Since when did CBMs become such a serious topic?

I think nerds in general for every fandom are in a bad spot right now. People are confused and angry because of the world political situation. And media literacy skills have reduced (or never been learned) for a good section of the internet’s user base.

It could lead to interesting conversations about how political climate affects storytelling and art but most of the time people are just lashing out at each other for very minor things. And we’ve all done it, at one time or another.

You are basically describing any big fandom in the internet age. People are very opinionated and will argue about anything and everything.

It's a huge franchise with a lot of cultural sway and money invovled, of course it's going to involve serious topics.

>Since when did CBMs become such a serious topic?

October 2019, thanks to Martin Scorsese and the New York Times.

It’s not comic book movies, it’s everything. Algorithms feed the public so much political propaganda slop that it’s all they see. They see it in everything.

YouTube outrage farming grifters have altered the discourse in a lot of geek circles in the past few years, notably since 2018. Now everything is seen through the lens of some "political agenda". 


It was especially hilarious when I was going through the TV channels the other day, and by chance I saw Fox News talking about Stranger Things S5 "coming out scene". The words those reporters use are just word for word something grifters like Critical Drinker would say. Imagine turning on the news and you hear "the gay agenda shoved down our throats", and the topic is about a Netflix show lol.

People need a hobby

I swear to god. I've seen this with every genre of movies now. It's insane. People are fucking insufferable.

Bots and bad actors are farming political drama in every space possible. Comic book movies are a popular genre whose most dedicated fandom unfortunately has a considerable number of lonely incels who are susceptible to right wing propaganda. They are targeted by agitators who try to convince them that anyone but straight white men in lead roles or women who exist for any purpose other than pandering to male gaze are an affront to them in order to perpetuate an ongoing culture war and boost right wing political candidates.

COVID trapped a lot of people inside for a year with nothing but angry Youtube rage farmers and reviewers claiming that art is objective and any disagreement is wrong.


Pair that with a genuinely frightening decline in media literacy and you have people shaping their entire personality around needing to be undeniably right, yet never able to be happy. 


Also CinemaSins and Letterboxd have ruined actual media criticism, but that's a much deeper dive

Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created Captain America because these two Jewish men watched America fawn over Hitler (he was killing *teh ebul commies* you see) then decided to call them out on their "American values".

Marvel has ALWAYS been inherently political *before they were even called Marvel Comics.* And Disney hasn't cut out all the political messaging until recently.

\-Iron Man 1 and 2 were criticism of the military-industrial complex.

\-Iron Man 3 was criticism of the "War on Terror".

\-The US Army were the villains of The Incredible Hulk.

\-Captain America 1 was LITERALLY about fighting the Nazis.

\-The plot twist of Captain America 2 is based off of how many Nazis America took in after the war (because *communism bad*) and made them founding members of groups such as the CIA and the consequences of such actions. (America's descent into fascism didn't start in 2016. Oh no.....)

\-Black Panther 1 and 2 called out the CIA on their fuckery. BP2 also called out France for their continued exploitation of Africans.

\-Hank Pym literally endorsed socialism in Quantumania. Not to mention Cassie getting in trouble for dealing with police officers attacking peaceful protesters. *Hint hint.*

And so on.

And if X-Men is to be done properly in the slightest, *it needs to be even more political than previous MCU releases.* So why are people talking politics with inherently political works? *Gee, beats me.*

But I do hate it how the chuds cry the hardest about films/shows with no actual political messaging and act like acknowledging women and black people is "forcing a political agenda". *Get mad at the anticapitalist and antifascist themes in the earlier MCU dammit! Those are directly against your ideology!*

a) comics and movies have always been a reflection of/statement on current politics. Think of

\- Donald Duck, Captain America and many more fighting against fascism;

\- Animal farm portraying regimes which interestingly enough was originally about communism, but in today's world, at least the pig's part can easily be matched on the Trump administration;

\- the Great Dictator; to be or not to be (Lubitsch) about WW2;

\- Watchmen (Comic) commenting on Vietnam and the Cold War;

\- Don't look up about today's science deniers and public ignorance

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b) comics/movies have always been a vehicle for proposing theories on what's right or what's reasonable.

\- If there is a suppressing Empire, you need to organize rebels to fight on the right side of the star wars

\- If some galactic society-of-the-week has worse morals than us, it's time for some star trekking teaching advice on how to become more human.

\- If some Joker is poisoning the people of Gotham and the police is unable to do something about it, vigilantism is a reasonable solution.

\- If the situation can't be changed anymore, maybe killing for keeping silent about it is justified. (end of Watchmen, the movie)

\- if any bad guy with much money and a secret base is planning something to threaten enough people, destroying his base and all living personnel inside is justified, by an agent, it's justified.

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c) of course propaganda movies exist.

What do you think Hero was? (An assassin with a special killing technique tricks himself into an audience with the king to kill him, only to be convinced by him that by conquering other parts of land, he will bring peace to them in the long run. Message: always bow to the king, he knows best.)

What do you think Independence Day was?

What do you think, Starship Troopers was?

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d) Did you notice that shows with queer characters have been cancelled?
That Trump has named special "ambassadors" for Hollywood influence?
That he himself wants the last word on what's shown in the Kennedy center? (no it's not "Trump & Kennedy")
That Animal farm, Anna Franks Diary and other books that are relevant to today's politics, are banned (at least in some states)?

Here's my gripe. Why do people care about the box office so much. Are you getting some return from the box office. I get it. It's quite sad that a good movie didn't make a profit, but it does not mean that the movie is bad. If you like the movie, you like the movie, regardless of it being a box office success or failure.

Just because a movie is a box office success does not necessarily mean it is a good movie.

This has been a thing since the dawn of time. The only reason you see it is because there's internet. Everyone's passionate about something. Doesn't have to be CBM, it can be anything. Fans will fan. It's that simple.

I was downvoted on this sub the other day because I listed the X-Men movies I liked and said the others sucked lol.

Fiction has always been an allegory for real life. As for politics I've seen people add the "politics" label to stuff that is just being discussed.

For example two average people will be discussing their sexuality and some uneducated moron will come in and announce that heterosexuality is the only sexuality and discussion about anything else is "just politics" in an attempt to shut down anyone who dares disobey their announcement.
It's bollocks though sexuality isn't politics, it's just something that's biological, potentially cultural (are there more or less bi-curious people in free societies?) and there is politics around how to handle homosexuality such as with marriage.

However being a homosexual isn't a political position, showing the existence of homosexuals isn't politics, showing homosexuals kissing or making love isn't politics either.


I've also seen a trend from the right to brand anything they don't like as political or woke as if they haven't seen anything like it before and the elders will try and argue that they weren't aware of such things as children. This usually demonstrates how sheltered and close minded they are, nobody alive today in the English speaking world has lived without homosexuals being prominent in the media in this century or the last. They may not necessarily have been openly homosexual but often they weren't exactly hiding either.


Anyway enough preamble let's get to a point. If you feel that these films are political 'now ' then you need to find out when they started being 'political' whether or not they are actually political or whether the media you are consuming has conditioned you to consider anything that portrays a wider or opposing view to them as 'political' as a way to keep you from engaging in discussions they exposes their point of view.


Personally i can't think of a time when comic books weren't an allegory for real life.

Read the title, got confused about Conventional Ballistic Missiles apparently being discussed in the world of the MCU.

i remember the days when it was debated how the movie differed from the books...artist impression...etc.

now, it seems like someone wants to be "right" in an argument without hearing the "truth" from the author themselves. but, hey, ya gotta sell books and mech...

You think this has only been going on for the last two or three years? You clearly haven’t been paying attention. Every movie and TV show that is based off of comics that has been controversial has been treated as a serious topic. There are a lot of people who take their fun seriously so this also isn’t some strange phenomenon with these movies.

The political rhetoric has picked up more in the last few years though. This is because the Marvel TV shows have thrown more things in that are politically divisive. But that’s just a more obvious branch of the existing serious talk.

You are right in that the amount of seriousness has increased in the last year. That’s because the US, and by extension the world, has become a more anxiety inducing place in the last year because of who is in the White House. So we are more on edge and are more passionate about the things that bring us happiness.

This is all part of the same plan by the right to stamp out the left. The right no longer wants the left to exist let alone have media that does not align with right wing views. Endlessly complaining online about mainstream movies that contain any elements of left wing ideology are targets with the intention to accomplish at least two objectives: First, turn as many people as possible against left wing ideas (the right wing has long benefited from creating and exploiting wedge issues). Second, to make media with left wing views unprofitable so that companies will not produce that media.

For example, the right decries The Marvels as "woke" because its main characters are three females, two of them nonwhite, which the right does not like. The right spends months creating toxicity around the film to turn as many people as possible against it before release so that the movie performs poorly. A poor box office means that Disney will not want to invest in future films featuring female nonwhite leads.

As far as the right is concerned, liberal democracy is now left wing ideology that they want to replace with right wing authoritarianism. (Liberal democracy being a form of government that combines the organization of a democracy with ideas of liberal political philosophy. Common elements within a liberal democracy are: elections between or among multiple distinct political parties; a separation of powers into different branches of government; the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society; a market economy with private property; universal suffrage; and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all citizens. Substantive democracy refers to substantive rights and substantive laws, which can include substantive equality, the equality of outcome for subgroups in society. Liberal democracy emphasizes the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and a system of checks and balances between branches of government. Multi-party systems with at least two persistent, viable political parties are characteristic of liberal democracies.)

Naturally, the right will deny its intentions until it is too late for own voters to realize what they've done.

> I’ll argue sometimes because I bite the bait

And that's all there is to it. People do it because it works.

You have platforms like youtube and twitter where engagement = money, no matter if that engament is good or bad.

It's profitable to make people angry and the bigger a fanabase is the more likely it'll be exploited for that, plus there's no more divisive topic than politics.

In the 80/90’s. Comicbooks became “graphic novels.” But it was there prior.

Social media brain rot and algorithms designed to push engagement (which is usually negative or anger inducing content).

There’s also a segment of people that will politicize anything and everything.

Culture Warriors on both sides of the spectrum latched onto them hard as a way to grift.