A perplexed Steven King asked today on Twitter why people were gloating over the failure of The Marvels.
Good question Mr. King! For those not tracking The Marvels is the newest superhero from Disney in the Marvel Universe. It has had the weakest opening weekend of any Marvel Universe movie to date.
Why are people dunking on the failure? Starting at least 10-year ago - there was a creeping injection of contemporary progressive politics inside the comic books - and in the social media accounts of the writers and creatives at Marvel and other comic book companies. Now there has always been some political commentary in comic books - but it has typically been secondary to the story and characterization.
In the past 10 years franchise characters and storylines were substantially altered to fit current progressive political visions. This created a substantial negative reaction with a large segment of fans. These arguments spilled out on to social media and intensified year after year. People lost jobs, comic sales plummeted as the politicization increase. The writer who substantially reimagined Captain Marvel as angry feminist - Kelly Sue DeConnick - infamously said "if you dont like my politics don't buy my book". Not only did they not buy they book they didn't watch the new movie. The previous Captain Marvel movies performed quite well - so DeConnick doesn't deserve all of the blame - there are likely many reasons.
For comic book fans who had strong emotional attachment to the characters, and felt abandoned and angry at the ideological hostility coming from Marvel (and other comic companies) seeing The Marvels fail, feels like vindication or revenge.
Realistically there are many reasons why the Marvels failed, "girl power" is no longer novel, the world has been saturated by almost two decades of superhero movies there is substantial fatigue, with the Hollywood strikes the movie has been underpromoted.
For comic book fans who had strong emotional attachment to the characters, and felt abandoned and angry at the ideological hostility coming from Marvel and other comic companies - seeing The Marvels fail - likely feels like vindication or revenge.
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