To the surprise of nobody. Disney continuing to implode one day at a time with this inclusivity garbage...to say nothing of brand awareness (NEW MUTANTS was a big hit?)

And what a way to do your "big reveal" about the X-Men **oh sorry that's offensive now** joining the decreasingly popular Marvel franchise.

They were pulling this crap even when Fox still owed the characters.

That's just a cringy line of dialogue though. This is throwing away the entire history of these characters but I get it.

We have entered the worst era for popular culture in eons where titles and virtue signaling is more important than content and quality, with this studio leading the way.

Anyways, the X-Men characters were already wrung dry by Fox for 20 years straight - going through them TWICE in two different time periods! - so I don't know why anyone would be squeeing with delight to see them done again, especially as dutifully woke, "refreshingly" diverse Disney avatars (here comes the black Professor X! I wonder if Disney will be guilted into casting someone who is actually wheelchair-bound ). It used to be you'd only see movies or characters re-done once a generation (it took almost twenty years after the Christopher Reeve movies ended before WB took another crack at Superman), but now before one take on a character is even cold, you have the next one already in production. After Batman & Robin fizzled out at the box office, it took eight years for WB to re-invent the character. Now, it seems like there's a new Batman or Joker every three years, and it's exhausting. It was galvanizing to see Heath Ledger's take on the Joker in The Dark Knight, because Jack Nicholson's version was almost two decades earlier, but there have been TWO big-screen versions since (including another Oscar-winning one!), with a third given a wearying tease at the end of the Pattinson film. And that's not even counting small-screen stuff like Gotham or numerous DC animated shows and movies.

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:40 amWe have entered the worst era for popular culture in eons where titles and virtue signaling is more important than content and quality, with this studio leading the way.

Twenty years ago, people complained when an actor wasn't the same ethnicity or hair color as the character on the page (even a dozen years ago, with the "racebending" controversy about The Last Airbender). Now they complain when a character who was straight, white and male on the page isn't a lesbian Mexican woman with crutches. Hell, the Fox Fantastic Four movies forced olive-skinned Latina Jessica Alba to wear a blonde wig and eerie blue contact lenses when she played Sue Storm, and people complained, yet, when Disney finally announces the casting of the FF in the MCU, they'll flaunt such casting. And, of course, if you complain (ESPECIALLY if you're a white, straight male), you get branded as racist, sexist, homophobic, ect. It's so tiresome at this point. When Idris Elba was cast as Roland Deschain in that awful Dark Tower movie five years ago, I was ticked off that the character on the page was being so horribly miscast, but of course, I was not allowed to just flat-out say, "Roland is white. He should be played by a white actor". Then again, Elba's casting was by far the least of that movie's myriad of problems...

Obviously I agree with everything you are saying here. It just baffles me they they think a name rebrand is the right move commercially. To me the very generic MUTANTS makes me think of NEW MUTANTS or *gasp* ETERNALS. We know how many times they've rebooted the X people but take the name away and anything that bears a relation to those characters, and most fans won't even connect them to the source anymore. Yes Marvel fans are so slavish to these films but this is such a slap in the face to comic book nerds that even they might feel they've reached the breaking point here. It took no time before they lost the Star Wars fans...dont think it won't happen here too. Marvel has had a good ride but that pinnacle of success looks like it's coming to an end.

Meanwhile... Another one I will miss.

It's a miracle Top Gun: Maverick even reached the screen with the main character still a male "warmongering white colonizer" (but apparently that's what audiences want to see).

A miracle...but also telling its one of the biggest hits of recent years. Most people just want to watch a movie not an agenda being rammed down your throat.

Paul MacLean wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:48 am It's a miracle Top Gun: Maverick even reached the screen with the main character still a male "warmongering white colonizer" (but apparently that's what audiences want to see).

Not that it hasn't stopped one moron of a "film critic" I've clashed with for over 15 years (and who is so cowardly to hear opinions not his own he has blocked me from responding to his public posts on FB and Twitter) from saying that even though he had fun with the movie, he bemoans the fact it celebrates a big male white superhero type because such an image for years allowed people of color to be treated second-rate etc. etc. Only a self-loathing white leftie could come up with that BS.

Paul MacLean wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:48 am It's a miracle Top Gun: Maverick even reached the screen with the main character still a male "warmongering white colonizer" (but apparently that's what audiences want to see).

Hey, one of the pilots was a Latina (sorry, "Latinx" ). Representation...!

AndyDursin wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 12:06 pm A miracle...but also telling its one of the biggest hits of recent years. Most people just want to watch a movie not an agenda being rammed down your throat.

This is also why Lightyear bombed...it wasn't fun, and thus the pandering to gays (with a GROUNDBREAKING...chaste peck on the cheek ) only stood out more. Had the movie been as creative, funny and emotional as any of the Toy Story movies, that moment would have just slid right off most people, but because Disney pushed how "brave" they were in cutting and reinstating the girl-girl kiss, all they did was prove that was the only thing they cared about, instead of of pushing the movie AS A MOVIE. Meanwhile Minions, which only had the agenda of making little kids giggle, will make it to a billion worldwide easily, while Lightyear sputters to a halt at barely over $200 million.