The Western genre has become hugely popular in the last decade, thanks in part to Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone franchise, and several other movies that have modernized the genre from the days of old cowboys riding cattle away from rustlers. One that brought the Western kicking and screaming into today’s world was Ari Aster’s Eddington, which starred Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as opposing forces in a battle of wills in the midst of a pandemic. Sound familiar? As the synopsis puts it:
“In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Phoenix) and mayor (Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.”
Pitched as a satirical Western comedy, the movie drew some very mixed reviews from both critics and audiences, and the film was a flop when it released in cinemas in July, taking just $12.5 million on the back of a $25 million budget. You need to go very little distance to discover just how polarizing the movie became, with one audience review calling the film a “wonderful, fun movie full of surprises, a great movie overall,” while another slammed it as “a horrible movie with unlikeable characters, stupid plot and lame direction.”
Now, HBO MAX subscribers are getting the chance to see for themselves where they stand on Eddington‘s worth, and in viewership alone, the film is paying off with a debut at the top of the streamer’s movie chart. While this does not mean more people like the film, when the viewership is up, no one is really going to care what the reviews say, as it is all about the minutes watched at the end of the day.
‘Eddington’ Is a Dark Insight Into the World Right Now
Like most movies that do not lay out on a platter exactly what the thinking behind them was, Eddington’s MAGA-tainted satire set in the Covid era, with plenty of machoism thrown in for good measure, is a movie that struck a chord with people for different reasons, mostly depending on whether they agreed or disagreed with the “absurdity” of it all. While speaking to MovieWeb around the time of the movie’s release, Aster explained that when looking at the things going on in the world, it is hard not to see most of them as absurd. He said:
“I think the insidious thing about our culture right now is that things are dangerous and scary and catastrophic, but they’re also absurd and ridiculous and impossible to take seriously, right? If you’re going to make a film about the moment that is inflected by any sort of modern realism, it’s going to dip into the absurd.”
Aster continued to note that while he knew where the movie was going from the start, there was always something inevitable about the conclusion it comes to, one that resonates with what is happening in the world at any given time. He added:
“I think that’s sort of the end game with a lot of what’s happening right now. If you keep pitting people against each other and stoking their rage, and if you keep providing these scapegoats for all these problems, you know, where does that go? It’s just the logical next step. Things lead to violence when there’s nothing in the air holding people together anymore.”
Eddington is streaming now on HBO Max.
- Release Date
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July 18, 2025
- Runtime
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149 minutes