Joker film sequel's failure said to supposedly reveal double-standards when it comes to female-centric fare

Movieweb wrote about the box office failure of Joker: Folie a Deux, and they argue superhero films with female leads are held to higher standards. And they also reveal a certain director, most unfortunately, defended the sequel, and making matters worse, they pulled the woke card act on racial issues:

On October 6, the Sunday after Joker: Folie à Deux opened in theaters, the movie was looking at a terrible box office weekend and an even worse audience reaction. The Hollywood Reporter posted a story about how director Francis Ford Coppola liked the Joker sequel. The caption on The Hollywood Reporter's X account said, "Hang in there, Todd Phillips." Many called out The Hollywood Reporter for the framing of this story, particularly in response to how they covered the box office fallout to The Marvels in 2023, particularly with the headline "Why ‘Marvels’ Director Nia DaCosta Bailed on the Cast-and-Crew Screening." The article seemed to put all of the blame for The Marvels flopping on DaCosta and was accused of misrepresenting the situation. This certainly highlighted how white male directors are treated kinder than women of color.

Oh for heaven's sake. Do we really need to hear this nonsense again about how white men have it better, sans all discussion of artistic quality? There's tons of male directors who haven't fared well, and Steven Spielberg's recent remake of West Side Story was catastrophous. Must I also note how disappointed I am with Coppola for lending support to the Joker sequel? And here I thought he was among all those famous filmmakers put off by the overabundance of superhero fare! Supervillain fare is much worse though, and that goes without saying. If we're supposed to be rooting for criminals, that's awful.

Still, it also spoke to another case of how female-centric superhero movies are treated far more harshly than male-led ones. While The Marvels was a box office disappointment, it performed better on its opening weekend than Joker: Folie à Deux; headlines about The Marvels were much more doom-and-gloom. Everything was put on the shoulders of The Marvels, where Joker 2 was treated as a one-off. The release and fallout of Joker 2 highlights a sexist double standard in how people talk about female-led superhero movies, one that is sadly as old as the genre itself. Long story short, when a male-led superhero movie like Morbius, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, or Joker: Folie à Deux flops, is because of several factors. When female-led ones like The Marvels, Birds of Prey, or Madame Web flop, the blame is solely on whom the lead is.

Oh for heaven's sake. Since when weren't the male leads of various live action adaptations accountable for failure? Far as I'm concerned, a non-actor like Dwayne Johnson has some responsibility to shoulder for the Black Adam movie's failure, and the scriptwriters do too, based on all the wokeness they shoehorned in. Of course, if that's how they feel, why doesn't Movieweb's writers do a whole essay on how quite a few pretentious male performers are to blame for a superhero film's failure? And overrated as the Wonder Woman movies were, I don't recall anybody massively blaming Gal Gadot for the 2nd film's failure, awful as it was. On which note, Movieweb does get around to that film, in any event:

In 2017, after 76 years in comics, Wonder Woman finally got her solo feature film with Patty Jenkins's feature film, Wonder Woman. Despite being part of DC's Trinity alongside Superman and Batman, she had struggled to make it to the big screen. Superman and Batman had multiple films by the time Wonder Woman got her solo movie. Wonder Woman remained stuck in development hell even though lesser-known heroes from DC's pages, like Swamp Thing, Constantine, and Green Lantern, got the big screen treatment. Meanwhile, the MCU wouldn't have a female hero in a film title until their 20th film, Ant-Man and the Wasp, with the following movie, Captain Marvel, being the first female-led solo project in the franchise after 11 years.

For years, the poor box office and critical performance of female-led superhero movies like Supergirl, Catwoman, and Elektra were used to justify not greenlighting a Wonder Woman or Black Widow film. The common idea was those movies did poorly because audiences didn't like female-led superheroes, and not that the actual quality of the films was bad. Bad movies based around male-led superhero movies never stopped the genre or were blamed for their box office disappointment. Films like Batman & Robin, The Spirit, and Jonah Hex never risked other male-led superhero movies like The Flash and Green Lantern getting made.

This is how it goes, as male-led superhero movies aren't forced to carry the weight of the genre on their shoulders as their female-led counterparts are. Three Punisher movies were made and bombed before Wonder Woman got her solo film. Madame Web was bad, but it is not like Morbius is any better. Moreover, individuals on the internet tried to blame Madame Web for being bad because it was about a group of women, but the same reasoning isn't used for box office and critical disappointments like Joker 2, 2019's Hellboy, or The Flash.

Strange, wasn't the 1st adaptation of Swamp Thing back in 1982? What's that got to with all this? As for the Flash film, I don't think star Ezra Miller's going to find many more roles after what he was accused of, and is tragically getting away with. Something they don't correctly acknowledge here is that Jonah Hex, Spirit and Green Lantern, at their time, remained with just one entry, little different from any failed film starring superheroines. Plus, they forget Hex can't be considered a superhero in the same way as the modern day counterparts, since it's a western. Though as I recall, the film absurdly gave Hex the ability to briefly revive the dead just so he could interrogate them or something?!? Gee, as if things couldn't have been more badly handled.

Furthermore, to say Madame Web's a flop because it was about women is monumentally stupid, and throughly ignores any and all lady-led films and even TV shows that were successful. What about Charlie's Angels and even Charmed? They may be TV-based (the former did have a film adaptation in 2000), but don't they count? The reason was simply because the studio wasn't building on merit and talent. From what Movieweb's telling here, you'd think these were gay men blabbering the nonsense; why would a heterosexual man have an issue with a movie starring a girl, especially if she's hot? That's something Movieweb's propagandist doesn't answer. It just doesn't make any sense. After all, considering films starring women continue getting made all the time, doesn't that contradict their claim?

How much longer do these ideologues intend to keep pushing this silly clickbait cliche that nobody wants movies starring superheroines? None of this is helping, and again, throughly ignores the lack of talent and merit in today's Hollywood. Maybe the best question of all is, what's the use of making these movies at all, regardless of whether a man or woman is the star? It's all just a whole waste of billions of dollars on so much sound and fury that signifies nothing in the end.