My wife made me ask my granddaughter if she wanted to see The Marvels because I always take my grandsons to the other Marvel movies. When I asked her she asked me if Thor would be in it. When I told her no, she said, "No." And went back to her phone.

"Remember when Disney liked families" - direct hit.

I still love ComicBookGirl19's description of current Marvel. "[Disney turned all of the cool female characters from the comics into No Fun, Marvel Mommies]."

My youngest daughter was a huge Marvels fan. Who’d have thought a teenage girl would be interested in a handsome god, a handsome billionaire and a handsome super soldier. I know, crazy. Her interest in Captain Marvel is less than zero. She doesn’t want to ‘be’ a superhero, she wants one as a boyfriend.

There's the Aesop's fable about the dog that was given a bone and was running of to chew on it when he walked past a stream and saw his reflection in water. Thinking it was another dog and that he could get it's bone he snarled and barked at it only for the bone he did have drop into the water and out of his reach. Hollywood has done the same thing with the fan base. They thought they could get more audiences for their productions only they've lost what they did have trying to chase a bone that was never really there.

Let's all remember the Princess Leia was, from the very start, a very strong character, not to be intimidated. Carrie Fisher pointed it out herself in interviews that this was part of what drew her to the role. Disney wasn't fixing any bigotry in the Star Wars universe. It was simply introducing a bigotry of its own, a pathos so extreme that they couldn't allow their female protagonists to undergo the classical hero's journey because that would mean the protagonist didn't kick ass even in the beginning. They have no arc. They're boring, except as a psychological study where the writers and producers have laid themselves bare, proudly oblivious to all the pathos they've put on display.

You are so correct… imagine the uproar if Barbie had actually tricked everyone and all the trailers were the sum total of all of Barbie’s scenes and only to discover that 90 percent of the movie was about Ken.

Disney and Lucasfilm just don't get that female fans of Star Wars and Marvel Comics like me are turned off by their stupid "girl boss" versions of characters. I find it a bit insulting.

These are brands that could do no wrong with their core audience. If they built it, they would come. Now...they only exist to please people who wont be spending any money on them regardless of what you do to appease/please them.

Disney managed to kill the enthusiasm for the most diehard Star Wars fan I know, which happened to be... my mom. So good job, Disney. This was a brilliant plan.

At this point, I can only assume it's intentional. They want to tear down our heroes, our values, and everything that unifies us and gives us hope.

So brave of Disney. They sacrifices themselves to set an example to all the companies out there. That's awfully very nice of them.

A lot of people, especially on social media, make the mistake of seeing misogyny as a weapon in the hands of people who hate women. In reality, misogyny is a shield wielded by those who think women are too weak to face up to their own mistakes and accept valid criticism. It is wielded by those who hate the idea that women need to earn their progress just like everyone else.

"No one went to Cinderella to see girl on girl action" 🤣🤣🤣

Disney : "we're lacking in male brands" Also Disney :

An interesting question is: are women and girls (beyond specific subcategories) partiicularly interested in Disney's take on female superheroes? The answer increasingly seems to be "no". So they have driven away the old core audience without even replacing it with a new one.

It always amuses me when I see statements that say Star Wars didn't have adequate female representation in the old days. The first major protagonist we meet in the entire series isn't Luke or Han, its Leia. Her actions are what set the events of the story in motion. Not only that, but she is arguably the most iconic strong female character in cinema history.

"What is a princess?" - Matt Walsh, sort of 🤷 - Disney

OMG! Captain Gore! So shtunning and brave. I need a signed copy! 🙂♥

I loved Star Wars as a kid because of the Han/Leia love story and because I had a huge crush on Han. I loved the MCU because Thor and Loki were gorgeous MEN (not boys, not thin-wristed hipsters) and their history was compelling. I laughed - outright LAUGHED - during Endgame when that ridiculous "gurrrrl powurrrr" scene happened. It was so ridiculous.

This is the best review of The Marvels yet.

The hero formula is build on humility, self-sacrifice, and service to others in the name of morality. Modern Disney heroes completely lack this.

I loved Star Wars for it's story and characters, a small brave group who stands in defiance of evil, a mighty democracy felled from the inside, a pointless war where no one really knows what they are fighting for, a tragic hero who fell, losing all he sought to keep, for friendships as close as family, who sacrifice and die for eachother, and in the end even the worst villain can be redeemed. I loved Star Wars, I love the old. I don't recognise the new, it is empty and shallow and selfish. As a woman I see myself in coherent characters who are flawed, but struggle and grow. Why would I want to see myself in shallow, selfish vapidness?

The fact that Disney thinks that to uplift female characters is to denigrate male ones is highly misogynistic. They're implying that the only way women can compete is if the men are too dumb or worthless to oppose them.

Love the Chris Gore as Captain Marvel thumbnail.

"Those offended by Conan the Barbarian just need to shut up." 100%. I got into Conan only recently because I always assumed it was some brainless macho man franchise. It ain't. In the hands of Thomas/Buscema/Chan it was an era-defining book. And it _is_ refreshingly out of step with current sensibilities.

One thing that makes brands successful is that they don't have any barriers to their potential audience. If it was designed as a boy brand, yet attracts a small percentage of women, the brand doesn't need to change to bring in more women as it already accomplished and expansion it was not intending to reach. That's called a win.

They do suck ... but don't say that out loud on the train or you'll wind up in jail!!

I laughed with the thumbnail for this video, and I totally agree with your points expressed: disney ruined both marvel and star wars. They pandered so hard to push the all female heroes + no male needed, romance = bad, etc ... a.k.a. THE MESSAGE. They chased the man away from it, and couldn't even get their weird target to buy their products.

You always have excellent points and a reasonable view. Thank you!

Chris Gore as Captain Marvel in the thumbnail? Brilliant! 😂

Truth Chato. you're a national treasure and I'm claiming you for the US... :)

It's also baffling to me that they refuse to make any plans for movies and just shoot shit and hope they can fix it in post. As it turns out having no plan is a pretty bad plan.

On top of all of that, I'm always shocked that you can basically measure the cost of movies in warships now.

Man that thumbnail pic had me in stitches,Gore's face stripped onto Captain Marvel's head is comedy gold! 😂👍👍

It's still absolutely insane that a company could buy a 35-year old IP for $4 billion without seemingly understanding what they bought, why it was popular for 35 years, nor why they just dropped $4 billion for it. (I know it was for all of Lucasfilm but it was primarily just for Star Wars.)

You succinctly covered all the salient points of the implosion of Disney, well done! Sadly your wisdom will fall on deaf ears. "There are none so blind as those who will not see." John Heywood.

Girl power superhero movies are like rebooting The Notebook featuring the cast of The Expendables.

"Not a sexual metaphor." Sounds like a challenge. Gimme a couple of minutes. 😉

There used to be a way the Princess could save the Prince... By being the reason to stop. The Prince has to go through hell, his blood pumps, the red mist descends, the adrenaline pumps as the Prince loses his reason to become a snarling beast... And in this state the Prince could be the monster he sets out to defeat... But for the Princess to appear before him that triggers that primal part of his mind that this is someone he cannot hurt, and thus, the Prince stops. Question... If a writer replaces the hell walking Prince with a Princess... What makes the Princess stop? Because from these writers we know the monster Princess will never see the Prince as something they should protect and thus will never stop being the monster. Disney had an interesting idea, but they never explored the idea. They just used it to push an agenda.

Sad part is Disney could have superhero princesses if they just embraced magical girls. Japan’s got the anime and manga for this down to a science.

I took my daughters to nearly all of the phase 1-3 movies, and they loved them. They cried like babies at the end of Infinity War, and couldn't wait for Endgame. Then phase 4 started, and apart from No Way Home they have lost all interest. I tried sitting down to watch She-Hulk with my eldest daughter, and although I made it through the first episode, she stormed off about 15 minutes in after watching Bruce be denigrated by a magically superior Jen. "How the hell is she better than Bruce when he's had years to master his powers?", she demanded, not understanding that women are just inherently better at everything. This is maybe because she's actually had to work for things in the real world.

I have a bit of an alternative suggestion. It's not that Disney turned Star Wars and Marvel into princess brands to join the classic Disney princess brand itself - it's that Disney decided to abandon the underlying idea of a princess brand altogether. After all, as you noted, what is a princess brand with a princess doesn't end up with a prince? It's part of the whole concept. At one point, Disney had an excellent princess brand and knew it - and wasn't shy about putting it in front of little girls who would love it. But even before the acquisition of Marvel and Star Wars, Disney was pushing back away from Disney princesses. Look at the stories they started telling. It wasn't about princesses being princesses. It was about princesses being little girls, hanging out together, doing each other's hair, and most definitely not talking about or dealing with yucky boys. It's arguable that Frozen was the last good princess movie after the infection really took hold and it's clear that Frozen is deliberately an antithetical princess movie. The prince is corrupt. The princesses may as well be isolated and they certainly start that way both socially and literally. At the end of the movie you have a queen who hasn't really earned that position with the people, isn't prepared in any way to be a ruler, but is lauded purely because she has a terrifying amount of power she really doesn't understand how to control. It doesn't get better from there. The princess brand burns. In an underlying narrative sense, taken as a whole, the only way to really describe it is the de-feminization of the princess brand, not to be more masculine but simply to be less feminine. Add to that the acquisition of Star Wars as a property, a property with such incredible cultural and social popularity that it would be ridiculous to suggest it got there without the active love of women. While we associate many of the classical Star Wars tropes with men, obviously there are a whole lot of women who appreciate the femininity of Princess Leia and the masculinity of many of the other protagonists - particularly Prince Han Solo. (In the same sense as Prince Ali.) Women clearly had to love it for it to be as popular as it was. What did Disney actually began to do? They removed the princess aspects in a very literal way. Everyone, men and women, in the New Star Wars™ is neuter. The women don't act like women. The men don't act like men. It's a removal of any discernible social, physical, or cultural role for men or women in new Star Wars. It violates an essential underlying precept of good writing: you want the audience to buy in to your fantasy. In order to buy into the fantastic elements of your fantasy, you have to provide them with strong elements in the rest of the setting that they can predict, identify with, and observe as similar to the things in their world. If the setting is alien to the audience then the people need to behave in ways that are truly recognizable. If the society is alien to the audience, then the grounding of the physical world needs to be something recognizable that the audience can get to grips with. It's bad and Star Wars but it's even more recognizable as what it is in the M-She-U. None of the characters act like human beings anymore. They don't react like human beings anymore. The world doesn't look like anything close to what the audience can respond to anymore. They are just images thrown on the screen with the occasional "do you remember" applied in subtitling beneath. It's not a princess brand. There are females - but no women. There are young females - but no girls. There are males - but no men. There are not even any young males at all, anywhere. It's a stretch to even call the characters people. No romance. No families. No communities, really. When communities do come up they are cardboard cutout parities of communities; the shape of a community with no content. No conflicts between individuals who might then have to actually struggle against one another and come to a real compromise or realize that someone is actually wrong. It's beyond feminization. It's depersonalization. It might even be depersonization. Not only is nothing truly personal, no one is truly a person. No one can like that. Not men. Not women. Not boys or girls. And the numbers show it. Disney is not alone in doing this; Hollywood as a whole seems to really want to strip the humanity out of everything they create and people just won't pay for that. As we see.

Your thumbnail really caught me off-guard!

I respect the "Chatoverse."

Blue Eye Samurai really proves that you can even make a baggy sweatpants butch woman but still have her be interesting, charismatic, and even beautiful. It takes effort and passion, something Disney has forgotten about.

I may have seen that version of Cinderella at the Illini Theater in '78

What Hollywood executives don't understand is that they're incompetent, shitty storytellers. This is why when they try to adapt a book to movie, they constantly strip out the best of the story. They don't comprehend that Tolkien, Heinlein, Rowling, or even Herbert (wordy) or Burroughs (outdated) are better storytellers than they are, so their changes just make things worse.

Aladin was the same from the start. It was obviously targeted towards boys, but Disney could never admit it, and then the live action version had to end with a girl power moment.

No, they didn't LET these brands burn to the ground, they slathered them generously with kerosene and flipped a lit match on them. Let us not presuppose any victimhood here... Disney bought these things IN ORDER TO change them. This was all very intentional.

It does seem incredible, doesn't it? To make one or two mistakes is understandable, but to do it again and again is mindboggling.

The problem Disney is having is that they do not recognize the function of a story - specifically, the function of a fairy or folktale. These stories were basically therapy - the reason why kids demand to listen to the same fairy tale over and over for a while is because that story represents a particular issue they need to overcome in that stage of development. They stop asking for it once they are over that issue. Many of these stories are about adopting social mores and traditional gender roles. The stories draw us because we recognize that stage and enjoy the echo of overcoming that issue. When the traditional roles and desires are ignored, the story loses its appeal. Fairy tale psychology is pure gold, I won't include links here but I recommmend research in this field to anyone critiquing the failure of Disney

What are you talking about Chato? Millions of basic women have replaced their "Live, Laugh, Love" signs with "Nasty Woman" and assure us that they're the funny one when they're out with the girls. Troublemakers all!

Like others have said, my gf only watched the marvel movies for the dudes... Thor in particular. (Edit: she doesnt actively identify with female characters that go around beating villains up, she prefers watching dudes save the day, hint: upper body mass, that she drools over) Personally my fav superhero movie is Wonder Woman: the beautiful Gadot delivers a sensual, kind-hearted heroine that can kick ass, but undergoes an endearing journey from being naive to learning a hard lesson. She is also powerful without making the weaker men look useless. Her costume is not overtly sexual but it is suitably feminine such that my male brain can appreciate her natural physique. The imagery and music from that movie is also excellent. With exception of Black Widow, the marvel ladies just don't have that X Factor. If you gender swap them to males, you're left with douchebag dudes that nobody would like. Their stories also lack any depth or character growth... or serious threat. It's like the writers are scared to put those powerful girl bosses at a disadvantage out of fear to be seen as sexist. As a result, they're actually severely damaging the idea of a potentially great female action hero, which can be done and has been done many times. They're ruining it for every one by forcing an unrealistic and boring political ideal.

I would have one small correction: Disney didn’t let all these franchises fall in disarray, Disney actively mandated the changes. How else could it be explained that the changes happened everywhere, not just Marvel or Lucasfilm or Pixar, no, all of them at once changed. This could only ever be achieved if Disney’s management actively made it happen.

Girl power portrayed in the Marvels : cats, skipping rope, dancing Green light ;)

There are no more princesses or masculine men in Disney. That's outdated. True strong feminine women and girls and strong boys and men are out. Perverts and groomers are in, and if you disagree, whether you're straight or gays, it's the guillotine, I mean, you're cancelled.

Hey do you remember when Disney would make products that people wanted instead of selling a product that the majority of people did not want at all? BTW, I always love your commentary Chato.

You mentioned the classic blood squib and getting riddled with bullets trope, instantly remembered the OG Robocop.

If Dominos were to switch from delivering pizza to delivering motor oil, nobody would call anyone else a bad person for pointing out why their sales would fall off a cliff.

Common now Chato! Princesses are passé It’s non binary or bust for Disney these days

I would like to add onto all your valid points. When Disney purchases a brand, their method is quantity over quality. It used to be that every MCU film was a must-see because each one was carefully crafted to serve the overarching plot, and their releases were few and far apart. Since it became a Disney property, we have seen multiple steaming series set in the MCU and an overabundance of theatrical releases being pumped out. The overall quality decreased to increase production. It became cinematic fast food.

Damn you, sir, for inputting the desire to see girl on girl action in a Disney live action remake of Cinderella into my head.

I bought my friend a Rose Tico action figure for 79 cents as a joke. He displays with the good stuff and it brings up conversations about how bad the movies were.

I’m a 51 yr old man who LOVED…loved superhero Star Wars sci-fi genres!!! Still do! Alas, apparently the stuff that’s being produced today is neither meant nor made for me. Disney has chosen to leave me behind.

I think an important part of it is that Disney just doesn't *get* superhero origins. Typically, the characters will gain power (that helps them face an external conflict) and grow through internal conflict. Iron Man showed both in his first movie, as does Thor, Captain America, Spider-Man, Bruce Banner/Hulk, even Ant-Man. Captain Marvel just pulls a doodad out of her neck and remembers that she was always awesome and some people were mean to her.

The interview process for hiring new writers for Star Wars or Marvels should be done at the prospective writer's home. The interviewer should enter and say, "give me a tour of your home." If there isn't at least one wall of shelves containing hundreds of SW/Marvels toys, comic books and games (etc) the interview is over and they will say, "we thank you for your interest but you don't seem to be a good fit."

You know I remember years ago when they did Xena Warrior Princess she had a relationship with Gabrielle. Allot of male audiences really love the series even if she was bi. But what made her a great character was that she was beautiful and also a bad ass. She stands up to misogyny, but doesn’t think less of men. Xena also owned up to her mistakes when she was a warlord and try to make things right. People in the series looked up to her and she empowers them. Even if you put diversity in a show there is a way to do and not just by shoving it down people's throat and doing it all the time for every piece of entertainment. In other words not every freaking tv show has to have a gay character.

Good job Paul. You described the real problem better than most have. You should go be a Disney network exec - save that disgusting company for Walt's sake:)

Well said! My 2 cents is that the companies forget who is their audience. Marvel is a superhero movie, for teenagers, you can try to make 1 superhero movie for girls, but you can't forget your main audience. Also the review blew my mind, but not in the same way it blew yours 😀

When a brand sticks to the principles that brought it success, fans don't demand change. The people who demanded change are the ones that weren't fans in the first place, and should be listened to with caution.

Modern Marvel movies are the equivalent of Metallica performing easy listening covers of all their songs.

"When I mention Wick, a brand image comes to mind..." So very true- the image in my mind was so clear, and so fresh, this line brought a wry smile to my face. Spot-on, as usual, Paul.

Disney managed to shit in SW so much that people don't buy the merchandise anymore. That shit is LEGITIMATELY insane. I think people don't understand the magnitude of that. In the prequal trilogy, people (including OG fans) still loved it enough to drop LOADS of cash on merchandise. Kids everywhere had SW toys in the late 90's, early 00's. The fact that they lost THAT means they lost their WHALES. that fact alone is much more important than the fact that people don't watch their tv shows.

The exploding head at the end makes me want to give a second thumbs up to the video, but KZfaq doesn’t allow that. 👍👍

Disney Princesses can't superhero... in a CAR

I’ve said this before, and I think it applies as much as ever: imagine starting a club, and after over ten years of good times, telling the members: “We’re changing the club to bring in new members. You don’t have a say in it. We don’t care if you don’t like it. This club is no longer for you. Also, we really never liked you in the first place. But we’ll still take your money!” That is what the MCU has become.

I wonder how long it will be before Hollywood rediscovers this simple fact: men like action movies and women like romance movies. There are obviously exceptions, but you don't make money marketing to the exceptions.

I'll never forget when Disney shrunk John Boyegas head on a poster for the Chinese market.

It’s interesting what you said about “was there misogyny in old comics?-probably” I could easily say that in the fairy tales aimed at girls a man only showed up to be handsome and chivalrous and rescue. He wasn’t written with much thought or background, barely a character. He would be a woodsman or a prince or a knight and that’s about it. I grew up in a house of men so I just have always preferred more masculine films, Sûre women were treated badly in some but it certainly goes both ways. The difference is now instead of writing one dimensional men they’re one dimensional and getting their arse kicked. Is that an improvement? Hardly.

I could see a number Disney film that would be improved by exploding heads. Think of Dumbo if everyone who scared Dumbos mum had there heads exploded, or Bambi

You know Mr. Chato im glad you brought this up! So last weekend I was with my brother and his family at the mall and we were at a toy store. For some reason there was a Captain Marvel doll in a princess dress and I was visibly uncomfortable. So I called my brother's 2 little girls over and asked them if they wanted it. They gave me a huge NO. I asked them why and they said she's: "Not pretty and she's ugly." So as another experiment, I looked for some anime stuff and brought them there instead. I saw some figures and plushies of Takina and Chisato from Lycoris Recoil and I asked them if they wanted it The answered with a resounding YES and I asked why they wanted them instead of Captain Marvel and they said: "Because they're cute and pretty and have cute clothes!". Bought them the plushies and they're unseparable. Suck it Marvel, your crap wont sell!

2:06 ...LOL! 🤣 Man... you broke me. I wasn't even thinking at that... and you gave me pictures in my head...

Paul, this was magnificent !!!!!! I wish they had a extra high grade of "like" that you could hit when something is REALLY great. I don't know, a "mega like" or "abso-f'n-lutely unreal like" or something even more extravagant for that special occasion just like this one. I loved the way you lifted strategic layers of the "skin" of Disney, salted it nicely and then slammed it back down into place.

Spot on as usual. The Wick series has been a godsend in a movie market that increasingly hates men. It seems Hollywood and Disney are determined to destroy every masculine brand there is.

If there was truly an audience for CM (the media seems to think so), they would all go out this weekend and see the movie.

"Men are not interested in Disney's [per]version of female superheroes."

Absolutely nailed it there Paul, and yes I had my hand up as one of those fathers that bought every Pixar release for the kids.

Your description of Disney as a "Princess Brand" is very insightful. I hope the race and gender swap continues. I'm looking forward to the all female reboot of "Jaws". But casting will be a challenge, what female actress do you see as Quint?

The only way Marvel and Star Wars can revive is if Disney sells them to someone who cares. I know they'll never do this willingly; they'd rather the brands burn than someone else make them successful again. But it might get ordered during bankruptcy proceedings.

This is shocking to me. I would expect that with the hordes of girls mobbing comic book stores that girl superheroes would be box office gold.

A rant for the ages! 100% entertaining and truthful commentary.

What a perfect take on a real problem in cinema. Toy Story, Indiana Jones, Star Wars and the avengers to name a few all had their legacies destroyed and hero’s turned pathetic and sad for what? Someone stop these people or is it already too late?

One of the problems with modern media is that there is a very small group of people making about 95% of the films we see, and their idea of healthy relationships and healthy role models is warped. I'm not talking about those directing and acting in the films, I'm talking about who's commissioning the films. We have a group who confuses equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. They believe that everybody should think the same way. Therefore, if 95% of their audience base can't stand the things in these films that's too bad because their audience must be wrong. Ever notice that there are almost no healthy relationships between a husband and wife, a man and a woman? Why is that? If it were a few films I'd just say they're oddballs. But it's most of them. This is not an accident. You don't find that nearly all of the films from a studio over the course of fifty years are about orphans, abandoned children, and broken marriages by mistake. There are very few films now depicting healthy models for relationships between a man and a woman.

Bree Larson with Chris Gores face will haunt my dreams forever now.

This video has more heart and head than disney can muster ! Keep the Verhoeven spirit alive !

The thing that has hurt Hollywood the most, is that these shows display their total lack of regard for their own consumers. In the past, Hollywood kept their actor's private lives private so it would not hurt sales. That idea is lost today and we now see these actors as pushy blowhards who know little about life and even less about politics, marriage, economics, and any other topic that is not pretend. We all have learned that these actors are nothing without us and we are not taking their crappy movies anymore. Make something good or go broke.

I was skeptical of Disney's acquisition of Marvel at the time because at that point, Disney was doubling down on their cheap girls targeted crap from Disney Channel like 'Hanna Montana'. That made me embarrassed to be A Disney fan because I was more into stuff like 'DuckTales', which I would call A 'general family brand' while 'Hanna Montana', and others like it is A 'girl brand' that could easily fit in with their 'princess' brands, (Though they're not nearly as good.) and they were slowly distancing themselves from their 'general audience' brands, and started fully embracing their 'girl brands', and ONLY their 'girl brands'. Disney doesn't know how to do 'boy brands' well as their 'girl brands', and over time, they sucked all the fun, and excitement of 'Star Wars, and Marvel to the point where they're no longer recognizable, and the women who use to see 'Star Wars', and Marvel instead went to go see 'Barbie'. And Disney wonders why people have been rejecting them.

Star Trek and Star Wars are unrecognizable since Disney pretended to understand what boys want.

“She’s not going to marry the prince. She’s going to be the strong leader that she always knew she could be.” 🤣🤣🤣