The Rise and Fall of Roger Ailes

 

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In this post I will present and compare three items which cover the rise and fall of Roger Ailes (1940-2017); the American media consultant who founded Fox News and who was in charge of the network for many years.

 

Item # 1

Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes (2018)

 

Item # 2

The Loudest Voice (2019)

 

Item # 3

Bombshell (2019)

 

 

 

Item # 1

Divide and Conquer: The story of Roger Ailes is a documentary film which premiered in 2018.

** Director: Alexis Bloom

** Executive producer: Alex Gibney and others

** Run time: 103 minutes

 

Here are some ratings:

70 percent = IMDb

71 percent = Meta

76 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the audience)

90 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the critics)

 

 

Item # 2

The Loudest Voice is a docudrama which premiered on US television (Showtime) in 2019

** Directors: Kari Skogland, Jeremy Podeswa, Scott Z. Burns and Stephen Frears

** Based on the book The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman (2014)

** This docudrama is a miniseries in seven parts

 

Here are some ratings:

55 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the critics) 

(there is no audience score)

79 percent = IMDb

 

 

 

Item # 3

Bombshell is a docudrama which premiered in 2019.

** Director: Jay Roach

** Writer: Charles Randolph

** Run time: 108 minutes

 

Here are some ratings:

64 percent = Meta

68 percent = IMDb

69 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the critics)

84 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the audience)

 

As you can see, item # 3 has the lowest ratings. Many reviewers are so fascinated by the title of this item that they have to make a pun about it based on the word “bombshell.”

 

Here are some examples:

 

“BOMBSHELL Bombs at the Box Office,” FTV Live, 23 December 2019

 

“BOMBSHELL Bombing at Box Office Isn’t Exactly a Shock,” The Hill, 31 December 2019

 

“Me-Too Film BOMBSHELL Bombs at Box office,” Washington Examiner, 2 January 2020

 

“BOMBSHELL is Bombing,” Daily Wire, 4 January 2020

 

“BOMBSHELL Bombs with too much Hollywood, too little Real Life,” Independent Blog, 13 January 2020

 

“BOMBSHELL Bombs,” The Lawrentian, 17 January 2020

 

“Oscars 2020: Why BOMBSHELL never blew up,” Now Magazine, 5 February 2020

 

“BOMBSHELL (and similar movies) Bombed,” Cracked, 28 February 2020

 

When we look at items # 2 and 3, we can see that the professional critics are not so happy with them. They tend to go low, while the general audience tends to go high.

 

When we look at item # 1, we get the opposite response: now the critics want to go up, while the audience wants to go down. In this case, I have to side with the critics.

 

Here is my ranking of the three items:

 

5 stars = item # 1 = Divide and Conquer

4 stars = item # 2 = The Loudest Voice

3 stars = item # 3 = Bombshell

 

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Roger Ailes (1940-2017)

(a picture from 2013)

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