By David Futrelle
You’ve probably heard of the Christian movie review sites that rate whether or not the latest Hollywood offerings will be good wholesome fun for the entire (evangelical Christian) family, carefully cataloging each film’s unsavory elements, from beheadings to glimpses of nipple, and even how many times characters in movies take the Lord’s name in vain?
For example, did you know that the film Hereditary contains “20 f-words … Multiple uses of the s-word and ‘h—‘ [and] some 10 misuses of God’s and Jesus’ name?” Though somehow I doubt that swearing will be what most offends fundamentalist Christians watching the film.
Anyway, now there’s a site that seems to have decided to perform a similar service for the sort of fragile male comic book nerds who get mad when allegedly man-hating ladies star in movies about superheroes in spandex, small businesses specializing in ghost-capture, and wars in space (among the stars, as it were).
So let’s take a look at the Cosmic Book News review of Captain Marvel: The One With the Lady in It, which opened (big) this weekend.
Like an unfortunate number of fragile comic book dudes who think they speak for all fans, Cosmic Book News’ Editor in Chief Matt McGloin doesn’t much like the film — though to his credit he has actually seen it, unlike most of those who have decided largely based on their own hurt feelings that the film is the worst thing to ever hit cinemas.
“Overall, Captain Marvel comes off as a rather dull and lackluster movie,” McGloin writes.
[J]oining Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, it is another spit in the face of Marvel Cosmic fans.
Ah, yes, very helpful to cite that universally loathed cinematic disaster Guardians of the Galaxy, which somehow managed to garner a 91% critic score and a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (back before angry dudes started review-bombing every movie they saw as a crime against maleness).
The film is loaded with anti-male imagery, footage and dialogue, which is simply insulting as well as alienating (similar to Disney Star Wars).
Apparently he’s still mad about Laura Dern’s purple hair in The Last Jedi.
It felt as if there were two different drafts of the movie, an initial draft with the storyline, but a second draft was commissioned which saw the directors, Feige and the producers go over it with a fine tooth comb to add the feminist male-bashing elements, of which there were many that came off forced and completely out of place, like much of the movie.
Yes. I’m sure that’s exactly how it happened. You may not know this, but all Hollywood movie scripts these days go through a rigorous misandering process, including an extensive review by the Misandry Board, to ensure that they contain the requisite amount of male-bashing, before hitting the screen.
You may wonder what specific misandries are contained in Captain Marvel. Well, our helpful reviewer has provided a list, conveniently titled “Male-bashing elements in Captain Marvel” in large type in case you weren’t sure that’s what they were.
Here are what I would say are the Top Five male-bashing elements from his list.
Carol’s dad is mean to her. …
When Carol crashed into the Blockbuster, she blew the head off Arnold Schwarzenegger (a male) of the True Lies standee, not Jamie Lee Curtis (a female).
Carol is hit on and insulted by the motorcycle guy.
What is wrong with calling a girl a young lady? Talos calls Maria a young lady a couple of times, which she gets mad about. Huh?
And the most egregious misandering of all:
Nick Fury … is shown washing dishes.
I’m really not sure is the male gender will be able to survive such an assault.
Apparently, these egregious assaults on maleness aren’t the only things wrong with the film. McGloin also feels that Captain Marvel doesn’t smile enough, that Nick Fury lost his eye for the wrong reason, and that the music used for the film was too girl-powery or something.
No Doubt’s “Just A Girl” was awful and didn’t fit with the scene or footage. Certainly, if we are trying to push the “girl power” aspect of the movie even further, a better song could have been picked. It was so out of place and killed all the build up. A majority of the songs also felt out of place, as they too, were pushing an obvious agenda.
Having not seen the film, I have no idea how well “Just a Girl” fits the scene it’s used in, but looking at the list of songs featured in the film I have to say that I am shocked that a film about a female superhero set in the 1990s contains numerous songs sung and sometimes also written and performed by women that were popular in the 1990s.
Be careful out there, fellas! You never know when or where you might be misandered. Not even the movie theaters are safe these days!
H/T — This tweet by @renfamous alerted me to the existence of this amazing review
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Why can’t these nincompoops speak for fucking themselves?
Diehard Cosmic Marvel fan here. The movies are fine. Could they be better? Yes, mainly if Marvel were able to use Galactus.
(Please, Marvel, just take one of your other many cosmic entities and put them in the same role. I can accept it. Just don’t leave me without my third person speaking space god fix.)
Yeah, camera lenses also make me go weak at the knees. I mean, look at this fine piece of glass:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Sigma_200-500mm_at_Photokina.jpg
Even as a child I understood “not using the Lord’s name in vain” to be “do not invoke God to do evil things or to justify your selfish behavior”.
My money is on Christopher Crosby being like Desperate Ambrose; hates manospherians, but only because they’re ‘losers’ who bring “normal men” down.
@Emily:
REAL MEN ™ gots WOMEN to do that for ’em! REAL MEN ™ gots a WIFE to do that for ’em (or mebbe their mother). Men that’s gots to do the dishes themselves ain’t REAL MEN ™, cause they ain’t gots a woman. Sure, REAL MEN ™ provide for ’emselves, but those fellers ain’t provided for ’emselves properly, cuz they ain’t gone get ’emselves one a them there women gadgets to keep th’house shipshape. Men that’s gots to do the dishes themselves by hand are even worse, cause they ain’ts even gots the moolah to buy themselves a motherf*cking manly DISHWASHER! (Dishwashers are manly cuz they’re engineering and technology, baby, and if you’re a real good lil’ girl, maybe your man’ll even buy you one of them things for Valentine’s Day, a real easy to use one so you’ll only have to press a coupla buttons on it and not worry yer pretty lil’ head anymore than that about it, sweetcakes.)
Note: As ever, post contains sarcasm. As ever, I have no idea what sort of accent that’s supposed to be, or why exactly I used it. Now, I do believe I need to go bathe my hands in bleach for having typed that out.
@vaiyt:
Interesting. Though I’m not religious, I was always under the impression that it meant “Don’t say ‘God’ or Jesus or whatever unless you mean it, and not as a swear word.” Hence why people say “Gosh” instead of “God.” Or “gadzooks” instead of “God’s hooks.”
OT: Oh Jesus fuck. (Which I’m pretty sure is taking the lord’s name in vain). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/china-database-lists-breedready-status-of-18-million-women
So, Fury doing dishes is bad?
But no mention of Fury cooing over the cat?
I liked Captain Marvel better than Black Panther.
I don’t like revenge plots.
Actually, their real agenda is capital gain by conning women into seeing it. Feminism has been hijacked by capitalists and is used as a marketing gimmick. Just like the Gillette commercial. Even Dove. It’s all to get us to buy products we don’t actually need.
It’s a well-known fact that the proper males of the human species start producing estrogen when touching dishes and/or the utensils. That’s why they eat with their hands or from a trough.
Eh? I could have sworn Beta was what you want the Midgar Zolom to teach your Enemy Skill materia so you can easily fry your way through most of the rest of Disc 1.
I’ve seen a reaction to this review that demanded, that from now on every MCU movie should include a scene, where Nick Fury does some common household chore.
…
I’m inclined to agree with it. :3
@Malitia
After this movie, I just want to meet Fury’s mother, Fury.
Saw the movie yesterday – it’s not perfect but it’s pretty good. For what it’s worth Nick Fury washing dishes is such a minor thing that I didn’t even process that he did it until seeing this.
If anything I’m amazed they’re not mad over him childishly cooing at a cat repeatedly. But then to know that they’d have to actually see the movie.
@Malitia
THIS. Seriously, my favourite Marvel book is still the Claremont/Davis Excalibur because it involved them just goofing about the Braddock Manor or their island tower with whatever interdimensional oddballs happened to crash the place.
@Flora
’85 baby here too and if that’s the case, I gotta see it. I still remember “Just A Girl” was track 7 on the original Big Shiny Tunes. Listened to the crap out of that track when I was a kid. Never really got into No Doubt though.
I do notice that these clowns seem to lack the ability to just… enjoy things. I mean, in terms of sheer spectacle, I think the worst a Marvel movie could ever really be is merely “okay.” But when you have one that’s as well crafted as Captain Marvel or Black Panther, these guys can’t get over the couple of moments that hit their “OMG minority empowerment!” detectors. Even I can look past a work of fiction’s obvious right-wing worldview if it’s just goofy enough to be fun (thinking Death Wish 3, although any 80s action movie fits that bill). These guys seem incapable of it.
@Contrapangloss
Single men who live alone buy a small dishwasher.
I know, I know, I was taken aback by this as well. I had to clarify. I said “uh, you mean to tell me, dude, that you cannot be arsed to run a bit of water over a couple of plates now and then, and you would rather buy what seems to me like an entirely superfluous piece of machinery and have it take up space and accumulate smelly, dirty dishes until it’s full enough to run, and have you taken leave of your senses?”
And he said “minutes spent doing dishes accumulate over time and I’m already spending a lot of my time at work, so I don’t want anything even remotely like a chore taking away any of my free time, i.e. I would rather watch movies and play videogames instead of doing dishes or whatnot, and cleaning is annoying and I am lazy.”
I do not leave this here in condemnation of (gender or person specific) slovenliness or sloth, merely as an answer to your question straight from the horse’s mouth.
OT, but on the topic of movies, I watched a couple this weekend. The first was the documentary Free Solo. which won Best Doc at this year’s Oscars. I didn’t realize that Alex Honnold was the first and only person to ever free solo (climbing without any protective equipment) El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Because I remember an out-of-shape and in his mid-50s Captain Kirk attempting a free solo of El Cap at the beginning of the godawful Star Trek V and at the time I figured “somebody’s had to have done it.” Apparently not. I mean, I don’t blame folks who wouldn’t dare climb a practically vertical granite cliff face with no ropes or safety gear; sadly, Spock’s magic rocket boots don’t exist yet… just surprised me is all.
It was remarkable to watch Alex train and track every movement he had to make. Just the copious notes of every placement of his hands and feet up every pitch… the kind of mental focus and attention to detail it demands. He spends his mornings doing chin ups with his fingertips. I felt for his poor girlfriend, having to contemplate the idea that she might not see him again. That was just gutwrenching.
Still, if you’re interested in movie that’s part character study and part human endurance showcase, see Free Solo.
The other film I saw was The Favourite which was… there. Okay, Olivia Colman definitely turned in an Oscar-worthy performance as the vulnerable, wounded and childish Anne, but the rest… guh…. I’m a history nerd, so historical dramas typically interest me, but this was an historical drama by the guy who made The Lobster. Way too much padding, wayyyy too much fish-eye lens, not nearly enough substance for a courtly power-struggle movie. I mean, the political intrigues of the 1% is already a topic that nobody can relate to, but the movie is so devoid of surrounding context that it put all its eggs in the “you care about this contest between Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, right?” basket that at multiple times during the film, I was saying out loud “is this going anywhere?”
Given the ending, it really wasn’t going much of anywhere. *sigh*
@Katamount:
There is a video on YouTube in which someone shows Honnold rock-climbing scenes from movies so he can point out what they’re getting wrong, and one of those scenes is the beginning of Star Trek V (Honnold quite likes that one, because he remembers watching it as a kid).
Saw Captain Marvel on Friday – ’77 baby here and was happily pandered to (down to Windows 95 lol). Only criticisms of the Just a Girl fight scene are a) the song wasn’t loud enough (the chorus of that baby is meant to be sung and screamed out loud while banging your head on the dance floor), and b) they could have edited or choreographed it a bit better to better match the musical phrasing and lyrics (former singer/guitarist and former ballrom dancer, so I’m a sucker for that kind of thing).
Loved Black Panther more because of the awesome world-building with Wakanda, but Captain Marvel is def in my favourites. I just wished I had kept my eyes off the net in the time leading up to it. Am sick and tired of the haters trying to suck the fun out of everything.
But does he LOOK LIKE A B****?!
__
I know there aren’t really producers whose job is to make sure each film has enough misandrist, but that is now my dream job.
Also, I loved Thor Ragnarok, but I had no idea it was due to it having misandrist baked right into the crust. I thought I just liked fun. Who knew?
Re: Small dish washers:
I have one of those. It came with the kitchen.
And I really like it. Cooking twice fills it up.
My mental health being what it is the small dishwasher is a blessing.
Running and emptying the dishwasher I can manage on top of cooking.
Washing dishes by hand? I wouldn’t cook nearly as much and subsist mostly of cereal, yoghurt and take out.
My mental bandwidth for adulting is very limited. Which is why I employ a cleaning lady and concentrate on essential things, like paying bills on time, doing my taxes, and work…
Small appliances have their use for people with disabilities.
Just a Girl fit the scene perfectly. 🙂
@Knitting Cat Lady
Seconding the love for small dishwashers. I love mine. Apart from the whole hygiene benefits, it’s a really good barometer for my mental health; how many days does it take for me to empty it once the cycle has ended? If more than 12 hours, it’s time to cut myself some slack and not take on anything too taxing, as I’m in/heading for a low.
The Just a Girl scene was one of my favorites!
I liked getting a sort of break from the dramatic tension and just see Carol kicking butt at the height of her power in a fun way. I thought that was fine to use with the less important antagonists. There are other scenes near the end — like when she takes on the missiles, the Supreme Intelligence, etc — that are more dramatic.
Complaining about the use of No Doubt’s “I’m Just a Girl”? When this comes out on Blu-Ray, I ought to recut that scene with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” just to show him what a real feminist propaganda piece looks like. The distinct lack of riot grrrl punk rock in my man-bashing ’90s girl-power superhero movie was a distinct disappointment.
(In all seriousness, the movie was about what I hoped for. Not as immediately mind-blowing as Black Panther, but mid-tier Marvel is still damn good by most other standards. Brie Larson was good, she had great chemistry with both Samuel L. Jackson and Lashana Lynch, and overall, it worked really well. One big oversight, though, is that the plot twist might’ve packed a bigger punch and had more subtext behind it if they set this in the 2000s instead of the ’90s. Swap out No Doubt and Nirvana for the Dixie Chicks and Green Day. If you’ve seen the movie, and you know what the Dixie Chicks and Green Day were known for in the 2000s, you probably know what I’m talking about. Then again, given that people are already complaining about this film being “too political” — which, seriously, how? — putting that subtext behind the twist might’ve just made their heads explode.)
“I have had it with these motherf#@kin’ dirty dishes in this motherf#@kin’ sink!”