"Don't know why he wanted women to cover to theatres instead of fans of the comics (men and women)"- @pvpv1234
👆👆👆👆👆
This goes for all genres from games, to movies, to comics, etc. Why go after women specifically when FANS of anything can be and are men & women which means more money anyway. Precisely.
It's self-sabotage, for no reason.
And it fails 90% of the time, if not more. IP deaths by the droves and for what? Nothing.
Women apparently are the reason the first Gundam series was kept on life support (reason I heard was the emotional depth of the characters, empathizing with war victim characters & specifically how young Amuro was suffering his trauma, mature storytelling than just being about action, space opera drama) until men got on board. But the reason the meta franchise is as big as it is is because of men and women, but allegedly, women in fact are the reason Gundam crawled before it learned to fly.
And if true, women gravitated to the 70s series ORGANICALLY, as far as i know- it wasn't specifically made for women. Which is why it's evolution was natural.
Same goes for your Spider-Man or Superman, these were likely not made for men, they were creations, stories.
When you go out of your way to groom a project to isolate a demographics tastes or your presumption of them, you're actually underestimating the audience.
Now this was 2006, likely the Superman Returns strategy wasn't political more so an attempt to broaden the scope based off of peer films.
Why do I say this? Simply given how action heavy the sequel was before cancellation, it's a stark contrast, two different genre's tied to the same Superman.
They wanted both sides on board, not realizing plenty women like things moving fast and looking cool too. Just put the emotional beats within that framework.
Superman vs The Elite is a good example, Superman Doomsday being another.
The Death of Superman 2018 is yet another one, 1978 as well even tho the effects are a bit wonky, but the writing is on-point in ways that makes the 2025 film look like an amateur fan-film.
Point being: Look at the Phase 1 to 3 of the MCU, before execs decided it was time for women to take over or be appealed to: It's funny how on board women were from the start when you look at reaction mashups of IRONMAN 2008, the women eat it up.
The juxtaposition of Tony's playboy to helpless captive status, the humbling it does to his character. That specifically I find in these mashups is what hooks people, but specifically women to see a larger than life personality in a man at his peak or just Stark symbolizing the preconception of a man being competent, in charge, suddenly brought to vulnerability, even weakness. There's a psychological fascination in that, which also explains the alleged Mobile Suit Gundam phenomenon.
There was no women in those cave scenes, and the women cheered when Tony won, they were intrigued when he was doing his mechanics grind, some of them even commented they found it attractive when men just know how things work mechanically (endearing commentary), and they were somber when Yinsen passed away; and it helps that Tony worked in a pressure cooker, a wasps nest, his life & the life of someone else was on the line. He had to earn it.
Just a roller coaster of emotions. Again, ZERO women in those scenes btw.
And when Pepper was being Tony's emotional anchor, the banter, the push & pull, you could see the audience resonated with that. Women aren't these homogenous hivemind creatures that can only connect with female characters, female power (whatever hollywood thinks that is) or something written for the female gaze, you can have both.
You don't have to isolate women in your media fantasy like your academia & politics insists on doing to them in reality even while it's destroying them.
You can cut them a break in the theater at least, you owe them that much, jesus.
After Phase 4 and Phase 5's failures, that Doctor Doom Special Look reaction mashup, everyone loved it. That Official Trailer didn't hit as expected for most, but that Doom Special look trailer was it.
Watch the mashup with just the women on screen, they're eating it up just like the good old days, the tragic villain archetype with a calloused heart, the mystique of a man in a mask, the implied vulnerability underneath all that power. Success in wait, if it's written proper.
Women are not as complex as we want to think, very predictable, and that's not a bad thing. They're also not these simple beings either, that will just support product because "all female" fetish or #TheForceisFemale got slapped on the box.
Yes, plenty of buzzfeed & article outlets written by men and women will praise the sentiment of excluding men for women, exclusionary rhetoric is great when it's one way. But WOMEN, the everyday woman is not going to support that like Men have entire rooms filled with Gunpla & figurines, collectibles (MONEY MAKERS), just because the studio wants a pet audience to groom, but an audience that's politically current & on the right side of history.
If it's too male dominated, it needs to be altered. If it's female dominated, & men are outside looking in, that's progress.
I personally don't think Singer's intentions were that deep, but how things have escalated since then, and the MCU's recent desperate pivot in tone, politics and marketing because they know they fucked up: Is further proof of how an empire acts through this misconception that you feel successful enough to treat women like a replacement reserve after we're done using the men to pay the bills.
Countries do this, decline ensues, so when studios pivot out of fear because failure's knocking, what does that forebode about a whole country? When the same spiteful attitude is the exact same, because zeitgeist bleeds into media eventually from top-down, studios simply feel the burn much faster than a country would.
It's a microcosm really, a social experiment.
Your population is men and women, your audience is men and women.
You wouldn't have gotten this far with just one group carrying; sure you've got Shoujo & Shonen; but Anime & Manga as a whole, like comics and video games isn't just for men or women.
- Plenty of boys watch Shoujo (including myself back in the day, and in fact; I have things to catch up on, actually) and plenty of girls & women (not stereotypical tomboys but regular girls & women) watch shonen/masculine-wired anime.
So the logic of appealing to one just to appease no one is not only exactly what you deserve, not because of karma, but mathematically that's one of the only logical outcomes to expect as an absolute. As an equation, that's to be expected.
But otherwise, Singer merely miscalculated, because again; the sequel by the sounds of it was less romance nove and more graphic novel. His mistake, I presume had nothing to do with politics, but he simply misread the terrain because of the success of a seemingly female oriented film. (The Devil Wears Prada 2006)
But I will say this, if there was too much going on in Superman Returns 2006 action-wise, people would've had complaints about that, rightfully, because it would've been inflated with too much or messy. Case and point? Batman v Superman: Dawn of Junk. So let's not be so quick to assume just action would've made the film better.
As I'm watching Superman Returns while typing this, the lack of action isn't the issue than how Superman & Clark are written and characterized.
DUNE PART ONE was no different from SR2006 & is a perfect example: Like Superman Returns 2006, DUNE PART ONE was also quieter, somber introduction to the world and then PART TWO brought the thunder. Like literal theater rumbling thunder, I saw the film 3-4 times in 2024.
The difference is, DUNE was given a chance to prove itself, Superman Returns was denied that chance.
Singer merely miscalculated, but what he did wasn't wrong, because DUNE did the exact same thing, not in execution, but in principle. Routh has matured immensely as an actor, he's still with us, he's on board. Still attached to the character. And Singer & Ottman cooked with Days of Future Past, ngl. They just need a good script, it's not too late. WB needs to let go of this cinematic universe crap and just take risks.
No comments:
Post a Comment