Awake not Woke!

While there is nothing woke in this it is a terrible movie. It looks like a 90's made for sci-fi channel no budget movie. The CG is terrible but even worse the extensive green screen backgrounds. They are so bad there are visible lines around the actors where they were cut and pasted into scenes. Nothing is blended together and the actors look inserted or pasted into the scene. Sometimes actors seem to 'float' in the scene and have no substance. The killer whale is inconsistent and changes size constantly sometimes within the same scene. It's so bad and distracting it renders it unwatchable for anything other than to laugh at and make fun of.

It's hard to rate this one.

I avoided this one because it looked like it was going to be typical Hollywood bias about the 1960's racial issues. That's not far off, but there's more to it. Michael Franzese, is a YouTuber, ex-mob-boss who reviews movies and television for accuracy to the Mafia culture. He rated this series as accurate, so I gave it a chance. A woke approach would be "black good/ white bad." In this series, they're all bad. I don't think there's a good guy in the show. There are corrupt cops, rapist blacks, junkies of every ethnicity. At one point, George Wallace was on the TV giving his "segregation now" speech. He was a Democrat governor and presidential candidate. Malcolm X is portrayed as a violent idealist who is hostile to Christianity. Congressman Powell is portrayed as a self serving, philandering, corrupt politician. A woke agenda would've portrayed him as a civil rights hero. There's no "black hero" attitude in this series. If anything, they portray black culture in a very negative way. I'm only 4 episodes in, so things may change. TV series tend to do that. Judge this one for yourself. I don't find it particularly entertaining or woke. I do find it to be realistic.

A movie that feels like a hack director trying his best to make a Guy Ritchie style movie and completely failing. I would like to say the acting is bad but I think that's what they were going for. Everything is delivered in the most emotionless dull monotone voices. It's like they gave everyone Prozac before every scene. The humor is so forced and unnatural, all the best parts are in the trailer. The writing makes little sense with a lot left unexplained are seemingly unrealistic. The 'heroes' are super powered and seemingly invincible, they take out an entire army without a scratch. The bad guys are comically inept and the heroes are never in any real danger, they barely even get dirty or a hair out of place. The lead says she's a lawyer, how is she able to very easily just dismantle this billionaire criminal organization at will? How is she so powerful and able to pull off any of this stuff? Don't know. This billionaire crime boss has his own island but a group of 6 men are able to import mountains of weapons, supplies and vehicles without him knowing. They are able to run drills and practice runs for seemingly weeks without anyone on the island noticing anything. Then months later when they go back everything is still there and set up to work just like they left it and nobody on the island has stumbled upon any of it. This crime boss seems to be completely powerless and ineffectual. How did he get to be a billionaire crime boss without having powerful friends or know people. He has all this money but his militia seems to be the most inept group of street thugs he could find, no professional mercenaries to be found. The smug annoying genius girlboss with all her male minions saving the other girlboss from the evil billionaire male. A lot of DEI though it is an internationally set movie so maybe not as unrealistic. Then there is the disturbingly gay seeming couple that is the 2 male leads. It's never explicitly stated that they are gay but the amount of gay innuendo and jokes thrown around between them are far beyond what you will see from straight men.

UNWATCHABLE

Is it bad? Oh shit it is bad! Is it woke? Absolutely yes! To anybody who’s gonna watch it, I recommend you leave your taste at the door, 'cause you’re gonna lose it if you actually make it to the end of this movie. James Gunn really hates superheroes…