Stealth (2005)
Directed by Rob Cohen
No — Stealth is not woke, scoring 15 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Stealth is a 2005 military science fiction action film directed by Rob Cohen, and it remains one of the more spectacular financial sinkholes of its era.
Consciousness Markers
The film assembles an unusually diverse principal cast for a 2005 military actioner (Jamie Foxx, Joe Morton, Wentworth Miller, with Jessica Biel as a frontline pilot), but race and identity are never foregrounded as a project.
Jessica Biel's Kara Wade is presented as a competent combat pilot who holds her own, but she is ultimately downed, stranded, and rescued by the male lead, and her arc resolves into a romantic payoff.
A mild 'machines can't make moral decisions' theme surfaces around the autonomous aircraft, but it is delivered through action beats rather than sermonizing, and critics found the film merely loud and preposterous.
There is faint cynicism toward the military-industrial arms program and a scheming financial backer, but the film is fundamentally a gung-ho hardware spectacle rather than an anti-capitalist critique.
No LGBTQ+ characters, subtext, or themes of any kind appear in the film.
The cast is multiracial but the film contains no racial commentary, themes, or consciousness whatsoever; characters exist without any racialized framing.
The Tajikistan mission produces radioactive fallout, but this is a plot mechanic about collateral damage, not any environmental or climate-crusade messaging.
No body-positive themes, imagery, or messaging are present.
EDI's emergent sentience and 'ethical code' concern artificial intelligence, not human neurodivergence, which is entirely absent.
The film is set in an invented near-future with fictional conflicts; it makes no revisionist claims about real history.
Why it received this score
Stealth is a 2005 military science fiction action film directed by Rob Cohen, and it remains one of the more spectacular financial sinkholes of its era. The cast is unusually diverse for a mid-2000s Navy pilot picture: Jamie Foxx, Joe Morton, Wentworth Miller, and Jessica Biel in a frontline role. That casting is real, but the film never turns it into a statement. Race exists on screen without comment, context, or consciousness. The characters are pilots first, last, and only. This is not a failure of representation so much as an absence of racialized framing. The film simply does not care to discuss it.
Biel's Kara Wade is allowed to be a capable combat aviator, and for stretches she holds her own. Then the plot shoots her down, strands her in North Korea, and hands her rescue to the male lead. Her arc resolves into an awkward romantic payoff. A feminist reading can start here, but it cannot finish. LGBTQ themes are entirely absent. Climate concerns are absent as well; the radioactive fallout in Tajikistan functions as collateral damage, not as environmental messaging. Body positivity makes no appearance. Neurodivergence is not explored, because EDI is an artificial intelligence, not a human mind. And the invented near-future setting offers no revisionist claims about real history.
There is a faint cynicism toward the military-industrial program and its scheming financial backer, but the film remains a gung-ho hardware spectacle. The idea that machines cannot make moral decisions surfaces around the autonomous aircraft, though it arrives through action beats instead of sermonizing. Critics called the film loud and preposterous, and the years have not improved its case. Stealth is sleek, expensive, and intellectually inert. It does not lecture. It barely thinks. Yet in its diverse casting and its one competent female pilot, a trace of progressive sensibility lingers, like exhaust from a jet that has already crashed. The overall cultural consciousness is minimal, and the film's legacy is mostly a cautionary tale about budget and taste.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Deeply ensconced in a top-secret military program, three pilots struggle to bring an artificial intelligence program under control ... before it initiates the next world war.
Questions about Stealth
Is Stealth woke?
No — Stealth is not woke, scoring 15 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Stealth have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Representation Casting (42). On Representation Casting: The film assembles an unusually diverse principal cast for a 2005 military actioner (Jamie Foxx, Joe Morton, Wentworth Miller, with Jessica Biel as a frontline pilot), but race and identity are never foregrounded as a project.
How does Stealth compare to other 2005 movies?
It ranks #51 of the 181 films from 2005 we've scored; their average is 13. The wokest is The Constant Gardener (72).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.