THE MARVELS: Stephen King Questions Why So Many People Are Happy About The Movie's Box Office Struggles

@bobevanz -

@Matchesz - Yeah Wonder Woman, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Wakanda Forever, and Wandavision were all successful and didn't see any of the response The Marvels has.

The fact is Brie Larson came into this franchise with some rich white girl feminist axe to grind and it turned a lot of people off. And the movie wasn't good to boot. There is no shortage of films that are commercially successful and beloved by audiences that have diverse casts of females, african americans, muslims, jews, asians, hispanics, we even let canadians be in movies (obviously /s).

@antirock - can you show us on the doll where Brie hurt you?

@DrReedRichards - It is "yuck MCU". But there are definitely people that aren't happy with the "M-She-U" agenda. Which is 100% a thing that Kevin Feige even said he was planning to do back in like 2018. He specifically said he was building an MCU where more than half the heroes would be female.

First of all, I hate the word "woke" which is why you'll never see me use it unless I'm talking about other people. But there are things I can understand about it.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/26/kevin-feige-says-more-female-superheroes-will-come-to-the-mcu

Like prioritizing women over men characters, even though the females they choose to prioritize are far less interesting. For example, Echo is a Daredevil side-character. Born Again is an 18 episode series. There's no reason her arc couldn't have been included there instead of giving her an entire show. Especially when you consider characters like Nova have been asked for from fans for years at this point. But they give Echo a series?

Or, Agatha Harkness. Is there any reason to give her her own series? Or Iron Heart?

These are all character that don't really need their own shows. They've never even had their own successful comics that haven't been cancelled within a year.

Meanwhile, characters like Ghost Rider and Nova sit on the back burner with no plans, as far as we know. Characters that people actually want to see in their own shows or movies.

And none of this is even taking into consideration all the gender swapped characters we've had. Eternals had some, Taskmaster, The Ancient One. To name a few.

It's not an issue of female leads. If they made a show about Storm, people would be interested. And she's female AND black. But people love Storm. No one complained about Black Widow because people like Black Widow. No one called that "woke" either, that I remember. Even though the movie itself left a little to be desired.

So it really comes down to prioritizing female characters, even when they don't deserve it, or when people don't care about them. And with The Marvels, they made a movie about the 2nd lowest viewed character on D+ (Ms Marvel), a side character who was only in WandaVision for a couple episodes and had a small part in the first Captain Marvel film (Photon), and Captain Marvel, who is already divisive among fans because of the actress. This is what I mean by prioritizing females over other interesting characters when they don't deserve it.

The same can be said about male characters. No one wants to see a female character get gender swapped into a male. Or a "POC" get race swapped into a white character. If they did that, everyone supporting gender and race swaps would be pissed, and rightfully so. And no one would rather see a movie or show about an uninteresting male character over an interesting female character either.

I know people like to just look at things at face value and make snap judgements. But there's more to it. It's not a matter of people hating women or "POC's". It's a matter of Feige having a clear idea that he wanted to make the MCU female heavy and was willing to do that without caring how uninteresting the females he chose to us are.

So, it's kind of both. The quality has dipped across the board. But people saying there is an agenda to prioritize women are also correct. And it feels like Feige has been trying to carry that out regardless of whether the female characters deserve it or not.

@DrReedRichards - Yeah, and I can't really say you're wrong either. Most of my conclusions are usually drawn from what I see other people saying on this site, and other areas like Facebook comments. So I get a mix if harder fans like us, and general audience people.

And you are right, because a lot of the Facebook comments just hate the MCU as a whole now. I do t really see them complain as much about the "M-She-U" thing.

@dagenspear - I didn't say she was...

@CorndogBurglar - PERFECT comment! I'm also glad that you are aware that use of the word "woke" is toxic. White folks have no business using that word when it comes from the Black community as a way of speaking about social justice/injustices or social consciousness. White dudes stole the word and perverted it, and that's wrong.

I understand what they mean by "woke" but they need to create they're OWN word and come up with some other moniker/term instead of stealing terms from the Black community and perverting the term.

@CorndogBurglar - Absolutely, GREAT comment. I mean there are literal racists, bigots, calling other people racists, bigots and whatnot. Lol!?

@dagenspear - The point is prioritizing characters that people actually care about seeing.

Most people aren't going to care about Echo, or Agatha Harkness, or Iron Heart. So don't prioritize them to get their own projects when you have fan favorite characters that fans have been asking for for years.

That's the point. Ghost Rider. Nova. Maybe Moon Knight Season 2? Maybe give Elsa Bloodstone her own show?

A good example of what I'm talking about is how Iron Heart was in Black Panther 2, and before that movie even released and anyone knee how fans reacted to her, they already green-lit an Iron Heart show. A character who has NEVER been popular.

This is a problem. Feige has prioritized these uninteresting characters simply so he can have a female-heavy MCU. And he just assumed we would it all up because it's the MCU.

@NickScryer -

Comparing the Flash - a movie starring an international criminal who choked a woman on camera and terrorized a Hawaiian island for like a year - to the Marvels - a movie that stars.....3 women who've done none of those things - is pretty perfectly making King's point for him.

I've seen people compare the responses to those films in this way multiple times and it seems people either genuinely don't remember the various reasons why people took joy in the Flash bombing (and to be fair, some of that was bigotry over Miller's preferred gender pronouns) or they're just cowards trying to shield themselves from criticism over why they're so happy to see The Marvel's bomb

@IronMan616 -

"How about Morbius? Who did Jared Leto terrorize?"

Jarred Leto has been accused of sleeping with underage girls multiple times, leads a cult, and Morbius was a film that's another in a long line of Sony shamelessly making villain films to milk the Spider-Man franchise while actually robbing fans of the ability to see him fight Spider-Man in actual good films. I think if you stopped and thought about this for 5 minutes you would realize how silly of an example that is

"Or the other Sony movies? "

As mentioned above, Sony's movies are intentionally half baked cash grabs that are universally terrible, and actually prevent those characters from interacting with Spider-Man. You already know this so no need to play dumb

"Zack Snyder? Who did he terrorize?"

Zack Snyder has directly insulted fans of the most popular superheroes of all time, while also directly ruining an entire universe of the most popular superheroes of all time. Again, you know this, so not sure the value in playing dumb

"How about movies like Twilight, 50 Shade? Those got plenty of hate, where are the ones defending this movie?"

Those movies had fans of those movies and the books they're based on defending them. You're asking the wrong person a question you don't care about anyway. why did you wake up on a Monday being so silly?

"Were ya'll also saying "don't bully those movies"?"

No one can "bully" a movie, so not sure what this even means. What's actually being said here is that the people throwing a party over The Marvels (a movie starring characters none of you even care about) or any MCU property failing are doing so for either extremely petty or transparently bigoted reasons, which is pretty obvious. I imagine you don't know how to engage on that topic honestly, coherently or intellectually, which is why you're deflecting to other films that had entirely different circumstances that actually invalidate your whole point.

@OmegaDaGrodd - You know that Miller isn't the only person who worked on that movie.

@OmegaDaGrodd - I get that some people found it entertaining that a movie starring possible criminal underperformed - but I expect better from professional journalists. It just shows hypocrisy and bias.
BTW, why is no one bashing on Loki? Doesn't it also feature a potential woman-assaulting pos?

@OmegaDaGrodd - They apply to Sony movies.

@NickScryer -

1. Miller isn't a possible criminal. We watched them choke a woman. And they've been accused of several other crimes/sick acts and has pled guilty to others. You should probably learn the facts surrounding Miller before commenting further on this

2. There's no "hypocrisy and bias" at play here, unless you remove every bit of context we know about all of these movies

3. Jonathan Majors isn't the star of Loki, and his potential assault has been a topic of controversy surrounding that show and the MCU has been an ongoing topic that isn't settled because we don't know the full story, nor has he been found guilty of anything

Again, this whole comparison makes even less sense when none of this stuff applies to the Marvels, a film that's only unique attribute is that it stars 3 women. There's *probably* a clear takeaway as to why that one failing is a source of joy for certain people