You can have a message to your films, but if that message is hostile or patronizing to a large share of your audience, or delivered in a way that feels preachy and tacky, that's when it becomes a problem. Nobody likes being lectured or talked down to.

.... or because... it was it turned into a musical?
They didn't respect the source material, and didn't appeal to the same audience that made the fist movie great?

This isn't a political tone or not issue, its the messaging and source material stuff.
Guys don't want to see a emasculated guy, being boss babied around Joker, that's singing and dancing thoughout seemingly aimlessly.

They f***ed up the formula to success they had.
which again, leads back to the topic at hand.... they seemingly don't want to try to appeal to men.
Even the Joker folie a duex, had to change, for f*** all knows why, and sales dropped.

It baffles me that they even thought that they could release that many projects back to back antagonizing, patronizing, humiliating and guilting men, and that somehow we would just keep giving them our money. Like, they can't be that stupid, right?

But who knows? Maybe they thought that if they were able to attract enough women into Marvel and Star Wars, they would not need men at all.

Lots of male insecurity going on around here, eh?

Man, if you can't enjoy a movie because the protagonist isn't the same gender as you, maybe you're a bit lacking in basic human empathy.

I don't get why it's so difficult for so many men to get invested in the story of a female character. A lot of my favorite characters are female. The first two Alien films were great largely because of how awesome Ripley was, Sigourney Weaver's performance in the second movie especially was amazing. Furiosa stole the show in the latest Mad Max movie to the point she got her own film, which despite flopping at the box office was fucking awesome too. Hell even if we look at superhero stuff, my favorite character from Spider-Verse (one of the few great superhero movies of the last few years) is probably Gwen.

Look, I'll be the first to admit I cringed super hard when I heard the "X-Women" line from Dark Phoenix. But the problem with that line, honestly isn't so much the line by itself, but rather that it makes no sense in context. If there had been a precedent in the series (or even in just this movie itself) of the women always being the ones who save the men's asses, it'd make a bit more sense for her to say that, but there isn't. If Mystique had a history of feeling prejudiced against for her gender or was the kind of character to get really fired up about social issues, then maybe it'd make a bit more sense, but she doesn't. That line came out of nowhere and felt so forced and out of place. That's bad writing, and it clearly came from an agenda the studio is trying to push.

The problem isn't in having females/people of color/gays/trans/literally-anything-that-isn't-a-white-straight-cis-male in movies. The problem isn't even having that message in the movie. The problem is when studios, in an attempt to appeal to all audiences, decide to shoehorn in lines like that instead of actually having the writers incorporate those messages in the script.

So like I kinda get the anger from the anti-woke crowd, there's a lot of bad writing going on in big studio movies, especially Disney movies lately, but like... grow a backbone, man. If a movie sucks, it sucks. Move on. Dark Phoenix sucked, and so did that line. But it didn't suck (solely) because of that line, it was just a bad movie. I've moved on.

Let's be real here, most of the anti-woke crowd felt "lectured" or "talked down to" when they found out that Gwen Stacy had a trans flag in her room in Across the Spider-Verse, and they found out about it only after seeing the movie through some random Twitter post.

If there is any kind of "woke" messaging of any kind anywhere in any work of art, they'll get mad at the "agenda" being pushed on them, and go on rants about how the industry is "attacking" men or whatever.

Also the people who still don't understand the original Star Wars movies are all about politics (specifically being anti-facism and anti-dictatorships) are dumber than a pile of bricks.

But.. We did move on. That's the whole point of this article. Or when you say move on, do you actually mean "shut up and keep giving your money"?

Superman and Fantastic 4 are still making some money which indicates there is still a core audience there, the people moving on are more likely the people who are not die-hard fans. Have seen this myself, my wife who I was able to take to previous superhero movies like Endgame no longer wants to go to them anymore. Has nothing to do with quality or messaging or anything, she's just tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. 

If you look at Superman's box office the domestic box office is actually not too bad, it's the international take which is really bad, which I think shows that audiences outside of America are losing interest in the same shit over and over again. 

This is more of just a fad/trend having a natural let down. 

Most people loved strong female characters like Ripley in Aliens, or Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, or Trinity in the Matrix, or The Bride in Kill Bill, or Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman.

I'd say very, very few people just can't enjoy a film if the protag isn't the same gender as them. It's more the execution that people often find lacking.