Far-right provocateur Ben Shapiro is back again with more hot takes absolutely nobody asked for, and this time he's whining about a superhero movie as if it's the collapse of society as we know it.
What's got Shapiro all upset is the so-called "woke touches" in the new Robert Pattinson film The Batman.
On Twitter and YouTube, Shapiro complained about the film's reversal of the usual race and gender roles we've come to expect, implying that they ruined the film entirely.
See his tweet below.
Shapiro wrote:
"I regret to inform you that 'The Batman' is bad."
Never mind that the film bowed to a whopping $134 million opening weekend--a nearly unheard of coup in the pandemic-crippled film industry at the moment.
There's no way to tell, of course, if its success is owing to the efforts the writers and director made to "woke-ify" the film.
But they sure seemed to do the opposite for Shapiro. So much so that he took to YouTube to post a lengthy takedown of the film. (Warning: The video below contains spoilers for the film.)
Ben Shapiro Reviews 'The Batman' [SPOILERS]youtu.be
The Batman makes several updates to the franchise that Shapiro calls "woke touches."
While the film's villains are played mostly by white men, Black actor Jeffrey Wright plays the traditionally white role of Commissioner Gordon, and Black actresses Jayme Lawson and Zoe Kravitz play the traditionally white male mayor and Catwoman, respectively. (Though the latter is not exactly a new take--several Black women have played Catwoman in the past, including Eartha Kitt and Halle Berry.)
In his review, Shapiro claims that these "woke touches" add up to one thing:
"The film hates Batman... And this drives me up a wall..."
Shapiro then claims he's not bothered by the "woke touches" in the film before going on to list them.
"Every white character is apparently bad, like all of them--fine whatever, I don't really care about that. That's fine..."
"You have Catwoman saying stuff about white privilege elites..."
"A lot of these lines seem like throwaways for 'film lefty Twitter,' but the main theme is not a throwaway. The main theme is... the film despises Batman."
IDK, man, sounds like you actually do care about the "woke touches"! Like a lot!
To be fair, Shapiro then goes on to give critiques of the film that, while entirely subjective, are at least based in legitimate gripes.
But all that was overshadowed by Shapiro's obvious distaste over the "woke touches," and people on Twitter weren't buying it.
Shapiro may hate The Batman, but critics and audiences seem to disagree: The film garnered an 86% Rotten Tomatoes score with critics and an 89% with viewers.
