What's it about female superhero movies that freaks the internet out?

Because of fragile masculinity. The difference between Wonder Woman and Birds of Prey as well as Captain Marvel is that the latter two show men as being a big obstacle in the heroine's way and they're portrayed as being sleazy and controlling. I don't think you'll care if you know that's not the kind of guy you are, but I think to others they feel like there's a mirror being held up to them and they can't take the criticism.

Agenda. If Gal Gadot was running around bitching about white men, people would hate Wonder Woman too.

"that freaks the internet out"

who is the internet?

It's nothing to do with them being female. It looks crap, the marketing made it sound worse than it was, and overall it's just a mediocre nothingy mess.

Because these female led superhero films are entering a territory that has always been a heavily male dominated fan base with masculine heroes, and some of these new films can possibly come off as patronizing and wanting to elicit a negative response from the male fans of this genre, usually from something the cast/directors say, who feel the need to put the original target audience for superhero films on the defensive before the films are even released.

Some people shrug it off and don’t worry about it, and others take the bait and it becomes a blown out of proportion political debate...which of course depending on how this goes, will have an effect on the bottom line of profit.

Don’t patronize people, and there shouldn’t be too many problems. If you call your movie a “feminist movie”, like Ewan McGregor did with this one, you’re going to alienate people. If you’re Brie Larson saying her movie isn’t for “old white dudes”, then you’re probably going to have issues. If you’re the cast of the remake of a beloved classic film like Ghostbusters, and you feel the need to tell male fans of the original film to “go back into their parent’s basement”, you’re going to rub some people the wrong way.

Whether it’s right or wrong, if someone takes something as patronizing or insulting them, they are going to fight back. Men and women have been fighting about their differences since the beginning of time, and I don’t expect it to change any time soon. Comic book movies seem to give everyone another reason to argue.

The internet is awash with right wing misogynists/racists/homophobes who hate on any movie/show that has women, non-whites or non-heterosexuals in it.

Youtube is a cancer with 'go woke go broke' circlejerk videos for white american men to have some revenge fantasy. "Haha movie with black girl make no money! We win, you lose hollywoke!"

The demographics on sites like IMDb are 80% male and around 50-60% american. Gives a really distorted sense of perception since men are predominant and largely american too.





On the topic of Wonder Woman, it's easy in hindsight to forget that when it was first announced right wing dickheads online
ran a hate campaign against Gal Gadot. Saying that WW should be played by an american woman (a lot of conspiracy theories were being posted that Gal only got the role because she's a Jew and hollywood is run by them!), that Gal is too skinny to be WW and that WW should have great big boobies! Seriously you can go look at interviews leading up to the release to see Gal having to answer questions about trolls online saying her boobs aren't big enough.

After WW became a success people started giving it a bit of a pass (because the 'go woke go broke' narrative wouldn't work) and it's when Captain Marvel came out and got hated on that WW finally became truly embraced. It was used in the "I've got a black friend, I'm not racist" manner. I recall the people online hating on CM and using WW as an example of a good female superhero movie and using it as proof they're not misogynist.