Woke Patrol
Woke Patrol
Most Woke Movies: Top 10 Woke Films
As of July 2025
© Warner Bros Pictures
Woke is Hollywood’s favorite supporting character these days. Gone are the days of subtle moral undertones that provoke discussion and self-reflection. Instead we're left with films that beat you over the head with agenda-first storytelling.
What Is a “Woke” Movie?
A woke movie is one that really wants you to know that it's about race, gender, sexuality, identity, or power. Like, really wants you to know. A woke film doesn't just have progressive themes, it is the theme, with the plot awkwardly taped to the side like an afterthought.
Diverse casts or social themes are not bad things to have. When done well, they can deepen a story and add perspective in meaningful ways. But in woke films, these elements aren't woven in naturally. They're bolted on like accessories, often so clumsily that they overshadow the story itself. It's less “show, don't tell” and more “lecture, don't entertain.”
Top 10 Most Woke Movies with their Box Office Earnings
Barbie (2023)
Box Office: Success
Budget: $145m • Revenue: $1.45b
Plot: Barbie discovers patriarchy and works to dismantle it in between dance numbers.
What makes it woke? Less film, more feminist TED Talk in plastic heels. Barbie drowns in meta-commentary and self-satisfaction, serving up gender theory with glitter and a Mattel logo. Still, it raked in cash. Hollywood has learned to weaponize chidhood nostalgia like no other. Gross.
Snow White (2025)
Box Office: Bomb
Budget: $270m • Revenue: $205m
Plot: Snow White doesn't need any Prince Charming, she’s too busy curating her feminist instagram.
What makes it woke? Disney took a beloved story and hacked off all things whimsical, leaving a joyless husk packed with focus-grouped empowerment. Audiences were distinctly not enchanted and the box office numbers were dead on arrival. “Weird. Weird”.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Box Office: Success
Budget: $250m • Revenue: $859m
Plot: In the wake of T'Challa's death Wakanda turns to its girlbosses.
What makes it woke? Part tribute, part geopolitical sermon. Wakanda Forever further shifts the series from fun super-powered adventure to ideological showcase. It made serious bank (well done Marvel marketing empire), proving that audiences will see anything if you just slap in superheroes and a post-credits scene.
The Woman King (2022)
Box Office: Broke even
Budget: $50m • Revenue: $97.3m
Plot: An all-female Dahomean army fights invaders while making no mention of the millions of slaves they sold. To quote the leader of the Dahomey: 'The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth'. But hey, girl-power, right?
What makes it woke? Who needs historical authenticity in a historical epic when we can have good vibes instead? The Woman King manages to be stylish and well-acted, too bad it's morally bankrupt. Critics applauded. Historians? Not so much. Broke even at the box office.
Ghostbusters (2016)
Box Office: Bomb
Budget: $144m • Revenue: $229m
Plot: The ghostbusters are now women. That's it.
What makes it woke? Instead of building on the original, this reboot ghosts everything that made the franchise beloved by adults and children alike. The jokes fall flat, the script is smug and self-congratulatory, and the whole thing reeks of studio politics. Shouldn't have crossed the streams, ladies.
The Apprentice (2024)
Box Office: Bomb
Budget: $16m • Revenue: $17.3m
Plot: A stylized takedown of Donald Trump’s early real estate career.
What makes it woke? Calling this a “biopic” is generous, it’s really just a 2-hour political cartoon. Every line drips with contempt, and the film seems uninterested in even token attempts at neutrality or objectivity. Of course, no one saw it and it bombed at the box office but somehow I doubt that was their primary motivation.
Captain Marvel (2019)
Box Office: Success
Budget: $152m • Revenue: $1.13b
Plot: An invincible hero shows that girls can do anything if they're invincible. So brave.
What makes it woke? Captain Marvel doesn’t have flaws, just men in her way. The plot points are forced, the Mary Sue won't stop Mary Sueing. It slayed financially but so would a home video of paint drying if Marvel were backing it.
Marighella (2019)
Box Office: Broke even
Budget: $1.8m • Revenue: $4m
Plot: A dramatized account of Marxist revolutionary Carlos Marighella's life.
What makes it woke? The film has been accused of butchering Marighella's politics (he was no bleeding-heart liberal as portrayed here) and his background (he was a light-skinned man of Italian and African descent). Subtlety never even made it onto the call sheet.
Red, White & Royal Blue (2023)
Box Office: Streaming release
Budget: $10m • Revenue: N/A
Plot: Two wealthy, privileged boys fall in love while the script pretends that the modern media would consider that controversial.
What makes it woke? This one’s for the TikTok crowd. A soft-focus fantasy where political tensions vanish in the glow of perfect representation. It’s sugary, safe, and so sanitized it feels like it was written by a PR team with pronoun pins.
Eternals (2023)
Box Office: Broke Even
Budget: $236m • Revenue: $402m
Plot: With ten main characters we can tick every checkbox.
What makes it woke? The forced inclusivity on display leaves Eternals almost reading like a parody. We've got a gay superhero, a disabled superhero, a gender-swapped superhero, a tomboy superhero and of course every ethnicity of superhero that you can think of. To quote the president of Marvel Studios: “the notion of switching up the genders, sexualities and ethnicities of the characters was baked in”. How about baking in a plot first so that people actually go see your movie?
Bonus: Biggest Box Office Disappointment
Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Box Office: Certified bomb
Budget: $190M • Revenue: $159M
What makes it woke? Matrix 4 had everything going for it: massive franchise, iconic names, the Warner Bros checkbook. But take one part gender theory, one part bitter meta-commentary and a helping of character assassination of Neo and others, and what you're left with is a sequel that no one asked for and even fewer finished. There may be other movies with bigger box-office losses but the way they fumbled what should have been such an easy slam-dunk makes this film a clear example of “go woke, go broke”.
Final Thoughts
Planning on seeing something that wasn't in the list but worried that it'll be woke? Search woke ratings for films, shows, books and video games in our database, all for free.
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