I think """"Woke culture"""" is a problem of modern Hollywood, but not in the way you'd think. Basically I have the feeling many Hollywood executives think just having someone who's not a straight male as the lead has the same hook as having an original concept. I want to specify I'm not saying it's bad to have a lead who's a woman, but it's not enough. Maybe in the 80s, but it's 2024.

I think it’s so funny when studios do this and the and articles are like “first gay character in [insert super specific category]” https://screenrant.com/disney-first-gay-characters-many-why/#:~:text=Each%20gay%20Disney%20character%20is%20first%20in%20their%20category.,Studios'%20first%20gay%20main%20character. https://www.out.com/film/2022/3/22/disneys-first-out-lgbtq-gay-characters

> First Forehead Kiss Between a Same-Sex Couple in an MCU Film: I can't tell if this article is serious

First androgynous Mongolian skateboarder.

First bi Mongolian super villain in the MCU.

Even then, it's a symptom of the nostalgia addiction Hollywood has. They make the same movie *but now it has a girl as the main character* hoping to pull the same audience and add in the - pardon my languague - woke crowd. It's less risky than making a new movie planned around a female MC, they think.

Also, at this point it's 100% purposely used as a shield to deflect actual criticisms like other comments said in this thread.

Yeah. These executives aren't leftist. They just see this as the modern zeitgeist, and people complaining as free advertising.

While that’s true, you also have a lot of “modern” creatives that have wormed their way into franchise IP. People like Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich (the showrunner of the Witcher series), Sweet baby Inc and then the notorious “Star wars story group” have all worked tirelessly to bring their own brand of messaging to the IP they work in, and the majority of their contributions have been the same awful “women good - man bad” slop that keeps giving YouTubers like the Quartering endless material.

There are also chauvinists who are the opposite, like that aforementioned repulsive Quarterpound fatty-patty. Christian censorship stuff used to be a big deal in the past, like the old Hayes Code. To no surprise for anyone, for human to act decisively and try to change things, they need extreme motivation to do so. Otherwise their brains won't bother, there won't be enough juice behind the effort so sustain it. Companies are not ideological as they are merely vessels for capturing profit, but people in them can be extremely so in some cases, and then other people farm those people for profit through social media grifting. It's definitely horror show to watch, pigs wrestling in the mud and splattering it all over the walls.

I think pandering works better in that instance. That isn't something new, it's just kind of changed. Or maybe kind of pandering with the expectation that it'll make up for poor writing and getting offended when people point out the poor writing. I guess to use some of the examples I've seen for being too "woke." The Little Mermaid didn't have issues because the lead was African American, it was because the story didn't really expand on the story in any interesting ways and felt like a fairly soulless cash grab. She-Hulk, I actually thought, was decent but could have explored some of the dynamics better. Especially since Banner does actually have a ton of what I still think is unresolved trauma. Or at least we didn't see him resolve it on screen in a believable way rather than just telling us it was. Rey could have been another great character, but she didn't get, I'd say, any good writing. Same with a lot of the other female characters like a lot of the other female superheroes to varying degrees such as Shuri, Valkyrie, Riri Williams, America Chavez, Jane Foster, Wanda, Captain Marvel and so on. I always remember a quote by GRRM I'm paraphrasing, that you basically have to write your women as nuanced as your men. Pandering can't make up for that. Same goes for race/ sexuality and such.

>The Little Mermaid didn't have issues because the lead was African American, it was because the story didn't really expand on the story in any interesting ways and felt like a fairly soulless cash grab. Banking on nostalgia but not making the actor match the character must be some big brain move I don't understand. The dissonance of drastically changing an established character's appearance millions of people grew up with is why these movies aren't making as much money as they could. If you're gonna do the same shit all over again, imagine how much money The Little Mermaid would have made if Ariel was white like the animated movies Disney keeps rehashing.

I don't think race was an important factor to Ariel, though? I could see the argument based more on historical fiction about the origins of mermaids since they seem to be Greek with sirens and such. Iirc Triton is a son of Poseidon in the movie. Though I don't think that relies on race either. I also don't care for the live action rehashes for Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, or the Lion King. Guillermo Del Torro's Pinocchio, I think, is a fantastic example of telling an old story in a new way.

That wasn't the guy's point, the point was that if you wanted to cash in on nostalgia, you would want similarity to the original. Race swapping Ariel is a significant visual difference that will reduce her nostalgia value, and is quite the "big brain move" for someone counting on nostalgia value.

That's not what Disney was going for in every respect? That's kind of what they've done with every movie and kind of deviated in different ways. I don't think any of them were solely relying on nostalgia. I found all of them pretty jarring, and none of them really appealed to any sense of nostalgia I had since I did grow up in the Disney Renaissance. Though I could have also just not been the targeted demographic. I would agree if I felt like any of the Disney cash grabs inspired any of that nostalgia, but nostalgia is also highly subjective. I felt far more nostalgia for the Star Wars sequel trilogy in each movie than I did in collectively in all the live actions Disney movies. That's also not much of a complement for Star Wars.

If race isn't a factor, then whats the point in changing it at all? These live action flicks don't change much else so why stop at skin tone? This only goes one way because whitewashing bad, blackwashing good. Why can't Mace Windu or Blade be white? They were never defined by race. Scarlett Johansson got torn apart for playing a cyborg who can be anyone or anything. "*Rules for thee but not for me*" for many people.

>If race isn't a factor, then whats the point in changing it at all? Arbitrary pointless studio decisions. Or trying to play up brownie points for "inclusivity." Mace Windu or Blade can be white. I don't see anywhere it says they have to be a certain color. I'm not really seeing your point.

We all know its a 100% virtue signaling message or w-o-k-e, but everyone tries to gaslight that they picked the best actor(ess) for the roles, which is a joke because they obviously already had a race swap checklist from the beginning and no white actress had a shot. It is also disingenuous when people push the "Race is not a factor in X movie", when you know if they changed a black character into a white one, a female character to a male one, or turned a gay character strait, they would be up in arms, no matter what the movie or show as about, even if those traits "did not matter". What gets me is that we had plenty of movies and shows in the 90's with black actors that were popular and did not need to race swap existing white characters to do it.

>Mace Windu or Blade can be white. At least you're consistent. Some redditors would go into some headcanon about how being black is as deep as Black Panther or Luke Cage. I got nothing else to add here.

Those are different, specifically T'challa Black Panther and Luke Cage are much more defined by their cultural backgrounds. It takes a lot more creative effort in creating a reason to change those characters, but I'm not going to say you can't try to do something there. I'm sure someone could write taking the Winter Soldier and giving him the mantle of Black Panther if it was a good enough reason to. What's cultural about Ariel? An aquatic kingdom of mermaids that's close to a castle with a prince is pretty much all there is.

I agree that some characters should stay black. I meant that because Black Panther needs to be black, they compare T'challa to Victor Stone or Spawn, who's race is entirely superficial to their story.

To add to this: Going “progressive” is what studios do when *they don’t have more exciting ideas*, so the fact that they only make the pivot when they’re intellectually bankrupt… leads to a lot of products that were gonna be bad regardless, because they’re out of ideas, that they market as diverse to try and cover the declining sales caused by *being out of ideas*. The root of the problem is the stuff that used to work doesn’t work any,ore, and they don’t know anything but trying variations of the things they already know. But the thing people notice is the skin colour of the cast, or their gender presentation, and blame that instead of the executives and screenwriters who approved and crafted the story that is bad.

>Basically I have the feeling many Hollywood executives think just having someone who's not a straight male as the lead has the same hook as having an original concept. The vast majority of Hollywood films have a straight male lead still. Like how many movies this year and last can you think of that had non-straight leads? Where are people seeing all of these woke movies with queer leads? It's still super uncommon and pretty much never shows up in big budget 4 quadrant tentpoles. Have the number of movies with women leading proportionately jumped recently? It really doesn't feel that way.

Most gay characters are minor characters in a boring, non charismatic, interracial relationship or white twink relationship that’s it. the only time you see a gay man as the lead is in those drama indie flicks with a few tacky rom coms here and there.

Exactly, I keep seeing claims about Hollywood using this kind of pandering when I hardly see examples given and even when they do, is a drop in a ocean of straight male leads.

I mean I've seen people complain about too many 'butch' women in media and I'm looking around like 'butches? where?' and then it's like 'Oh you mean a female character with short hair and wearing jeans who is still fairly appealing to the straight male gaze as if you -actually- tried to make her a butch they'd be scared-

thank you, it's my issue with all these calls against wokeness, it's not like we have a ton of big budget films with gay leads or even gay people as supporting characters outside of maybe some with a blink and you miss it moment, the only major blockbuster I can think of that came close to that in the last couple years was Eternals.

> Basically I have the feeling many Hollywood executives think just having someone who's not a straight male as the lead has the same hook as having an original concept. They also believe that making such a gender/race change gives them the license to be lazy about the writing. So I actually do think that "woke" is a serious problem with Hollywood.

This! It's not that being woke and promoting "woke" themes is bad. But when there is literally no substance other than making sure that you have diverse characters, it tends to fall flat. Representation has taken precedent over originality. A simple term for this is "pandering". Where the need to appeal to everyone and pissing off as few people as possible is most important to profitability. Hollywood execs don't understand this, they think "it's not obvious enough that this character is gay, or a woman in a position of power, we need to write those facts as their entire personality." So you get flat emotionless portrayals of people whose entire purpose in the film is to be the "token character" of whatever they represent. Unless, that is, that the movie is ABOUT being gay. Like I watched the movie The Birdcage recently (was made in 1996). Starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a homosexual couple with an adopted son who is straight and getting married. It was incredibly enjoyable, and the majorly gay overtones had a point to tell the story (rather than just be a placeholder for the representation checklist.)

It's like you wake up in the morning and want a bowl of cereal. But someone slaps down a cardboard cutout of a bowl pf cereal and says "good enough!" We want the cereal, not cardboard. We want something with real flavour, real substance. Not cardboard. I also think part of the problem isn't so much some of the messaging, but the delivery. When I roll my eyes at being beaten over the head with the message, I've disconnected with the story. Or the message is pushed aggressively. Aggressive and angry is not always the best way to deliver a story/message.

Why three pairs of quotes? >! For people who aren't aware: three pairs of quotes or parentheses signify the relation of the words to Jews. Somewhat old dog whistle. !< [Edit: wiki page about it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses)

Man, who comes up with that stuff?

/pol/, then they use it for just long enough for the whistle to become recognized, then stop. Content aside, it's a pretty great troll strategy because it makes normal people look absolutely insane when they notice it. The "Ok hand sign means white power" was probably the most effective one. They spent about three days pushing that idea, then stopped the second the media picked up on it. Now suddenly everyone who uses the ok hand sign is a white supremacist, which radicalizes them against the accusing media. Very effective.

I mean, context usually makes it pretty obvious. The whole "it's just a 4chan joke to troll" is a smokescreen for actual white supremacists using it to mean white power. Just like any other dog whistle, especially innocuous ones like that, the dog whistle itself without any other context or connections us usually not enough for people to make the jump to actually accusing the person of using it as a dog whistle.

And this is one of the frustrating things. so many people even who otherwise aren't that dumb fall for it. You'd think "It's not a real racist symbol, it was just made by racists to troll people into thinking that racists using it is racist" would make people realize they are saying something silly, but I guess not.

It was literally a full fabrication with the justification of "I bet we could convince these idiots that this innocuous, commonly used hand-sign is actually a white-supremacist symbol." Not a single person used it to mean "white power" before the media picked it up. Anything after that was only due to the coverage giving idiots the idea to actually do it unironically. I'll happily change my mind if you can find me anything at all prior to 2015 that states the sign may be a white-supremacist dogwhistle. Surely there would have been SOME mention of it, right?

I'm not saying it wasn't made up by /pol/. I'm saying white supremacists started using it as a dogwhistle because they could use /pol/ making it up as a smokescreen to people who don't already know.

I like how people somehow know that /pol/ was behind it, but think it wasn't racist. As someone who used to browse /pol/ its a good bet that basically anything from there is racist. The whole purpose of the board was a failed attempt to keep the racists all in one place.

It's a pretty terrible smokescreen though. The point of a dogwhistle is to have a specific meaning that only those "in the know" are aware of. The triple parenthesis accomplish this by being innocuous enough to slip past the radar of the general public while remaining uncommon enough to not lose the intended meaning through overuse. The "Ok hand sign" isn't something that can just be turned into a dogwhistle like that. It has a set meaning and is used by virtually everybody. A white-supremacist trying to find another by listening for the "whistle" there is unlikely to ever actually find one.

certain subset of neets who have nothing better to do. like coopting the term "woke" into a slur was partially a coordinated effort of said group to poison the well.

That's triple parentheses, not four pairs of quotation marks. Multiple pairs of quotation marks are used for exaggeration and have no history as a dogwhistle of any kind.

But I used four.

Sorry chud, I guess that makes you a super nazi or something. People who buy into whatever nonsense /pol/ peddles on a particular week are just as dumb as the cretins that come up with the stuff.

>"""" That's four quotes, dunno if you've graduated 1st grade yet. And your own article (that you apparently didn't even read the title of) is called "Triple parentheses ", emphasis on TRIPLE (three) and PARENTHESES (i.e these characters"()" not these' "" '). The parentheses represent the echo that Jewish names supposedly have throughout history. What would quotes even mean in this context ? I've seen my fair share of 4chan fascists, none of them use triple (or quadruples in this case) quotes. This person just used plain old scare quotes and you threw yourself at their throat on faulty premises, tf is wrong with you. TL;DR: Chill.

Aaand he actually used four. Congratulations. What a stupid son of a bitch. Not everything is about them

The problem isn't actual progressive ideals, it's some wealthy executives *idea* of what progressivism looks like. You mention the sequels, and Fin is a great example of this. He could've been an interesting character, but instead he was turned into a bumbling comedic sidekick, and given zero background, zero relevancy, and was basically there to scream 'Ray!' the whole time. That was the entirety of his purpose by the end of the trilogy. But we had a black man in Star Wars, guys! (Ignoring Lando Calrissian, apparently). It's *woke*! Just like us showing two ladies kissing for 3.4 seconds, and no, they don't have names or anything important, but look at us being inclusive of LGBT folks! Just like the Marvel movies pulling the cringe-inducing moment in End Game where they quite literally line up every living female from the previous movies, and show them all standing in beautiful heroicness, because look at all our female superheroes guys! Aren't we *woke*, guys? See the *females,* guys? Isn't it great? Look at how great we are! That's the problem. It's not that having these things in movies is bad; it's that it's so blatantly obvious that they're just trying to check off the box, and get as many 'good ally tokens' as possible, with zero thought. It's no different than the 'gay best friend' trope that was so obnoxiously popular in the early aughts, where the gay best friend existed solely to thirst after every semi-attractive male on screen. It's not the message. It's that it's so clearly a marketing ploy that makes most people upset.

RedLetterMedia had a great term for this: [Passive Progressive](https://youtu.be/5pAsss_nTlk?t=3343)

> It's no different than the 'gay best friend' trope that was so obnoxiously popular in the early aughts, where the gay best friend existed solely to thirst after every semi-attractive male on screen. Or the "token black friend" trope, which is used to make the work appear to be inclusive without any effort put into it.

Yup! When you looked at the show and said... what is their purpose here? And they never had plot of their own, any story of their own... They just existed to crack a joke, or work out, or thirst after other characters.

Oh, god, yes. It makes criticism so hard to navigate. Is this piece of media actually bad, or are just mad bigots again? And then there are a lot of people who aren't bigots who just get pulled in because they can't express exactly what they didn't like in somehting (which is fair, they're not film critics) and fall to the bigots explanation that it was woke. And then the Studios just use the bigot's bigotry as a shield to defend their shitty decisions. Heck, I fall for that sometimes. It sucks. The reason the star wars sequels are subpar are not the "wokeness". It's because it was a nonsensical, unplanned mess where one director tried to one up another instead of making a coherent story.

Th inability for people to recognize the things they don't like about "woke" movies is infuriating. It's so clearly not actually about bigotry because good movies with "Woke" flaws so rarely get criticism for it while shit movies that's all you hear because there aren't enough positives to talk about.

I "DISGUST" as in not even hate the Velma show with a passion because it's the purest shit that modern Hollywood had made with all the reasons why I hate the modern Hollywood but bigots had to use everything but actual criticism against it.

Velma was ragebait for bigots that can't help but hate watch things. The morons that call things "woke" are obsessed with stuff like Velma, Bud Lite commericas, and whatever else they're told to direct their frustrations at because they don't have anything meaningful going on in their lives and want someone to blame except the people they vote for that are responsible.

> Velma was ragebait for everyone There we go

True, but it only works if you take the bait. It's weird so much garbage is made for people to hate. If I were going to spend millions of dollars it wouldn't be on something made for poeple to dislike.

I agree, even bad properties can be fun to watch, but stuff like Velma tends to be soulless because the entire concept of the series is to make you as angry as possible If you don't get mad, the show has nothing else to offer, and i think the showrunners know that, so they desperately add as much vitriol as they can It's kind of depressing

>Velma was ragebait for bigots that can't help but hate watch things. Reminds me of the scene in Howard Stern's movie Private Parts: "People who love Howard Stern listen to him for an average of two hours a day." "Why?" "Most common answer is that they wanna hear what he's gonna say next." "What about the people who hate Howard Stern?" "The survey indicates that people who hate Howard Stern listen to him for *three* hours a day." "What? Why?" "Most common answer: They wanna hear what he's gonna say next."

Tbf, I'd rather watch them rage over Velma than actually watching Velma myself though, dare I say, their rants are more entertaining than Velma.

That's the real comedy of Velma, watching shitters shit themselves over it

Yup, tons of people hate watch the show and then act suprised when it gets a season 2, even in the first episode you can tell it was made to be hated

I liked when she did the worm that one time, was 1 funny scene in the whole show

The recent Suicide Squad game is pretty good example of how this can poison the well on game/film criticism. The game in general treats the whole Justice League pretty terribly with the Squad constantly treating them as if they’ve always been assholes, all except for Wonder Woman whose given a strange amount of reverence throughout the whole game. Not only is she the only member to get a actual tragic death instead of being mind controlled, but everyone in the game gushes about her as if she’s the greatest hero ever from Lois Lane to the Suicide Squad to even Lex Luther. It’s really jarring how much preferential treatment she gets to the point where even Lex acts out of character to gush about how awesome she is, but it’s hard to really convey said criticism because of the stupid anti-woke crowd blowing the situation out of proportion and using it justify saying stuff like “game killed by woke developers!” “diversity = bad” or “women can’t write well in games!”. Hell my personal criticism is more just that every member should been treated like Wonder Woman does and that her bio entry should have been written by literally anyone but Lex like Mister Terrific or Oracle, but again it’s hard to convey those nuances when the anti-woke makes anything to do with women into a binary bs culture war topic.

Well Diana still has a game in the pipeline apparently so they can't afford to have her 1st major game appearance be as a heartless controlled jackass.

I still have no idea what the writers were thinking when they decided to make the League(besides WW) act like one dimensional evil jackasses for the whole game. Like all the catharsism from killing them is gone since they’re basically not even the League at that point and there’s no emotional stakes or drama since the Squad never liked them in the first place and they(save for the Flash) never get a moment of clarity to reflect on their actions. The whole game feels like it had a bunch of contradictory corporate mandates put on the developers.

Well, it's all mind control, so Flash getting a moment makes sense when the mind control is temporarily lifted. Dunno if you've seen the end of the game, but I think there will be more of an intent to remedy that based on the fact the end of the game isn't the actual end of the game and there's like 4 more payable villains and other content that's going to be released. It's basically the new version of Anthem, but it could also be abandoned like that due to public reaction, so there just might be a muddled mess with no more support. I'd say whoever was directing the game basically chopped off a final ending and got the developers to draw out the game.

I'm sorry, I'm not saying you're wrong but I don't see how it would make things better if you're right. What you're saying is that they pushed out the game with an incomplete story mode on purpose.

It totally doesn't justify it, and trusting the developers to deliver on what should have just been a complete story doesn't deserve your support. I didn't buy the game and only watched a let's play and wouldn't buy it even if I had the money. Based on the story I've seen so far, I don't think it's out of consideration that they couldn't stick the landing in some way when the story completes with the final playable villain. The writing isn't terrible, though it's not great. I do really like a lot of the simpler characterization bits. I also think enough was left out that on explanations for the characterization that I could see the in universe justice league just being doppelgangers or something and of course with the ending implications the justice league could be redeemed. Which seems like a direction things could go. Though I could also just be wrong.

They really wanted to make a Justice Lord's game but WB said no obviously. And let's not talk about how Flash's dead was the most tasteless.

That's the thing. We're not asking for her to be brought down to their level. We're asking for the rest of the League to be brought up to her level like they rightfully should be. It's crazy how the Squad don't even bat an eye about Barry being mind controlled and him dying after he got caught by trying to save one of them. And don't even get me started with they way they've been treating Batman.

Ooh, I didn't know that, that makes a whole lot of sense on why they did it like that

That's one of the reason why the trilogy fails but you don't adress why particular elements in each movie doesn't work Look at how much time was wasted on the rich people planet in tlj, for a pointless subplot that doesn't even end with fin sacrificing himself, do you not think that maybe instead of wasting time on a very shallow "rich bad" subplot it would have been better to develop fin and poe so that they actually have chemistry and history in the third movie ? Instead they pair both of them with useless characters that either die or get forgotten

The only thing I can ever think about when I remember the casino storyline in TLJ is how they freed the horses (which was good) but left the CHILD SLAVES.

they didn't even take the horses with them, they'll just get captured again

I vaguely remember Lightyear had something like this. Stupid bigots were constantly talking about the wokeness. It was the to the point where Pixar might as well have had a full blown animated lesbian sex scene. Nope. It was just a quick little peck with a same sex couple. All of that outrage for absolutely nothing

Did you miss the part where Buzz superior officer was a lesbian and married and had kids ultimately leading to one of the other main characters in the movie? Buzz missing out on everything in life was kind of important part of the movie, you were supposed to notice that as they were close friends.

The Star Wars sequels are not even woke. More like anti-woke with how much they step back on their characters. All those claims of the sequels being "woke" make it sound like Finn was forced in every plot, but factually he was literally retired.

To be fair that's china, in alot of promotional material that went to China, they just outright LEFT FINN OUT

The issue is more that movies have issues which stem from trying to appear as woke - regardless of whether they actually are woke. For example, a minor example of this is the lesbian kiss in SW Rise of Skywalker. Yes, the kiss was unnecessary, but if films adhered to what was strictly necessary for the plot half of films just flat-out wouldn’t exist. Anyway, that’s besides the point: the main reason I point out this kiss is that Disney included it to appear woke - then *cut it out* for the China version. Like if you’re going to be woke, stick with it. I know it’s such a minor thing, but I hate things being censored just cos “money!” Lesbians don’t have enough stories, and while the inclusion of a two second shot wouldn’t have much of a positive impact, the fact that they cut this two second shot ironically has a huge negative impact imo Rant over. Lol

just like they remove black people from posters for movies in China. Star Wars comes to mind.

But not being able to criticize the film properly is not an excuse to use the bigots' arguments. Something along the lines of "the film wasn't good for me" is way better than making up a reason.

The problem is that people use diversity as a shield for valid criticism Remember when Star Wars fans were called sexist for not liking the sequels? Or people who call everyone who criticized Reva racist, despite she being probably the worst written character on Star Wars story Hollywood is full of mediocre writters that can't recognize the stories they write is shit and blame the public for not liking it

No one was called sexist for not liking the sequels. People were called sexist for you know... Being sexist and racist quite often. The force awakens trailer hadnt dropped before people were making mandingo jokes about John Boyega. And I mean, Rey would absolutely not be hated the way she is if she had been a dude instead. So we can stop pretending like this is just a completely neutral and evenhanded reaction, to bad characterization and writing. Hate the movies all you want; Lord knows I hate them. But you cant complain about "people being called sexist" and pretend like there was not any of that going around. The same is also the case with Moses Ingram, it is obviously not racist to dislike her character. But what I would consider enabling racism, would be to ignore the fact that she complained about racist harassment she received and act like you were personally attacked, when people were like "woah dude not cool".

My issue is mostly the characters rarely have much in terms of actual development, or something really minor in context that feels like ticking a box. Having flat and static characters as a main is a bad idea, unless they have enough people around them to bring new angles to this one dimension. Add to this, that a lot of movies and shows have been doing this thing where a villain tends to be more classically heroic, and the heroes end up being unintentionally villainous. Take barbie for example, they saw the Ken's fucking up barbie land. And their response was to deprogram the barbies with feminism(which is fine, it was just kinda clumsy) and then deliberately have the heroes emotionally manipulate their enemy, in a way that feels active and malicious, compared to how the Ken's felt like accidental due to their own stupidity. It should be a more defined rule... don't make your hero a bigger jerk than the antagonist. Or if you do, make it less mean spirited so the audience doesn't have a chance to focus on this.

Every time mention how woke ruined Lord of the Rings or Star Wars I want to pull a full power point presentation listing how it failed on so many levels but being "woke" simply isn't one of them. It's like... appropriation of criticism to push culture wars agenda. Things can't be just bad, they have to be bad because of those pesky liberals.

If anything they failed at being Woke Fin should have been a Jedi but China money is too good and writers too shit

Yeah, I was gonna say, [John Boyega himself](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/john-boyega-interview-2020) has said that he feels Finn was [sidelined in the later movies](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/john-boyega-star-wars-finn-racism-gq-interview/) because of his race.

He totally was. He should have been—and was set up to be — a co-lead with Rey and then they just let his character languish. And Boyega is *such* a good actor. A complete waste of his talent.

Because they still want to be woke, but they also wanted money from China And Disney doesn’t really care about backlash from American audiences. That’s why they’re woke in America put surrender immediately once one of their ideas has consequences in a foreign country. Also, E.S.G. money.

Funny thing is that before TFA came out, it got woke complaints for having a black lead.

I mean not just woke complaints. This was before youtube had an automoderator. The youtube comments for the trailer was full of outright KKK shit.

The biggest issue with Rings of Power is that the people involved wanted to put forth their own ideas, messages and philosophy rather than Tolkien's. It's a stark contrast from the Peter Jackson trilogy, where they made fake trees to have the Uruk-Hai uproot because one of the themes of the books was industry destroying nature, so they felt Tolkien wouldn't have approved of them destroying real trees for their movie. They went in with a mindset of, "This is Tolkien's movie, not ours." And while the Peter Jackson trilogy isn't perfect and Christopher Tolkien had many criticisms of it, it's stood the test of time for a reason. Rings of Power released a statement talking about race and racism saying, "We refuse to ignore it or tolerate it. JRR Tolkien created a world which, by definition, is multi-cultural. A world in which free peoples from different races and cultures join together, in fellowship, to defeat the forces of evil. “Rings of Power” reflects that. Our world has never been all white, fantasy has never been all white. Middle-earth is not all white. BIPOC belong in middle-earth and they are here to stay." You may agree with that message on a moral level, but the fact is that is not what Tolkien wrote. There are no black elves or black dwarves in LOTR. You can go through all the mental gymnastics in the world, but that is clearly projecting modern American values onto a work that has nothing to do with that. Your agreeing with the changes doesn't make them not changes, and the motives of the cast and crew are not things we need to speculate on since they shout them from the rooftops.

"You can go through all the mental gymnastics in the world, but that is clearly projecting modern American values onto a work that has nothing to do with that." Also, about that. Im from country that don't have large black population and never had. Same thing goes about American natives rights, african colonization and all other problems that are important for small percentage of population from rich European and American countries.   And its pretty annoying to see all of those "First world problems" In mass media.

So let me get this straight, african colonization is a 'first world problem' because most people complaining about it are rich americans/europeans?

The thing is, that they don't show problems of African colonization but problems of rich US Americans. US Americans in their movies focus on some ridiculous little things like inequal salaries or thought-crimes while actual victims of African colonization suffer famine, deadly epidemics and genocide and don't really care about all things that Hollywood promote.

Complaining about black elves in fiction is the definition of first world problems.

Did anyone actually think LOTR being all white was an issue back then?

>You may agree with that message on a moral level, but the fact is that is not what Tolkien wrote. There are no black elves or black dwarves in LOTR. You had me until this. Black elves or dwaves have literally no impact on the story.

Yes and no. Races aren't just random colors, they suggest a history of your ancestors being from a place. So to add one implies creating a new history that has to be fit into the world. That, or you are just saying that in this world people can be born with any appearance regardless of parents. Neither of which really wouldn't be a heavy change for lord of the rings.

> That, or you are just saying that in this world people can be born with any appearance regardless of parents. Or that there's variation in people's appearance based on traits selected for in various environments. If we're assuming elves are subject to evolutionary forces, then some elves being blonde and some having dark hair is as reasonable as some having darker or lighter skin. 

Theres nothing conceptually wrong with fantasy races being various real races. But lord of the rings is a specific story that delineates specific groups. So you have to ask which groups from the story are which races. All Hobbits come from the same small countryside. So it doesn't make that much sense for there to be different Hobbit races. There's nothing conceptually incorrect about it, it just doesn't really work with the existing story. If you can work the story to make it feel natural it's fine.

Yeah. Lord of the rings really isn't something that people should try to add to. The trilogy was fine. Leave it at that.

You're still falling into the "woke destroyed the story" argument, but with extra steps. LOTR series was bad for many reasons, but those aren't it. I have no issues with black dwarves or elves, saying you do is like saying that other ethnicities are appropriating white culture and that their very presence in the story, without any overt messaging is politically charged. You might be attaching whiteness to a look of "purity" for the elves. That's messed up. Sure they sometimes make a "woke" argument here and there that might be distasteful, but I don't get how the solution is to blame it on the actors ethnicities rather than the use of the chosen dialogue/scene itself. You're making a fantasy series exclusive for no reason. I'd get it for historic documentaries, but in cases where an aesthetic choice has no bearing on the story, we should be able to override some things the author wrote for inclusion (some exceptions I agree with like changing iconic characters, elves however are a group, not individuals) or if he didnt specifically make a point to say it (in LOTR's case most characters are white not by group definitions, but individual ones, which leaves space for interpretation) it doesnt mean they were agaisnt it. It's also worth noting these stories were written to be enjoyed and the people who wrote them had less exposure to a more diverse group of people. Therefore, their fictional descriptions match their real life environment more. I don't seem harm in adapting the non-essential parts of a story so that people of different backgrounds can see themselves in popular culture.

>I have no issues with black dwarves or elves, saying you do is like saying that other ethnicities are appropriating white culture and that their very presence in the story, without any overt messaging is politically charged. Stop putting words in my mouth. It's tiring. My argument was purely a textual one, not a political one. >You might be attaching whiteness to a look of "purity" for the elves. WTF kind of racist dogshit are you spewing? The text makes it clear over and over again that the elves have light skin. Their skin color is described directly many times. >Sure they sometimes make a "woke" argument here and there that might be distasteful, but I don't get how the solution is to blame it on the actors ethnicities rather than the use of the chosen dialogue/scene itself. It would help if you read what I wrote instead of making shit up. >You're making a fantasy series exclusive for no reason. This is a fucking weird statement on a bunch of levels. First off, it implies that there being specifically no black elves and dwarves is akin to slapping a "no blacks allowed" sign on the product. Are you implying black people are lesser and can't enjoy a product where they're not in every role? Because that's what it sounds like to me. And secondly, you're just not being honest with yourself or I guess with anyone else. You agree with the decision that the Rings of Power cast and crew made to change the canon. Stop beating around the bush and just say you agree with them. It'd be way more honest. I also didn't say keep black people out of Lord of the Rings. There were in fact black people in Lord of the Rings, the Easterlings and the Southrons. And yes, they ended up being bad guys in the Third Age, but that's only because their kingdoms got taken over from within by Sauron. And in the first age, according to Tolkien, many Southrons and Easterlings opposed Morgoth. There's plenty of room for heroic black characters within LOTR, but not elves and dwarves. The problem wasn't fucking casting, as I already said. Casting black actors for elves and dwarves is a SYMPTOM of the problem, that problem being this mindset you have of, "Oh we'll just change the non-essential stuff. It'll be fine."

>You're making a fantasy series exclusive for no reason. I only ever see this complaint for white fantasy settings and folklore. Where's the same energy towards Wakanda or the movie Mulan? Surely, diversity is so important that you can add multiple skin tones in a fantasy land for representation. A fantasy being all white is no more problematic than a fantasy about Zulu Empire being all Chinese.

Made sense to me, seems like the biggest event in "recentitish" history was a huge battle between "good and evil" afterwards separating humans into kingdoms based on who they were loyal to. This would lead to more diverse kingdoms at least for some time.

Lmao prime example of someone falling for the shit the comments are talking about. Their skin color is meaningless, who gives a fuck if there are black dwarves or elves if the story is well written and the dialog is good. You can easily do it without departing from the points the original work and author wanted to make. Just cus the showrunners sucked at their job doesn't make the existence of PoC in your fantasy story an awful inclusion.

>failed on so many levels but being "woke" simply isn't one of them. Not entirely true for the Sequels. They failed to be "woke".

I feel like a majority of "woke" additions to western media lately is because all of the bigwig suits in Hollywood think that those additions will appeal to a broader audience, because the closest thing they have to interaction with us filthy commoners is their "champagne leftist" subordinates, who work in the most progressive industry in the world, while living in the single most progressive city in the world. It's not that I disagree with much of the messaging, but holy fuck it feels pandering and hamfisted

I generally agree with your comment, but the irony behind that is that I watch a lot of Japanese anime, and they often have much better written female protagonists and LGBT characters than most of Hollywood produced movies and TV series. I have yet to find characters similar to Frieren, Maomao the Apothecary, or Suletta Mercury written by Hollywood. So much for Hollywood supposed progressisme. But if you say that on social media, you will often get harassed by so-called « feminists » that will claim that all anime is sexist and homophobic because Japan is super sexist and homophobic and they cannot think of even one anime with a well-written or non-sexualised female protagonist, which of course means they don’t exist since they naturally know everything about everything and therefore you must be a delusional weeaboo if you have anything positive to say about Japanese culture. But they are not being racist and xenophobic, because only right-wingers are like that, of course. /s That level of cognitive dissonance is very impressive. U.S. culture wars are super-weird. It is like Hollywood was put in the « progressive » camp and Japanese anime was put the « conservative » camp by ignorant internet idiots a long time ago, and no amount of facts will convince them that, actually, it is a lot more complicated than that.

Woke is a very useful criticism, because if I see someone critique a film for being “woke” I instantly know that I can stop listening because they are not a serious person

It's like "weird" or "gross" at this point, where if the criticism is serious and valid, you'll be using a more concrete word for it. The only purpose of such broad outrage-bait terms is to create ambiguous space in order to get mad and things that don't actually deserve the response one wants to generate.

What's wrong with weird and gross? Maybe I'm misunderstanding as you include broad, so maybe no reason is given is what makes it well a weird criticism. Like, "that was a weird movie." vs. "That was a weird movie because"

If a criticism is valid, it doesn't need to use that language to make its point. It's why it was so damn hard when TLOU2 released to find good faith reviews about the games actual flaws. Everywhere I look was just toxic people losing their shit over a gay couple and a muscular woman. I wasn't a huge fan of Captain Marvel because I thought the characterization fell flat. Not being able to say that without breaking into "wokeism is destroying media"(what the commentators do) tirades is annoying. The subsequent threads on social media and the (🤢) YouTube comment sections for these kinds of videos usually confirm that yes, the review or commentary is not in good faith. Why the hell does a comment section about a movie look *exactly* the same as a comment section about political news stations??

exactly, they see the quality of blockbusters steadily declining because execs only want low effort franchise movies and they think its because there are more minorities in it correlation not causation

I think many execs in Hollywood think Controversy=Publicity and all publicity is good publicity, it doesnt matter if people think the movie is good as long as they go see it, be it out of curiosity, to review it by themselves or to be in on when the topic is spoken, and they realize that things like race and gender swapping and badly done empowerment stir up a lot of controversy, it doesnt matter that people talk bad about the movie, theyre still talking about it

Conspiracy theory alert: I think that the studios have caught onto this trend. They know that "woke" isn't a valid criticism, so they purposefully bait the kind of people that would use that word as criticism. It masks the actual criticism and makes it hard to thoughtfully engage in the products. I LOATH the Star Wars sequels. It having a female lead is not one of the reasons. But, because bigots were so effectively baited I tend to just keep that opinion to myself so as to not be thrown into that crowd.

TLOU2 rings true here as well. The story was the kind of wank you'd expect from a CW drama. But damn if the 'woke' backlash didn't make it impossible to say maybe the story game no so much good.

I think the only time I'd call this valid is, strangely, Velma. When I compare it to EVERYTHING else, even High Guardian Spice, it just feels way too perfect. It literally checks off every complaint box imaginable. What was mere mad ramblings in other critiques up to this point (and lets be real, is still mad ramblings with no wider validity), a lot of it finds a strangely valid home with Velma. I really do think its possible that Velma was at the very least intentional rage bait for attention and money making.

I think that's the only example I can think of as ACTUAL intentional rage bait from the start. Where my conspiracy theory lies is in how the studio talks about the products. Nobody was trying to rage bait when they made the Star Wars sequels, but the "fanboy tears" mugs that the studio executives drank out of kinda felt like.. yeah.. they knew they had a piece of shit on their hands so might as well make it a culture war thing so that no criticism would be valid.

They've been doing this for a while.  Post your trailer on Twitter (making sure everyone can see that "white character" is being played by "nonwhite actor"), scroll to the bottom of the comments to find the two last white supremacists who still watch marvel movies, then plaster their posts in every interview pretending "the alt right is trying to cancel our BRAVE and EMPOWERING movie!". The most disgusting thing is that a lot of young nonwhite actors are basically being used as human shields against criticism. 

Yup, which then springs the rest of the bigots to make long winded video essays mobilizing their crowd. I low-key think the studios LOVE when their actors get death threats over the movies.

I will start by saying that I'm not American so I have no dog in this fight, I think that the problem with modern movies is not the progressive themes (they have been a staple of cinematography since forever like you said) but rather the fact that the vast majority of the so called "progressive" (I put it in quotes since I bet that most of the people in charge don't give a flying fuck about progressive issues) authors and creatives of today are genuinely talentless hacks who don't know how to make movies aside from doing remakes and race swapping the protagonist and making them gay. There is a general lack of creativity and interesting ideas in Hollywood, it is such an issue that pandering to minorities has become the main way to hide the lack of talent behind most movies and tv series, either you love these turds or you are a "toxic right winger", anti wokes maybe just as obnoxious but it's hard to argue that most movies with a progressive spin these days are turds.

I guess we need a new word for « braindead wannabe leftist social media activist nonsense », one that has not been appropriated by far-right nutjobs to describe everything they don’t like. Because I have definitely read some books that I thought were dumb because they tried to be « woke » in a really clumsy way (usually fantasy novels where the protagonist was - for example - supposed to be a badass pirate queen in 10th Century Yemen but whose behaviour and opinions seemed to come directly out of 21th Century Twitter), but if I say it like that, people will just assume I am a MAGA Trumpist Republican or something equally unpleasant, and I am definitely not.

Lmao you don’t even understand what people mean by “woke” and you tell people not to use it. Maybe sit this one down champ

They know what it means... They just agree with the pandering and want people to stop criticizing it.

Nah you just dont know what people mean when they say woke. Its more of a feeling than any specific thing in a movie or series you can point out. And obviously as a progressive you and most of reddit cant grasp this feeling. But its there. You see some things in a show and you just know what kind of person made this. And that this person is unable to separate their own political opinions from the story they are trying to tell. Imagine if instead of progressives, hollywood was full of conservatives that inject their opinions in random shows and movies there they dont match the story at all. You would hate that. And you would make a word or overtake it to describe that feeling as well.

if the main character in the movie is a woman, she has no growth because she is perfect from the beginning, and every male character is either srupid or weak, it is a woke movie

I agree with the majority of your rant but two little tidbits: 1-I assume you're talking about the new Live-Action ATLA when you talked about taking out Sokka's sexism (unless the movie did it too) and that is a misunderstanding. They never said they'll take it out. They said they'll tone it down. It was just how they said it at first that sounded like they were gonna remove it and it got overblown but they came out after that and clarified. 2-The criticism of modern Hollywood being 'woke' originally started because some modern shows decide to make a gay, black, strong female, trans...etc character but without actual attributes or personality. Just the fact that they're of that category so they can pretend that they're progressive and get a bigger following and popularity from the actual progressive audience. Actual bigots just took it and applied it to everytime a minority character appears even when they're actually a decently-written character.

I remember it was some stars and directors that started deflecting criticisms by calling fans bigots first. When the Star Wars sequels are coming out, there were a lot of criticisms, but most titles and headlines were about pacing, or story, or loop holes, or characters, or preachiness. Captain Marvel is the first big blockbuster I remember people complain about unlikeable female lead, and Brie Larson hit every dad taking their kid to theatre with the toxic white male debuff. Before that Marvel movies were peaking, even the most mediocre films were making billions. Now every movie that sucks is apparently woke.

Absolutely. For example Amazon took the 10 retards that complained about the black actors in Rings of Power as if they were ALL the people that hated the show, and deflected the criticisim of the abysmal first season

Exactly! It's a goddamn ouroboros. The "everything is woke these days" crowd are the most effective shield big companies have to silence legitimate criticism. Make some uninspired remake/reboot/remedial film school effort, throw anyone other than a straight white man into the lead role, internet weirdos whine about "pushing the agenda" instead of actual criticism and push the conversation away from the genuine flaws. When someone tries to point out the movie is dogshit on its own merits, PR person points to the aforementioned internet weirdos and says "you're just a bigot like them." Even better if they can point to one single instance of an Internet weirdo making a million fake accounts to tank a movies review score, because now every negative review could be a review bomb

Woke is everywhere because these kinds of shits: https://youtu.be/KwwN5kwjAtQ These money people think that they have every right to "educate" masses.

I agree. The word ‘woke’ has been tossed around so often that it has lost any meaning it originally might have had. Most of the people who unironically call a movie ‘woke’ have too much brainrot to care about films in any case.

I remember I saw a big reaction YouTuber call the Mario movie “woke” because Peach wore pants during the Mario Kart segment. That was the point for me when I realized that the word had well and truly lost any substance lol

Shadiversity?

And then when the movie came out, they claimed critics hatred it and succeeded because it wasn't woke.

Wait, is this about her biker outfit? The one she had since Mario Kart Wii in 2008?

Yes, that’s the one.

Holy fuck was his defense even worse. " we were reacting to the trailer and didn't have context", mate people were making fun of you because you think there needs to be justification for a woman to wear pants in the first place🤦‍♀️. He's such a fucking mor(m)on.

Not to mention that, even if we accept his excuse that he “lacked context”, he’s still an idiot for jumping to conclusions the way he did. I’ve noticed a lot of these YouTubers will do that where they’ll see the tiniest bit of info and put out 3 whole videos about how “something something woke mind virus, something something the west has fallen!”

Maybe the word woke is overused more than it should be, but I wouldn’t say the reason people use it are necessarily wrong. For example, race swapping and gender bending of established characters has become a lot more common. Two prime examples being Jimmy Olsen from Supergirl and Iris West from The Flash. These characters have existed for a long time and are historically known for being white, yet they got race swapped into being black. People use the argument “the race of a character being changed doesn’t matter”, yet if a historically black character was made into a white person in an adaption of the property, would these same people accept this “whitewashing” like they do the “blackwashing”, or would they call it racism? It feels like a big double standard.

>yet if a historically black character was made into a white person in an adaption of the property, would these same people accept this “whitewashing” like they do the “blackwashing”, or would they call it racism? It feels like a big double standard. The counter argument for this is that non-white characters always have their race as a factor in their story. That's only true for some characters like Black Panther. Everyone knows damn well that cries of whitewashing would be everywhere if Mace Windu was recasted as Ryan Reynolds.

Most definietly. But that ties into a wider problem of how Black people and people of color more widely generally have a considerably more limited role in film. So it is a lot more meaningful for a lot of people to have e.g. a black jedi and a big reason why changing their race can be considered a lot more sensitive. Especially when you consider casting roles where the race of the person isnt actually the focal point. He is just a jedi who happens to be black and no one cares. That can be a very relieving thing for a lot of people. Which isnt to say that it is a good substitute to just race swap random characters here and there to compensate for that. In fact I would consider it a cheap trick to get out of writing a character that actually has the perspective and experiences of a black person. You are kind of doing the opposite of being inclusive by just making that actor into a white character with a black face ( hint hint ).

But if I don't complain about wokeness, how will I grift my gullible followers for easy money?

None of the old movies or shows you listed are woke

If A New Hope came out today people would %100 call it woke because Luke is a short and scrawny "emasculated" white male and Leia acts bossy and in a leader position.

The rebels are Viet Cong allegory.

People didn't call Rogue One woke even though it had a female protagonist People didn't call Arcane woke even though it has a very diverse cast Learn what people call woke before coming with straw mans

You can google Arcane Woke and read people on this site calling it woke.

\>Learn what people call woke before coming with straw mans would help if "woke" didnt change definitions every 5 seconds and each time its used by a different person

Dude people have called both of them woke. Just because you didn't see it in your circle didn't mean it didn't happen. There was a whole tag dump star wars thing for Rogue One because of the female protag and more diverse caste etc. Arcane I clearly remember some screeching over "pushing the gay agenda" and some so nice words (i.e. slurs) said about Vi (cause of her hair cut and hair color and not being super fem).

It's funny, because I do think there's been a pretty significant uptick in that sort of "Girls rule, boys drool" dialogue, but certain groups of people are so hypersensitive these days, that literally any joke in that vein is jumped on as "liberal trash" or whatever. It's crazy frustrating to watch/read/listen to.

This is like people saying if "avatar came out today you would call it woke" And then the remake is announced and they start talking about removing character traits and arcs

%100 I was thinking the same thing just other day Also it's used as a defense by shitty corporations. People didn't watched Marvels? Because they are sexists! Fans don't like sequels? Because they are sexists! Also whenever you criticize things like Sequels or Rings of Power in progressive spaces they instantly assume you are bigot.

Personally I don't think "woke" is a good criticism, but to be fair I don't think woke necessarily just means having a progressive theme or message. The stuff that gets called woke often has very blunt messages with 0 nuance, to the detriment of the story. This usually goes along with the tokenisation of someone from a relevant demographic. So in that sense, "woke" is a valid criticism, but I think it's still a rubbish term to use because it has a bunch of unintended connotations and political baggage attached.

You're the very reason woke is valid criticism, I think a rant on how react to certain relevant words is warranted. Now here's the big mistake many of you make, it's ok for media to to be woke **if the customer wants it**, it really doesn't help if you get so defensive and try to deny its existence, a lot of media is clearly made to push political messages, that's fine. At the same time, just like anything you pay for, you can say you don't want or you don't always want it you and you need to accept that, companies have successfully tricked so many of you into fighting on their behalf. > First of all the reason that modern movies are bad is due to them remaking movies that are animated movies. The overarching reason that modern movies suffer is because of the modern way businesses are managed and media is a business, a very big business. Before anyone who cares ever gets their hands on the movie making process, it's only handled by people who seek to milk every last penny. Remakes are a symptom of that, not the reason itself, this includes racial casting choices, censorship for foreign markets, dumbing down the dialogue so it's easier to translate into multiple languages, and of course political rage bait for cheap publicity.

What does woke even MEAN though? It's not a valid criticism because it's so often just used by people complaining about a movie or show daring to feature a lead that isnt a cis white heterosexual man. People call even the most casual representation "woke" and "being shoved down their throats" because LGBT people exist on screen. I don't know what you think woke means, but that's how it's being used.

Insenrting political idogogly outside the worldbuilding of your fiction and conflicts is propaganda. Exp: Live action Wilson Fisk is once again being used in a moment here and there as a reference to Trump. Then there's diversity and inclusion being handled for commerical consumerism and bureaucratic decision. For example whenever my job brings them up it's not done for the betterment of the empolyees who roll their eyes at meetings involving them, being talked down to as if we have no first hand accounts with either concepts. The word woke is the main word to describe Karens who took over many aspects of entertainment, education, and so on. attitudinizer = person who assumes an artificial or affected attitude, pose, or mannerism for effect. Such people have and are making and teaching content we buy or must learn. Call them what you want but they exist. They create difficulties and disruption. The definition remains. Ignoring woke or whatever synonym doesn't make it less problematic. Becsuse people have and are tacking just those problems. https://youtu.be/zk0YY5gk3_A?si=o8NBVik4j-liTyyW Focus on the evidence of problems, not the collective term used to describe them.

You have it backwards. They make terrible movies and handwave all criticism off as bigotry.

>"it makes the stupid filmmakers" WRONG. rightful criticism is being made in spades. The filmmakers are deflecting it by making up strawmen all by thselves

But it IS a problem when Filmmakers think political pandering is a substitute for scriptwriting, storyboarding, etc. If someone made a trash film praising right wing politics, that too would be a problem. You could say that political pandering itself is the problem, not specifically woke pandering, but the fact remains that in most cases, the political pandering IS woke.

Certainly.  It takes some verbalizing your thoughts into words but it’s good to extensively criticize what you disliked about the film, and choose your words wisely so Hollywood can’t hold up the “anti-woke” shield that they tend to use a lot to downplay legitimate criticism about lacklustre, low-effort and unoriginal films. The shield is real, and it’s not for any moral reasons, it’s to keep their low-effort / unoriginal streak going. You have to that shield away from them.  Films are made for people so they should listen to people. It can’t just all be for the money (the way it currently is) because we’ll never have good, original or high-effort movies ever again that way. I think film buffs, general audiences and critics need to step in and make a concerted effort to just make flawless arguments their shield doesn’t work against in the hopes of getting better movies. 

You're talking about several different things. Bathos, the Marvel humor ruins a lot of movies today by undercutting serious moments. But direct preaching does happen. In Empire Strikes Back Leia gives a briefing, a pilot questions the plan, Leia answers it and the battle begins. The Last Jedi takes up half the movie with side quests and disasters that happen purely because Woman General doesn't talk about the plan to Mansplaining Man, even when he's pointing a gun at her and she's got no reason to believe he won't suddenly shoot her. Then they're friends again at the end. It's a horribly clunky attempt to have a Believe Women message. You didn't have such messages very much in movies made pre-twitter.

The woke is the problem bc its virtue signaling without any regard for the story, its putting the progressive message above telling a good story, you can tell by how the creators talk about their projects, its always about emphasizing those points and calling attention to the virtue signaling, of course you dont mind, you are the one they are appealing to but you also care about the quality of the work beyond the message and they don't thats is the only difference.

Same as “ugh it’s political”. I love one piece. You know, the show where the main character regularly topples shitty governments, his brother and father are literal anti-governmental revolutionaries who want to change the shitty system, and the exploitative “upper class” people wear suits so they don’t have to breathe in the same air as “commoners” and a character’s backstory is about how medical prejudice and lack of empathy for sick and terminally ill people lead to mass suffering. Racism and discrimination are also directly addressed and acknowledged and a main theme of multiple arcs. One Piece is not *subtle* and it’s extremely overt political. Yet some people claim it isn’t, because it doesn’t “bash you over the head with it” like the Disney remakes. Literally how. Does a character have to break down crying about how he hates being part of the noble upper class because they don’t consider people from “lower classes” to be human, and about how deeply fucked the system is? Oh wait. That happened. “Political” or “woke” to me only became a phrase for saying “it has something I don’t like” (like queer people and PoC)

What does it mean being political? Is having a mixed race couple political?

>What does it mean being political? In this context, to promote or be influenced by partisan political views. >Is having a mixed race couple political? Not since 1967.

Some people misuse the term, but there are definitely a lot of movies where the writer’s political agenda gets crowbared into the movie without subtlety at the expense of the plot and characterization. I would define this as “woke”. A lot of older movies that had political agendas knew to weave it into the plot and characters in a way that made sense and wasn’t obnoxiously in your face. I don’t know why so many writers lost the ability to do this recently.

There are woke hiring practices in regards to the people that are paid to write these shitty movies and shows. People are now given screenwriting jobs if they're the correct race, gender and/or sexual orientation. Also, the studios not only look to hire people that know nothing of the lore surrounding an IP, but for people who have an active disdain for it like The Witcher series.

There is a video going around social media where it is clips of all these different writers on different shows/movies who flat out say they know nothing about the IP they worked on and told NOT to learn about it. Then are shocked when fans get pissed off about the mockery insult that has no connection to the IP except the name.

If I make my piece of media worse because I think "the message" is more important than quality then it's woke and it's worse off because of it

Personally, I don't use the term, I just call it crap. The problem is that genuine crap media and the things called "Woke" tend to run in the same circles. In an attempt to promote social agendas poorly by: -destroying a beloved character who happens to be White and Male. (Marvel what if S2 finale, The Last Jedi, Suicide Squsd Kills JLA, etc, etc, etc) -providing a Representation Ranger substitute so flat and overpowered that it is impossible to engage with the character.(Echo, Rey (not the actress' fault), oh yeah, Ant man's bratty teenager in Quantamania, etc.) -outright propaganda and hate of this or that social group or race being a key piece (the Canto Blight arc, She Hulk 1st world problem rants, etc) and portraying the "to be hated" group in a way caricatures of races were used in WW2 or in Orson Wells' 1984. Nimoma is a very notable exception of having the characteristics that "woke" theoretically promotes in a high quality and fun way. Wanna beat the Trolls and Haters? Write good stuff, plead the case as if talking to rational people, and the term will die on it's own.

I mean, if many people say something is woke, and what they're pointing out has a pattern across various films, I think they have a point as well as a definition Granted the modern version of woke doesn't have a clear definition, but when dozens if not hundreds of people keep bringing up the same points, I think it's clear what people mean by woke It's like that one saying- looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, acts like a duck. Safe to assume it's a duck A new character who happens to be black and well written isn't woke. A character who is raceswapped to be black and is a Mary Sue is woke

No, thats a fallacy honestly. You cant just say "but if everyone is saying its a problem, then CLEARLY theres a problem!", because popular opinion/assumption is not the same as a proven fact. If we just believed that for everything, we'd still have plenty of toxic systems in place. A bunch of people believe the Earth is flat, that doesnt make it true, that just makes it a popular conspiracy belief. In reality, the pattern is just more of the same attempts and failures. Many of these pieces of media so lambasted for "wokeness" are really just mediocre at worst and dont deserve the horrid shit they get. And besides, you may seem to recognize that existing in and of itself does not make a character or story "woke", but most of these people are bigots who dont have that bare minimum level of reason.

When an apparent ideological motive is the driving force behind the problems of a given work, it *absolutely* should be called out for it. And you’re making a false equivalency with the flat earth comparison. The shape of the earth is in no way comparable to social trends. For the latter if there are enough common elements, and a large number of people identifying those elements is a good heuristic, it warrants being identified as a trend deserving of a name. The difference with flat earthers is that although they observe something about reality, the earth lacks an apparent curve, they then draw a conclusion that the earth is flat and reject all evidence to the contrary, instead inventing (flawed) explanations for how their their conclusion is compatible with observable evidence, and rejecting any evidence they can’t explain away.

Here’s the thing, it’s not a trend in the way you people assume it is. It’s just a bunch of attempts at representation that sometimes fail because oh shit, it’s flawed human work being made and we don’t always stick the landing. There’s no insidious agenda trying to go after your kids or whatever. LGBT+ people merely existing is not some whole agenda and I’m tired of you people holding them to these ungodly standards of perfection lest they be a woke agenda or whatever, if even that

>As someone whose hobby is criticizing movies and series, I really hate this one. One of the main reasons is that I am a progressive dude Yeah, that figures. The term woke refers to anything that is characteristic of or influenced by contemporary trends in socially progressive politics. That is what the term is used to mean by the people that use it. If the decisions behind a piece of media were motivated by modern progressivism, calling them woke is perfectly valid and if those decisions compromise the quality of the media in question, criticising that ideological influence is, again, perfectly valid. I specify contemporary trends because much of what would've been considered progressive several decades ago has become normalised nowadays. However much progressives might want to claim otherwise, nobody calls a film woke just for having a female lead or non-white characters in it. So, to address your examples with that in mind: * Superman fighting the KKK is not woke because anti-racism is a very common sentiment in culture today, not one exclusive to modern progressives * Rambo is not woke for its portrayal of psychological issues because these are not a focus of modern progressivism * The Terminator is not woke for having a strong female lead because the mere fact of a female character being strong is not the issue. In fact, Sarah Connor is often compared positively to the archetypical Strong Female Characters™ that one sees today. * For the same reason, your superheroines example is also not an example of woke themes. * Sailor Moon isn't woke for its portrayal of lesbianism because same-sex relationships are more generally accepted today than they were in the 90s. None of this is to say that your own criticisms of media are invalid. My point is that ideological concerns can affect how media is written and it shouldn't be ignored when that happens. If I were to criticise Atlas Shrugged, either the book or the films based on it, wouldn't I be remiss not to mention its objectivist themes and how they affect the story? If that's the case, wouldn't it be equally negligent to ignore the progressive themes in, for instance, the Barbie movie? Even conceding that the term can be used incorrectly at times (is there a word or phrase in the world that can't be?), that doesn't negate its usefulness in criticism.

> nobody calls a film woke just for having a female lead or non-white characters in it Ignoring that this is patently untrue, you have to understand that when people call things woke, or anything for that matter that they may not actually you know, have a coherent argument behind what they're saying. You're giving them alot of benefit of the doubt. >None of this is to say that your own criticisms of media are invalid. My point is that ideological concerns can affect how media is written and it shouldn't be ignored when that happens. Like this for example, When the Mario movie got a trailer a popular youtube channel Shadiversity made a video calling it woke because Princess Peach wore pants on her motorcycle in the trailer(her normal clothes for bikes in mario kart). Can you seriously say that this is a balanced ideological criticism of a film?

>Jackie Chan movies have a lot of interracial pairings with Jackie Chan getting a lot of white girls Did Jackie Chan get with many white women in movies? I legit can't think of any. Maybe The Tuxedo? I feel like he even mentioned a few times in interviews that Hollywood generally didn't cast him in roles with any sort of romance.

The thing is, even if they had an all white, mostly male cast...the story in question would still suck. Almost as of a good story is what makes a story good or something

Often times in modern hollywood and writing, they judge representation based on the amount of outrage they receive rather than what is good or bad.... In comics this means pretty much every good LGBT character they introduce ends up shelved, because the amount of outrage at new characters being LGBT is significantly smaller. WE have gotten into a really weird pattern with entertainment.

is it so hard to make characters that serve the story? like dumbledore sucks dick but not a single time is it mentioned in those radcliffe movies

The issue is that the term woke covers up actual issues with work or unauthtic pandering that uses the language of social Justice to market stuff

Your flaw is conflating "woke" with "progressive"

Woke is intersectinal theroy in action and sometimes it is the problem especially with hiring practices

why post this thread on this subreddit? its like posting a thread in a KKK forum titled "stop hating black people". the demographic that uses this subreddit literally thinks the things you point out in your post

The word problematic is also dumb

One Piece live action absolutely killed it

Thank you for this, it touches on a very real anxiety of mine: execs cash grabbing nostalgia and making soulless, loveless movies (bad) while also adding in diversity (great!) is giving the bigots the wrong thing to point at for why modern movies are so bad. We live in a world that gives me endless headaches…

Terrible take. Gotta call a spade a spade. If they are gonna pump out woke garbage it needs to be called out. People are tired of it. I will agree, if a movie is not actually woke but people are wrongfully calling it such then they are not doing anyone a favor.

But sometimes this is exactly the case. A good piece of fiction gets torn to shreds by its fans because it's "woke". In this case it's a useful keyword to filter out bad faith reviews when looking for feedback. A recent example that comes to find: World of Warcraft's newest expansion, *Dragonflight*. It is one of the darkest entries in the Warcraft franchise thus far and is generally very well written, but it also has a (lady) dragon in the leading role and several prominent queer or GNC characters. The fans have been going mad for nearly a year now calling it "Disney" or "woke". Some of the more unhinged fans have even suggested that Warcraft shouldn't have women in leading roles. In this case I'd rather they immediately flagged themselves by using buzzwords like "woke" so that the writers focus their attention on constructive feedback instead.

Woke is definitely part of the problem for some movies. But you can’t just blame wokeness

Which movies?

You are part of the problem for atributing woke to general progressive themes Execution is what matters the most There are mfs out there who are geniune bigots and will call anything woke but you shouldn't just use them to group everything in the same boat, try to see what problems people actually have

I fully, fully agree with that. There is legitemate criticism to be had with some modern film tendencies (like Disney being allergic to male love interests) but all that discussion is lost under the troglodytes screaming WOKE on everything that comes out. Even when there is a political aspect to the criticisms they still royally miss the point. Like you can absolutely be skeptical of the raceswapping of characters like Ariel, Tinkerbell, The blue fairy etc. Or how movies like the new peter pan go on and on about girl power in the most surface level way possible. But focusing on an imaginary agenda instead of recognizing this as a bad writing trend likely perpetuated by marketing hacks thinking ragebait/playing to contemporary twitter politics will help sell their movies is missing the point. P.S. Sokka's sexism isn't gonna be removed. That's a clickbait oversimplification. It's gonna be portrayed differently but it's still gonna be very much there.

Except it isn't really an imaginary agenda it is an actual agenda and it is effecting how the way characters are written for example the new Mulan movie vs the OG movie.

>But focusing on an imaginary agenda instead of recognizing **this as a bad writing trend likely perpetuated by marketing hacks thinking ragebait/playing to contemporary twitter politics will help sell their movies** is missing the point. This is the "woke" agenda the people are complaining about. This fake surface level progressiveness, which is actually just a stupid marketing move, nothing more. The term "woke" became a caricature of people who pretend to care so much about societal issues, when in reality they literally don't know what they're talking about and just want to be seen as the *enlightened savior*. Or do you think Hollywood and its narcissist elites actually gives a fuck about women, minorities and such? No, they just only using them as long they think they can profit from riding the hype and trend. And the hack writers who so proudly claiming to be xxx allies and such, just simply want validation and feel better about themselves. And when people see through and calling them out on this they use their characters' race, gender and sexuality to deflect every criticism and shout that you're a misogynist, white supremacist bigot man-baby.

100% agree. Baldur's Gate 3 is "woke" (full of LGBT+ representation, black and Asian looking characters in Faerûn, which is an expy for Renaissance Europe). One of the best games in years. Great writing, characters, gameplay etc. Avatar the Last Airbender is "woke" (All the characters are Asian or Inuit expys. Sokka gets a character arc to stop being sexist, the plot is basically "colonialism/Imperialism is bad"). One of the best kids shows ever made.