Propaganda in movies

Propaganda in specific films spread and promote certain ideas that are usually religious, political, or cultural in nature. Propaganda is made with the intent that the person aware of this will adopt the position that is promoted by the propagator and eventually take action towards making those ideas widely accepted. While propaganda in movies has been around since 1896, nowadays, these are becoming more common as every political ideology (especially the SJWs, right-wing nationalists, etc.) taking advantage of trying to shove their belief down the audience's throat.

While political themes can be used, you cannot make it the main focus in a movie. A film like mh:greatestmovies:Black Panther has political themes in it; however, it's subtle, as the story and not the political theme is the focus, so the audience can think about it. However, some writers and, in some cases, directors do not care about making a story due to their ego and, in some cases, they want to promote a political theme instead to worship their activism. This problem is the main reason why films like Ghostbusters end up being panned by audiences, as they focus on political themes over a good story.

How to Spot Propaganda in Films

 * 1) Trying to promote religious, political, or cultural theme(s) in a movie instead of making a story.
 * 2) Lack of subtly and trying to talk down to the audience.
 * 3) Treats the other nations, cultures, religions, or any person (including men) they don't like as dumb and/or evil, while the main characters' identity is unrealistically strong and flawless.
 * 4) Characters that are put there just to promote it (e.g. Dani from Terminator: Dark Fate).

Examples

 * 1) Zapped (2014), Ghostbusters (2016), Charlie's Angels (2019) and Black Christmas (2019): Feminist propaganda films that are sexist towards men and make the women strong and smart whilst making men either utterly irredeemable villains or complete idiots.
 * 2) Birds of Prey: Same as Example #1, but the men in this film are more forgettable or unimportant except for the main villains. The females lean more towards the anti-villainous side.
 * 3) Black Widow: Same as Example #2, but only two of the main male protagonists are actually likable despite being goofy and stupid at times. The rest are either forgettable, more idiotic, serve only as background characters, or have antagonistic roles. Also, it is considered by many to be a good film otherwise due to the propagandic themes being subtle and well-hidden unlike the other examples.
 * 4) Sir Billi: A Scottish nationalism propaganda film that has the two main villains being helped by the British government off-screen and shows the British flag being overshadowed by the Scottish flag in one scene.
 * 5) Men in Black: International, Terminator: Dark Fate, The Darkest Minds and The Craft: Legacy: Same reason as Ghostbusters, with the main characters being made just to promote it.
 * 6) Leaving Neverland: Made just to ruin the reputation of the late Michael Jackson and make a story around Wade Robson and James Safechuck to make money.
 * 7) God's Not Dead and its sequels: A Christian propaganda film that treats all non-Christians as evil and Christians as the only good people on Earth.
 * 8) Blackfish: Same reason as Leaving Neverland, made just to defame SeaWorld with outdated information and just to make money.
 * 9) Kids vs Wizards: Promotes Russian Orthodox religious and Russian nationalist militaristic propaganda, and portrays non-Russian Orthodox & non-Russians negatively.
 * 10) Reynard the Fox and the Jew Animal: As the title suggests, it's a Nazi propaganda short film that portrays the Jews (in the film, the Jew is portrayed as a rhino) in a negative manner.
 * 11) United Passions: A self-congratulatory film by FIFA that glosses over any bad things they did, praises Sepp Blatter, and even portrays English people as racist.
 * 12) Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, Death of a Nation and Trump Card: Anti-modern-day Democratic Party, Pro-Trump and modern-day Republican propaganda films that demonize progressives and the modern-day Democratic Party, and even go as far as saying Trump is the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. The Democrats are portrayed as neo-Nazis and racists via accusing them of still supporting the Ku Klux Klan, despite Trump's policies looking nothing like Lincoln's policies and the Democrats are actually centrists to the center-left, since they described themselves as a big tent political party.
 * 13) Inchon: Essentially promotes the Unification Church's religious "theology", and glorifies General Douglas MacArthur, who was actually quite a nasty person in real-life.
 * 14) Battlefield Earth: Acts as propaganda for Scientology and the viewpoints of its founder (and the author of the book the movie is based on), L. Ron Hubbard, in particular promoting distrust of psychologists via the movie's villains, the Psychlos.
 * 15) On Deadly Ground: Basically a platform for Steven Seagal's pro-environmentalist views, to the point of saying that rich businessmen and oil rig workers deserve to die for polluting the environment (with main protagonist Forrest Taft hypocritically doing the same thing by blowing up an oil rig), and having the last seven minutes of the movie (originally the last thirty minutes until the studio cut its length down) literally just be Seagal's character lecturing the audience on how to save the environment.
 * 16) Rock: It's Your Decision and Hell's Bells: Blatant Christian fundamentalist propaganda which portray rock music as "the Devil's work".
 * 17) If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?: An incredibly violent pro-Christian/anti-Communism propaganda film which states that the Soviet Union will completely subjugate the United States in a matter of days unless everyone converts to Christianity.
 * 18) An American Carol: Tries to satirize Michael Moore and his documentaries, but just ends up being blatant propaganda for the George W. Bush administration and the War on Terror.
 * 19) Cool Cat Saves the Kids: Contains a lot of downright harmful and hypocritical messages to kids about bullying and how to deal with bullying, such as "bullies have no friends" (which makes no sense since bullies are usually in packs), "it is okay to laugh at someone else's misfortune" (Cool Cat and Maria laugh when Butch gets paint in his eyes), "you should read messages from strangers" (this, however, was fixed in the recut) and "yelling at a bully will make them go away" (even though if you show a bully that they are getting a rise out of you, they will continue to harass you).
 * 20) Saving Christmas: Similarly to above, it meant to satirized both modern-day Christmas tropes and conspiracy theorist-based Christian fundamentalism, but instead coming out more resembling the latter (but in the opposite way), and because of that, comes out as Christian right-wing, almost SJW-like propaganda, based on Kirk's evangelical denomination. Where they also pushing their so-called 'Prosperity Gospel' theology, though unintentionally, as seen 2/3rds of the film.
 * 21) Mulan (2020): A pro-Chinese propaganda film that demonizes Tibetan and Uyghurs to the point where it even goes as far as crediting the infamous camp in Xinjiang. It also contains feminist propaganda in the form of Mulan being downgraded into an insulting dull and overpowered Mary Sue-like protagonist from the get-go and Li Shang being removed in favor of the MeToo Movement.
 * 22) Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed: Claims to disprove evolution theory but is really just pro-religious propaganda that tries to argue that one shouldn't believe in evolution because the theory is somehow immoral, and has some holes in it, without explaining why creationism or intelligent design fit the facts better.
 * 23) Certain films nowadays have at least one feminist preach in them specifically to promote feminism. These examples include The Emoji Movie, mh:greatestmovies:Ralph Breaks the Internet and Kim Possible.
 * 24) 2016: Obama's America: It's basically an anti-Obama documentary.
 * 25) The Price of Freedom: an anti-NRA and anti-gun rights documentary.
 * 26) Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe: An anti-vaccine documentary directed by Andrew Wakefield, an anti-vaccine activist.
 * 27) Fauci: A National Geographic documentary, it is a one-sided view of infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci (who has repeatedly misinformed the public in health and the pandemic by flip flopping). The "documentary" tries to praise Fauci highly while ignoring his clear flaws. The trailer for the documentary on YouTube was bombarded with tens of thousands of dislikes. It received positive reviews from critics, but audience reviews were generally negative. Its IMDb score of 1.5/10 makes (as of October 11, 2021) it one of the lowest-rated documentaries on the site. No, we are not being far-right, but this movie makes him look like a God.
 * 28) Fitna: Is fearmongering propaganda that portrays Islam as an evil religion and suggests that Muslim immigrants will force Sharia on any country they migrate to.