The Four Color Media Monitor

The UK Observer discusses, how Hollywood lost its way with superhero movies in the past number of years, and unfortunately, they make it sound like The Boys was a game changer years after superhero fare made it big. They also make a very absurd claim about Hollywood:

And then came a surprise new hit whose effect can be felt today: in July that year, Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys premiered. Based on another series of comics and centred on a group of superhuman, Lycra-covered crusaders, it could easily have been more of the same. But what felt genuinely revolutionary in 2019 – as Iron Man did in 2008 – was its tone: one of merciless, depraved cynicism.

From its malignant, narcissistic leader, Homelander, to its lecherous invisible man (who uses his power not to stop crime, but to lurk in women’s bathrooms), the satirical show spoke to something more true: grant humans invincible power and they become not paragons of (sardonic) virtue, but unbearable dickheads.

What was more delicious, though, was The Boys’s gleeful takedown of the parent company that “owns” these superheroes, and produces their films, television shows and merchandise. Though its heroes were modelled from DC Comics, The Boys’s sinister Vought International was clearly a Marvel parallel – a corporation that enjoyed total, unparalleled command of the culture.

Vought is a godless place that cares for nothing but its own expansion into every aspect of American life. The show parodied the company’s hypocritical expression of liberal pieties and a cringe-worthy publicity campaign celebrating the message “Girls get it done” (a clear swipe at the “female Avengers unite” scene in Avengers: Endgame, in which its superheroines walk together across the battlefield against a triumphant orchestral score), while ignoring its own workplace sexual harassment issues.

You could point to the irony of a show about the worst of capitalism being produced by Amazon, a corporation with a similarly rapacious grasp on American life, but the conversation seemed so beyond that now. Donald Trump’s US was a land of ironies wrapped in ironies, where to believe in something pure was to be passe and naive. At least here, someone was using their compromised platform to do something interesting.

Hollywood is an inherently conservative place. The success of The Boys proved that there was in fact a market for the zingy meta-referential superhero satire, and, ironically, it helped open the door to similar fare. The critically beloved series Hacks – also available on Amazon Prime Video – is a funny and engaging entertainment industry satire.

It's supremely silly they're claiming leftist-dominated Tinseltown is "inherently conservative", when here, they took to shoving wokeness into only so many notable franchises like Star Wars and the superheroes themselves, as noted before, and this is a very insulting example of pretending it never happened. All so they make it sound like the shows in question were never "liberal" enough, and an excuse to rip on capitalism. Gee, if they don't like capitalism, maybe they shouldn't have seen any of the movies at all; how else do they expect to resist a concept they must believe is inferior to socialism?

And I'm sorry, but satire is no excuse. Besides, if they believe a series as crude as The Boys is truly a breath of fresh air, that means they never approved of the basic themes the Marvel/DC superhero movies were built on anyway. If there's such a thing as good satire, then there's also such a thing as bad satire, with The Boys decidedly fitting in the latter slot. It's just no use, and it's very sad how we're repeatedly lectured that such repellent themes as the Boys comic and TV show are built on are something even adults need. No, we don't, and it's regrettable if anybody's tuning in to such an awful concept.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics