I haven't seen Eternals, Shang Chi or Black Widow yet but I'm not sure wokeness is the problem or that it's just hard for something as big and sprawling as the MCU to continue to keep up that level of quantity. Every major franchise has made duds. Consider that Star Trek: Enterprise was actually meant to be a reaction to what would be considered "Wokeness" and it lasted a shorter time than TNG, DS9, or Voyager. I think if you have good writing and acting I don't see "wokeness" as a problem. Rogue One had a strong female lead and a mostly non-white cast so it could qualify as woke. It was well written and well acted so woke or not wasn't an issue. The Last Jedi was poorly written, poorly acted that they crammed wokeness down the audience's throat really stood out.
Where the hell is Jon Favreau in all of this? He gave birth to the MCU as we now know it (along with the excellent casting of RDJ) ...AND he's breathed new life into Star Wars with The Mandalorian. Disney should ditch Feige and Kennedy and promote Favreau.
Black window’s Bad guy felt like it was old fat Russian dude who looked like Weinstein That movie was alright but should have been released way earlier
I think it's just a matter of how the writers and various media outlets address certain issues and how Marvel chooses to promote their movies and shows. Take DS9 for example it was a pretty well received show and pushed boundaries. Still at the core the characters and stories were well written. It was filled with strong females, non whites, interracial relationships, and even what you could almost qualify as a trans character with Jadzia Dax. However, that stuff wasn't shoehorned in and you didn't have it come off as box checking. You didn't have promotion of the show saying "AND FIRST STAR TREK COMMANDER OF COLOR IN A LEAD ROLE..." You had Avery Brooks playing Benjamin Sisko and he was stellar. With some of the Marvel stuff it's more choose a character or actor based on their outward appearance or some type of orientation and then write a 2nd rate story around them. Then they herald it as some great achievement that they have "FIRST PERSON OF XYZ RACE, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION IN A .... ROLE". That's wonderful...now who is this character and why do I care about them? The bigger issue at Marvel is sloppy writing, bad retconning, and spamming out far too many new characters and not developing a few core characters. They are still in the process of trying to roll out a new core of characters and they keep bringing more and more characters to the table.
Favreau left with a BAD taste in his mouth after Iron Man 2. The studio forced a bunch of stuff on him. He felt it ruined the movie. Same thing happened with the Ultron movie and Whedon. Same thing happened with the version of the Ant Man movie that never saw the light of day. The studio finally realized their mistakes and gave Feige autonomy, which resulted in movies like Guardians of the Galaxy. Feige's approach - let directors do what they want. The studio owned the mistake, kisses and makes up with Favreau who winds up getting other projects from Disney, and eventually is named an official "Disney Legend" a sort of Disney Hall of Fame, along with Robert Downey Jr. Not sure if Feige & Favreau are BFF but I don't think Favreau would be interested in taking over the MCU. If he had to be replaced... I imagine Disney should look to the Russo Brothers or.... James Cameron? But instead would put some stiff executive with a board in charge and slowly run everything into the ground.
It's a back and forth, which is good, IMO. But I think picking the 'next big sexy woke director' is a mistake. These are tentpole action movies and shows, first and foremost, and should be treated as such. Pick a good director with a few action flicks under their belt. What I want is a clean story, decent dialogue, good editing, and fun action. It's not that ****ing hard. There are gold standards. Then you can put in social commentary. I have zero issues with that but it shouldn't be an advertising point. If you want to help the world change, add in riders to the main bill until they gain traction and are the norm.
I think it's ridiculous how people harp on "wokeness," "SJW," or "cancel culture. I feel like they are very vacuous and nebulous. Because, for one, cancel culture has always been around, since early civilization, and even in America. It's much older than people can even guess. I think they are all silly phrases, which are more dog-whistling than anything. For one, do people not understanding that Marvel, even in its yesteryears, was pretty progressive as it already stood. The characters that people feel are super - "woke" are from that era. The Marvel movies may have performed below expectations, but the truth is most blockbusters movies have in the last 2 years. We are in a global pandemic. I'm not quite sure you can judge that to film, pre 2019. Even with Captain Marvel, it made 1.1 Billion (w/ $426, domestically), which I'm trying to find out where that's disappointing at. Yes, as Rhino17 said, it is very Karen-ish to boycott on these merits, alone. It's very silly. I remember that films, such as "Dogma," "The Last Temptation of Christ," "The Hateful Eights," and "Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)" were all picketed for reasons that you can probably guess or look-up. Zach and Miri makes a Porno was not allowed to run in certain theaters, because of the name in the title. The "Star Wars" franchise is probably not the best example that people often used, considering some fans said that "George Lucas ruined their childhood, back in 1999, with the Phantom Menace." There's also a film, called, "The People vs. George Lucas," which says alot. After he sold the franchise to Disney, there was a new scape-goat in town...Disney and then the "woke-agenda," because it was easy for some people to latch on to. https://www.theatlantic.com/enterta...wars-fans-and-the-sins-of-george-lucas/37920/ https://www.cnet.com/news/why-the-people-may-hate-george-lucas/
Yeah, the whole column reads as peevish white Incel snowflake bile. My favorite rant was his whining about fat Thor as some sort of plot against masculinity.
The key difference between your examples and now is the internet and social media. People are more influenceable than ever....there are even full time influencers. If there's a groundswell of sentiment, everyone online is going to hear about it. That wasn't the case with the movies you cited. I remember that stuff and just blew it off because it was on the news or newspapers and I just didn't watch/read those sections. Now you're hammered with it because it's trending and algorithms know it gets eyeballs so they push it. If you read any news or social media online you're going to see it. Agree on the pandemic impacts. I think it's certainly part of the Disney drive, however, Star Wars was 'ruined' by the sequel trilogy, which was way before the pandemic. Regardless, companies are just shifting to market demands. If there are less ticket buyers, they need to optimize based on feedback. I didn't think Shang Chi or Black Widow or The Eternals were over the top woke, they were just mediocre movies. But smashing people in the face with a social agenda is a sure way to turn them off. Men are men and women can be strong characters but we don't need to be reminded of that. Like @robbie380 pointed out with Star Trek, just do the thing and let the character stand on it's own merit.
Why are we acting like the new Star Wars ruined the franchise when the previous Jar Jar Binks Star Wars sucked? Yall cray. Let's be honest, the IP is strong, but Star Wars content is actually kind of weak, the hardcore fans complain about everything that isn't the Mandalorian or the cartoons. There are maybe, what, 1 or 2 great Star Wars movies? Another 1-2 really good ones (at best)? C'monnnnnnnnn.
I agree that the bigger problem is mediocre movies as of late. I saw Black Widow, it was fine. Not great and not bad. I did not detect any over the top wokeness in it. Haven't seen Shang-Chi yet but will soon since it's now on Disney+. I'll wait for Eternals as well since I was never really hyped for it. But it was the same issue for the sequel SW trilogy. The problem wasn't that it was woke; the problem was that it was incoherent. (Although TFA was nice even if too familiar and TLJ is actually good [excluding all the casino ****] and I'll go to my grave saying that.)