@therealsilvermane

Stay classy, Mecha_Fantastic. Anyway...fans weren't fighting over the quality of Last Jedi as a movie. For the most part, Star Wars fans were nearly universally disappointed in Last Jedi, mostly because it ditched the story of Force Awakens and the way it treated Luke Skywalker. Irony is best left out of the Star Wars franchise. Carol Danvers Captain Marvel was a brand new character in the MCU. She had no previous setups from a previous movie, other than her logo appearing in the Infinity War credit scene, so there were no story expectations for her. She was a blank slate. The Last Jedi was not a blank slate. There were big story expectations from that movie and audiences were let down, for the most part, because the sequel never really followed through on what was promised in Force Awakens. Captain Marvel was hugely important to the Avengers mission in the beginning and the end of Endgame, but she mattered not at all when it came to the character stories of Endgame. It was still cool seeing her do her part to help save the universe, but I can see why Marvel wanted to focus the human story on the original Avengers team for this film.

Even if the gender percentage breakdown between WW and CM which you presented is correct, CM made $1.1 billion dollars. WW made $820 million worldwide. If you factor in the percentage of women who saw each film, Captain Marvel still made more money from women audience members than Wonder Woman did, about $60 million more. So more women went to see Captain Marvel than they did Wonder Woman.

Captain Marvel made $1.1 billion dollars worldwide, basically curb stomping the original Wonder Woman's $800 million worldwide take . Though Captain Marvel is still growing her base of diehard fans, she still has a base of diehard fans. Kelly Clarkson recently told Hailee Steinfeld on her show that Captain Marvel is her favorite superhero. A lot of little girls are slowly jumping from the Wonder Woman boat over to the Captain Marvel boat. If there was any disappointment in the Captain Marvel character at all it was her limited showing in Avengers Endgame. WW84 made made $166 million worldwide. The movie was nearly universally derided and Wonder Woman probably lost a lot of fans and street cred with general audiences. The character also rapes an innocent man whose identity is stolen by her dead boyfriend. WW84 was the main hope of a dying DC superhero movie universe and now that hope has dwindled to a slight flicker. Captain Marvel was a success. WW84 was a complete and utter failure. They are not comparable.

Scott Lang is also the Sexiest Man Alive.

Last Jedi was a movie that had huge expectations as it continued the cliffhanger story from Force Awakens and would re-introduce Luke Skywalker after a 30+ year absence. And it didn't really divide Star Wars fans that much. Critics loved the movie. Fans for most part didn't like the movie. And why? Because it completely upended the story set up in Force Awakens and turned Luke Skywalker, the hero of the most beloved movie franchise of all time, from the New Hope to an old milk drinking curmudgeon. Captain Marvel had no expectations for fans as she was a new character. The only expectation was that she would be the saviour of Endgame and she really wasn't. She contributed for sure, but she didn't ultimately save the day. Stark did that. MCU fans for the most part put Captain Marvel as a movie in the middle of the pack. Some like me have it at the top. Some have it at the bottom. The only reason the character is seen as divisive is because of the backlash against her by a horde of toxic male fans opposed to a woman taking over the MCU. To their credit, they were right to be afraid, because Captain Marvel will be taking over. The story that Marvel is setting up (beyond the magic stuff and the street level Disney+ stuff) will see to that. Captain Marvel and Last Jedi are not comparable.

progressive math! it may not really equal 100%, but it feels so right to me! Aw Jeez, sorry for the crummy math. Believe it or not I'm supposed to be good at the subject. After a Google search, the only numbers I found that came close to this 65% male comic book reader number was the 2017 New York Comic Con Demographic Snapshot that said that 63% of fans who purchased comics and graphic novels were men. Another Google search will then find different numbers with a slightly more even split gender-wise. It doesn't really matter. A gender split of moviegoing fans of the MCU finds that it's something like 55% male, 45% female. As I've said, I know just as many female fans of the MCU as I do male fans, and very few of those female fans have ever read the comics. The new generation of MCU fans, the kids (like my partner's 11 year old niece) have never read the comics at all because kids don't really read new comic books these days. While Marvel Studios definitely keeps the comics fans in mind as it expands and grows the MCU, it doesn't make the stories just for them. Movie and television audience demographics and expectations have come a long way since the 1960s.

Spider-Man is the flagship character of Marvel and the most popular superhero on the planet but he can't be the center of the MCU because his appearances in the MCU have to be limited because of Sony's control over the character. That's why the MCU Spider-Man films have zero effect on the greater MCU storyline. And I understand that Captain Marvel will most likely never achieve the popularity of Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark but probably no MCU character ever will, not even Tom Holland's Peter Parker (understand that the craze around No Way Home is not because it's a Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, it's because it's a Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and Tom Holland Spider-Man movie aka live action Spiderverse movie). The way I see it Marvel Studios should continue to keep telling live action modern adaptations of the Marvel Comics super-hero stories and the fans can pick their favorites. I think Marvel will be content not having all the love rest on one character but spreading the love around to all the characters and not leaving them off to the side like they did for so long with Hawkeye and Black Widow. The Disney+ shows now allow Marvel to tell the stories of those side characters and thus spread the love around to every hero in the MCU. I think Captain Marvel will become a central figure in the MCU, not only because Marvel Studios wants its namesake character front and center, but because the coming MCU storyline will necessitate it. And the groundwork is already being laid in Phase Four. Nick Fury is her major supporter and is already becoming a bigtime player due to his alliance with the Skrulls. Her best friend Maria Rambeau founded SWORD which will become the new SHIELD going forward. And when Wong wants to discuss the implications of the Ten Rings, who does he bring in? Bruce Banner and Carol Danvers. As far as the cosmic side of the MCU goes, Carol Danvers is already being positioned to soon be in a leadership role.

Marvel Studios has already appealed to female audiences and they are there in huge numbers. They no longer have to try. I haven't checked the statistical numbers lately but if you say the MCU fanbase is 65% male, that means that 45% of the fanbase is female. That's not a number to ignore. I personally know almost as many female fans of the MCU as male fans. I never thought I'd see the day that I'd have a serious conversation about the MCU with a woman over 60 but I have. And these women I have conversations with about the MCU all love Captain Marvel and love the idea of her. My partner's 11 year old niece, who has never seen a Marvel movie because her conservative parents won't let her watch the PG-13 Marvel movies until she turns 13, says her favorite superhero is Captain Marvel. My own partner, who hates the MCU God bless her soul, says the only MCU films she can stand to watch are Thor (because of Chris Hemsworth), Black Panther (because she thinks it's a good movie), and Captain Marvel (because finally there's a Marvel movie since Iron Man that she's not required to have seen twenty other movies to understand, she likes it because she likes how it's just a girl hero doing the same things any hero would do, and also because she finds Brie Larson's title character charming). The women fans are there. And the ones I know dig Captain Marvel. And Captain Marvel has already brought in money. Her two major movie appearances in CM and Endgame are among the highest grossing movies of all time. Even YouTube Captain Marvel haters kept making one hate video after another about the Captain because they'd get more hits if they talked about Captain Marvel. She makes news, makes money, and brings the attention. addendum: I forgot my partner also likes Ant-Man because of Paul Rudd and that his power is that he can control ants.

Why it matters that Marvel made Captain Marvel so strong is that it shows that Marvel is willing to invest that kind of power in this character which means they have bigger plans for Captain Marvel beyond a cute origin story movie and a bit part in Avengers Endgame, as in Captain Marvel will become a central figure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Observation: Tobey Maguire Peter Parker and Tom Holland Peter Parker each had a trilogy of surrogate father figures in their respective Spider-Man trilogies. Tobey Peter's father figures were the villains of each film in his trilogy and had a hand in shaping Peter into a man. Norman Osborn saw Peter as a brother to Harry and offered advice through the film after Uncle Ben died. Otto Octavius was a mentor of sorts to Peter in college. Flint Marko was the man who accidentally shot Uncle Ben, thus setting Peter on his journey to understand the meaning of great power. Tom Peter's father figures were the MCU superhero guest-stars of each film. Tony Stark, Nick Fury (Talos), and Stephen Strange all had a hand in guiding Peter through each film's journey and becoming a better hero afterwards.

Idk, I think Dafoe's real face in No Way Home was way more Goblin-like than anything the makeup department could dream up.

Willem Dafoe didn't play some kind of power card to force Marvel Studios and Pascal Pictures to completely change the screenplay and have a bigger role in the story. What he said was he wanted to do a lot of his own stunt work and action scenes and not just sit on the sidelines for them and not just step in for a face shot during an action sequence. He said he feels he can earn the right to be the character more if he also does his own action scenes. That's what he meant with the "cameo" line. Basically he wanted to be more like Brie Larson. Here is a link to the story complete with misleading headline: https://www.ign.com/articles/willem-dafoe-didnt-want-to-come-back-to-spider-man-if-it-was-just-a-cameo

I guess Marvel Studios does do test screenings. But Grace Randolph has been called out by many directors like James Gunn and Cathy Yan (Birds of Prey) for spreading false news stories based on the slightest hearsay about their movies.

Captain Marvel is the strongest Avenger. Girl power is here to stay in the MCU and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. That's why Carol Danvers will become the next leader of the Avengers.

Older reports of a test screening of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness bombing with a test audience and that being the reason for reshoots is complete and utter b****it. My proof? First, Marvel Studios doesn't do test screenings. Second, if that Grace Rudolph lady is pushing the story on her YouTube channel then you can bet it's dubious. I don't know why exactly they're doing reshoots, but I do know it's all part of the filmmaking storytelling process. And I also know it's not because it bombed with a test audience.

Also, this is apparently news from a couple months ago, but I hadn't heard it. A Spectrum Disney+ series?

Reading is fundamental. You might learn something.

I think you might be a little confused about the meaning of "pandering" and "tokenization" when it comes to film and television. Pandering refers to giving the audience what they want. In fact, Spider-Man No Way Home might be the definition of a pandering film because it gave fans exactly what they wanted, a Spiderverse movie featuring the Spider-Mans of three different Spider-Man franchises swinging around together. However, one could say MCU films like Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, and Shang-Chi were not pandering at all because audiences weren't really asking for those films and their popularity upon release was unexpected. If the MCU were to truly pander to its audience, it would simply make another Iron Man movie or another Steve Rogers Captain America movie instead of the more challenging option of trying to make a Sam Wilson Captain America appeal to the general audience. Tokenization is an older "industry term" used when most U.S. movie, television show, and commercial sets featured a mostly white cast and one or two black cast members (or other non-white ethnicity) was included for the sake of not making the cast seem all white. Nowadays, Hollywood and independent productions have figured out how to better tell the stories of all Americans, not just the white ones. And even if a Hollywood movie production wants its cast to be full of actors of different ethnicities for no real good reason, that's not tokenization, either. There is no Hollywood rule that says all your actors have to be white and if they're not white than you better have a darn good reason for not using all white actors. Again, tokenization is the U.S. industry practice of making one or two or cast members black or non-white in a large cast of mostly white actors in order to not look exclusionary of black or non-white people. You accuse the MCU of pandering to the audience and tokenization apparently in a racial and gender sense, and you've referenced Shang-Chi and Eternals in past arguments. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings doesn't pander to general audiences because the general audience never really asked for a Shang-Chi movie. Now, you could argue that Shang-Chi was made in part for the China market, but that's business sense, not pandering to the audience. The Shang-Chi movie isn't a tokenized movie, either. Shang-Chi is an actual character from Marvel Comics who is Chinese. The movie simply portrays that character and his story. I fail to see the tokenization in that. Shang-Chi is simply another character in Marvel Studios' menagerie of obscure super-heroes like Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy who have become household names because of the popularity of the MCU. I don't care if you didn't like Shang-Chi or a couple of disgruntled fans here didn't, a lot of fans loved the movie and it has one of the highest RT user ratings of a MCU movie. The Eternals is another movie that can't be pandering to the audience if the audience never asked for the movie to begin with. Nobody knew what to expect with this movie as it was an unknown. This movie pandered to nobody. As for the Eternals being guilty of tokenization, I assume you mean because the Eternals featured an international cast of actors from Korea, Pakistan, Mexico, and a Chinese-British actor. I'm not counting the two American actors, or the two U.K. actors in your "tokenization" accusation as I assume you aren't either. It's not tokenization if the movie calls for actors from every corner of the globe because these super-heroes actually represent beings who have lived all over the world but also aren't tied to one country. They are not only galactic beings, they are worldly beings. The story and the cast reflects that. I don't care if you didn't find any of the characters relatable. A lot of fans liked this movie and yeah, found some of the characters relatable. Social media has revealed that Makkari, the deaf Eternal, is now a fan favorite. In the end, my response to your post is that Shang-Chi and Eternals was neither pandering to audiences nor did it feature token characters. The story called for the cast that we got, particularly in the ancientness and worldliness of the Eternals characters, and that's what we got.

If we can learn to unconditionally accept an actor portraying a superhero who doesn't resemble ourselves in skin color, race, gender, or other factor that makes us all different, then maybe we can learn to unconditionally accept those same people in other areas of life. Comic books can teach us a lot.

Kung Fu the 70's TV series was whitewashed by Warner Bros because they simply didn't think American audiences would be interested in an actual Chinese actor in the role. Meanwhile kung fu films were all the rage in 1970's America. Bruce Lee auditioned for the role of Kwai Chang Caine, but was rejected in favor of David Carradine.

Thank the Maker! Maybe now I can post in peace without Bosco getting all up in my grill all the time.

By the way, I'm not attacking anybody. I simply invoked a worldwide prayer for peace and acceptance of solo Marvel movie super-heroes whether or not they are black, white, Asian, male, female, gay, or alien. I'm the one who seems to be getting attacked for that simple prayer to the true One Above All.

My prayers were to soften the hearts of those against the diversity of movies like Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Shang-Chi, and Eternals because of their films' diversity. If you disliked Captain Marvel because you strictly didn't like Brie Larson's acting and didn't have a problem with the diversity of the aforementioned films than my prayer doesn't apply to you.