A decade in the movies is a lifetime in terms of popular culture. Back in 2015 the future of American film and television still seemed bright with a host of box office winners every year making billions of dollars per production. However, something sinister was bubbling under the surface in Hollywood.
Maybe it was two terms of Barack Obama and far-left politics that spurred the change, maybe it was a confluence of random coincidences, maybe it was the threat of a possible Donald Trump presidency or maybe the social engineers simply decided it was time, but from 2015 to 2016 everything changed in Tinsel Town. The entertainment industry has always been overly progressive in nature (not to mention perpetually degenerate), but this new wave of "woke" collectivism was something entirely different.
Someone turned the propaganda dial up to eleven. Since then media companies have been on a relentless campaign of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). Their goal? To saturate every corner of pop culture with feminism, critical race theory and LGBT indoctrination to the point that it's impossible to walk into a movie theater or turn on the TV without being psychologically molested (a problem Hollywood is famous for).
The agenda went even further that that, though. The industry not only set out to make every single project woke, they also tried to go back in time and retroactively erase characters they don't like anymore - Specifically, straight white male heroes.
In December of 2015 Disney's feminist Star Wars series was launched with 'Force Awakens' and Sony went even more obvious with their all-female Ghostbusters cast in 2016. The rise of the "boss babe" trope was at hand and an army of infallible, all powerful and insufferable Mary Sues was unleashed. The trend started with reboots; movies and shows with no originality that replaced popular male protagonists with less interesting female characters. Those people that tracked the drama around Ghostbusters might recall that establishment journalists lost their minds when the movie's feminist messaging was highly criticized. Fans were constantly attacked as "bigots."
Production companies were simply stealing the stories of beloved classic blockbuster films and putting women in the primary roles.
While there was more attention surrounding Star Wars and Ghostbusters, there was another movie released in 2015 that some commentators warned about; a movie that launched the feminist subversion trend using what we now call the "bait and switch" strategy. That movie was 'Mad Max: Fury Road.'
To be sure, plenty of people at the time enjoyed Fury Road and still do. It wasn't widely known that director George Miller's wife was reportedly a militant feminist and he had also adopted feminist politics later in life. Miller told Vanity Fair in May 2015:
"I've gone from being very male dominant to being surrounded by magnificent women. I can't help but be a feminist."
This might explain why Mad Max: Fury Road is strangely devoid of the popular Mad Max character for a large part of the film. Instead, we are treated to a "badass" boss babe in the form of a new female protagonist called Furiosa. Critics at the time warned that Fury Road was a feminist bait and switch - Using an original popular male character as a vehicle to promote his eventual female feminist replacement.
Almost ten years later we have now come full circle with the theatrical release of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, proving the critics right. Audiences mostly ignored Fury Road's bait and switch in 2015, maybe because people had no inkling of the woke agenda behind it. In 2024, things have changed dramatically. Movies are worse in terms of propaganda but at least audiences are now savvy to the game and they aren't paying to be brainwashed anymore.
No one wants to see a Mad Max Movie without Mad Max, and it would appear that the era of the boss babe is dead.
Furiosa officially flopped hard at the box office with the worst Memorial Day weekend performance in over 30 years. The film's opening draw is being called 'disastrous', even by the Hollywood media. It's budget is estimated at around $300 million including marketing and promotion, yet it only netted $30 million in the long holiday weekend. It will require around $500 million in theater receipts just to break even (theaters take 50% of all ticket sales).
The prequal flick has received positive reviews and the media is apparently stumped as to why it's not performing better. Some analysts blame inflation and the higher cost of living, making recreational spending more difficult for most families. Some studio executives still blame the pandemic, believe it or not. The problem is that these theories have been debunked. Certain movies have performed very well in the past year which means the public is still hungry for entertainment, they just aren't hungry for Furiosa.
With the exception of the Barbie Movie (a feminist movie marketed as a romantic comedy that ultimately had no romance in it), every feminist film is now bombing. There is no money to be made in these endeavors and all that sweet ESG cash has dried up.
The hailstorm of woke movie failures might have caused Furiosa to suffer collateral damage. Maybe the box office embarrassment of the film is unfair. But, it's not unfair to point out that Hollywood did this to themselves. Any hint of feminist propaganda and audiences turn their noses up; odds are good the movie will be a waste of their hard earned cash. For now, media companies still refuse to learn their lesson. What's the lesson? Get Woke, Go Broke.
