XPost: alt.disney, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics, alt.politics.media   
   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   https://redstate.com/bradslager/2025/07/06/disney-delivers-another-   
   debacle-as-ironheart-becomes-marvels-the-acolyte-a-series-review-n2191308   
      
   Disney+ has released another Marvel series - “Ironheart” - and it becomes   
   not just another woke fiasco on the platform; this might be among the   
   worst offerings seen from the studio. Not only is this worse in quality   
   and amateurism than “She-Hulk,” it actually challenges “The Acolyte” as   
   far as being about the most unwatchable content from the streamer. (We   
   covered that monumental disaster extensively in 2024.)   
      
   So, just how bad is this new offering? The troubles are on display before   
   you watch one scene. Behold the red flags in the show's genesis: It was   
   written in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement; the cast is nearly   
   all POC, so they altered most of the source materia; filming was completed   
   in 2022 and is only now coming to light; the completed product went   
   through double-digit amounts of edits; the studio only put out a trailer   
   barely a month before the debut; and they burped out the entire series in   
   about a week with two, 3-episode releases.   
      
   All of this indicates how Disney-Marvel realized it had a debacle on its   
   hands and strained to deal with what they inspired. “Ironheart” stands as   
   the last offering in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase-5, and it has   
   been a series of failures. “Deadpool and Wolverine” stands as about the   
   lone success from this iteration of the MCU. As a sign of how bad things   
   have been, the most successful of the Disney Plus-Marvel shows was “Agatha   
   All Along.”   
      
   Marvel master Kevin Feige was allegedly recently heard describing some of   
   the output seen from the streaming products in a painstaking light:   
      
   The head of Marvel Studios told colleagues recently that watching all the   
   comic-book giant’s new TV shows and films had started to feel more like   
   homework than entertainment.   
      
   This describes “Ironheart,” to be sure. Even as Disney head Bob Iger has   
   declared they will be focusing more on quality of content rather than   
   quantity, this thing gestated back when the studio was marinating in   
   virtue activism; so, we get possibly the most woke-DEI-checkbox casting   
   ever seen, all done in a bid to hire a cast and crew based on their labels   
   as opposed to their talent and servicing the storyline. And it comes in   
   with a cost of roughly $20 million per episode?! (Obligatory spoilers   
   warning, although doubtful this is needed.)   
      
   The plot overview: This centers on a young and brilliant college woman who   
   crafts her own Ironman-style super suit and ends up falling into   
   allegiance with a criminal outfit as she wrestles with her own morality   
   and identity. The reality: This is a villain origin story with a character   
   who is both unlikeable and self-destructive, and makes repeatedly horrible   
   choices supposedly done in service to woke empowerment.   
      
   Thus begins a backstory of a brilliant child prodigy, Riri Williams, who   
   manages to land a full scholarship to Massachusetts Institute of   
   Technology. While there she uses grants made to MIT to create her version   
   of the Tony Stark weaponized suit, but she dumps on his accomplishment as   
   something he was only able to do because he was a billionaire. This   
   completely ignores the basis of that storyline, where he built his initial   
   suit while held captive by terrorists in the Middle East. The show relies   
   on the insistence (rather than displaying) of Riri’s brilliance and   
   motivations; she tells the audience, “I can be the greatest inventor of my   
   generation.” Later she tells the dean, “I want to build something   
   undeniable. You want me to be small, but I refuse.”   
      
   Riri gets busted selling intelligence to other students and nearby   
   colleges - dismissing the concept of getting a top-flight career with   
   corporations - and upon her expulsion, she makes off with the suit,   
   justifying that it was made with “her” grant money, not those made to the   
   college. She manages to do this using the help of the built-in AI that is   
   a ripoff of Microsoft’s Clippy -- this example instead being an animated   
   anthropomorphic pencil. (Yes…seriously.)   
      
   She meets with a friend to mourn the loss of her father and best friend,   
   Natalie, to a gang shooting. She tells him, “I need a job that pays. A lab   
   so big they don’t notice if I finesse a resource here or there.” But   
   instead of working at a place like Boston Dynamics, where she could become   
   rather unrealistically wealthy, she falls in with a gang to make far less   
   with her cut of the thieving and extortion. Riri needs a new AI for her   
   new version of her suit, after crashing.   
      
   So, she hacks into the “Black Panther” Wakanda servers and, with her brain   
   wired to her computer, she dozes off thinking of her friend; Natalie is   
   reconfigured as Riri’s new AI assistant. She becomes N.A.T.A.L.I.E. which   
   stands for Neuro-Autonomous Technical Assistant Laboratory Intelligence   
   Entity. Yes…seriously.   
      
   The gang she connects with is led by Parker, known as The Hood, because he   
   wears a hooded cape imbued with dark magic. His cohorts are a series of   
   characters from the comics, but all are POC intersectional types, with a   
   gender-fluid muscle duo and a hyper-flamboyant trans named Slug. Despite   
   Parker-Hood being blatantly evil, it takes N.A.T.A.L.I.E. to explain to   
   the brilliant Riri that something is off about the guy.  So, during one   
   heist Riri secretly removes a small patch of his cloak with a laser.   
      
   She also meets with the son of “Ironman” heavy Obediah Stane, and I had to   
   laugh every time he was referred to as Zeke Stane. He is played by Alden   
   Ehrenreich, who was the titular lead in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” in case   
   you were wondering why you are unfamiliar with him. In one moment, Riri   
   recoils at the remains ashes of "Zeke"s father Obediah, which he keeps in   
   a Zip-Loc baggie because, “We weren’t close.” Yes…seriously.   
      
   This is the halfway point and we have seen - after Riri agrees to join   
   this gang because they do not harm anyone - this group has murdered dozens   
   of corporation employees, security guards, and the CEO of one business   
   because he wanted to improve food supply techniques to feed the world, but   
   impacted small farmers. So, we have a series justifying the actions of its   
   main character and then defying those very standards almost immediately.   
      
   After this point, many online thought Riri would have a redemption story   
   and become heroic, but it is not to pass. She is to become a villain, and   
   not a likable one, at all. When selling the audience an anti-hero, you   
   should give us a reason to either root for, or comprehend the motivations   
   of, or at the very least understand their descent into villainy. Instead,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)