(250 year old spoilers follow)
It’s the Fourth of July, a day right after this film is released, and I am on my way to offer two hours of my day to Angel Studios in exchange for an exciting and hopefully inspiring biographical drama about the life of George Washington in his younger years as a general.
While I was waiting outside the theater, an older gentleman excused himself while he passed us into the theater wearing a hat and shirt with “250 Years of America” on it. I caught a glimpse of the kind of crowd I was about to belong to. When I finally stepped inside the theater I was surprised to find the whole theater packed with Virginians wearing their proud red, white, and blue. This was going to be something. As I watched the few trailers of Angel Studios branded films that preceded the film (all consisting of similar conservative historical dramas with random B-list actors you would never expect) among the crowd of patriots, a suspicious feeling began to sink in.
Where had I felt this feeling before? As the film began, it opened with something that would mark the rest of my experience watching the film:
“This Film is Approved by the Angel Guild”
This will be of great importance to remember in a bit, but for the meantime the movie is about to start. Very soon into the film, the rather young Washington appeared on screen, to which I was expecting something like a crowd cheer by the way other characters had kept mentioning the name “Washington”. Constantly it was brought up and treated with great emphasis; it was almost as if the actors were trying to directly give the crowd goosebumps every time it was spoken. This was a pattern that repeated throughout the entirety of the film.
This subtle, yet noticeable awareness of the audience throughout scenes gave the whole film a sense of inauthenticity and unbelievability in its telling of the George Washington story.
The best way I can describe it is in a particular scene when George Washington is meeting up with his love interest Sally Fairfax (Mia Rodgers). During the course of the scene a famous classical piece by Bach is playing in the background, seemingly coming from somewhere in the room. The characters don’t seem to notice it. It most likely would not have even been played during that time in history. And yet it is a popular classical piece that people would associate with high class and so… it is used in the scene because it is expected.
Throughout the film, Washington’s journey is marked by clichés. Rushed romance and action kept just under enough control and within the sight of the camera to give the illusion of a vast raging and violent battle. The ending finally moves young George from a passive to active character…far too late.
A vivid sense of unbelievability grew larger when I could sense everyone in that theater nudging to their neighbor when Andy Serkis (as Edward Braddock) or Ben Kingsley (as Robert Dinwiddie) popped on to the screen to give the most mediocre performance I’ve seen from them. It was almost as if it didn’t matter that they were playing characters in a story, but rather that their mere presence as professional actors in this “Christian Film” was enough to make the Angel Studio fans feel like “they’ve made it with Big Hollywood” despite whether the film turned out to be good or not.
This very goal towards primarily being a “better Christian adaptation” of what would normally be a “secular film” proved greatly detrimental in providing the audience with believable and real characters and a story that is worth investing in. Instead what was presented was an hour and a half of “Young Washington” failing in his positions of authority, without clear responsibilities or agency on the part of his character, all while his personality is kept crystal clean of any emotions lest his legend be stained of any genuine human flaws.
Earlier in the essay I mentioned the opening title of the film which mentioned an approval by the Angel Guild and after some quick searches online, everything that I had experienced just recently made sense. Unbeknownst to me, Angel Studios has a system called “The Guild Score” where any member can vote on a certain project they would want to see Angel Studios produce.
“A measurement of the audience’s passion for and support of a potential film or show, the Guild score is the deciding factor that determines whether a project will either come to fruition or will need to be refined and resubmitted for further voting. The Guild score will also closely predict what a potential film’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score would be”1
All that I had just spent watching for the past 2 hours was the product of a film so heavily influenced, refined, and finally approved by over a million guild members that by the end of it, had lost all sense of personality and expression.2 In the end I was greatly disheartened by a film which promised more than a regular production studio, and delivered not even a quarter of it.
It was a heavier blow to take once I realized that over 100 of the shots filmed were made using generative AI (a fact that was made obvious during the course of watching the film and that I just had to confirm afterwards). Although the use of AI is implemented in various ways, such as for establishing shots or for adding the firing effect to the canons, it is most prominently used in creating the illusion of a freezing cold river during one of the action sequences. The director argues for the use of generative AI to “make something safer and more affordable in that scope to a project like this”.3 I can’t help but see the usage of it within this context be nothing other than a waste of potential talent and creativity in a film which already is largely lacking in such.
In the end, Young Washington is a prime example of Angel Studio’s anxious concern with providing the expected at the risk of losing what is needed within a story.
https://www.angel.com/blog/angel-studios/posts/the-guild-score-what-angel-studios-is-doing-differently-from-every-other-studio
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/angel-reaches-milestone-of-1-million-guild-members-302401595.html
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/young-washington-director-jon-erwin-ai-1236801002/
I’m wondering if Angel Studios’ baffling choice to distribute “Animal Farm” had anything to do with Andy Serkis being in this movie. “Animal Farm” had been in development hell for close to a decade, so is it possible Angel agreed to distribute it in exchange for its star and director appearing in one of their movies? Unlike Sir Ben Kingsley and Kelsey Grammer, Serkis still has some clout in Hollywood, so it makes as much sense as anything else.
Wow.
That was incredibly harsh.
And frankly, unwarranted.
It wasn’t exceptional but it was certainly entertaining and provided some insights into that part of GW’s life that I was unaware of and later researched myself to learn more.
There have been more than several movies on your list that I question as to why a Catholic should watch them…now I am wondering about your authenticity & your POV.
Time for me to move on.
Thanks.