Paramount+ is the most ideologically divided major streaming platform in America. On one end, you have Yellowstone, the highest-rated cable drama of the past decade, a show built entirely on land, loyalty, and the kind of masculinity Hollywood has spent fifteen years trying to write out of existence. On the other end, you have Smurfs, a 2025 animated film that managed to score woke-leaning on our system. One platform. Two totally different value systems.
That tension is not an accident. Paramount is a company navigating a cultural split in real time. Its Paramount Network and Paramount+ originals, led by the Taylor Sheridan universe, serve an audience that skews conservative, rural, and deeply suspicious of Hollywood's progressive drift. Its theatrical releases, handled by Paramount Pictures, tell a different story. And its classic library, which includes Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, and Braveheart, is some of the most traditionally scored content in our entire database.
We pulled every Paramount title currently reviewed by VirtueVigil and ran the numbers. The ranking below is sorted by net score: Traditional Score minus Woke Score. A positive number means the film leans traditional. A negative number means it leans woke. The further from zero in either direction, the more pronounced the lean. Eighteen titles made the cut. Here they are, from most traditional to most woke.
All scores were generated using the VirtueVigil Woke Score system. Full reviews with trope-by-trope breakdowns, creative team profiles, and parental guidance are available for each title by following the links below.
#1 — Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The highest-scoring traditional film in our Paramount database, and it is not close. Steven Spielberg's masterwork about the Normandy invasion earns its score through sustained, unflinching reverence for sacrifice, duty, and the cost of freedom. Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) is defined by his obligation to the men under his command, not by any personal agenda. The mission to save one man is framed as the logical extension of what that man's brothers already gave. There is no political subtext here. The only agenda is honoring the men who died.
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#2 — Transformers One (2024)
The animated Transformers origin story that almost nobody saw, and that is a genuine shame. The prequel to the live-action franchise follows Orion Pax and D-16 before they became Optimus Prime and Megatron, tracing how two friends with shared ideals end up on opposite sides of a war. The themes of brotherhood, betrayal, and the corrupting power of resentment are handled with surprising seriousness for a franchise film. The virtually nonexistent woke score reflects a movie that had one job (tell an origin story with emotional weight) and did it without political editorializing.
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#3 — Braveheart (1995)
Mel Gibson's Oscar-winning epic about William Wallace is one of the most unapologetically traditional blockbusters of the 1990s. Freedom, sacrifice, loyalty to people and land, and the willingness to die rather than submit to tyranny. Wallace is not fighting for an ideology. He is fighting for his wife, his people, and the right to exist on his own terms. The film's anti-English sentiment prevents a perfect traditional score, but its core values of male courage and devotion are unassailable. The closing battle cry still lands thirty years later.
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#4 — Tulsa King (2022)
Sylvester Stallone's best work in decades. Dwight Manfredi is a New York mob boss exiled to Tulsa after 25 years in prison, and the show uses his old-school code of loyalty, mentorship, and unbreakable word as a contrast to a culture that has forgotten those values. The woke elements, a diversity-cast supporting character and a casual attitude toward marijuana, are present but peripheral. What drives the show is a man with a value system that simply works, everywhere he takes it, including places that were not expecting it.
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#5 — Yellowstone (2018)
The Godfather in Montana, and the most traditionally minded prestige drama of its generation. The Dutton family's fight to preserve their land, their legacy, and their way of life is the show's engine, not its backdrop. John Dutton is not a hero in the conventional sense. He is a patriarch making hard choices to preserve something worth preserving. The woke score of 8.2 reflects the Native American grievance narrative and Beth's sterilization arc, both of which are handled with more moral complexity than most conservative critics acknowledge. The traditional bones are stronger than the woke tissue around them.
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#6 — Landman (2024)
Taylor Sheridan's oil-country drama starring Billy Bob Thornton lands firmly in the traditional column for the same reasons Yellowstone does: real work, real consequences, and a value system that does not apologize for itself. The Texas oilfield setting is treated with genuine respect for the people who work it, not as a backdrop for environmental lectures. Thornton plays a company man navigating competing interests with the same pragmatic code that defines every Sheridan protagonist. The woke score of 5.6 is minor and reflects some contemporary dialogue choices rather than ideological content.
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#7 — Forrest Gump (1994)
Tom Hanks's Oscar-winning performance anchors one of American cinema's purest arguments for decency, loyalty, and unconditional love. Critics at the time found Forrest naively conservative. They were not wrong. The film is a sustained argument that simple virtues, keeping your word, loving your people, showing up when it matters, carry a person through thirty years of American chaos better than any ideology. The fact that Forrest stumbles into historical events without understanding them is not a critique of those events. It is a celebration of the man navigating them by instinct and heart.
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#8 — Smile (2022)
The supernatural thriller that turned trauma into a contagious curse earns its traditional score through its moral architecture, not its surface aesthetics. Evil is real in this film. You cannot outrun your past. Confronting hard truths requires genuine courage, not therapy buzzwords and institutional support. The mental health framing and female protagonist are progressive surface elements layered over a fundamentally traditional horror framework: face the monster or be consumed by it. One of the better recent examples of horror earning its traditional lean through story logic rather than coincidence.
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#9 — 1923 Season 2 (2026)
The Yellowstone prequel starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as the patriarch and matriarch of the Dutton ranch in the 1920s continues the franchise's commitment to land, legacy, and the sacrifices required to preserve both. Season 2 deepens the world Sheridan built without expanding its ideological footprint. A lean traditional score that reflects a show focused on storytelling rather than messaging. Ford and Mirren bring genuine weight to every scene they share.
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#10 — September 5 (2024)
Tim Fehlbaum's docudrama about the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, told from the perspective of the ABC Sports broadcast team who covered it live, earns its traditional lean through its unflinching treatment of the attack, its portrayal of journalistic responsibility, and its refusal to moralize beyond the facts. The film asks hard questions about media ethics without answering them in a predetermined direction. A serious, adult film that respects its audience's ability to draw their own conclusions.
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#11 — Novocaine (2025)
Jack Quaid plays a man who cannot feel physical pain, which turns out to be useful when his girlfriend is kidnapped and he has to become a one-man rescue operation. The premise is absurd in the best way, and the film leans into it without apology. The traditional lean comes from a story built around male protectiveness, determination, and the willingness to absorb punishment to save someone you love. Light on ideology, heavy on entertaining genre mechanics. A clean action-comedy that does not overstay its welcome.
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#12 — IF: Imaginary Friends (2024)
John Krasinski's family film about a girl who can see abandoned imaginary friends is a genuinely warm story about grief, the importance of childhood wonder, and the connections between generations. The traditional lean reflects its family-positive framing and its emotional core: a father-daughter relationship tested by illness, with imagination as the bridge between them. The acceptance-and-inclusion messaging is present but secondary to the story's heart. A safe family pick with real emotional craft.
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#13 — Bob Marley: One Love (2024)
The Bob Marley biopic earns its traditional lean through its treatment of faith, family, and community, all central pillars of Marley's actual worldview and his music. The film frames his Rastafarian spirituality as genuine conviction rather than cultural aesthetic, and his family relationships as the grounding force behind his public work. The woke score of 11 reflects political messaging around poverty and racial injustice that was also genuinely part of Marley's message. A biographical film that treats its subject's actual values with respect.
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#14 — TMNT: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
A visually stunning reboot with a warm father-son heart that earns its traditional lean through Splinter's protective instincts and the brothers' genuine family bond. The Superfly grievance arc and acceptance messaging are present and real, but they do not overwhelm the film's fundamental warmth. The score reflects a movie that had strong traditional elements in its family relationships while also carrying some contemporary social framing in its villain arc. One of the better animated films of 2023, whatever its politics.
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#15 — The Naked Gun (2025)
Liam Neeson inherits the badge in a legacy sequel that commits fully to the original's dumb-on-purpose comedy. Pamela Anderson steals every scene she is in. The film scores near-neutral because apolitical slapstick comedy genuinely does not contain much ideological content in either direction. The traditional lean is modest and reflects some genre conventions around duty and law enforcement. Its real value is as a clean, genuinely funny comedy. The funniest legacy sequel Hollywood has produced in years.
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#16 — The Running Man (2025)
The remake of the 1987 Schwarzenegger classic lands perfectly neutral, and that is almost a political statement of its own. The source material is inherently a critique of entertainment-as-corporate-control, which reads as neither specifically left nor right in 2025. Edgar Wright's version leans on craft and genre mechanics rather than ideology, and the result is a film that traditional and progressive viewers can both watch without feeling targeted. Neutrality at this exact moment in culture is its own kind of achievement.
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#17 — Yellowjackets (2025)
The Showtime/Paramount+ survival thriller about a girls' soccer team stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash sits just barely in woke-lean territory. The show has genuine tension and some exceptional performances, but its framing of female dynamics, its treatment of sexuality, and some of its ideological undercurrents push the needle leftward. Not aggressively woke by any standard, but not neutral either. Conservative viewers who enjoyed earlier seasons for the survival mechanics should be aware the later seasons increase the social commentary.
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#18 — Smurfs (2025)
The CGI reboot of the classic franchise is the only clearly woke-leaning title in Paramount's library among reviewed titles. A woke score of 10 against a trad score of 6 is not catastrophic, but it is enough to note for conservative families. The film's ideological content is light compared to, say, a Pixar release, but it reflects the same instinct to layer contemporary social messaging into children's entertainment. The Smurfs are a 1950s Belgian comic property. They did not need updating. The update is the problem.
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The Verdict: Paramount+'s Split Personality
Paramount is running two businesses simultaneously, and the numbers reflect it. The Taylor Sheridan universe (Yellowstone, Tulsa King, 1923, Landman) is the most consistently traditional block of prestige television being produced in America right now. Add the classic library (Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, Forrest Gump) and you have a catalog that conservative viewers can navigate with confidence. The theatrical side tells a different story, trending neutral to woke lean in recent releases.
For subscribers: Paramount+ is worth the price for the Sheridan content alone. Know what you are getting with the theatrical releases. The classics are safe. The animated titles require more caution than they used to. And Yellowstone, at +15.2 net traditional, remains one of the most pro-family, pro-land, pro-masculine shows on any streaming service.
Browse all Paramount titles and every other streamer in our full review database at VirtueVigil.com/reviews. Our scoring system covers 443 films and shows with full trope breakdowns, creative team profiles, and parental guidance for every entry.