‘Our Brand Is Crisis:’ Is cable news taking a toll on the political drama?

This weekend brought a surprise involving “Our Brand Is Crisis,” the Sandra Bullock-Billy Bob Thornton movie about rival U.S. political consultants in South America that crashed and burned at the box office.

That’s not the surprising part: The dramedy was tracking poorly and pretty much no one expected a hit, not even studio Warner Bros., whose marketing spend in recent weeks seemed, well, disciplined would be one way to put it.

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What is surprising is the larger context into which this movie comes. “Our Brand Is Crisis” is part of a long line of movies that look at the inner workings—occasionally idealistic, mostly Machiavellian—of our political process.

Electoral democracy is a system easily given to drama, when it’s not setting itself up perfectly for satire. Movies such as “The Candidate,” “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” have all come to be classics on this basis; differing worldviews shade all of these efforts, yet they are united by the fundamental quality of a keen interest in, and astute grasp of, the inner workings of a political system.

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But these movies, alas, also have something else in common: They all came out a long time ago. (The most recent among them was “The Candidate,” and it was in theaters at the same time Nixon was in the White House.) Many of the more recent movies about the intricacies of campaigns and legislation—those from, say, this century—have been a more lackluster bunch. To name a few examples: “Man of the Year,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The Ides of March,” “Swing Vote.” Also “The Manchurian Candidate,” but not the good one.

Weak crops of movies don’t always follow from one trend; sometimes a number of mediocre efforts just happen to come along at the same time. But there may be a more specific reason many of these movies have trouble gaining a foothold: the appetite for constant news and the political craziness that often goes along with (or is fueled by) it tends to overshadow much of what we see on a movie screen.

I mean, if the Koch brothers or George Soros are pulling the strings on an election, or Donald Trump is rising in the polls, or Hillary Clinton and GOP lawmakers are squaring off in a hearing, it can understandably be a lot more fun to follow those developments (or the hourlong cable-news reduction of them) than a piece of fiction making the same points. These cable-news versions are all around us, they land with the impact of real life, and they contain characters you (unfortunately) couldn’t make up if you tried.

Take “Crisis.” On the very day the movie came out, the Republican National Committee was sparring with NBC over the latter’s treatment of the former’s candidates on the CNBC debate. There’s at times an enjoyable crackle to the Bullock film—indeed, I seem to have liked it more than some of my journalist peers--but when a compelling real-life showdown between two power structures like this is playing out on our televisions and Twitter feeds, it’s tough for a Sandra Bullock mooning scene to compete.

It’s worth noting that these big-screen failures are all coming as political-insider stories on the small screen seem to be flourishing—shows such as “Veep,” “Scandal,” “House of Cards” and “Madame Secretary,” all following, in one way or another, “The West Wing” of a previous TV era. That poses a bit of a question--how is it that all these shows work in the current climate while all these movies fail?

One obvious distinction, of course, is that these serialized stories, with hours upon hours to unspool and years to develop characters, enjoy luxuries the movies don’t (and also separate themselves from the insta-byte culture of TV news that the movies keep running into).

That’s a big part of the issue. But there’s another advantage these TV shows have: By being able to go that long, they can transcend a simple political story to establish themselves firmly in a genre. It’s why so many of them have such a distinct identity that even the best two-hour movie can’t manage: The outrageous comedy of “Veep,” honed over years of knowing how Selina and Gary and Amy will act in a given situation, or the soap operatic turns “House of Cards” takes over numerous seasons of Frank and Claire Underwood’s manipulations. (I’d also argue that many of these stories take place in heightened, stylized worlds that movies have a harder time pulling off.)

This all may be why the fewer shorter-form efforts that do work, like HBO’s “Game Change” and “Recount,” tend to be fact-based efforts that follow real life closely. Rather than trying to compete with the events playing out on the cable-news dial, the best movies simply channel them.

(Not insignificantly, we also don’t have to pay for what’s on TV. If so many juicy real-life political stories are already on television, we might still nonetheless be willing to turn the channel to see some more of them. But we’re less willing to leave the house and fork over 12 bucks for the privilege.)

As with elections and wheel-based transit, good movie subgenres tend to come in cycles. So the tale is not yet told. We may just need more time before we get 21st century versions of “The Candidate” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Or, perhaps, the meaty political drama is one more thing cable news has spoiled.

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