The Post-Mortem Of Hollywood’s Most Expensive Trend

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez must have rehearsed the line she may live to regret.

The New York socialist recently told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl how she remembers the recent past and some of her party’s excesses.

“Woke 1 was crazy,” she said with a sheepish grin, allegedly quoting fellow socialist New York City Councilman Chi Ossé.

Yes, we know. And Hollywood embraced that craziness as much as any institution. So while Ocasio-Cortez hopes to memory hole woke’s political implications, it’s worth revisiting exactly why “woke 1 was crazy” in La La Land.

It crushed the Hollywood brand, hurt the U.S. box office, and coaxed celebrities into betraying their art.

The worst example remains the 2025 “Snow White” debacle. Disney decided to update the classic story, the first animated film in the studio’s history, for a modern audience.

That meant no dwarfs, since casting little people in a major Hollywood movie would be deemed offensive in some quarters. Just ask little person superstar Peter Dinklage.

But other little-person actors, who struggle to find recurring gigs, raged at the decision. They watched that oh-so-rare Hollywood door slam in their faces.

The story’s “dwarfs” would have become full-sized magical humans, at least according to a viral image that Disney unsuccessfully tried to downplay. But the Mouse House quasi-backpedaled, using CGI to create animated dwarves at the last minute.

It wasn’t woke enough to cast someone of Colombian descent in the title role. Rachel Zegler, the film’s leading lady, took it upon herself to mock the source material, angering Disney loyalists in the process.

The finished film downplayed the story’s romantic angle because female empowerment, a woke staple, doesn’t require a man for “Happy ever after.”

The result? “Snow White” lost Disney a reported $170 million after it belly-flopped in theaters.

The Black Lives Matter movement spiked in 2020 following George Floyd’s death. Hollywood studios and stars bent over backward to accommodate the far-Left cause, racing to social media to flex their woke platitudes.

That partially explains a cringe-worthy video where famous faces like Aaron Paul, Kristen Bell, Debra Messing and other white actors “take responsibility” for systemic racism.

They apologized for racial stereotypes, racially-charged jokes and so-called police brutality, even if the facts didn’t line up with their pleas.

“Black people are being slaughtered in the streets,” Julianne Moore said, ignoring how that’s sadly true as black-on-black crime, often in Democrat-run cities like Chicago, and is not a racially-charged development in the vast majority of America.

That BLM fever dream coaxed some artists to censor themselves. Tina Fey of “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock” fame once told an interviewer she’s against explaining jokes. That attitude flipped post-Floyd.

Fey instructed streaming platforms to censor four “30 Rock” episodes that had blackface-like moments.

Desus & Mero, two minority comedians who briefly enjoyed a successful Showtime pairing, admitted they self-censored for fear of a woke backlash.

Woke also infected beloved franchises like “Star Wars,” “Doctor Who” and “Star Trek.” The first saga suffered the most, shedding decades of goodwill by incorporating woke elements in “The Last Jedi,” “The Acolyte” (the “gayest” title in the saga) and “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”

“Jedi” had female commanders dressing down male heroes like Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and an income inequality subplot, while “The Acolyte” featured lesbian space witches as central to the story. “Solo” showcased a woke droid who prattled on about robot rights.

The fallout? “The Acolyte” earned a swift cancellation, and the most recent “Star Wars” film, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” became the lowest grossing film in the franchise.

Original films also sank thanks to extreme woke content. Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, 2019’s “Booksmart,” might go in a time capsule for the most overtly woke comedy. The film featured two high school seniors who dressed like Fidel Castro junkies and pushed endless female empowerment. The box office? A tepid $22 million stateside.

Hollywood tried to reboot the “Charlie’s Angels” IP, but it did it during peak-woke mania. Out went bikini-clad crime fighters, in went social justice warriors marching against The Patriarchy.

“I think women can do anything,” star Kristen Stewart says in the film’s opening sequence.  “I want all my options available so I can decide for myself.”

The revived franchise stalled with a paltry $17 million U.S. total.

Woke culture proved so suffocating that even the industry’s biggest stars couldn’t escape it. Lovable Kevin Hart, one of the few bankable movie stars at the time, got picked to host the 2019 Academy Awards telecast. That is, until someone dug up a nearly decade-old comedy routine where he protested his child possibly being gay.

The Outrage Mob did its social media thing, and Hart sheepishly quit the assignment before the Academy could fire him. The process took 48 hours.

“The Tonight Show’s” Jimmy Fallon endured a woke struggle session on his own program in 2020. A 20-year-old clip “resurfaced” where Fallon donned black makeup to imitate Chris Rock. He begged for forgiveness on-air.

Rock later defended Fallon, but only after the humiliating “hostage”-style apology. He likely feared the blowback if he spoke out earlier.

No star was too big to be taken down by the woke mob. Consider A-lister Scarlett Johansson, who briefly signed on to play a trans character in “Rub and Tug.” News of the gig enraged the woke Left, who demanded the role go to an actual trans actor.

Johansson apologized and quit the gig. “Rub and Tug” never got made. Halle Berry similarly signed on for a trans role but swiftly quit under similar pressure.

Hollywood has learned some lessons from the Peak Woke era. Movies have less overt progressive messaging than before. Comedians have more room to say what they want, when they want.

Woke remains in the industry’s DNA. Should Ocasio-Cortez’s party come out on top in 2028, the movement might get a Hollywood sequel.

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Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. He’s also the host of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto.