The fanboy wars have ruined my excitement for Doctor Strange

I'm going to see Doctor Strange tonight in IMAX......and I'm not as excited about it as I should be. 

It's not that I don't want to see it. I absolutely do and it looks to be another solid effort from Marvel Studios at the very least. It's already getting great reviews and it will likely be another box office success for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

I'm just really tired of the fanboy narrative, especially after this year. 

What's the "fanboy narrative?" Oh you know, the whole "Marvel is the superior franchise when it comes to comic book movies and it has the critical success and the box office numbers to prove it." Before this year, I never heard that from people on social media at all and it was a peaceful time. I was able to go see Marvel movies in a state of tranquility on opening night or at an advanced showing without having to worry about getting into an argument before, during or after the movie for any reason. 

Then Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice came out in March of this year and all hell broke loose. I've had very little peace as a geek in more than seven months since then. From the moment the early bad reviews for that movie came out, the lines started to be drawn and this stupid little fanboy war began to flare up. That's when people really started to take shots at DC movies, at least these current ones, and with an army of critics and clickbait bloggers behind them they said everything from "it's too dark and gloomy" to "they need to take lessons from Marvel on how to do it right."

That last comment is the real problem. These people drew a clear line in the sand for whatever reason and either fired a lot of Marvel fans up or pissed a lot of DC fans off. Suddenly it was all about how Rotten Tomatoes was either the answer to why the DC Extended Universe is a piece of garbage or how Rotten Tomatoes was being bought and paid for by Disney to give MCU movies a wealth of "fresh" ratings while keeping the DCEU movies rotten. Now everybody's arguing about everything from conspiracy theories to marketing budgets and expectations to total box office gross and it's just one pissing contest after another on Facebook and Twitter these days. 

It's the War of the Fanboys, and it's ruining everything. 

I'm not supposed to be "meh" about going to see Doctor Strange tonight, I'm supposed to be excited, like I was for the first 12 MCU movies that I was front and center for to see in the theaters, or the entire Dark Knight Trilogy, or Man of Steel and BvS. The thing is after BvS came out and I loved it, even in its inferior theatrical form, the fanboy war started and I found myself defending it and the DCEU against an endless army of social media morons that proceeded to laugh at me and others who defended the movie and DC franchise right along with me. They called US fanboys and said we were nothing but pro-DC shills that couldn't see the movie for the incredible disaster that it truly was and we should accept it. Marvel is vastly superior, they said and the critics and bloggers certainly backed them up on that one publishing story after story about how "rushed, bloated and full of holes" the DCEU was compared to the MCU, who just knows how to do it right. 

That went on through the first week of May and then got worse once Captain America: Civil War came out. It was like giving the fanboys a fresh nuclear bomb to drop on the rest of us DC fans, except that it wasn't really a nuclear bomb, it was just a really big water balloon that soaked more than it destroyed. What I mean by that is, it was all just a bunch of angry, subjective opinions that these fanboy bullies were trying to use as fact, and many of them still are, making memes, videos and writing articles to further their ideal of Marvel superiority at the cinema. Naturally, DC fanboys have fired back with tons of their own content about Marvel's kid-friendly formula, lack of compelling villains and unimaginative cinematography to name a few things. 

And this is why I'm not as excited for Doctor Strange as I should be, because as much as I actually like Marvel and really want to see it, I'm tired of all the fanboy crap that goes along with it. It's already Certified Fresh on RT at 90 percent, meaning that the entire MCU is STILL completely fresh rated while the entire DCEU is still completely rated rotten. I'd love to call conspiracy on that, but I know it isn't true. After all, I'm the one that says Marvel Studios hasn't made a bad movie yet in 13 tries. That's right, I actually like Iron Man 2 and 3 and both Thor movies. Are they weaker links? Of course, but they aren't BAD. I've seen a lot of much worse before, like Elektra and Hulk and Green Lantern. I paid money to see all of those movies and there's not a single MCU OR DCEU movie even remotely close to being as bad as those, in my opinion. 

I know, I shouldn't care about what angry idiots say on the Internet even if they do run blogs and claim to be journalists when they're actually just trolling us for a few million clicks a day. It's not easy to ignore though, seriously. When you constantly see bad press and opinions about your favorite franchise it's not that easy to just look the other way, even if we should and unfortunately that can affect our movie watching experiences from now on. You feel like you have to defend it because the people attacking it are not respecting the opinions of those who actually like it, because they keep telling people that NOBODY likes it and EVERYBODY likes Marvel. Neither of those statements are true. Plenty of people love the DCEU and hate the MCU and vice versa. 

I didn't ask for this stupid fanboy war to happen at all. I don't want it. It's bad enough that I have to defend being a Trekkie that also loves Star Wars and thinks that rivalry is beyond idiotic. Now I have to do the same thing with DC and Marvel movies and since those are more mainstream, there's way more fanboys out there that want to fight about it. Terrific. 

So I'm going to go see Doctor Strange tonight and try my best to push all of the fanboy war crap out of my head and enjoy the movie for what it is, the 14th installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hopefully I'll be able to do that and form my own opinion of the movie without any preconceived notions or anger at the fanboys poisoning my thoughts about it. 

At least until the Wonder Woman trailer is shown. After that, all bets are off. Crap.