Is The Apprentice woke?
The Apprentice (2024)
Movie
Released: January 1, 2024
Wokeness Score
7/10
Strongly Ideological
Woke messaging is very prominent and often feels forced or shoehorned in. Characters and plot are primarily shaped to serve the ideology. Many viewers feel the agenda overshadows the entertainment.
Key Summary Points
- Portrays Trump's rise as shaped by ruthless right-wing tactics and moral corruption via Roy Cohn mentorship.
- Includes graphic depiction of alleged spousal rape and emphasis on vanity, drugs, and callousness to critique character.
- Released near 2024 election with themes linking past events to modern political polarization and power abuse.
Wokeness Analysis
The film centers on young Donald Trump's rise through his mentorship under Roy Cohn, portraying the origins of tactics like relentless attack, denial of facts, and claiming victory. This framing serves as social commentary on power, media manipulation, and moral decay in American politics and capitalism, with clear intent to link 1970s-80s events to contemporary divisions. Depictions include a graphic rape scene involving Ivana Trump, vanity procedures like liposuction, drug use, and indifference to Cohn's AIDS-related death, emphasizing cruelty and callousness. While some reviews note humanization of Trump as a striver and balanced performances, the overall narrative is shaped by progressive critiques of right-wing figures, with timing near the 2024 election amplifying perceptions of ideological messaging. The story prioritizes illustrating how ambition and mentorship create a 'monster,' subordinating pure entertainment to commentary on systemic issues like racism in housing and political fixers. Conservative audiences view it as a hatchet job that shoehorns anti-Trump ideology into a biopic, making plot and characters vehicles for the message rather than organic storytelling.
Plot
The Apprentice follows a young Donald Trump in 1970s and 1980s New York as he seeks to emerge from his father's shadow in real estate. He encounters and learns from the powerful, cutthroat lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, who teaches him strategies of deception, intimidation, and media manipulation amid a racial discrimination lawsuit against the family business. The story traces Trump's courtship and marriage to Ivana, business deals like the Commodore Hotel, personal vanities including cosmetic procedures, and his growing obsession with winning at all costs, culminating around Cohn's death from AIDS in 1986. It is a fact-based dramatization of their relationship and Trump's transformation.