Cinema Issues: Marvel Doesn’t Seem To Understand The X-Men

We have talked previously about the deviant morality in Hollywood and how a lot of modern screen writers cannot understand right from wrong. Well to this point consider Jean Grey in Brand New Day she is a murderer, she throws a man in front of a taxi, she drives a tank into a building full of people and blows it up amongst other things. However, the writers say she is just acting in rage so it’s fine and that she didn’t kill anyone directly, which is untrue.

Not only does this horribly butcher the character, please look at the comics wherein Jean’s sister is actually kidnapped notice how she handles it there, notice how she doesn’t endanger civilians and throw them in front of cars, it also shows they don’t understand the X-Men.

The idea that something bad has happened to you therefore you can fly into a rage and do whatever you like consequence free, is simply not true it is the philosophy of kids and progressives. Even when you’re upset you have to make moral choices and must hold yourself to that line. When Uncle Ben died did Spider-Man kill the killer, no. Did he go around throwing people in front of taxis for no reason, no. Yet jean did.

This reflects the fact that Hollywood no longer understands the concept of good vs bad, they only understand the concept of getting what they want and lashing out if they don’t get it. That philosophy of Hollywood and the left is why when they are offended they scream death threats at people, Jean Grey herein is a manifestation of that.

In the world of the X-Men the idea is that the world fears and hates them but they do good and risk their lives to save regular humans. If the X-Men are throwing random people in front of taxis then the world will be right to fear them and that fundamentally isn’t the X-Men at all. You could argue she hasn’t met Charles Xavier yet but the film presents her as being an adult she should still have a moral compass and shouldn’t need Charles to teach morality to her.

This all comes on the heels of the X-Men director for the MCU’s attempt at these characters saying that they will showing new stuff never before seen on screen. That is a colossal red flag, yes there are many great X-Men comics that haven’t been adapted however, it is almost certain they don’t mean that, they likely mean they’ll make up new adventures for these characters. With the way in which they introduced Jean Grey being so out of character and just so wrong this fills us with concern.

The butchering of Jean’s character isn’t the worst of it, it is the precedent it sets that is by far the more troubling thing.

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Cinema Issues: Career Suicide The Story Of Yahya Abdul-Mateen ii and Mahershala Ali

Recently Marvel has come under attack from stars of projects that didn’t happen in the case of Ali and from stars of shows that did not get renewed in the case of Abdul-Manteen, the accusation is the same, as the black show or film was not made, or renewed therefore racism. This is the very peak of entitled, you are not owed a project or a second season, the fact that shows like Eyes of Wakanda are made, and that Black Panther and Sam Wilson are central to the Marvel universe show that there is no racism going on.

What is going on is that these stars of colour think they can throw around accusations in order to get what they want, but as the case of Blake Lively will tell you that is a dumb strategy to try. First to Abdul-Manteen’s argument of optics, black shows are not the only ones being cancelled or not renewed for season two, look at Hawkeye, look at the scrapped sequel for the Eternals, but this is an inconvenient fact.

The movie going public are well aware of actors like this trying to claim to be the victim whilst they live in their mansions, and they are starting to get sick of it. The fact is the black audience, in countries that matter to the box office, so the collective west and large Asian markets, is so small that they could boycott the next wave of Marvel projects and it would not effect the bottom line at all, Africa as a market does not matter to the box office at all. All of that is to say, that trying to claim you’re an abused black man because you didn’t get a film or second season is not a winning strategy.

Moreover, look what happened to other ‘stars’ who ran their mouth about Disney/Marvel and had an acrimonious divorce with the studio, Tatiana Maslany’s She Hulk might as well be non-canon with a lot of the events of her show having been ignored. Then there is the case of Oscar Issac who threw away the chance of Moon Knight ever getting a second season after he came after Disney for suspending Jimmy Kimmel. Blade can get a new film post Secret Wars with Snipes, Ali has put himself out of business, and if Disney ever did want to bring back Simon Williams there are plenty of other actors who could take over the part.

Behaving in the way these two men have, with the level of entitlement and using their race as a card to mean they cannot be fired and that they must be given things is disgusting. The idea of equality is that everyone is treated the same so if Issac and Maslany can get themselves fired and their characters written off so should these two men.

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Cinema Issues: The Death Of Marvel’s Disney + Dreams

News has broken that other than Daredevil Born Again no other series will be returning to Disney +, despite all those fake leaker accounts promising Hawkeye season 2. There’ll be some one offs and mini series, but by and large the focus will shift to animation as it is cheaper and easier to do.

As you can imagine people are upset, why won’t we get another season of Wonder Man despite the fact it flopped. However, this move is great for Marvel, you shouldn’t have to watch a 6 hours series in order to understand a film you want to watch as such stopping it is for the best.

Moreover, a hell of a lot of the things that happened in the Disney + shows either were never referenced again or were just written out, looking at you Hulk’s son and Kingpin losing an eye. The fact is a lot of these series just weren’t good at all, and so it makes sense to cast them off. When they did mix in with the proper MCU films it was generally in so much as providing a supporting character or explaining a motive, they just weren’t needed.

There are also a lot of reasons why Disney and marvel as a brand want to remove themselves from Marvel’s Disney + offerings and a lot of this comes down to politics. Both Tatiana Maslany and Oscar Issac have publicly attacked Disney in the press and online and as such She Hulk and Moon Knight died there and then, She Hulk has been heavily ignored and vast parts of it simply seem to be non-canon now.

In many ways Disney leaving this arena whilst they still have some of their credibility left is a win, let’s hope Wonder Man, Riri Williams, She Hulk and the rest stay buried forever and don’t pop up for a jump scare in the next Avengers film.

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Cinema Issues Spider-Man Brand New Day And Superhero Fatigue

Just like the success of the Odyssey doesn’t prove that woke films are back in vogue, Spider-Man Brand New Day’s success doesn’t change the fact Superheroes are on the way out.

One only needs to look at recent Superhero box office failures such as Captain America Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four or Supergirl or consider the bad viewing numbers of many of the streaming shows.

Folks will always watch Spider-Man he’s a popular character just like folks will watch the Avengers films but just wait for the next B level character and see how few people turn out for it. The fatigue hasn’t gone away it just never applied to the big characters people care about.

Nolan could pull off woke as he’s is Christopher Nolan and sold the experience of seeing his film, another director couldn’t do that, likewise the Marvels 2 wouldn’t be able to be profitable simply because Brand New Day was as no one cares about those characters.

Some say it is bad movie fatigue we say it is bad character fatigue.

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Spider-Man Brand New Day: Spider-Man Is Depressed

Summary Jean Grey shows up for no reason and decides to act like a villain. Spider-Man pines over his girlfriend.

Let’s get one thing right off the bat as our article from a few days ago said putting Jean Grey into the MCU sans X-Men is dumb as hell. Jean does not behave like herself here, and her backstory around her missing sister etc would have fit very well into a gritty X-Men film but without the light hearted world of a Spider-Man film it really sticks out. If you removed her entirely from the plot and just had it be Spidey working with and then going up against the leader of Damage Control it would have been much better.

The arc they give Peter is probably the best of the MCU, he is broken as Peter but on top of the world as Spider-Man he has lost everyone and needs to learn to trust and let people in again. This is a serious and grown up Spider-Man, we wouldn’t be surprised if kids like this one a bit less as it’s far less about dances and curfews and far more about loneliness, sadness and trauma. Seeing Spider-Man at a low ebb is kind of what the character is all about though.

You’d argue that the supporting cast does a lot of the heavy lifting here, John Bernthal is wonderful as the Punisher and you really see how much he cares about Peter. Yelana is funny and steals the scenes she isn’t in. However, the star of the side cast is arguably Zendaya. Now a number of the contributors to this magazine do not have a high opinion of Zendaya however, here she is the emotional core of the film. The fact that she can’t remember anything about Peter and that they don’t get back together in the end is incredibly mature and grown up.

There is a real sense of transition with this film not the least due to the changes happening to Peter with his Spider DNA but because it shifts from being a children’s film to something much more serious and grown up.

3.5/5

Pros.

Peter and MJ

Frank

The action and the go pro scenes

The humour

Cons.

The stuff with Jean Grey

The end credits tease isn’t good

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Cinema Issues: The Jean Grey Issue Spider-Man Brand New Day

At the time of writing we do not know if Jean Grey is in Spider-Man 4 and if it is Sadie Sink’s mysterious role however a lot of online speculation says that’s the case.

If it is then it is a terrible terrible decision for multiple reasons, let’s get into it.

1- It introduces her first as a villain: Jean Grey of the X-Men outside of her Phoenix possessions is a good guy, however, a lot of the rumours linking Grey to this film say that she is the villain pulling the strings behind the scenes. Why would she be doing this? It would be incredibly against the character and make very little sense.

2- It cheapens the idea of introducing the MCU’s own X-Men at a later date: we know the X-Men are coming however, the drips and drabs strategy we have been getting isn’t working. The idea was to have an X-Men film pretty immediately after Secret Wars when the universe will be reset why would it make sense to have just Jean Grey introduced early here rather than alongside her fellow X-Men there, it wouldn’t.

3- Spider-Man is still not able to hold his own film: under the MCU there seems to be an idea that you can’t just have a Spider-Man film, like Sony did for years. You need Iron Man, you need the multiverse, you need an X-Man. Repeatedly it seems like Peter cannot just have his own adventure and this film is already crowded with the likes of the Hulk and the Punisher showing up for some reason, now they have to put Jean Grey in as well, it’s just stupid. People want grounded, focused stories not cameo fests.

We long hoped that she is Firestar a different mutant character but one that would be a much more organic fit for the film, however, it would not explain the seeming mind control elements of the plot.

If it is Jean Grey it is a poorly thought through desperate move.

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Cinema Issues: Audiences Inability To Wait

The other day there was supposed footage from Avengers Doomsday doing the rounds, supposedly leaked. It was in incredibly bad quality and was quite hard to watch. Looking at the view count clearly a lot of people had looked at it.

However, this is a symptom of a wider problem. People used to be able to wait for things to wait for a trailer, to wait for the film to come out, yet now people are getting excited and rushing to see a poor quality leaked bit of test footage that likely won’t even make it into the film.

This does a disservice to fans as it shows them as being desperate, fans shouldn’t be desperate they should be more discerning and only want to see the best possible version of the footage that is actually finished.

Sadly it is unlikely to change anytime soon.

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Punisher One More Kill: A Fear of Gareth Ennis

Summary: The MCU tried to adapt Welcome Back, Frank and does what it always does.

This is why the MCU can’t make a Blade film, sometimes people just want to see badass characters being badass, not processing trauma, not having a crying, just being cool. You’re making a comic book film/made for streaming one shot, for God sake.

The first half of this is Frank being sad, the amount of time wasted herein becomes more and more noticeable later.

The second half tries to give the people what they want but then just abruptly ends with no how do you do, to maybe be picked up in Spiderman Brand New Day.

John Wick understands the badass factor, Mortal Kombat understands the badass factor, the MCU is allergic.

Plus as has been memed heavily since there is a God awful CGI shot of Frank falling, wherein they swap the stuntman’s face with John’s and my my it looks terrible.

Overall, it’s about twenty minutes of goodness wrapped in 30 minutes of disappointment.

Pros.

Some cool Punisher action

It leaves you wanting more of the good bits

Cons

The sad Frank sequences

The ending

The CGI

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Daredevil Born Again Season 2 Overview: It Got Worse

So the TV show brings back Jessica Jones a fan favourite character, but why not Luke Cage because he is a deadbeat father who is out of the country working for the CIA, he shows up in the last few minutes after all the fighting is over no doubt to be emasculated next season.

The reason why Muse was barely in the show last season before being killed off was because they wanted to have Daredevil’s girlfriend take over the mantle and become a female version of the character, who was in one issue of a comic once.

Matt is overshadowed in his own show by the crime stopping adventures of Karen Page, at the end of the series he goes to jail despite being a force for good, so that next season they can give someone else the mantel of Daredevil whilst he’s gone, perhaps Electra.

The decision to not feature the Punisher this season at all, but have Dex essential serve the same purpose is a choice and and a weird one at that.

Finally having Kingpin be exiled after all he has done is ridiculous, people have died as a result of him, yet Daredevil pleds with the crowd to let him leave. It’s just dumb. It’s suicidal empathy.

As you can guess it’s bad the first half of the season was bad and this somehow got worse. Overall since the first episode of season 1 of Born Again it has been rapidly running down hill.

0.5/5

Pros.

The new White Tiger

Cons.

It makes Daredevil a background character

The writing makes no sense

Characters who should be there aren’t

It feels sanitised

How they handle Luke Cage

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Cinema Issues: Marvel Doubles Down On Slop

So Daredevil has been sidelined in his own show. Certain members of the cast have already come out to disparage and name call the audience.

The Punisher will be a lot less brutal and almost comedic in Brand New Day

And Peter Parker is second fiddle to the community within Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man.

Can you feel that the last vestige of a brand are dying.

So the head of Marvel TV has been taking, and boy has he shown he shouldn’t be in a job. He has renewed Wonder Man for season 2, because of DEI , or maybe because it was given a two season order but this is despite the fact it was the least watched Disney + show. More people watched Echo. He claims it’s because people loved the show the numbers don’t reflect that.

Then in terms of Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man he said it is about a community telling a community tale. We’re sorry we thought it was a Spider-Man show. Also which community only has white people as villains outside of Peter and feels the need to have every single race and ethnicity ticked off on a list.

They have renewed Marvel Zombies for a season 2, that was a show we were excited for before it just became a girl boss show and a way for them to continue to include Riri despite the God awful ratings for that show.

Marvel’s efforts with Disney + have been what’s taken the brand from the heights of End Game to where we are now. Yes they made some bad films, but by and large it has been the terrible Disney + shows that have inflicted the mortal blows on the brand.

Last year the MCU released 3 films, Captain Falcon the Brave New World, The Thunderbolts, which we liked, and Fantastic Four. All of them lost money. As for Disney + you had Daredevil which was met with collective disappointment, except from us though season 2 has taken us there as well, Iron Heart, Wonder Man, Eyes of Wakanda, Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, and Marvel Zombie non of which had any cultural staying power. Pandering hard to the black community and to women, who don’t traditionally watch a lot of superhero fare doesn’t appear to be giving them the audience they want.

Never fear when in doubt just keep doing the same thing and expect different results, the definition of insanity. Born Again season leans into overt left wing messaging and relegates Daredevil, they green light season two of Wonder Man despite the terrible ratings, Punisher, a character fans actually liked is neutered.

At this point I think Doomsday will be big but nowhere near the levels of Infinity War or End Game not even close. I think years of alienating the audience calling fans toxic, and making the projects you want to make rather than what audiences ask for has come around to bite. They did it to themselves.

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