Woke Hollywood Goes Broke

by J.D. Rucker

Over the past two months, we’ve seen a shift in the way movie failures are being reported by corporate media. There was a time not too long ago when every excuse possible was made for why “woke” movies didn’t perform well. Sometimes, they would blame world events. Other times, they’d blame a vast rightwing conspiracy. They used to blame Covid a lot, and that was at least partially true.

But they never blamed wokeness.

Lately, they’ve at least started mentioning it in some corporate media reviews and movie postmortems. They never come out and say that wokeness is bad, but at least they’re acknowledging that many films by companies like Disney are “controversial,” and the controversy “contributed” to their box office failures.

Admittedly, this was not the trend I expected. If you asked me in March or April how corporate media would report on Hollywood’s growing list of woke bombs, I would have said they would continue to try to hide the fact and blame “bigots” on the right for not being inclusive enough to let their kids be indoctrinated by LGBT propaganda or Critical Race Theory injected into plotlines.

Is the truth becoming too blatant for even corporate media to ignore? If so, now is the time to strike. And by strike, I mean ramp up efforts to inform our friends and relatives about two things. First, we need to continue to lambast woke movies. Lightyear suffered from such warnings, not just in media but through word of mouth. Second, we may need to support movies that are not woke… if you are among those who still watch movies. I personally do not, though I will make rare exceptions for movies that are on target.

Sound of Freedom is such a movie, from what I’ve heard. We will be watching it as soon as possible.

Between proving to them that woke movies are unsuccessful while rewarding unwoke movies with success, we can actually make them change. But here’s the thing. A large part of me hopes they don’t change. The only reason I’d like to see a change at all is because I’m aware of the influence they have over many Americans. However, that may not be enough for me to hope they improve.

That large part of me that doesn’t want them to change really wants them to completely fail. Would America be better off if Hollywood learned its lesson or if Hollywood failed to oblivion? I’m leaning toward the latter. An irrelevant Hollywood is, in my humble opinion, better for America than one that reluctantly starts making better business decisions. This is why I believe we should go for the jugular and stop watching anything they put out at all. Sound of Freedom may be the last Hollywood movie I ever watch.

Even if we push them to take notice of their dwindling bank accounts, they won’t stop promoting demonic ideas. They’ll just be more subtle. Perhaps we won’t get anything overtly woke like the recent Velma debacle, but the evil in Hollywood is so pervasive that they’ll simply sink back into the shadows a bit with less obvious indoctrination messages. They’ll still squeeze “inclusivity” into kids’ shows. They’ll still dishonor American patriotism, Christians, and straight white men as much as possible. It’s baked into who they are. The only way to truly “fix” Hollywood is to put them out of business. Incremental changes won’t do the trick.

Woke Hollywood Sinks Into Irrelevance After Multiple Box Office Failures

The formula for box office success these days seems rather simple – Produce a solid story with relatable and likable characters, and tell that story in a setting that makes sense with as few distractions and tangents as possible.  In other words, make a normal movie without the intent to manipulate your audience with propaganda.

Most movies that follow this basic formula will rake in the cash.  Any movie that insists on browbeating the audience will bomb; get woke, go broke.  The problem is that Hollywood elitists just can’t help themselves.  They think they’re smarter than the audience and smarter than the box office, and they would rather lose their entire business and fade into obscurity than admit the truth:  The market dictates the success or failure of popular media, the media does not dictate the market.

To be fair, the media culture we live in today is far different from what it was even 10 years ago.  The entertainment industry is no longer interested in keeping the public happy or distracted, they’re only interested in “platforms.”  They see every movie and every popular franchise as a vehicle to deliver their gospel, the gospel of woke.  It is likely that they believe if they saturate the market long enough and thoroughly enough with their messaging that one day the public will just give up and accept woke as the new normal.

This isn’t happening.  There’s been a flurry of film flops in the past year which have made it obvious that Hollywood is imploding instead of gaining influence.

Disney is probably the best place to start as a window into woke failure, because the company strategically targets children with far-left concepts from feminism to gay and trans ideology.  The company was on a downward spiral well before they tried to go to war with the state of Florida, declaring that they would do everything in their power to overturn anti-child grooming laws.  But that little incident didn’t help, either.

Disney’s slate of failed films over the past year has included:

• Turning Red, a metaphorical animated film exploring female puberty and menstruation.  The movie lost  $168 million.
• Lightyear, which featured a lesbian relationship and was released right after their fight with Florida.  Disney was also accused of removing Tim Allen as the voice actor for the popular Buzz Lightyear character because of his conservative leanings.  The movie lost at least $106 million.
• Strange World, another animated children’s film featuring thinly veiled climate change propaganda as well as a prominent LGBT relationship involving teen boys.  One of the biggest flops in Disney history with a loss of $197 million.
• Peter Pan And Wendy, a live action adaptation of the classic, was offloaded quickly to Disney’s streaming service and received dismal audience reviews.  The movie boasted a race swapped Peter Pan, race swapped Tinkerbell,  gender swapped “lost boys,” and a Mary Sue-like Wendy that battles 200 pound pirates with her sword fighting skills.
• The Little Mermaid, a live action adaptation, race swapped the classic Dutch fairy tale character and changed the message of the story from a mermaid seeking the love of a prince to “she don’t need no man to save her.”  The movie lost at least $20 million.
• Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, a film which attempts to undermine and deconstruct its title character and replace him with an anti-capitalist feminist activist, has been met with thumbs down from audiences and critics that have seen it so far, along with general disdain by fans of the franchise.  It is expected to lose hundreds of millions of dollars for Disney due to its massive budget.
• Elemental, a ham-fisted commentary about racism with Disney’s first animated “non-binary” character, is crashing at theaters and is expected to lose tens of millions of dollars.  The movie also had the 2nd worst box office debut in Pixar history, a company that was once seen as a sure thing.

Disney isn’t the only leftist media company in the gutter these days, it’s merely the most notorious.  Multiple woke movie calamities have struck in the past year from the horrendous ‘Bros,’ to the vapid ‘Fauci’ documentary, to AOC’s climate change documentary which went down in flames, to Amazon’s attempt to hijack Lord of the Rings with their woke ‘Rings Of Power’ series.  The list goes on and on, with production losses in the billions for 2022-2023.

What Hollywood doesn’t seem to realize is that audiences have options and nothing is going to force people to consume leftist ideology as a recreational product; they greatly overestimated their influence.  They might as well get rid of the box office altogether and come out of the closet as the defacto propaganda wing for governments and globalists.  Then they can abandon the facade and start making their own woke versions of ‘Triumph Of The Will.’