I’ve already published a proper review of the Captain Marvel movie – a movie that I didn’t think was magnificent and didn’t think was a disappointment either, but which I generally enjoyed.
But what’s bugged me for months is the extent to which trolls and anti-feminists have been trying to destroy this movie and its momentum.
Months before the film was released, online haters were insisting it was going to be terrible, it was going to ‘destroy the MCU’, that Brie Larson was the Anti Christ, and so on and so forth.
They also confidently predicted Captain Marvel would do so badly, lose so much money, that it would be a disaster for the MCU.
In the end, Captain Marvel exceeded all box-office expectations in its opening week. So the trolls reverted to conspiracy theories that Disney had bought up all the tickets to inflate the perception of the film’s success, and that the film was in fact playing to empty cinemas.
I don’t even particularly think the movie was all that great: it was good, I enjoyed it. It had flaws and misfires: and it had successes and winning elements too. But I’m so tired of everything being dragged into the ‘culture war’ and made into a toxic mess.
They’re still at it, by the way: still insisting Captain Marvel was a disaster, that it’s the ‘death of the MCU’, blah, blah.
It’s as if the toxicity around The Last Jedi opened a pandora’s box – and now people just can’t get enough of the toxicity and hatred and the overly dramatic reactions (or preactions) to these things.
I want to take a moment here to just burst a couple of the key things still doing the rounds on Yawn-Tube and other platforms. Because these dumb videos keep appearing on my feeds.
Let’s start.
Captain Marvel is made way too over-the-top powerful in this film just because she’s a woman…
No, not really. I mean, yeah, she’s big-time powerful at the end. But that’s how powerful she is in the comic books – you know, in the source material. There’s no getting around that. What should they have done – deliberately made her less powerful?
Disney/Marvel bought all the tickets for the Captain Marvel screenings all around the world…
I mean, really? Look, I do conspiracy theories all the time – and it’s dumb shit like this that gives conspiracy theories a bad name. Does it occur to these people that the MCU is hugely popular and these films always do the business at the box office?
Also, this film was hyped up – it was bound to get people into the cinemas. Also, it may have had an above-average quota of young girls going to see it, which would push its numbers slightly above some of the other MCU releases.
Also, this film is right before the massively anticipated Avengers: End Game – which is another reason it would’ve done particularly well: because people knew or felt that Captain Marvel would be tied in directly to End Game. So that’s another reason this film would do very good numbers.
Instead, the trolls want us to believe Disney literally bought millions of tickets to a movie they already paid for. Look, dudes, Disney doesn’t squander money – spending millions to profit from a film that you already spent millions making makes no sense. And all the stupid photos of empty cinema screenings are not proof – they’re just stupid.
Clue: those photos could’ve been from any cinema during any film at any time. Try better.
This film rewrites the whole MCU to make Captain Marvel the main hero…
It doesn’t though. It provides some new context to Nick Fury and the Avengers Initiative, and to the Cosmic Cube (sorry, I mean ‘tesseract’), etc, but it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. Look at the trailers for End Game: it’s all centered on Tony Stark, as it should be at this point.
Captain Marvel is now the first Avenger instead of Captain America…
Not really. She scarpers at the end of the film. She only wants Fury to contact her in the case of an extreme emergency. She’s nowhere to be seen between 1995 and the events of the first MCU movies. Captain America is still the ‘First Avenger’, the first person Fury approaches for the Avengers Initiative.
They’re trying to make Captain Marvel the most important hero in the MCU…
They’re not though. Outside of Nick Fury, no one in the MCU even knows she exists. Iron Man and Captain America are still bigger heroes, with more in-universe fame and prestige.
They’re making Captain Marvel the new ‘face’ or main character of the MCU…
The fact that Iron Man, Cap, Thor or Hulk might no longer be featured in the MCU beyond End Game isn’t some conspiratorial agenda to do away with male protagonists: it’s to do with contract durations, and possibly the fact that these actors have been at this for a long time and may not want to continue indefinitely. Robert Downey Jr has been playing Tony Stark for over ten years at this point.
If they do have to move new characters to the forefront, why not Captain Marvel? That would be entirely in keeping with the comic book scene, where Captain Marvel is very much of the three or four ‘senior’ hero characters in the contemporary Marvel Comics tapestry. Who else is going to come to the leadership role? Kid Spiderman?
Captain Marvel is being used as a deus-ex-machina to be the one to come in and save the day and kill Thanos…
Well, we don’t know that. I think that’s unlikely. It’s very unlikely that the likes of Stark or Rogers are going to be minimised or downplayed in End Game, particularly if this is their swan song. It’s more likely that Iron Man is going to be the main hero in End Game, with Captain Marvel playing a relatively small role compared to him. Besides, there’s also Adam Warlock to keep in mind.
Captain Marvel isn’t even that important in the comics: they’re just making her way bigger than she really is… because ‘Feminism’…
Really? Have you been living under a rock? Captain Marvel or Carol Danvers is one of the three or four most important or senior heroes in contemporary Marvel Comics. She’s up there with Iron Man and Captain America. Only someone who doesn’t know the comic books would think she’s a minor character just being bigged up by the MCU.
In comic book terms, she’s a bigger presence and more prominent character than even Thor, Doctor Strange or the Hulk. Just read any major event from the last five years and you’ll know that Captain Marvel is one of the big guns.
Captain Marvel is an over-the-top feminist attack on men…
Is it though? I mean, it’s a film that deals a lot in ‘girl power’, sure, and issues of identity and empowerment. But is there anything in there that could be construed as anti-male, offensive to men or belittling towards masculinity?
And, after decades of endless male protagonists and machismo in Hollywood movies, is it really such a hard pill to swallow that there’s a female superhero being a bad-ass? And is there really anyone on the planet who’d rather watch an Aqua Man movie than a Captain Marvel movie…?
Sorry, I just needed to get all of that off my chest. I’m just getting sick of the toxification of absolutely everything in our culture. I’m beginning to feel sorry for all the people who can’t enjoy anything anymore, because they’re always choking on the toxic cloud they themselves are helping to keep in the air.
