Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar sounded off on the criticism that she said female Marvel superheroes seem to routinely receive, calling it and the male superhero mentality "backwards."
"Genre is where women can really succeed and hold an audience," Gellar said in an interview with The Guardian. "Every time a Marvel movie tries to do a female cast, it just gets torn apart… Unfortunately, audiences weren’t as accepting. There’s still this mentality of ‘the male superhero,’ this very backwards way of thinking."
"Captain Marvel" and "Ms. Marvel" were hounded by negative reviews at the time of their release, with the former getting a 45% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, although the film scored much better with critics. Brie Larson, who starred as Captain Marvel in the 2019 film, caught flak for some controversial comments she made on the Marvel press tour that were perceived as sexist toward men.
Her press days "appeared to be overwhelmingly White male," she said at one point.
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Other critics complained that Captain Marvel didn’t smile enough.
The criticism was not lost on Larson in a recent interview.
"How long will you play Captain Marvel?" Variety asked the actress, to which she replied, "I don't know. Does anyone want me to do it again?"
Likewise, the "Ms. Marvel" TV series, starring Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American teenager who is obsessed with the Avengers, was review-bombed on IMDb. Several blasted it as "woke" and "cringe."
Marvel movies at large have been the target of some Oscar-winning Hollywood directors in recent years. Martin Scorsese has said that the Marvel films are "not cinema" and are more like "theme park" rides, while James Cameron scoffed at the idea that Marvel's special effects came close to those in "Avatar."
"Weta Effects, as it’s now known, is the best," Cameron said. "Right? I mean, ILM does great work, but when it comes to the kind of emotive facial stuff that we’re doing…I mean, Thanos? Come on. Give me a break," Cameron said. "You saw this [new Avatar] movie. It’s not even close."
Cameron added, however, that he "loves" DC and Marvel movies.
Gellar's years starring as Buffy Summers on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" earned her a cult following that has remained with her to this day. The actress, who is now starring on the teen werewolf drama "Wolf Pack" on Paramount+, explained why she would not, however, reprise the iconic role in a reboot.
"I am all for them continuing the story, because there’s the story of female empowerment," Gellar said of "Buffy." "I love the way the show was left: ‘Every girl who has the power can have the power.’ It’s set up perfectly for someone else to have the power. But like I said, the metaphors of ‘Buffy’ were the horrors of adolescence. I think I look young, but I am not an adolescent."
