BBC have announced that the 13th Doctor in Doctor Who will be played by a mere human woman and men are not happy. Sadly, this isn’t the first time a woman has committed an act of violence against thousands of men. Madeleine Chapman ranks the worst of them.
There’s nothing worse than blatantly miscasting a fictional character, and no one knows this more than the die-hard male fans of movies and television. They’re an angry bunch, those nerds. They’ll defend their beloved characters to their dying day, so long as that beloved character is white and male. Which, until recently, was a given.
BBC announced the 13th Doctor through a trailer that screened after the men’s Wimbledon final in the closest thing the UK has to a Super Bowl ad slot. It was hotly anticipated, and played up the suspense by having the Doctor walk away from the camera, hood up, for most of the 30 seconds. Then a womanly hand appeared and testicles all over the world began to shrivel. By the time the Doctor had pulled her hood back to reveal actress Jodie Whittaker, it can only be assumed that some Whovians had shat themselves. Luckily, phones can be used in the bathroom so they wasted no time at all in mainlining their masculine rage into the Twitter and comment sections the world over.
To honour the casting of an excellent actor in an iconic role, and the hilarious rage that inevitably follows, here’s a power ranking of each (recent) act of violence against male movie fans and their beloved fictional universes.
6) Mad Max: Fury Road
Mad Max: Fury Road was snubbed for the Best Picture Oscar in 2016 (JUST MY OPINION) and I was not impressed. But even less impressed with life itself was men’s rights activist group Return of Kings, a blog for those who believe “men should be masculine and women should be feminine.” They were furious(a) when they found out a movie about a manly man named Max was also going to feature a prominent female character. How. Dare. They. It was a very funny rant that got laughed at and was mostly harmless, except it gave some men an excuse to shit on one of the coolest characters in film history.
5) Ocean’s Eight
I have tentatively placed Ocean’s Eight this far down because it hasn’t even come out yet, but I’m sure it’ll move up once the first trailer is released. Lucky for us, opinions are out there despite the lack of information and they’re not great. There has been literally one photo released, which makes me want to see it (though I’d want to see it even more if it were called anything but Ocean’s Eight). And from that one photo we have the first ripple in the inevitable ocean of bile that’ll appear closer to its release date.
4) Star Wars
The more time that passes between sequels – or prequels or installments whatever you want to call them – the more time movie makers have to think about who their casts represent. Disney decided that with the latest installments in the Star Wars franchise, maybe there should be some women doing stuff too. So naturally it angered Star Wars fanboys who were still holding out hope that Harrison Ford hadn’t aged and could travel through time to play every character in the movie. Instead they got a woman and a black storm trooper and their lives were ruined.
3) Wonder Women-only screenings
Not the most vile but definitely the most ridiculous. Superhero fans got their Superman boxers in a knot when Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse cinema announced there would be one, just one, women-only screening of Wonder Woman. That’s right, there was one screening on one day (not opening day) at one cinema in one city in America for women only and men. lost. their. minds. It was hilarious but worrying that something so insignificant could anger so many men. It’s the equivalent of getting mad because the restaurant you eat meat at also has a vegetarian option. Though now that I think about it, I’m sure that’s happened a worrying number of times. Men threatened to show up anyway despite no women ever intruding on the unintentionally male-only screenings of Entourage. Thankfully, the Alamo Drafthouse is one of the coolest cinemas in the world and their responses to men’s ridiculous complaints were *mwah*.
2) Doctor Who 13
The latest turd pile of opinions has been served up on this very day thanks to Dr Jodie Whittaker. Lifelong fans have had their childhoods ruined, their homes burned to the ground, their families kidnapped, and their lives put in real danger because of this casting decision. The Doctor isn’t even a human so already BBC were wrong by casting skinny white men to portray him all these years. But by God, now they’ve cast a woman to play an alien which is so much worse. When will this PC madness end? I decided to go directly to the source of terrible comments and on my way I learned that the Daily Mail managed to be their usual worst self.
1) Ghostbusters
The jewel in the men-getting-mad-at-things-that-they-could-easily-ignore crown is the hate tirade that led to death threats and cyber attacks on Leslie Jones, one of the stars of the all-female Ghostbusters. Once again, childhoods were ruined for the umpteenth time and men felt personally victimised by a piece of fictional story-telling. Was Ghostbusters as good as the original or even as good as we hoped it would be? No. But was it an act of violence against movie fans who now have to walk around with no childhood to reminisce on? According to thousands of men, yes.
It’s a funny thing when men loudly complain that women are getting all the lead roles and men are being portrayed as one-dimensional idiots. It’s like the last 60 years of cinema never happened. I’m going to be optimistic and say that it seems like every time a woman gets cast in a lead role, a few more men jump off the hate wagon and into the ever popular why-should-I-even-care cart. Eventually, hopefully before I die, the rage over a woman being cast as a shape-shifting alien will be because of something other than her boobs.