Anon (2018) is a movie about a detective in a futuristic society where everything is surveilled.
I'm not going to spoil the movie, but if you liked the Laughing Man arc in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, or if you liked Deus Ex Machina, you'll probably like this movie.
It's basically a neo noir movie, with a grizzled detective, a femme fatale, and surprisingly little wokeness given the year it was made. What wokeness there is doesn't really interfere and could even be considered a coincidence.
The cinematography is pretty decent, and really reminds me of Deus Ex Machina.
Overall 8/10 movie.
So it’s woke, but you excuse it because you like the movie.
This has been my experience every time someone claims a piece of media “isn’t that woke”.
There's different aspects of "woke" of varying tolerability.
Woke "story" is always garbage. That's when the characters in the movie actually utter lines that could come straight out of the mouth of your typical SJW. A stronk 110-lb waif woman will say some stupid crap like, "ha, you thought you could take me on just because I'm a woman?" after she's single-handedly beaten up a half dozen 200-lb stuntmen with just her fists.
Then there's woke "universe". Like where you have some stronk 110-lb waif woman who beats up a guy, but just does it because it's part of the story and doesn't make it a statement about how women are just so damn strong, don't'cha'know. It's just a thing that's part of a fictional story where the good guy beats the bad guy and the good guy just happens to be a woman and if it fits in the "universe," just go with it.
And most common, which has been going on since back in the 90s, is woke casting. Which is where you've got some random group of "good" people and some random group of "bad" people, and although the story never acknowledges it directly, the "good" people are a multiracial smorgasbord of at least 50% women, and all of the "bad" people are white men. Or in less extreme cases, you have a single set of super diverse characters, but all of the ones with obvious character flaws are white men. (Top Gun: Maverick falls into this category)
As a '90s sitcom woke casting example, I just finished watching through News Radio, and I genuinely think that every time they brought on a minor character to act as some sort of NYC government official, the actor was black. Except once, where a judge was semi-humiliated in the end so obviously that had to be a white guy.
IMO, woke casting is an annoyance, woke universe can be tolerable (though less so these days), woke story is nauseating.
Woke universe could also describe something like the dystopia in cyberpunk settings. (including Cyberpunk 2077) People may complain that it's woke but I would expect that in context. It depends on whether the narrative explicitly defends and promotes the woke aspects.
Just watched it and OP's description is accurate, and I have a very low tolerance for woke propaganda. It's a decent movie. Acting is mediocre and at times bad but everything else is decent. 7/10
Arrr, thank ye matey. This ship be raising anchor presently!
Arr, indeed, me fello' cap'n.
Thank you sir
Thanks! GitS SAC is one of my favorite anime so I'll check that out. What do you mean by "Deus Ex Machina" though? Did you mean the game "Deus Ex" (another one of my faves) or the plot device? There was also a 1984 game called Deus Ex Machina but I don't think you meant that. I'm just wondering if there's another a movie or something with that name I need to watch.
Yeah I like that one too! I thought of that but was focused on the detective and surveillance themes he brought up, and didn't consider he might have meant because of the robots. In that case Ex Machina makes perfect sense.