So the new Crusader movie, “Kingdom of Heaven,’’ is a critical and commercial disappointment. What does that tell us about movie audiences? And about the relationship between Hollywood and history? A lot.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Kingdom’’ led a “lethargic charge’’ to the top of the box office over the weekend. But as E! noted, the big movie premiere of the same weekend last year, the unremarkable “Van Helsing,’’ generated more than 2 1/2 times as much revenue. The poor performance by “Kingdom’’ is all the more remarkable because it was directed by Ridley Scott, who helmed such hits as “Alien’’ and “Gladiator.’’

So what happened? As usual, one can blame the media — the changing, more right-tilting media. More than a year ago, Cambridge University historian Jonathan Riley-Smith predicted to London’s Daily Telegraph (nicknamed the “Torygraph’’) that the film would set forth “Osama Bin Laden’s version of history.’’ That quote has rocketed around the blogosphere ever since, fueling deep suspicions about the film that were confirmed when it debuted.

The conservative Washington Times headlined that the film unspooled a “flawed history.’’ And even more mainstream critics agreed that it leaned toward the Muslim side of the historical argument. Jack Mathews, writing in the Daily News, focused on one particular character, the Christian king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan. As Mathews put it, “The audacious choice of portraying the Muslims as righteous and chivalrous while depicting Guy’s Christian knights as mad-dog warmongers should light up the phones over at the 700 Club.’’ Scott can make any kind of movie he wants, of course, but in the middle of a war in the Middle East, he might have been wise to make his tale more fair and balanced. But Tom Neven, a critic for Pluggedinonline, a Christian movie guide, dug deeper into the film’s weakness. Describing Scott as a “self-professed agnostic,’’ Neven lamented that “distinctly 21st century views on religion’’ had been imposed on the film. Thus much of the historical-religious context of the film was leached away. As Neven explained of the Christian and Muslim combatants, “as for the distinctiveness of their respective faiths, you’d never know what they were fighting about.’’

That was a big mistake, commercially as well as historically. By contrast, the three “Lord of the Rings’’ movies were huge successes, because they presented a sharp moral worldview, of good pitted against evil. Gandalf and the Hobbits vs. Sauron and the Orcs: You knew which side you were on. Yes, the “Rings’’ villains sometimes possessed a dangerous dark-side appeal, but the trilogy kept a distinct moral voice that audiences appreciated — indeed, yearned for.

Once upon a time, Hollywood could blithely make cowboys-and-Indians movies in which white people massacred red people, as audiences — white ones, at least — cheered.

But then came a revised history, and the general sense that Native Americans were the victims, not the enemy. That historical wheel had turned completely by 1970, when Hollywood released “Little Big Man,’’ in which the red men were saintly, while the whites were either comical, or, in the case of Gen. George Custer, genocidal.

A similar process has been at work in regard to US-Mexican history. Nowadays, historical revisionism and political correctness — and also, maybe, fear of Muslim reprisals — might make it impossible to film an epic in which “good’’ Christians vanquish “bad’’ Muslims. In which case, moviemakers will probably have to drop the whole genre, at least for American audiences. So it will be interesting to see how Hollywood handles flicks about the Iraq war.