Captain Marvel is a hit, the world is beyond saving, and I'm hanging up my shingle.

Captain Marvel is a hit. I didn't want it to happen, even though I suspected it might happen. I even underestimated its box office take. The implications are saddening. Yes, it's just a shitty movie, but it's an example of a bigger problem. The public is slowly just taking in SJW trash more and more, moderating their speech not to offend them and accepting the propaganda as new tropes. And politics is downstream from culture. The left is already attacking people physically and pushing them off the internet and getting them fired. It is only going to get worse as more people are indoctrinated into their crazy and unhappy worldview.

It isn't much of a surprise that conservatives lost and lost utterly. Conservatives never really fought the culture war, preferring to chuckle at insane but earnest left wingers as they pushed discourse leftward. So here we are.

What is to be done? Politically, I don't even want to think about how bad things are going to get soon. I'd rather not touch on that here. Culturally, the only option we have is to accept the fact that traditional values are unpopular with the modern average denizen of America and most of Europe, and if such things are to survive they must become an alternative culture.

So I'm going to focus less on pop or mainstream culture, or attempt to. It's beyond me to create an alternative culture. But I want to help. What I'd like to do is this: if you have a story/comic/game that you want reviewed publicly or even critiqued for private feedback- and it has traditional values values- I'll do it. I'll review on Amazon or anywhere you'd like, and I'll signal boost (do people still say that?) it to other people. Keep in mind the review will be an honest one, my honest assessment, and not a guaranteed gushing piece, but I'll still do my best to get it out there to other like-minded people who can at least hear about it either way.

So, please contact me on twitter if you have something you want me to review @culturefall.

Nerds are used to being pariahs who build their own things. We all know what that was like. It's hard watching things we enjoyed get turned to garbage, but in the end it's just fiction. More can always be made.

I WANT GHOST RIDER!

Earlier I posted two guesses for Captain Marvel's numbers: one pessimistic, one optimistic. I still feel these are the likely outcomes, and my official bifurcated guess. And yet I feel I wasn't truly being honest on what my instinctive assessment is, because I think it's wrong, yet still it is what I believe in my gut. You can't change how you feel about things in your gut, just ignore it or allow it.

Eh. Why?

In my gut, I feel like Captain Marvel should make about $38 million its opening weekend and maybe $420 million overall. I don't see it as interesting in the slightest. I think Captain Marvel is a lame character. I think Brie Larson's comments didn't help, but quite honestly I don't see who cares about this. Who cares about some angry militant heroine who hates you? Who wants that?

I say this, but I think my instincts are wrong. They have to be, because my gauge of what should be a success is skewed. My favorite Marvel movie was Ghost Rider (2007), and I'm still angry it didn't get its due.

Ghost Rider was the best Marvel film, better than Civil War or Iron Man or any of that other crap the young people all wank themselves to. Nicholas Cage did an Elvis impression, he went up the side of a building on a motorcycle made of fire, and the flaming skull of Ghost Rider is ALWAYS grinning. Whereas Brie Larson can only show the emotion of angry impatience, Nicholas Cage showed every emotion imaginable in any given second, laughing maniacally, snarling, and screaming in a tour de force only equalled by his turn in the ill-conceived Wicker Man remake.

And in terms of characters, Captain Marvel may be able to fly and shoot energy bolts (the most boring powers there are), but Ghost Rider is a goddamn flaming skull who hurts people by staring at them. He is as awesome in every aspect as Captain Marvel is bland and generic. 

The plot of Ghost Rider, for those uninitiated, is that Nicholas Cage plays daredevil Johnny Blaze, who sold his soul to Mephistopheles in his teens to save his father's life by curing his cancer. Naturally the devil betrays him and kills his father anyways. Despite the difference of opinion on the contract, Mephisto still turns up decades later to force Johnny to become the Ghost Rider, The Devil's bounty hunter, to bring wayward souls into hell. In particular Mephisto wants Blaze to bring him four Demons who seek an evil contract of power. Ghost Rider finds and defeats each in turn. He also balances this with love interest Eva Mendes, who comes to learn of his curse.

Tldr - Ghost Rider is a flaming skull who beats up criminals. And it had Sam Elliot as the first Ghost Rider, a flaming skull cowboy with a Warlock Dreadsteed instead of a motorcycle. Everything about this movie was what a comic book movie should be: fun, over the top, insane, and awesome.

But cruel fate conspired against it. It came out in March, with a 38% rotten score (the bastards) and this beautiful film was considered a bomb, so maligned it isn't even considered to be in the MCU. A sequel was made with Nicholas Cage, but of such inferior quality and production values its existence is profane.

It was BEAUTIFUL!

But when it burned, it burned so brightly, the Roy Batty of the MCU, superior to all others but retired too soon. Lost, like tears in the rain. 

And so when I conceive of a world that would reject the awesomeness of Ghost Rider, which deserved to make two billion dollars and inspire TRULY AWESOME merchandise, I can fully see this world valuing the unmitigated boring shit that is Captain Marvel, the garbage heap of bland feminist antisexploitation backed up by Disney's borderline frightening PR machine.

Why, oh why, can't we have Nicholas Cage playing a flaming skeleton anymore?

Captain Marvel - How will it do? Two Guesses

Personally, even leaving aside Brie Larson's comments, I don't understand the projections for Captain Marvel. She is not a particularly successful character in comics or media, nor was Mar-vell, the initial character she was based on. But then again, I didn't understand the Black Panther hype either, so my personal preference on superheroes is hardly a good indicator of success. To be frank, I could take or leave much of the MCU. I liked the first Iron Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Otherwise there are many decent entries but a few underwhelming ones. (I actually thought Infinity War was kind of weak, but that's another post.)

I've been thinking about who the dedicated audience is for Captain Marvel, since in a typical release you want a rabid fanbase who love the character, like Batman or Spiderman brings. These people generate hype among their friends. Captain Marvel has no such devotees. There is no one who talks about reading Captain Marvel as a teen and eagerly awaiting the next issue, or who got a tattoo of her logo before this movie started being hyped.

In its place are people who support the character for the underlying politics of a woke female superhero who considers smiling sexual assault. I think for the most part the dedicated audience is liberal white males in their 30s who are not overly familiar with comics but consider themselves conspicuous geeks. Disney may want minorities and women to watch, but quite honestly for the most part they have their own interests. Little girls want to be princesses like Elsa, not grim and dimensionless men with boobs like Captain Marvel, and that leaves you with an audience of liberal white males who hate on whites for wokeness cred. That is a sizeable chunk of people, but this group is probably an active hindrance on sales, as they run around online screaming at people, call everyone racists, and in general act like huge assholes.

Not sure if this is in the film

Without a dedicated fanbase to generate positive hype, it really comes down to the group that gets called "normies" by the young people. These are casual people not paying much attention to online goings-on, and who shuffle from zeitgeist to zeitgeist as a herd. What or where they go is hard to predict, and their reasoning is superficial, bizarre, and/or contradictory. The entirety of sales and marketing could be said to boil down to trying to predict what these people want, and really the performance of almost every film depends on them. I see them breaking in one of two directions - coming out in droves, or staying away entirely.

On the one hand 'normies', who aren't paying attention to any of the online kerfuffle, are likely to go and sit down in a theater and watch Captain Marvel, because the MCU has built up a lot of goodwill with its fanbase. But, normies might not be thinking of going to the movies in March, and does this movie motivate them? Normally I'd say no, but Disney knows how to market films.

Tuesday the reviews will be out, and I expect them to be rapturous. We will hear about how awesome the character is, how much trouble Thanos is in, and how the cat is the greatest thing ever. Anything short of pure praise (Think the hundreds of Solo 'it's a blast' reviews) and I think the movie is in trouble. But I think Disney will not have to worry about reviewers, as for whatever else I think the Mouse knows how to seduce them into giving good reviews. Disney will generate hype -and lots of it- based upon critical acclaim.

The question is will normies buy in, and I think there's a good probability that they will. If normies hear there is a great new MCU film out, they might make the effort to go out in early March to see a movie. If things break for normies being interested, I'd put box office projection at about $120 million, the high end of the initial estimate.

The second question is how does it do following opening weekend if it has a strong opening. I don't see this movie as getting overly positive or overly negative word of mouth. I see it as getting 'eh, it was alright' responses. I highly doubt the Brie Larson magic of anti-white male PR permeates the movie. There may be subtle things that irritate people who know to look for it, but the average normie will probably just consume the propaganda without resistance, and in the absence of negative word of mouth I think it doesn't see a huge dropoff. Given this, I see it tracking close to Civil War and ending at about $1.1 billion.

BUT, if 'normies' are utterly uninterested in the never-successful brand of Captain Marvel - and there are some indicators of this based upon the toys already going in clearance - then we are in for a very different story. If Brie Larson has turned off fans enough that normies are aware of her comments and not just the controversy - if they start associating this film with divisiveness like they did with Ghostbusters 3 - then positive reviews won't help, and they will decide to just skip it, or forget about it, or wait for the blu-ray.

If things break this way, I see the film going into Solo territory with an $80 million opening. This movie will not generate the positive buzz needed to overcome an anemic (for a Marvel film) opening. Following low opening week turnout I see it limping to $500 million overall. It really all depends on how the normies break, but what I will say is they will break pretty much as a group one way or another: this won't be a divided film. It will either be wholly loved or wholly mocked.

I do feel like giving a positive and negative take is kind of a cop-out, but this is the inherent weirdness of living in a country of 300 million people: you have your own concept of who people are and what they want, and what society is and wants, but as with every election or open question, when it comes down to it you really don't know, and when they en masse do the opposite of what you think they SHOULD do, it can be jarring. Depending on what the stakes are, it can be downright scary.

But it also is why this is fascinating. Either way, we're about to learn something about society and culture, about what people will accept vs what limits exist. And I see Captain Marvel as an indicator of where Star Wars Episode IX will land. If it succeeds, Episode IX will probably hit TFA numbers. If not, IX could be in jeopardy, because it signals audience irritation with strident social justice theming.

You can all guess which way I'm hoping this turns out. My hope is we see this kind of 'woke' movie-making fizzle out like any other fad, and people look back on the crazed films of the 2010s the same way they view avocado colored refrigerators. But if it doesn't? Well, then I think anyone who isn't a fan of this overt woke politics needs to start building their own art and community, and understanding that you are a counter culture now. Nerds aren't strangers to this, but it is still sad to see things that once were fun get torn down purely for the sake of tearing them down.

"It Wasn't Made For Them"

For whatever else, Brie Larson has certainly generated online chatter lately, and Captain Marvel looks to be the latest cultural battle over aggressive feminism in film since Ghostbusters 3. Projections alternate between Captain Marvel making over one hundred billion dollars or a mere ten cents,  and its success or failure has eclipsed the discussion about the rather dull character who has never quite resonated, either as a female or as Mar-vell.

Where the numbers ultimately fall will be revealed in a few weeks, but what can be said is Brie Larson's comments haven't helped the movie much, even if they may not hurt the film as much as many say they should. Much of what she has said has already been parsed, and condemned, for its racism and sexism:

"I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle in Time. It wasn’t made for him! I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color..."

Most people have focused on her statement that white males have no valid opinion on films, which is understandable, but as is typical with people of Brie Larson's political persuasion there are layers of faulty premises in her reasoning, which have inadvertently been conceded as fact. Namely, there has been a concession on the point of a Wrinkle in Time itself, as if the story is only for women of color.

As it happens, I am a white man in my 40s. But once upon a time, I was ten. And when I was ten, my fourth grade teacher decided to read a book to the class with an odd green centaur-man with wings instead of arms on the cover. That book was a Wrinkle in Time. And the entire class - boys and girls - listened to it for an hour at lunch every day, discussing the book and eager to hear what the next day would bring (or as eager as fourth graders ever can be).

Several years ago, when a friend (a white male then in his 40s) lamented there was no science fiction that would appeal to a girl his daughter's age, I suggested a Wrinkle in Time offhandedly, saying it was fascinating and had a female protagonist. Several weeks later he thanked me, saying his daughter loved it and that he was reading the books with her and enjoying them himself, and it had been a positive moment of bonding between them. As a parent I've come to understand that any bond with your children becomes precious, so I was happy something I suggested turned out so well. (How often does that happen, after all?)

Such is my history with the book. No, it isn't some tale of life-changing events where I put down a gun I had aimed at my temple because I remembered Mrs. Whatsit. I am no scholar on the book or on its author, just an aquainted and casual fan. It is a book I enjoyed, and remember fondly. I probably would have seen the 2018 film in the theater (I have watched prior adaptations) but I missed it. I can't speak to how faithful or unfaithful it was to the book. But I do feel somewhat qualified to have an opinion on its quality if I do choose to see it, and I feel qualified to venture this opinion.

If I had to guess, Madeleine L'Engel, a staunch Christian who believed in universal salvation, would be uncomfortable with the idea that her book and its message wasn't intended for a universal audience, or that some people shouldn't have opinions on it. None of the quotes I have read of hers lead me to believe that she targeted teenage girls of color specifically. She didn't avoid writing to them, but her main goal was writing for children of every race. The book has messages about the importance of love and the threat of domination, the evil which strives for absolute control of thought and purpose against the freedom to express, the love of family and the ties that bind, and of a young person's place in the world as they enter adulthood. The book, as I see it, has a message intended for all people. Doesn't it then follow that all people should have a right to comment on it?

My teacher hadn't gotten the memo that white males weren't the audience for A Wrinkle In Time, nor did I when I suggested it to a friend, nor I guess did people since its publishing in 1962, nor did the makers of earlier film adaptations. Only recently - and eleven years after the author's passing- did it suddenly become only for one group of people. And Disney is involved.

Harlan Ellison in the 1990s had an excellent diatribe about his contempt for Uncle Walt's practice of putting "Walt Disney's" before classic ideas as though they were his own, such as Walt Disney's Winnie the Pooh when the stories were written by A.A. Milne, or  Walt Disney's The Jungle Book when it was the universe of Rudyard Kipling, or...well, a million examples. I wonder if this sad part of his mixed legacy has reared its head again. I suspect that Brie Larson is only vaguely aware that the Disney film was based upon a novel. I would guess she either doesn't know or doesn't care about the work on which the movie was based, because the Disney version is what matters. Either that, or she read it and came away thinking it was about racial and gender wokeness, which I highly doubt.

In a way this is very sad, because somehow a timeless and very good story by a religious woman about love and family is now a failed Disney project associated with cultural marxism, to where the Brie Larsons of the world feel entitled to declare that it is not for one group of people or another and the rest of us just kind of accept that. How many people will pass by the book now that they assume it is some radical tract?

I reject the notion that skin color is a gating factor on whether or not an opinion is valid. What we all should strive for is to not spout off in ignorance, but to speak honestly and thoughtfully. When it comes to A Wrinkle in Time and who is 'qualified' to speak about it, I think the person who should be ignored is Brie Larson.

Maleficent and Why It Sucks

Sleeping Beauty was Walt Disney's animated masterpiece. The designs were lavish, the score epic, and the writing crisp. The movie was the most ambitious of the Disney princess movies that Walt Disney undertook, and the last one until the Little Mermaid, made long after his death.

Though not a box office success, Sleeping Beauty is treasured as a Disney classic, and the character of Maleficent is considered arguably the best villain in Disney, inspiring later villains such as Jafar, and appearing as a major antagonist in several other Disney products.

When Disney began its craze of reimagining films as live-action adaptations, the first chosen was a new spin on the tale of Maleficent. While subsequent live action adaptations have been faithful to source material, Maleficent took what could best be described as some massive liberties.

To start, Sleeping Beauty is, of all the princess films, probably the most grounded in the medieval heritage of Europeans and European Americans. It mixes old pagan mythical concepts with subtle Christian imagery and references. The story is one of good and evil through a traditional chivalric lens. The villainous witch fights against a brave and dashing prince in the epic final minutes of the film, which is, I would argue, the greatest sequence Disney ever produced.

In the Maleficent film, the decision was made to make Maleficent the sympathetic character. Thus the focus was changed, giving us a view of Men as a force of destruction and chaos, in conflict with the honorable Fey of the woods. Maleficent's character went from being a fearsome Satan worshipping badass to some kind of Messiah guardian with long black wings who was raped by a man.

What's that about rape? Well...yes. King Stefan, now reimagined from a slightly bumbling King to some kind of crazed ambitious superbastard, befriends Maleficent and, as a price for the throne, cuts off her black wings. It's worthwhile to note here that rape literally means, "to take" and the symbolism of what this represents is obvious, as Maleficent is now damaged and incomplete. Stefan takes her wings and wins the throne. Maleficent adopts her trademark sinister mannerisms and befriends a crow, and begins plotting her revenge, setting up a retelling of the events of Sleeping Beauty with about as much love for the original as Rian Johnson showcases towards Star Wars.

So EVIL

A note about Angelina Jolie - I'm not sure that she does a particularly good job as Maleficent, but the character is so poorly adapted from the original (whom Angelina still does her best to mimic here, despite the radically different character profile) that it probably isn't fair to blame her for the movie's problems, which stem from the odd choice to inject very crass gender politics into the film.

The biggest problem the movie has is that it is correcting a problem which doesn't exist, namely the charge that the original was chauvinist, and in the process makes it worse, like giving a healthy person chemotherapy. I would argue that Sleeping Beauty is one of the most feminist and female-oriented films of the twentieth century, with a strong female villain whose gender is not her principle defining feature, and three main characters who are all women and do not conform to any of the sexy body type images which feminists are always complaining about. The movie passes the Bechdel test in numerous places. In fact, there is no scene in the film where a male character is not talking about a woman.

People often think the story is not feminist because Aurora does very little but fall asleep and wake up, but it isn't really her story. Other people claim it is about Phillip, but he doesn't even have dialogue in the latter half of the movie and is operating completely at the instruction of the Good Fairies. Phillip and Aurora are both integral to the movie (moreso than the remake), but truthfully the story is about the three Good Fairies, who showcase courage, sacrifice, flaws, and genuine love, and are the true protagonists of the film. It is their story. The ending is their triumph.

So STUPID

What happens to the Good Fairies in the Maleficent film is worse than what happens to Maleficent herself. They go from being brave and capable to being morons who can be downright nasty to Aurora (Imelda Staunton, who played Delores Umbridge, plays Flora, still in pink and with obvious callbacks to arguably the most hated character in Harry Potter).

Instead the hero of the story is the villain, attractive A-list actress Angelina Jolie, playing a 'dark' Maleficent who winds up growing close to Aurora as a surrogate mother. She not only curses the princess but also wakes her with a kiss of true love, and at the end she has wings again. It seems like the silly vanity project of an aging actor, insisting on playing Hamlet, Claudius, and Ophelia all at the same time, except my guess is this was driven by the creative team at Disney and not Angelina Jolie.

Disney seemingly has gone all-in on destroying and denigrating the concept of love at first site, describing it as nonexistent in Maleficent and stupid in the movie Frozen, so the audience of 'cool wine aunts' can nod their heads and we can all sit to be lectured about how in a world of fantasy and make believe, we can't for a moment stomach the idea that Fate exists, or that True Love exists, -or heresy of heresies- that the love between a man and a woman is special.

In all cases the film is less 'feminist' than its animated predecessor. In fact the only thing this movie does do is make men bad, and show men being harmed by exotic creatures while the audience is supposed to cheer against them. The movie doesn't uplift women -every female character is a weaker and less capable version of their animated counterpart- but it certainly does denigrate men in fairly cliche ways. Which I think says something about feminism and what its true goals are, and what truly motivates it. It also says something about the company leadership at Disney which aggressively pushing this message.

Maleficent is identity politics masquerading as a remake to push an ideology onto its audience. Sadly, we're all too familiar with this as a practice from Disney, and Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil (what?) looks to be more of the same.