Marvel Desperately Tries to Make Ironheart Look Essential
Marvel knows it has a bomb on its hands with Ironheart, the upcoming Disney+ series starring Dominique Thorne as Riri Willaims, Tony Stark’s successor as a tech-based superhero. When the first trailer came out, it immediately turned off Marvel fans, and the trailer now has a ratio of 216,000 likes to 514,000 dislikes, meaning it has more than twice as many dislikes as likes from 9.4 million views. And it’s no wonder why fans didn’t take to the Ironheart trailer; it presents Riri Williams as smug and obnoxious, saying she wants to create something “iconic” while appropriating Iron Man’s entire motif, having a self-serving answer to every question or warning, and being described as a genius who is excelling at MIT but also somehow downtrodden and not having the resources of Tony Stark (who built his first Iron Man suit while a prisoner of terrorists in Afghanistan). Before the first trailer hit, Marvel used other techniques to get people to accept Riri, first by saying Robert Downey Jr. gave his seal of approval to Thorne, Riri, and Ironheart, then by contradicting themselves and saying the show is not a passing of the torch from Tony Stark to Riri. A few days ago, Marvel released a second Ironheart trailer, which you can watch below:
This one has a closer ratio – 41,000 likes to 49,000 dislikes – but it’s still underwater. You can tell Marvel tried to counter some of the complaints about the first trailer by having Riri talk about helping people and being a hero, and having other people call her a hero (which is usually how Marvel establishes that someone is a hero nowadays, instead of demonstrating it like they used to). But as this doesn’t seem to be working, either, they’re going back to square one by having Dominique Thorne once again mention Robert Downey Jr.’s endorsement to Cinemablend, saying that fans should “get on the bandwagon” because “Tony’s on the bandwagon, so, you know, what’s the problem?” First of all, when your first trailer has more than double the amount of dislikes as likes, it’s not a bandwagon; it’s a sinking ship. Second, this sounds incredibly defensive, like she’s pissed off that people aren’t interested in Ironheart; Cinemablend seems to realize how poorly her remarks come off, as they make sure to say that she made them “playfully.” It’s amusing to see how the marketing has pivoted back from its initial pivot, now embracing Tony Stark as the reason why people should tune in to Ironheart. It’s a sign that they’re flailing, desperate to get people to watch any way they can.
But, somehow, it gets even worse. In an interview with The Direct, Thorne was asked if Riri Williams would appear in Avengers: Doomsday and/or Avengers: Secret Wars, and she told them, “Oh, you know, what can I say? The odds might be in our favor. Who knows? We’ll see. We’ll see.” It’s vague, and it could be spun as an offhanded comment from Thorne if Riri doesn’t turn up in the films (perhaps the word “playfully” will be used again), but it’s clearly meant to suggest that Ironheart will be part of at least one of the next Avengers movies, so everyone had better watch the show lest they be lost when they go to the theater to see Avengers: Doomsday. This is absolutely shameless, reminiscent of how they made people think they needed to see Captain Marvel to understand Avengers: Endgame, only for Carol Danvers’ involvement in the latter to be minimal and barely needing an explanation. (And since Captain Marvel screwed up some MCU continuity, audiences would have been better off treating Carol as the random-ass deus ex machina she was.) I doubt this will work with Ironheart; aside from Marvel having lost the goodwill of most of its fans, not enough people subscribe to Disney+ for Ironheart to benefit much from this ploy. This has been one of Marvel’s bigger problems in the last few phases, and highlighting it again will not only fail to help Ironheart, but it won’t do Doomsday and Secret Wars any favors. Marvel may have to write this one off, which, on the plus side, it should be used to by now.
Let us know what you think of the new Ironheart marketing scheme in the comments!
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