First of all, to say there was an organized boycott is misleading. There was a handful of us that decided not to see this movie. Some of us were personally boycotting Captain Marvel, but there was no organized, widespread boycott.
It should also be noted that this didn’t happen because the Fandom Menace and other groups like it hate women, in fact, many of the leaders of these groups are women. It happened because Brie Larson was making offensive and inflammatory comments about men. And no, they were not out of context. Worse, her only attempt at reconciliation with the fans was the sort of non-apology apology we see when radical Leftists in the Democratic Party say something racist. A journalist will set up an interview, summarize the controversy, then tell the subject of the interview what they actually meant to say, and then the subject will confirm it. It’s disingenuous. Sorry, shills, Brie Larson is a terrible person, and if you sincerely believe in equality and fair treatment for everyone, she is not someone who deserves your white knighting. Especially since she hates anything white. It’s not her favorite color, it turns out.
It’s also worth observing the undeniable fact that Disney went out of its way to protect this film. The deplorable methods they stooped to cut off fan’s means of being able to communicate with each other. They accomplished this by pushing Fandango to remove key features of Rotten Tomatoes, starting with the “want to see/don’t want to see,” poll, which was removed after Disney and their shills complained the movie was being, “review bombed,” when the movie wasn’t even out. No such thing was happening. The poll asked if you wanted to see the movie or not, and the overwhelming response was, “no.” RT even went so far as removing 54,000 lukewarm and negative reviews after the movie released, while leaving up thousands of favorable reviews that were clearly copy-paste jobs being posted by clone accounts. There’s no way the 54,000 deleted reviews were all trolls.
The actions Disney took here prevented word of mouth from getting out that this movie was... well... meh. Turns out the movie wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. But fans ability to communicate their feelings was interfered with in an unprecedented way, and justified by attacking disappointed fans as, “trolls,” “misogynist,” and a whole bunch of other radical Left catchphrases that allowed the Disney shill media to ignore the actual issue... Brie Larson’s own bigotry.
To the point that the movie made a billion dollars. Sure. But Disney released the film just weeks ahead of Endgame, a film bound to be a multi-billion dollar global hit. They also released it in a time frame where it would have an uncontested 3-week run.
Restated, Captain Marvel has three weeks with no competition. The minute it was challenged by another decent film (This is Us), it’s global ticket sales collapsed. But in the lead up to that, there was nothing else of interest to watch at all. Also of note, Disney had released performance expectations for Captain Marvel (CM) that it would do $450-480 million domestically. For the purposes of fairness, we will refer to the more conservative estimate. In actuality, it was closer to $377 mil, at the time of writing. So despite the unprecedented protection this film got, it DID underperform domestically, which means Disney cannot afford to dismiss dissenters as the formula for long term success for Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel isn’t there.
Now, I understand that underperforming is not bombing. It just means they didn’t quite reach their goals, a moot point, perhaps, when you consider that they did reach their global goals. But literally, no one I am aware of expected CM to bomb. Though we did hope it would for similar reasons Disney fans wanted Sony’s Venom to bomb. We fear the direction that this film’s success may steer the franchise. Disney fans fear Venom’s success means losing Peter Parker. We feared CM’s success means Peter Parker will be broomed in favor of Miles Morales. It’s essentially the same fear. They’ve already dipped their toe in that direction with Into the Spider-verse, which was actually a really fun movie, though it foreshadows danger for those hoping we’d have Tom Holland for a long time to come. Worse, the emergence of a cinematic pallet swap character like Miles Morales would only be the beginning of the characters we know being replaced with more pallet swaps. Amadeus Cho replaces Bruce Banner, Kate Bishop replaces Hawkeye, Laura Kinney becomes “Wolverine,” and on and on and on. Then they tell such original stories like, “Civil War II,” “Secret Wars II,” and ”Old Woman Laura.” Most of these iconic tales will be the same stories they’ve already told, but with the heroes we grew up with replaced with insufferable radical leftist lecturers who too easily beat the baddies, then stop for a Selfie. No joke, the comics have been that bad. Worse, even.
Marvel Comics aren’t selling that well either. We believe that they think that, once everyone sees their replacement crew on the big screen, that will turn around. Carol Danvers was a pallet swap for the original female Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau. Incidentally, Monica is African-American, but I guess not progressive enough? Let’s just admit Progressives don’t actually care about women or minorities (beyond scaring them half to death with nonsense about the evil ”other” out to get them), so poor Monica got tossed under the bus and lily-white Carol Danvers got pallet swapped in because #MarvelSoRacist. Either that or Monica is secretly a Republican and a fan of Thomas Sowell like I am. So far, Carol Danvers CM’s comics are still not selling well. But they’re doing this anyway.
The decline in comic sales didn’t happen over night. It was a process that took years and was impacted by numerous factors. The embrace of extremist Leftism was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. If the comic sales are any indication, the era of fun, amazing superhero stories are about to end. The era of fighting super villains is about to end. In their place, Leftist lectures, selfies and “smashing the patriarchy.” Don’t believe me? Go read the current Captain Marvel series, now on its umpteenth reboot since Carol Danvers took on the mantle. That series is a perfect example of the garbage writing coming down the pike. In fact, CM the movie gives more than a few hints of this new, “woke” direction. They even went so far as portraying the villainous Skrulls as misunderstood refugees, rather than a sinister war mongering race using subterfuge to conquer Earth, like in the old comics. The world created by Stan Lee and his friends is being erased, and if you think CNN is insufferable, wait till you get a load of SJW Marvel. That’s why we’ve been putting up a fight. It’s not about hating on women and minorities. It’s about hating on bad storytelling, especially when the story suffers from political agenda pushing. It’s about hating seeing characters we love, including characters like Rogue (ignored), Jean Grey (fridged for well over a decade), Black Widow (ignored), Black Panther (killed and replaced by his little sister Shuri), and Blade (ignored and quietly replaced by his daughter), swept aside or ignored while they kill off other classic characters to replace them with new “woke” versions. It’s about hating that characters don’t have trials and tribulations to overcome now, just lectures to give, and selfies to take. I keep hammering the selfie because it happens a lot, and it’s stupid. Also, Marvel’s leader has never been made to answer why they keep replacing classic heroes with pallet swaps, rather than introducing new, diverse characters. Almost as if to say that female and minority characters can’t make it without a white male mantle, a disgusting notion to be sure. #MarvelSoRacist.
With all that said, it is odd no one is talking CM 2. Not that they shouldn’t. Carol Danvers used to be pretty cool. She used to suffer and grow like everyone else. If they allow for that, she can be an amazing character.
Disney has to know this first movie only succeeded because of how they manipulated the market and interfered with fans talking to each other about this film. They have to know they will not be able to do this every time there’s a new CM centered film. They can’t protect every movie this way. They certainly didn’t protect Dumbo. Nor can they afford simultaneous global release to minimize the impact of word of mouth. Nor can they always release during significant times of no competition. Disney won this round, but it is ultimately a pyrrhic victory. Captain Marvel is insufferable. Word of mouth is now getting around that the movie is meh. Too late to stop ticket sales now, but not future releases. Endgame will be a smash hit, but if the intention is still to have CM be the face of the MCU going forward, the fate of future MCU solo films might look, well more like Solo.
Disney and their shills can celebrate now, but to pretend this film would have performed like this under normal conditions is deceptive. And to pretend that the “40-year-old men” (and women) who were upset with Brie’s bigotry had no impact is disingenuous. Again, look at their goals. Goal: 450 million domestically. Actual: 377 Million Domestically after release in close proximity to the highest anticipated film ever, cutting into fan’s ability to communicate their dissatisfaction, simultaneous global release (which also slowed word of mouth) and having no competition at all. There can be no doubt that we did impact the film domestically. Many have reported that China’s response to the film was also very negative, with many fans over there referring to Brie Larson as “too ugly to be a superhero,” and some even going so far as to compare her to their, “angry ex-wife.” So laugh all you want, Disney, but Brie Larson is hardly endearing herself to the global fan base, especially with video of her interacting with her teammates starting to get out there. One video of her interaction with Thor’s Chris Hemsworth suggests its not just dissatisfied fans Brie has a hard time getting along with. And let’s face reality… if you fix the problems and make Brie behave like a decent human being, when she appears in public and keep the movies good, we win. Keep going woke, and you’ll go broke eventually... and we will win. Either way, SJW Marvel will lose eventually. And that’s a good thing because these participation trophy generation “creatives” can learn a lot from failures. Sadly for them, the long term writing is already on the wall, and I think the ink is already dry.
No comments:
Post a Comment