I've mentioned a few times with regards to the new D&D movie that it isn't woke, but it does suffer from small levels of "ambient wokeness." My wife in particular doesn't like this term, or my focus on it, but to that I suggest that I'm not focusing on it, but I also think that it is wise to not just sweep this stuff under the rug and notice it. If the goalposts are moved subtly and stealthily, at the end of the day, they are still moved.
So, in spite of the woke comments which angered many would-be fans about the D&D movie (the "white men can't leave fast enough" controversy, and the "emasculated leading men" controversy, I would suggest that the first is not related to the movie, it just was an unfortunate bit of timing. The Hasbro corporation is certainly woke and that was a horribly bigoted woke comment, but it came from someone who is not related to the movie at all. The second one is related to the movie, and people sneered at the directors' commentary that it wasn't woke, but in retrospect... it really wasn't all that woke, but it does represent a kind of ambient wokeness, where women are perfect the way that they are and men constantly need to struggle and learn and grow.
And it wasn't just that Chris Pine's character was kind of ridiculous and incapable of accomplishing much in his own right. (Given that he was a bard, that was probably inevitable anyway). Bradley Cooper's cameo, where they thought it would be funny to have him be a little halfling guy who's totally the woman in all of his relationship, with big, burly women who are the men in the relationship was less overtly woke and more a funny joke, but they didn't make it in an environment where men are expected to be manly and therefore a man in the woman's role is funny. Mr. Mom or Mrs. Doubtfire this is not.
There is one man who isn't ridiculous in the movie, Xenk whats-his-name, the Thayan paladin. Not surprisingly, the actor who plays him is a half-white half-black man who father was English and who's mother was African.
Holga was also race and essentially sex-swapped. Nobody really believes (I hope) that a woman who's less than 5½ feet tall would literally be throwing around much larger men en masse who are wearing heavy armor. We can accept that because it's heroic fantasy and heroic fantasy characters are always larger than life anyway, but it's worth pointing out that until just a couple of decades ago, nobody expected women to act like men. Even characters like Red Sonia weren't so overtly masculine. Although, to Michelle Rodriquez's credit, and contra many other girlboss action stars of recent years, she actually did really spend some time in training, and looked pretty buff.
Even in the movie, though, when they had all the flashbacks of her "ancestors" from just a few decades earlier, every single one of them was a Nordic Viking-looking man, with blond or red hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. But for some reason, she's played by a Hispanic woman?
Elminster was played, in magical illusory form, but still, by a black man. Why was he race swapped? For that matter, why was the cast so diverse to begin with? The "PC group" was a ridiculously ineffective middle-aged white man, two half-black half-white men, only one of whom was presented as all that heroic, a little white woman who was super physical and one of the most powerful characters in the group, and a hispanic woman of... well, I guess Michelle Rodriguez is middle-aged now too. I mean, she's in her mid-40s, fer cryin' out loud. Is there no such thing as "these people live in this area" in the new Forgotten Realms? Is every single locality a cosmopolitan multi-ethnic ambient woke utopia?
Even among the villains; Hugh Grant was the kind of silly con man; the real villain was, of course, a powerful woman (who, it's alluded too briefly, has a powerful man boss, at least.)
These tropes have become so commonplace that they are now what I call "ambient wokeness." People don't really think about them, or think of them as woke, but that is exactly where they had their genesis. The D&D movie avoided any overt wokeness, but future Americans, if Americans survive as a people into the future, will look back at it and chuckle at the ambient little details that are unrealistic because they represent woke thinking, but it is, at least, all background stuff. Not enough—even to me—to crock the movie. I still enjoyed it. Would I have liked it better if Holga was Holgar and a white Viking looking man, and he and Edgin had a Bing Crosby and Bob Hope buddy comedy vibe to them? Yeah, probably. Would I have liked it if Edgin's daughter wasn't a mostly white and obviously not entirely? Yeah, probably. Would I have liked it if gratuitous African elves and halflings didn't show up for some odd reason looking exactly like African humans do, except with ears or small? Yeah, probably. And so on and so forth. But none of those was enough to make the movie unlikeable. Ultimately, Michelle Rodriguez's character worked because in spite of her absurd strength and physicality, she was also a rather ridiculous character, who was kinda dumb, did kinda dumb things, and said kinda dumb things, ultimately making her likeable in the dumb jock kind of way. And although it was weird to see a short Hispanic woman playing a dumb jock, it was still mostly funny.
Only the little girl druid was kind of unlikeable, because she had that kind of Karen attitude to go along with her oh so perfect abilities. Kind of a shame. Under-utilized and mishandled opportunity there.
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