Captain Marvel and The Rotten Tomatoes Scandal

Revenge of the Nerd Cultural Wars

There is something going on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, also known as the MCU. It is an ominous dark cloud creeping across the land filled with the shill beasts, the SJW demons, the online media liars, and the Ultron dictator mouse house that controls the horizontal and the vertical as we unwittingly step into the censorship zone. What has come of us in this new world of cyber criticism? Can we express an opinion without being called names? Can we post a thought in the negative and not become fearful of being demonetized for producing an opposition video? Is this the silencing of a hundred voices who don’t follow the corporate philosophy of to not speak ill and only positive about our product? Such is the case for the upcoming Marvel film, Captain Marvel, that’s been produced and marketed by Disney.

Captain Marvel is the latest film from the MCU that will get its general opening on March 8. It will star Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, a figure with untold powers that apparently has no rivals. Captain Marvel was made to be a tie into the upcoming Avengers Endgame movie that’s scheduled for an April release date. Last year the MCU gave us Avengers 4 with the powerful being known as Thanos wreaking havoc on earth by eliminating half the population with just one snap of his finger aided by a set of infinity stones. At the end of Avengers 4, Nick Fury pulled out an old pager before he disappeared into the ether and as the camera slowly zoomed in, the emblem of Captain Marvel was on the pager. Fast forward a few months and we are being introduced to Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel.

When Disney started marketing Captain Marvel, it had a 97% score of people interested with 3% of people not interested in seeing this movie on Rotten Tomatoes, an Internet film ranking site. As time moved forward, things started to change and not for the better. As of February 25, 2019, Rotten Tomatoes had Captain Marvel at a record low of 27% of over 45,000 people interested in wanting to see this film which meant that 73% of people were not interested in seeing this film. There were signs that these numbers were still heading down as the premiere date crept closer and closer. There were YouTube sites reporting on the steady rise of people not being interested in seeing the film on a daily basis. Ticket sales that had Captain Marvel forecast to make an estimated $168 million its first weekend in the beginning but that number too changed to a forecast of just $80 million dollars. There were reports where people were looking to get their money back following the controversial comments made by Brie Larson but they were denied a refund even though it was weeks ahead of the premiere date. Of the latest update on people not interested in seeing the film, one of the YouTube nerds, Geeks, and Gamers, decided to check in before closing down for the night and discovered that Rotten Tomatoes had removed the people not interested in seeing the film score. It was gone. The only thing that was left was just the people interested in seeing the film. Gone also were the negative comments. Who was behind this supposed independent service that the movie industry relied on to promote their films? Who initiated this coup-DE-tat of information obliteration? You have to first look at what caused this tumult with Captain Marvel and you didn’t have to look any further than it’s the star, Brie Larson.

Brie Larson is an actress not known for making big blockbuster films. She received A-List status after receiving an Oscar for her performance in the movie, Room, where she portrayed a mother held captive, along with her son, in a small room for several years. Although she is not known for it, she claims she is an advocate. I’ve personally have not seen her advocate on anyone’s behalf but I’m not tuned in to the 24/7 life of this woman. I find women like Emma Watson doing advocacy work on causes she believes in as she has taken positions on the things she holds an interest in like her work with the U.N. I do not know of anything Brie Larson has done but she claims she is an advocate for women. It is because of this, Brie Larson has taken up a position on the white male film critics.

At The Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards event of June 2018, Brie Larson stated, “ I do not need some 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle In Time. It wasn’t made for him.” You can see the speech in the clip below along with Dave Cullen’s running commentary that challenges her position. 

That speech became the proverbial thorn in the paw for more than just straight white men. Brie Larson had thrown down the gauntlet. It became the slap across the face heard across the world. Somewhere along the line, that speech was replayed over and over again immediately after the first trailer for Captain Marvel came out. The reviews of the initial trailer were met with a lackluster response. It did not pop. There wasn’t anything special to see. It was ordinary compared to other superhero type films. It was no Alita: Battle Angel. There wasn’t anything there to warrant a sense of the need to see the film but the initial hype had begun.

The ’40-year-old white dude’ speech had started to take hold. It began to take on a life of its own and people started to mind-meld the speech with the Captain Marvel trailer. The trailer also took on an air of becoming a feminist propaganda tool for identity politics with certain cringe-worthy dialogue Brie Larson was saying in the trailer and the flashing of H-E-R with HERO. Even some women had a problem with that. Soon, it was not just the white dudes who had had their fill of being bashed just for walking upright on this earth but there were also women who saw this as a reach that had no justification with the attacks on white dudes. And by extension, black dudes saw this as a foreshadowing of things that would eventually trickle down to them based on historical events. The white dudes had reached that last straw and weren’t going to be ‘Gilletted’ anymore.

As the Rotten Tomatoes audience score kept falling and falling, there were constant updates from YouTube bloggers like MechaRandom42, That Star Wars Girl, the aforementioned Geeks and Gamers, Nerdrotic, John Talks, Odin’s Movie Blog, and ComicArtistPro Secret, all who were driving the narrative of what was happening along with giving some very pointed insight as to why it was happening. Many were surprised that the not interested in seeing the movie score had reached 50% as this was the lowest score a Marvel film hard reached. When the number fell below 50%, it became a spiraling foregone fiasco as we begun to see a shift with the mouse house to stop the spiraling and conducting damage control.

Damage control became the thrust by steering positive interviews towards Brie Larson’s way with paid sycophants towing the mouse house line. The mouse house perhaps told her not to poison the well any further and cease the war with the ’40-year-old white dude’. In one online interview, Brie Larson doesn’t take responsibility or even apologize for her statement but seems to double down and avoid the question by stating that she doesn’t recall what she may or may not have said and instead states that she wants to “bring more chairs to the table”. Brie Larson was starting the cause the mouse house a lot of money before any money is to be made. Projected money to be made on the film started off at $168 million to $148 million to $100 million and the latest at $80 million. Soon, online media outlets began writing articles about the “trolls” attacking the film because a woman starring in it. The shill beasts were gathering their army around Brie Larson.

Online outlets like The Mary Sue, ComicBook.Com, Screen Rant wrote articles that contain content that wasn’t factual. Every last one of them stated that trolls had reviewed the film when in fact, nobody had reviewed the film as it wasn’t out yet. A point that many of the online bloggers made a point about but was ignored by the online media sources. What they did do was offer up their opinion as to why they weren’t going to go see this film. A completely different position. And the use of the words ‘troll’, ‘misogynist’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ has been tossed out there as adversarial bait as a dissuasive tool for people to discourage them from forming a negative opinion because this has become the machinery used by the so-called SJW’s. Attacking the fan base is a strategy now. Production houses, directors, and stars have started attacking the very fans that have spent their money on your properties and after they voiced their opinions as to why that property didn’t work and has fallen out of favor with them, you strike at the very heart of what has brought you acclaim. Do you begin to question the ethical approach of some of these media outlets as to if they are giving us honest journalism? Many of the articles seem like they are doing cut and paste as the same misinformation is being reported over and over again in verbatim in that the film had been reviewed when in fact it had not been. The views that people left were positive and negative but these publications took exception to the negative one and started to label the comments as trolls and misogynistic. So what do you call or refer to women who have negative opinions and comments about Brie Larson? Women too have voiced their objections with Brie Larson. We have come to a crossroad in our society where you can’t say anything bad or give criticism with anything anymore without getting a harsh rebut from the insane clown posses.

The 40-year-old white dude is tired and has had enough of being berated, derided and discounted to the point where it is becoming a thing in Hollywood where masculinity has become a four-letter word. On the CBS All-Access streaming service, Star Trek: Discovery is a haven for male bashing. The straight white male is an endangered species in that timeline. Male captains authority is countered by the female subordinates. In one episode, a white male flexes his authority and a few minutes later, he is killed after challenging the flying ability of his female colleague. A female general described men with “small tiny brains”. All of these incidents take place in this one episode. When Brie Larson made her statement, the backlash had just begun and men were not going to accept being punished just for being a man. We are not a monolithic one brain fits all acquisition. We are free thinkers. We are not anti-women.

When Wonder Woman came out, there was no opposition to this film from men. There was no anti-male rhetoric being said from its star, Gal Gadot or its director, Patty Jenkins. It was well received by both men and women. Alita: Battle Angel, another sci-fi picture, came out earlier this year with no hint of controversy until much later when one of the online media outlet, a purported SJW, started reporting negatively about the body of the robot, Alita, She laid the blame at the foot of men for sexualizing the fantasy of the ideal body. This was an example of unjustified blame that men have been put upon for merely existing. Alita is something and someone that Hollywood seek out character-wise, the strongly empowered woman troupe that’s been championed since the film, Norma Rae, first appeared some 39 years ago. We’ve been discussing women empowerment on all levels ranging from Hollywood to politics to other work areas and the men are silent and we forget that there are little boys who are being discarded in this process. Brie Larson’s current role of being an empowered female in this climate is no different except it seems as if reality versus fantasy has blended into a sense of invincibility as she speaks about having this new found power she’s never had before. I caution Ms. Larson to walk carefully as the power you may believe that you have is only equal to the power of what the people are willing to give you. It can disappear just as fast as you may think you perceived it.

Many in the online community feel as if Disney is having Brie Larson under damage control by having her conduct interviews with specific media outlets to put a spin on the new narrative they’ve created. When the not interested in watching this movie category vanished all of a sudden, the consensus was that Disney had gotten its hooks into Rotten Tomatoes. Why did Rotten Tomatoes do this? They put out a statement that the changes had been in effect for several months and under its current format, the numbers were confusing but the ‘interested in this film “ remained and was still active. You can’t just shut down one side and leave the favorable one still active. This was pure censorship through and through. We are in this dawn where any negative criticism is met with an opposing position. If you give a bad review on Yelp, you’re either sued or banished never to be heard from again. If you don’t believe and TV star’s alleged reporting of a hate crime, you’re a racist. If you oppose a big budget film starring a woman, you’re sexist and practice misogyny, even if you’re a woman. If Brie Larson wants to champion the cause of being an advocate for women of color, perhaps she should have let the role she is occupying go to a woman of color, after all, Maria Rambeau, a black woman, was the original Captain Marvel.

Disney has placed a lot of bank into Captain Marvel. But the truth is that the only thing people really want to see is the end credits where we can see any clues to Avengers Endgame. They could have saved them a lot of money by cutting out two hours and just show the last eight minutes of the credits. That is the only thing people are really interested in seeing, a hint to the conclusion to Avengers 4. I, along with a few other people, will probably see it and give it a review but I do so with protest.