The Woman King

The Woman King (2022) is a movie my wife and I caught in theatres last night. The storyline follows an African kingdom with a new(er) king in 1823 who posses the only female army in Africa. The leader of the female Army has a past that haunts her but the respect of her king, enough to be on his council. She strongly urges him to avoid the slave trade and find alternative methods of riches. Meanwhile, those who do believe strongly in the slave trade look to march on the kingdom and bring them down. A new recruitment class to the female army brings brashness, new ideas to defend the kingdom, and the female leader's ghosts back to the forefront...

This movie is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) and stars Viola Davis (The Help), Thuso Mbedu (The Underground Railroad), Lashana Lynch (No Time to Die), Sheila Atim (Doctor Strange: In the Mouth of Madness), John Boyega (Star Wars: Episode VII-IV) and Jimmy Odukoya (Mamba's Diamond).

This movie has so much depth and contains a great primary plot and even better sub plots. The writing is remarkable, thorough and very impressive. The character's inner demons are well portrayed as is their struggle to overcome them. The acting is out of this world across the board. You feel for every character; and if anything happens to anyone, you feel personally hurt. The villains were also excellent as is the outcome of each of them. The settings and cinematography is outstanding and there is impressive use of lighting. The action scenes are remarkable and the fight choreography is award winning caliber. My only complaint is an awkward love story that is obviously in here to show maturity and self discovery but I could have done without it.

Overall, this movie has literally everything you'd want in a movie - tremendous action, great villains, self discovery and character triumph. I would strongly, strongly recommend seeing this movie and score it a 10/10. We loved it.

I enjoy history and like to see accurate representations in films. I will say straight away that I intensely dislike films that have an agenda and are incredibly historically inaccurate as a result, e.g., Braveheart, 300, The Patriot. However, I can easily accept and enjoy films a bit historically inaccurate as films primarily exist to entertain, i.e., most Hollwood historical films.

Unfortunately, TWK falls into the former category. If they had stuck to the real story, then it could have been an interesting film about a little-known African Kingdom, particularly with the lovely images of Africa. Instead, they decided to make it as a black female empowerment, anti-European propaganda piece. Sure, slavery is central to the film but with a twist, in that slavery was in place to make money from Europeans, for which Dahomey reluctantly supplied slaves to feed a European need. The truth is that Africans had been supplying slaves for thousands of years to Arabs, Egyptians, Romans, etc, and keeping hundreds of thousands for themselves. Europeans had a relatively 'short' involvement with the African slave trade, and Europe's largest contribution (primarily British) was to end the African slave trade, against the wishes of African kings and slave traders. The female warriors are shown as some sort of Spartan elite, which they were not, as they primarily attacked and seized women and children as slaves and were easily defeated by the French in hand-to-hand combat. In fact, the French lost 6 soldiers killed whilst the Dahomey warriors, including the female 'elite', lost many hundreds killed. The female warriors and their general were misrepresented in the same way that the Waffen SS would be misrepresented if portrayed as peace-loving pacifists!

A good film could have been made of court intrigue or the impact of Dahomey slavers on raided villages, but no, propaganda and politics rules the roost in Hollywood.

This film is complete propaganda, and tries to rewrite history in a dangerous way. It's about the Oyo tribe, historically one of the largest suppliers of slaves for the slave trade. The king it follows - king Ghezo - is portrayed as wise and fair, but historically he was a cruel and ruthless king. He was even nicknamed "the slaver king" in his time. This guy had a harem of hundreds of slave women, including one whose sole job was to kneel in front of him holding a golden chalice for him to spit into. From here, the historical butchery gets worse.

The unit of women the film follows - the Agojie - did actually exist. They were formed by the king in response to a rival king demanding tribute in the form of female slaves. Once formed, their job was to round up women to enslave and gift to this rival king. The Agojie were literally formed to enslave women.

The Woman King is a perfect example of Hollywood being reckless with history in order to capitalize on social trends and make a profit. Because of the threat of enslavement, name "Agojie" would have been terrifying to any African woman living in Western Africa in the mid-late 1800s. Now Hollywood has decided to rewrite history to glorify these people so they can make a quick buck. This is the equivalent of making a film about the Nazi S. S. in which it's rewritten to make them the heroes trying to save Jews. If anything deserves to be canceled, it's this film.

I watched this movie not knowing much about it. So it made me curious. I love history, and I found after some research that I had to agree with History vs Hollywood. "To make a movie that celebrates the Dahomey is a glaring example of how Hollywood likes to morph history, either by way of omission or outright fabrication. If you're going to watch The Woman King, read about the true story of the Kingdom of Dahomey first. Otherwise, take everything you're seeing with a grain of salt." I knew many tribes sold other captured tribes to the European slave traders, but that is putting it mildly with the Mahomey. They were a very cruel tribe that perpetuated it.

This movie is far from the historic facts. That just one of its problems. The acting was meh, and "the message" being forced in the movie is laughable. Look you should not change a whole tribe of people history just to gaslight people. So I blame the writers and the producers for this. We should go into a movie because we want to not because we are scared we might get cancelled. Has Hollywood learn yet to stop attacking movie goers. I guess not since they been doing same thing for decades. So my final thoughts on this movie? It was not good fictional and not based on facts movie. Don't waste your money.