The Jack Reacher series, launched in 2022, received widespread acclaim for avoiding most of the woke tropes slathered all over the majority of streaming series and movies at the time. For those with short memories, in 2022, the idea of a project featuring a 6'3" 240 pound white guy as the main protagonist seemed impossible. The series felt like a refreshing callback to the 1980s and the action/thriller apex era of Stallone and Schwarzenegger.
Solving big problems with unfiltered masculine violence is something audiences love, but Hollywood usually hates. If the hero is not a 90 pound wheelchair-bound minority lesbian boss babe kicking patriarchal ass, Tinsel Town usually isn't interested. It was a miracle that Reacher was greenlit.
That said, just because an actor plays a cool character on screen does not mean they're also a cool person in real life.
Enter Alan Ritchson, who smartly kept his mouth shut through most of the filming for Jack Reacher. Unfortunately, Hollywood has a way of energizing people's worst impulses and a lot of actors feel compelled to loudly virtue signal in order to stay in the good graces of industry elites. Ritchson has been increasingly unhinged in recent months and his latest rant went off the deep end into violent territory when it comes to Trump and conservatives.
Ritchson now attacks Trump and MAGA voters regularly on issues ranging from immigration to the Epstein Files, and falsely accused Trump of assaulting a 13-year-old girl (an anonymous and baseless accusation that conveniently popped up in 2016 just as Trump was beginning his campaign for the presidency).
But where was Ritchson's steroid fervor during the Biden years? Where was the big, tough actor back then when it came to the trans grooming of children or Biden's bizarre hair sniffing habit? It's fascinating that celebrities only seem to find the voice to speak up when Democrats are out of power.
Ritchson was raised Catholic and voted Republican in his early years, until, he says, he had an "awakening" on the "black and white" nature of the church. Catholicism as an institution has also been overrun with progressive ideology in recent decades (nearly 50% of Catholics vote Democrat, 60% support legalized abortion rights and 75% support "trans rights", for example).
This would explain Ritchson's position that abortion is "spritiually wrong" but he still supports legalization. It also explains his argument that Christians who oppose immigration are going against the Bible. Being raised Catholic definitely doesn't ensure a conservative mindset.
It is a common tactic of progressives within the church to assert that conservative policies are "anti-Christian"; as if open borders, transgender acceptance, pacifism and killing babies are Biblical requirements. At bottom, the spread of these concepts would effectively mean the death of the Christian West, but hey, they're the good guys because they're "empathetic".
Some critics argue that Ritchson's continued affiliations with Christianity are a ploy to keep his large conservative audience intact, but if that's the case, then he has failed miserably. The actor has been on a tour of interviews to promote his latest movie "Motor City" and Reacher Season 4, but his comments have alienated a huge portion of his fans. Motor City opened last week to resounding crickets.
Although it was released in over 1600 theaters, Motor City grossed a dismal $1.6 million in its debut. Its per-screen average was a only $1,015, placing it 18th in the per-screen-average derby. Motor City’s production budget alone was $30 million, there is no reported information on the marketing budget (likely around $10 million). In any case, the film is a financial disaster.
Get Woke, Go Broke prevails again.
As for Ritchson, the collapse of his latest film suggests a dwindling fan base for future projects. When will Hollywood celebrities learn to shut up and keep their Reddit inspired political opinions to themselves? Probably never, but at least it's easier than ever for movie goers to figure out who and what these people are before spending their hard earned cash.