The now oriented point you raise is akin the the issue of relevance and currency people have pointed out regarding the difference in reception between the Social Network and TFE. Facebook is a more visible part of people's immediate lives than is wikileaks. I cannot really fault the US population (or other populations) for being very now oriented. It is an oversight, but sometimes I feel I am drowning in information overload and find it very hard to slog through it all.

And Benedict is definitely not a big enough name to carry a film in the States. This is part of why the marketing around him really felt to me like pinning too much on a rising presence. I cynically wonder if in doing so, Dreamworks was hoping to wash their hands of blame. Once they realized it was not going to get a great reception, did they decide to focus their marketing and promotion on him so they could more easily blame his lack of starpower for the movie's financial underperformance?