The Four Color Media Monitor

IGN's posted more needless speculations about where the Marvel movie machine could be churning next, and gives some more reasons why this whole franchise should be avoided. First:

Multiverse of Madness ends as a heroic Wanda brings down the Scarlet Witch’s temple onto herself. Eagle-eyed fans noticed a red flash, and that combined with the fact that we didn’t see a body has folks speculating about Wanda Maximoff’s survival. Similar to how Hulk won’t let Bruce Banner die and the Phoenix Force protects Jean Grey from harm, Wanda’s Scarlet Witch persona is unlikely to go down without a fight. Thankfully, the comics could hold the key to how Wanda fits into the future of the world’s highest-grossing franchise.

Or maybe they couldn't. For now, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness certainly doesn't, seeing how it depicts Wanda murdering people, going far beyond what was seen in Avengers: Disassembled and House of M. Why do they think she's depicted "heroically" in view of that characterization? And on that note, here's where their news turns really sickening, and sums up why this film franchise is best shunned:

Olsen herself has said she’d love to say the legendary “no more mutants” line in the MCU, which is a nod to House of M’s catastrophic events. Even though a lot of that 2005 arc has been adapted across WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness, the depowering of mutantkind that occurs as a result of that line seems like too popular a storyline for the movies to not cover in some form eventually. In terms of dealing with Wanda’s family troubles, House of M is also a way to (re-)introduce major characters including Magneto and Quicksilver into the MCU. Avengers Disassembled ends with a catatonic Wanda being taken to Genosha under the care of Professor X and Magneto, while House of M picks up with the latter warning that her reality-warping powers need to be stopped with a permanent solution.

Well how about that, Olsen is okay with a controversial storyline that didn't appeal to all Marvel fans 17 years ago. Something IGN clearly wants left down the memory hole, and they take no objective view of the storyline either.

One thing is clear: We’re far from finished with Wanda and her potential as the Scarlet Witch. Alongside those continued rumors of a Young Avengers project and a Scarlet Witch standalone, there’s also the Kathryn Hahn-led Agatha: House of Darkness spin-off in the works. WandaVision ended with Maximoff saying she’d know where to find Agatha if she ever needed her, and a role for Olsen or her onscreen sons in that series could neatly queue a riff on The Children’s Crusade. Going with the tried and true trope of “if you don’t see a body,” someone is sure to be digging Wanda out of the Mount Wundagore rubble. It doesn’t take the brainpower of Professor Xavier to figure out the MCU isn’t done with Ms. Maximoff just yet.

I'm afraid the potential was destroyed after the scriptwriters began turning Wanda into a lethal villainess. This is repellent, and IGN's refusal to approach the topic through an objective lens only worsens the affair. Most infuriarating is how they threw away the potential for depicting a serious romance and partnership in crimefighting between Wanda and a boyfriend who's a superhero (or even a civilian co-star, something past writers may never have tried developing to pair with Wanda), all for the sake of depicting Scarlet Witch in a sterile role of a villainess that doesn't need serious work in character development. A problem that's occurred in mainstream comics in several cases before, where, if the writers/editors don't want to depict an honest character in a story where he/she will need the challenge of character growth and focus in writing, they'll instead put them in the one-dimensional role of somebody turning evil. It's a brand of cheap sensationalism that's become a quite an Achilles Heel in mainstream comicdom, if you know where to look (I remember Magenta, a former girlfriend of Wally West when he was Kid Flash, pretty much fell victim to the trope as well), and something that's got to stop.

And with that told, I just discovered another bit of eyebrow raising info about the Dr. Strange sequel that reeks of tasteless moral equivalence. I was reading Wikimedia manager Danny Horn's Superheroes Every Day site, where he posted a review of the movie, and, while I may not agree with him on everything, it seems he's revealed something involving America Chavez that even the most left-wing apologists for the film don't seem dismayed at in their gushy reviews:

On her jacket, America is wearing an up-to-date queer pride flag pin, which nobody remarks upon and is not important. There is no romantic plotline for her; the only romantic story thread in the movie is Stephen and Christine, which they invited me to care about and I declined.

They do mention her two moms, which is nice, but they instantly die and have nothing to do with the rest of the movie, so “kill your lesbians” is still alive and well in our corner of the multiverse.

I read that Saudi Arabia asked Disney to distribute a cut that didn’t include the 12 seconds of America’s two moms, and Disney told them to go pound sand, so they didn’t release the movie in Saudi Arabia. That’s great and I’m happy that they stood up to anti-queer censorship, but the fact that the queerness all took place during 12 seconds that could easily be excised with no impact on the plot is still irksome, and I am irked by it.

Let me guess. Wanda's the guilty party in assassinating the two moms along with various other civilians, right? Next thing you know, we'll discover the filmmakers secretly wrote Wanda as a metaphor for an extreme right-winger. Either way, this part of the screenplay sure reeks of tasteless moral equivalence. Even if the same-sex parenthood emphasized in all of 12 seconds is a poor example, that still doesn't justify wiping out the 2 moms. It reminds me that I'd done studies on tropes and stereotypes in classic TV over past years, and as I've written a few times before, there's entertainment writers who were far more willing to subject lesbians to roles like committing murder (and I still shudder at the memory of an atrocious episode from Nash Bridges where something like that occurred), while male homosexuals, by contrast, were hardly ever depicted in criminal roles since the mid-70s, and if they were, it was very sparing and non-committal. There were some reports several years back about TV shows where lesbians are wiped out, and if this new movie is any indication, a trope that's anti-female is still very prevalent in Hollywood and other entertainment mediums. I get the feeling that, if the same-sex parents in the Multiverse of Madness screenplay had been a pair of men, and a son instead of a daughter, it'd never have made it past the screenwriting committee at Marvel Studios. That's basically "male privilege" for you, here in the form of a studio division producing comics movies and TV shows.

And if they're wondering why it was so common, well gee, why don't they blame the leftists who've greenlighted such a crude bias? They're the reason why there's so many inconsistent standards applied in how certain types of people are portrayed in showbiz, and why women continue to suffer unfair treatment, even long after the Harvey Weinstein scandal made headlines.

And if the steep 2nd week drop in box office receipts is any suggestion, this proves that if Marvel Studios was hoping to please everyone, they failed, because it's impossible to please everyone when you adhere to political correctness.

Labels: Avengers, Doctor Strange, golden calf of death, golden calf of LGBT, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence, women of marvel