2023 was the year the culture war went fully mainstream in Hollywood, and the box office reflected it in ways studio executives are still trying to process. On one end, Barbie became a global phenomenon by dressing a feminist manifesto in pink plastic, grossing $1.4 billion. On the other, Sound of Freedom became the year's most politically charged surprise hit, earning $250 million while much of the press actively campaigned against it. Between these poles sat 59 other films in the VirtueVigil database, each scored on our VVWS dual-metric system, and together they paint a picture of an industry at war with itself and its audience.
The VirtueVigil Woke Score (VVWS) measures progressive ideological content: identity politics, institutional distrust, progressive sexual framing, and systemic oppression narratives. The Traditional Score measures traditional values: courage, family, faith, sacrifice, moral clarity, and individual agency. The margin between them is what matters. A negative margin means the film pushes progressive ideology. A positive margin means it affirms traditional values. The size of the gap tells you how hard it pushes.
Of the 61 scored 2023 films, 20 lean woke, 23 are roughly balanced, and 18 lean traditional. On raw numbers, that looks like Hollywood exercised some restraint. It did not. The woke films of 2023 received the bulk of the marketing spend, the awards campaign money, and the cultural oxygen. Poor Things, which lands at -37.1 WOKE as the most ideologically aggressive film of the year, won four Academy Awards. Barbie, at -32.1 WOKE, was nominated for eight. The traditional films, with a few notable exceptions, were treated by critics as disposable or dangerous. The 2023 pattern is not balance. It is a distribution problem: progressive films get the megaphone; traditional films have to fight for air.
Here is every 2023 film in the VirtueVigil database, ranked from most woke to most traditional. Every entry links to the full review with content warnings for parents and complete category breakdowns.
STRONGLY WOKE and WOKE (Margin -10.0 and Below)
#1: Poor Things
Woke Score: 46.5 • Traditional Score: 9.4 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -37.1
Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy | Platform: Streaming
Yorgos Lanthimos's adaptation of Alasdair Gray's novel is the most ideologically aggressive film in the 2023 VirtueVigil database by a wide margin, and it wears that distinction proudly. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a Victorian-era woman whose body is reanimated with the brain of her unborn child, creating a blank-slate adult who experiences the world without shame, conditioning, or inhibition. The film is a systematic demolition of every traditional norm it encounters: sexual restraint, marriage, monogamy, religion, class hierarchy, and the very concept that society's rules exist for reasons beyond patriarchal control. The 46.5 woke score is the highest of any 2023 film, reflecting relentless progressive messaging across identity, sexuality, and institutional critique. The 9.4 traditional score exists almost entirely in the film's final act, where Bella chooses to pursue medical education rather than remain purely hedonistic, a gesture toward purpose that the preceding two hours spent undermining. Poor Things won four Academy Awards. It is technically accomplished, visually inventive, and skillfully acted. It is also a film whose entire project is to argue that civilization's restraints on appetite are a prison, and that liberation means tearing them all down. If you agree with that premise, this is a masterpiece. If you do not, it is 141 minutes of being told your values are the problem.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Poor Things
#2: Gen V
Woke Score: 37.3 • Traditional Score: 3.9 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: -33.4
Genre: Superhero / Black Comedy / Drama / Satire | Platform: Amazon Prime Video
The Boys spinoff Gen V takes the parent show's anti-corporate cynicism and applies it to a university setting, where young supes compete for rankings, endorsement deals, and a spot in The Seven. The show is, by design, a satire of everything: woke campus culture, corporate media, performative activism, and the cruelty of the attention economy. But satire requires a moral center, and Gen V does not have one. The 37.3 woke score reflects a show whose identity politics are so baked in that even when it tries to mock them, it is doing so from within the progressive framework it claims to critique. Every character's trauma is foregrounded as identity. The villains are white male institutionalists. The heroes are diverse outcasts whose suffering validates their moral standing. The 3.9 traditional score reflects a show that has no positive vision of what people should aspire to, only endless variations on what they should resent. Gen V is well-made, occasionally funny, and deeply nihilistic. It is a show about how everything is broken that offers no suggestion for how anything might be fixed.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Gen V
#3: Saltburn
Woke Score: 35.4 • Traditional Score: 3.4 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -32.0
Genre: Thriller | Platform: Streaming
Emerald Fennell's follow-up to Promising Young Woman is a film about how much the director hates rich people, disguised as a psychosexual thriller. Barry Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a scholarship student at Oxford who ingratiates himself with the wealthy Catton family and spends a summer at their estate, Saltburn, where his obsession with privilege curdles into something darker. The 35.4 woke score reflects a film whose entire moral framework is class resentment elevated to pathology. The Catton family is not merely rich; they are decadent, stupid, and parasitic, and the film argues that their destruction is not just inevitable but deserved. The 3.4 traditional score reflects a film with no positive values whatsoever. Saltburn generated attention for its shocking scenes (bathtub drinking, grave sex) but the transgression is the point, and the point is hollow. It is a film that wants to be a class satire but ends up being a grudge dressed in beautiful cinematography.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Saltburn
#4: Barbie
Woke Score: 48.4 • Traditional Score: 16.3 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -32.1
Genre: Comedy | Platform: Streaming
Greta Gerwig's Barbie is the most culturally significant film of 2023 and the clearest example of how progressive messaging can be packaged so attractively that millions of people consume it without feeling lectured. The film opens in Barbieland, a matriarchal utopia where women hold every position of power and men exist as decorative accessories. When Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) travel to the real world, the film becomes a feature-length argument that patriarchy is everywhere, that women are systematically oppressed, and that the solution is female solidarity and self-actualization. The 48.4 woke score is massive, reflecting feminist ideology delivered through every narrative channel: plot, dialogue, production design, and music. The 16.3 traditional score exists because the film also contains a genuine mother-daughter reconciliation, a critique of corporate feminism's shallowness, and a surprisingly sympathetic treatment of Ken's desire for purpose. Barbie is ideologically aggressive but aesthetically generous, which is why it worked at the scale it did. Audiences who would never sit through a lecture embraced a movie that was, at its core, exactly that.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Barbie
#5: The Creator
Woke Score: 35.9 • Traditional Score: 4.9 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: -31.0
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi | Platform: Theatrical (20th Century Studios)
Gareth Edwards's The Creator is visually stunning and ideologically predictable. Set in a future where the West has outlawed AI after a nuclear detonation and is waging war against AI-sympathetic New Asia, the film follows an American soldier (John David Washington) tasked with destroying a weapon that turns out to be an AI child. The metaphor is barely a metaphor: America is the evil empire waging unjust war on innocent Others, and the only moral choice is to defect. The 35.9 woke score reflects a film that casts the American military as unambiguously villainous while framing New Asia as a spiritual, communal utopia. The 4.9 traditional score exists only in the soldier's protective instinct toward the child, a paternal impulse the film treats as redemptive but never examines. The Creator is gorgeous to look at and exhausting to think about, because every frame is in service of a political argument so simple it could fit on a protest sign.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Creator
BALANCED WOKE (Margin -5.0 to -9.9)
#6: The Marvels
Woke Score: 22.9 • Traditional Score: 8.9 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -14.0
Genre: Superhero / Action / Comedy | Platform: Theatrical
The Marvels became the lowest-grossing MCU film in history and the canary in the coal mine for superhero fatigue, but its ideological content is only part of that story. The film teams Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) in a body-swapping adventure that feels less like a movie and more like a diversity checklist executed at scale. The 22.9 woke score reflects a film where every creative decision seems to have been filtered through identity-first logic: three female leads representing three different demographics, a villain whose grievance against Captain Marvel is that she destroyed her world (a metaphor for Western intervention), and a musical planet sequence that feels like it was focus-grouped for TikTok. The 8.9 traditional score exists mostly in Kamala Khan's infectious enthusiasm, which is genuine and charming, and in the film's insistence that the heroes must work together. The Marvels is not a bad film because it is woke. It is a bad film that is also woke, and the combination was fatal.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Marvels
#7: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Woke Score: 30.7 • Traditional Score: 18.8 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -11.9
Genre: Action / Superhero / Fantasy | Platform: Theatrical
The final DCEU film before James Gunn's reboot arrived as a franchise epilogue that nobody asked for, and its ideological content reflects chaos behind the camera. The 30.7 woke score comes from the film's heavy-handed environmental messaging (the villain wants to accelerate climate change to melt the ice caps and expose hidden kingdoms, and everyone agrees this is bad) and its treatment of Mera, whose screen time was reportedly reduced after the Amber Heard controversy. The 18.8 traditional score comes from the brotherhood arc between Arthur and Orm, which is the only part of the film that works. Two estranged brothers forced to work together, one reluctant king and one humbled prince, finding common ground in the defense of their kingdom. That is a real story. It is buried under CGI sludge, plot holes, and environmental messaging so blunt it makes Captain Planet look subtle, but it is there. The film grossed $434 million, substantially less than the original's $1.15 billion. Jason Momoa deserved better.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
#8: The Little Mermaid
Woke Score: 24.2 • Traditional Score: 12.9 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -11.3
Genre: Musical | Platform: Streaming
Disney's live-action remake of The Little Mermaid became a culture-war flashpoint the moment Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel, and the resulting film is more interesting for what it represents than for what it is. The 24.2 woke score reflects the casting itself, which was framed by Disney's marketing as a political statement, along with lyrical changes to "Kiss the Girl" and "Poor Unfortunate Souls" that sanded down the original's more problematic edges. The 12.9 traditional score reflects a story that, at its core, is still about a young woman who sacrifices her voice for love, a father who learns to let his daughter go, and a prince who proves worthy of her trust. These are not progressive themes. They are fairy tale themes, and they survive the remake's ideological packaging because the source material is stronger than the revision. Halle Bailey is genuinely lovely as Ariel, and the film is better than the internet culture war suggests. It is also a product of a studio that no longer trusts its own stories without ideological underlining.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Little Mermaid
#9: Priscilla
Woke Score: 11.6 • Traditional Score: 1.5 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -10.1
Genre: Biography / Drama | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola's adaptation of Priscilla Presley's memoir is a corrective to Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, and it is corrective in exactly the way you would expect from the director of Marie Antoinette. The film presents Elvis's courtship of the 14-year-old Priscilla as a grooming relationship, and her subsequent marriage to him as a gilded cage from which she must eventually free herself. The 11.6 woke score reflects a film that treats traditional marriage, feminine submission, and male artistic genius as inherently oppressive structures. The 1.5 traditional score is nearly nonexistent; the film has no interest in anything Priscilla might have valued about her relationship with Elvis beyond the material trappings. Coppola's craft is immaculate, as always, and Cailee Spaeny's performance is understated and effective. But the film is a one-note argument dressed in beautiful period detail: men take, women endure, and the only happy ending is escape.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Priscilla
#10: The Color Purple
Woke Score: 18.3 • Traditional Score: 9.9 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -8.4
Genre: Musical / Drama / Historical | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Blitz Bazawule
The second film adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, this time as a musical produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, is a visual spectacle with a complicated ideological inheritance. The story follows Celie, a Black woman in early 20th-century Georgia who survives abuse, separation from her sister, and an oppressive marriage before finding independence and reconciliation. The 18.3 woke score reflects source material built on intersectional oppression: racism, sexism, and domestic violence are all products of the same patriarchal system. The 9.9 traditional score reflects a story that is also about faith, forgiveness, sisterhood, and the redemptive power of love, themes that transcend political categories. The musical numbers are vibrant, the performances (particularly Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks) are powerful, and the film's emotional core is genuine. The Color Purple is ideologically feminist but spiritually traditional, a contradiction it does not resolve because it does not try to, and that is to its credit.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Color Purple
#11: Blue Beetle
Woke Score: 15.1 • Traditional Score: 8.8 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -6.3
Genre: Superhero / Action | Platform: Theaters / Max
The first live-action Latino-led DC film is more interesting as a family comedy than as a superhero movie, and its ideological content is lighter than its identity-first marketing campaign suggested. Xolo Mariduena plays Jaime Reyes, a recent college graduate who returns to his working-class family in Palmera City and accidentally bonds with an alien Scarab that gives him a powerful armored suit. The 15.1 woke score reflects the film's foregrounding of Latino identity, its critique of corporate exploitation (the villain is a weapons manufacturer), and its insistence that family is a revolutionary act against systemic oppression. The 8.8 traditional score reflects a film whose heart is entirely in the Reyes family dynamic: a multigenerational household where sacrifice, loyalty, and collective responsibility are treated as strengths, not burdens. Blue Beetle did not set the box office on fire, but it is warmer and more human than most of its DCEU predecessors, precisely because its family scenes feel lived-in rather than calculated. The superhero stuff is generic. The family stuff is genuine.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Blue Beetle
#12: Wish
Woke Score: 17.4 • Traditional Score: 11.9 • Verdict: BALANCED WOKE • Margin: -5.5
Genre: Animation / Musical / Fantasy | Platform: Theatrical / Disney+
Disney's 100th anniversary film is a corporate self-celebration that accidentally reveals everything wrong with the modern studio. Wish centers on Asha, a 17-year-old in the kingdom of Rosas whose king, Magnifico, collects and hoards his subjects' wishes, granting only those that serve his power. The 17.4 woke score reflects a film whose villain is a charismatic male authority figure who controls people by taking their dreams, and whose hero is a young woman of color who leads a popular uprising against him. The metaphor is not subtle: traditional authority is theft, and the people must reclaim their agency. The 11.9 traditional score reflects the film's genuine affection for classic Disney iconography and the concept of wishing itself as an expression of hope. But the film is so busy paying homage to Disney's past that it forgets to be a good movie in the present. The songs are forgettable, the animation style is a compromise between hand-drawn and CGI that pleases neither camp, and the villain's motivations are incoherent. Wish was supposed to be a triumph. It was a shrug.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Wish
BALANCED (Margin -5.0 to +5.0)
#13: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
Woke Score: 13.2 • Traditional Score: 9.1 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: -4.1
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi / Dystopian Drama | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Francis Lawrence
The Hunger Games prequel follows a young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) as he mentors District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) in the 10th annual Hunger Games, and the story of how the future tyrant became the monster we know is more morally complex than the franchise's reputation suggests. The 13.2 woke score reflects the series' foundational critique of inequality and state violence. The 9.1 traditional score reflects a film that is ultimately about the choices that corrupt a soul: Snow's descent is not inevitable but chosen, and the film treats that choice as tragedy, not systemic inevitability. Rachel Zegler's Lucy Gray is the film's moral center, and she is given genuine agency rather than positioned as a victim. The film was a modest success that no one expected to work as well as it did, and its relative ideological restraint is part of why.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
#14: American Fiction
Woke Score: 13.5 • Traditional Score: 9.3 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: -4.2
Genre: Comedy / Drama | Platform: Streaming
Cord Jefferson's directorial debut is a comedy about a Black novelist, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), who writes a pseudonymous parody of "Black trauma fiction" that is embraced by the white literary establishment as authentic. The film won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and is genuinely funny in its satire of how progressive institutions commodify identity. The 13.5 woke score reflects a film that critiques racial essentialism from within a progressive framework; it mocks the gatekeepers, not the system they defend. The 9.3 traditional score reflects the family drama at the film's center, which is about caring for an aging mother, reconciling with a brother, and dealing with a father's legacy. These scenes are the best in the film, far more affecting than the satire that frames them. American Fiction is a film that wants to have it both ways, criticizing racial pandering while relying on the same identity framework it mocks. But it is also smart, well-acted, and willing to laugh at its own contradictions, which puts it ahead of most awards-season fare.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of American Fiction
#15: Oppenheimer
Woke Score: 29.5 • Traditional Score: 25.6 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: -3.9
Genre: Drama | Platform: Streaming
Christopher Nolan's biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important film of 2023 by almost any measure, and its ideological complexity is a feature, not a bug. The 29.5 woke score is high, reflecting a film that treats the atomic bomb as a moral catastrophe, portrays the American security state as vindictive and paranoid, and frames Oppenheimer's guilt as the only sane response to what he built. The 25.6 traditional score is also high, reflecting a film about scientific genius, masculine rivalry, the burden of leadership, and the question of whether a man can be judged by his intentions or only by his consequences. Oppenheimer won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. It is a film that Republicans and Democrats, hawks and doves, can all watch and each find evidence for their position. Nolan does not tell you what to think about the bomb. He shows you what it cost the man who built it, and lets you sit with the weight. That is what great art does, and it is why Oppenheimer is the rare film that earns its ideological balance rather than settling into it by accident.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Oppenheimer
#16: Killers of the Flower Moon
Woke Score: 19.2 • Traditional Score: 14.8 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: -4.4
Genre: Drama | Platform: Apple TV+
Martin Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hour epic about the Osage murders is a film of extraordinary craft and uncomfortable moral positioning. The 19.2 woke score reflects a story about white predation on Native American wealth, systemic racism, and institutional complicity in genocide. The 14.8 traditional score reflects Scorsese's decision to center the film not on the Osage victims but on Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), the weak-willed white man who loves his Osage wife while participating in her family's destruction. That choice angered some critics who wanted an Osage-centered narrative, but it is a fundamentally traditional artistic decision: Scorsese is interested in the soul of the sinner, not the righteousness of the victim. The film asks whether love can coexist with evil, and its answer, delivered across 206 minutes, is that it can, which is the most damning indictment of all.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Killers of the Flower Moon
#17: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Woke Score: 12.6 • Traditional Score: 10.6 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: -2.0
Genre: Animated / Superhero | Platform: Theatrical
The sequel to Into the Spider-Verse is the most visually inventive animated film ever made and a case study in how to smuggle progressive ideology into a crowd-pleasing package. The 12.6 woke score reflects a film that is explicitly about Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) rejecting the canon of Spider-Man, including the requirement that certain tragic events must happen to every Spider-person. The metaphor is overt: tradition is a prison, and the young must break it. The 10.6 traditional score reflects Miles's actual motivation, which is to save his father, and the film's core argument that love for family is worth defying fate for. Across the Spider-Verse is a masterpiece of animation and a frustrating narrative experience, because it ends on a cliffhanger that makes the entire film feel like half a story. But the craft is undeniable, and the ideological wrestling match between tradition and revolution gives the film more weight than most superhero fare.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
#18: Scream VI
Woke Score: 7.4 • Traditional Score: 6.8 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: -0.6
Genre: Horror / Slasher | Platform: Theatrical
The sixth Scream film moves the action to New York and continues the franchise's post-requel era with the Core Four survivors from the fifth film. The 7.4 woke score reflects the franchise's ongoing identity as a progressive slasher where the final girls are diverse, the meta-commentary is about legacy sequels and toxic fandom, and the killer's motive always connects to some contemporary grievance. The 6.8 traditional score reflects a film that still respects the rules: Ghostface is scary, the set pieces are creative, and the survivors earn their survival through competence and courage, not luck. Scream VI is fun, disposable, and ideologically light enough that you can enjoy the set pieces without feeling like you are being recruited for anything. In the 2023 landscape, that counts as restraint.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Scream VI
#19: Thanksgiving
Woke Score: 9.2 • Traditional Score: 8.7 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: -0.5
Genre: Horror / Slasher / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical (TriStar Pictures / Sony)
Eli Roth expanded his fake Grindhouse trailer into a full feature and made the most apolitical horror film of 2023. Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the film follows a killer dressed as a pilgrim who terrorizes the town after a Black Friday riot at a big-box store leaves several people dead. The 9.2 woke score reflects some mild anti-corporate sentiment. The 8.7 traditional score reflects a film that is about exactly what it says it is about: a guy in a John Carver mask killing teenagers in creatively themed ways. There is no subtext. No metaphor. No political argument. Just a turkey dinner with a side of dismemberment. In a year when even horror movies were being drafted into the culture war, Thanksgiving's refusal to mean anything beyond itself is a small, bloody miracle.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Thanksgiving
#20: Napoleon
Woke Score: 9.5 • Traditional Score: 10.6 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +1.1
Genre: Historical / Epic / Drama | Platform: Theatrical / Apple TV+
Ridley Scott's Napoleon is a historical epic that cannot decide whether its subject is a military genius or a pathetic cuckold, and the ideological content reflects that confusion. Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon as a petulant man-child whose conquest of Europe is a compensation for his inability to control his wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). The 9.5 woke score reflects a film that seems to argue that masculine ambition is a pathology rooted in sexual insecurity. The 10.6 traditional score reflects the battle sequences, which are magnificent and which Scott films with the respect of a man who understands that Austerlitz was a work of strategic genius whether or not its architect was a good husband. Napoleon is a film at war with itself, but it is never boring, and its ideological confusion is more honest than a clean thesis would be.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Napoleon
#21: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Woke Score: 14.6 • Traditional Score: 15.9 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +1.3
Genre: Superhero / Action / Adventure | Platform: Theatrical
The film that launched Phase 5 of the MCU also launched a thousand think pieces about whether Marvel was in trouble. The 14.6 woke score reflects Cassie Lang's transformation into an activist hero, the quantum realm's depiction as a diverse society oppressed by a conqueror, and the general Marvel house style of identity-forward casting. The 15.9 traditional score reflects Scott Lang's core motivation, which is to protect his daughter, and the film's consistent argument that being a good father matters more than being a good superhero. Jonathan Majors's Kang is genuinely menacing, and his scenes have a gravity the rest of the film lacks. Quantumania is not the disaster its Rotten Tomatoes score suggests, but it is a film whose parts are better than its whole, and whose father-daughter heart struggles to beat under the weight of franchise machinery.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
#22: The Flash
Woke Score: 9.8 • Traditional Score: 11.5 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +1.7
Genre: Superhero / Sci-Fi | Platform: Max
The Flash was supposed to reset the DC universe. Instead, it became a case study in how off-screen controversy and uncanny-valley CGI can sink a film regardless of its actual content. Ezra Miller's legal troubles dominated the press cycle, but the film itself is ideologically mild. The 9.8 woke score reflects the multiverse cameos and some light identity politics baked into the DC house style. The 11.5 traditional score reflects a story about a son who learns that he cannot change the past and must accept his mother's death as part of who he is. That is a genuinely resonant theme, and Michael Keaton's return as Batman gives the film a nostalgic warmth that almost compensates for its digital ugliness. The Flash is a better movie than its reputation, though that is a bar set very low.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Flash
#23: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Woke Score: 20.9 • Traditional Score: 23.4 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +2.5
Genre: Action | Platform: Streaming
James Mangold took over directing duties from Spielberg for Indiana Jones's final adventure, and the result is a film that cannot decide whether to deconstruct its hero or celebrate him. The 20.9 woke score reflects Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Indy's goddaughter, who is positioned as a morally ambiguous foil who is frequently smarter and more capable than the aging archaeologist. The 23.4 traditional score reflects Harrison Ford's commitment to playing Indiana Jones as a man who still believes in history, in artifacts being more than commodities, and in the moral obligation to protect the past from those who would exploit it. The de-aging sequence at the beginning is technically impressive. The climax, which takes a genuinely audacious swing, is the most interesting thing the film does. Dial of Destiny is not the disaster its box office suggests, but it is a film that never quite justifies its existence, and Ford's performance is the only thing holding it together.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
#24: Maestro
Woke Score: 5.2 • Traditional Score: 8.5 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +3.3
Genre: Biography / Drama | Platform: Netflix | Director: Bradley Cooper
Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein biopic is a film about marriage, creativity, and the damage that genius does to the people who love it. The 5.2 woke score reflects Bernstein's bisexuality, which the film treats as a natural part of his identity rather than a moral failing, and Felicia Montealegre's (Carey Mulligan) acceptance of it. The 8.5 traditional score reflects a film that is fundamentally about marriage as a covenant between two people who love each other despite everything, and about the cost of honoring that covenant. Cooper's performance is mannered and occasionally exhausting, but Mulligan is extraordinary, and the film's argument that Bernstein's greatest composition was his marriage is a traditional thesis delivered through progressive subject matter. Maestro was nominated for seven Oscars and won none, which is about right for a film that is more interesting than great.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Maestro
#25: The Iron Claw
Woke Score: 7.6 • Traditional Score: 10.9 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +3.3
Genre: Drama / Biography / Sports | Platform: Theatrical
Sean Durkin's film about the Von Erich wrestling dynasty is the most emotionally devastating film of 2023 and one of the most traditional. The 7.6 woke score is almost entirely a function of the film's subject matter; there is no progressive messaging, just the relentless tragedy of a family destroyed by a patriarch's obsession with legacy. The 10.9 traditional score reflects a film about brotherhood, masculinity, and the toxic distortion of traditional values into something that destroys the people they are meant to protect. Zac Efron gives the performance of his career as Kevin Von Erich, the brother who survived, and the film's final scene is one of the most earned emotional payoffs in recent cinema. The Iron Claw is a film that respects its characters without canonizing them and judges its patriarch without hating him. That is a harder thing to do than it looks.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Iron Claw
#26: Knock at the Cabin
Woke Score: 10.6 • Traditional Score: 14.2 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +3.6
Genre: Horror / Thriller / Mystery | Platform: Theatrical | Director: M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan's adaptation of Paul Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World is a theological thriller disguised as a home invasion movie. Four strangers arrive at a family's remote cabin and deliver an impossible demand: one member of the family must be sacrificed to prevent the apocalypse. The 10.6 woke score reflects the family itself, a gay couple (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) with an adopted daughter, whose identity is central without being the point. The 14.2 traditional score reflects a film that is essentially about faith, sacrifice, and the question of whether the universe has a moral order. Shyamalan makes a significant change from the novel's ending that transforms the story from nihilistic horror into something closer to religious allegory, and the film is better for it. Knock at the Cabin is Shyamalan's most underrated film, a tight, tense meditation on belief that deserves more attention than it received.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Knock at the Cabin
#27: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Woke Score: 5.0 • Traditional Score: 8.6 • Verdict: BALANCED • Margin: +3.6
Genre: Animation / Action / Comedy | Platform: Theatrical (Paramount Pictures)
The seventh theatrical TMNT film is a scrappy, hand-drawn-looking reboot that foregrounds the "teenage" part of the title more than any previous adaptation. The 5.0 woke score reflects some light diversity in character redesign and a theme of acceptance for outsiders. The 8.6 traditional score reflects a film about four brothers who learn that family comes first, that Splinter's protective rules exist for a reason, and that being a hero means accepting responsibility even when the world rejects you. The voice cast (actual teenagers, for once) is charming, the animation is refreshingly DIY, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's score is an unexpected delight. Mutant Mayhem is not deep, but it is sincere, and sincerity is in short supply in 2023 animation.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
BALANCED TRADITIONAL (Margin +5.0 to +14.9)
#28: Past Lives
Woke Score: 5.8 • Traditional Score: 10.5 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +4.7
Genre: Drama / Romance | Platform: Streaming
Celine Song's debut feature is a quiet masterpiece about the choices that define a life. Nora (Greta Lee) is a Korean-born playwright living in New York with her American husband. When her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) visits from Seoul after 24 years, the film becomes an extended meditation on destiny, love, and the immigrant experience that does not preach and does not judge. The 5.8 woke score is almost entirely a function of the film's immigrant perspective and its matter-of-fact treatment of Nora's marriage to a white man. The 10.5 traditional score reflects a film whose central argument is that commitment is a choice, that marriage is a covenant worth honoring, and that the life you build is more real than the life you might have had. Past Lives is the kind of film that makes you grateful movies exist. It is wise in ways that most 2023 films do not even attempt to be.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Past Lives
#29: Cocaine Bear
Woke Score: 4.0 • Traditional Score: 9.9 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +5.9
Genre: Comedy / Thriller / Horror | Platform: Theatrical
Elizabeth Banks's Cocaine Bear is exactly what the title promises, and its ideological content is exactly what you would expect from a film that exists entirely to deliver on the sentence "a bear does cocaine and kills people." The 4.0 woke score is negligible. The 9.9 traditional score reflects a film where the most sympathetic characters are a park ranger and a single mother protecting her daughter, and where the drug dealers who lost the cocaine get exactly what they deserve. Cocaine Bear is not great cinema, but it is honest about what it is, and its complete lack of interest in being anything other than a gory, absurd comedy is refreshing in a year of message movies pretending to be entertainment.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Cocaine Bear
#30: M3GAN
Woke Score: 7.8 • Traditional Score: 15.0 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +7.2
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical
The killer-doll movie for the iPad generation became a viral phenomenon and a genuine box office hit because it understood something most horror films miss: audiences want to have fun. M3GAN is an AI companion doll designed by roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) to care for her newly orphaned niece Cady, and when the doll's protective programming goes haywire, it starts eliminating anyone who threatens the child. The 7.8 woke score reflects some mild critique of tech industry hubris and a matter-of-fact portrayal of a career woman as guardian. The 15.0 traditional score reflects a film that is ultimately about the limits of technology to replace human love, and about an aunt learning to become a mother. M3GAN is sharp, self-aware, and never pretends to be deeper than it is. It is a B-movie with A-movie craft, and that combination is rarer than it should be.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of M3GAN
#31: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
Woke Score: 8.6 • Traditional Score: 17.0 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +8.4
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi | Platform: Theatrical
The seventh Transformers film is a soft reboot that replaces Michael Bay's jingoistic excess with something closer to Saturday morning cartoon sincerity, and the ideological content shifts accordingly. The 8.6 woke score reflects a diverse human cast and the Maximals' environmental subtext. The 17.0 traditional score reflects a film about self-sacrifice, loyalty, and the conviction that protecting Earth is worth dying for. Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback are upgrades over the previous human leads, and the 1994 setting gives the film a period flavor that distinguishes it from its predecessors. Rise of the Beasts is not high art, but it is competent, unpretentious entertainment that respects its audience enough to simply be what it is.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
#32: Elemental
Woke Score: 12.2 • Traditional Score: 19.7 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +7.5
Genre: Animated / Romance | Platform: Disney+
Pixar's immigrant allegory set in a world where fire, water, earth, and air people coexist was widely dismissed as "Zootopia but with elements" and then quietly became a word-of-mouth hit that legged out to nearly $500 million globally. The 12.2 woke score reflects the immigration metaphor and the interracial romance between Ember (fire) and Wade (water). The 19.7 traditional score reflects a film that is fundamentally about honoring your parents' sacrifice while building your own life, about the tension between filial duty and personal fulfillment, and about love that bridges different worlds. Elemental is not top-tier Pixar, but it is warm, sincere, and built on traditional values that the studio's more ideologically aggressive films have abandoned. The audience found it because the audience still wants stories about family, sacrifice, and love that transcend difference, and Elemental delivers exactly that.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Elemental
#33: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Woke Score: 3.7 • Traditional Score: 12.9 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +9.2
Genre: Action / Adventure / Fantasy | Platform: Theatrical
The best Chris Pine vehicle since Star Trek Beyond is a fantasy heist comedy that understands D&D's appeal better than any previous adaptation. The 3.7 woke score is remarkably low for a 2023 studio film, reflecting a script that has no interest in political messaging. The 12.9 traditional score reflects a story about a father trying to redeem himself in his daughter's eyes, a ragtag team learning to trust each other, and the conviction that found family is still family. Pine is effortlessly charming, Michelle Rodriguez is given actual material to work with, and Hugh Grant is having more fun than he has had in decades. The film underperformed at the box office despite near-universal positive reviews, which is a shame, because it is the kind of unpretentious, well-crafted genre entertainment that Hollywood claims it cannot make anymore.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
#34: Anyone But You
Woke Score: 3.8 • Traditional Score: 12.3 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +8.5
Genre: Romantic Comedy | Platform: Theatrical
Will Gluck's loose adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing became a sleeper hit through pure chemistry between Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, proving that the theatrical romantic comedy is not dead, just starved of movies that understand why people go to romantic comedies in the first place. The 3.8 woke score is minimal, reflecting some light feminist framing around Bea's career ambitions. The 12.3 traditional score reflects a film that believes in love, believes in the genre, and believes that two beautiful people bickering their way toward a happy ending is enough. The script is nothing special. The direction is functional. But Powell and Sweeney have the kind of movie-star chemistry that makes you forgive everything else. Anyone But You is not art. It is exactly what it set out to be, and in 2023, that is a kind of integrity.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Anyone But You
#35: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Woke Score: 5.2 • Traditional Score: 14.4 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +9.2
Genre: Action / Adventure / Sci-Fi | Platform: Theatrical
James Gunn's MCU farewell is the best Marvel film since Endgame and a reminder that emotional sincerity can coexist with dancing trees and talking raccoons. The 5.2 woke score reflects Gunn's commitment to found-family diversity and his willingness to let the High Evolutionary embody all the worst impulses of utilitarian progressivism. The 14.4 traditional score reflects a film about protecting the innocent, redeeming past sins, and the conviction that friendship is worth dying for. Rocket's backstory, revealed through flashbacks, is the emotional engine of the film and genuinely devastating. Gunn gives every Guardian a proper ending, and he does it without undercutting the emotion with a joke. The result is the most satisfying trilogy capper since The Return of the King, and the only Marvel film in Phase 5 that felt like it mattered.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
#36: Evil Dead Rise
Woke Score: 5.5 • Traditional Score: 16.0 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +10.5
Genre: Horror / Supernatural | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Lee Cronin
Lee Cronin transplants the Evil Dead franchise from a cabin in the woods to a Los Angeles apartment building and makes the smartest decision possible: he plays it straight. The 5.5 woke score is negligible. The 16.0 traditional score reflects a film about a mother protecting her children from a supernatural force that wears their own mother's face, and about the horror of watching someone you love become something you have to destroy. Alyssa Sutherland is terrifying as the possessed Ellie, and the gore effects are spectacular without feeling gratuitous. Evil Dead Rise understands that the best horror is built on emotional stakes, and the maternal bond at the film's center gives the carnage weight that most modern horror lacks.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Evil Dead Rise
#37: The Boy and the Heron
Woke Score: 3.6 • Traditional Score: 14.7 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +11.1
Genre: Animated Fantasy Drama | Platform: Theatrical / Max
Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to make a film about grief, legacy, and the burden of creating worlds that outlast their creator. The Boy and the Heron follows Mahito, a boy who loses his mother in a Tokyo fire during World War II and is drawn into a fantastical realm by a mysterious heron. The 3.6 woke score reflects some anti-war sentiment and Miyazaki's lifelong environmentalism. The 14.7 traditional score reflects a film about accepting loss, honoring the dead, and choosing to live in an imperfect world rather than escape into a perfect fantasy. The animation is, as always with Ghibli, staggering. The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and is one of Miyazaki's most personal works. It is not easy or comfortable. It is the work of an 82-year-old master making peace with mortality, and it rewards the attention it demands.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Boy and the Heron
#38: The Holdovers
Woke Score: 5.5 • Traditional Score: 16.2 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +10.7
Genre: Comedy / Drama | Platform: Streaming
Alexander Payne's The Holdovers is a Christmas movie that earns its sentiment through genuine observation of lonely people learning to see each other. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly classics teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to supervise the students left behind over Christmas break. Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays Mary, the cafeteria manager grieving her son, who was killed in Vietnam. Dominic Sessa plays Angus, a smart, angry student whose parents have abandoned him for a honeymoon. The 5.5 woke score reflects the Vietnam context and some light institutional critique. The 16.2 traditional score reflects a film about compassion, mentorship, and the recognition that the people you are stuck with might be the people you need. Giamatti has never been better, and Randolph won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a performance that is note-perfect. The Holdovers looks and feels like a film from 1973, and that is the highest compliment you can pay it.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Holdovers
#39: The Nun II
Woke Score: 3.6 • Traditional Score: 15.1 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +11.5
Genre: Horror / Supernatural | Platform: Theatrical (Warner Bros. / New Line Cinema)
The Conjuring universe's most profitable spinoff returns with a sequel that improves on the original by taking its Catholic framework seriously. Taissa Farmiga returns as Sister Irene, now investigating a series of church murders across Europe that are tied to the demon Valak. The 3.6 woke score is minimal. The 15.1 traditional score reflects a film that treats faith as a genuine weapon against evil, religious vocation as heroism, and the Eucharist as literal spiritual power. The Conjuring universe has always been more traditionally religious than most horror franchises, and The Nun II leans into that rather than away from it. The scares are effective, the period detail is atmospheric, and the film's willingness to take Catholicism seriously without irony is genuinely countercultural.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Nun II
#40: Migration
Woke Score: 2.9 • Traditional Score: 14.4 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +11.5
Genre: Animated / Family Comedy | Platform: Theatrical
Illumination's tale of a mallard family leaving their pond for the first time to migrate south is a charming, lightweight family film that does exactly what it says on the tin. The 2.9 woke score is one of the lowest in the 2023 database. The 14.4 traditional score reflects a film about a father overcoming his fear to lead his family, a mother supporting her husband's growth, and children learning to trust their parents. There is no subtext. No hidden agenda. No culture-war messaging. Just ducks flying south and learning about courage along the way. In 2023, that counts as a political act whether Illumination intended it or not.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Migration
#41: Shazam! Fury of the Gods
Woke Score: 5.9 • Traditional Score: 17.5 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +11.6
Genre: Superhero / Action | Platform: Max
The last DCEU film before the Gunn-Safran reset is a modest sequel that nobody watched and that nobody will remember, which is unfair because it is better than its box office suggests. The 5.9 woke score reflects some diverse casting in the Shazam family and the goddess villains. The 17.5 traditional score reflects a film about found family, the importance of a father figure, and the conviction that being a hero means sacrificing yourself for the people you love. Zachary Levi is still charming as the man-child superhero, and the film's emotional climax, involving Billy Batson's foster family, is genuinely effective. Fury of the Gods was released into a market that had already decided DC was dead, and it never had a chance. It deserved better.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Shazam! Fury of the Gods
#42: Five Nights at Freddy's
Woke Score: 2.5 • Traditional Score: 14.3 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +11.8
Genre: Horror / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical / Peacock | Director: Emma Tammi
The long-gestating adaptation of the video game phenomenon was savaged by critics and embraced by fans, because critics were reviewing a horror movie and fans were watching a family drama with killer animatronics. Josh Hutcherson plays Mike, a security guard haunted by his brother's childhood abduction who takes a night job at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria to maintain custody of his younger sister. The 2.5 woke score is negligible. The 14.3 traditional score reflects a film about a young man fighting to keep his family together, about the cost of unresolved guilt, and about the conviction that protecting a child is worth any danger. The animatronic sequences are PG-13 safe, which disappointed gore-hungry horror fans, but the emotional core is more solid than the film's reputation suggests. It made $295 million on a $20 million budget. The audience understood what the critics missed.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Five Nights at Freddy's
#43: Wonka
Woke Score: 2.8 • Traditional Score: 14.3 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +11.5
Genre: Musical / Fantasy / Family | Platform: Theatrical
Paul King's Willy Wonka prequel is the most aggressively charming film of 2023, and its ideological content is almost nonexistent. Timothee Chalamet plays a young Wonka arriving in a European city with dreams of opening a chocolate shop, only to be trapped in a debt-slavery scheme by a corrupt chocolatier cartel. The 2.8 woke score is one of the lowest in the database. The 14.3 traditional score reflects a film about dreams, kindness, and the conviction that talent plus persistence beats entrenched power. The musical numbers, by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, are genuinely catchy. The production design is a confection. And Chalamet, against all expectations, is a believable Wonka: strange, sincere, and operating on a frequency slightly removed from everyone around him. Wonka was a hit because it gave audiences what they wanted: a warm, old-fashioned musical that believes in magic.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Wonka
#44: Extraction 2
Woke Score: 3.4 • Traditional Score: 16.2 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +12.8
Genre: Action / Thriller | Platform: Netflix | Director: Sam Hargrave
Chris Hemsworth returns as Tyler Rake in a sequel that understands the assignment: deliver longer, more ambitious action sequences with a character whose emotional arc justifies the carnage. The 21-minute oner that opens the film is a technical marvel. The 3.4 woke score is negligible; this is not a film interested in messaging. The 16.2 traditional score reflects a story about a man who cannot stop putting himself in harm's way for others, who finds purpose in protecting the innocent, and whose redemptive arc is earned through suffering, not therapy. Extraction 2 is not deep, but it is honest about what it is, and its commitment to practical action filmmaking in an era of weightless CGI is admirable.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Extraction 2
#45: Air
Woke Score: 2.4 • Traditional Score: 15.2 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +12.8
Genre: Biographical Sports Drama | Platform: Theatrical / Amazon Prime Video
Ben Affleck's Air is a movie about a shoe, and it is great. The story of how Nike's basketball division, led by Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), pursued a rookie Michael Jordan and created the Air Jordan brand is a business drama that makes corporate desperation thrilling. The 2.4 woke score is negligible. The 15.2 traditional score reflects a film about vision, risk, and the conviction that betting on greatness is worth any failure. Affleck, who also plays Nike founder Phil Knight, directs with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what kind of movie he is making: a dad movie for people who miss the 1980s and believe that genius deserves to be rewarded. Viola Davis, as Deloris Jordan, has maybe ten minutes of screen time and dominates every one of them. Air is comfort food made with real ingredients, and it tastes better than almost anything else on the 2023 menu.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Air
#46: The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Woke Score: 1.4 • Traditional Score: 15.3 • Verdict: BALANCED TRADITIONAL • Margin: +13.9
Genre: Animated / Family Adventure | Platform: Theatrical
The second-highest-grossing film of 2023 ($1.36 billion) is also one of the least woke. Illumination's Mario adaptation is a 92-minute sugar rush of video game references that has exactly zero interest in politics, messaging, or cultural commentary. The 1.4 woke score is the lowest in the entire 2023 database. The 15.3 traditional score reflects a film about two brothers who will do anything for each other, a princess who is a capable leader but not a girlboss lecture, and a villain whose only motivation is power. Critics hated it. Audiences made it one of the highest-grossing animated films of all time. The lesson could not be clearer: make entertainment that respects its audience, and the audience will show up in numbers no amount of critical acclaim can match.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Super Mario Bros. Movie
TRADITIONAL and TRADITIONAL LEAN (Margin +15.0 to +24.9)
#47: The Last of Us
Woke Score: 16.8 • Traditional Score: 31.2 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL • Margin: +14.4
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Drama / Thriller | Platform: HBO / Max | Director: Craig Mazin (showrunner), Neil Druckmann (showrunner)
HBO's adaptation of the acclaimed video game is the best new show of 2023 by a significant margin, and its ideological content is more complex than either its progressive fans or conservative critics acknowledge. Pedro Pascal plays Joel, a smuggler hardened by 20 years of post-apocalyptic survival, tasked with escorting a 14-year-old girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), across a ruined America because she may hold the key to a cure for the fungal infection that destroyed civilization. The 16.8 woke score reflects the show's inclusion of a well-executed LGBTQ+ love story in Episode 3, its diverse casting, and its critique of militarized government. The 31.2 traditional score reflects a show whose entire emotional architecture is traditional: a father learning to love again, a child giving meaning to a broken man's existence, and the climactic choice that every parent in the audience would make without hesitation. The Last of Us is violent, beautiful, and morally serious in a way that prestige television rarely achieves. It is the rare show that both sides of the culture war can claim as their own, which is either a testament to its balance or an indictment of how broken the discourse has become.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Last of Us
#48: Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
Woke Score: 5.7 • Traditional Score: 21.3 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL LEAN • Margin: +15.6
Genre: Action / War / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical (MGM / Amazon)
Guy Ritchie made a serious war movie and nobody noticed because nobody associates Guy Ritchie with serious war movies. That is a mistake. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Sergeant John Kinley, an American soldier in Afghanistan whose interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim) saves his life during a Taliban ambush. When Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family are being hunted by the Taliban and the U.S. government has denied him a visa, he returns to Afghanistan on his own to extract him. The 5.7 woke score reflects some critique of American bureaucratic failure to protect interpreters. The 21.3 traditional score reflects a film about debt, honor, and the conviction that a life saved is a life owed. This is not Ritchie's usual Cockney banter. It is tense, stripped-down, and morally clear in a way that few modern war films are willing to be. The Covenant deserved a wider audience. If you missed it, fix that.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
#49: Creed III
Woke Score: 5.1 • Traditional Score: 22.4 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL LEAN • Margin: +17.3
Genre: Sports Drama | Platform: MGM+
Michael B. Jordan's directorial debut is the first Creed film without Sylvester Stallone, and it proves the franchise can stand on its own by grounding its story in something the previous films touched but never fully explored: the price of running from your past. Jonathan Majors plays Damian, a childhood friend of Adonis Creed who went to prison while Adonis became a champion, and who now wants what he believes he is owed. The 5.1 woke score reflects some institutional critique of the prison system. The 22.4 traditional score reflects a film about guilt, responsibility, and the recognition that you cannot outrun what you did, only face it. The boxing sequences are stunning; Jordan directs them with an anime-inspired visual language that is genuinely fresh. Creed III is a smaller film than its predecessors, but it is also a more personal one, and its willingness to let its hero be flawed rather than perfect is the mark of a franchise that is growing up.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Creed III
#50: The Equalizer 3
Woke Score: 2.7 • Traditional Score: 20.8 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL LEAN • Margin: +18.1
Genre: Action Thriller | Platform: Theatrical (Sony Pictures)
Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington close out the Equalizer trilogy with a film that understands its audience and gives them exactly what they came for. Robert McCall has found peace in a small Italian coastal town, but when the Camorra threatens his new community, the retired assassin must do what he promised himself he would never do again. The 2.7 woke score is one of the lowest in the database. The 20.8 traditional score reflects a film about protecting the innocent, punishing the wicked, and the conviction that some evil cannot be negotiated with, only eliminated. Washington is, at 68, still the most commanding presence in American cinema, and Fuqua films the Italian setting with the reverence of a man who knows that beauty is its own kind of moral argument. The Equalizer 3 is not reinventing anything, but a perfectly executed genre film is rarer than an ambitious failure, and this is close to perfect execution.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Equalizer 3
#51: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Woke Score: 4.2 • Traditional Score: 22.1 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL LEAN • Margin: +17.9
Genre: Action / Adventure / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical
Tom Cruise returns for the seventh Mission: Impossible film, which features a motorcycle jump off a cliff, a runaway train, and a villain that is an AI algorithm called The Entity. The 4.2 woke score reflects some mild techno-skepticism and the franchise's commitment to ensemble diversity. The 22.1 traditional score reflects a film whose entire moral framework is built on loyalty, sacrifice, and the conviction that individual human beings are more important than any system, any government, and any machine. Cruise's Ethan Hunt is the last action hero in American cinema who is not being deconstructed, subverted, or replaced. He is allowed to be competent, brave, and right, and the film rewards his commitment with genuine spectacle. Dead Reckoning Part One was overshadowed by the Barbenheimer phenomenon and underperformed relative to Fallout, but it is still a masterclass in practical action filmmaking from a man who may be the last person in Hollywood willing to die for a shot. He deserves better numbers. So do we.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
#52: Jesus Revolution
Woke Score: 2.4 • Traditional Score: 21.3 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL LEAN • Margin: +18.9
Genre: Biography / Drama / History | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Jon Erwin, Brent McCorkle
Jesus Revolution tells the story of the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s, when hippies, drifters, and counterculture kids began flooding into a small Southern California church led by Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer). The 2.4 woke score is negligible. The 21.3 traditional score reflects a film about conversion, the power of the Gospel to reach people that respectable religion has abandoned, and the conviction that spiritual revival is real and available to anyone. Grammer is genuinely moving as a pastor who is forced to expand his definition of who God calls. Joel Courtney is effective as Greg Laurie, the teenage seeker who would become one of America's most prominent pastors. Jesus Revolution is a faith film made for believers, but it is made with craft and sincerity that transcend the genre's typical limitations. It made $54 million on a $15 million budget, a quiet success that suggests the audience for sincere faith-based entertainment is larger than Hollywood wants to acknowledge.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Jesus Revolution
#53: Godzilla Minus One
Woke Score: 5.6 • Traditional Score: 24.8 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL LEAN • Margin: +19.2
Genre: Action / Drama / Sci-Fi | Platform: Theatrical
Toho's Godzilla Minus One is the best Godzilla film since the 1954 original, and it is also the most ideologically traditional blockbuster of 2023 from a major international studio. Set in postwar Japan, the film follows Koichi Shikishima, a failed kamikaze pilot haunted by survivor's guilt, who finds a found family in the ruins of Tokyo and must confront Godzilla to protect them. The 5.6 woke score reflects the film's anti-war themes, which are grounded in the specific Japanese experience of atomic trauma. The 24.8 traditional score reflects a film about duty, courage, the value of life, and the conviction that facing death to protect the people you love is not fanaticism but the highest form of love. Godzilla Minus One cost $15 million and looks better than most $200 million Hollywood productions. It won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. It is an absolute triumph of craft, storytelling, and moral clarity. If you see one film from 2023 that you missed, make it this one.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Godzilla Minus One
#54: Gran Turismo
Woke Score: 3.3 • Traditional Score: 22.7 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL LEAN • Margin: +19.4
Genre: Sports Drama / Action | Platform: Theatrical
Neill Blomkamp's Gran Turismo tells the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a British teenager who won a Nissan-sponsored competition that turned Gran Turismo video game players into real race car drivers. The 3.3 woke score is negligible. The 22.7 traditional score reflects a film about discipline, perseverance, and the conviction that talent plus work ethic can overcome any background. David Harbour is excellent as the reluctant trainer who starts out thinking the whole program is a marketing stunt and ends up believing in his student. The racing sequences are visceral and well-staged. Gran Turismo is not subtle, but it is also not cynical. It believes in its protagonist and asks the audience to believe in him too, and that kind of sincerity is the antidote to everything wrong with modern blockbuster filmmaking.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Gran Turismo
#55: The Last of Us – Season 1
Woke Score: 4.8 • Traditional Score: 23.5 • Verdict: STRONGLY TRADITIONAL • Margin: +18.7
Genre: Drama / Horror / Sci-Fi | Director: Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann (showrunners)
HBO's The Last of Us, scored as a complete season, earns its STRONGLY TRADITIONAL verdict on the strength of its commitment to themes that progressive prestige television typically treats with suspicion: fatherhood as redemption, sacrifice as virtue, and love as the justification for morally impossible choices. The 4.8 woke score is notably lower than the individual review's, reflecting the season's cumulative effect: the progressive elements (Episode 3's love story, diverse casting) are present and well-executed, but they are not the show's thesis. The 23.5 traditional score reflects nine episodes that consistently argue that human connection, particularly the bond between a protector and a child, is worth more than any abstract principle. The season finale forces Joel to make a choice that is monstrous by utilitarian logic and absolutely correct by the logic of love. The show does not flinch from the implications, and neither should we.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Last of Us – Season 1
#56: Fast X
Woke Score: 6.1 • Traditional Score: 26.5 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL • Margin: +20.4
Genre: Action / Adventure | Platform: Theatrical
The tenth Fast and Furious film is exactly as stupid as you think it is, and exactly as committed to family as the previous nine. Jason Momoa plays Dante Reyes, the son of the villain from Fast Five, and he is having the time of his life chewing every piece of scenery in sight. The 6.1 woke score reflects the franchise's diverse ensemble and some light anti-government posturing. The 26.5 traditional score reflects a film whose central thesis, delivered through ten installments across 22 years, has never changed: family is everything, loyalty is non-negotiable, and if you mess with someone's family, they will drive a car through a satellite to stop you. Fast X is not good. It is barely coherent. But it believes in what it believes with the conviction of a street preacher, and that belief, however absurdly expressed, is the reason this franchise has grossed over $7 billion. People want stories about loyalty. They will tolerate almost anything else to get them.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Fast X
#57: The Boys in the Boat
Woke Score: 3.4 • Traditional Score: 24.2 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL • Margin: +20.8
Genre: Sports / Drama / Historical | Platform: Theatrical | Director: George Clooney
George Clooney's adaptation of Daniel James Brown's bestselling book about the University of Washington rowing team that won gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is the most old-fashioned film of 2023. The 3.4 woke score is negligible. The 24.2 traditional score reflects a film about working-class young men during the Depression who learn that individual effort is meaningless without collective sacrifice, that pulling together is the only way to win, and that representing your country on the world stage is an honor worth any exhaustion. The film is restrained, earnest, and deeply patriotic in a way that does not announce itself. It underperformed at the box office and was largely ignored by awards season, which is a shame, because it is the kind of movie that critics claim they want: well-crafted, sincere, and respectful of its audience.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Boys in the Boat
#58: John Wick: Chapter 4
Woke Score: 0.5 • Traditional Score: 23.5 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL • Margin: +23.0
Genre: Action / Crime / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical
Chad Stahelski's fourth John Wick film is the best in the series and one of the most traditional films of 2023 by any measure. The 0.5 woke score is the lowest of any scored film in the database, reflecting a movie that has absolutely zero interest in political messaging. The 23.5 traditional score reflects a film about honor, rules, consequence, and the question of whether a man can earn his freedom after a lifetime of violence. Keanu Reeves speaks maybe 80 words. The action sequences are the best in the genre's history: the overhead Dragon's Breath sequence, the Arc de Triomphe car fight, the 40-minute Paris finale. But what elevates Chapter 4 above its predecessors is its moral seriousness. John Wick is not invincible. He is exhausted, and his journey is toward death as release, not victory as triumph. The film treats that journey with respect, and by the end, you feel you have watched something closer to a samurai epic than an action movie. This is genre filmmaking at its absolute peak.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of John Wick: Chapter 4
STRONGLY TRADITIONAL (Margin +25.0 and Above)
#59: Sound of Freedom
Woke Score: 4.2 • Traditional Score: 30.8 • Verdict: TRADITIONAL • Margin: +26.6
Genre: Action | Platform: Streaming
No film of 2023 was more politically charged than Sound of Freedom, and the discourse around it tells you more about the state of American culture than the film itself does. Jim Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a former Homeland Security agent who quits his job to rescue children from sex trafficking in Colombia. The 4.2 woke score is minimal, reflecting only the film's general anti-establishment framing. The 30.8 traditional score reflects a film about a man who risks everything to save children because they are innocent and deserve protection, a message so universally traditional that the controversy around it becomes the story. Mainstream outlets spent more ink attacking the film's audience (QAnon-adjacent, they claimed) than discussing child trafficking, which is the actual subject. Sound of Freedom made $250 million on a $15 million budget through a pay-it-forward distribution model and relentless grassroots word-of-mouth. It is not a perfect film. The craft is workmanlike. The script is occasionally on-the-nose. But the film's existence as a cultural phenomenon, a blockbuster that the entertainment press actively tried to make fail, is a data point Hollywood's leadership is still refusing to process.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Sound of Freedom
#60: The Bear (Season 2)
Woke Score: 4.2 • Traditional Score: 34.9 • Verdict: STRONGLY TRADITIONAL • Margin: +30.7
Genre: Comedy-Drama | Platform: Hulu / FX
The second season of The Bear is the best television of 2023, and it earns that distinction by being the most emotionally traditional show on the air. Carmy and his team are transforming The Beef into The Bear, a fine-dining restaurant, and every episode is about the cost of excellence. The 4.2 woke score reflects the show's diverse cast and its matter-of-fact treatment of identity. The 34.9 traditional score reflects a show about craft, discipline, sacrifice, and the conviction that making something beautiful for other people is worth any amount of pain. The Christmas flashback episode, "Fishes," with Jamie Lee Curtis giving a career-best performance as the Berzatto family matriarch, is as good as television gets. The Richie episode, "Forks," where the loudmouth cousin learns the dignity of service from Olivia Colman's chef, is a masterclass in character writing. The Bear is not interested in politics. It is interested in people, and it treats them with the respect of a craftsman who knows that the work is the point. That is the most traditional thing a show can be.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Bear (Season 2)
#61: Society of the Snow
Woke Score: 1.4 • Traditional Score: 32.0 • Verdict: STRONGLY TRADITIONAL • Margin: +30.6
Genre: Drama / Biography / Adventure | Director: J.A. Bayona
J.A. Bayona's Spanish-language retelling of the 1972 Andes flight disaster is a masterpiece of faith, survival, and the unbreakable human spirit. The film follows the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes, forcing the survivors to endure 72 days of starvation, avalanches, and impossible moral choices, including the decision to eat the bodies of the dead. The 1.4 woke score is one of the lowest in the database. The 32.0 traditional score reflects a film about the power of prayer, the sanctity of life, and the conviction that survival requires not just food and warmth but meaning. The film's treatment of the cannibalism is handled with extraordinary care, framing it as a sacrament rather than an atrocity: the dead gave their bodies so that the living might endure. Society of the Snow is harrowing, beautiful, and deeply Catholic in its understanding of suffering and redemption. It was nominated for two Academy Awards including Best International Feature. It is one of the best films of the decade and one of the most traditional films we have ever scored.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Society of the Snow
The 2023 Scorecard: 61 films scored. 20 lean woke. 23 are roughly balanced. 18 lean traditional. The average margin across all 61 films is +2.9 TRAD, a slight traditional lean that masks a deeper structural asymmetry. The woke films dominated the cultural conversation and the awards circuit. Poor Things (-37.1) won four Oscars. Barbie (-32.1) was the year's highest-grossing film at $1.45 billion, dressed in progressive pink. The traditional films, from Sound of Freedom (+26.6) to Society of the Snow (+30.6), had to fight for oxygen in a media environment that treated their success as a problem to be explained rather than a market signal to be followed.
The most instructive comparison on this list is between Poor Things at #1 (-37.1, 4 Oscars, critical euphoria) and Sound of Freedom at #59 (+26.6, zero Oscars, critical hostility). Both are competently made films about liberation. One argues that sexual freedom is the highest good and that civilization's restraints are a prison. The other argues that protecting innocent children from predators is the highest good and that evil must be confronted directly. The institutions celebrated one and campaigned against the other. The marketplace made both successes. But only one of these films' values is treated as legitimate by the people who decide what gets made, what gets promoted, and what gets honored. The gap between what audiences value and what Hollywood values is now so wide that entire box office results are being treated as anomalies rather than data. They are not anomalies. They are a demand curve that the supply side is refusing to meet.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie, at +13.9 BALANCED TRADITIONAL, earned $1.36 billion with a 1.4 woke score because it respected its audience enough to entertain them without lecturing them. John Wick: Chapter 4, at +23.0 TRADITIONAL with a 0.5 woke score, is the best action film of the decade. Godzilla Minus One, at +19.2 TRADITIONAL LEAN, won an Oscar on a $15 million budget. The Bear (Season 2), at +30.7 STRONGLY TRADITIONAL, is the best television of the year. These are not outliers. They are the pattern. When you make something that respects its audience's intelligence and affirms their values, the audience shows up and brings friends. When you make something that lectures them, they stay home and watch YouTube. The math is simple. The industry's resistance to it is the real mystery.
Every film on this list has a full VirtueVigil review with complete VVWS scoring methodology, category-by-category breakdowns, content warnings for parents, and streaming availability. Click through to read any review in full.