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.

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[–] 91 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Why didn’t they save this for the political prisoners they need to torture?

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    [–] 63 points 9 months ago* (3 children)

    The mandatory cinema consumption featuring great leader's family will continue until morale improves.

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  • [–] 33 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago*

    Its actually a 50M film with a 25M advertising budget... They haven't even made their advertising expenses back. I wouldn't be surprised to find out 75% of ticket sales were bought with the ad budget. I never saw an ad for it.

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  • [–] 27 points 9 months 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.

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  • [–] 24 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Kelly told them they don't have to follow illegal orders, and forcing them to watch this movie sounds like a war crime.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Good god, this sounds like some shit they would do to those torturees at guantanamo, force them to watch this shit on repeat until they confess.

    I shouldn't make light of it we did some horrific torture at guantanamo, probably still do, popular music and movies is actually part of it, playing the same music on repeat, hot and cold temperature changes, stress positions, all sorts of disgusting shit, along with sexual abuse.

    We stopped pretending to be a civilized country in 2001.

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  • [–] 23 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    If they’re gonna do propaganda, why is it in the most pathetic way?

    Shouldn’t it be a film about national pride or something like that?

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I suspect that it's a reaction to the various successful media projects by Michelle Obama. In Trump's mind, the Obamas are making him look bad by being smart/successful/..., so this is Trump's attempt at showing that his first lady too can create a successful media project. Because the Trumps are tasteless and have surrounded themselves with sycophants, there wasn't anyone around to tell them how crap the movie was, so it got released as it is.

    The big tell that this was Trump's attempt at trying to one up the Obamas, is that once it became obvious that the Melania movie was bombing, Trump posted a super racist video about the Obamas. He tried to one up the Obamas creatively, failed, and then resorted to insults.

    Meanwhile Melania is 28 million dollar richer, so as usual she probably doesn't care that much about how bad this makes her look.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    It's not that they don't know the movie is shit, it's that they don't care. They are happy juicing it to have good numbers even when everyone hates it. Just as the president is happy having his name on something where all the people in it hate him, he's happy having a nobel peace prize on his mantle that was given to someone else.

    He's just a pathetic man, and can't or won't hide it in his old age as he loses control of his faculties and the party leads him around by the hand to dismantle his America First Legacy and the like. Talk about Sad.

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  • [–] 21 points 9 months ago

    It's the enemy military right? It's torture right?

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months 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.

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Isn’t that against the Geneva convention

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  • [–] 38 points 9 months ago (10 children)

    “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.

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  • [–] 25 points 9 months ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 20 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    But could they buy the tickets themselves and order you to go to the cinema during work hours?

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    They're all asleep at the Melania movie! Now is our chance to invade!" -- The Entire Massed Russian/Chinese/North Korean Army

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    ... please clap...

    Pathetic.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago

    Morale will improve or you get the movie again!

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  • [–] 19 points 9 months ago

    This is some real North Korea type stuff.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Are they trying to increase the suicide rate?!

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago

    Wow, that's kind of awesome. If those members didn't hate him already, they do now.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago

    They really want to get couped, don't they?

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    Hazing has changed over the years it seems

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU ONLY MAKES YOU STRONGER

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    Maybe they’ll be mad enough to disregard illegal orders next time they’re ordered to do something illegal.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Did the asswipes force the soldiers to pay an admission fee to watch the crap film? The drunk wife beater also wants the North Korean fake clapping and tears.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    It does read like that. That various "superiors" were "encouraging" people to go see it in the theater. Pretty much the only way to inflate the numbers and avoid "military uses millions of dollars to buy tickets for a movie".

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months 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.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago

    Its the least they deserve for continuing to be the iron fist of the christofacists.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Trumps latest nickname 'clockwork orange'

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    How dare they be pressured to take a long nap.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months 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.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    The more I watch the more I think of the propaganda songs Romania made about Elena Ceaușescu.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months 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.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    I read this elsewhere and I thought it was satire.

    Well, at least hopefully this will cause dissent in the army as they stop taking him seriously.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    "I'm fine with murdering people in the name of the oligarchy but I draw the line at watching a boring movie!"

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    [–] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Unsurprising. Usually the far-right church infrastructure also buys tickets in bulks to these types of events.

    I used to date a woman whose dad was a pastor and his church would get bulk tickets to stuff like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ to give out like candy. It undoubtedly inflated the box office numbers.

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  • [+] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I feel sometimes like many of them almost acknowledge their weird dichotomies but compartmentalize it. For example, to support ICE to me seems inherently unchristian, because the bible including the new testament constantly talks about treating foreigners well and being peaceful/forgiving/non-materialistic.

    But they will excuse voting for Trump by saying "well, he isn't my preacher!". To me that is simply moral relativism, so the Christian part is even more odd, how they barely ever display the values the bible says that they are supposed to live by. It is totally superficial and a country-club type arrangement.

    The government is a proxy that allows their bigotry to manifest in the real world, while they can still wear a fake smile and say "I'll pray for you" and in their own mind they are an agent of peace on earth through their prayers. Christianity (USA right-wing varieties) to me is a strange broken mindset, I grew up with reformed Christianity and have had to purge it from my mind as an adult.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago

    He told Business Insider. “They were pressured to see the movie. Your military superior, that’s not your shift manager at Taco Bell or Starbucks. They have complete and total control over you.”

    No shit. Why do you think most people don’t join the cult? It’s been awful for literally generations.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    War is hell.

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