Well, Marvel Studios has been busy lately and recently dropped The Marvels trailer looking for the fanfare of united Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), and Photon (Teyonah Parris). Good times, right?
Eh, not so much.
It’s peculiar, considering the hullabaloo of each individual character. Captain Marvel earned more than $1.1B at the box office. To this day, Ms. Marvel has a 98% on the Tomatometer, thanks to an impressive Disney+ TV series. And after Monica Rambeau’s characters commanded her scenes, anticipation was high. Did any of that matter? Absolutely not.
In less than 12 hours, there was a sizable foray of 7.6 million views on The Marvels trailer. Sounds like a peek at Avengers: Infinity War or something. The cosmic powers were at their highest voltage, it seemed. Out of all those views, 318,000 people liked the trailer. Unfortunately, 214,000 disliked it.
And the trend has continued. At the time of this post, there have been 16M views with 60K comments, 479K likes, and 358K dislikes. What is significant is this hate campaign has set a record as the worst-performing Marvel Studios trailer. Ever.
Kevin Feige and His Anti-Marvelous Women
This is a problem the DC Comics/Warner Bros./DC Films/DC Studios collective has not faced. Wonder Woman is part of DC’s hallowed trinity. Fans accepted and welcomed Wonder Woman by the fans. She was a force in Batman v. Superman. And seeing Gal Gadot getting friendly with the OG Lynda Carter to pass her torch was awesome. Her origin story got good numbers, and we’ll forget what happened after that because Warner Bros. wet the bed on that one.
The point is the DC faithful gave it a strong chance to succeed. On the other dank and dusty side of that coin, the equivalent of a middle finger came from Marvel’s acolytes to Brie Larson. Why?! She is an Oscar-winning actress and yet, no open arms for her. Her character could have smacked Thanos around by herself and yet, no one cared she was there.
If you’re unfamiliar with that term, imagine what you think is a “male chauvinist” and amp that up a few. Whereas chauvinism is a blind and misguided feeling of superiority, misogyny bumps up to hate. You can’t call it bigotry because Captain Marvel is white, Photon (Monica Rambeau) is black, Black Widow is an immigrant, She-Hulk is from the States, Ms. Marvel is Muslim, and Valkyrie is…well, she’s from out of town.
Yet, nothing but a bucket of piss and vinegar welcomes them all. It’s nonsensical and ludicrous, yet, the majority of nerds come out in droves against any female superhero. Still, need convincing?
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- Kevin Feige feared he would lose his job before the first Avengers film came out in 2012, as Mark Ruffalo explained in a riveting interview with UK’s The Independent. Essentially, Feige had to stand up to Marvel management (see the next bullet) for women to have a place in an MCU film.
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- In 2014, Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter penned an inflammatory email about the profitability and viability of a female-led superhero film before Captain Marvel was released. That leaked email began a firestorm of pigheaded and prehistoric opinions about women. (He has since been canned — albeit, last month — so whatevs and farewell to his toxic, asshat machismo.
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- Social listening leader, Brandwatch, did a US survey in 2015 trolling more than 700,000 tweets. The results were thunderous, finding Black Widow was the “most hated Avenger.” And it wasn’t even close.
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- In 2019, Captain Marvel‘s debut on the screen made $1.1B. Nonetheless, Brie Larson’s depiction caused a global toilet bowl pigheaded fans wanted to flush. It has a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.8 on IMDB, and a lackluster 64% on Metacritic.
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- Even though Ms. Marvel received a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, the 2022 Disney+ series became the worst-performing TV drama ever with 6.6/10.
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- And then there was She-Hulk in 2022, which polarized the MCU nation–786K likes and 553K dislikes on the trailer alone.
The Marvels Weren’t Supposed to Fight This
If you know the story of The Marvels, (and by reading the cesspool of trailer ratings, you haven’t), you know the enemy is slated to be the powerful Kree warrior and disgruntled general Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton).
Dar-Benn is a formidable foe and should whoop up on these cosmic enforcers pretty good. This will be a good fight and should pose to be a respectful movie with CGI for days! If you know the comics story from 1991, this cavalcade of characters should amp you up.
Yet, it’s not because The Marvels are not only fighting some butthurt military officer; they are fighting a gaggle of misogynists review bombing the movie.
It’s not in the script. Feige wasn’t planning on this enemy in the dry reads. The actors weren’t working out to fight this big bad. Yet, there it is, rearing its ugly and acne-ridden face expelling its hot breath and halitosis all over another female-led superhero movie.
Rolling Stone shared this cut-throat calamity this way:
On YouTube, the official upload from Marvel Studios has been hit by over 300,000 dislikes and thousands of copypasta comments—a popular way to spam content and drown out positive replies by inundating comment sections with similar messaging.
Messages aren’t targeted toward a BIPOC or LGBTQ+ person–just female. Culture, color, or creed is of no consequence to these incel turds–just no girl power. This problem isn’t going to fade anytime soon, which is why real fans from any comic line or multiverse need to come together and clown those fools.
And if Feige doesn’t think those idiots are his real enemy, he needs to go back to the comics. Misogyny has always been in the storyline, and it’s time to draw that out once and for all.
Since he saw ‘Dune’ in the $1 movie theater as a kid, this guy has been a lover of geek culture. It wasn’t until he became a professional copywriter, ghostwriter, and speechwriter that he began to write about it (a lot).
From the gravitas of the Sith, the genius of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, or the gluttony of today’s comic fan, SPW digs intelligent debate about entertainment. He’s also addicted to listicles, storytelling, useless trivia, and the Oxford comma. And, he prefers his puns intended.