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Captain Marvel, Feminism and Fanboy Angst
Efforts by a few fragile fanboys to sabotage "Captain Marvel" completely failed -- but they did succeed in sparking a few fights that aren't worth having.
Before "Captain Marvel" even opened, trolls targeted it on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and YouTube, spurring all three to make changes designed to screen out attacks from people who hadn't actually seen the film.
"Captain Marvel" beat the trolls handily, opening to $153 million domestically and $455 million worldwide. It is certain to be one of the fastest films to gross $1 billion at the box office.
Why were some men so threatened by a superhero movie?
Trolls cause lots of problems. But one of the less-obvious ones is the way they drive people to take extreme positions that divide us all.
In the case of "Captain Marvel," they treated a female-fronted superhero movie as an existential threat to men. That led other fans to celebrate "Captain Marvel" more vigorously than they otherwise might have. And that, in turn, made the film a more attractive target.
Was it really a game-changer? Was it a perfect embodiment of feminism? Was it flawless in every regard?
Were we really going to have this argument?
If you're interested in this topic, we strongly recommend Cara Buckley's story about it in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/movies/captain-marvel-brie-larson-rotten-tomatoes.html
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