sfcityduck

You are contradicting yourself. You want new templates but complain about “diminishing male characters” or more accurately diminishing the old template. You admit audiences are fine with female centered movies, but then say we should not have female centered movies at the “expense of male characters” (or as you say elsewhere on this thread you want more male centered movies and less female centered movies). Which is it? Your positions are not coherent. You pay lip service to well-written female characters but apparently you cannot conceive of well-written female characters without “(un)diminished male characters”.

How much did Disney lose on each of their Marvel movies? This conversation is not about theme parks, espn, abc, Star Wars, etc. But even so Disney is weathering the pandemic well. The film industry is entering a rebound. So compare Marvel’s net to other top grossing movies of 2022. Did any lose money? How did they compare? These vague general assertions aren’t moving the needle because you no facts to support your conclusion.

I hate to break this to you, but the templates have always been painfully obvious. These are comic book movies. They follow well defined formulas that have around longer than most of us have been alive. There have always been templates. All that has changed is that females are no longer limited to the damsel in distress template and men aren’t always slotted into the near perfect hero who always comes through template. That is an improvement because now we get to see something other than the same old template and in shows like Loki and WandaVision we see the envelope being pushed in exciting and innovative ways instead of yet another retread of an old story.

Yes. They have a problem due to scarcity of access to vfx and they fired an abusive executive who wasn’t handling that problem well and reshuffled their schedule (a historically common occurrence) to help fix that problem. Which has what to do with female centered movies? Nothing. You guys are getting desperate and are just flinging mud against the walls in the hope some sticks.

2022 was a year impacted by the pandemic. Box office and ticket sales are down for the entire industry! That is not a Marvel problem. Marvel had four of the top ten grossing movies of 2022. No other property had more than two. Avatar beat out all competition on gross sales when it came out, including male centered Marvel movies. That Avatar 2 beats out Marvel movies again is not evidence of decline. It is to be expected. Don’t be naive, four out of ten top grossing movies of 2022 is success even if two movies beat you out for the top spot.

Marvel’s first 20 MCU movies had only one centered on a female character (and she got second billing). The next twelve arguably had six centered on a female character. How is that an “over correction”? It is 50%. How small a percentage do you want? The way you remedy the mistake of not telling enough female centered stories is you tell more. That’s not a “wrong” that’s a solution. If your criticism is truly about the storytelling, then I would expect you to advocate for BETTER stories about women, not LESS stories about women.

How is Marvel having four of the top 10 grossing films of 2022 an “apparent decline” again? That is a decline every other property would love to experience. Your premise is suspect.

Everything I do is knowing. My points are narrow and targeted to specific comments. If someone’s rant against ‘Disney” is predicated on the notion the MCU has been ruined by “female domination” when the facts being ignored evidence otherwise, there is probably an agenda or bias at work. Calling for a return to balance when only one of the first twenty films was centered on a female character and only six of the next twelve were is counter-factual. That’s a portrait of a lot of imbalance only now being replaced by balance not evidence of “female domination.” That complaint is more than a bit shrill. A good argument can be made that Marvel should put 19 movies centered on women if the goal is to acheive balance.

As a kid Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne/Austin X-Men were my favorite book too. Why? The art, writing, and most especially the civil rights for an oppressed minority theme. It was a very political book - maybe never more so than in Days of Future Past and the Magneto concentration camp origin story. Your favorite character Kitty Pryde was a rare Jewish character. It was diverse and not afraid to tackle political issues. I stopped buying new comics by 1990. Why? I thought the companies got too greedy, art got worse, and the artists started drawing pin-ups instead of narratives. I occasionally try new titles. The best are those that try to be fun not profound or near-pornographic. The only manga that I have loved was Lone Wolf. I don’t recall any great manga movies. Am I out of touch - yeah. But that makes me the sweet spot for the MCU since their bread and butter is my nostalgia. Which is a problem for them. I am too old to be a sustainable target audience anymore. They need to aim younger. The Miles Morales movie was a brilliant move, a joy to watch, and the SpiderGwen character was pretty cool. MCU has some good new characters. Give them a chance. Every Marvel movie has faults.

Translated: "I've had time to get used to the male heroes who have been around since the early 1960s. I have not had time to get used to the stories of the new characters which have been around less than ten years. So I find the stories I'm familiar with iconic and the stories I'm not flawed - even though the flaws are similar in both sets of stories." That's a bias based on your age, background, and experience. Comics are constantly recycling ideas. We tend to like the ones from our youth and dislike the later ones. A young person whose early comic reading experiences were Ironheart stories may not share your views. This site, by its nature, is largely old guys like me yelling "get off my lawn!" I like sharing the nostalgia with folks on this site, but this is not where I come to see what hipper younger people think. I'm old enough that I never really got into rap, my favorite band to watch is still U2, and my go to song lyric on this phenomenon would be: Come mothers and fathers throughout the landAnd don't criticize what you can't understandYour sons and your daughters are beyond your commandYour old road is rapidly agingPlease get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand

Arguments I've made up thread are being pointedly ignored. 19 of the MCU's first 20 movies were centered on men. 6 of the last 12 have arguably been centered on women. And yet, folks on this thread are literally complaining about "female dominance" and calling for "balance." Say wha? Facts matter. These stats don't lie and they rebut the statements made up thread. Opinions matter less so. The movie industry is hurting overall, so year to year box office comparisons are meaningless. Within year comparisons are meaningful. And in 2022, Disney/Marvel had four of the top 10 grossing movies. No other studio/property had more than two. That's not a decline. That's dominance. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the most-watched Disney Plus movie ever (which may be due to the fact that Disney+ has grown by huge margins the last three years). In 2023, Disney/Marvel has released one movie. It's presently the third highest grossing of this year. That's the kind of "decline" the other studios are dreaming of. Later this year Loki Season 2 is coming out. It will likely be a top tv show. Again, Disney is not failing. In my view, if your big complaint is "female dominance" you probably are being a bit lazy in your analysis. You certainly can complain about the writing. Marvel has had many horrible movies over the years and many subpar tv shows. That's almost always due to bad storytelling. That's show business. But even shows that feature great writing can underperform with audiences (Star Wars: Andor is the best example). Sometimes that is just because audience expectations were not aligned with what was delivered. That does not mean that the show was bad - it can be that the audience just wasn't ready (again Andor is a great example). The comic fan community may be less prepared for female centered stories, at least ones that aren't based on objectifying women, than they should be. At least that's the impression I get when I hear the shrill outrage about "female dominance." The outrage is outsized to the problems with the movies - which are pretty typical problems for Marvel movies. Marvel movies aren't serious Oscar contenders. They are just light fun entertainment which are hit and miss.

I'm not "blindly accusing" anyone. Corporations almost ALWAYS act of a desire to increase profits. Their Boards owe that duty to shareholders. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't find blaming the "corporations" as a convincing argument. In the end, corporations are fun by people, and some pursue profits in a more palatable way than others. Marvel historically has been one of the good ones. I don't see Disney undermining that at all.

Owlman/Nite Owl - I knew what you were saying. The original treatment of Watchmen written by Moore used the actual Charlton characters. Giordano made him change it. Moore went with it because he felt it gave him a little more artistic license. But the characters are all clearly the Charlton heroes. Here's a description of Charlton's Thunderbolt and it is clearly Ozymandias: Peter Cannon, orphaned son of an American medical team, was raised in a Himalayan lamasery, where his parents had sacrificed their lives combating the dreaded Black Plague! After attaining the highest degree of mental and physical perfection, he was entrusted with the knowledge of the ancient scrolls that bore the secret writings of past generations of wise men! From them he learned concentration, mind over matter, the art of activating and then harnessing the unused portions of the brain, that made seemingly fantastic feats possible! Then he returned to America with his faithful friend, Tabu, and sought out a new life, in a new land. I get the Fortress of Solitude reference, and I suspect that is some of the additional artistic license that made Moore accept not using the original Charlton heroes (remember he'd already done Miracleman/Marvelman) but I don't think you are using the term "parody" correctly. Mad does parody. This is a parody:

Riri is Ironheart. Kids are smarter now. The notion that a middle-aged drunk playboy can be a master of computer science is probably the unlikely scenario now. Tony was supposed to be 21 when he took over Stark. So not that different a story.

LoL! You are aware that the young woman in question is a genius on scholarship to MIT? Drunken playboy Tony would have been bought into the school by his dad. Being a CEO (that could be replaced by his girlfriend) is not indicative of the kind of genius that Tony is supposed to have. Tony and Peter and Riri are all equally implausible. Riri's story is not that different than Tom Holland Spiderman's.

Interesting take. I never saw it as parody. I saw it as deconstruction and critical commentary on superhero comics. I thought it was very established that Watchmen was based on Charlton hero - Owlman was intended to be Blue Beetle, Rorsach = the Question, Dr. Manhattan = Dr. Solar, Ozymandia = Thunderbolt, etc.

You just described what is happening here. Excessive criticism of scenarios that are not that different than Peter Parker being able to whip up miracle spidey thread (that would be worth billions) or other tech, playboy drunk Tony Stark being able against all odds an incredible genius able to MacGyver an Iron Man suit in the middle of nowhere, a 90 lb weakling turned into the best fighter and tactician and leader of all time, etc., none of which garner any outrage here because, well, they are men and we grew up with those stories of another age. I get that folks prefer to watch stories about people they can empathize with or want to be, and you are right that some men can't empathize with female characters and some people can't empathize with folks of a different ethnicity or religion or nationality or whatever. But that's not a problem with the storytelling, that's a problem with the audience. All of these stories require the viewer to suspend disbelief. If you can do it for Tony Stark and Peter Parker (the super-genius H.S. student) but not for a college girl, then you got to ask yourself why not.

To me the best part of the film was the three Spider-Man's. Otherwise, the film was a bit of a drag and the reboot at the end was super-annoying to me. (Reminded me of how they got out of the MJ marriage.) But the three Spider-Man's was pretty awesome. So for me, that meeting was not something to be overcome, it was something to be celebrated. To each their own.

The things you dislike were the central storyline of the last Spider-Man. It would not have been made without them.

Disagree. Stan Lee was a vocal supporter of civil rights. Some readers had your view back in the 1960s. One wrote a letter to complain about Marvel’s support for civil rights stating “I’m not a racist, just a concerned Marvelite who doesn’t want his favorite comic company to be ruined by something that doesn’t concern you as comic publishers.” Sounds exactly like your point. Stan Lee's response? This in a 1969 letters page: Stan didn't stop trying. Shortly before he died he posted a viedo stating: "Marvel has always been and always will be a reflection of the world right outside our window. That world may change and evolve, but the one thing that will never change is the way we tell our stories of heroism. Those stories have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender or color of their skin. The only things we don’t have room for are hatred, intolerance and bigotry.” 'nuff said. Lots of very profitable and entertaining move and tv products also provided important social and political messages. And nothing in Marvel/Disney is "angry." Quite the opposite.

I hate time travel and multi-verse's when they are not done well (Avengers, Rip Hunter) but Loki is doing it very well. Latest Spiderman did it well. Miles Morales did a fantastic job. Wandavision didn't go down that road at all. Nor did Hawkeye. I dunno, the outrage seems selective since you guys seem to have loved Avengers and the many Spidermans. And the MC comic universe has been on this road for 40 years. So hard for Marvel to avoid it. Still, while I share your frustration with reboots and time travel and multiverse stories, I can still appreciate the creativity and entertainment value of Loki! Not sure how anyone could not. Disney went out on a limb with that one and I am glad they did.

The title of this thread is "The Top 5 M-SHE-U Failures." Your response is self-contradictory. I think this thread has everything to do with female characters. If it didn't you wouldn't be complaining about the MCU being "too female" and about "female dominance." I have no problem with strong female characters or movies about females. In the MCU, the vast majority of films to date have centered on males. It took the MCU until its 20th film to give a female a significant title lead. Since that time only 6 of 12 films (50%) have arguably been female centered. I have no problem giving women a chance for a while. Not sure why anyone would. Your complaint about "too female" and "female dominance" is more than bit overstated and shrill.

I always assumed the EC logo was a copy of the DC 1940s bullet, but I also thought that those logos were copied from railroads who used round logos because of the engines:

Is there a shortage of AF 15s? I'd wait for better page quality.

How? Face Facts: Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk were never great properties. Kudos to Disney for taking a creative risk. Disney did a great job with Wandavision, Loki, and Hawkeye post-retirement. I enjoyed them all immensely. Fans like fan service movies. But they are often creatively bankrupt. Disney has shown a willingness to take risks to freshen a stale MCU up. Fans here who think the solution to all storytelling problems is just to recast and tell the same stories from their childhood over and over again aren't living in a creative world. I prefer worlds where creatives are empowerd to take a creative risks. That's what leads to great comics and movies. The real cautionary tale for Marvel fans is the four FF failures that were created without Disney's involvement. The best FF films were the Incredibles movies made by Disney.