The word you should use is “pandering,” but I still disagree that the movie was pandering to anyone except comic book fans. It wasn’t a great film, but it was fun and true to the source material (with some understandable changes to Ms. Marvel’s powerset).

The heroes are women. The primary antagonist is a woman. Half of all people are women, so it’s not some crazy statistical anomaly to have a cast of primarily women.

Yes, they gender-swapped Dar-Benn. I’d wager all the money in my pockets that nobody complaining about “wokeness” had ever heard of Dar-Benn before this movie came out. Gender-swapping characters isn’t even a bad idea, considering the rampant misogyny in the history of comic book publishing (and, like, reality in general). Superhero teams have been sausage fests for like 100 years, and the women that were included were little more than eye candy and thinly-veiled fetish caricatures.

I think I know what you mean. The best example I can think of was in Endgame, when all the women lined up to backup Captain Marvel, as if to demonstrate that the MCU has had badass women heroes all along. The scene felt inauthentic and forced, and I think that’s what you mean by “fake,” but correct me if I’m wrong.

But I just disagree. I don’t think there was that much pandering in The Marvels, and it certainly wasn’t the most glaring problem with the movie. For me, it was pacing and scale, like here’s an entire planet of Skrulls, and the entire Planet of Skrulls is going to be destroyed by a Skrull-Planet-Destroying Kree Warship with Anciet-Kree-Skrull-Planet-Destroying Quantum Bands, and all of it takes place in this one valley about the size of Tomorrowland at Disneyworld. And then let’s jump to an entirely other planet and destroy yet another civilization, except this one is a musical and takes place at a beach resort.

And I liked the musical bit. I thought that was fun. But it was not good. The movie was flawed in many ways. However, I think there are a lot of people who have taken pleasure from its failures, either because they are tired of comic book movies and want to see Marvel fail, or they are bigots and want to pretend “wokeness” is a real problem they didn’t just make up to avoid admitting they are bigots.

Quantumania was similarly bad, with additional CG/green screen problems and a setting that tried so hard (and failed) to inspire wonder. But critics didn’t enjoy that failure nearly as much, and it’s because they couldn’t blame a political agenda.

Eternals is another excellent example of the trend. It was not a good movie. It had too many characters, too little character development, elastic stakes, and nonsensical plot twists that, despite being foreshadowed and telegraphed, still had to be spelled out to even register as twists. “And now I, the obviously evil giant telepath, will tell you something that you should find shocking!” It was bad.

But it wasn’t bad because they cast Salma Hayek as Ajak. It wasn’t bad because Phastos had healthy relationships with his husband and child. It wasn’t bad because Makkari was a dark skinned woman who is deaf. I don’t doubt that each of those decisions was some calculated machination to promote the film for its “firsts,” but the pandering wasn’t at all distracting or unnatural within the context of the film. The actors did a fine job with their roles, they just happened to be in a bad movie.

And the bigots went nuts over it. They lost their collective shit, as if they actually cared about the changes to the source material. The bigots reveled in the movie’s failure at the box office, ejaculating tweets all over each other like “Go woke, go broke!”

There’s no defending these movies as cinematic masterpieces. If you don’t love them, I completely understand. I enjoyed them for what they were, people bringing my childhood comics to life. I can look past some flaws and enjoy the humor and the action and not get hung up on plot holes or cheesy dialogue. And I can see the pandering where it exists. But I can also see the political agenda of the critics looking for cracks in the armor.

And so, if I overreacted to your comment, I apologize. I should not have assumed the worst of you, and I recognize I am overly sensitive to this shit. I do hope you’ll reconsider the use of the term “woke” if only to avoid the dog whistle pandering of which you were previously unaware. Either way, have a good day.