"We probably should have seen this coming. Let me take you back to 2019. Endgame had just dropped, the fever about the MCU had skyrocketed, we were sad that phase three had ended, even though its conclusion hit the ultimate climax with scenes like this. The interest was at an all-time high, we all couldn't wait to see what was next. I didn't think that scenes like this would signal what was to come, but here we are.
Now let me be clear. I have no issues with female empowerment. I love a good Girl Boss scene, when it's well written and believable and above all else not at the expense of men. But so many MCU properties these days seem to be written by people who have a very strange view of feminism whose only interest seems to be in putting down men, deconstructing the character and generally making fun of the phases of the MCU that have come before.
One of the worst things I think they've done so far is to have female versions of the original characters come in to take over for their male counterparts. Most prominent examples include characters like Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, Sylvie taking over for Loki, She-Hulk taking over for Bruce Banner, Jane Foster taking over for Thor and so on and so forth. And you get my point the writing of these characters so far has seemed to do its utmost to portray these females as an upgrade to their males all the while putting them down and generally making fun of them.
Such examples include stripping Thor naked in front of a crowd of people, turning Loki into an absolute fool, She-Hulk generally being better than Bruce at everything despite the fact that she's been a Hulk for less than five minutes, Shang Chi being owned by his own sister despite him having at least 75 pounds of muscle on her and Ant-Man being unable to finish off his own villain without help from Hope. If any of this had happened to a female, people would be up in arms, and yet no one bats an eye now.
As someone who's a fan of a lot of these characters and has been for a long time, I find this absurdly frustrating. Not only because it makes these characters into a joke that shouldn't be taken seriously. It claims that these Heroes aren't beings that we can or should look up to. And that's concerning. Superheroes are supposed to bring out the best in people and inspire them to be greater than themselves. It didn't matter that they were male or female. They still went through trials and difficulties that made them relatable regardless of their powers or the costumes that they wore. I certainly never cared. But in making this a male versus female debate, a few problems begin to arise that are subtle but over time could cause a significant amount of issues.
The first is a lack of continuity regarding the male characters. Loki is regarded as one of the cleverest and most powerful characters in Marvel's Pantheon and yet his character has been reduced to a sidekick next to his female counterpart who somehow has to be smarter than he is. Sylvie is the one who comes up with all the ideas and gets to display her full power in the show's penultimate episode. Loki somehow never decides to swipe the drawer full of Infinity Stones because it never occurred to him that he might need them for something later on. When you choose to alter a character's personality from what it previously was, you simply indicate to the audience that nothing about this character is worth watching or liking anymore, because they don't care, why should you?
The second is deconstruction. With regards to the character of Thor, he was once a prince of Asgard and one of the finest warriors alive and yet now he is little more than a jokester, incapable of being serious and is quite content to be made fun of. His character from Ragnarok, though I wasn't the biggest fan of that movie, still had moments of seriousness where you could still feel the brevity (sic) of the situation and his own thoughts breaking through yet here he is claiming that the only reason for his success is Jane. That she is the sole reason he is who he is and has the value that he does. This is eye rollingly inaccurate. For someone to attribute success and inherent worth from someone else who has never given it offers power to that person that is not earned and is unrealistic at best and insidious at worst.
Jane may have helped Thor find a new perspective but to claim that all he is is a result of her simply demonstrates that the writers' chief aim was to build a character up by tearing another down. Deconstruction of a character into something pathetic by comparison to another one is one of the most insulting things that can be done as a writer. But the creative geniuses behind the manifestation of Phase Four don't really care about audience opinions now do they?
Finally we are simply left with poor satire. In the case of She-Hulk the writer set out to make Jennifer Walters the superior option to her cousin Bruce Banner. And all they succeeded in doing was making her obnoxious, arrogant and toxic to those around her. Not to mention cringe. Completely and utterly cringe. Scenes which showcase her apparent superiority to Bruce without any effort or struggle to get to her current state really is the worst insult the writers could have done to this character. And then of course they had to compare their triggering moments and liken cat calling to physical abuse. This is one of the most jaw-dropping things about this level of satire when writing these Marvel characters. Because such things like trauma or the Hero's Journey or an inherent struggle of any kind are rarely discussed anymore.
Instead we have poor cutouts of MCU phases past that have little to add to the general story and much to do with tearing down everything that has come before it, in the cringiest and most uncomfortable way. The trouble continues with movies like Shang Chi whose trailer only showed his sister in a flash of images and yet the movie shows her to be this strong female character who rose up after her brother abandoned her, who trained herself in the same martial arts forms that he did, despite having no teachers, who wants to rule her father's Empire and somehow runs her own Fight Club where she is capable of beating other male fighters despite not having the same body type or muscle mass. She defeats her brother and then spends the rest of the movie either disliking him actively or actively saying that she is going to succeed where he failed. She's going to take over her father's Empire and be a boss that her brother clearly has no interest in and has abandoned, and it just comes across as preachy and very unrealistic. I did a video on Mary Sue's in their utter unlikability in modern media recently so if you want to take a look at that, the link is in the description down below.
And finally we come to the recent release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Mania. There's a whole host of other problems with this movie so if you want to check my thoughts out on that go and check out my recent review. But the main sticking points of this movie come to me right at the beginning, where Scott is essentially mocked for his part in saving the world by his family and his own daughter, as if he has no right to feel pride in the things he helped accomplish in bringing back half the vanished people.
The events of Endgame were treated almost like a joke in that family dinner scene and it was so infuriating. Cassie of course being a narcissistic little brat didn't help matters, claiming that her father is disappointing for not getting involved in local political matters. But of course that is all rectified when she gets her own Ant-Man suit and is able to use it after only a little bit of practice in the Quantum Realm. And the whole subplot where Scott must earn Cassie's approval by fighting alongside a group of dispossessed people in the Quantum Realm is just another laughable aspect of the recent degradation of these male characters. All of their accomplishments are forgotten or laughed at. All of their inherent abilities are appropriated by someone else. Someone younger, hotter and most likely female. And the men either bow to this form of mockery or else become incompetent at the very essence of their characters in general.
And I should probably add this sort of mockery is bad for female characters as well because it says that the only good things they are capable of achieving have come from the male counterparts of themselves. They can't struggle like the guys because they are simply better than them and the struggles of men must be laughed at or mocked. So what are we left with? A collection of characters, most of them female who have not really experienced what it is like to truly struggle and have only achieved their success at the level of males they have put down and ridiculed on their individual journeys.
The writers have demonstrated that these females can't have any success on their own unless they are emulating or else emasculating men which does a complete disservice to both sexes and we as fans are simply expected to sit back and realize that this is the direction that the MCU is taking for the foreseeable future.
No wonder the reviews for Love and Thunder were so bad. No wonder the ratings for She-Hulk have plummeted. No wonder no one wants to see Quantum Mania. No wonder people are upset. When you tear down Heroes in degrading and disrespectful ways you are going to make a lot of fans angry, myself included. When you claim that female heroes are better than the guys but also claim that they can't have any success on their own merits you create a paradox for yourself that is next to impossible to escape from.
Now you have original Heroes that no one can really look up to anymore and characters that are so toxic they are impossible to like. And what does that lead to? A complete abandonment of the property which we are slowly starting to see now. On a final note I can say that not only is this level of emasculation disrespectful, it can also be harmful as well because you are not only stripping away role models, you are stripping away inspiration, and it is being done on both sides of the scale. Which begs the question: why are they trying so hard to destroy our heroes, both male and female and what is the end goal? Because if they continue on this route it clearly isn't making money"
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