"Deadpool & Wolverine" has made more money in its' opening weekend than the entire box office runs of "The Marvels" and "Madame Web" - combined.
Deadpool & Wolverine: $438,300,000
The Marvels: $206,136,825
Madame Web: $100,298,817
(Yes, I know Madame Web isn't an MCU movie.)
Here's looking at you, bub.
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It's almost like people like good movies. Who would have thunk it?
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Also:
I've seen it said that people didn't like The Marvels or Madame Web because the average comic movie audience is sexist as hell and hates even the idea of female protagonists. I'm not going to pretend that such shitheads don't exist, but they're a tiny and loud minority. Female lead characters (or lead characters of any underrepresented demographic) don't automatically lower the bar for quality for the movie. If it's a bad movie, it's still a bad movie.
I myself belong to a couple underrepresented demographics, although I won't specify here which ones. I get told that I should like x or y movie because lead character is like me, but then the movie is bad with bad writing and bad acting and so on and so forth. It's extra fun when the character that I'm supposed to identify with is insufferable as all hell (thanks guys, you telling me that I'm insufferable?). Pandering doesn't make a movie better. Actually make a good movie, and people will like it.
I'd argue that the poor performance of female-led comic book movies is absolutely due to sexism.
Not on the part of the fans, though.
It's like studios, writers, directors, whoever panics when they're gonna put a woman/girl on-screen and no longer know how to use their actors.
Women in an action scene? Easy peasy
Women as an object of affection? All day with their eyes closed
Women as comic relief? Eh, they're working on it
But once a woman is supposed to command the scene and be in charge of the action, these movies seem to fall right back into sexist tropes. For some reason, the creators can't just write a superhero movie and shove a woman or girl in the lead role.
Case in point: Wonder Woman
The first Wonder Woman movie was essentially Thor, but with better pacing. Of course it was a great fucking film. WW87? Holy shit did they hit the sexism hard for that movie. They turned Wonder Woman into a lovesick puppy who couldn't decide between saving the fucking world and boning some dude who hosted her dead boyfriend's spirit. I get it and it probably could have worked had they not made the villain a cat-lady stereotype turned chick-flick hot girl turned literal cat-lady.
They keep pandering to the lowest common denominator and audiences won't settle for that anymore. Not for their favorite characters who can literally do anything
The villain in 87 was absolutely fantastic though.
The rock or the Trump insert that had more likeable characteristics than the real Trump?
I think calling him Trump is underselling him. He's a personification of what capitalists think capitalism is. He's the American dream. He's infinite growth. He's a good deal. And even being a mythologised portrayal of capitalism, he's still bad. If you give capitalists exactly what they want and how they want it, they'll still destroy the world. That's the point of the movie.
I had to be told he was a Trump insert. I honestly thought he was just a Gordon Gekko type. His only redeeming quality was he did love his son, which is why I didn't make the Trump connection at first.
Broadly speaking, I get it, but too many aspects of the movie were either undercooked or someone needed to be willing to tell Patty Jenkins that her ideas aren't very good. I agree with RLM said that the movie was a bunch of empty platitudes. That ending monologue was nonsense.
Also, just bring the boyfriend back with a body made of clay. It side steps so many issues and plays into Wonder Woman's original origin.
Solid agree.
Especially when the female/LGBT/Black/immigrant story would actually need to deal with or acknowledge difficult topics executives and big studios back off rather than embrace it. It often leaves things feeling weak, or forced.
And then if you add an underbaked romance plot... Bleh
The first Wonder Woman had all those tropes too. People just seem to not remember that. I have never figured out why.
Having the tropes doesn't make the movie bad per se. A bad use of the tropes makes it bad.
WW1 works as a dumb action flick. WW87 fails even at that. Diane giving that moral speech at the climax of the movie felt like a 80s cartoon "moral lesson" - thinking about it, it sure feels like the movie was a big budget, 80s toy-seller cartoon episode
I'd argue that the first one used those tropes whereas 87 fell back into them to the point that they became themes.
Solid agree.
Especially when the female/LGBT/Black/immigrant story would actually need to deal with or acknowledge difficult topics executives and big studios back off rather than embrace it. It often leaves things feeling weak, or forced.
And then if you add an underbaked romance plot because women need to be paired up to have a happy ending... Bleh
If it's a bad movie, it's still a bad movie.
For me personally, the reason I absolutely despised Captain Marvel had absolutely nothing to do with the gender. I hated that movie for the same reason I hate almost all depictions of Superman: universe defining power with no real character growth, meaningful struggle or change.
They start with godlike power but don't know it, discover they have godlike power, and then proceed to trivially dismantle the plot with some contrivance thrown in that doesn't pose any danger at all to them. It just makes for incredibly boring storytelling.
I REALLY wanted to like Captain Marvel and not just because I have a huge crush on Brie Larson but they really needed to bring their A game writers and directors for her. She really needed to be the bridge from the previous generation to the next. I felt like most of us wanted to root for her in the series but it felt just off ... almost like the MCU expected us to root for her without putting in the legwork.
I'm not a writer and I'm shit with storytelling but I really thought they should have started her off on Earth and shown her vulnerable side and have her be more "human" before going all godmode.
The problem is that Carol Danvers' arc in Captain Marvel is being emotionally repressed by the Kree. She's a soldier from a regressive society that reduces people to mere weapons. She wins the movie when she embraces her emotions and gains full control of her powers. This is a perfectly fine movie plot on a logical level. Character has a flaw, character overcomes flaw in order to become self actualised and resolve the plot. It's even socially relevant, because women's emotions being treated as a taboo is a political issue in our own society. This is classic sci-fi writing. It's even the plot of five different Halo games.
Unfortunately, it necessitates that Brie Larson must spend 90% of the movie showing absolutely no emotion or feeling. Which is a TERRIBLE directing decision especially for the new flagship of your franchise.
There are ways to use framing to play on this kind of thing and make a good movie out of an emotionless character. Look at Spock and Data. Look at Blade Runner. But Captain Marvel chose not to do that, and to play the superhero genre straight, for... some reason, which resulted in a bad movie.
Have you seen 'My Adventures with Superman'? I think they did a great job in this series dealing with the issues you mention.
As an aside, One Punch Man is an example of a series where the protagonist is absurdly OP but super entertaining nonetheless - not a comic book series though, of course.
My Adventures with Superman
No, never heard of it. I'll check it out at some point.
I did like One Punch Man, and yes, they lampshade the sheer ridiculousness of his power level, and even mess with preconceptions by having the origin story be as mundane as possible. I think the core difference between One Punch Man and Superman/Captain Marvel is that OPM isn't supposed to be taken seriously. The mismatch is the joke.
I've never bought the idea that men need men leading characters to identify with for a movie to be successful. If you want to sell a man a magazine put a woman on the cover. If you want to sell a woman a magazine put a woman on the cover. Now this gets into all kinds of sticky issues with objectification and male fantasy, but at least proves the starting point.
Also, Wolverine has a much longer track record than alternate spider heroes. I'm not sure I would have seen this Deadpool in the theater if it weren't for the presence of Wolverine.
And if you want to sell something to men AND women, call Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell
They can definitely cover all the possibilities.
yep, everyone loved Arcane, because was a good series, don't matter if it have gay and woman characters
Arcane is worth a watch for the visual style alone, it looks like a bunch of hand drawn paintings in motion, it looks sublime. That it has a good story to boot is a real cherry on top
trueee same thing with miles morales
I loved arcane and I am a Dota 2 fan and a LoL hater.
holy shit arcane was so good
Yeah, it's funny that they'll accuse the same people whose favorites include the early Terminator, Alien, Matrix, etc movies of being sexist against strong female roles.
Sorry, but no. I loved the original Ghostbusters because of the chemistry and skill of the original actors. Weaver, Hamilton, and Moss were right up there in my favorites along with Schwarzenegger, Reeves, and Stuart.
Stuff like Ghostbusters (2016), or The Marvel's aren't bad because of female leads, they're bad because of bad writing it acting and also because trying to successfully follow a massively popular series is hard, which is also why latter Terminator/Alien/Matrix/Batman/etc movies tends to be an uphill - losing -battle, nevermind if you're replacing part of what made it popular.
But it is still possible to capture the magic with the right mix of old and new, which is why "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" managed to crawl back from the grave after the 2016 attempt (with a young female lead, because that lead was very talented in her role and had a good script to act from)
I'm looking forward to the eventual movie where Rogue sucks Capt Marvel's powers out and leaves her for dead. Hopefully the writing will be good in that one.
