“Yeah, another female-centric superhero flick from a company with a spotty track record for this kind of thing, featuring a race-swap protagonist and some weird multi-versal plot device that felt like a cheap excuse to get Michael Keaton back as Bruce Wayne, and I imagine the poor test screening[s] didn’t exactly help convince the studio that they had a major hit on their hands.
“But if the rumors that I’ve heard are true, [Batgirl] actually scored higher than Black Adam and Shazam 2. But you’ve got to ask yourself ‘how bad does a film really need to be that the studio would rather pull the plug on the whole thing and lose tens of millions of dollars rather than just re-cut and try to salvage something halfway decent…this is the same studio, remember, that reckoned Birds of Prey, Justice League and Wonder Woman 1984 were fit for human consumption.
“And Batgirl, by the way, isn’t the only [Warner Bros. movie] to get shitcanned [as] the tumor is that Supergirl is also on the chopping block…hmmm, two female-centric superhero movies featuring race-swap protagonists that happened to get unceremoniously cancelled at the same time…
“Film division honcho Walter Amada‘s genius strategy was to basically do whatever was popular at the time, and what was popular the time was diversity, female empowerment and representation. Rather than try to work these things into his movies with skill, intelligence and patience, Warner Bros. instead decided to just straight-up replace popular characters played by problematic white men for more diverse alternatives.
“I think it’s fair to say that after nearly a decade of having ‘the message’ shoved down our throats, audiences are getting a little bit tired of this shit.”