Nolte: Variety’s 6 Reasons Marvel Is Imploding

Far-left Variety has finally acknowledged the Disney Grooming Syndicate’s Marvel branch is in serious trouble.

Although those of us in New Media have been aware of this for years, things have to get irretrievably bad for a suck-up publication like Variety to turn it into a cover story, which happened this week.

Naturally, Variety fails to focus on Marvel’s two biggest problems: 1) lousy movies and 2) movies made lousy by all the shallow and stupid propaganda surrounding leftwing identity politics. Those two problems have hurt Marvel in the worst possible way: losing audience trust and goodwill.

You see, that’s what made Marvel Marvel for ten years: audience goodwill. We trusted Marvel to deliver. We loved Iron Man, Thor (before an apron emasculated him), Black Panther, Hulk, Captain America, Star-Lord, Black Widow… Iconic and likable characters in movies determined to entertain. But then Kevin Feige decided he was Thanos, and there was something wrong with Marvel. So he snapped his fingers, killed off the characters we love, emasculated the others, and remade the Marvel Universe in his political image — which is full of affirmative action, lectures, shaming, gay sex, overbearing feminism, and no fun whatsoever.

Obviously, Variety would never have the moral courage to relay those truths, but Marvel is dealing with six other serious problems.

1. Jonathan Majors

Majors’ supervillain, Kang the Conqueror, was supposed to carry this next Marvel phase in the same way Josh Brolin’s Thanos drove the previous one.

Kang was introduced in the box office flop Ant-Man and Wasp Quantanobodyfreakencares. He’s also a major player in the Disney+ Marvel streaming series Loki. All of this mythological junk was supposed to set the table for what was to come, and according to Variety, the point of no return for Kang the Conqueror had already been crossed. But…

Majors is currently embroiled in a growing scandal regarding his alleged abuse of women.

 “Marvel is truly fucked with the whole Kang angle,” says one top dealmaker who has seen the final “Loki” episode. “And they haven’t had an opportunity to rewrite until very recently [because of the WGA strike]. But I don’t see a path to how they move forward with him.”

Are there three more beautiful words in the English language than “Marvel is fucked?”

1. Marvel Assigns Homework on Disney+

The Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t used to require a PhD to follow. The mythology was built slowly with each movie. All you had to do to keep up was see a couple, maybe three movies a year. This was a luxury problem because, with a few exceptions, the movies were pretty good.

Well, then Disney and Bob Iger killed the golden goose by refusing to give it a rest. Post-Avengers: Endgame, on top of more movies, came one Marvel streaming series after another. The whole idea was to pimp out Marvel to sell Disney+ subscriptions. The sales pitch was this: If you want to keep up with the Marvel mythology, you have to watch She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel and Loki and on and on and on… Primarily because most of the shows went woke and stunk to high heaven, following the mythology became homework, an exhausting assignment. The fun was gone.

Groomer Bob is supposed to be some kind of genius, but he’s never heard of less is more?

1. Terrible Visual Effects (VFX)

Because I’m done wasting precious hours watching content created by child groomers that make me a hate object just for being a normal guy, I can’t speak to any of this, but it does make me smile:

Marvel’s entire VFX battalion, including staffers and vendors, is struggling to keep pace with a never-ending stream of productions. This past February, when the credits rolled at the world premiere of “Quantumania,” shock rippled through the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood over some shoddy CGI. “There were at least 10 scenes where the visual effects had been added at the last minute and were out of focus,” says one veteran power broker who was there. “It was insane. I’ve never seen something like that in my entire career. Everyone was talking about it. Even the kids of executives were talking about it.”

So Marvel fired the woman overseeing VFX, but the problems march on.

1. ‘Bleeding Money’ On Junk Like ‘She-Hulk’

This number boggles the mind…

“All the while, Marvel was bleeding money, with a single episode of ‘She-Hulk’ costing some $25 million,” reports Variety, “dwarfing the budget of a final-season episode of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones,’ but without a similar Zeitgeist bang.”

One episode — one! — of the She-Hulk debacle cost $25 million?

You have to be an idiot to hold stock in Disney.

1. The Woke Gestapo Run Marvel Now

Breitbart News covered this Wednesday, but it’s worth repeating. First, it tells you just how far off the woke rails Disney has gone. Secondly, it’s the only time Variety hints at Marvel’s real problem, which is its nauseating, anti-art pandering to the DEI loons:

As public criticism mounts, Feige is pulling the plug on scripts and projects that aren’t working. Case in point: the “Blade” reboot. With Mahershala Ali signed on for the eponymous role of a vampire, things looked promising for a 2023 release date. But the project has gone through at least five writers, two directors and one shutdown six weeks before production. One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.

While it is good news Feige pulled the plug, the question remains… How do you get so high on your supply that you allow things to get that wildly off-track?

This is cult behavior.

1. The Marvels Is About to Tank

This makes me so happy…

“‘ The Marvels,’ which opens in theaters on Nov. 10, will struggle to get the ball past the infield, at least by Marvel’s outsized standards,” reports Variety. “The movie, which cost $250 million and sees Brie Larson reprising her role as Captain Marvel, is tracking to open to $75 million-$80 million[.]”

I’ve seen tracking as low as $45 million.

Nobody likes Brie Larson. Nobody likes Ms. Marvel. Nevertheless, Marvel’s DEI cult still poured $250 million into teaming them up. Add promotion costs, and this DOA DEI Dud will have to cross $600 million worldwide just to break even.

Marvel is the ultimate in Get Woke, Go Broke. Its first 30 movies grossed $30 billion. Then Marvel went woke, and here we are…

Variety closes its piece with this quote from a film professor: “Writing the Marvel obituary would be ill-advised. Kevin Feige is the Babe Ruth of movie executives, and Marvel has the most profitable track record in movie history. No question.”

Well, in a sane world, that would be true, but we do not live in a sane world. Instead, we live in Woketopia, and the only way Marvel can be saved is to cease the politics and go back to universal storytelling. To do that would require moral courage and a willingness to stand up to the woke mob, many of whom work for Disney and Marvel.

I just don’t see that happening. Leftists would prefer to see it burn than 1) admit they are wrong or 2) return to the kind of storytelling that brings people together in our shared values rather than divide us along shallow lines of identity and sexuality.

Can Marvel right the ship? Sure. That’s easy. But… Will Marvel hoist a middle finger to the woketards and do what’s necessary to right the ship? That’s a whole other question.

For us normal people, this is a win-win. We either get to watch Disney/Marvel crash and burn, or we get to watch Disney/Marvel eat all that rancid crow as they’re forced to return to making movies for us normal people.

Man, this is fun.

Hey, Disney started it. Disney hates me. All I’m doing is hating Disney back.

John Nolte’s debut novel Borrowed Time (Bombardier Books) is available today. You can read an exclusive excerpt here and a review of the novel here.