The term “bomb” has been obfuscated because of the increased presence of financial speculation. But studios rarely disclose the total cost (involving marketing and advertising) for a new release, and there’s no way to determine the actual profitability when considering all forms of revenue. This summer’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu in all likelihood didn’t make back its budget in the theatrical window, but will become a win for Disney eventually as a result of all the toys and games it sold. The unquestionable “bombs” are those that saw only declining interest and toxic word-of-mouth; another misfire from this summer was Supergirl, which both collapsed after its low opening weekend and signified a lack of confidence in James Gunn’s ongoing cinematic universe.
Younger film fans are desperate to quantify the success of a film instead of developing original criticism, so perhaps the obsession with box office makes sense. Even then, there’s usually a cultural element involved in why a film’s saddled with such a negative perception. When looking at raw production budgets versus revenue, John Carter, The Lone Ranger, and The Marvels would all be in the running to be the biggest money-loser ever, but they were also instances in which a studio (all Disney) poured extensive resources into a potential franchise that had no cache. It’s often that these bombs have repercussions that expand beyond the films; Michael Cimino’s revisionist Western Heaven’s Gate caused the collapse of United Artists and is credited with ending the “New Hollywood” era where studios handed over unlimited resources to auteur filmmakers. Another example is Renny Harlin’s Cutthroat Island, which caused Carolco Pictures to cease operations, inspired Geena Davis to seek early retirement, and temporarily killed the swashbuckling adventure genre until it was revived by Pirates of the Caribbean nearly a decade later.
It’s due to this capitalistic lens of media criticism that it’s so surprising that Desert Warrior has disappeared, and hasn’t been acknowledged for being potentially the most immediately unprofitable blockbuster in some time. That the film, after a limited release in April (from the small distributor Vertical) might explain why the reported budget of $150 million resulted in a sum of less than $800,000. You’d be forgiven for not knowing that a historical action epic with Anthony Mackie and Ben Kingsley was even made, because its release was more of an added bonus than a goal. Despite the presence of English director Rupert Wyatt, Desert Warrior was funded by the Saudi Arabian production houses MBC and AGC Studios. As the first major English-language production made with Saudi money, Desert Warrior was intended to serve as a training ground for the country’s emerging film business. Instead of a traditional film school, an investment was made to develop skills for a daily crew of around 500 through the creation of a film that mirrored classical Hollywood epics like Ben-Hur or Spartacus.
Desert Warrior isn’t the first Saudi investment in the international film industry. The Red Sea International Film Festival has become a popular venue for everyone from Michael Caine and Adrien Brody to Queen Latifah and Vin Diesel; Dakota Johnson even noted that it "renewed her faith in cinema,” although she might be predisposed to support any country that wasn’t directly involved in Madame Web. That this event, much like the Riyadh Comedy Festival, only earned a week of backlash should be an indication that celebrities aren’t concerned about the criticism of being involved with a country under a unitary militaristic monarchy, and that Desert Warrior won’t be the last of its kind.
Desert Warrior is based on the Battle of Dhu Qar, waged in pre-Islamic South Iraq during the seventh century, but it’s notable about the lengths taken to qualify that fact; the film’s end title cards specifically note that the story is mostly fictional, and that you’d have to squint to interpret its bloated hero’s story as being a sincere exploration of the Arabian Peninsula’s political makeup. Desert Warrior is nonetheless modeled off of classic sword-and-sandals stories with Mackie (in a particularly awkward Persian accent) as the thief Hanzala, who united Arab tribes under the Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart) in a rebellion against the cruel Emperor Kisra played by Kinglsey in an inadvertently hilarious performance. Kingsley’s a brilliant actor and also takes “paycheck roles,” and for better or worse it’s as if he is in a completely different film than everyone else.
The most puzzling aspect of Desert Warrior is that it has the scale of an epic, but not the grasp of one. Many would point to the success of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey as proof that audiences seek a return to practical sets and locations, but Desert Warrior doesn’t take advantage of the cinematic possibilities of the Red Sea climate. The cinematography is defined by stillness, but there isn’t enough intimacy to provide any sense of scale; the dialogue might’ve been intended to seem classical, but it's too archaic to be profound. The few attempts to modernize the aesthetics come off as opportunistic, with title cards embedded with frozen images that call to mind the credits of an 1980s sitcom.
The most disappointing aspect of Desert Warrior is that it isn’t an interesting failure in the way that a truly memorable bomb should be. I thought of The 13th Warrior, the misguided medieval epic from Die Hard director John McTiernan, which shot for so long over-schedule that its star, Antonio Banderas, missed the chance to play Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator. That’s a film that was clearly hacked to death by the studio, but there’s more evidence of intentionality than anything that Wyatt does with Desert Warrior. I’d point to Rise of the Planet of the Apes as a strong showcase for what Wyatt can do with a studio blockbuster, but I suspect that AGC didn’t give him the same editorial support for Desert Warrior.
It’d be silly to fault Mackie or the other actors involved for doing their best with the material, and it’s no less egregious than the cavalcade of celebrities who do commercials and sponsorships. There isn’t a lot of maliciousness involved, it would be more interesting if Desert Warrior was pure propaganda and not a tired rendition of components from better films; there’s a shot of elephants marching into battle lifted straight from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and swapping desert shots that could double for Lawrence of Arabia if you were watching on an iPhone. The most insidious part of Desert Warrior isn’t that the Saudis are trying to replicate the film industry, but that they threaten to make it irrelevant.