The controversy over Captain Marvel was (and is) one of the dumbest things I’ve ever experienced online. Here was a very by-the-numbers Marvel Studios origin movie being treated like the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
A small group of terminally online men took exception to star Brie Larson saying some pretty milquetoast feminist things while promoting the film and all hell broke loose. Amazingly, some are still waving their pitchforks a year later, launching obviously fake petitions to get Larson fired and continuing to populate comments sections with angry diatribes (see below). But some new analysis indicates that Captain Marvel 2 may not cause quite so much anger.
Comic Book Review have posted a lengthy dissection of the Captain Marvel hate campaign, exploring the reasons it arose and how it’s tailed off. They point to a decline of hate for the movie, pointing out that YouTube channel Geeks + Gamers was seeing anti-Captain Marvel videos pulling in 70k views in the run-up to the film’s release, with their more recent ones drawing in much less.
The article’s conclusion is that “rage can only be sustained so long before it burns out” and that the pic’s ultimate critical and box office success knocked the wind out of the hate campaign’s sails.
But, and I think that this is pretty obvious, one of the main reasons why you don’t see Captain Marvel hate around so much is that the movie came out a year ago and there’s only so much to discuss. That being said, I have absolutely no doubt that when Captain Marvel 2‘s 2022 release date draws closer, the basement-dwellers will emerge from their tissue-strewn holes to dust off the old misogynist invective one more time.
CBR’s analysis ends on a positive note, though. With the hate campaign against Captain Marvel a high-profile failure, whatever bile they chuck at its sequel will “lack the zeal” of what we saw in early 2019. Let’s hope so, because there’s only so many unemployed scraggly bearded men ranting into webcams that I can take.