Audiences waited a long time for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

Sin City came out all the way back in 2005. It was a success then largely because of its originality. The comic-book movie as an industry was in its infancy at the time. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to bring audiences something they have never seen before. A strange amalgam of film and comics, it had a visual style to match its charismatic violence. Sin City was a special movie, and, deservedly, a big hit.

Flash forward 9 years. After countless delays, the sequel has finally arrived. In 2014, the style has been reproduced, the comic-book genre is now well into its post-adolescence. Apparently, audiences couldn’t think of a good reason to go see the sequel because it opened this past weekend and it brought in just under $6.5 Million.

I’m not going to overstate it, so I’ll just say, that is a colossal failure. It came in at the weekend box-office in the 9th position, just behind the currently bombing Expendables 3, now in it’s second week.

Take it away, Pinkie Pie

Sin City 2 also opened 3 spots behind the evangelical Christian When the Game Stands Tall. When the Game Stands Tall is another strong showing for feature films “upholding biblical values” (this is the language such movies are marketed upon). Such films hang tightly to the family movie approved story-lines that exhibit the values of “faith” and “courage” in fairly explicit manners, and this one, about the success of a high-school football coach and the tragedy that strikes his team, is no different. This spring also saw the success of God’s Not Dead, an hugely successful film starring Kevin Sorbo as a liberal college professor and his debate with a student about God, and the even more popular Heaven is For Real.

Christian Family Movies are clearly on the up in Hollywood, with the business savvy understanding that despite the critical failures (or perhaps even because of them?) there is a reliable American audience for “biblical values movie” at the theater.