Liberals are making the comment that "traditionalists" are getting smarter in adroitly dodging Hollywood bullets aimed at them by pointing out the collective yawn that is the response to the movie Angels and Demons. While I'm happy that they consider us smart, I think the real reason is more pedestrian. Angels and Demons is simply no DaVinci Code. Sure it's anti-Catholic but that isn't obvious until the very end, and even then it's not so much a direct attack on the church (much less Christianity) as it is a tired old canard. The DaVinci Code, however, was much more salacious, positing that Jesus was married and full of alleged disclosure of ancient secrets that titillated those who hated the Catholic Church. It also masqueraded as historical truth, something which really drove opposition to it and which Angels and Demons did not do. A&D is simply a straightforward novel with — slight spoiler alert, not that it's surprising — an evil cleric. Big yawn.
So in summary, A&D was a flop because it didn't maintain the level of intensity of DVC and employed fairly unimaginative anti-Catholicism, not because the Holy See got a lot more smart about handling these things.
