines get the absolute bottom of the barrel treatment even as far military members go.

  • Whostosay@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    4 hours ago

    Lol thats not a $75M film. That’s an $82M film because that 7 million in sales was also spent by the same people who made it.

  • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    edit-2
    5 hours ago

    The ironic thing is that if it was a real documentary, talking for example how they met, how she got citizenship, her involvement in his businesses etc then a lot of people would watch it. Heck, I don’t care about movies about first lady, but I would watch it.

    It’s just for some reason they want to keep so far away from those topics they n made it about the 20 days before second inauguration.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 hours ago

    “Against their will” sounds funny in context. I was forced to do plenty of things in the military against my will. Most dealing with PowerPoint presentations.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 hours ago

      Isn’t the point of joining the military is to surrender free will? That’s one of the many reasons I didn’t want to.

      • RunJun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        5 hours ago

        In war, mostly yes. But the majority of the time, they only control your work hours. There’s a ton of caveats to that but day to day, it’s like any other job. But they cannot make you spend money on something like this. I don’t know if I could have not laughed in their face for trying to pressure that.

        *This varies more or less depending on the branch.

  • Tempus Fugit@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 hours ago

    I thought it was wild when my CO said Fox News was the only true news station. If he had told me I had to go watch some foreigner butcher English for an hour and a half I’d have lost my shit. I’d for sure be reporting his ass to the battalion or brigade commander. That shit is inexcusable.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Private, don’t worry, I won’t make you bomb that dinghy in the Caribbean Sea for no reason. Instead you can watch Melania and prepare me a film review report by next week.