ive given this topic alot of thought; its bs "pushing an agenda" means -blam!- all story says something you dont like. its pushing an agenda story features certain undesirable types. pushing an agenda even a single throw away line of dialogue and its pushing an agenda

You know, when people make a "strong female character", they're pointing these out as the exception and not really the majority. They don't seem to realize this though... Feminism in movies kinda annoys me. Top Gun Maverick just had a female character that was as competent and more competent than most of the guys. No side woman character plot device came along and said: "wOW NOW tHEy CaNT say THAAT ONly mEn CaN fLy..." Avengers Endgame however... (narrows eyes) That scene completely took me out of the action in an edge of your seat scene. I just sat there like: "Bruh, are they really doing this." Newsflash: We don't need to be preached to about the patriarchy or what have you. Most people agree that women are not less capable overall or lesser human beings. It's ridiculous.

I could put out an essay on this, but I’ll do this a succinctly as I can. This time of stories not having an agenda never existed. All stories have an agenda. All of them. Every book, movie, game, play, story, and myth has an agenda. Because they are created by, for, and with the dollars of people. And everyone on this planet has an agenda. If you are fondly recalling a movie/ game/ book that did not have an agenda, then you probably prescribe to the agenda that story was pushing or you haven’t sat and thought about it critically enough. It’s okay to not be the target audience.

Bit of a heads up, if youre one of those who spends far too much time on "twitter activism" and calling people things theyre not, ya may wanna avoid reading this. Might get your blood pressure up too high, dont wanna cause you medical issues after all. [quote]You can make a movie about empowering women without putting down men. [/quote] Yes, so much this. For example, some of the versions of Harley Quinn I've seen are amasing. Same with Wynnona Earp from Revenants imo. (sad it never got more seasons) To my point tho, this topic always does amuse me lol, how come thats become the standard practice? Its not just exactly what you want to [i]not[/i] do to make real progress, its also highly uncreative. Ya know, in a [i]creative[/i] field, one would think it'd be important to be, idk, [i]creative[/i] lmao. Ofcourse, all this is assuming its just honest but incompetent people doin the writing. Which it sure as hecc often aint, lotta them doin this on purpose from what I've seen. If you for some ungodly reason want my further thoughts, theyre in the spoiler. Inb4 some "enlightened" mf tries telling me how something-ist and bigoted I am. Me, a norwegian, raised with norwegian values. Hypocrisy: the eye which can see endlessly into the far but goes blind in the mirror. Safe to say I appreciate the irony when this happens. [spoiler] To further add to this, lets mention the practice of taking male characters and literally just turning them female. Like huh? Youre not empowering women by doing that, youre just telling them to be men. Men, the very thing thats supposedly oppressive. On top of that, by doing so youre indirectly claiming some feminine traits are for some reason to be not just looked upon as "limiting" and bad, but to be utterly rejected; thrown away like trash into a garbage bin. I'd love to see more well written characters in popular media. I genuinely believie women and men alike need not just more role figures, but better ones as well. Homer Simpson and Hal from Malcom In The Middle is not what men should have to look up to nor strive to be. Nor is it what is good for women to think men really are. Vice versa too for that sake. We ought have better than this, for the sake of us all.[/spoiler] TL;DR: The commonalities of modern story writing are bad for us all. Women, men and even kids. I have the sneaking suspicion this may earn me a free vacation, or even a full retirement, but oh well.

It's less the agenda, and more a lack of a soul. Many stories that are being told today might have people very passionate about the message of the story, but since the movie industry is so dominated by corporations who have to keep up appearances, among other things, a lot of the passion and "soul" that might have gone into a project is pushed away or watered down. Other times, it's a bad director or a bad writer that pulls a story down. Note: I'd even say it's rarely a "bad" anything, and more misplaced. The director for the newest Thor did well once, on Ragnarok, but Thor 4 just didn't fit. The clashing themes, conflicting tones, and misplaced humor make the whole movie just a pain to watch. Perhaps if he was a director for a different movie, he would've put out an entertaining piece of media, but not this time. Many of the awesome works of media push agendas. 1984 or any other similar book all push a political agenda in one way or another, and there are plenty of those books. They are still entertaining, a good read, and generally well-recieved. Perhaps a healthy dose of perspective could help all of us, both producers and consumers of media, to see why one thing worked and another didn't. The argument that an agenda is what's wrong with a film, book, or whatever other story is being told just isn't that sound. (I won't deny that it is sometimes right, but in a lot of modern cases I would say there are other problems with the media.)

People write from their perspective. If a movie seems woke it’s because woke people wrote it. Just saying

The writing is just god awful for a lot of movies. You’ve identified just one example of many that prevent me from being able to immerse myself into the story. Diversity is awesome and there hasn’t been enough representation on screen - but not every scene and message needs to be about diversity. What grinds my gears more is when people just don’t behave how you’d expect. Police not behaving like police would IRL, parents not behaving like parents, etc.

[quote]So, I think we can all agree that recent movies suck, either because it has an agenda or just plain bad story telling. After watching a lot of painful movies and TV shows (because I have no life and way too much time on my hands) I’ve realized that maybe instead of meshing a weird agenda in a story, how about we compromise. I know, right? I’m the only one that made this discovery (that was sarcastic btw) they need to stop putting unnecessary details that contribute nothing to the story. Look, I get it, they want to spread “THE MESSAGE” whenever they can, but maybe they should think about how the common person doesn’t want to be preached at. Like video games, movies are meant for entertainment and to escape the real world for just a couple of hours before they get a text saying that their co-worker is a lazy piec— sorry, is taking a sick day and needs you to take over. Obviously when returning from a long exhausting day, dealing with the BS, you don’t want to turn on the TV and be told all the things you don’t want to hear. I know a lot of people will take this a say I’m a bigot and say that “you’re just to afraid to face these real world problems! You need to be educated!” I know exactly what’s going on, I don’t need to hear it from a movie. I’m not -blam!-, I’m not -blam!-, racist, or anything, I’m just saying that you can tell a good story without taking a side. You can make a movie about empowering women without putting down men. Create relatable characters where the fan can make them whatever they want. Let they’re imagination roam free. Just… compromise.[/quote] [spoiler]nibbles crayon[/spoiler]

Name one movie released in 2022 that was pushing an agenda