Young Washington Shows the Way Forward for Hollywood

(Warning: spoilers ahead)

The surprising (to some) box office success of the brand-new Young Washington during America’s Semiquincentennial weekend points a way forward for America’s struggling entertainment industry: solid, exciting entertainment that appeals to Americans who are tired of cynicism about God and country, woke casting, and heavily leftist messaging.

The reasons for Hollywood’s difficulties are many. A great deal has to do with technological changes in how movies and television are watched, made, and distributed. While such challenges can be surmounted, a more substantial one is that, by and large, those who make our movies in the big studios identify themselves with the hard left. They don’t really like America or the values that made her and still animate so many of us.

As radio host Michael Medved put it in the title of his 2011 book, it’s Hollywood vs. America. While Hollywood used to at least produce a few movies for the heartland to pay for the ideological assaults they were making on traditional religion, morality, and clean language in their other fare, that largely ceased not long after Medved’s book.

As an article at Deadline observed, “few distributors are making movies for the middle of the U.S. post Warner Bros’ 2014 mammoth American Sniper ($350M domestic),” but Angel Studios has tried to pick up the slack. Apart from Young Washington, the company has scored breakout hits with Sound of Freedom (2023)and the animated David (2025).

Young Washington is certainly a breakout hit, making nearly $21 million at the box office for the weekend despite being shown in fewer than 3,000 theaters nationwide—impressive, given that most big releases are in 4,000 or more. Only Minions and Monsters and Toy Story 5 were more watched over the holiday weekend, while Young Washington beat out the much more expensive and widely screened Supergirl in that movie’s second week in theaters.

That box office success is not because of the critical buzz. As Paul Tassi at Forbes observed, the Rotten Tomatoes critics score showed that a mere 58 percent of critics gave it a positive review, while 94 percent of audience members gave it a thumbs up. At the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), one sees a similar positive reception from audiences. The movie has a 7.3/10 average rating from over 3,300 viewers. 43 percent give it a 10, while another 29.8 percent give it either an 8 or 9.

Those reviews aren’t wrong. Young Washington has a great cast, a decent script, little of the sticky sweet qualities that sometimes plague patriotic movies, general historical accuracy, and a lot of action.

Young English actor William Franklyn-Miller plays the 23-year-old Washington, whom we see first awakening in a stupor as gun- and cannon-fire explode around him on July 9, 1755. Stumbling out of the wagon in which he was sleeping, he is informed that there has been an ambush. Mounting his horse, he rides out to find the Virginians with whom he has been fighting. Informed by a red-coated British soldier that the battle is lost and that a retreat has been ordered, he asks about the Virginians. Informed that they were at the front and have no chance, he is faced with a decision to cut and run or find them.  

The movie then cuts away and back to 1743, when the boy Washington (Will Joseph) is mourning the death of his father, Augustine. He meets his half-brother, Lawrence, who is faced with the somewhat difficult task of helping George’s mother, Mary Ball Washington (Mary-Louise Parker), raise a boy who wants to stay in school but cannot. Joseph Foss’s portrayal of Lawrence Washington gives just the right amount of sympathy and frustration at trying to corral an already ambitious and headstrong boy who resents the misfortune Providence has sent him.

The pipe-smoking Parker does a creditable job as the tough and independent mother Mary Ball Washington was in real life, one who doesn’t shy away from her son’s tough questions about the ways of Providence.

The action cuts back to the now-grown but still young Washington, who has gained his surveyor’s license and wants a scope for his ambition. Having snuck into a party at Thomas Fairfax’s (Kelsey Grammer) plantation, he convinces the old man to hire him to survey the Ohio territory. He also meets and falls in love with Sally Cary (Mia Rodgers).

There is a bit of liberty with the history after this in the form of real-life character Christopher Gist (Leo Hanna). In the movie, Washington travels with the surveyor Gist to survey the Ohio territory and saves his life when their raft goes over the rapids. In real life, Gist didn’t connect with Washington until the next trip to deliver a message from Virginia Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie (Ben Kingsley in a delightful turn) to the French to vacate the territory. He did, however, save his life.

Young Washington depicts a flawed and overconfident young Washington, promoted to colonel at 22 in 1754, making fatal strategic and tactical errors that lead to the death of many men, including Gist. Though in reality, Gist died in 1759, this liberty with the story gives greater emotional weight to Washington’s regrets about his pride and his mistakes.

Washington’s return to soldiering with the Virginia Militia and Royal troops as an aide-de-camp to General Braddock (Andy Serkis) allows viewers to see a humbled but wiser young Washington developing the wisdom that would make the later General and President Washington. The climax of the movie is the return to the beginning of the movie, where we find out whether Washington went to find his Virginians at the Battle of Monongahela and what happened.

There’s a bit of the action movie hero in Young Washington, but such touches are rooted in the real Washington’s reputation for avoiding bullets. There’s also a bit of proverb quoting that is perhaps overdone, but that, too, is likely closer to the reality of Washington, who copied down “Rules of Civility” and other proverbs for himself. While the script is not always free from wooden moments, the critics are often bothered by faithfulness to real stories of which they do not approve.

One topic discussed is Erwin’s admission that he used AI for a number of big shots and effects. Given that movies have long used CGI, it’s not clear how this use of AI is a bridge too far.  

Co-writer and director Jon Erwin has already announced a sequel to the current movie that would bring the hero up to 1776. While Young Washington is not a great movie, it is a very good one that hearkens back to an older way of doing things. Young Washington will likely make considerably more money in the following weeks based on word-of-mouth recommendations.

I hope it does. If Hollywood could get over itself and learn from Young Washington to tell stories less hostile to America and traditional religion, perhaps it might see brighter days again, whatever the critics say.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.