Over the past few years, Hollywood has made attempts to have more diversity in movies. This act has received positive response from actors, critics and audiences.
J.J. Abrams made Daisy Ridley the main lead of a Star Wars film, Warner Bros. hired Patty Jenkins to direct “Wonder Woman”, and the movie “Crazy Rich Asians” was a critical and commercial success.
Despite the rise of good change happening, there are a lot of people who now see this as a threat to the past and will do whatever they can to stop it.
That’s exactly what happened two weeks before the release of “Captain Marvel.”
Audience scores from sites like Rotten Tomatoes were review-bombed by trolls and people who are anti-feminist to bring the overall score down.
“Most of the trolls’ comments are about Larson being a vocal feminist and how this movie pushes feminism to the forefront of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Because of this, they assume that the movie will ruin the franchise,” said Ana Dumaraog, a reporter with Screen Rant.
The reason behind this was that Brie Larson, the lead actress who plays Carol Danvers, was using her press tour to promote more diversity in the film industry and it was Marvel’s first female lead movie.
This isn’t the only film for this to happen.
Another example is “Black Panther.” A month before the film’s release, a Facebook page was trying to recruit people to help tamper the movie’s review by writing hate messages or bad reviews on it.
“Black Panther” was review-bombed for being a film with a predominantly black cast. The 2016 “Ghostbusters” reboot was attacked for being a female movie and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” was called out for its diverse cast.
This tactic has been used against movies, T.V. shows or games that represent some form of diversity, feminism or what is politically correct to them.
These trolls can go as far as damaging the reputation of the movie because their main goal is to keep it from succeeding and prevent Hollywood from making movies like these.
The problem is no one wants to accept change; or that minorities and woman have no representation at all.
This trolling has to be stopped. We need to send a message that we don’t accept what they do, everyone deserves the spotlight and diverse movies shouldn’t be attacked for being different.