Al Gore returns

Al Gore has been prophesying our imminent doom for lo, these many years. Starring Al Gore, the 2007 Davis Guggenheim documentary An Inconvenient Truth pulled down an Academy Award from the industry whose stars and executives must rank among the chief contributors to our death by anthropogenic warming. The film played perfectly into the eve of destruction mood that our arbiters of taste promote so ardently during Republican administrations.

Roger Friedman recalls that An Inconvenient Truth made $25 million domestically and the same amount abroad. It might have paid for a lot of heating and cooling at the Gore mansions, for travel between the mansions and for the chartered jets that have carried Gore to appearances decrying our use of fossil fuels.

Lest we forget, I should also note that Gore (along with the IPCC) was also rewarded for his efforts with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Gore stands with some of the most ludicrous winners of the prestigious award. Among Nobel Peace Prize winners whose recognition is best subsumed under the rubric of Laughter is the Best Medicine, Gore fits right in with the European Union, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, the UN and Kofi Annan, Rigoberto Menchu and others.

Now comes An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (trailer below). The sequel comes to remind us that the end is (still) nigh and that some clichés will never die. According to the New York Times, “It could be one of this summer’s hottest sequels[.]”

That’s not the way it has turned out. Insofar as the sequel is concerned, the end is indeed nigh. Steve noted parenthetically last week that the film is dying at the box office. As Friedman puts it, the film “has been a box office dud so far.”

As of this past Friday, two weeks after its wide release, Box Office Mojo estimates the film to have have grossed $2,777,649. A fan of the original documentary, Friedman writes: “The sequel has turned out to be very inconvenient at least financially.” In a week of grim and demoralizing news, this may be the feel good story of the week. Kyle Smith puts an exclamation point on it in the tweet below.

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