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‘Ironheart’ Review Bombing Proves Some Comic Book Fans Still Can’t Handle Women of Color in the Spotlight
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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Not wrong. But it does seem to miss the general slide in popularity of the rest of the Marvel franchise. Very easy to review bomb a movie that nobody else is interested in watching, because the genre and the franchise is utterly played out.
I suspect the "We don't make art at this company, we make money" bean counters at Disney+ will continue to take the wrong message from all of this. Given their rush to cancel a bunch of prestige hits, like Andor and Extraordinary among others, I suspect we're going to see a new wave of cheap, low-budget, heavily AI-driven slop content in the near future. The lesson we learn will be to double down on boring white dude power fantasies, because their standard for art and writing is so much lower than their peers.
I hope we're all ready for everything to become Rebel Moon!
While I agree there has been a decrease, to say no one is watching is an overstatement.
Deadpool & Wolverine was #2 at the Box Office for 2024. Marvel films were also in the top 10 in 2023 and 2024. Currently in 2025 Marvel films are in the top 10, although they would likely fall off by years end (but also Fantastic Four, so TBD).
The audience, as a whole, is interested. I understand that many people have stopped watching and that's fine, but just because you have stopped because you don't like it, doesn't mean that everyone else had stopped.
What people want is a quality film. Or since we're talking about Ironheart, a quality TV show. Disney/Marvel has absolutely fumbled with a lot of these stories. Their rock bottom was Secret Invasion. But we're generally trending up.
Agatha was fantastic. Spider-Man was a fresh new approach that really worked. Daredevil was a project they knew they messed up on so they reshot it, it stumbles a little bit but starts and ends strong.
Watching Ironheart, with all the bad press going into it, I've been pleasantly surprised. It's got some issues, but overall it's solid.
You don't think it's telling that the big example you gave for people still liking Marvel was a movie that shit all over the MCU and made fun of the boring, convoluted mess it's become?
No. That's why I referenced 2022 & 2023 to show that 2024 wasn't a rare exception. Looking at 2025 it does look like we are starting to trend downwards. While the two current MCU films are in the top 10 box office their numbers probably won't let them stay there by the end of the year. However July gives us the comic book film Superman, but also the MCU film Fantastic Four. If those bomb horribly then yeah, maybe people really are getting sick of comic book/superhero films.
Besides Deadpool 3 made one joke about "this being a low point". Jokes about the multiverse have been happening since the first Deadpool movie when it was just the Fox universe, so once you have access to everything, you of course make fun of everything (although even then most references stuck to Fox properties).
Something of an exception that proved the rule, as the whole Deadpool formula is to parody and mock the main franchise.
Captain America: Brave New World underperformed Ant Man & Wasp Girl (itself a disappointment) despite enjoying significantly more promotion. The Disney+ MCU shows are all getting cancelled regardless of popularity, because the budgets are so high, including Agatha (which was mid in no small part because it was trapped in the Marvel formula).
Thanks to the enormous extensive promotion, they've managed to juice their rankings next to other lower budget films. But promotion costs money and if you're not scraping $1B on your main line film every year, it's hard to justify $100M+ telling people to go watch the film plus another $200-500M to make the damned things.
When you can release a movie like Terrifier 3 and rake in 45x what you spent for it, or a more traditional Disney film (Moana 2) for a scant $100M and take in 10x, you have to question the Marvel math.
Point of order: Andor was only ever going to be two seasons.
Andor's five-season plan was axed due to "desperation," "Diego's face"
"It just takes too long to make it," showrunner Tony Gilroy concluded, explaining why he condensed Cassian Andor's five-year journey into two seasons.
Sure but that's still only planned for two seasons. The show runner, the creative, made that decision. Andor was great and I'd have loved to see more, but if the creator decided that their five year plan wasn't worth it, then I trust that they made the right decision.
I'm for not dragging things out unnecessarily.
Case in point, apparently you don't even realize that this isn't a movie. It's a show.
People review bombing stuff that they don't want to see, and probably didn't even see (or just the first five minutes), simply is not behaviour that should be encouraged. Unfortunately nowadays reviews don't mean shit anymore for the original purpose of reviews: to be a guide for people who are interested in watching something, to see if watching this particular thing is worthwhile.
Nowadays these reviews or ratings are being used by the monoculture people to say "at the moment our monoculture likes x and hates y". And that's stupid bs that the mainstream has caused.
It doesn't matter. It's the same story they've been telling for the last twenty years. It's tired and played out. "What if Iron Man was a woman over 8 episodes instead of three movies" isn't fun anymore.
Sure. Because they think the solution to a played out franchise is to make it darker and edger, having learned exactly nothing from the collapse of the DCU.
Of course it isnt fun when you go into it with the mindset that the story will be that. I have only watched the first episode so far and it doesnt seem like Iron Man to me at all, bar the fact that it's comic booky and superheroe-y.
And my point was that reviews should actually review a show/movie. And not be a general feedback tool for how a franchise is perceived. The studios have failed in providing such more broad and general feedback channels.
I don't think its mindset so much as experience. If you've never watched an MCU feature before, I suppose it could still be a lot of fun. But they've been making these shows since 2008, at least? If you've seen them, you've seen them.
Sure. And if you've made your brand on the "I hate everything with non-white men in it" the first thing out of your mouth is going to be "That's not a white man on screen so it sucks!"
But if you've spent nearly twenty years watching the Superhero franchise eat its own tail, what is left to review? This feels like asking someone to give a cinematic review of the latest Pokemon episode. "Guys, it looks like they're trying to catch another rare one and... omg its Team Rocket again, I wonder if they'll get foiled this time, too".
The studios think they have a formula that prints money. And the formula is so deeply engrained, so dogmatized, that there's no room left for more than a change to the window dressing. The fact that they did take 18 years to get to "Maybe someone else can play Iron Man?" is illustrative of the trench they buried themselves in.
I watched both versions of the Rebel Moons…
Are you saying ‘their standards’ as in Disney executive’s standards or ‘white dude’ standards?
Unfortunately, its white dudes all the way down