Do you often feel suffocated by some social movements and point of view is being shoved in your face? Do you feel that every second there's a move you "Must watch" because of its message? Well, that is by design the ultimate honor goal for many filmmakers that is award shows. The last few years they have been putting emphasis on rewarding such movies over judging a movie by its overall quality, how else would you explain Christopher Nolan not winning an Oscar yet?
Well, with such incentive to make more "Socially conscious" movies pushing filmmakers to make more such movies, the free advertisement that comes to your movie for "Tackling sexism/racism/bigotry etc.."encourages production companies and studios to make such movies. The rest of the movies are mainly "theme parks" in the form of superhero movies, as described by Martin Scorsese. And of course sci-fi, animation, and romantic movies. There is the occasional comedy, but that is always going to be there.
Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan are trying to go elsewhere, but they are just two men. Although you can find the exception here and there, Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here are psychological masterpieces, with the later being a better joker movie than The Joker itself, a movie in itself is an exception. So, with movies relating to social movements covering our screens in what to seems to be a decline in story quality, one has to ask: are social movements ruining our movie experiences?
Well, messages are force-fed where they don't belong, look at Brie Larson obnoxiously talking about feminism in Captain Marvel where in reality, the movie could have been about a man and would have been just the same basically. The final sequence of the avengers shows Pepper coming out of nowhere so we could have the pandering "Bad ass women" fighting sequence. Charlie's Angel is just a piece of hot garbage that tried to make the three women able to do everything, making the characters lack any uniqueness to what they are special with, they all can fight, all can hack, all can seduce. Many examples coming off my head.
The issue with all of these movies cramping down causes down our throats is that they are basically trying to be simple. They want to condense their movies so they are not complicated and too long, simply put, they are trying to write a tweet in the form of a movie, and a gif in the form of dialogue. There is a market requirement for a minority to kickass, Atomic Blonde NEEDS to be like James Bond, even sleeping with women. Black Panther has to include the word "Colonizer", even where it is not warranted in the movie.
Each movie mentioned decided to cut down from its quality just to deliver trigger words creating an unclear side story that goes nowhere. But these are examples of people who just didn't know how to express their social ideologies correctly. After all, how good is Elizabeth Banks as a director after all? The fact you might be googling her or just waiting for me to get to the next point. But I actually to take this chance to point out how bad is Banks actually. Banks directed the only movie in the Pitch Perfect movie that lost money, the other two made at least double their budget. And barely made profit with a big trademark movie like Charlie's Angles (Now you know what movie she did), she also got to direct both because she is married to the producer.
The reason I am lingering at the Elizabeth Banks point is to point out how bad the ones behind the camera are. Because my answer to the question is: No. I don't believe social movements are ruining our movies, horrible filmmakers are.
Filmmakers who do their jobs out of passion never miss the mark, those who do it for money or to be a national hero of sort miss it by a mile. You can make a movie about a social movement, or expressing its ideas and you could end up with a masterpiece. What you need is actual good intention and coherent understanding, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, you can't explain something you don't understand. And you can't do it when you are coming from a place of hate.
The whole of point Charlie's Angels is "white men are bad", and the fact that Elizabeth Bank was also the writer of it prove it, just check her interviews about the movie. The woman things she expose sexism. Meanwhile, a movie like the animation Mulan(Definitely NOT the live action) got at its root the very definition of woman empowerment, Mulan doesn't conform to male behavior, she transcends it and wins the war by not acing barbarically and even getting the men to follow HER PLAN
Many examples to cite, absurd anti-capitalism comedy "Sorry to Bother You", movies like "Get out" and "Us" redefined horror, Hidden Figures, Barber Shop, Boyz n the Hood. Milk made waves and played big part in the eventual enabling of gay marriage. What happened to social movements in movies is much like sex in movies, explosions, and everything else, they have been commercialized.
Not only are social movements aren't ruining movies, but in fact it is the other way around as bad movies are hurting the social movements. When Elizabeth Banks credits her movie as feminist, you would actually view feminism as horrible if she was right. A bad movie is a bad movie, and using a blanket of social movements, it does a disservice to the social movements it allegedly supports.
In Summary
Due to the chase of the mighty dollar and awards, there have been a shift toward a so-called activism movies, be it just shoved for the sake of publicity or actual thought out movies aiming at criticizing the status quos and highlight injustice. The latter makes for an enriched movie experience, while the first, which is the majority, is merely a cash and an attention grab ruining the very thing it claims to support.