Hiya!

I guess Captain Marvel is a hit. Despite numerous calls to boycott the movie thanks to Brie Larson’s controversial comments about the “white man,” the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe outing soared to a glowing $153 million over the weekend in the United States alone. I already talked it being Marvel’s most important movie because of all the outrage the outspoken actress has received and I definitely stand by my statements. I have seen the movie myself and I was actually surprised at the large turnout as the cinema I went to had a lot of people in the seats. Not all the seats were full, mind you. But there was definitely not a shortage of people in the theater.

Now, here’s the thing. I didn’t really like the movie. As a female/girl/woman, Captain Marvel specifically targeted me. And, in all honesty, I felt the movie talked down to me. There was very little subtlety with the entire “Don’t let men tell you your place” with all the flashbacks and Carol Danvers getting up each and every time she failed. It would’ve been much more empowering if they actually showed her succeed after getting up. Then again, that’s just my opinion. Captain Marvel felt like a step back for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe as everything just looked bland. Brie Larson’s acting was bland. The action was bland. The setting, even with the nostalgia hooks, was bland. I really wish I was creative enough to give her a nickname like “Captain Bland” but there’s just no hook to it. But that’s how I feel about the film.

But does Captain Marvel, the movie, deserve all the hate its getting? I don’t think so.

It certainly doesn’t look like it’s getting a lot of hate on Rotten Tomatoes. Let me rephrase: it doesn’t look as bad as it did just a few days ago on Rotten Tomatoes. When the movie opened, the critics certified Captain Marvel as “Fresh” (even though I can’t for the life of me figure out why) while the audience score was at a dismal 33%. But now, if you look at the Captain Marvel page on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score is now at a healthy 58%. So, what’s the deal?

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Captain Marvel was being “review bombed.” What this meant was some people were creating multiple account and using bots to bring down the audience score for the film. They essentially made more accounts and reviewed the dickens out of the film to drastically bring the score down.

Now, I ask you, does Captain Marvel or Brie Larson for that matter deserve that level of hate? I mean, it’s one thing to go online and rant about Brie Larson’s political views and try to convince other moviegoers to not go and watch Captain Marvel to send her a lesson. That seems like a reasonable and rational thing to do, right? But instead of doing that, you have a bunch of people basically trying to commit election fraud for a movie! Okay, that sounded pretty hyperbolic but you get the idea.

But even the ranting against the movie has gotten out of hand. It’s getting so it’s hard to trust whatever is being posted on the super trusted thing of all facts, the Internet. I’ve seen videos and Twitter posts proclaiming that they watched Captain Marvel in an empty theater and with pictures to prove it. But… the movie made a whopping $153 million? So, who’s telling the truth here? It’s really easy to fake an empty movie house. All you have to do is come in really early before anyone comes in and snap your picture. Or you can just use Photoshop to make it seem like it’s empty. I’m not saying that’s what they did but it’s totally plausible as it goes against the box office numbers, doesn’t it?

I’m not including the large number of biased videos that have been stating that Captain Marvel is just for SJWs and they’re all now crying since fans hate the movie. Look, I may not really like SJW’s and what they generally stand for because of how overboard they go in order to push their form of “equality” on the world and I don’t like how it’s making general society soft (which is strange as I’m technically a millennial and I should be an SJW). But how does this help your cause? How does saying the SJWs are a bunch of crybabies and can’t take it that people hate Captain Marvel? Wouldn’t that just make them want the film to be more successful and go watch it over and over again to prove you wrong?

But just because I dislike what the Captain Marvel haters and anti-Brie Larson camp is doing, that doesn’t mean I’m siding with the fans saying that Captain Marvel is the ultimate Marvel movie because those guys and gals are equally guilty!

It seems fair to say that there are a lot of haters that tossed a review bomb at Captain Marvel. It’s easy to spot since the comments are just copy and pasted from account to account. There are also the “reviews” that just note that they hate Brie Larson and never mention the film. Well, guess what? I’ve seen evidence of the same thing from the reviews that are singing the praises of Captain Marvel! There are those copy and pasted glowing reviews out there and I really hope Rotten Tomatoes also took those down just to be fair because there is such as thing as a positive “review bomb” in this case!

There’s also the name calling coming from that side. I get that there are “trolls” out there who using their tech savvy (ie. creating multiple account to review bomb Captain Marvel) to try and “prove” that it’s a bad film. But I just don’t like how it seems like anyone, and I mean anyone, who criticizes the film are being put under that same bracket. Maybe that’s not their intention but that’s how it comes across when you have headlines like “Box Office: ‘Captain Marvel’ Trolled The Trolls With A $455M Global Launch” and “Trolls hit ‘Captain Marvel’ with bad reviews on its release day on Rotten Tomatoes” and others. Are you telling me it’s not possible to give the movie a bad review and not be a troll? Because that’s how it comes across to me!

Look, I’m kind of like Switzerland in that I’m not joining anyone’s side in this Captain Marvel war… but I’m the Switzerland that doesn’t join because I hate both sides! I didn’t like the movie. That doesn’t make me a hater of women’s rights! Nor do I approve of people trying to do something underhanded to trick people into not watching the movie! It should be okay to voice out one’s opinion because of the free speech thing but trying to shame others for liking or hating something because you have an agenda or something to prove is just dumb.

And that goes for both sides.

What’s your take on the entire Captain Marvel debacle? Let me know in the comments section below… but in a civil way.