How much diversity can a movie have before you consider it "woke"?

[IceCreamSandwich]

Can it have 1 non-white character? 2—3? Can a non-white character be the protagonist? What if the antagonist is white—can the protagonist still be non-white? Does it make a difference which non-white race?

What about non-men characters, is 1, 2, or 3 okay? Can one be the protagonist? Can one be non-traditional in personality, skills, roles or appearance? Can one even be unattractive, and not be the antagonist?

What about non-straight characters? 1, 2, or 3? Can one be confirmed to be non-straight, or only implied? Can one have a romantic scene or partner? Could it be the main romance, or even have a happy ending?

What about non-cis characters? Is even 1 okay? Can they be confirmed as non-cis? Can they be treated as normal by other characters and the story? Can they be happy?

[DextroShade]

Having a non-white, gay, or female character doesn't in and of itself make a movie or show woke; but when they have no white straight people except as villains or make stupid social commentary or the casting is obviously pandering it does. I'll give some examples:

• The Sandman (Netflix): would have been a good show but 90% of the characters were gay so I kept wondering how humanity hadn't died out while they trapped him in the first episode.
• That Viking show on Netflix: there were no black female Viking queens so it immediately kills the suspension of disbelief.
• The Woman King: blatant historical lies, those female warriors didn't fight slavers they WERE slavers. When they actually went up against a real European army they lost badly.
• The Last of Us: three episodes in there are just two random dudes banging each other who had NOTHING to do with the main plot or the other characters.

Having black or gay characters featured is okay and I liked the female lead in the Alien movies but what they do now is pander so hard the art suffers for it.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Wait, so having a lot of gay characters in a movie is pandering because in the movie humanity would have died out if that many people were gay? Sorry, I don't follow the logic. Even if it's true humanity would have died out if 90% of people were gay, wouldn't that just make it a plot hole in the movie? Like in Encanto how there was so few people for so many years that there was almost definitely incest going on.

Also the viking. I've seen movies where they made an Indian white, when that's not historically accurate, but it was still a decent movie because the actor played the role well. It's just a weird choice of actor, and yes it could definitely take you out of the movie, but wouldn't that make it a bad movie, not pandering? Pandering would make people like the movie more, right?

Like the historical inaccuracies to make the movie more appealing to audiences I understand is pandering, that makes sense. People like happy endings, or at least not depressing ones, but sometimes real history is depressing.

The one with a random episode about side characters or never-again-seen characters though, again, I've seen that done a lot and it's often very fun. You learn more about the people and the world, even though it's nothing to do with the main plot or characters. I don't see how it's pandering in this one case and not in other cases.

[DextroShade]

By casting black people in obviously white roles and making way too many characters gay they are pandering only to a small minority of woketards and it alienates most everyone else.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Oh, okay. I guess that sort of makes sense. It seems like every movie would be pandering if that's what it means though, because every movie tries to appeal to some sort of audience or demographic. I thought pandering would have to be trying to appeal to the largest possible audience, like by lying about history so more people will like the movie and only few people will know it's inaccurate and dislike it, or how Disney makes reboot after reboot just because that's what they think will get the biggest audience. Just appealing to any audience at all, that's a much broader definition for pandering. Even movies with little or no diversity could be said to be pandering in that case, because a movie with only straight characters would appeal more to some straight people and alienate non-straight people. But that doesn't mean it's a bad movie or woke, does it?

[DextroShade]

Movies with only straight characters aren't pandering because even the gays know and accept that straight people are the vast majority of the population. If a gay person cannot enjoy a movie or show because there are no gay characters then they are going to have a hard time finding stuff to watch. Conversely I don't mind a gay character but making 3 out of 4 characters gay like in the Sandman was just ridiculous.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Just because most people are different from you doesn't mean you will feel any less alienated if everyone in a movie is also different from you. Women make up 50% of the population, but there are still a lot of men who "can't relate" to a woman protagonist. You know that out of the entire population, there are millions of gay people? It definitely can be harder for them to find stories that even include people like them, much less that are about people like them. I don't see why it's so ridiculous for a movie to have a minority group as a majority of characters even just for the purpose of diversity. There are minority writers who want to tell stories about people like themself, naturally. I don't think that's a ridiculous thing to do, especially when it's a cosmic fiction and includes a literal magic sand man and a multiverse. Multiverse stories are often used specifocally to show a different version of reality than ours. How is a magic sand man not ridiculous, but a lot of gay people are ridiculous?

[Sargentcaptain]

There's a difference between a movie having characters that are black and a movie shoving propaganda down your throat. In what universe is Robyn Hood remotely believable? There's a reason why people didn't like it when they made British queens, Cleopatra or the Vikings into black women yet no one cared about Will Smith in Independence Day, Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide or Carl Weathers in Predator. Not the least of which being race didn't really matter to the movie makers, actors or fans, hell the one scene in Crimson Tide that approaches the typical unnecessary racist shit is usually looked down upon for approaching the typical unnecessary racist shit. And there wasn't a barrage of 'if you think think Pulp Fiction isn't the best movie of all time you're just saying that because it stars Samuel L. Jackson' type articles. The creators didn't write propagandist trite.

[IceCreamSandwich]

So it doesn't matter to you how many black characters are in a movie, just whether it's "propaganda" or racist. I can definitely agree that racist movies are bad. What do you consider to be propaganda though? As opposed to a movie just having black characters. Is it only when a previously established character is changed? If so, I can also understand that.

[Sargentcaptain]

Previously established characters changing doesn't matter inherently, really they abide by the same rules as new characters. MCU race swapped Nick Furry and no one cared. Partly because they got a cool actor, partly because it was never even mentioned in the story and partly because it wasn't really mentioned outside the story either, be it from the creators or from the media circle jerking. Same story with Red from the Shawshank Redemption. Only time Red's race swap was mentioned in the movie was when they made it into a lighthearted joke.
In those instances it didn't seem like they race swapped characters for the purpose of pushing their agenda, and when people criticized the movie for any reason, corpo shills weren't browbeating them with the racist stick.
And that's basically what separates the normal race swaps from the forced nonsense and what separates regular movies from woke trash. A decent way of parsing out woke nonsense from regular movies is checking interviews with the actors and creators and counting how many times they mention that X was stunning and brave for being diverse. Also, the propagandists will never race swap a diverse character and make them white, or make a woman into a guy. For a diverse cast to not be woke trash, it should be believable, both in the in universe (no black people in Scandinavia) and in the real world (no show just so happened to have an all minority cast queer female cast, yet the one straight white dude just so happened to be the villain, like the Robyn Hood).

[IceCreamSandwich]

Okay. Sorry, I just don't think that it makes sense to not know whether a movie is woke or not by watching just the movie itself. I don't think that makes sense. But besides that, I think I understand what you're saying. Although when a work is fiction, I don't think it has ro follow the same rules as something like a documentary or realistic/historical movies. If Robyn hood is like the legend of Robin hood, then why couldn't they do whatever they want? It's a legend, a story. It's not real people. How is it not believable that something that did happen, happened? It may have been intentional, but so would it have been intentional if all the characters were Scandinavian. If it were a nonfiction movie then that would be different. Fiction doesn't have to prioritize realism to be good though. They can prioritize something like diversity without compromising the quality of the story, if that's what they choose to do. I haven't seen that movie though. It may make sense to call it woke just because it has the only white character as a villain, and that could be racist.

[Sargentcaptain]

You can absolutely notice the ham fisted messaging in the story, lackluster characters and forced themes, the point is that you don't even need to see a movie to get the general idea. I'm not gonna waist my time and money on every She Hulk and Captain Marvel that comes out.

> If Robyn hood is like the legend of Robin hood, then why couldn't they do whatever they want?

By that logic make Robin a radioactive mutant monkey from Venus, he fights crime and is addicted to casseroles. Works of art will still need a consistent internal logic, and if your entire motivation for creating a work of art is to supposedly reflect on the real world, well then the themes and messaging will have to be written in a way that actually reflects reality.

The creator of Robyn Hood thinks the story reflects on real people. He didn't just fall ass backwards into getting the actors he chose. He didn't write the story with a random word generator, he wrote a story he thinks reflects reality and is pushing his propaganda.

> would it have been intentional if all the characters were Scandinavian.

If the movie takes place in Teheran, yeah, that's a conscious choice. If you're shooting in Sweden and are just getting the best actors not paying attention to their sex/race/sexuality, guess what kind of a demographic you'll get. If you end up with a cast that consist of 95% Koreans, with the sole exception being the Swedish villain, that seems an awful lot like purposeful agenda pushing.

> Fiction doesn't have to prioritize realism to be good though. They can prioritize something like diversity without compromising the quality of the story,

That would depend on the story. Seeing black people in the Witcher makes 0 sense since there is no place where black people could even evolve naturally on the continent, and there were no migration of black people from elsewhere to the continent. Sprinkling in some 'diversity' for the sake of real world propaganda is only damaging to the story.

[IceCreamSandwich]

"By that logic make Robin a radioactive mutant monkey from Venus, he fights crime and is addicted to casseroles"
I would totally watch that. It sounds fun. The themes and what the story reflects is up to the writer. Usually, yes, there's intentionally something that tries to reflect reality. Sometimes that doesn't match with the audiences view of reality, and nobody likes the movie or finds it engaging. That's just a bad movie. Do you mean to say that a "woke" movie is just a bad movie, that also has a diverse cast? If so, i have heard that before. I just didn't think that's what you meant at first.

Isn't the Witcher a Supernatural story of some kind? It has magic. That wouldn't have any way to "naturally evolve" in that location. But that's what the writer put there for the story, and it's consistent with the rest of the story, even though it's not at all consistent with reality. A movie doesn't need to prioritize every kind of realism just because it uses one aspect of realism, in the same way that movies don't have to prioritize every kind of magic or diversity just because they decide to use one kind of magic or diversity. You can pick whatever you want, as long as within the story it stays consistent, then it shouldn't distract or confuse the audience.

[Sargentcaptain]

> Sometimes that doesn't match with the audiences view of reality, and nobody likes the movie or finds it engaging. That's just a bad movie. Do you mean to say that a "woke" movie is just a bad movie, that also has a diverse cast?

All of this is complicated cause I wouldn't say a movie is necessary bad if audiences aren't engaged by it.
Lots of movies have diverse casts and are bad, because they are badly written.
A woke movie I'd define as a movie that goes out of it's way to be diverse, whether or not it hurts the story. They'll have general leftist themes and they'll have a political message.
Whether or not that's inherently a bad movie, it's complicated. Theoretically, I suppose they might be well written. In reality, they're shit. Partly because there are so few well written stories in the first place, especially the ones that get turned into Hollywood movies. Partly because the woke stuff will generally get in the way of a good movie.
There's plenty of movies that are diverse, aren't woke and are trash because they're just badly written like most movies are.

> Isn't the Witcher a Supernatural story of some kind? It has magic. That wouldn't have any way to "naturally evolve" in that location.

www.google.com/url

> But that's what the writer put there for the story, and it's consistent with the rest of the story

No, it's not consistent with the story. Hence the issue. And we both know Netflix does this shit just to push their agenda, they could give less of a shit about the story or lore.
If races in the universe didn't evolve the way they did on Earth so much as a single throwaway line that at least attempts to solve the consistency issue could be used. They didn't put it there, cause they don't care about consistency or lore. That's why the show sucks in general.

[jennifer_bloom]

In a truly diverse movie like Star Trek or power rangers, the different races have shared cultural values, missions, ethics, interests and curiosities. Mixing a bunch of ethnicities together in a movie and giving them contradictory personalities that have no unity or similarity with each other is not diversity, it’s politically correct agitation designed to get publicity through irritable controversy and social noise.

[IceCreamSandwich]

I understand that. Conflicting characters just because they're diverse, where they are supposed to be unified, is woke. I assume this wouldn't apply in movies where the characters are supposed to conflict with each other though, in that case I guess the opposite would apply? If there should be conflict but there is instead unity just because the characters are diverse, that would also be woke.

[A_Bell]

I dislike pretty much everything about Hollywood. Rapists and molester theater holds little interest for me, no matter how they dress it up with their fake social messaging.

Think how many lives these perverted assholes have ruined over the years and simply hoped you didn't care because you enjoyed their perverted work product?

[Sasahara]

A movie can have a whole lot of diversity without being woke. But I notice you are asking about spesifically non-white. Why? What makes you think "white" supposedly is less woke or diverse than others in your opinion? I can dig up a lot of Japanese movies that most likely would not get labeled woke… And you do realize that for example a all-black cast is not more diverse than a all-white cast, right? Same goes for all gay cast. Not more diverse than a all-straight cast.
And so you know, cis is a slur thats even getting banned on twitter / X now.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Oh, yes, I'm aware diversity doesn't mean "non white" or "non men" or any of that. I've just only seen diversity get called "woke" when it is done in this way, in movies or TV shows where there is a mainly white or man cast and fewer different characters. So, that's what I asked about. I'm not familiar with people who watch primarily Japanese or any other country media, although I'm sure among them are people who also have strong views about diversity or lack of it in those movies.

Twitters owner is transphobic to the point his own trans daughter cut contact with him, and uses of actual racial slurs skyrocketed when he first bought the platform and removed rules regarding that. I don't think we should hold his standard of what is considered acceptable language. If you're concerned though, cis is just the accompanying latin prefix to trans. It isn't derogatory and doesn't have a dark or negative origin. It's just the current descriptor, like trans, black, white, straight, or gay. None of those are slurs.

[Sasahara]

A lot of the anti-woke crowd has no issue enjoying Japanese media, for example anime.

Speaking of people with strong opinions about diversity in movies, peculiar how that bitch about Nani’s actress in the upcoming Lilo & Stitch remake is too white, had no issues with Ariel in the Mermaid remake, right? Or just stop answering after using "Ariel is a mermaid, not human so its ok" excuse, if you ask them how they feel about everyone turned black in Polly (the remake of Pollyanna) odd how they have no issues with all of them turning black, right?

Oh, so its supposedly not a slur because you don’t like the owner of Twitter. Perhaps you should look at the sjws who get called woke, you have people supporting banning of Japanese Apex players for saying nigaso (female) or nigeru (escape / run away) because they felt those word sound like a word for black some people don’t like.

And for good mesure, here are some other examples of the woke crowd:
-People supporting Terese Nielsen getting fired because her wife follows and liked Right leaning people on Twitter
-People supporting a judge getting a 17 year old banned from a Pokemon card tournament because he happened to be nervous when said judge asked him about his pronouns
-People who bullied people for playing the game Hogwarts Legacy, because they dislike the author who created the world the game is set in
-People acting like the woman who was the PR person for Limited run games deserved to get fired for following LibsofTiktok on Twitter.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Like I said, I'm just not familiar with those people. I don't know anyone who watches anime and is anti-woke. I barely know anyone who watches anime. I'm asking about what I'm familiar with so I will understand the answers better.

People can have problems with diversity in a movie for several different reasons. I'm just asking about anti-woke reasoning right now. I can ask a different question for the pro-diversity people who have a problem with race-changing minority characters to be white but not the other way around, but that's a completely different line or reasoning. I don't want to make the question too complicated.

Did I say that we should take any leftists opinion on what is acceptable language as the standard, either? No. There are just as sensitive and ignorant people as Musk on the far left. I said..."If you're concerned though, cis is just the accompanying latin prefix to trans. It isn't derogatory and doesn't have a dark or negative origin. It's just the current descriptor, like trans, black, white, straight, or gay. None of those are slurs."

[normalice]

I dont really know about wokeness but I consider it too far if the plot needs to be modified or interrupted to insert some social awareness message. If it's not a natural part of the plot just leave it out. Barbie did a wonderful job of pushing their social awareness message because that was the plot. But if the barbie movie had a random 2 minute infomercial for Puppy Chow halfway into it, that would be weird and detract from the movie, right? Any sort of message should be subtle. Bludgeoning people over the head with an offkey message substantially dampens the entertainment quality by dispelling the illusion. I watched a Thai martial arts movie once and it was excellent but halfway through they had some random girl yelling at her boyfriend for pirating DVDs. Destroyed the rest of the movie..

[KostasKouvalis]

It becomes woke when it's pointless and irrelevant to the plot. Like in the last Chucky movie, they put a doctor in it who was only in one scene for a few minutes and they made him a faggot. Like what was the point of stating his sexual orientation. It was completely irrelevant to the plot.

Or implying that James Bond's Q might be a faggot. Like why? What's the point. He's just a side character.

[IceCreamSandwich]

What makes it pointless or irrelevant? Even if it doesn't add to the plot, it adds to the character and the world. Would it have added to the plot if the doctor was straight? No. That doesn't mean it would have been bad to make him straight either. It's just character details. Not everything about a character should add to the plot. That would be way too complicated, or way too basic of a character. Even side characters shouldn't just be blank blobs that further the plot. That's bad world building.

[gorydetails]

It's more than a quota, while race/sex swapping a traditional character is always woke. It's the way these minorities are inserted into a movie. It's white men being idiots and the black men/women always outsmart them or know what to do (see last voyage of the demeter) or gay characters inserted into movies or shows where it has no bearing on the plot (see every piece of major media in the past 5 years)

[IceCreamSandwich]

Okay. Changing an established character and making all white men seem bad and dumb makes sense. But could you explain the difference between "inserting" a minority character into a movie or show, and them just being there? It may not have relevance to the plot for someone to be gay, but it wouldn't have for them to be straight either. I just see it as character details and world building, like any other information about a character would be.

[gorydetails]

Anne Boylin was not black. She was a person who existed. Stories based in locations in Northern Europe would not have black people in them... any more than Shaka Zulu would have a random white dude hanging out.

Being straight is the default for humans. A male character sucking dick doesn't enhance a character.

[IceCreamSandwich]

I already said, changing existing characters makes sense to see as woke.
So racial and gender diversity just as character details, you don't think is woke. But sexual diversity for character details is woke, and every character should be straight unless the plot specifically calls for something else? Sorry, I still don't see how that makes sense. Even if you're right and it's not the "default," there are still many characters who don't fit what's considered the default, and it's still just character details. Like a little girl who likes cars instead of dolls, or an grandparent who rides a motorcycle. It's not considered the default, but that's just what the writers decided to have the character be like.

[gorydetails]

I said that racial and gender diversity was woke. Gay people make up about 3% of the population. I'd bet you $100 you can't watch 24 hours of major media produced within the past 5 years where there isn't one gay character shoehorned in. My buddies and I take bets on how many minutes in before "here comes the gay".

[IceCreamSandwich]

Wait, so do you think every TV show and movie has to follow the exact demographic statistics of the area where it was filmed, or else it's woke? I haven't heard that opinion before. That seems difficult to apply in fantasy, sci-fi, apocalypse, and many other genres... I guess if you stick to realistic or historical movies, then that makes sense. But even then, a particular group of people from any given area are not likely to reflect the same demographic statistics as the area as a whole. Writers, directors, and the rest choose who to represent in a movie. Also, only about 80% of the population is straight. So even if all movies did follow that rule, you'd still be likely to run across non-straight characters fairly often, though they wouldn't all be gay either.

[gorydetails]

So you don't think that a viking show should have white characters? Bullshit only 80% of the population is straight. You've swallowed a lot of propaganda.

[IceCreamSandwich]

That's just the first result when I Googled it, sorry. I said I have no issue with thinking something is woke for changing the race of established characters. If there's a viking show about a particular real group of white vikings, then it would be perfectly reasonable to say that's woke for having then be black in the show. If it's a historical fiction show based on the idea of vikings, then they can do whatever they want. They can be black, they can have dragons, I don't think it matters in that case. It's fiction.

[gorydetails]

Not if it's based on Scandanavian/northern European geography... ex. Lord of the Rings

[IceCreamSandwich]

A story can base itself on something without tying itself to portray that thing exactly. Scandinavia and northern Europe don't have walking, talking trees, and there were probably many more women there than there were in the main cast of the Lord of the Rings, statistically. It's always a choice what you put in the story. Unless it's nonfiction, like a documentary, or it is about a specific figure or group of people, I don't think the characters must be portrayed any particular way. I think it should be left to artistic choice, like in Lord of the Rings. I don't think it was a bad movie just because it had talking trees or very few women characters. That was just what the writer wanted to have in the story.

[gorydetails]

Even fictional characters have to follow some sort of relatable logic. Human-like people who live in a desert with a lot of sun would have brown skin as do humans. If you accept walking trees as something that exists in a world, then they too have to follow a familiar logic. You wouldn’t have a walking tree marry a dog and give birth to a dinosaur.

[IceCreamSandwich]

I'm sorry that you can accept treebeard within his context, but not Luke Skywalker within his. Personally I enjoy letting a story set up it's own rules and world. That's one of the big things stories can do. Whether it's one that's very similar to ours, or very different to ours, I don't mind.

[gorydetails]

I absolutely allow a story to make it's own rules, but the rules have to be consistent and somewhat logical. It would have pulled you out of the story if he regrew a lobster claw after vader chopped off his hand.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Yes, it should be internally consistent. If a movie makes a human regrow a lobster hand, that's probably not internally consistent. But Thunder Force had a human regrow lobster hands, and was internally consistent. Because they established that the character had lobster hands, and that fit into the larger context and setting internal to the story. That's That's I'm saying. Movies can make their own rules, and those rules don't have to be consistent with rules of the real world.

[AngryCarl2]

I don't know if this is a serious question but it does highlight a serious problem. There are actually quotas required for a movie to get a good ESG score, which is the whole reason why wokeness is a problem. You can make a perfectly fine movie with mostly gay characters, or mostly black characters. It only becomes jarring when these characters are shoehorned into a movie where they don't belong.

[IceCreamSandwich]

So the problem isn't the movies, but the quotas? If the quotas were removed, and people made the exact same movies, then it wouldn't be woke anymore because the same diverse characters would be there for a different reason? I guess that makes sense.

[provokeesmokee]

I just like laughing at white fragility.

They see a non-white in a starring role and freak out. It's hilariously pathetic.

It's like that fat white bald guy who had a huge breakdown over pronouns in Starfield. He could choose "he/him" and have fun, but instead he got salty and the whole internet memed on him, lmao!

[Anonymous]

Your cheerleading for this Leftist nonsense in film is nauseating.

What makes a movie Woke? Shameless tokenism and virtue signaling. Diversity for diversity sake. And overt and blatant political jabs ham-fistedly passed off as “satire” when it’s really just political propaganda.

[IceCreamSandwich]

So you don't think the amount of diversity has anything to do with being woke? A movie could have no straight white cis men characters, and as long as it wasn't "for diversities sake" it wouldn't be woke? Okay. In that case, what do you consider to be "for diversities sake" as opposed to for world buildings sake, for broader appeals sake, or characters who just happen to be divserse for no particular reason?

[exitseven]

It is really when people of different races are inserted into the movie in such a way that it looks like the producer is trying to come off as being diverse and woke. That show about the firefighters in Seattle is like that..

[IceCreamSandwich]

How would you have diverse characters in a movie without the movie looking diverse though? That seems like a catch-22.

[exitseven]

It is hard to describe. Maybe if you see a bunch of white guys and have the boss be black. Not that it couldn't happen but the writers make a big deal about it and inject race into every scene and try to make all the white guys look like rednecks.

[IceCreamSandwich]

So, like the black widow movie would be woke because there was a man controlling a bunch of women, and the sex difference was mentioned a lot? It could and does happen, sure, but in the movie it would have been easier to just have the character in charge also be a woman, and just not comment on it. I guess that makes some sense. I don't mind when it happens, because often it can play some part in the plot or the world building, but I can see how it could be annoying if you just wanted a simple action movie without having to see or think about diversity or different dynamics.

[DarkWinterNights]

When the show loses it’s sense of believability because they spent most of the time going down a checklist than actually writing a good, relatable and creative story.

[IceCreamSandwich]

So as long as a show has good writing and a creative story, then they can have however many diverse characters they want and it wouldn't be seen as "woke"? It's only when it's a bad movie, and has diverse characters, then it's considered woke. Okay. Although whether a movie has good writing and creative story can be a bit subjective, so is whether it's woke, so that makes sense.

[DarkWinterNights]

Sort of. “Woke” doesn’t have a precise definition because it’s always changing and is whatever is currently acceptable, which is where cancel culture originated from.
It may be a coincidence that overly diverse shows tend to have bad writing. Or having a Black person, an Asian, Hispanic and the only white person is a butch lesbian or trans woman just doesn’t pass the sniff test for regular normal people. Possibly because it usually requires them to write their sexuality or minority message in the script that causes people disassociate from the story or make them feel preached to.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Yes. I've not heard woke defined like that before, it's always a little different what different people say it means. What do you mean by "pass the sniff test" though? Sure, if there's a minority character then that sometimes means a minority perspective or story is used. Minorities do have their own perspectives and stories though, so that doesn't usually take me out of the movie by itself. Sometimes it definitely is preachy though, like when it doesn't make sense within the movie for it to happen, or is so exaggerated it seems like a Dora the Explorer version of the story. I agree that feels like the movie is trying to teach with a lecture rather than with a story.

[findacure4wokeness]

I had no problem showing people of color in pre woke times but now I don't want to see any of it and ruins the movies for me.

[IceCreamSandwich]

So it's not the diversity that makes the movie woke, it's just the time period when it came out? So every movie made after a certain year is woke unless they have no diversity at all? Okay. I haven't heard that exactly before, but I've heard similar. It seems weird to me to judge a movie based on when it came out rather than by what's actually in the movie though.

[Drewtate]

The most diverse movie ever was black panther.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Okay. Do you think that movie was woke?

[Drewtate]

Yes but not as woke as Wakanda for ever. #BlackGirlPower

[IceCreamSandwich]

So is there a threshold for how many black people or how many women a movie needs to have before you consider it woke, or does even 1 make it woke, and those 2 movies just have the most that you've ever seen in a movie?

[Jackblue]

To me black panther was an extremely woke film for considering Killmonger a sympathetic villain.

[Astarlessnightsky]

Doesn't matter.

When people don't like your movie for whatever reason, they won't look at statistics. They will hurl around these buzzwords no matter what.

So people should create the movie they want as best as they can.

[zagor]

It can have any combination, as long as it's not contrived. As would be, for instance, a movie about Vikings with black characters.

[IceCreamSandwich]

What do you mean by contrived? You mean like on purpose, like literally every aspect of a story is purposeful and not just random?

[zagor]

I mean like something totally unrealistic done just to be PC, as in my example.

[electromagnetic]

I don’t believe in the ‘woke’ complex. The movie is either trippy or it is not. Woke is just a fancy way of saying bullshit.

[JesseJayNeak]

Smallville had many race swapped characters yet it wasn't woke. Why? Because it was made well. These woke movies/series are not made well. Heck, they only paint old school stereotypes

[IceCreamSandwich]

So it's not diversity at all, but the quality of a movie that makes it woke? I've never heard that before, but woke still doesn't have a concrete definition so I guess it could just mean "bad." Thanks for explaining.

[Solo3k]

Too many gays. Or adding a gay relationship/arc that is completely irrelevant to the story like it would add any sort of depth to the story.

Like in Lightyear.

[IceCreamSandwich]

Yes, but how many is too many?

Romance doesn't always have to be relevant to the plot, it can be done for its own sake. Like in the hobbit movies they added that romance between the elf and dwarf. Some people didn't like it, and it wasn't necessary, but it did add its own thing (romantic sideline) to the story. I understand it can be annoying if you don't want romance in your different-genred movies though. I just don't see how it's woke to do it with gay people, when it's just annoying to do with straight people.

Also, Lightyear may be a bad example, because that's actually a really huge part of the story. Lightyear is stuck in time while his friend is moving on, hitting all the big family milestones of getting a partner, marrying, having kids and grandkids, while Lightyear remains stagnant and alone. The time jumps would not be nearly as impactful if we don't see it contrasted with how someone actually lived out the time between jumps that Lightyear is losing.

[Anonymous]

There is no such thing as woke.

[Jackblue]

For me it is more a matter of what it promotes than the cast. Films with minority lead roles have been around for over a century. The question is what are they trying to say? Are they trying to claim that the US is a racist society?

[jahaims]

Any forced diversity is woke

[IceCreamSandwich]

What makes it forced? People are still allowed to make movies with low or no diversity today.

[jahaims]

When you cast on anything other than talent/merit. Casting for race, ethnicity, sexuality etc. is sexist/racist and only hurts those groups.

[IceCreamSandwich]

By that logic, shouldn't the best actor be cast for ALL the roles in a movie? It would cost more to edit them together, but you would also only have to pay for 1 actor. But I don't think you would like if every movie was done that way.

[jahaims]

Different actors have different strengths. Not all roles have the same requirements. You do not understand what logic is, apparently.

[IceCreamSandwich]

So you understand that different characters require different actors, just not that that can extend to things like race, gender, and sexuality as well as things like experience, personality and skills. Not every character requires all or any specific type of actor, of course. But if you're writing a star-crossed love story that deals with different races and traditional roles, it would require two actors of different races and gender. Two actors of the same race and gender would not be able to tell that story very well, even if they would each be the best fit for their individual role. Their role in context of the story and the other actors roles needs to be considered, and that means one of them would have to be recast for someone of a different race and gender, or the whole plot and theme of the movie would need to be rewritten.

[jahaims]

You do not know how to have a basic conversation. You are the type of person who waits to say what they are already going to say with no regard to what was actually said.