‘God of War’ Director David Jaffe Claims Male Critics Of Female-Led Marvel Projects Are “Misogynistic, Homophobic, And Racist”

Spencer Baculi |

Sep 13, 2022

In the latest vie for attention from perhaps one of, if not the most unwarrantedly condescending video game developers of all time, original God of War director David Scott Jaffe has accused male critics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s female-led projects of being “misogynistic, homophobic, racist” on the patently false grounds that they don’t “rag” on the shared universe’s poorly-made, male-led entries.

Jaffe first began leveling his contradiction-laden and inconsistent accusations – his favored style of argument – against critics of “woke” MCU content on September 11th, spurred by Twitter user’s @TheStrxggler’s criticism of Brie Larson’s unlikeable candor during a recent interview conducted at the D23 2022 expo .

It feels like Brie Larson always goes out of her way to be as unlikeable as possible.

The man just asked a question. Don't turn it into yet another passive-aggressive session on how you let the internet live rent free in your head. https://t.co/s9aA3xXJeN

— 『Mr𝕏'sUncleRuckusMan』 (@TheStrxggler) September 11, 2022

Retweeting @TheStrxggler’s post, Jaffe bellowed, “They can say Capt Marvel is a bad movie but here’s the truth:they don’t like Brie cause she doesn’t give a F–K about them”.

“She doesn’t pine for their love/affection, she doesn’t NEED their adulation,” he continued. “She won’t kiss the nasty ring of underdeveloped geek men so they HATE her for it.”

Following-up on this initial point, Jaffe asserted in a separate tweet, “They hate Black Widow, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Captain Marvel. AKA strong women who don’t pine for male approval. They love Scarlet Witch, a woman who literally destroys universes because she can’t have the man she loves.”

“See the pattern?” he then asked. “It’s misogyny and it’s gross.”

It should be noted that despite his smug demeanor, Jaffe’s entire argument is predicated on an entirely false recollection of the MCU.

Not only did the last episode of She-Hulk center entirely around her desire for a boyfriend and even feature an explicit moment highlighting her disappointment that her ‘Jen form’ did not get the approval of the one man she had a good date with, but Scarlet Witch is not “destroying” universes for Vision, but rather her children – as depicted in the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Met with the obvious truth from @lockmort that his argument also falls apart due to the fact that “’they’ love Yelena, Shuri, Kate, Jessica Jones, Okoye, Katy Chen, Valkyrie, Nebula, and Gomora, or to take it out of the MCU and keep it current: Kim Wexler, Ahsoka, Kimiko, Max, and Rue,” Jaffe proceeded to trip over his own fervor and claim, “Sure, because NOTHING about those stories has anything to do with them being women.”

“They simply ARE women,” he said. “But have a geek story be a geek story that is ALSO speaks to/from the female experience and the sky is falling on these people. Because it makes them terribly uncomfortable.”

But did Jaffe not just claim that male fans ‘love’ the Scarlet Witch? A character whose entire character arc deals with being a mother, and the lengths she would go in her misguided quest to find them again?

And what of the wide-spread love given to Jessica Jones’ first season – prior to its writing going down the tubes in later seasons and causing general audiences, not just men, to lose affection for the Netflix series – which features her rape trauma as a central element of her story?

Surely he has to have taken note of the widespread criticism that in Black Widow, Yelena treats the Red Room’s standard performance of hysterectomies on recruits as a joke, when in Avengers: Age of Ultron, her sister Natasha was clearly traumatized by the process?

To this end, it seems apparent Jaffe was again more concerned about getting in a ‘dunk’ than making any sort of actual point.

Attempting to give his argument an ‘exit’ of sorts, Jaffe concluded his Twitter rant, “Last thing: do they have points that some of the stories are not fantastic? 100%. But that’s almost ANY movie.”

“And that’s fine,” he admitted. “But it’s the viciousness and consistency with which they beat on the not perfect women films that comes off as creepy and worrisome.”

Following his standard playbook, after spending a day or so engaging with the discourse sparked by his disingenuous claims, Jaffe offered his actual “last” word on the subject in an impromptu, falsehood-laced video shared to his Twitter.

“I didn’t realize some of you folks needed this much help, ” opened Jaffe, employing his aforementioned signature condescension in response to his seeming inability to accept that even those he appointed himself to champion found his take to be off base.

My final word (yeah, right) on the misogynistic responses to female lead movies in the MCU (and geek fandom in general). pic.twitter.com/akaFxSe4HR

— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) September 12, 2022

“I called them misogynistic, or their actions are misogynistic, and immediately they rush to Twitter, and go ‘No, they’re just bad Jaffe,’” he continued. “‘What about how we don’t hate Wonder Woman 1, we hate Wonder Woman 1984’, you know, and all this s–t,”.

Dismissing this valid counterpoint, Jaffe snobbed, “Yes, you’re missing the point.”

“Because I’m not saying you are overtly misogynistic, in the sense that you walk around in a t-shirt that says women hater or ‘wahmen’ hater, or whatever the f–kit is they say,” he claimed. “It’s the consistent badgering and beating up on geek centric content that you call ‘woke’ is the part that’s misogynistic, homophobic, racist, all right?”

“Iron Man 2 is a s–t movie,” he opined. “Ant-Man, the first Ant-Man, is not a s–t movie, but it has as much emotional resonance as a fucking average episode of an ABC sitcom that you don’t even remember the name of. I’m looking at the list of MCU titles right now, and even Thor: The Dark World? No one’s saying you guys are out there defending those movies – Avengers 2? – there’s some great moments in that movie but it’s not a great movie.”

Running himself in circles as he desperately grabbed for a coherent argument that did not involve him admitting ‘Maybe I was wrong on that one’, Jaffe falsely declared, “No one’s saying you guys are out there defending these movies as good movies, the point is you don’t say much of anything about them.”

”Even the Eternals,” he put forth, “which even though I think it was interesting, and most people would agree is one of the weakest MCU movies, even the Eternals doesn’t get the consistent shit upon that She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Black Widow, and there was like one or two others.”

“So yes, I understand that you can champion an obvious great movie like Alien or like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, or like WandaVision, and you can’t deny that it’s great,” he continued. “That’s not the misogynistic part.”

“The misogynistic part,” Jaffe ultimately accused, “or the hate part, or the part where you reveal your true colors because you are uncomfortable at some level with the opposite sex, people who are LGBT if you are not one of those folks, people of color if you’re not one of those folks, somewhere along the lines you are revealing by the very nature of your consistent targets.”

“You’re not saying let’s f–king rag on the MCU, Thor: The Dark World, Avengers 2, Iron Man 2 was s–t, Captain America [Falcon] and the Winter Soldier had some moments but it wasn’t a great show, yeah She-Hulk, and Ms. Marvel – it’s just the women, right?”

Attempting to reconnect himself to reality, Jaffe concluded, “It’s the frequency of the things you choose to beat upon when there’s a number of things to beat upon is where you need to do some work, call Better Help, or get real life therapist, and do whatever you need to do to work through your clear discomfort of people who are different from you, or challenge you, or threaten the view you’ve been told is the normal acceptable view since you were a wee lad. “

“So work on that,” he signed off, believing himself to have successfully proven his point.

Where does one even start in proving how almost every point of Jaffe’s rant is categorically false and informed by a disingenuous read of the entire situation?

To say that to one criticized his specifically noted MCU entries, such as Iron Man 2 or Thor: The Dark World, is either proof that one is being disingenuous or that they have lived in social isolation since each of them released, as these films are routinely touted as the weaker points of the entire franchise by fans of every label Jaffe would wish to split hairs by.

The same applies to his accusation that ‘anti-woke’ critics took no issue with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Eternals, as these projects were regular targets of criticism during their airing.

However, one thing Jaffe seems to ignore is the unfortunate reality of the content creation economy the critics who’ve earned Jaffe’s disdain operate in.

Iron Man 2 released in 2010. Thor: the Dark World dropped in 2013, and Age of Ultron in 2015. What’s left to be said about these that hasn’t already been said?

Or perhaps the better question is, what do audiences believe is left to be said?

If they’re not interested, it becomes harder and harder for one to sustain their own content creation and growth.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk is currently airing. Black Widow was the first film to kick off Phase 4. Brie Larson is back in the news thanks to the recent D23 panel promoting The Marvels.

The simple fact is that the studios’ release schedules dictate what stories and topics they’ll be covering, as not only is it more interesting for said critics to cover something they haven’t seen before – even if they are simply trashing it – but it’s the best way to get more eyes on one’s content.

After all, is that not why Jaffe himself leapt into the conversation?

As for the specific dislike of Larson, this is not based on her film, which most detractors have agreed offers a serviceable if not standard superhero origin story, but rather her direct antagonizing of fans, as begun in 2018.

“I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about ‘A Wrinkle in Time’,” Larson fired at critics of identity and gender politics driven movie production while accepting that year’s Crystal Award at the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards. “It wasn’t made for him. I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color.”

Of course, this negative appraisal of the actress is not based on this one event, but rather her own active engagement in the ongoing ‘feud’.

In fact, in her latest shot at said critics, Larson shared a photo of herself and her The Marvels co-stars and its director Nia Johnson to her personal Twitter account alongside the caption, “*trolls combust*”.