Avengers: Endgame has been one of the most talked about cinematic releases of the year.
While the movie has been widely praised by fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as the perfect conclusion to the Avengers series and been a box office hit, some people have taken umbrage with it for completely different reasons and are now pirating a copy without "all the feminism and gay s**t".
This is a behind-the-scenes clip of Endgame shared by Chris Pratt:This was revealed on the illegal BitTorrent download page, where the information was subsequently screenshotted and posted to Twitter in a now-viral post. In it, the anonymous user wrote:
"Endgame, but shorter, no feminism, no gay s***, less boring filler, less sniffing its own farts, no constant quips, no other small changes."
The edited version of the film was posted to Twitter by user @FreeYourMindKid who wrote:
"So white men are downloading and pirating a copy of Endgame that has all of the non-white men edited out.
#WhiteFragilityIsReal"
The edited film provoked quite the response on social media:
While many people would like to live in a world where gender, sexuality and race aren't factors in movies, Endgame broke new ground because it was the first in the MCU to have an openly gay character.
And despite this seemingly progressive move, the screentime devoted to its characters reflects patriarchal norms, with the male superheroes having 381 minutes of screentime and the female characters just 116 minutes, the Daily Mail reports.
However, Advocate has said that Endgame is the "swansong" of straight white superhero movies.
Co-director Joe Russo, who plays the movie's only gay character, said to Deadline: "Representation is really important.
"It was important to us as we did four of these films, we wanted a gay character somewhere in them.
"We felt it was important that one of us play him, to ensure the integrity and show it is so important to the filmmakers that one of us is representing that.
"It is a perfect time, because one of the things that is compelling about the Marvel universe moving forward is its focus on diversity."
But while the character might have been included with the best of intentions, some members of the LGBTQ+ community found it "more insulting than progressive", Pink News reports.
One thing's for sure - if the swansong of straight white superhero movies was too much for the "fragile straight white male" brigade, they're going to have even more editing work on their hands in the future.
