In the worlds of news and social media, there has been a bifurcation in audience between the two major cultures in America: the progressive left and the conservative right. The left and right have separate sources that interpret the world in very different ways. It is like living in two worlds. There are positives and negatives to that. It increases the polarization between those two cultures, but at least the people in each culture have news sources to follow and social media platforms to speak freely on and follow like-minded folks. That is better than trying to go back to the pre-internet world where a center-left liberal ideology was forced on everyone, and that was the only news available.
But the entertainment industry is different from news and social media in that it has not experienced that same cultural bifurcation. Hollywood is much more tightly gate-kept as an industry, so when it comes to TV and movies, there are only two options: far-left progressive or center-left liberal. The conservative right is starved for any movies that portray their culture in a positive light. So they are thrilled when they get a center-left apolitical movie like Top Gun: Maverick, just because it's not openly woke and anti-conservative. That movie was a massive hit, proving there is a huge audience of right-wing conservatives, libertarians, and apolitical centrists who want to see movies that don't force the woke social justice message down their throats. But such movies remain few and far between.
It would be nice to get more centrist apolitical movies like Top Gun: Maverick, and we probably will get that in the near future during the coming vibe shift. But it might be even better if the entertainment industry fully bifurcated culturally like the news and social media industries, so that the left can continue making their hyper-woke movies, but right wing filmmakers could make anti-woke movies too.
In the current Hollywood system, the only options are woke or non-woke (apolitical), but an explicitly anti-woke movie is not an option. Top Gun: Maverick was non-woke, not anti-woke. There were still female pilots and a diverse cast, but they weren't pushing the social justice message on you. More non-woke movies like that would be good. In fact, the majority of entertainment should be apolitical. But there should also be explicitly right-wing anti-woke movies too.
Hollywood produces an overabundance of left-wing movies but zero right-wing movies, despite their being a desire for it. There is an audience willing to pay to see right-wing movies, but Hollywood is afraid to make such content. I think the current vibe shift will produce many non-woke apolitical movies in the vein of Top Gun: Maverick. If such movies are reliably successful, they might push the Overton window in Hollywood to take risks on more explicitly right-wing movies, which may prove to be even more successful. Those movies will not attract left-wing audiences, but they will appease the right wing who have given up on Hollywood entertainment. Fox News is the most successful cable channel despite not drawing any left-wing viewers (except those who hate-watch). Hollywood can and should follow the same right-wing path to box office success.
You can’t please everyone all the time with art—which is what Hollywood is trying to do with Marvel movies. Instead, divide your audience, and focus on a niche. An entire industry of right-wing “ragebait” content has sprung up on YouTube, reacting to the terrible woke movies. Left-wing breadtubers can do the same for the future based movies that will inevitably outrage and offend them (which will only bring more attention to those movies). If Hollywood doesn’t make right-wing movies, AI will—and thereby put Hollywood out of business.
