It's mostly about Brie Larson and various comments she made in the run-up to the movie. I didn't pay much attention, but most of the bitching I heard was about her saying things like "I won't let the Captain Marvel premiere be infested by white men" and whatnot, which triggered the anti-SJW side of the internet something fierce.

 

I miss when every new piece of media wasn't at risk of triggering a new round of internet culture wars.

 

It's the continuing trend of Ghostbusters 2016 and Disney Star Wars. People give reasons why they dislike the movie, then social media decides it must be because they hate women. No doubt there's a percentage that actually hates women, but how big can it be? The feminist angle has a lot more to do with Brie Larson irl than the movie itself. IIRC she took a shot at male movie critics.

A lot of the discussion around CM I've seen was about concerns about her power level, that it would be unearned. On one hand, I can see it: Thor and Iron Man took a journey across multiple movies to get as powerful as they are. Otoh there's Vision, Wanda and Doctor Strange, all of whom are certainly comparable if not more powerful and they had much less development. The big argument is that CM might steal the thunder from OG Avengers in Endgame, where there's a desire from a portion of the fanbase to have Endgame be the last hurrah of the original six Avengers, and CM's presence threatens that. There was that small moment with Banner and Shuri in IW which shows that MCU is not above taking a cheap shot at more established characters to promote new ones.

Btw, is there anything in CM that seems like relevant knowledge to have for Endgame that's not covered on the Wikipedia page? I'm just not feeling this movie.

 

Not really, the only major thing being the mid-credits scene, which teases when exactly in the timeline she‘ll appear on Earth after the snap.

 

The last scene after she finished the antagonist is straight feminist rhetoric.

But let's all forget Brie Larson/SJW and just look at the movie itself. It's bland, badly directed and the worst thing is that it "redefines" a major character. I don't see *the* Fury from Avengers/Winter Soldier in it at all. He's just a bad comedic caricature. Mendelsohn is also plain awful. The cheese in this movie is hard to stomach after a certain spot.

 

I'll take your word for it. I haven't seen the movie and I've been burned out on Marvel movies since before guardians of the galaxy 2, so I doubt I'm ever going to.

I'll just sit here miserably pining for the days when a movie could just come out, without political bullshit tied into it, and people could see it or not and decide if they liked it or not, also without turning it into a political statement.

 

People seem to actively search for "SJW content insertion" to be outraged about it at this point.

 

Not really? News media and PR campaigns actively push that sorta news. If you're on facebook or try to keep up with any sort of entertainment news, it's going to be pushed in your face.

 

Fantasy. Utter fantasy. That Holy Grail does not exist.

 

I find the complaints about politics in movies to be truly bizarre - as if even superhero movies hadn't always been intrinsically political, being about racism (X-Men), the unaccountability of power (Justice League), and literally fighting Nazis (Captain American). You can certainly complain if the political stuff was handled badly, but that's no more an indictment of using movies as a medium to explore politics than is Twilight's abject shitness a reason for movies not to cover love and relationships.

My real issue with Captain Marvel - not that I've seen the movie - is that Marvel should never have allowed this new character to come in at so late a stage. Endgame ought to be - for both thematic, plot and emotional reasons - about the original Avengers overcoming death and despair, desperation and defeat, to avenge the world and reverse Thanos's omnicide. Introducing Carol Danvers at this stage, when we have little to no emotional attachment to her, is a boring deus ex machina, and makes no sense with regard to the story Marvel is trying to tell - what, is the story not about how a true hero never gives up, no matter how bleak and hopeless things are, so much as how someone else will come in and save the day?

 

Honestly, taken in isolation, it's a non-issue. It's just that the modern era is relentless in its attempts to politicize everything, such that even the simple decision to go or not go to see a given movie is now a political statement, and I'm just sick of it.

 

I do understand why people just want to enjoy fiction (especially the ones they have a nostalgic attachment to) in an uncomplicated way! On the other hand, there's also a case to be made that the best stories are the ones that challenge our pre-conception and make us improve as human beings.

Also, I think that all stories internalize some degree of political assumptions anyway, the issue is whether we agree with them (in which case it appears non-political) or not (in which case it appears needlessly politicized). Captain America is an excellent example of this - it's not terribly political to us, but that's only because we aren't Nazis, and I imagine in a different time and place (e.g. 1930s Europe) such a movie would be the furthest thing from apolitical. Similarly, stuff that's now hotly politicized (I dunno, a movie about trans people) may well not be in the future once moral and politic views change sufficiently.

 

I think I'm not communicating well, as I'm not talking about the content of the movie. I've got zero issue with a movie that makes a statement about whatever.

My issue is largely with the modern media and societal trends, wherein "you didn't like Black Panther because you're a racist" is viewed as a legitimate response to criticism of the movie, or Captain Marvel's release is treated as some kind of foundational cornerstone in feminist achievement, or people refusing to see Captain Marvel because Larson has feminism cooties, and so on.

I'm just so tired of people, on both sides of the aisle, trying to turn literally everything into a political weapon, and I wax nostalgic about the days before social media turned multiple generations into relentless orthodoxal drones slaved to the wider political machine. When I wanna talk about a movie, I just wanna talk about the goddamn movie, not listen to a diatribe about <insert political opinion and how the movie exults/destroys it here>.

 

I enjoyed it a bit more than I enjoyed the first Thor. Dr. Strange territory. Solid but not amazing. Was definitely fun, though.

Fury was definitely off, so much so that I wonder what happened to make him as deeply cynical as he was in earlier MCU movies. Would love a Fury origin story.

I'll echo the concerns about introducing the character this late in the game. If she's not handled perfectly, she'll come across as a plot device in Endgame more than anything else. Guess we'll see.

The "politics" surrounding the movie, or any mainstream movie really, have never bothered me. Partly because I lean pretty far left in general and partly because I was always taught that media, for the most part, inherently political no matter what. If I let that bother me I wouldn't be able to watch much of anything, and that'd suck.

 

Just saw it tonight and I share pretty much the exact same sentiment. I thought it was great fun and I really don't understand any of the "it's so feminist" stuff.

Spoiler

Like, there was some light slap down of stereotypical 90s misogyny when she blew up that monitor, or when stole that douchey guy's bike, and then there was the cheesy victory line after she blasted Jude Law, but other than that, it really wasn't blatantly "feminist" at all.

My main beef with the film was that Larson felt a bit wooden in the fight scenes where she was meant to be hugely enjoying herself. I also would have liked a few more 90s throwbacks. There were some fun tiny touches, but it needed more.

Also, Fury/Goose OTP. I want a flerken.

 

Spoiler

And at least to me, the guy being a douche was probably more about making it okay for our hero to steal his bike. It's a pretty common writing tool: have someone be a jerk so your hero won't lose audience sympathy for doing things to them that normally aren't okay.

And yes, we ALL want a flerken now. Goose is the best.

 

Yeah, about Goose...

Spoiler

How the fuck did a cat eat the Tesseract? I mean it's like the size of a Rubik's cube at least.

 

Spoiler

Because alien. It ate a few kree at the end, never mind the Tesseract. I think I read somewhere that it has a pocket dimension inside it, but that might have been a headcanon.

 

I feel like a lot of the themes being identified as "feminist" in the movie aren't really feminist at all. Like, there's a running theme of Jude Law's character gaslighting Carol, and her line at the end is the culmination of that theme. Gaslighting is not a feminist issue, and it doesn't become one just because in a particular instance the victim is a woman. On an individual level, it's a tool of manipulation open to anyone regardless of sex. With larger audiences it's a PR tool, again open to anyone, and regularly used by politicians of whatever sex.

Yes, the film has various moments where douchebags are exposed and get their comeuppance. Again, this is not a particularly feminist theme. Douchebags getting their comeuppance has been the bread and butter of cinema for decades. The person delivering that comeuppance being a woman doesn't make it feminist.

 

Unless there's a massive drop in box office after the opening weekend (BvS massive), MCU has another billion dollar grosser in the bag. If the alternate cut of Endgame rumours are true, we're getting the CM version.

Shit, I really hope CM is in the background in Endgame.