‘Ironheart’ Review Bombing Proves Some Comic Book Fans Still Can’t Handle Women of Color in the Spotlight
‘Ironheart’ Review Bombing Proves Some Comic Book Fans Still Can’t Handle Women of Color in the Spotlight
I haven’t seen the show yet so I can’t speak to whether it’s good or not, but I do know some statistics about movie reviewers.
Something like 70% of reviewers/critics are male and they account for 75% of all reviews. 73% of male critics are white.
Of the remaining 30% of female critics, 70% are white.
When reviewing movies with a male protagonist, female critics, give average ratings of 73% while male critics award the same movies an average of 70%.
On movies with a female protagonist, female critics give an average rating of 74% versus male critics who rate these movies with an average of 62%.
The gaps are just as bad when it comes to race.
TLDR- White men make up 70% of reviews and rate movies with female leads significantly worse than female reviewers.
If you want to learn more, here are some great resources with a variety of research on equality in media.
https://womeninfilm.org/ https://geenadavisinstitute.org/ https://annenberg.usc.edu/research https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research/
My complaints are simple things, like:
"why was there >!a human sized drainage tunnel!< connecting to >!an incredibly secure facility!<?".
&
"why use >!songs!< in the >!soundtrack!< that have to be >!censored!<?"
Please mark spoilers ;)
Vaguely spoiling & not pivotal to plot, however I will amend because spoilers are bad.
Let’s call this what it is: a pattern of harassment wrapped in the pretense of critique. Whether it was Ms. Marvel, The Little Mermaid, The Acolyte, or The Last of Us Season 2, projects centering women — particularly Black women or women of color — have been consistently met with a wave of bad-faith backlash from the very people who claim to love the genre.
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!
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.
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?
Deadpool & Wolverine was #2 at the Box Office for 2024.
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).
Marvel films were also in the top 10 in 2023 and 2024.
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.
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.
apparently you don’t even realize that this isn’t a movie. It’s a show.
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.
Nowadays these reviews or ratings are being used by the monoculture people to say “at the moment our monoculture likes x and hates y”.
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.
I watched both versions of the Rebel Moons…
double down on boring white dude power fantasies, because their standard for art and writing is so much lower than their peers
Are you saying ‘their standards’ as in Disney executive’s standards or ‘white dude’ standards?
Unfortunately, its white dudes all the way down
At this point I only trust individual reviews from Lemmy. Unsurprisingly that means I haven't watched much lately. But if I see a post or comment praising something then I will give it a chance.
Lol, I wouldn't even know where to watch this, legally, of course.
Disney+
Indeed, but I was playing at the market breakup and inability to provide a good service. So I am not going to subscribe several services for the same one thing.
Returning to the original post, one of the reasons is also this.
(edit and of course I can find and do have other ways too)
I haven't seen it yet so I'm withholding judgement but I didn't much care for her character in the movie and I wouldn't be surprised if a show based on her struggled.
After watching wakanda forever i wanted a show on Nakia doing more spy stuff. I could watch her all day. Totally forgot about ironheart.
I'm sure some of the negative reviews are from people like that. But I also think a lot of companies and people like to hide behind the fact that they have a minority or POC main character as the reason the movie bombed when in reality the movie was just bad.
Any discussion about the actual quality of the writing, directing, casting and whatever else gets drowned out by people calling it racist or sexist as opposed to addressing the fact that the movie did fail in several other key ways.
I'm a forgiving fan, but am enjoying the hell out of the series. And I'm a middle-aged Midwestern white dude. I don't need representation to get behind a story or the characters.
And after the first episode I was amused by this thought: "Was Jim Rash the only white character in the episode?"
I haven't watched this show or movie or whatever it is, but my comment was more in general.
If movie is bad and the lead is a white guy the studio and director and everyone involved kinda just shrugs and goes "whoops" but when it's got a minority/POC lead and it ranks they seem to almost always accuse the viewers of just being racist incels instead of just admitting there might have been other issues with the film.
That’s just whataboutism from the same people doing the review bombing because of perceived wokeness. Corporations only give a shit about the bottom line, and if they can make money out of Black Panther or a movie about ICE agents on a quest to dig up Hitler’s skull they’ll do it.