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Disney's PR team is very very good at manipulating entertainment reporters and online forums. They no how to kick up a mob to attack a competing movie.
Reviewing films is actually quite hard. You get to watch them once and you need to come out with some kind of take based on your notes. You need to do this with multiple movies. Often they are watched without much of a break.
So there's plenty of room for a friendly PR person to offer some notes about other studios movies that are easy to string into an article.
My take is that Disney is upset about TSOF embarrassing the new Indiana Jones movie and in response they are kicking up a culture war storm. A lot of reporters are joining in the gang pile because it's fun and easy.
Beyond that, a lot of people in DC at places like the State Department see the cartels as useful. The CIA has most likely been co-ordinating & manipulating them quite a bit over the years.
Movies that paint the cartels as scary badasses who are just trying to make money getting cocaine to consenting adults are OK.
Movies that point to child exploitation or fentanyl deaths in the US make the CIA look bad by association, so they are attacked.
This is sort of true, but only if you succumb to all the bullshit fluff the pr people push on you. Even if you watch 3 films back to back with only 15 minutes between them, it's not hard to make detailed notes to build your review from - as long as you don't spend each break trying to max out the pr firm's open bar tab or simping for whichever featured extra they convinced to come along.
It's true that big studios like Disney are very good at manipulating entertainment reporters and critics, but part of the job of being a critic is not allowing that manipulation to work. Or it should be, it's supposed to be. But progressives like blacklists when they are in charge, so critics have to play nice or else they don't get access. But society has no obligation to print or listen to a bunch of chucklefucks lying about what they watch to keep their jobs, like some kind of sinecure.
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Could you provide some supporting evidence for why you believe this movie's criticism is due to separate conspiracies by Disney, the State Department, and the CIA?
How does Disney benefit from attacking a movie that, at the time of the rolling stones article, had earned 25% of what Indiana Jones had done at the domestic box office?
Why would the CIA be particularly troubled by this movie showing the cartels involved in human trafficking, but not others?
Why would the State Department's main lever of shutting a movie down to be releasing negative critical reviews after release, as opposed to a myriad of powers it could presumably exercise for a movie by a former DHS employee that was partially filmed in California?
The State Department and the CIA aren't really separable in this context, CIA agents use State Department covers at embassies and they coordinate with State Department staff.
It isn't some formal policy, it's the DC dinner party circuit. DOS/CIA employees have been dropping sly hints about using the cartels to look cool at dinner parties for years. A movie comes out about how their cartel friends are sexually exploiting children. They respond by going on a tear to any reporter who will listen about this evil Q-Anon conspiracy movie.
The movie you linked to doesn't seem to involve the Latin American cartels and only made $20k at the box office, so I imagine there wasn't much discussion.
DHS isn't one of the "cool" agencies. ICE agents don't get invited to the good parties to tell stories.
Disney using their PR staff and entertainment reporter contacts to attack their competitors hardly seems like some far flung conspiracy I need to prove. SOF's success is an embarrassment not just for Disney but for all of the big distributors. The number 2 film for July 14th weekend is distributed by Angel Studios. That undercuts the perceived power of the major distributors.
However Angel Studios lacks the skills and connections to defend the movie.
Arguing about revenue at the time of the article isn't a good metric. Disney has people monitoring other movies and using various metrics to predict their success.
Disney had a whole lot invested in Indy 5. Wikipedia lists it as the 13th most expensive film ever made and there are rumours that Kathleen Kennedy has been playing with the books because the real cost is even higher. It's the first LucasFilm release since Rise of Skywalker in 2019. It was expected to gross over $1B.
And it came in behind Sound of Freedom in it's third week at the box office.
Disney is struggling. They may have to fire Kennedy over that.
Disney attacking the movie out of anger and desperation, not because it's an effective strategy.
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