The Four Color Media Monitor

I almosst missed this Esquire interview (via Fox News) with Capt. America star Anthony Mackie, where the talk of Donald Trump turns up:

Marvel has specific plot details under wraps, but we do know that Ford will push a few pant sizes to become Red Hulk, Thaddeus Ross’s alter ego. Mackie’s already seen the film. His review: “It’s literally the best movie it can be. It stays in the lines of Marvel. It stays in the lines of Captain America, and it’s fun and it’s big.” Expectations are high, but Brave New World has also been dogged by rumors of excessive reshoots. Mackie promptly downplays the reports: “Every movie that Marvel has made, every movie that DC has made—Star Wars, Star Trek, Disney—has done reshoots.”

He offers a similar cool treatment to the inevitable comparisons that will be drawn between the Red Hulk and President Trump. “I hope, as a country, we’re tired of all the political jousting,” he says when I ask if he thinks fans will make that jump. “Let’s just go to the movies and chill the fuck out.” He adds: “We could’ve made this motherfucker yellow and it would’ve been a problem.”

Ahem. It's not the skin color that's an issue here, but rather, whether the ascribed personality intentionally draws from how leftists perceive Trump. And let's not forget Mackie irked people with his lecture that Captain America shouldn't represent the USA. That kind of PR stunt is exactly why we can't assume the film itself doesn't succumb to anti-conservative bashing. By the way, it's not "ethical" for an actor to review the same movie he appears in, so that makes his statement little more than self-congratulatory boasting.

Also worth considering is that Bill Mantlo's early 80s creation, Sabra, originally an Israeli Mossad agent as well as a superheroine, has been altered, as noted by Variety, and even the superpowers she originally had were jettisoned for this new rendition:

And it’s not just Sabra’s ties to Mossad that have been cut from the MCU. As Moore explained, the character also no longer has such mutant abilities as superhuman strength and speed.

“She’s no longer a mutant. She’s a part of the red room [from ‘Black Widow’],” Moore said. “You want to make the best version of a character – be honest to the roots of the character without not necessarily doing what publishing did. We weren’t about to put her in a feather boa and have her throw diamond earrings at people [such as in the comic books] but we did like the attitude of the character.”

Frankly, I don't find this appealing either. It's decidedly lazy scripting, and that she doesn't work for the Israeli government, and may have seriously truncated connections to Israel, only makes this sound even more dispiriting than it already is. Steve Rogers worked with plenty of heroes more superpowered than he was in the comics, with the Falcon being just one of dozens, and there's no reason this film adaptation shouldn't take that approach too. Except that, lest we forget, Steve's no longer even the star character, so what's the point other than the race-swapping mishmash? If they wanted, they could've used Natasha Romanoff, but if memory serves, they scuttled even that potential if she was portrayed sacrificing herself in one of the last Avengers movies. The film spokesperson also goofs with the weaponry issue, since besides the flight, what Sabra could throw was quill-style energy weapons, not earrings.

In the end, it's clear PC has caused damage for all characters involved in this film, and while I have no idea how well or not it'll do at the box office, I do know I for one am not encouraged to see it, since chances are high it'll be a whole woke mess.

Labels: Captain America, history, Hulk, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, violence