This Means War (2012)
Directed by McG
No — This Means War is not woke, scoring 7 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
McG's This Means War arrives from 2012 with the serene confidence of a film that has nothing on its mind and no plan to acquire anything.
Consciousness Markers
Angela Bassett appears as the CIA boss Collins and the cast includes a few non-white faces, but this is colorblind, unremarked-upon casting rather than a statement of representation.
The premise is a woman being fought over by two men who spy on her phone and sabotage each other's dates; the gender politics are thoroughly traditional rom-com fare.
The film makes no attempt to lecture or moralize; it is a lightweight, irreverent comedy with no message beyond entertainment.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext anywhere in the film.
No engagement with race as a subject; the film is a glossy spy romp with no racial consciousness whatsoever.
No environmental themes or climate content.
No critique of wealth, capitalism, or class; the film luxuriates in aspirational consumerism and CIA gadgetry.
No body positivity themes; the film trades entirely on conventional Hollywood attractiveness.
No neurodivergent characters or themes.
No historical revisionism; the film is a contemporary fictional spy comedy.
Why it received this score
McG's This Means War arrives from 2012 with the serene confidence of a film that has nothing on its mind and no plan to acquire anything. Two CIA operatives, played by Chris Pine and Tom Hardy, learn they are courting the same woman, Reese Witherspoon, and settle the matter by bugging her telephone, monitoring her dates, and deploying agency resources against each other. The film frames this as romance. Lauren's eventual choice between the two men is treated as the central dramatic question, which places the gender politics somewhere in the vicinity of a 1950s magazine advertisement. She is a prize, and the audience is invited to enjoy the contest.
The supporting cast offers Angela Bassett as the CIA section chief Collins, and she is excellent in the way a professional is excellent when handed nothing. Her presence is colorblind in the purest sense: the film never notices race, never comments on it, and never thinks about it. No racial consciousness survives contact with this screenplay. Chelsea Handler's Trish supplies the raunch that earned an initial R rating, and the film's appetites run toward Klimt paintings, gadgetry, and real estate. Wealth is aspirational here, never examined. There is no LGBTQ content, no engagement with body image, no neurodivergent character, and no environmental thought of any kind. The film is a glossy, well-lit vacuum.
What remains is a comedy that refuses to lecture, which is its one genuine virtue and also its entire personality. It moralizes about nothing, apologizes for nothing, and means nothing. The result is a cultural artifact of near-zero ideological weight, a spy romp that offends mainly through ineptitude. Roger Ebert called it incompetent, and the years have not improved the verdict. We file it under harmless and forgettable, and we move along.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Two top CIA operatives wage an epic battle against one another after they discover they are dating the same woman.
Questions about This Means War
Is This Means War woke?
No — This Means War is not woke, scoring 7 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does This Means War have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 25.
How does This Means War compare to other 2012 movies?
It ranks #118 of the 230 films from 2012 we've scored; their average is 12. The wokest is Killing Them Softly (92).
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.