I went and saw Thor: Love and Thunder this weekend. I did enjoy the movie, and I want to talk about something that is a spoiler for those who haven't seen it. So here is your SPOILER WARNING.
Got that?
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Captain Marvel and The Wasp should watch their backs. Seriously. I think other than Pepper Potts, she's the only major female superhero lead who hasn't sacrificed herself and died so that a male superhero can go on to save everyone. Let's look at the female body count thus far in these MCU movies.
1) Black Widow. She sacrificed herself/died so that the Avengers can get the soulstone.
2) Gamora. She was killed by Thanos so that he could get the soulstone.
3) Jane Foster. She was killed by cancer. A wish could have brought her back, but it was used on the bad guy's daughter (to bring them back).
4) Scarlett Witch. She was killed when a mountain fell on her and crushed her to death.
5) Peggy Carter. She died of old age, but she's still dead.
6) The Ancient One. She was killed by Kaecilius and his murderous zealots, but not before setting Doctor Strange on the right path.
7) May Parker. She was killed by the Goblin Glider. It's arguable that she sacrificed herself for Peter Parker, and put him on the path that he is on today.
Lots of women making the ultimate sacrifice so that the boys can shine. I don't know what's up with the writers in the MCU, but this shit is glaring. Like seriously...it is. Do you think it is sexism? Or is it coincidence? Please weigh in if I'm making "too much of a mountain out of this molehill."
Well Black Widow died because her contract was up and she didn't want to come back. Jane Foster died in the comics from cancer, though it was set up a lot better. Scarlet Witch and Gamora will probably appear again.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget they killed Iron Man, pretty much killed Steve Rogers, Coulson (at least in the movie universe), Quicksilver, Vision, Heimdall, Odin, Loki, and probably T'Challa since he died IRL. So I'd say they're pretty even on that score.
Yup. They kill off the "diversity" character so that the cishet white male can shine. They can point to the character and say they've filled their diversity quota all the while marginalizing them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Pat. They have killed them off rather equally. And some can come back in other dimensions. (Like Loki did.) Or time - Gamora from the past is still alive and now in the present.
ReplyDeleteI'll come back and read it after I see the movie.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think you're making too much of this.
ReplyDeleteNatalie Portman never wanted to do more than one Thor movie, so they have stretched her a lot to get her to go this far. And it was awesome for them to have her go out like this rather than just disappearing as it had been.
Pat is correct in regards to Johansson. It's difficult these days to replace a character with a different actor, so it has become pretty normal to kill them off, but they are bring back a Widow, so it's not like they sacrificed the female role.
Gamorra is not gone. That was to serve as a reset on the romance between her and Starlord. There has to be romantic tension so, now, she doesn't even know him.
It's unclear about Wanda. Olsen is, I believe, out of contract, but Marvel has left it open to bring that character back in an alternate form. Honestly, they made her character too powerful, and this is a way to scale her back some.
The Ancient One has never been a current character. That death was always going to be. Making the character female was a big step for Marvel, and they took a lot of heat for it. The character would have died if it had been male, too, so it was nice to have the role given to a woman.
I don't know what to tell you about Carter. They have continued to use her as a character long beyond her lifespan from the comic. I don't think there can be any real complaint there.
As for Aunt May... well, two things:
They want Peter out on his own.
She served in place of Uncle Ben in this iteration. Since they already killed Ben twice and alluded to some sort of tragedy with the Ben in this version, I don't have a problem with it.
And, you know, glancing over at DC... DC really only has two female characters, so...
@Andrew: I accept your reasoning and see that perhaps I was making too much out of this. I also plan on showing this to some of my feminist friends who have commented about this same thing. Maybe it will serve to modify their opinions as well.
Deletewow... I just wrote a really long response and it just vanished.
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to do it again, so I'm going to say that you're making way too much of it and reading too much into the situation.
If I have time later, I'll come back and re-write.
@Andrew: I found your comment. You made very good points. I have my blog store/put into moderation all comments that are older than a day. So oftentimes, it looks like they have vanished. This is because I get visited by so many robots that are looking to spam the comment section. This cuts down on a lot of that, particularly on older posts. I've had robots post a hundred times on a hundred different blog posts over a year. It would take forever to go through and weed those out. But instead, they just get put into the "awaiting moderation" cue and I can delete them with basically two clicks.
DeleteYeah, I saw that after I made this comment, but the "waiting for approval" thing didn't pop up after I made the 1st comment. Then, when I was making the second, the page did a weird refresh thing and the comment disappeared while I was actually typing it, so I thought something was going on.
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