Marvel's The Eternals

[ProphetofGanja]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

A show about a woman with living hair that's a weapon and a giant dog... and right away they cut the woman's hair and send the dog away. That's what happens, right? So, so weird. I mean, what were they thinking?

Wow, is that really what they did with Inhumans? Criminal. I never really cared to look into the Inhumans characters; they never really popped up in Marvel comics I read. Ditto for the Eternals. Just seems hard to relate to near-immortal cosmic children of supreme space gods.

[sdp]

I tried to get into the inhumans in the late 00's but man I never understood the appeal or why I was supposed to like any of them. I was really curious to see how the MCU would make them popular. They seemed to try to make them into mutants equivalents which made no sense to me but whatever it could've been neat to see them try, perhaps there was something to them I had not seen but alas once they got Fox they didn't care to even try.

[Autbot_Benz]

Eternals just hit 59% on Rotton Tomatoes making it the first MCU movie to be rotten

[CyberCubed]

I hope it goes even lower. I want it to plummet.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I hope it goes even lower. I want it to plummet.

I don't necessarily want "failure" as the part of satisfaction. But rather I view it as "audience rejection" of this bull $#!(. If you can make needy-addicted-comic-book-nerds reject an offering then that's true evidence of a society disgusted with a direction finally.

[Leo656]

It doesn't sound like that's what's happening, though.

Like I've seen some reviews (from sources with an obvious bias) that gush about the diversity angle as the best part of the movie aside from the cinematography. But even they gave it a mediocre or poor review because in spite of hitting all their boxes, they just found the movie really, really boring.

I'll need to see a bunch more race-flipped super-hero movies full of gay main characters fail, before I'll call it a full-blown cultural rejection. Right now, it just sounds like most people don't find it to be the sort of thrill ride a Marvel movie is "supposed" to be, and that's where most of their negativity comes from. "Too many characters and not enough happening." That's what I keep reading.

Nobody knows who these characters are, on any meaningful level, so they don't especially care that they've been "Woked" up. They just don't like how they finally got Angelina Jolie into one of these things and she does nothing at all of importance... and neither does anyone else.

The whole project was flawed. They gave it to a director who had some critical acclaim but had never done a movie like this. And sometimes, that works, but it seems like her wheelhouse is artsy-fartsy stuff. Pretty pictures about "real people" that nobody actually watches. And that's fine, there's a place for that in cinema. It's not another Guardians situation, where you had a bunch of obscure characters but the person directing the whole thing had a sense of style and bombast and knew how to illustrate why those characters were interesting. In this case, they gave the project to someone whose entire style is "understated and poignant" and let her do it all Her Way, and it just seems like it didn't mesh well. Like, I haven't seen this movie, or ANY of her movies. But everything I've read about it just makes it seem like she may be a talented director as far as her own style but just completely wrong for this type of movie, and what it needed to do. Remember, "these movies aren't cinema". Yet "cinema" is literally all she's done. Why have her oversee a theme park ride? Just to see if it'll work? It won't.

Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if the people who hired her never even saw her other films. They just read that they got great reviews, and "Hey, she's Chinese! More diversity on our big Diversity movie! That's perfect!" I can definitely see that happening. Don't forget, this is the same Disney that gave a whole Star Wars movie to a guy who hated Star Wars, just because he had "fresh ideas." They're not immune to making dumb decisions for silly reasons and in turn tanking an entire movie just because "it sounded good on paper".

[neatoman]

The fact that critics gave Captain Marvel passing reviews but are basically slamming this one... It sends chills down my spine, how bad would this have to be for them to admit it sucks?

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by neatoman

The fact that critics gave Captain Marvel passing reviews but are basically slamming this one... It sends chills down my spine, how bad would this have to be for them to admit it sucks?

Exactly. This is Marvel's full-on woke $#!( flick. It's exactly what the liberal media has baited clicks with and hinged their whole meal-ticket and life virtue on. They should be shilling it even more than they did for Craptain Marvel.

[CyberCubed]

If only movies could be like they were in the 1950's when everyone was white, straight, and women stayed in the kitchen.

[Andrew NDB]

Everybody ready for the MCU "The Uncanny X-Men," with black Magneto who is a victim of systemic racism and not the nazis, gay Wolverine, gay Iceman, and gender swapped Professor X?

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by IMJ

Exactly. This is Marvel's full-on woke $#!( flick. It's exactly what the liberal media has baited clicks with and hinged their whole meal-ticket and life virtue on. They should be shilling it even more than they did for Craptain Marvel.

All I can figure is, it must be REALLY boring if they can't even be bothered to give it a halfway decent review simply because it checks all their prerequisite boxes. Like you'd think "They made the white one non-white and the straight one gay and there's a gay couple with a kid in it and the two dudes kiss" would be enough to get a good review from SOME of those critics.

Instead they're like, "I WANT to like the movie because of all those things. But I didn't, because it takes a long-ass time for nothing at all to happen."

It's interesting and strange. Like they admit that they were rooting for the movie because of all its SJW stuff, but in the end that's still not enough for them to like it. Very odd.

Like where were these same exact people when we needed them to admit that Ghostbusters 2016 was a lousy movie? They were so busy telling everyone that it was great just because it had four women leading it, they didn't notice or didn't care that it was a huge piece of sh*t. But NOW they can suddenly put the agendas aside and admit that other things matter in a movie, too? Since when? When did these people suddenly develop taste and/or a conscience?

It's weird.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Everybody ready for the MCU "The Uncanny X-Men," with black Magneto who is a victim of systemic racism and not the nazis, gay Wolverine, gay Iceman, and gender swapped Professor X?

I keep saying this is what's going to happen and people keep telling me I'm crazy.

I only ever even speculated it because some emails leaked out a while back that explicitly said those were ideas Disney was kicking around. Maybe it'll happen and maybe it won't, but I'm not crazy if those are actual conversations that are being had behind closed doors. And I promise you, they are. DC's over here pushing TWO Black Superman projects that nobody wants, you can bet your ass Disney's over there talking about how to "modernize" the X-Men at the exact same time. And we all know what "modernize" means in 2021.

Also, you forgot the part where Magneto and Xavier are gay lovers. One more idea Disney was "allegedly" kicking around. Think it won't happen? Or at the least, think it's not being talked about? HAH. Maybe it won't happen, but anybody who doesn't think it's part of a conversation happening in some office Right Now is delusional.

[ProphetofGanja]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Everybody ready for the MCU "The Uncanny X-Men," with black Magneto who is a victim of systemic racism and not the nazis, gay Wolverine, gay Iceman, and gender swapped Professor X?

The Uncanny X-People

[Andrew NDB]

Oh, I'm sure there's heavy debate in offices about just how far to push things. If any project would seem "on paper" to be perfect to front-load with a ton of LGBTQ stuff, it'd be the X-Men. I suspect there will be many compromises made and we'll only get one or two "wtfs?!" out of it, with maybe the idea that a Generation X or something-something-X spinoff will be the big avenue for that.

It IS interesting that Disney/Marvel Studios got the rights back to X-Men and the Fantastic Four at exactly the same time and while the MCU Fantastic Four was announced like 2 years ago, we still have absolutely no sign of anything X-Men, when that's by far the bigger draw. I suspect it's because that's the one they feel they have to figure out the most.

Originally Posted by ProphetofGanja

The Uncanny X-People

Feige is pretty "progressive" but I give him enough credit that at the very least he will tell the people touting that to stfu.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

If only movies could be like they were in the 1950's when everyone was white, straight, and women stayed in the kitchen.

I don't think that anybody actually wants that either, you simp.

[Leo656]

I would've been a little more excited about Disney's X-Men about ten years ago, when at the worst a few characters' personalities might be different from the comics but almost everyone would at least look nearly identical to the comics and have the right powers and costumes. It would've been a dramatic step up from the FoX-Men movies, where everyone was pretty In Name Only for most of them.

Nowadays, they've got different motivations driving their adaptations; therefore, I no longer trust them and no longer especially care about Disney's X-Men. It's not even primarily about keeping things "spiritually faithful" while only using the broad-strokes of the books as a guideline, like it was back then; now, it's all about "If they were white, now they're not, if they were straight, make 'em gay, and by the way, we'll get better reviews if the director is a chick, preferably not white and/or not straight. So figure that part out, too." And everything else to them is secondary.

They have bad priorities and I don't trust them to show much restraint in a social climate where if they DON'T make those kinds of changes then everyone on Twitter will rage about how they "wasted" an opportunity to be truly "progressive".

MCU X-Men ten years ago, though, yeah, that could've been cool. Now, though? I expect Disney's X-Men to bear even less resemblance to the comic book X-Men than the Fox ones, honestly, and I didn't even think that was possible until this "make half of 'em queer and the other half not-white and we got ourselves a movie" stuff started becoming a mandate.

I mean, we'll see. I just have this really strong, really deep feeling that they're gonna botch it.

Originally Posted by IMJ

I don't think that anybody actually wants that either, you simp.

TO BE FAIR.

Both Quality and Quantity of sandwich production has fallen off dramatically since women were let OUT of the kitchen. Nobody talks about it but it's a very real and very serious problem.

[ProphetofGanja]

Make Sandwiches Great Again

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I would've been a little more excited about Disney's X-Men about ten years ago, when at the worst a few characters' personalities might be different from the comics but almost everyone would at least look nearly identical to the comics and have the right powers and costumes. It would've been a dramatic step up from the FoX-Men movies, where everyone was pretty In Name Only for most of them.

Nowadays, they've got different motivations driving their adaptations; therefore, I no longer trust them and no longer especially care about Disney's X-Men. It's not even primarily about keeping things "spiritually faithful" while only using the broad-strokes of the books as a guideline, like it was back then; now, it's all about "If they were white, now they're not, if they were straight, make 'em gay, and by the way, we'll get better reviews if the director is a chick, preferably not white and/or not straight. So figure that part out, too." And everything else to them is secondary.

They have bad priorities and I don't trust them to show much restraint in a social climate where if they DON'T make those kinds of changes then everyone on Twitter will rage about how they "wasted" an opportunity to be truly "progressive".

MCU X-Men ten years ago, though, yeah, that could've been cool. Now, though? I expect Disney's X-Men to bear even less resemblance to the comic book X-Men than the Fox ones, honestly, and I didn't even think that was possible until this "make half of 'em queer and the other half not-white and we got ourselves a movie" stuff started becoming a mandate.

I mean, we'll see. I just have this really strong, really deep feeling that they're gonna botch it.



TO BE FAIR.

Both Quality and Quantity of sandwich production has fallen off dramatically since women were let OUT of the kitchen. Nobody talks about it but it's a very real and very serious problem.

C'mon dude. You know that only moms make sandwiches not women.

[Leo656]

I do believe that most moms did at some point used to be women, so I feel that it's okay to speak broadly. Especially when speaking about Broads.

Originally Posted by ProphetofGanja

Make Sandwiches Great Again

I try and do my part.

I generally go turkey, ham, provolone, dab of mayo, chicken, turkey, ham, provolone, dab of mayo, chicken, turkey, ham, provolone, chicken. On white. Both slices mayo'd up. Seems pretty "great" to ME, mang.

Dagwood Bumstead, now there's a guy who made a great sandwich. I mean, I assume, just going by visuals. Damn thing was taller than he was, I assume it was pretty damn good. You figure it'd have to be.

[Galactus]

Other than the character lineup being diverse I'm not sure what makes this movie anymore 'woke' than your average modern day Hollywood blockbuster. True, Marvel are bigger targets of the perpetual culture wars outrage because of how prolific they are and how they've dominated the last decade. Still it doesn't sound like there is anything more 'woke' about this than any other recent blockbuster or any recent Marvel movie.

Surely that that this picture isn't getting the glowing reviews from professional reviewers surely proves that there isn't some big conspiracy in the industry to push movies that promote diversity. Nor do Disney pay off critics to give their movies good scores in general.

The reason I feel that Captain Marvel got a bit of a pass is that it still followed the MCU formula. At this point it's like a nice, reassuring comfort blanket for audience. If there is one takeaway from all the reviews I've read is that this doesn't follow the Marvel formula that strongly and no one knows quite what to make of that.

Interesting that this is being compared to the DCEU movies particularly the Justice League Snyder cut. Since they never got into detail about what it is exactly that is evocative of that movie (although I could hazard some guesses). Strangely all the DCEU fans that have blasted Marvel films for looking like TV movies and having lots of quips and not being serious enough are strangely quiet on this. Makes you wonder if their support of the DCUE was largely due to contrarianism and brand loyalty. (Except for you Leo656 I know you're a true blue fan of that stuff.)

Admittedly I really like most MCU movies and think the formula is successful for a reason but I was looking forward to one doing something different. Also a Kirby fan I do genuinely like the Eternals and have long thought of all of the more space opera creations of Kirby they'd suit a movie the most so it sucks this may not be the success it could have been. Then again, who knows how the actual audience will react to this. It's mixed response didn't Captain Marvel earning a billion and both of those Venom movies were outright panned but audiences loved them for some reason.

[TigerClaw]

The RT rating went back up to 60%
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/eternals