The "anti-SJW" crusade against films: Has it actually accomplished anything?

[Kaleredar]

Preceding the release of Captain Marvel, I'm sure no shortage of you were familiar with the outrage shown by various groups (and certainly no shortage of them here on MMO champion) at the "female empowerment" tone of the film, outrage at comments purportedly made by the star Brie Larson, and so on and so forth. People took to sites like IMDB and rotten tomatoes before the film opened and tanked the audience ratings for a film they had never seen. Following its release, people cited empty theaters and conspiracies of Disney having bought out tickets to fudge the data to try and detract from the films ostensible success.

Other films featuring protagonists depicting minorities or women have faced similar amounts of vitriol. Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and The Last Jedi all faced lambasting from certain groups (I'll style them "anti-SJW," because why not) because of their choices to prominently feature the aforementioned women, minorities, and so forth.

Nevertheless, these films have all been colossal box office successes.

I'll draw attention back to Captain Marvel, which had perhaps the greatest amount of disdain towards it going in: This past week it passed the one billion dollar global gross. It is, demonstrably and unequivocally, a box office success. Very obviously, the "anti-SJW" crowd's vehement attempts to dissuade people from seeing the film by tanking its audience ratings, misrepresenting various comments and spreading rumors about malfeasance by Disney amounted to absolutely nothing. Disney is not doing some soul-searching while kicking back on their billion dollar pile of money.


Now, let me make something clear: I'm not saying that these films are perfect or without due criticism. Far from it in fact. I think ALL of them have legitimate criticisms that can be levied at them when it comes to things like story structure and other film trappings that seek to analyze them as pieces of cinema, like any other film does. Because I dislike mincing words, my thoughts specifically are: I thought Black Panther was pretty good overall, its primary weakness being the 3rd act textbook Marvel giant CGI army battle. Similar thoughts on Wonderwoman and Ares shouting video game boss fight lines at the end. I liked the Last Jedi and its stuff with Luke, Rey and Kylo but I felt the side plot was particularly weak and largely pointless. Captain Marvel was a serviceable Marvel movie but I wish that the scope of her powers had been more defined within the film and I wish the character had more of an arc; it simply felt like an overall fine but largely forgettable entry in a TV show requisite to introduce a character for End Game.

But that kind of film criticism is not what I'm talking about these movies facing. I'm talking about the intense vitriol coming up against these kinds of films BECAUSE of their casting choices; criticism these films were facing before anyone had seen a SINGLE frame of them, and the crusade various groups went on to lambast the films before and after their release. And, to the point, that these "crusades;" the effort from these groups or people in trolling review sights, attempting to tank ratings, lying about empty theaters or seeding the conspiracy of the studio buying out tickets to falsify the box office data all... well...


(and here's the TLDR;)


The "anti-SJW" opposition all amounted to nothing.


The films were financially successful; incredibly successful. In many cases, critically successful as well. The three of the four films I cited, in fact, all made over a billion dollars. The effort these people put in to attempting to troll these films they disagreed with, not as pieces of cinema, but from some stinted ideological or political standpoint, was all wasted hot air on their part. They wasted nobody's time and effort but their own.



So the question I suppose this thread poses is: Will this sort of bad faith film trolling continue in force? I proffer that people don't really care about their political views on films and the only time and effort they're wasting is their own. I know some people on this very website were eager for Captain Marvel to fail spectacularly for the reasons I outlined above. Very obviously, it did not fail. So what, then, is their redress to this film's success and the success of many other films like it? What good is their constant gnashing when nobody seems to care but them? Someone can, of course, not like a film for whatever reason, no matter how asinine, he or she pleases; but it seems that their own asinine reasoning is not shared by the majority of the public, nor does the public care particularly about said reasoning or want to even hear about it. Why continue to shout into the wind? You can rue a movie privately to yourself, or spend a tremendous amount of effort shouting and screaming and falsifying online and still apparently, come up with the same result of... nothing at all changing. Will these people recognize that?




Also, as for the various "conspiracies" about how Disney "futzed the numbers" on Captain Marvel in particular, This Video does a spectacular job explaining why almost ALL of them are either presented horribly out of context or are likely complete bullshit. And the guy doing the video didn't even like the film.

Some hits:
-The box office dropoff seen by Captain Marvel is well in line with the dropoff seen by many other Marvel films, finding its dropoff practically equal to that seen by Age of Ultron, Winter Soldier, Dr. Strange, and the first Iron Man.

-On the subject of Disney "buying out tickets," If Disney had bought out 25 seats for five showings for every theater in the United States, on its first weekend, they wouldn't have fudged Captain Marvel's gross by more than 10% and would still have been the 9th highest opening MCU film even if they had.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

the people who rage about such things are just SJW's for there own side, the problem comes about when there own side is just abunch of morons shrieking about woman and minority's instead of shrieking about what ever the topic of the mouth for SJW's is.

no one should take them seriously just as they shouldn't take normal SJW's seriously.

[Yunaqt]

To be fair this movie just has a bit more hype around it leading into End Game, so many fans wont want to miss movies between Avengers 3 to avoid missing any important details. Especially with Captain Marvel being apart of the ending credits scene in A3.

[Trassk]

I'm not going on any anti sjw rant about it, despite the cancerous nature of social justice warriors infecting popular culture and idiots who don't understand this kind of mentality is as destructive as the far right culture said idiots despise so much (making the two sides of the same coin).

I'm just saying, Bree Larson is a c**t, and should keep her mouth shut.

[Malaky]

Four lines down and OP is already lying.
The problem is not women empowerment but rather tacked scripts and Mary Sue characters that those people misunderstand as "powerful women".
There have been plenty of powerful female heroes for years now and nobody batted an eyebrow to them. When done right, nobody complains. When done badly, people dislike them for good reasons.

Also nobody "review bombed" Captain Marvel, the votes concerned a "Are you interested in this movie?" poll that has nothing to do with ratings and reviews.

At least be more clever in trying to manipulate us with lies.

[Kaleredar]

To be fair this movie just has a bit more hype around it leading into End Game, so many fans wont want to miss movies between Avengers 3 to avoid missing any important details. Especially with Captain Marvel being apart of the ending credits scene in A3.

Sure. Like I said, I'm not saying Captain Marvel is some hallmark of cinema. In my opinion it's a middle-of-the-road marvel film; a mix of the first thor, but a bit more coherent, and guardians of the galaxy, but without quite as much fun.

But I really don't think that, were the situation to change slightly and Captain Marvel wasn't integral to End Game, that the film would have been an "unprecedented box office disaster" or somesuch. Look at Ant Man and the Wasp; it was by no means a failure.

I'm not going on any anti sjw rant about it, despite the cancerous nature of social justice warriors infecting popular culture and idiots who don't understand this kind of mentality is as destructive as the far right culture said idiots despise so much (making the two sides of the same coin).

I'm just saying, Bree Larson is a c**t, and should keep her mouth shut.

Lots of other people thought that a lot more loudly; loudly enough to lie about it and troll critic and film cites.

But apparently, 1 billion dollar's worth of people don't care.

[Trassk]

Captain marvel is a strange case. You had sold out shows, shown to empty theaters
https://cosmicbook.news/disney-lying...office-numbers captain marvel wasn't target because of sjw junk. Is because brie Larson said (paraphrasing. We don't make movies for white males...talking about critics) needless to say it wasn't well received. Ghostbusters attacked it's audiance with "don't wanna see it? Then you're sexist" first tine I can recall of a company doing that. It lost 100+ million. Than we also got star wars.

Its common knowledge by now Disney brought out seats in the cinema the boost the pretense of box office popularity.

This is why I don't pay attention to award shows and only go by decent unbiased film reviews like Chris Stuckmann.

[Endus]

Four lines down and OP is already lying.
The problem is not women empowerment but rather tacked scripts and Mary Sue characters that those people misunderstand as "powerful women".

That comes up every time, and it's never true.

Bella Swan of Twilight is a "Mary Sue". None of the characters these people have been complaining about in these films meet that description. They're just strong women. That's the whole basis of the complaint.

Captain marvel is a strange case. You had sold out shows, shown to empty theaters
https://cosmicbook.news/disney-lying...office-numbers

Shit that people literally made up based on essentially no evidence, other than photos of empty theaters without context or timestamps.

captain marvel wasn't target because of sjw junk. Is because brie Larson said (paraphrasing. We don't make movies for white males...talking about critics)

Not remotely what she said.

Ghostbusters attacked it's audiance with "don't wanna see it? Then you're sexist" first tine I can recall of a company doing that.

Also literally never happened.

Than we also got star wars.

Which did just fine in theaters. And while The Last Jedi had some issues with pacing and narrative, for some reason, those bitching focus entirely on misrepresenting Rey, Rose, and Holdo.

[Malaky]

"Nevertheless, these films have all been colossal box office successes."

Brands like Star Wars and Marvel herocomics cannot fail. They could've literally made a movie with characters doing nothing but sleeping and farting and those brands would still call millions to the theaters.

Let's not even talk about movies tying and coming out so close to Endgame, of course everyone went to see them no matter what. You can't use this as a metric of quality in normal cases, even less so this one.

[Trassk]

Lots of other people thought that a lot more loudly; loudly enough to lie about it and troll critic and film cites.

But apparently, 1 billion dollar's worth of people don't care.

Sorry to tell you, but money doesn't always equal people percentages.

[Malaky]

Also literally never happened.

Two words: James Rolfe.

[Endus]

Two words: James Rolfe.

None of what happened to Rofle had anything to do with the marketing and production of the film.

Try again.

[Chinese Bootlickers]

Two words: James Rolfe.

[Kaleredar]

Captain marvel is a strange case. You had sold out shows, shown to empty theaters
https://cosmicbook.news/disney-lying...office-numbers

I'd advise you to watch the video I posted. The "empty theater" source seems to come from a single tweet; investigating that individual's tweets paints them as a person with a very specific anti-captain marvel message.

Placing the veracity of their claim of an empty theater heavily into question.

captain marvel wasn't target because of sjw junk. Is because brie Larson said (paraphrasing. We don't make movies for white males...talking about critics) needless to say it wasn't well received. Ghostbusters attacked it's audiance with "don't wanna see it? Then you're sexist" first tine I can recall of a company doing that. It lost 100+ million. Than we also got star wars.

...The Last Jedi, which made over a billion dollars?

...Or Solo, which had absolutely nothing to do with Rian Johnson, purple haired women in positions of power or Rose and featured a male protagonist for like 85% of the film?

- - - Updated - - -

Its common knowledge by now Disney brought out seats in the cinema the boost the pretense of box office popularity.

It's common knowledge that starting a sentence with "it's common knowledge" without citing evidence is what's called a "proof surrogate."

[Endus]

I'd advise you to watch the video I posted. The "empty theater" source seems to come from a single tweet; investigating that individual's tweets paints them as a person with a very specific anti-captain marvel message.

Placing the veracity of their claim of an empty theater heavily into question.

Plus, I know here at least, Captain Marvel was playing at my local cineplex in like 4 or 5 different theaters for a week or more. If you went to a noon showing on the first Tuesday after it launched, yeah, that showing is probably nearly empty. That doesn't mean the evening shows weren't packed. I know the theater was full when I saw it, the Sunday after it came out.

[Trassk]

https://cosmicbook.news/disney-manip...vel-perception

Its been shown how Disney are manipulating the box office.

You call out anti sjws over something as disingenuous as this movie.

Do your research before touring this crap.

[MikeBogina]

Other films featuring protagonists depicting minorities or women have faced similar amounts of vitriol. Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and The Last Jedi all faced lambasting from certain groups (I'll style them "anti-SJW," because why not) because of their choices to prominently feature the aforementioned women, minorities, and so forth.

Weird, I must have missed this "Anti-SJW" outrage for Black Panther and Wonder Woman, but I did enjoy those two movies. The Last Jedi outrage came after the movie's release and it was a sequel to a movie that already had a female and african leads, which was loved by the same people who were bashing the sequel. That wasn't Anti-SJW... just Rian Johnson sucked.

Haven't seen Captain Marvel yet, but the outrage seems to have been caused by Brie Larson's comments and the movie came out right alongside another female lead action movie that didn't receive any of this "Anti-SJW" outrage(Alita).

Seems the more vocal the actors or directors are about their dislike for the majority of the fanbase, the more there's going to be backlash.

[Malaky]

...The Last Jedi, which made over a billion dollars?

After Force Awakens everyone wanted to know what would happen and the answer to all the questions that JJ raised.
FA was mediocre but at least it wasn't SJW crap.

Little did people know what sort of trash can was waiting for them as a second episode... and by the time they did, the money was already gone.

...Or Solo, which had absolutely nothing to do with Rian Johnson, purple haired women in positions of power or Rose?

Didn't Solo bomb? As above, people didn't wanna fall into the same trash trap twice. It all aligns.

[Jotaux]

Lots of other people thought that a lot more loudly; loudly enough to lie about it and troll critic and film cites.

But apparently, 1 billion dollar's worth of people don't care.

I think Brie Larson is a cunt and I still went to see the movie. I enjoyed it but I went because it will tie in with Endgame.

[Trassk]

Come again?

Its endus, don't even try. He loves to twist facts himself to suit his agenda.