#bryan tyree henry
An addition to my previous post about Eternals reviews. No spoilers here but the article I mention does have spoilers so if you wanna read it this is my heads up to you! :)
As always: my blog is a safe space and rudeness and negativity will be deleted and ignored :)
A white guy writing a review that has spoilers, completely takes a very important Phastos scene out of context to make it bad and complains that Salma Hayek was not even fun or “hayeky” is one great example of why we also need diversity in film criticism.
He provides no context or details of who the characters really are and can do, just very generic stuff, and he carefully chose what he was going to reveal about these two.
Interesting…
I won’t talk about the flashback he mentions but basically, to explain: Phastos is an inventor and engineer, and he feels guilty about what humanity did with his help with technology, he did NOT build anything intending to cause harm but he helped people evolve, just like the other eternals did in their own ways, so when he sees what humans did with technological inventions he feels like he took part in it, in the horrible things people did to each other. I’m sure Phastos still has this guilty in him, specially with the advanced world we live in where horrible things happen with the help of technology all the time.
About Salma: “And the group’s leader Ajak is played by Salma Hayek, who is not even allowed to be fun and Salma Hayeky!” I don’t even have to explain his complaint about Salma cause that’s just so clearly xenophobic and sexist his quote speaks for itself. She is a leader and a healer, is she suppose to heal by the power of gritos?
He is not even trying to hide that he expected her to show up yelling in Spanish at the eternals and acting crazy (as we latinas often do in movies). Perfect example of how these people will only like the angry and loud latina and when we have a dramatic role they’ll hate it.
We need more inclusion in film criticism, so productions are not affected by the prejudice that goes in the minds of the majority of the people who’s opinions are valued and considered as the right ones, specially those who get to watch them first and can really damage a movie’s marketing and future chances of diverse productions to get produced.
Eternals reviews and my feelings about it
no spoilers don’t worry :)
Quick note: my blog is a safe space and rudeness and negativity will be deleted and ignored :)
All the “bad” things I’ve seen are the reasons I think I’ll love it.
It doesn’t feel like an mcu film, not too much humor with jokes every 5 minutes, slower pace, focus on story instead of action, more adult… All this seems like a win for me!
We have 10 new characters, that are 7 thousand years old, we explore the creation of the universe, different galaxies and planets, and deeper topics like what it means to be human. Of course it’s heavy and dense.
We’ve been spoon fed light plot with cheap humor every 5 minutes, so when we get a decent plot and a character focused story of course it feels alien. But hey, you can’t complain for years about not having character development, not exploring character’s personalities and personal traumas and fears, too many jokes ruining the moment and too much cgi distracting you, and then when we get something different you give it a bad review and a bad ratting saying it feels different. It doesn’t make sense. Do you want a break from the Marvel formula or not?
I completely understand people have different opinions, and I respect that, but what I’m seeing so far are critics (not marvel fans necessarily, let’s not forget that) giving a negative review because it doesn’t have typical mcu jokes and it’s character focused. And let’s not forget this movie has been getting heat since forever, it’s diverse, has gender swapped characters, legit gay representation (gay Joe Russo I’m looking at you) and it’s not made by a white straight american dude.
Also, many reviews are contradicting themselves. They don’t like the directing choices then call it Zhao’s masterpiece, they complain about locations being barren but when Dune was basically all sand it was cinema, they have issues with marvel movies not focusing on characters but then say the movie was too focused on character and plot instead of action.
A movie full of layers, complex, focused on characters and slower paced is far from a bad movie. There’s a huge difference there. Different doesn’t equal bad.
It seems Marvel went out of their comfort zone with this one and I’m really happy with that.
The cast is incredible, Chloé Zhao is a master, I love everything Ramin Djawadi creates, and I’ll always be a Marvel girl. I’m super excited and can’t wait to watch this beauty on the big screen!
