We really live in interesting times. Political entertainment reactionaries have always been a thing but their voices seem much louder than before because of social media. For a lot of these guys, any movie these days that doesn't conform with what they deem as normal is something that should be boycotted or shouldn't exist..
It's interesting how "more" intolerant certain segments of the audience has become. One can only imagine the uproar if movies like Too Wong Foo (a mainstream movie with major stars at the time in the leading roles as drag queens) or The Crying Game or The Bird Cage (with drag performers are the main characters) were released today. It's so bad nowadays that even stuff with no explicit political themes like Captain Marvel and Dr Strange 2 and even video games like the Dead Space remake and Resident Evil are attacked by some folks as being woke. Seriously, what is going on with the culture? When did consuming art becoming a political exercise? If one doesn't approve of something, then don't watch it, the hate campaigns against certain media and trying to get them cancelled is reminiscent of the "One Million Moms" nonsense and how some American Catholics were trying hard to cancel movies that didn't portray religion in a positive light (like the Last Temptation and how they completely cancelled Sinead O'Connor).
They've stretched this nonsense to movies and studios that have dared to include minorities and women where they weren't prominent before. The whole "anti-Disney" nonsense is because they dared to speak up against the very stupid law that Florida is trying to implement and how the studio has dared to include minorities in some of their movies. It's so bad that these guys have literally termed Disney/Marvel movies that were hits as flops (like Shang-Chi, Dr. Strange and Thor 4), and the media (which is too lazy to even do any serious analysis of these things) are buying into these stupid narratives. Remember the first weekend of Avatar 2 and how that absolute creep Matt Walsh called it a flop and some very stupid media outlets ran with the narrative the movie wasn't a hit?? The Star Wars side of things is now a complete mess because it's become extremely difficult (outside of this forum) to even discuss anything Star Wars as everything around it is completely toxic (although it must be pointed that Star Wars fandom has had its toxic elements for a long, long time). There are a lot of people in the mainstream media (that should know better) that are really letting themselves and their audiences down with just how low effort their takes are. White supremacy has crept into the mainstream after 2016 and has made its way into entertainment commentary. With social media being algorithm driven, the more and more incendiary takes are what gets promoted to the main pages of these sites.
Anyways, what drove me to start this thread was the reaction to the success of the Mario movie. Some months ago, some chuds were complaining that the movie was "woke" because Luigi was captured, and Princess Peach was a strong woman that could fight for herself. NOW, the movie is a megahit and they're turning around and saying it's because it wasn't woke.or it was "anti-woke". How? The movie is just about Mario, nothing inherently political about the film. Consuming entertainment, isn't a profound political statement and if people are truly upset that women and minorities that they see around them in life are popping up in their movies then the fragility is truly real.