And your argument is STILL not convincing. It essentially boils down to "I don't think that this would work, well just because." Sorry, but you have to have actually EVIDENCE to back up your claim, and you don't. You have a lot of guessing, and heresay, and just blatant unsupported assumptions, but not much in the way of actual evidence. The fact that you come up with lame excuses as to why the female-led action movies that HAVE succeeded somehow "don't count" doesn't change the fact that they HAVE worked.
Is that what it boils down to? What, exactly, have I said won't work anyway?
I've given a pretty comprehensive analysis of the trends we've observed, I've explicitly stated my base assumption: that the audience trends will continue and repeatedly made the caveat that these trends may all be coincidence and that I cannot prove at they are not. If you got 'just because,' then perhaps you aren't interested in reading my posts. That's okay, but, if so, why bother quoting them?
Similarly, my response to the successful female led action movies is: make a movie like that. The idea that a fundamentally different movie will be equally successful simply because they both have female action leads is not logical, unless you can prove that having a female action lead is the only or main factor in making the films that worked work. I use logic like that to draw conclusions.
Now since you believe that we have to actually have hard evidence to back up our claims, then you should be first in line to provide some.
Your theory is also sexist and outdated. The women who won't watch superhero movies and only watch rom-coms are an increasingly rare outlier, as are the men who just want macho violence.
The Marvel movies so far have succeeded by appealing to to men AND women, by providing action that is exciting and fun and intense, but not overly harsh or gruesome, and characters that are powerful, but charming and relatable. And frankly, the emotional challenges depicted in the Marvel films have been just as successful, if not more so, than the action scenes depicted.
There is a huge demand for a female-led superhero movie right now, and there is an audience who will pay for it. Trying to use Salt as an example of why women can't carry a movie is absurd, because that movie a.) did well at the box office, and b.) would not likely have done much better with a male protagonist. Nothing in its marketing indicated a strong central hook for the film, or gave the audience any reason to care. And it still did well.
An MCU Captain Marvel movie would have a built-in brand name that both men and women have learned to trust, would have a hugely charismatic, relatable protagonist, and would likely be a better movie than the likes of Salt, Lucy, Maleficent, and (arguably) The Hunger Games, etc.
Honestly, how much could a female protagonist REALLY hurt Marvel's box office? Really? How many Marvel viewers are going to see a female protagonist and just tune out, and decide not to buy a ticket because of it? This idea that men are too sexist and dimwitted to watch a movie with a female lead is ABSURD. How many dudes refuse to watch Aliens or Kill Bill because of their female leads? How many people even TALK about the fact that those movies have female leads?
Bottom line, if Marvel makes a good movie, with the same kind of action/comedy/heart balance that their movies have had so far, a Captain Marvel movie will make money, period.
You are projecting onto my statement. I said women tend to enjoy emotional challenges more than physical ones. I did not say they only enjoy them in any certain kind of film, or that they don't enjoy the latter at all. Hunger Games is a movie with more emotional challenges than physical, and it has an audience of about 60% women. Avengers is the inverse and it has an audience of about 40% women. I am making comparisons of degrees, not absolutes.
Salt had a very strong "Who is Evelyn Salt?" mystery hook in it's marketing, and I use it only as a comparison with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which had no such hook. It is not the shining example of all female action movies, but just a point of, all things being equal an action movie with a male lead or even just co-lead will do much better with both genders.
Is the idea of society being misogynist, of dehumanizing women all caps ABSURD? Or does that only play out in daily interactions and has no affect on whether men identify with women as action heroes? Is your perspective that only movie executives have a lack of desire to see female action heroes kick butt? Would zero men go? Of course not. Would less go? Almost assuredly. How many less? We don't know for sure, but you may be looking at a 60/40 split going the other way, and if you're not getting more women going to see Captain Marvel than say, Iron Man, you're going to see a significant drop in profit.
And like with most gender bias, it doesn't play out as dislike, but merely disinterest or ignorance. Most people who wouldn't have paid to see Kill Bill or Alien are likely to just flip through the channel not even registering why it doesn't interest them, rather than stop there and scream out their refusal to watch it. "What else is on?"
You say there is a huge demand for a female led superhero film? Where is that documented? Because they're the most requested in fan circles?
You also are on the audience-will-trust-Marvel thing, to the point where you trust them as well, sure that they have a better handle on Captain Marvel than they did Thor in The Dark World. If there's nothing driving the film but the fact that she's female, where does the quality come from? Where does the passion for the story come from? Purely political motivations? It can be done, but that's a risky road as far as ensuring movie quality. You'd be surprised how uninspiring 'make it good because this is our only female' can be. I suspect this is the same place quality has been lost (or never found) on the female superfilms that came before. It's the same recipe: focus on the political value of the character, negligence of the entertainment value. Reliance on something outside of the character's nature to appeal to the audience, and then surprise when a film centered around something other than the core appeal of the film doesn't come together.
I think you guys have totally missed my point. I would like to see a Captain Marvel movie, a successful one. My perspective is simply to make her fundamentally equal to the male heroes in terms of potential appeal and let the box office take care of itself, rather than to rely on marketing tricks and being the only female and the highly suspect assumption that gender doesn't affect audience reception. It sounds like you guys who already like the character, who take pride in her being equal in terms of power level assume that anyone who learns about her will be just as interested in her as they are in Iron Man or the Guardians of the Galaxy, even though the reasons those characters are interesting is not because of being equal in power level or anything like that.
Moreover, I don't believe in coincidences, not after 5 repetitions at least. So when we see that all the female superhero movies have sucked, that means there's a cause. If we don't address that cause, then the next one will suck too, Marvel or not. I like to address that stuff. If you don't, that's fine, it's Marvel's problem anyway, and I'm sure they're aware of all of the issues. But why say that I'm against something simply because I see more roadblocks, especially when I spend so much time addressing how to overcome them? That simply doesn't qualify as responding to me.
So if your overall point is: will it make money? Yes, it will not make zero dollars. I agree.
