The #GirlBoss movement in the MCU is extremely pseudo-feminist.

I could be totally off-base with this, but has anybody else noticed that here lately the mcu has had a slight pattern of making a few female characters ridiculously overpowered as well as turbo-hyped by the narrative and marketing…

This specifically includes Wanda, Carol Danvers, and Sylvie.

I’m in particular talking about how all 3 of them had far less time for character exploration and strength build-up than the majority of the other more powerful heroes, had fairly bland and uncreative personalities compared to the other more powerful heroes (Wanda was coddled by the narrative and not allowed to have any ownership in her wrongdoings which would’ve made her more complex, Carol was a victim of the “having the same arrogant attitude as the douchebro male characters is all it takes to make a Strong Female Character(TM)” writers’ mentality, and Sylvie with mary sue-ed to hell), and were generally made more about the cool powers and ‘oooh such a badass’ moments and the aesthetic than the actual depth.

My point is… they’re all so shallow and performative. It’s like the (mostly male) writers looked at the female character and scoffed and said “ok there’s no way this lady’s gonna become a fan fave on her own- we have to help her. We have to give her a boost. I have zero faith in women being able to gain popularity by their own merit (because who’d be interested in a woman, ammiright?), so we can’t just give her a compelling backstory and let that be it. We have to make sure she has the most tragic backstory of anyone on screen at any given time, and we have to make sure the audience knows it! We can’t just give her a specific set of powers and depict them in an interesting and unique way. We have to make her stronger than any other character she’s going to share screen time with and we have to have her flaunt her powers every ten minutes to remind the audience how strong she is! We can’t just make her intelligent in her own way and give her witty banter with the male characters. We have to make sure she makes them look like idiots and condescends them as frequently as possible so the audience knows it! We can’t just flesh out her morals and let her get things wrong sometimes. We have to make it so she’s always in the right and the audience should always be on her side! And even when she does something wrong, we have to make sure the audience knows that it wasn’t really her fault and she still has the moral high ground! That’s the only way we’ll ever get people to like her as much as the main male characters!!”

It’s just…. This is just rank with a lack of confidence in women. They approach the idea of having women front and center with equal parts skepticism and greed. They’re so out of touch with what women want in superhero films and just what women want in general. They fall into the trap of thinking feminists want everyone to know that girls are actually superior to guys, when in reality we just want to be treated with the respect and humanity and agency guys have always been treated with.

And by creating these female characters the way they do (making sure they’re not equal but decidedly better than the male ones, making sure they’re nearly infallible strength-wise, making sure they’re never allowed to be held accountable for mistakes) they literally defeat that whole point. They’re being extremely counterproductive to what feminists are actually trying to do, because they aren’t actually interested giving women genuinely good representation- they’re just interested in pandering to Twitter stans and casual female fans who form their opinions based on a first glance and girls who are so starved for rep that they’ll praise movie-makers for serving up rank crumbs.

They give us female representation but not really, just like they give us queer representation but not really, and like they give us poc representation but oftentimes not really…. Because (surprise surprise) the multi-billion dollar corporation does not actually give a shit about minority issues.

Some next day thoughts about Thor 3: Ragnarok:

(cut for spoilers)

- At first I was a little jarred by the ending’s abruptness. But then I thought about it a bit more. Yes, as a movie ending, I still think it’s a bit too abrupt, I would have liked 5-10 more minutes to cover some of the dangling plotlines I’ll discuss further down. But then I realized that with all the Marvel movies out there, they’re likely going to be binge watched. So this format makes sense when you realize that this movie is only going to end there for about 1 year in its lifecycle. For the rest of its existence, viewers are just going to immediately go to or cue up either Black Panther or Infinity War, so it’s actually more like a very long TV or Netflix episode than a standalone movie in the traditional sense.

Nevertheless, some things I would like to have seen more resolution are:

- Bruce - They made a pretty big deal of the fact that if he ever switched back to the Hulk again, Bruce Banner may never come back. Now, most likely it’s not a dark enough movie series for that to be true. But still, the fact it was never brought up again after he transformed nags at me, I would have liked to see some concern from Thor & his crew over whether Banner is ok. Though I suppose some of that could be explained by Valkyrie knowing Hulk better, Thor “preferring” Hulk, and the fact that Hulk has now had enough time out in the world to actually be quite stable. It almost implies that Hulk was an infant, or an overly-caged animal so his unmanageability was purely because he wasn’t getting enough time to grow up or exercise. That being said, you’d think Loki would be a little more freaked out. And dammit, I’m worried for Bruce.

- Loki - Has shown a pathological inability to play well with others, pretty much since he learned he was adopted and from the stories of Thor 3 even before that. He is the ultimate little shit. The fact that he was shown peacefully going along with the good guys for even 5 minutes without stabbing Thor again or just causing mischief or fucking off from there gave me a weird feeling of cognitive dissonance. Like, this status quo has already lasted 5 minutes without someone actively trying to kill them, no way Loki is this patient. Then again, this was somewhat resolved by the post-credit scene of the other big ship appearing, since Loki will sometimes go along with things if a team up is required for survival, at least until he figures out how to join the other side.

Some other thoughts:

- Apparently Asgard has fewer people in it than your average shopping mall? Also none of them have the same superpowers as their royal or valkyrie elites? Apparently it is an anime land where if you don’t have a cool character design you don’t have powers, sorry guys, you’re all cannon fodder with as little ability to defend yourself as the average human and maybe less considering you have advanced magic and science sometimes but most of the time you don’t even have guns.

- Hela looks hella like Loki. I’m beginning to wonder if Thor is the adopted one here. Also wondering if, in a more serious moment, what impact Hela having once been Odin’s favorite child would have on Loki given their similarities? Some reflection by him on that point would be interesting.

- Also, wtf, are they gods, are they random aliens with delusions of grandeur, how do they embody concepts...? Thor’s lighting powers were SICK AS HELL AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF THAT FIGHT AND HOLY SHIT HE LOOKS AMAZING WITH THE ONE EYE GODDAMN but I’m just really confused from a lore/cosmology angle of what the fuck Asgardians are in the larger cosmos and as relates to Earth.

Some other good/GREAT things about the movie:

- Seeing that level of diversity was such a fucking relief like I didn’t need to brace myself or roll my eyes whenever anyone who wasn’t the Designated POC was shown as always white and usually male, it was actually wonderfully diverse and awesome wow thank you Taika. 

- (A little mad though that we didn’t get to see the Valkyrie bisexual scene, Disney is still really bad with dealing with LGBTQA+ stuff and this is another reason I fear the consolidation of all IP under The Mouse)

- Anyway, just in general, the directing, holy shit Taika Waititi is a master. 

- Like, the movie was 95% laughs and it’s really hard to transition an audience that was just laughing its asses off to a serious moment but every single serious moment hit like a punch in the gut. Like immediately. Holy shit. Odin’s death, Valkyrie’s flashback, the tiny micro-expressions of Loki and Thor dancing around what they really mean to each other these days, Banner’s identity crisis... my only complaint about any of those is that they didn’t last a little longer, but they were so efficiently done that I can’t really be mad about that. Their brevity matched the pacing of the film, and it’s only my fangirl heart that would have loved some long lingering over all the horrible Feels everyone is going through. Ah well, that’s what fanfic is for.

- That being said, it did feel like there was a couple moments and themes that could have used a little more attention, though the complaint here is minor. There is some serious fridge horror in Banner losing 2 years of his life. What about the people he killed under Hulk’s influence? What about the feeling he’s going to lose himself forever if he ever changes again, and him doing it anyway to help his friends? That was one theme that felt a little under served to me given the seriousness of the implications. 

- Hela was amazing omg. Like, it is hard to introduce a new villain that’s just magically better than everyone at everything and is also a stone cold badass woman. Somehow, somehow they managed it most likely through the immortal talent of Cate Blanchett. She was genuinely terrifying and genuinely felt like a member of their family, unlike some missing family member villains who just feel tacked on. 

- Though I will say I was a little surprised by the reluctant villainy of Karl Urban’s character. I expected him to be a more willing ally of Hela, his story was interesting in how he was basically just an opportunistic but otherwise loyal Asgardian trying to survive and I could have used a few more minutes of focus on him just to sort of pull his story together as more than just someone for Hela to talk to while shit is going down.

- Btw, SPEAKING OF HELA I’ve been saying for AGES that we should be reexamining what Thor being “worthy” is all about because it’s not necessarily the modern concept of good vs. evil. Given that Odin slaughtered his way across 9 realms then turned on the child who helped gain it for him, being “worthy” could literally just mean “able to kill the largest number of people efficiently” according to Odin.

- Uh, do any of our heroes have their powers anymore if they drew them from Asgard which is now a pile of rubble?

- But OMG WE’RE GETTING ASGARD ON EARTH YEEEESSSSSSS. Ok so one of my number one writerly influences, J. Michael Straczynski who also wrote Babylon 5 and Sense8, wrote a Thor comic about Asgard being reestablished on Earth and IT IS HILARIOUS AND WONDERFUL GUYS I am SO EXCITED to see Asgard planted in the middle of the goddamn MIDWEST this is going to be GREAT. Also Dr. Strange must be losing his shit right now HE ASKED THEM TO PLEASE LEAVE NOT BRING THEIR WHOLE PLANET HERE

- Oh, and on a total badwrong side note, I still ship the fuck out of Thor and Loki and I am sorry. I hate incest in general, blech, as a plot device but Loki definitely does not see Thor as a brother also they’re kinda not even human so for some reason that sneaks by my radar. But I’d dearly love to see some Thorki where they’re as snarky and antagonistic and sort of tragically doomed to always be messing with one another as was in Thor 3, and not like... wide-eyed tragic uke Loki or some such (not that that isn’t valid for writers to explore, I just DESPERATELY want some obnoxious-conniving-little-shit Loki and exasperated but actually able to keep the upper hand and occasionally tragically upset and annoyed that Loki just can’t stop being such a conniving little shit for five minutes and sit at the dinner table like a normal person goddamnit why can’t i quit you Thor... just saying). 

Honestly, that movie was just so much fucking fun, I need to see it again.