I have read the explanations (read "excuses" ) for this box office failure. That it came out against Spider-Man--No Way Home is laughable. WSS came out the weekend before the Spider-Man movie. Now, if Jen Psaki can use COVID as an excuse from crime, I suppose critics can use it as an excuse of this Spielberg musical not doing well. Some people might even believe such nonsense. I don't even think that America has lost its taste for musicals, though recasting this musical as a woke epic of heroic immigrants battling knuckle-dragging whites provides much appeal. The Hollywood cocktail crowd frequented by Spielberg wants to believe that anger over immigration is a symbol of white bigotry. It's not. Few are opposed to immigration, but illegal immigration that erases our borders is quite another thing.

With cavalier intellectual dishonesty, Spielberg and his ilk want to conflate the two. The elites who keep insisting that borders don't matter are also the ones who label fellow citizens as racists for pointing out practical problems and public policy insanities. And these elites are the target for political anger by Americans who have to pay the bill for overburdened social services, schools, crime, and economic dislocation. We now live at the first time in our history in which the political class seems to believe that maintaining controlled borders is not only unnecessary; it is a bigoted idea. Other nations do not share that notion, and Americans are catching on that the political class has been lying to them, as well as defaming them.

And that leads to the more fundamental reason for WSS's box-office debacle. In a curious ersatz display of righteous indignation, Spielberg intentionally insulted his English audience, an audience upon which he depended for his production's success. When he said that he didn't want to use subtitles to translate Spanish-speaking scenes because that would have been disrespectful to the Spanish language, he uttered a thoroughly moronic sentiment that will stick with him for the rest of his life. Alienating audiences seems to be a Disney virus that has now infected him. Of course, Spielberg's industry is known for hypocrisy, but a lack of respect for other languages does not stop his industry's use of subtitles to make productions accessible to wider audiences. In fact, that industry even use dubbing. So his comments portraying subtitles as disrespectful constitute "virtue signaling" above business sense and tells his potential English speaking audience, "I made this film in a way that excludes you from understanding parts of it. That's my hint that this film was not made for you, so go spend your money elsewhere. If you insist, I will take your money, but please understand that I don't really need it."

Romeo and Juliet was the play that inspired WSS. Shakespeare set that story in Verona, a city in Italy, a place in which people speak Italian. But Shakespeare wrote his story in English. The disrespect that may show to the Italian language may shock Spielberg, but I don't think very many beyond the "woke" crowd with whom he identifies will care. Wokeness destroys storytelling, humor, and even good sense. Americans are growing tired of it. "Get Work, Go Broke" is a proposition to which Spielberg has offered his "lived experience" as supportive evidence. Thank you, Steve.

let me guess - the three people in the pic all have swinging meat - right? BTW I always thought the original West Side Story was gay - as hell

I watched on TV today in New Zealand them talking to him about the Movie...Seems it was his Passion to make it..Somethings are just best left alone..Some Movies should never be Re done..