The Marvels, Dua Lipa and The Great Trish Scandal
I went back to the MCU just in time to see it flop
This week, The Marvels ended the MCU’s hot streak (but is it really that bad?!), Dua Lipa returned with a big new single (but is it really that good?!) and we all went “oh… oh no…” over Trish from Big Brother. Let’s get into it!
The women of The Marvels deserve better
To quote the great philosopher Nina Bo’nina Brown: well, it’s over.
Judging by headlines using words like ‘BOMB’, ‘FLOP’ and ‘DISASTER’, the once-untouchable box office domination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to a juddering, inelegant halt; courtesy of The Marvels. The movie opened in the US with $47m, a new low for the franchise; and its UK bow of £3.5m is its lowest since 2011.
It’s not a surprise. A whole cocktail of factors meant many pundits saw it coming: there were release date delays; reports of post-production difficulties; claims the marketing was confusing; incel fanboys seeing three female leads and crying “WOKE!” faster than Suella Braverman in Veggie Pret… There’s also been the obvious fact that Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris were unable to promote the damn thing due to strike action.
The argument that’s getting the most airtime, though, is simply the fact that as moviegoers, we are tired. We’re so tired. Tired of superheroes. Tired of CGI showdowns. Tired of multiverses and different timelines and wildly expansive lore that’s just too much of a bloody effort to keep up with.
For me, I wouldn’t say I’m over superhero movies per-sé, but at this point my flirtation with Marvel superfandom definitely feels like a Thing From My Past; much like listening to Pixie Lott or going swimming. Since the MCU’s imperial phase properly peaked with 2019’s Avengers Endgame, there has simply been TOO! MUCH! CONTENT! to keep up with, and not enough of it has excited me. Post-Infinity Saga, I’ve seen WandaVision, Ms Marvel, Eternals, Thor: Love And Thunder and Spider-Man: All The Spider-Men (or whatever it was called)… but that’s it. I didn’t intend to fall behind. But I’m only one man!
And yet. On Friday, having noticed that reviews for The Marvels weren’t as catastrophic as many feared, I dragged my husband into central London to see it on opening night. I’d seen Larson in Captain Marvel, Vellani in Ms Marvel and Parris in WandaVision, so despite my flailing commitment to the Marvel empire, this was one set of characters I was fully up to speed with.
And you know what? It’s a solid, really good fun, well-acted little romp. Spending time with these three is a blast (spin-off on the musical planet WHEN?), and it really went very well with a bottle of wine and a shitload of popcorn at the end of a long week. Is it an all-time classic? No, probably not. But it gave me everything I needed.
So it’s a shame - no, it’s really bloody annoying - that it may well go down as the poster-movie for MCU’s flop era. The women of this movie deserve better, and I hope they don’t get thrown under the bus.
Larson, for example, has brought a lot to Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, a character who - let’s be honest! - is a liiiiil’ bit of a personality vacuum. The whole premise of her first movie was that she didn’t have much of an identity (helpful!), and even now she’s a long way from the charisma of an Iron Man or the depth of a Scarlet Witch. That Larsson still makes her fun to watch is a credit to her. Parris, meanwhile, feels like she’s just getting started and poised for more airtime, having previously only been seen in a supporting role in WandaVision. And Vellani is just a megastar-in-waiting. Her Kamala Khan is a joy any time she’s on screen, and I really hope this whole fiasco doesn’t deter the powers that be from making her a key player in the franchise’s future.
Whatever happens, though, the silver lining of all this doomsday coverage is that Kevin Feige et al will clearly need some long, hard talks about where they go from here (if they haven’t already). Disney’s insatiable need for non-stop content has diluted the brand no-end, and chatter about 109,304 more characters possibly joining the action isn’t helping. Nor, for that matter, is the legal situation shrouding Jonathan Majors, tipped to be their next big-bad.
I don’t know how it all can be turned around. Maybe we as a society just aren’t in as much of a superhero-y place right now, and the pendulum needs time before it swings back around.
But for what it’s worth, The Marvels isn’t bad, by any means. It’s a really fun way to spend 105 minutes, and it doesn’t deserve to go down as the film that definitively ended a golden era. I sincerely hope - demand! - we get to see its three leads (and their excellent director Nia DaCosta) in the MCU again.
Ar Trish and the curse of the digital footprint
Has anyone recovered from the Great Trish Firestorm Of Last Weekend yet? Because I sure as hell haven’t.
It feels like mere minutes since I was fawning over Big Brother’s greatest moment of the current series, in which Paul and Dylan were evicted over Trish and Noky. But now here we are, just over a week later, with Trish not only having been evicted anyway, but having also been the focus of a fascinating - and very disheartening - controversy.
When the 33-year-old popped onto Twitter/“X” over the weekend to soak up some of the love coming her way, she inadvertently set herself on a path to having all her historic posts forensically sifted-through… and they were not good. Racism, homophobia, xenophobia… you name it. It was so disappointing. 2012 Trish was much, much, much less of a legend than the Trish who visibly stood against those sorts of things in the Big Brother house.
She posted an apology, taking accountability for the posts and trying to assure people that she’s not that person anymore. I thought it was a very well-written and considered apology, as apologies go. But many marginalised groups were affected, and it’s not for any one person - not even me! - to dictate whether or not she should be forgiven.
What is interesting, though, is that the whole thing breathes new life into the broader ~discussion about the extent to which we can/should moralise about things people said when they were younger and stupider, and more ignorant to the durability of their digital footprint.
I first remember this being A Big Deal on I’m A Celebrity in 2017 when Jack Maynard was kicked out after some of his old tweets resurfaced*. Stormzy’s been through this sort of thing, too; as has Zoella (honestly, celebs, DELETE YOUR OLD CRAP!).
Without getting into the specifics of any one person’s brush with this kind of scandal, I am inclined to think that, generally speaking - and provided there’s been clear growth - forgiveness isn’t just a nice thing to do, but an important thing to do.
As we’re all painfully aware, we live in a world in which many people still hold shitheaded views, have shitheaded prejudices, and make shitheaded jokes. I do think there’s something to be said for showing that it’s possible to unlearn that bigotry and come out the other side without being permanently shunned - if adequate accountability is taken.
I suppose I just worry that if miscellaneous dickheads get it into their heads that there’s no point being less of a dickhead, they’ll… well, they’ll never be less of a dickhead. And if we want society to be a nicer place, don’t we need to give people the space to grow?
(*I doubt the same will happen if we start digging up Nigel Farage’s old tweets in a few days’ time, but here we are).
The popstar is popstarring!
It’s not often these days that we get a capital-p Popstar coming back for a big new era with a big lead single - partly because there just aren’t many capital-p Popstars left, full-stop (even Zara Larsson, whom I shouted-out in last week’s post, feels like she’s just shy of the A-list).
So what a thrill to have Dua Lipa launching her next chapter with a blockbuster pop song, a buzzy video, and (this is how you know it’s serious) a DIFFERENT HAIR COLOUR!
Sure, her whole ~cool aesthetic doesn’t make her quite as much of an exciting entity as, say, a Britney or a Gaga or a Beyoncé. Or even a Cheryl. But she’s a massive artist making pop songs on a massive scale, and that we must celebrate.
Houdini is a belter, and it gets better with every listen. Personally I haven’t felt quite as emphatic about it as I’d like to have been, but I was like this with the Future Nostalgia singles too, and… well, we all know how much of a classique that whole era became. I’m in!
And furthermore…
I know it’s not been formally confirmed yet, but Girls Aloud being back feels… surreal. I just can’t imagine what a Girls Aloud single sounds like in the 2020s, but goddammit, I sure as shit can’t wait to find out.
I am enjoying the Mamma Mia thing on ITV, even if it’s not quite as gloriously DUMB as the old casting shows on the BBC. Good grief, though, catching up on Sunday’s episode felt like it sucked up 400 years of my life. Shorter episodes if we do this sort of thing again, I beg!!
I watched a bit of This Morning for the Cat Deeley of it all, and what a nostalgic comfort to have her on morning telly again!!
Two episodes into the new season of Real Housewives of Potomac and if this Robyn/Juan fallout is going to be the dominant storyline of the season, I don’t know if I’m going to make it! Also MORE CANDIACE!
There’s a new gay Italian movie on Netflix called Nuovo Olimpo that I’d recommend, if you enjoy guys yearning for each-other across multiple decades and occasionally taking their clothes off (I suspect you do).
A bop to finish
It’s ‘popstars releasing middling Christmas songs’ season, and I enjoy it!