For a Facebook group that counts 472 followers, the hilariously named Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys must really be enjoying the overwhelming press they’ve received. In case you forgot, they’re the group that claimed responsibility for using bots to drive down the audience score for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” on Rotten Tomatoes (the review aggregator denied any bot attack took place and stood by the authenticity of their scores). It was a perfect storm of nerds giving good quotes — heck, Huffington Post even deigned to get comments from Down With Disney’s page moderator — and a high profile movie, making for some very clicky headline material. Hell, we covered it too. But frankly, film culture deserves better than amplifying the voices of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of superhero “fans.”
Once again, Down With Disney are planning to battle Disney by attempting to drive down the Rotten Tomatoes audience score for the highly anticipated “Black Panther.” On their event page, which has just shy of 4,000 “going” as of publication, they say this protest is being taken in retaliation for the “house of mouse’s actions for paying off the critics that hurt DC Comics on film.” Ah yes, that old delusional canard. Sorry guys, I’ve been hating on DC and kinda sorta liking Marvel movies for years now, but my payoff from Disney must’ve gotten lost in the mail. Disney might have billions, but believe me, there are no critics, editors, or writers getting any kind of secret handshake money to write positively about Marvel, or negatively about DC. I’m not driving an uncharacteristically luxurious sports car or swimming in fine wines thanks to Marvel money. It’s simply not happening on any level. And that belief also presupposes that critics have some kind of magical sway over audiences — if that were the case, “Paddington 2” would make $2.9 billion dollars at the box office and win Best Picture next year at the Oscars.
I digress.
MRAs, fringe fans of [insert franchise] who complain on Reddit about something ruining their childhood, misogynists, or in the case of Down With Disney, four hundred or so people who think there is a grand #DisneyConspiracy at work — whose interests are we serving but theirs in giving their opinions a platform they wouldn’t otherwise have? These aren’t prominent, critical voices with something substantive to say about superhero films or franchises. These are myopic “fans” occupying far corners of the web, who will never be happy with how any of their favorite franchises turn out, even if they got the chance to make it themselves.
Not to get all kumbaya about this, but particularly when Things That Actually Matter — politics, the environment, basic human decency, the survival of our planet — seem so fraught thanks to a certain clown in the White House, we can do better than giving further air to this kind of toxicity in the realm of cinema. Film deserves better conversation, and as superheroes movies are growing more complex and opening the doors for more diverse voices, we’d all do better to ignore the marginal, dissenting yowls against progress.
But hey, as the Managing Editor around here, I get it. Traffic isn’t always easy to come by, and this kind of coverage is very clicky fodder. I first learned about this latest Down With Disney development via Indiewire, and I completely understand why they decided to cover it. But perhaps collectively we can all hold ourselves up to a better standard, and engage and promote the stories that make the movie world a better place to be, and perhaps, on some small level, the world around us a better place to be too.
