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.
thefartographer@lemm.ee 3 months ago
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
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
The villain in 87 was absolutely fantastic though.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The rock or the Trump insert that had more likeable characteristics than the real Trump?
MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
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.
Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 3 months ago
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
III@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The first Wonder Woman had all those tropes too. People just seem to not remember that. I have never figured out why.
ICastFist@programming.dev 3 months ago
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
thefartographer@lemm.ee 3 months ago
I’d argue that the first one used those tropes whereas 87 fell back into them to the point that they became themes.
Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 3 months ago
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