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I will now reveal my normie tastes in movies...
Looking at the lists, in addition to Avatar II doing well, Mario Bros also did really well, suggesting that people just don't want to see Elemental or the new Indiana Jones all that much. I watched Mario Bros on streaming (and enjoyed it), but might have gone to the theater if circumstances lent themselves. It has about the right combination of nostalgia for those who grew up with the games, actual fun and an alright plot, Jack Black making a fool of himself, and no particular wokeness. Everyone likes super talented Peach, it's pulled off well, with humor and fondness.
The rumors are, Indiana Jones is about setting the franchise up for Harrison Ford to be replaced by a younger woman. I don't know if this is true or not, since I haven't watched the movie, and don't plan to, but it certainly doesn't make it sound fun. I also didn't see Black Widow, because it sounded like it was about setting it up for Florence Pugh to take over from Scarlett Johansen, or that series about the guy with the metal wings taking on the mantel of Captain America, or the special about a woman taking over for Hawkeye. In general, movies about someone taking up the cape of someone else sound boring, it's much better when they just show up with swagger and without much explanation, like 007. This seems to be a common failure mode of long running hero shows. Assuming the rumor to be true, I don't think the recent trend of replacing older male heros with younger female heros is necessarily about wokeness per say, but more about stodgily following the tropes of the moment, even when people are tired of them and they've become stale.
Elemental looks... probably fine? Kind of like Zootopia, but for elements? I liked Zootopia, though not enough that I would have bothered seeing it in theaters. I haven't heard any rumors about it, it just seems kind of basic. Looking at a mainstream review, it sounds like they tried making a ham fisted racial allegory, but it didn't really fit, only fleshed out two of the four elements, and even the mainstream reviewers don't like ham fisted racial allegories. That's kind of how Bright was -- there was an attempt made, and Will Smith is fun enough to watch, but it was also kind of a mess. I'll probably watch it in a year when it comes out on Disney+, but will wait until I'm subscribing for a month for other reasons. I'm not sure if it makes sense to shorthand this to "woke," since the complaint is coming from the mainstream reviewers -- interracial love story (but with elemental spirits! who are not particularly magical, and basically just New Yorkers) probably just not a great concept, and would be really hard to do so well that a mass of people will go to the theater to see it immediately.
As an aside, I see that Spider Man: No Way Home did really well, and having watched it: why? It's terrible! So bad! Apparently fan service, done right, does bring in the cash.
The same brain-dead Marvel fans who threw money at the first animated Spider-Man, like all movies in the MCU, had no problem doing the same for the sequel.
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