Awake not Woke!

No woke. Not a bad watch. It's just not my thing.

Impossible situations. Mechanical booby traps that have been dormant for centuries, but are perfectly operational, corny jokes, and ridiculous fight scenes. If you like that kind of thing, this movie's for you. It's sort of a dark, slapstick movie with a big budget.

Surprisingly accurate for a voluntarily modern vision.

This is not a serious movie; and yet, it gets so many details right, or closer to right than most movies this century. The armour, weaponry, costumes are (most of them) pretty much coherent with 14th century Europe. Not historically perfect, some details modernised, but nothing is jarringly bad. The movie does bend the timeline a little, but the pervasive Chaucer in-jokes make up for it. By modern vision, I do in no way the fabled "modern audience"; I mean translating (some) events or costumes into modern culture. The movie opens with the peasantry singing Queen's We Will Rock You at a tournament. Though obviously anachronistic, it does, to my mind, convey the overall feeling. Tournaments, jousting in particular, was a cross between pro wrestling and drag racing at the time. Big show. So yeah, Queen. Love the bloke turning donuts with his horse. The cast is brilliant, to the last. Bettany is simply fantastic as an over-the-top Chaucer. Ledger was on his way to greatness. Tudy is Tudyk. Addy is at his best. Sewell is perpetually under-rated. As for political agenda, I find none. Yeah, female blacksmith. It did happen. Widow to a tradesman (as in this movie), cause one has to eat, or tradesman with no son, cause trade is precious. In both cases, they would help enough to pick up some skills. Armourer, though, might be pushing it; there are (rare) historical examples, but the actress just looks on the smallish side. Ah well, it fits with the rest. All in all, a surprisingly good and endearing movie.

I must’ve watched a totally different movie called War Machine than the one the other comment is talking about. Who knows, maybe that’s the case and I really did see another film, because the one I watched was one of those that I wish had gotten a proper theatrical release so I could’ve gone to see it at the cinema. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen action sci-fi that’s purely made to entertain at this level. There’s no “diversity saves the day” stuff at all. There’s only one woman in the whole movie (who interacts with the protagonist), and she’s not a girlboss, not butch (but she’s not feminine either). She’s bald, but it fits the role perfectly. She’s not going around lecturing or moralizing everyone… and I don’t want to spoil anything, but what happens after she intervenes has nothing to do with her!!! It’s a really, really good action/sci-fi movie! I highly recommend it. Enjoy!

s1 woke-0 overall-4 I would say there is nothing woke in season 1. There are a few female officers but they are barely there and very few. The same with minority representation, very few and well within reality. Mostly good season with pretty good acting and only some minor writing issues. s2 woke-1 overall-3 This is a step down from the first season. The decision to use another copycat with the Ripper expert from season 1 returning and is an expert again on this one is a bit implausible. The writing overall is not as good and there's a good bit that's just not believable. The police are a bit frustrating at how cowardly and ineffectual they are but I guess that's what happens when you have an unarmed police force. It's still watchable but not as good as season 1. Woke creeps in a bit here as well. There seems to be an effort to cast females in a lot of the supporting roles. There is a storyline where one of the original killers was gay so the copycat is pretending to be gay too. He is messing around with another character who is a girl pretending to be an underage boy. It's a minor plotline that takes up very little time and is not the focus of the season. s3 woke-2 overall 2 This season goes to a new format, where the previous ones were 3 episodes with one case across the whole season now it's 6 episodes with 3 cases each taking place over 2 episodes. The writing takes another hit this time with characters doing dumb things and some pretty big stretches in believability. They also decide to stick with every case tying into a past case gimmick. This makes everything even more unrealistic and would of worked better to just go with a normal murder case instead. The ripper expert is now hired on as a research expert and becomes more annoying and out of place. The first case or episodes 1-2 permanently introduce a new overweight body positive female to the team and a mixed race Asian female forensic expert for the arc to add to the female morgue attendant already in the cast. Getting even heavier on the female casting now. There is also a nasty entitled feminist type character for this arc and the usual overrepresentation of females and blacks in the secondary and background characters. The killer is so obvious and easy to pick out in about 2 seconds in this arc. The 2nd case or Ep 3-4 introduce yet another female detective for the arc. The writing seems to be getting worse as it goes along. Ridiculous leaps in logic and highly unlikely coincidences keep happening. They are now investigating murders based on random world history murder cases with magically exact circumstances most of which are completely made up. 2nd case or Episodes 5-6. At this point the researcher character has become very annoying and I actually can't stand him anymore. The constant linking of cases to the past and using that to steer investigation has become ridiculous and makes every investigational procedure absurd. It's become tired and overused. This season seems to want to push further away from the original police procedural and into supernatural/horror territory. A victim that almost is killed is a completely unrealistic for the situation angry feminist type. More and more of these types are showing up this season. The writing in this arc is completely absurd, lazy and unrealistic. A scene with a dead victim that is visibly breathing comes to mind. This season was a struggle to get through and I'm not going to bother with season 4. I would suggest watching season 1 maybe season 2 if you like detective stories but stop after that. It's unfortunate as the 1st season had so much promise.