Avengers: Endgame. What the Hell is Wrong with the Fans?

On this post, C flies solo, so don't blame T for it's content!

I was planning to write a rather extensive review of  “Avengers: Endgame” that dealt with the film’s numerous faults and my dismay at not having enjoyed it even remotely as much as its brilliant predecessor. I had my bullet points ready and was prepared to be the lone voice in the wilderness of adoring sycophants daring to say the emperor had holes in his underwear (with apologies to Bud Bundy).

Yep, that was the plan. But two things happened that changed all that:

First, amidst the enormous groundswell of initial praise, I started noticing quite the opposite. Obviously there are always people poised to hate a popular thing, but even when discounting those types, there was still a rather vocal minority pointing out the film’s many shortcomings. And they had well thought out reasons!

Some of these people absolutely hated the movie. I didn’t. There were some good moments just not enough of them to justify the film’s three-hour runtime. I found the film uneven, as if it had been shot using an outline rather than a completed, polished script. Some of the character beats were poorly chosen and rendered and the entire plot felt lazy and phoned-in. I feel let down and it has diminished my interest in the MCU to the point where I doubt I will allow myself to become invested in an ongoing story arc again.

Still, like-minded people weren’t enough to change my plans. That’s where the second thing comes in.

Anybody who expressed dislike or even disappointment with the movie was immediately attacked by those who loved it like white blood cells to a virus. It’s easy to dismiss them as paid Disney trolls but let’s be honest: That’s total horseshit. Disney has no need for such things because real people are beyond willing to devote their time and energy to defending them whenever someone has the nerve to not heap praise. This is especially true regarding the MCU which, at this point, can do no wrong to its cadre of unquestioning devotees.

They are fanatics. The Marvel movies are their god and they will keyboard warrior like mad to prevent any perceived blasphemy against him. So, like any fanatics worth their glassy-eyed stare, they label those of us who don’t agree with names designed to make us look like either terrible people or those who have yet to accept the good news. There’s also another facet to their fanaticism that most people might not recognize...they speak their own language. Words that don’t mean what they think they mean are used to continue their bizarre, pointless agenda.

Much like how Evangelical Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses use “worldly” as an insult when its true meaning is complimentary, the MCU cult uses phrases such as “DC fanboy” as if it means anything more than someone who considers DC Comics their favorite comics publisher. The same thing was done to the word “liberal” in the 1980s, a tactic that proved so successful, liberals started calling themselves “progressives” instead.

In the right (or wrong, depending upon your point of view) hands, re-engineering language can be a powerful tool for controlling how people view things.

We have entered a time when even disagreement over a movie can turn ugly. Since I expected something like this to happen, I decided to sit back and observe. Whenever I saw someone on an “Endgame” related Facebook post make any sort of non--fawning comment about the movie,  I clicked on it to read the reactions. True to form, the majority were antagonistic, hostile, dismissive and, in some cases, demeaning. Two weeks after the initial giddiness had worn off, however, I started noticing a small but steady wave of people daring to share negative opinions. Some of them were obvious trolls, of course, and some were far less kind to the movie than I’ve been, but the response was the same no matter what.

I finally decided to see about getting a substantive response to why these clearly insecure fanatics are responding this way. To do that, I decided to choose a thread where the initial comment was resoundingly negative.

I agreed with some of the original commenter’s points but not all of them. Again, I did not hate the movie. I found it underwhelming with a lackluster second act (my normal criticism of problematic movies is the third act) and a victim of lazy, phoned-in writing but there were moments that were very enjoyable. Just not enough of them considering the near perfection of its predecessor.

It didn’t take long for the guy to be labelled a troll; jokes were hurled at him implying he’d been molested as a child (some obscene metaphor online jerks use to indicate your dissenting opinion comes from striking back at the world because you were tampered with) and a “Butthurt DC fanboy,” which is apparently the worst thing one can be in the eyes of a MCU Zombie. The original commenter seemed to find this all rather amusing while I decided to use it as a way to see if I could get a better idea of their so-called thought-processes.

I wrote, “I found the movie disappointing and lackluster. Am I a butthurt DC fanboy, too?”

The response, “You either are or you’re not,” came straight from the fanatic’s songbook. In fact, it’s a paraphrase of a response I received when I asked a religious fanatic if I was going to Hell for not being a believer.

I repeated the question. To my pleasant surprise, the second response was measured and thoughtful. He informed me his comments were really about the people who slammed the movie with words such as “sucks” and “garbage etc. I thanked him for the reply and the adult way he did it. One other person was not so mature and I had to remind him I’m not his “bro.”

It occured to me that the guy with whom I’d mostly interacted was probably caught up in a moment of fanatical fervor. He also likely realized how like the original commenter was coming across when I did not react with hostility. Sometimes it is possible to make a fanatic think.

Now if we could just do something about that toxic “Star Wars” fanbase.