Like most of y’all, the cost of living crisis has hit me hard. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to sell my Funko Pop collection. I’m not ashamed to admit I wept uncontrollably. It was like losing a cherished loved one, only much more traumatic and painful. The hole left in my boosted, swollen heart by the loss of my beloved adult collectables will never be filled.

So it pains me to admit that I simply can’t afford to go watch The Marvels. The $275 million dollar budget film features three stunning and brave her-oes up against a BOPOC baddie as written and directed by a strong Black female. So what’s the problem? The price of a movie ticket, that’s what. The admission is just too high for a lowly dog walker like me, especially one who works entirely from home due to the dangers of COVID (like, hello, Covid is still out there). If the dubious and ultimately unimportant box office numbers are anything to go by, the film’s legions of fans and supporters are in the same rapidly sinking boat as I am.

It’s not all film negatives though. The wise and business savvy decisions of Disney head cheeses Kevin Feige and Papa Iger to cater to a modern audience of wine aunts and a terminally online nub of loud leftists who don’t pay to watch films or buy comics isn’t the epic misfire many on the far-right are claiming it to be. The MCU (uhm, M-SHE-U ! — ed) is thriving under this model. The numbers just don’t reflect reality, that’s all.

Even though we can’t pay to see this cinematic masterpiece on the silver screen, there are still ways in which we can defend and support this film from the malicious mob of anti-woke haters and grifters.

Here are five free ways cinematic virtue warriors can support The Marvels:

5 Shipping Return to Sender

Generate buzz by shipping the characters together. There are three leads you can do it with and many, many side characters. I don’t know most of their names as I haven’t seen the film and don’t read comics but a quick search on Wikipedia will help with that.

Personally, I like to ship Captain Marvel with Valkyrie. Their offscreen romance is one for the ages. It’s my headcanon now, and therefore you must accept it. Affirm my lesbian fanfiction of them scissoring in their frumpy, sexless superhero costumes. Do it, or you’re a bigot.

4 Cancel the haters

The damage these grifters have done to The Marvels is unfortunately irreversible, but we can stop them from doing more harm to future  projects in the M-SHE-U ! Some have already led the charge on getting anti-woke channels like Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker taken down for their hateful content. These brave and wholesome defenders of Disney and the M-SHE-U took to X to voice their concerns directly to YouTube. 

With any luck, YouTube will capitulate to the outraged cries of two accounts with a combined follower count of 126 and take down these channels with millions of subscribers for their racist and misogynistic content. I’d thank those who complained but sadly they’ve locked their accounts, no doubt due to the intense backlash they received from incel manbabies!

3 Pretend you liked it

This applies to both those who have and haven’t seen the film. Just post non-stop praise. Hone in on the positives – women, diversity, Flerkens, Iman Vellani, the short run time. Tell folx that you’ve been to see the film repeatedly and loved it more each time. Fake praise is better than none!

2 Blame the actor’s strike and misogyny

We can’t let the film’s colossal failure be attributed to the film itself or those involved in the making of it. Blame everything but the film: the actor’s strike,superhero fatigue, misogyny, racism, anti-woke grifters, South Park, COVID. The list of excuses we can come up with is endless. It’s super important for democracy that we protect this film and everything it represents.

1 Pirate it

I’m sure Disney and Marvel won’t mind if you resort to this in your desperation to see the film. Surely they’d understand and even commend you for your anti-Capitalist efforts in downloading a poor quality, virus-laden copy of the movie filmed on a midrange Smartphone. Once you’re done squinting your way through the blurry, incomprehensible picture, go straight to Letterboxd or Rotten Tomatoes, give it five stars, and wonder aloud in your review about why people hated it so much.

We may not be able to make this number one at the box office, but if we all try hard enough we can make it the number one pirated movie of 2023!