Guns, politics and Hollywood collide

Deadshot and Bourne stepped on a minefield.

The popular characters hit the cineplex this summer in Suicide Squad and Jason Bourne, guns in hand, their marksmanship a telltale sign that film fans were in for a bloody good time.

But as violent headlines — and a raging political debate on gun control — dominate the news, Hollywood has found itself battling accusations of hypocrisy.

In the wake of tragic mass shootings and police attacks, many found Universal's marketing of Matt Damon's famous CIA assassin aiming a gun upsetting and insensitive. Girls writer/producer Tami Sagher Instagrammed a shot of a Bourne subway ad with the gun image ripped down, saying “Hey, New Yorkers, what if we do some peeling and get rid of the guns in the Jason Bourne subway ads. So tired of guns.” Her star Lena Dunham responded: “Good idea … Let’s go!”

Damon accepted the criticism. "I get not wanting to see a picture of a gun right now," Damon told E! News.

Not that violence is hurting the box office: Billion-dollar franchise Bourne handily won the box office its first weekend and has pulled in more than $120 million to date. Meanwhile, Suicide Squad raked in over $200 million its first two weekends.

But the big picture is complicated by Hollywood's politics. Republicans bristled at the sight of Bradley Cooper at the Democratic National Convention last month in Philadelphia. The actor, a Democrat, became an iconic figure to some on the right for his patriotic portrayal of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle in 2014's surprise box office smash American Sniper.

"Guess I've seen my last Bradley Cooper movie. Ewww Ick," wrote @theRealExTex. "How could you POSSIBLY play the hero Chris Kyle so well and then surround yourself w/anti-Americans?" tweeted @LibsRCrazy.

It's a familiar pain point for conservative moviegoers, many of whom feel used by an industry that loads guns into movies while simultaneously lecturing the masses on gun control.

"It never ceases to amaze me that hollywood hates guns yet glorifies them in movies when there's money involved," tweeted @DeeboCouch. "How about libs in #Hollywood agree to never make another film glorifying guns and the people that use them THEN calling for #Guncontrol," wrote @courtface59.

Accusations of hypocrisy is a "major issue" for Hollywood, says Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. "You can't deny that nearly every action movie, and superhero movie for that matter, turn to the rat-a-tat-tat of gunplay when they need a kicker or there's a lull in the story. Stories in the action/adventure genre seem to rely on gun violence without much thought to the consequences."

While it's long been a mark of prestige for a star to land an action franchise (which typically feature a hefty amount of gunplay), it's no secret that a majority of Hollywood leans left, with stars and studio heads often donating to Democratic campaigns (Leonardo DiCaprio will hold a fundraiser Aug. 23 for presidential nominee Hillary Clinton).

These are separate issues, argues veteran Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman, founder of Fifteen Minutes PR.  "There's a big difference between a movie that has violence in it and shooting somebody. (Or) advocating for assault weapons," he says. "One is commerce and one is a personal passion where people wish to stand politically."

But when it comes to responsibility around portrayals of violence, “I don’t think Hollywood has honestly owned up to this conversation or explored it in a proactive way,” says conservative film critic Christian Toto, editor of HollywoodInToto.com. "From my point of view, I think it’s the creative freedom that we enjoy that there can be very violent movies. There’s always a risk that someone may copy them but that’s a risk that a free society has.”

Hollywood's opportunism doesn't keep nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Michael Medved up at night.

“There are so many examples of Hollywood hypocrisy,” he says. “Hollywood claims to be pro-feminist and you could say regularly portrays females (as) willing or attractive victims. How many people who applaud like crazy for Hillary Clinton saying ‘Equal pay for equal work’ fail to provide it for their onscreen talent?"

Even softening scripted weaponry has its risks. In supervillain spectacular Suicide Squad, Warner Bros. gave Deadshot (Will Smith), a comic book character celebrated for his sure aim, a conscience: The assassin avoids murdering a colleague and is torn over living up to his daughter's ethics.

Most critics pummeled the movie (USA TODAY's Brian Truitt disagreed, giving it 3½ stars out of four), with some (like Vanity Fair) noting its "hideously timed gun worship" and others (like IndieWire) saying the film had been sanitized into a "painfully PG-13" affair.

So where fictional gunplay is concerned, can Hollywood win?

If the Motion Picture Association of America thought movies "had little to no influence on audiences in America, then they wouldn't have such strict guidelines for ratings, especially involving teens, smoking and violence,"  Bock says. (The MPAA, an independent organization, rates films on a case-by-case basis.)

Chris Ortman, the MPAA's vice president of corporate communications, says the ratings system is continually evolving, adding that it isn't the classification and rating administration's "purpose to prescribe social policy, but instead to reflect the current values of the majority of American parents."

One thing is changing: The taboo subject of culpability is now on the table.

Gun safety non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety says scripted gunplay and real-life violence are not as intertwined as today's tweetstorms suggest.

“Content creators are quite anxious about that conversation, because they often feel guilty or wonder, ‘Am I somehow responsible?’ " says Jason Rzepka, director of cultural engagement for Everytown, which launched a creative council in October chaired by Julianne Moore and whose members include J.J. Abrams, Judd Apatow and Jennifer Lawrence. "They are usually quite relieved when they hear that from all of our research on this subject, violence in television and film is by no means a primary culprit in our gun violence crisis in America.”

According to a study published in the American Journal of Medicine, America’s gun murder rate is more than 25 times the average of other developed countries. Those countries "all watch the same movies, they all watch the same TV shows, they all play the same video games. But none of those countries have a gun violence problem anywhere near what America has," Rzepka says.

The question remains whether Everytown can affect the conversation around gun violence through pop culture. It's making progress: The advocacy group consulted with the writers of House of Cards last season on an episode where President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) was shot and the subsequent efforts of a fictional Congress to pass gun control legislation. “We partnered with them on getting the language right and the reality of what the changes are that this movement is looking for,” Rzepka says.

Everytown also provided John Oliver’s HBO show writing team with background on the Dickey Amendment, the 1996 measure aimed at restricting federal funding for injury prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from being used to promote gun control  a week after a gunman killed 49 people in an Orlando gay club.

In May, for an Inside Amy Schumer sketch called "Welcome to the Gun Show," “we basically did a 90-minute briefing session with her writers room," Rzepka says. "They tried to find humor in what is a very dark, oftentimes sad and depressing issue. They keyed in on how there are some facets of gun policy in America that are stranger than fiction."

But speaking up can come at a price. Daisy Ridley, lead actress in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, wrote a message in solidarity with young relatives of victims of gun violence who appeared at the Teen Choice Awards last month. Commenters swarmed, accusing her of hypocrisy because of the violence depicted in Star Wars. Ridley quit Instagram.

Schumer, who is about to release her first book, The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, devotes a chapter to how she became involved in lobbying for gun safety after a gunman killed two women who attended a screening of her 2015 comedy Trainwreck in Lafayette, La.

When she began speaking out about gun violence, "I had a whole movement of people against me on Reddit trying ... to take me down," Schumer says. "The majority of NRA (National Rifle Association)  members are really great, normal people who want to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, but there’s a minority of people who are, like, dangerous and kind of careless."

Making gun safety black and white is "a strategy by the gun lobby to muzzle the creative community,” Rzepka says (for its part, the NRA has said that Everytown's efforts are intended to "brainwash the public").  “For a long time, people felt that you had to pick a side, that you had to be either pro-gun or anti-gun. And that is patently a false choice,” he says, adding that the majority of Americans favor measures like universal background checks, keeping guns away from domestic abusers and cracking down on drug trafficking.

In June, a CNN/ORC International survey found that 92% of Americans favored expanded background checks, and a Suffolk University/USA TODAY survey the same month found 76% of likely voters supported banning gun sales to people on the federal government's no-fly list.

What's clear is that the industry is being challenged by its audience to do better.

To Bock, a reliance on guns is "plain lazy filmmaking. Scriptwriters and filmmakers in general need to rely less on guns to carry the plot and more on imagination."

It remains to be seen if recent headlines and the looming election will have an effect on the marketing of fall's more violent fare, including The Magnificent Seven, Antoine Fuqua's upcoming remake of the classic Western; Tom Cruise's military action thriller Jack Reacher: Never Go Back; and December's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The studios behind those films — Sony, Paramount and Disney, respectively — did not respond to requests for comment on whether their marketing strategies have shifted because of raised sensitivities.

At the Television Critics Association's press tour last week, Fox TV Group co-chairman/CEO Dana Walden told journalists that the network takes pains to avoid gratuitous violence.  "We think about it a lot from the marketing side, even the artwork you saw of (the upcoming reboot of) Lethal Weapon, we’re trying to focus on the characters and not on guns or the violence in the show," she says. "But you have to hit a balance, and they're trying to create stories that feel relevant. ... When they take place in a cop world or a world of terrorism, it’s hard to imagine that without any violence.”

To some, the debate is already moot.

“The fact is that Hollywood movies have never been less influential,” Medved says. “The number of entertainment alternatives is so vast now that the idea of influence or responsibility or accountability has been defeated.”

Behind the scenes, the push to get gunplay right continues. Last month, Modern Family executive producer Steven Levitan held a gun safety summit for 50 TV writers and producers with Everytown, including creatives from Homeland, 24: Legacy and Scream Queens. “I wanted to get the word out on what they’re doing for people who have influence,"  Levitan says.

Where does Schumer believe Hollywood goes from here?

"I don’t know," says Schumer, calling from the Hawaii set of her upcoming untitled action comedy with Goldie Hawn, expected next May. "Realistically, it’s not going to go anywhere. People like seeing it."

The comedian recently cut a violent scene out of that film. In the action-comedy, "there are bad guys and so there are guns," she says. "It’s not like there are no guns in any frame of this movie. (But) I was supposed to kill people with guns and I was like, 'I don’t want to do that.' And everybody was like, 'Yeah, we don’t want to do that.'

"So I don’t know at all what Hollywood should do. I just know that I want to do my part for not glorifying and making people with guns look super-powerful."

Contributing: Gary Levin