The 2020s did not invent woke cinema. Every decade produces films that reflect its political anxieties and progressive ambitions. But the 2020s industrialized the process. What was once subtext became text. What was text became the marketing campaign. And what was once a handful of films per year became a structural feature of how studios greenlight, cast, write, and distribute their most expensive projects.
This list covers the entire decade so far -- 2020 through mid-2026 -- and draws from a database of over 700 reviews. The 25 films ranked here are not the only woke films of the decade. They are the most ideologically aggressive, the most instructive, and the most revealing about where the industry has been and where it is going. Every score is backed by the VirtueVigil dual-metric methodology: woke content scored on severity, authenticity, and centrality; traditional content scored on the same axes; and a margin that measures the gap between them.
The decade's arc is visible in the rankings. Early-2020s entries like Strange World (2022) and Glass Onion (2022) operated with a certain optimism about audience tolerance. By 2024 and 2025, films like The Substance, Heretic, and Zootopia 2 had abandoned subtlety entirely. The median woke score on this list is 35.4. The median traditional score is 10.4. That ratio -- roughly 3.5 to 1 -- is the decade's ideological signature.
Ranked from most woke to least woke.
STRONGLY WOKE (Margin 20.3 and Above)
#1: Zootopia 2 (2025)
Woke Score: 91.4 • Traditional Score: 53.0 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 38.4
Genre: Animated / Family | Platform: Theatrical | Distributor: Disney
A Disney animated sequel that abandons all pretense. The original Zootopia's progressive allegory was subtext. The sequel makes it text, then boldfaces it, then shouts it through a megaphone. The woke score of 91.4 is not just the highest in the database -- it redefines the ceiling for what an animated family feature can deliver in ideological content. Parents who remember the first film's gentle "anyone can be anything" messaging should understand: the sequel is a different animal entirely.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Zootopia 2
#2: Barbie (2023)
Woke Score: 48.4 • Traditional Score: 16.3 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 32.1
Genre: Comedy / Fantasy | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Greta Gerwig | Distributor: Warner Bros. | Rating: PG-13
Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera
Nobody took their kids to a $1.44 billion feminist manifesto, but that is what they got. Greta Gerwig's Barbie wrapped a comprehensive takedown of patriarchy inside pink packaging and branded partnerships, then collected eight Oscar nominations for the effort. The film's genius -- and its danger for parents who did not read the reviews first -- is that the politics and the entertainment are the same product. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are delightful. The film's argument about American society is the film.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Barbie
#3: Poor Things (2023)
Woke Score: 46.5 • Traditional Score: 9.4 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 37.1
Genre: Black Comedy / Fantasy | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Yorgos Lanthimos | Distributor: Searchlight Pictures | Rating: R
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe
Four Oscars for a film about female liberation told through sexual awakening and ideological rejection of Victorian society. Yorgos Lanthimos deploys his trademark grotesquerie in service of a message that Hollywood found irresistible: a woman discovering that all social constraints are oppression, and the only authentic self is the one liberated from every norm. Emma Stone's performance is fearless and technically astonishing. The politics are inseparable from every frame of it.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Poor Things
#4: Disclosure Day (2026)
Woke Score: 43.1 • Traditional Score: 18.3 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 24.8
Genre: Science Fiction / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Steven Spielberg | Distributor: Universal Pictures | Rating: PG-13
Cast: Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo
Steven Spielberg's return to alien-contact sci-fi frames extraterrestrial encounter through an institutional transparency narrative: the government lies, truth must come out, the people deserve disclosure. Emily Blunt anchors with genuine gravity as a scientist caught between state secrecy and public obligation. At 43.1 woke and 18.3 traditional, the gap is enormous -- the wokeness is embedded in the film's core argument about institutional trust rather than surface-level messaging. The craft is undeniable, as expected from Spielberg. The politics are equally undeniable.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Disclosure Day
#5: Conclave (2024)
Woke Score: 42.6 • Traditional Score: 3.85 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 38.8
Genre: Thriller / Drama | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Edward Berger | Distributor: Focus Features | Rating: PG
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini
The most dangerous kind of progressive film: one that is genuinely excellent. Edward Berger's papal election thriller deploys Ralph Fiennes as a cardinal fighting the Catholic Church's conservative instincts from within. Visually sumptuous, masterfully acted, ideologically surgical. The traditional score of just 3.85 reflects how little countervailing content survives Berger's framing -- the Church's rituals and beauty are present but always in service of a progressive argument about what the institution should become.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Conclave
#6: Heretic (2024)
Woke Score: 41.2 • Traditional Score: 13.7 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 27.5
Genre: Horror / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods | Distributor: A24 | Rating: R
Cast: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East
Hugh Grant's most charming and murderous performance, deployed in service of a theological assault on Christianity dressed as a horror film. Not subtext. Not metaphor. An explicit, scene-by-scene dismantling of monotheistic faith delivered through genre pleasures that make the argument entertaining enough to swallow. A24 distributed it. Audiences who expected a standard horror film got a seminary debate with a body count. The traditional score of 13.7 is almost entirely from the two Mormon missionaries who serve as protagonists -- genuine faith placed in the crosshairs of a film designed to test it to destruction.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Heretic
#7: The Substance (2024)
Woke Score: 37.3 • Traditional Score: 13.2 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 24.1
Genre: Body Horror / Satire | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Coralie Fargeat | Distributor: MUBI | Rating: R
Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid
Hollywood eats its own, and Coralie Fargeat's body-horror satire makes that literal. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley star in a film about aging, female beauty standards, and the industry's appetite for discarding women -- all delivered through Cronenberg-level practical effects that earned the film Best Screenplay at Cannes. The body horror is not gratuitous; it is the argument. Every prosthetic and every explosion of viscera maps to a thesis about what society does to women. Moore's performance is the best of her career.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Substance
#8: The Creator (2023)
Woke Score: 35.88 • Traditional Score: 4.9 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 31.0
Genre: Science Fiction | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Gareth Edwards | Distributor: 20th Century Studios | Rating: PG-13
Cast: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Allison Janney
A genuinely beautiful film with genuinely bad politics. Gareth Edwards' sci-fi epic frames America as the villain in a war against AI refugees in "New Asia," depicted as spiritual and Buddhist-coded. Visually stunning -- some of the best effects work of the decade on a fraction of a blockbuster budget. Structurally, it is a political polemic that positions Western military power as the enemy and AI personhood as the next civil rights frontier. The traditional score of just 4.9 reflects how little balance the film offers.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Creator
#9: Anora (2024)
Woke Score: 35.8 • Traditional Score: 9.9 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 25.9
Genre: Comedy / Drama | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Sean Baker | Distributor: Neon | Rating: R
Cast: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov
Best Picture winner at the 97th Academy Awards. Sean Baker's film about a sex worker who marries a Russian oligarch's son is a class-warfare romance that Hollywood rewarded with its highest honor. The protagonist's profession is neither incidental nor stigmatized -- it is celebrated as authentic labor and a legitimate path to self-determination. Mikey Madison's performance is raw and compelling. The film's politics are the premise, and the Academy's embrace of that premise tells you as much about the industry as the film itself.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Anora
#10: Saltburn (2023)
Woke Score: 35.4 • Traditional Score: 3.4 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 32.0
Genre: Psychological Thriller | Platform: Theatrical / Prime Video | Director: Emerald Fennell | Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios | Rating: R
Cast: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant
A manifesto wrapped in designer lighting. Emerald Fennell's follow-up to Promising Young Woman deploys gothic aesthetic and Oxford privilege to deliver a comprehensive indictment of British aristocracy, heteronormativity, and inherited wealth. The bathtub scene got the headlines. The politics were the point. Barry Keoghan's Oliver is both protagonist and parasite, and the film's sympathy for his class-war motivations makes the ideological project explicit. At a traditional score of just 3.4, there is virtually no countervailing content.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Saltburn
#11: The Bride! (2026)
Woke Score: 34.8 • Traditional Score: 10.4 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 24.4
Genre: Gothic Romance / Horror | Platform: Theatrical (IMAX) | Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal | Distributor: Warner Bros. | Rating: R
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening
Maggie Gyllenhaal reimagines the Bride of Frankenstein as a feminist gothic romance set in 1936 Chicago. Christian Bale, Jessie Buckley, and Penelope Cruz star in a film that tells you what it is from the first frame and does not care if you approve. The Universal monster is repurposed as a vehicle for exploring female autonomy, bodily agency, and the violence inherent in the male gaze. At 34.8 woke and 10.4 traditional, this is ideological filmmaking executed at a high level of craft -- the production design is sumptuous, the performances are committed, and the argument never takes a rest.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Bride!
#12: The Moment (2026)
Woke Score: 32.0 • Traditional Score: 5.0 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 27.0
Genre: Comedy / Mockumentary | Platform: Theatrical | Distributor: A24
Cast: Charli XCX
A $4 million A24 mockumentary starring, produced, and co-written by Charli XCX as a fictional version of herself. The "Brat Summer" phenomenon of 2024 -- lime green aesthetic, feminist anti-establishment messaging, explicit sexual identity celebration -- is not the backdrop. It is the thesis. A feature-length victory lap for progressive pop culture with a traditional score of just 5.0, reflecting how thoroughly it abandons any pretense of ideological balance. At a margin of 27.0, it is one of the most ideologically aggressive films of the decade.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Moment
#13: Emilia Pérez (2024)
Woke Score: 30.4 • Traditional Score: 5.0 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 25.4
Genre: Musical / Crime / Drama | Platform: Theatrical / Netflix | Director: Jacques Audiard | Distributor: Netflix | Rating: R
Cast: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez
The transgender cartel musical that earned 13 Oscar nominations -- the most for any non-English-language film in Academy history. Jacques Audiard's film briefly united progressive and conservative critics against it while becoming an artifact of the 2020s awards ecosystem that will be studied for decades. A cartel boss transitions to live as a woman, then attempts to atone for past crimes by founding a nonprofit for victims of violence. That sentence describes a film that exists, won major awards, and makes perfect sense within the 2020s prestige pipeline.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Emilia Pérez
#14: Hamlet (2026)
Woke Score: 30.24 • Traditional Score: 8.96 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 21.3
Genre: Drama / Tragedy | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Aneil Karia | Rating: R
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Art Malik, Sheeba Chaddha, Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn
A contemporary reimagining of Shakespeare's tragedy that relocates the play's political and familial dynamics into a modern progressive framework. Riz Ahmed's Hamlet is not your grandfather's Danish prince -- the melancholy is reframed through the experience of a man caught between ancestral obligation and personal identity in a deliberately multicultural Elsinore. At 30.24 woke to 8.96 traditional, the progressive reframing is comprehensive. This is not Shakespeare with diverse casting layered on top but Shakespeare reinterpreted through an identitarian lens from the ground up.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Hamlet
#15: Bugonia (2025)
Woke Score: 28.94 • Traditional Score: 8.48 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 20.5
Genre: Black Comedy / Thriller | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Yorgos Lanthimos | Distributor: Searchlight Pictures | Rating: R
Cast: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone
Yorgos Lanthimos reunites with Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone for a black comedy thriller that wraps an anti-capitalist, environmentalist manifesto inside an alien-conspiracy kidnapping plot. Skillfully made, darkly funny, ultimately nihilistic. Plemons plays a CEO abducted by conspiracy theorists who believe he is an alien -- the setup allows Lanthimos to prosecute corporate America while the audience laughs. The comedy works. The politics are the entire engine.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Bugonia
#16: Immaculate (2024)
Woke Score: 25.4 • Traditional Score: 3.5 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 21.9
Genre: Horror | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Michael Mohan | Distributor: Neon | Rating: R
Cast: Sydney Sweeney
Sydney Sweeney spent years developing this vehicle, and the film that emerged is Rosemary's Baby filtered through contemporary reproductive rights discourse, shot in Italy and dressed in Catholic iconography. A horror film where the Church is the monster and a woman's bodily autonomy is the only sacred thing. The traditional score of 3.5 reflects how little of Catholic imagery is deployed respectfully -- it is all set dressing for the monster to wear. Sweeney's commitment to the project and performance is undeniable.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Immaculate
#17: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
Woke Score: 24.3 • Traditional Score: 4.0 • Verdict: STRONGLY WOKE • Margin: 20.3
Genre: Mystery / Comedy | Platform: Netflix | Director: Rian Johnson | Distributor: Netflix | Rating: PG-13
Cast: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista
Rian Johnson constructs an excellent mechanical puzzle and fills it with the most explicitly progressive cast of characters in the franchise. Edward Norton's tech-billionaire villain is a specific kind of contemporary target -- the Elon Musk surrogate whose wealth and influence have made him untouchable by any institution except the one Johnson's script assembles. The film's attitude toward wealth, influence, and who deserves a voice is unambiguous. The traditional score of 4.0 reflects how completely the film's sympathies align with a progressive worldview. The mystery mechanics are first-rate. The politics are the chassis they ride on.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
WOKE (Margin 11.0 to 17.9)
#18: MaXXXine (2024)
Woke Score: 31.5 • Traditional Score: 13.6 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: 17.9
Genre: Horror | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Ti West | Distributor: A24 | Rating: R
Cast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin Bacon
Ti West concludes his X trilogy with Mia Goth's Maxine Minx arriving in 1985 Los Angeles, where the Night Stalker prowls and the Moral Majority screams from every TV. A former porn star claws toward mainstream stardom while the film frames the conservative 80s as the real horror. The period setting allows West to position the religious right and the Hollywood casting couch as equivalent predators. Mia Goth's performance is feral and committed. The traditional score of 13.6 reflects the film's genuine engagement with its period setting, but the ideological framing is unmistakable.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of MaXXXine
#19: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)
Woke Score: 30.7 • Traditional Score: 18.8 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: 11.9
Genre: Superhero / Action | Platform: Theatrical | Director: James Wan | Distributor: Warner Bros. | Rating: PG-13
Cast: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
The DCEU died drowning in its own ambition. A $215 million climate change PSA that forgot to be a good movie first. Jason Momoa's charisma is intact, but the film cannot stop lecturing about environmental stewardship long enough to entertain. The traditional score of 18.8 reflects the superhero genre's inherent traditional elements -- heroism, sacrifice, loyalty -- but the climate messaging is relentless and the film's box office underperformance suggests audiences noticed.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
#20: Wicked (2024)
Woke Score: 28.42 • Traditional Score: 17.44 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: 11.0
Genre: Musical / Fantasy | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Jon M. Chu | Distributor: Universal Pictures | Rating: PG
Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum
Universal sold this as the feel-good family musical of 2024. What audiences got was a film about institutional corruption, manufactured enemies, and the radicalization of a woman the system labeled "wicked." Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are vocally exceptional. The messaging about systemic injustice is baked into the foundation -- it was in the Broadway show, but the film amplifies it with the full resources of a blockbuster production. The traditional score of 17.44 reflects the musical's genuine heart, its celebration of friendship, and the enduring appeal of its spectacle. But the politics are not decorative. They are the narrative engine.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Wicked
#21: Strange World (2022)
Woke Score: 27.5 • Traditional Score: 12.32 • Verdict: WOKE • Margin: 15.2
Genre: Animated / Adventure | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Don Hall | Distributor: Disney | Rating: PG
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union
The movie where Disney stopped pretending and went full ideological accelerator. A $180 million animated film that frames its energy source as a parasitic infection killing a giant turtle-like ecosystem. Disney's first openly gay teen protagonist in animation appears in the same film that teaches children their civilization is destroying the planet. The film lost an estimated $197 million at the box office. The audience rejection was not subtle, and the studio learned a lesson it has since applied inconsistently. Strange World is the canary in the coal mine -- the point at which ideological content became a commercial liability even for the most powerful animation studio on earth.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Strange World
WOKE LEAN (Margin 3.9 to 9.0)
#22: Wuthering Heights (2026)
Woke Score: 35.0 • Traditional Score: 26.0 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: 9.0
Genre: Gothic Romance / Drama | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Emerald Fennell | Distributor: Focus Features | Rating: R
Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver
Emerald Fennell's adaptation of the Brontë classic with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi reimagines Heathcliff's outsider status through a contemporary lens while retaining the source material's Gothic romanticism. At 35 woke to 26 traditional, the margin of just 9.0 reflects the genuine tug-of-war within the film: Brontë's traditional architecture (all-consuming love, moral consequences, class as structural reality) pushes against Fennell's progressive instincts (sexuality as liberation, marriage as cage, transgression as artistic statement). The 26 traditional score is the highest on this entire list. The question for viewers is whether the traditional elements survive the director's determination to provoke.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Wuthering Heights
#23: Forbidden Fruits (2026)
Woke Score: 27.8 • Traditional Score: 21.2 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: 6.6
Genre: Comedy Horror | Platform: Theatrical / Shudder | Director: Meredith Alloway
A stylized look at mall culture and the commodification of desire. Employees at a store called Free Eden gather after hours in a candlelit room for rituals that may or may not be actual witchcraft. The film tracks their aesthetic rebellion with genuine style, carrying progressive subtext about consumer culture and performative feminism without becoming polemical. At 27.8 woke to 21.2 traditional, the margin of just 6.6 makes Forbidden Fruits one of the most balanced entries on the list. Traditional elements -- genuine friendship, moral consequences, and a climax that takes witchcraft seriously as a threat -- provide real counterweight.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Forbidden Fruits
#24: Oppenheimer (2023)
Woke Score: 29.5 • Traditional Score: 25.6 • Verdict: WOKE LEAN • Margin: 3.9
Genre: Biographical Thriller | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Christopher Nolan | Distributor: Universal Pictures | Rating: R
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh
Christopher Nolan's Best Picture winner earned its woke score not through overt messaging but through its relentless focus on the moral catastrophe of American power. Nolan is too skilled a filmmaker to lecture, but the cumulative weight of the destruction sequences and the protagonist's guilt makes the case that the bomb was not just a weapon but an original sin. At 29.5 woke to 25.6 traditional, Oppenheimer is one of the most ideologically balanced films on this list. The traditional elements are substantial: patriotism, scientific achievement, the necessity of ending a war that was killing civilians by the hundreds of thousands. Nolan gives both sides their due, which is why the margin is only 3.9. But the film's emotional gravity tilts progressive -- the horror of what was built overwhelms the justification for building it.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Oppenheimer
MIXED (Margin Below 3.0)
#25: Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
Woke Score: 24.5 • Traditional Score: 22.13 • Verdict: MIXED • Margin: 2.4
Genre: Musical / Psychological Drama | Platform: Theatrical | Director: Todd Phillips | Distributor: Warner Bros. | Rating: R
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga
A $200 million act of cinematic self-immolation. Todd Phillips produced a sequel that exists primarily to punish its predecessor's audience for caring about Arthur Fleck. The woke score reflects the film's deconstruction of its own antihero -- the narrative systematically strips away everything that made the first Joker compelling -- while the traditional content from the musical sequences keeps it balanced near the center. At 24.5 woke to 22.13 traditional, Joker: Folie à Deux is the only MIXED verdict on this list. The narrow 2.4 margin reflects a film pulling simultaneously in opposite directions, resulting in something closer to ideological chaos than ideological messaging.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Joker: Folie à Deux
The Takeaway
Seventeen STRONGLY WOKE films, four WOKE, three WOKE LEAN, and one MIXED. That distribution is not a statistical fluke. It is a snapshot of a decade in which the center of American prestige cinema shifted decisively toward progressive messaging as a production-level priority, not an accidental byproduct of storytelling.
The pattern across years is instructive. 2022's entries (Strange World, Glass Onion) still operated with a certain optimism about audience tolerance for ideological content in popular packaging. By 2023 and 2024, the gloves came off: Barbie, Poor Things, The Substance, Saltburn, Anora, Heretic, Conclave, Emilia Pérez -- these films do not smuggle their politics. They build the marquee around them. And 2025-2026 (Zootopia 2, Bugonia, The Bride!, The Moment, Hamlet) suggests the acceleration continues. The ceiling for how much ideology a prestige film can contain keeps rising.
The Disney entries deserve particular attention. Zootopia 2 sits at #1 with a woke score of 91.4 -- nearly double Barbie's 48.4 at #2. Strange World appears at #21 with a woke score of 27.5 and a $197 million loss. These two data points bracket Disney's 2020s: one film that pushed ideology so hard it redefined the ceiling, and another that pushed hard enough to break the business model. The studio has learned different lessons from each.
The auteurs are heavily represented. Yorgos Lanthimos appears twice (Poor Things, Bugonia). Emerald Fennell appears twice (Saltburn, Wuthering Heights). Greta Gerwig (Barbie), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Rian Johnson (Glass Onion), Sean Baker (Anora), and Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Bride!) all contribute entries. This is not a fringe phenomenon driven by activist directors on the margins. This is the center of American and international prestige cinema, and the center is ideologically aligned.
A24 is the distributor most represented on this list, with Heretic, MaXXXine, and The Moment among its entries. Neon distributed Anora and Immaculate. Focus Features released Conclave and Wuthering Heights. The prestige distribution pipeline is functionally uniform -- conservative audiences seeking refuge from progressive messaging in independent and arthouse cinema will not find it in the 2020s.
What separates the bottom of this list from the top is not the absence of progressive ideas but the presence of countervailing ones. Oppenheimer carries a 25.6 traditional score alongside its 29.5 woke score. Wuthering Heights carries a 26.0 traditional score. Forbidden Fruits earns 21.2 in traditional content. The films at the top -- Zootopia 2, Poor Things, Saltburn, The Creator -- offer no such counterweight. They are arguments first and entertainment second, however well-made the entertainment is.
The decade is not over. With two and a half years remaining, the trajectory suggests we will see more Zootopia 2s -- films whose ideological ambitions match or exceed their craft ambitions -- and fewer Oppenheimers, where the two pull against each other in productive tension. The industry has not yet processed what the box office data is telling it. The question for the back half of the 2020s is whether it ever will.