The “antiwoke” crowd on YouTube and X are not real film fans. Nerdrotic, Geeks and Gamers, Ryan Kinnel, Yellow Flash, Tyrone Magnus, Critical Drinker, and every other antiwoke content creator are not real movie fans, nor are they real fans of superhero stuff or comics. I say that because they don’t know basic history of film, and they haven’t read any comics at all.

First of all, they use the word “woke” wrong. “Woke” has an actual definition. Woke originated from African Americans to mean being aware of systematic racism, and then it grew to mean systemic injustice everywhere, like gender, class, LGBTQ+, etc. It doesn’t mean, “This movie doesn’t have a straight white male in it, so it’s WOKE,” or, “This character was race-swapped, WOKE.” That’s not what it means. It means being aware of systemic injustice. Just because you race-swap a character doesn’t mean “aware of systemic injustice.” Words have actual factual definitions, so they are using the word “woke” wrong, and that’s a fact.

It would be the exact same equivalent for me to say, “A 50-year-old dating a 25-year-old is a pedophile.” No, that’s not what a pedophile is. That’s not what that word means. Is it weird? Possibly. Creepy? Sure. But if they first met six months ago, then that’s not “pedophilia.” Words have fucking definitions. So, unless you are saying we can just take any word now and just change its definition, then let’s stop teaching kids in school what definitions and words are, since we can just change their definitions and words have no real meaning now. If you are 43 dating a 25-year-old, I guess we can call him or her a “pedophile,” since words have no meanings anymore.

But to my point about them not being real film fans: they aren’t. And no, that’s not me “gatekeeping.” And if it is, oh well, I don’t care. The antiwoke crowd is a reason why we (and by “we,” I mean actual movie fans and every actual film critic) should gatekeep the fandom of films. I will explain why they aren’t fans with a few reasons, though.

First of all, they don’t know basic film history. If they did, then they’d realize calling modern Hollywood “woke” is stupid. First of all, film originated in France. Around 90% of screenplays were written by women during this time because art like this wasn’t seen as paying the bills, so men didn’t take those jobs. So who wrote screenplays? Women. Around 90% of screenplays were written by women. The first Hollywood star was an actress. Her name was Florence Lawrence. So, if you are a real film fan, for you to act like women have no place in Hollywood, despite the fact that the foundation of Hollywood had a lot of important jobs done by women, is stupid. And I can tell you they don’t know this history. The first female director was also during the French silent film era.

The antiwoke people act like Hollywood only began casting non-white people in 2016, despite the fact that Hollywood cast non-white people since the 1910s–40s, and even to some degree before that.

So now this brings us to The Odyssey. If you hate a movie for no other reason than they cast two Black people and one trans person in a movie, and hate a movie even before it came out because of that, you are objectively not a real film fan. Real fans wait until a movie comes out and give an honest opinion—an actual honest opinion on the movie.

Since the movie is three hours long, which The Odyssey is, Elliot Page has five minutes of screen time, Lupita has three minutes of screen time, and Travis Scott has two minutes of screen time. So, altogether, that’s ten minutes of screen time in a THREE-HOUR-LONG MOVIE. So, if you hate an entire movie because of three people who barely are in it, then you are not a film fan.

Also, this movie was never “historically accurate.” There are no Greek people in this movie at all. And even by their own made-up, fake definition of “woke,” there is nothing woke in this movie. Everything exists to serve the straight white male warrior and king. You would think this would be their fever dream of a movie.

And I know these people didn’t even read The Odyssey because, if you read it, Ethiopians (i.e., Black people) are straight up mentioned in the book, literally in the first couple of pages. These people are not only factually and objectively stupid—like, the lowest IQ possible—but they aren’t fans. They aren’t fans of films. They aren’t fans of comics. They don’t know shit about what they are talking about.

If your argument is that a political agenda being ham-fisted into a story can make a movie bad because it’s so on the nose, then I agree with you. But that goes for both movies with a left-leaning message and a right-leaning message. And as much as these people claim to hate politics in their movies, they praise a movie like Citizen Vigilante that ham-fists its anti-immigration message down your throat.

And as for race-swapping, look, if you are someone who says, “If you are going to adapt something, then it should be accurate to the original source material you are adapting,” then that’s a fair assessment. But to hate on an actor or an entire movie because they made a casting choice you don’t agree with is stupid. Even real film fans who are conservatives can see through this bullshit and don’t take them seriously.

I’m not even someone on the far left. I think leftists can be just as annoying and low IQ as some right-leaning people. But my God, as a film fan, these antiwoke people are insufferable. I really think actual film fans need to ignore them. Stop bringing Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic to interviews. They don’t know anything about movies or comics.

It would be like me trying to interview an astrophysicist and then ending up interviewing some five-year-old toddler about it. It’s the same thing. Neither of them know shit about what they are talking about. You know what? I take that back. A five-year-old toddler is more literate and probably has a higher IQ than these antiwoke people, who have an IQ below 0.