Awake not Woke!

Sticking with Season 7 for this review

It's been a while, but I think I remember enjoying Black Mirror in the past, but let's let the past be the past. This is now, and it's the future! Yep. Episode 3 is about as mind-blowing shit woke as you can get. Pure propaganda. Mixed race lesbians and all. To be honest, I try and stay away from these modern shows, but I do remember that I liked Black Mirror at some point, but really? It's science fiction. Strange stories from the beyond! Can't these fools be happy with that?

Not woke. Great science fiction series!

No woke here. Great acting and writing.

I went into fully expecting this to be woke and to not like it. Surprisingly I didn't really see anything woke. I mean yes the title character is the usual tiny 100lb female but they don't have her overpowering large men in one on one combat. Everything she does is using vehicles or weapons. Yes some of the things she is able to do are ridiculous but then so are the men. I don't see the Mary Sue complaint either as she is trained to survive as a child in a wasteland then spends her entire captivity doing nothing then trains with the truck driver and his squad for years. The movie just jumps past all this and its literally a scene transition and its over. I remember only one other female in the warriors all the rest are men. This is about on par with Fury Road in quality. The acting is all decent with some excellent stunt work and action scenes marred by overuse of mediocre CGI and green screen. I also found the first hour or so to be worst as they really ramp up the weirdness factor and it just feels like a silly self parody. However the second half drops a lot of this and focuses more on the action scenes. The story is a little hard to follow at time with odd scene cuts and transitions that just happen out of nowhere especially in the first half. Everything is over the top in these movies and that's always been the point so lack of realism doesn't really bother me at this point. The writing has some problems and some things make no sense as they are happening. This also has the problem all prequels have in that you already know what happens and which characters survive. If they are in Fury Road you already know they don't die so there is no real tension in any dangerous situations. All in all not a bad Mad Max movie and if you liked Fury Road you will probably feel about the same with this one.

Story Surpasses Woke

Nine years later, I have to admit this does read a little woke. Back in 2016, I really didn’t notice (as much). There’s a lot of forced diversity on screen and super female empowerment, but it reads well within the story. And that’s what’s most important: the story. What woke movies completely miss today is writing, acting, and producing good stories. The production always gets pushed to the side in favor of the aGEnDa!!111 So yes, it’s woke. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t heavy handed. And the story read well. If more productions endeavored to create original content versus rehashing and tearing down classic content, websites like this wouldn’t be necessary.