Marvel Censored Ant-Man 3 Over Gay Imagery And One Executive Was Not Happy About It
Marvel executive Victoria Alonso may have been fired for standing up to Marvel for censoring gay imagery in Ant-Man 3.
Marvel has been making headlines recently, and it isn’t because of the terrible reviews critics are giving the studio’s most recent superhero feature, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Instead, the internet has been twittering about the recent and sudden termination of Victoria Alonso, a very important producer who has been with the MCU since the very beginning. Because Disney’s official statement over the termination was vague, fans have been doing a little sleuthing to figure out what happened, and The Hollywood Reporter may have just solved the mystery—Alonso was not happy that Marvel censored gay imagery in Quanutmania.
Last week, Disney fired Alonso, siting that her work for the Amazon Oscar-nominated feature, Argentina, 1985, was in breach of her contract and a “direct violation of company policy,” but fans have been wondering if that was truly the reason Disney let Alonso go. On the one hand, Alonso has been with Marvel since the inception of Iron Man, which began pre-production work in 2005, so one would think that after so many years with the company, she would know what her contract allowed. And now, new information is coming to light that Alsono, who is a gay Latina woman, refused to allow Marvel to censor gay imagery in the studio’s latest film, inciting pushback that the studio did not want to deal with.
This hypothesis was formatted after Alonso’s attorney Patty Glaser (whom the executive hired to sue Disney for wrongful termination), made a statement saying Alonso “had the courage to criticize Disney” and “was silenced. Then she was terminated when she refused to do something she believed was reprehensible.” While Glaser didn’t reveal what the reprehensible act was, fans believe that the attorney was referring to Marvel wanting to remove gay imagery shown in Ant-Man 3 when Paul Rudd is walking down a street in San Fransisco and passes a shop that has rainbow decorations featuring the word “Pride.”
This moment, though small, shows important representation for the LGBTQ+ community, a community that Alonso herself is a part of and has been known to champion publicly. Previously, Alonso has spoken out against Disney and Marvel’s lack of support for the gay community and pushed for Disney to speak out against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida. So it makes sense that she would also push back against Marvel censoring gay imagery in one of her movies.
The moment in question was only censored for the Kuwait market, a country that has extremely strict anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Disney’s policy around editing a film for another country is to adhere to the laws of the country unless the edit in question is an integral part of the story, which is why the studio chose to have films like Lightyear and Eternals banned in places with anti-LGBTQ+ laws but also chose to edit out moments like the pride images in Ant-Man 3 and a moment of affection in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Allegedly, Alonso would have preferred Ant-Man 3 to be banned in Kuwait, like Lightyear and Eternals, than have Marvel remove the small moment of gay representation.
At this time, neither Alonso nor Disney has spoken out about the theory that Alonso’s pushback against Marvel’s gay censorship is why she was terminated from the company after nearly 20 years. However, as Alonso is suing Disney for wrongful termination, and Hollywood court cases are often very public affairs, the details of this Mouse of House drama are sure to come to light very soon.
