In recent years, Disney has faced criticism for being “woke” and allegedly harming the MCU and Star Wars franchises with this approach. Many fans have noticed an increase in projects featuring female leads, gender-swapped, or race-swapped characters. Some fans feel this move disrespects the comic book legacy, while others embrace the change.

Last year, ‘The Marvels’ became the lowest-grossing MCU movie, failing to reach $100 million domestically. Similarly, ‘Madame Web’ also didn’t do well (unrelated to Disney, also having a female lead.

Then there’s the Star Wars Universe and the “The Force is Female” slogan. While some of the criticism towards these projects is undoubtedly hateful, the quality of writing has also declined significantly. Stories have become watered down, focusing more on the character’s gender rather than their depth. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Yesterday, the casting for Silver Surfer was announced, revealing a female version played by Julia Garner. The majority of comments were negative, with many accusing Disney of being “woke” once again.

The term “woke” has been thrown around so much that Bob Iger felt compelled to address it. He recently claimed that Disney isn’t pushing any particular agenda, a statement that many find hard to believe. Now, Iger argues that those using the term “woke” don’t even understand its meaning.

the term woke is thrown around rather liberally, no pun intended in that regard. I think a lot of people don’t even understand really what it means

Iger did not deny the validity of the claims that Disney is “woke.”

I think the noise is sort of quieted down. I’ve been preaching this for a long time at the company before I left and since I came back then our number one goal is to entertain. The bottom line is that infusing messaging as a sort of a number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we’re up to. They need to be entertaining, and where the Disney company can have a positive impact on the world whether it’s you know, fostering acceptance and understanding of people of all different types, great.

Iger also mentioned that their messages aim to reach a diverse audience, which is why they might come across as “woke” at times.

But generally speaking, we need to be an entertainment first company … And understanding that look, we’re trying to reach a very, very diverse audience. And on one hand in order to do that, what you do, the stories you tell, have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach, but that audience because they are so diverse, really, first and foremost, they want to be entertained, and sometimes they can’t be turned off by certain things. And we just have to be more sensitive to the interest of a broad audience. It’s not easy, you know, so that he can’t please everybody all the time, right?

I don’t believe that prioritizing “reaching a diverse audience” should mean neglecting the preferences of the majority of your audience, but that’s just my personal view. Box office results speak for themselves: many people aren’t satisfied with Disney’s current offerings, whether it’s Star Wars, the MCU, or their animated projects. In fact, 2023 marked the first year in recent memory where Disney didn’t have a billion-dollar project at the box office.

All their projects seemed to struggle, indicating that trying to cater to everyone’s tastes might not be appealing to anyone. As I’ve mentioned earlier, this approach can result in diluted storytelling. Gender, race, or any other characteristic isn’t inherently interesting; it’s character development that truly matters, and unfortunately, we’re seeing less of that.