Blog Archive

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Doctor Strange 2 watched:

This was a decent movie, but worse than the Ms. Marvel tv series, much less actually good Marvel movies or Top Gun 2.  The problem is the inclusion of too many liberal themes -- blacks, gays, women, Asians and Hispanics everywhere for no good reason.  In addition, the soundtrack was awful, mainly bent on manipulating your emotions by suddenly trilling in order to be 'shocking' and 'scary.'  The Scarlet Witch made for a great Terminator impersonation, an inspired choice of villains.  I doubt she really died at the end, I'm sure she'll be back in some movie or other.  The Scarlet Witch chose on her own to stop fighting, in the end Dr. Strange's choices were all meaningless.  He was a minor character in his own movie.

Dr. Strange has lost every fight he's been in -- against Thanos, Spider-Man and now the Scarlet Witch.  The poor guy can't catch a break.

Ms. Marvel is diversity done right.  A story centered around a minority community, where being a minority makes sense -- in fact you feel like you're in the majority because everyone around you is the same as you.  It's the white guy who's the minority in Ms. Marvel.  That's the actual life experience of minorities, not sprinkled around like blueberries in muffins, but concentrated in local majorities of their own.  Disney should learn from its own tv shows how to do a minority culture right.  Instead of a woman shoehorned in to a story that isn't about women or romance, like that random Christine girl was in this movie, Ms. Marvel is about a woman, Kamala, so it's natural for her to be there.  It's natural for the story to have women in it.  That's doing a woman character right.  For that matter Scarlet Witch was naturally part of the story so I didn't mind her.  It was Christine who stuck out like a sore thumb as a complete third wheel.  There are good female characters and bad female characters.

Most of what I watch features female characters, they're great protagonists.  K-On! is a story exclusively featuring women with nary a man to be seen, and it's one of my favorites.  What they aren't good at is random inserts in male-centered fighting stories between men.  (Or powerful women like the Scarlet Witch who overlap more with male than female characteristics.)  I wish they'd all stay out of it -- Pepper Potts in Iron Man, Jane in Thor, Lois Lane in Superman, all the random worthless women who don't matter to the story which is about fighting between men.  They're all a waste of time, with no purpose, just sitting on the sidelines as a bystander because nothing they do can make a difference because they aren't powerful.  There is a time, place and occasion for women and it isn't on the battlefield (unless they're abnormal superpowered women).

No comments: