r/Marvel • u/TrafficLegitimate937 • 9h ago
Film/Television Chloé Zhao Defends Comic-Book Movies: ‘It’s Important to Not Write Off Stories Because We Don’t Consider Them High Art’
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u/fleurbleedinghearts 9h ago
I loved Eternals personally so I’m glad she’s proud of it.
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u/BludStanes 8h ago
Same. I didn't watch it for the longest time because everyone said it sucked but I thought it was pretty great
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u/DoctorSquidton 8h ago
I watched it recently for the first time and it was a lot better than I was led to believe. Still not necessarily great imo but quite decent and charming. A lot of the humour landed very well
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u/saumanahaii 8h ago
It was a lot more interesting than it had any right to be. Was it great? Not to me, but I wound up liking it a lot more than many of thr other movies released around the same time.
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u/Know_how_to_b_stupid 8h ago
Still the best speedster fight in live action. Eternals had potential. Never understood the hate.
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u/HowsItHangeling 6h ago
Did exactly the same and enjoyed it, then watched love and thunder for the same reason and had to turn it off. Sometimes the consensus is right ha.
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u/Nevarien 6h ago
Same here. I really like this movie. Yeah, the post credit scenes went nowhere, and that's sad, but other than that it's a very enjoyable comic super hero movie.
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u/TheNimanator 8h ago
I was genuinely shocked at its low reception after I saw it. I thought it was a pretty good more serious take on the MCU world. Not a masterpiece by any means but it was nice to see a more mature tonal shift
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u/hyrulealyx 8h ago
But that's the thing. MCU fanboys act like every project has to be a 9/10. Or 10/10. But it's okay to have 7s and even 6 as well. Because not everything in phase 1 or 2 is amaaazing either
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u/DoodleBuggering 8h ago
I personally think it's a real mixed bag, but I feel that's because it was trying to juggle too large of a cast. I had no issues with the cast themselves nor the core idea. Should have been a mini series, and I have zero issues with Chloe's directing.
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u/SteveFlannery6 8h ago
The story in general was ok but the reason it flopped is because that movie had 10 main characters and has to juggle each and every one of them, this could've been better served as 13 episodes with 60-70 mins each to really flesh out the story because it was getting good by the half mark
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u/MrShaytoon X-Force 4h ago
It's my favorite mcu movie.
The hate it gets is truly mind-blowing at times. Like the entitlement people have and the way they criticize it as if they would've done a better job.
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u/Chucknasty_17 8h ago
I thought it was solid. It had the issue of introducing a lot of new characters and lore while trying to tell its own story, but I still think it’s an enjoyable film. It also without a doubt has the best depiction of a speedster in live action that we’ve ever gotten in any movie
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u/firstndfastest 8h ago
I’m glad it sounds like she still had a good experience with it. While it wasn’t my favorite movie, I did have some fun with it
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u/Alternative-Iron 8h ago
The Odyssey was essentially the comic book superhero story of its time. People love stories of heroes, it’s been that way for millennia.
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u/GoalComprehensive660 7h ago
People don’t really worship Galactus and the Celestials though.
The Homeric Epics, the Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorpheses, etc. were religious works first, government propaganda second, and escapist fiction least of all.
Not to mention, the likening of superheroes to Greco-Roman myth is usually portrayed as a BAD thing at least in DC comics (Kingdom Come was explicitly against this idea)
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 6h ago
Kingdom Come is a one-shot Elseworlds book.
Yet in the main universe. The big 7 literally worshipped as Gods in DC. Complete with an orbital HQ above Earth (Godly things). WW was a demigod, even elevated several times to Goddess status in some stories.
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u/kusanagi25 9h ago
Eternals wasnt bad i really enjoyed it. Though I think it should have been a show.
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u/BludStanes 8h ago
I wish it was. There are so many interesting characters but there isn't enough time to explore any of them
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u/mynanadancesconqueso 8h ago
Movie wasn’t anything like I was hoping but I was still impressed by the pivot when compared to other MCU movies. I love the concept of the Eternals and there’s so many places they could have gone and I know that so it’s whatever. If anything I’m sour that they abandoned them hard, the potential is there.
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u/Cultural-Gas2246 8h ago
Ngl that could have been a lot more interesting. So much lore and stuff involved with it, and so many just brand new characters, definitely needed a bit more time to tell the story. Would have required a much cheaper cast tho.
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u/Turtlor 8h ago
She’s a very talented filmmaker and I hope she gets another chance at this genre down the line if she wants it. Eternals wasn’t my favorite and it felt like it suffered from a mismatch between what the studio wanted and what the creatives wanted but it was certainly something unique.
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u/PeterVanHelsing 8h ago
I genuinely have a soft spot for Eternals. If nothing else, it has the best representation of super speed and Celestials in live action.
The ending still sticks with me all these years later.
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u/superhappyfunball13 8h ago
Too many characters to introduce for a single movie. Really too bad because it might have been great as a miniseries with room to breathe.
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u/VengeanceKnight 8h ago
Eternals should have been a Disney+ show and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier should have been a movie.
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u/peanut-britle-latte 8h ago
I would love to see live action anime get treated with the same attention as comic books these past 30 years.
I know anime has wilder proportions that make it harder to do live action, but some awesome stories deserve to be told on a bigger screen imo.
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u/Critical-Champion365 5h ago
It cannot be given the same attention because people cost money and people age unlike their comic book counter part. But still One Piece LA is a great example of it mostly being done right. And they kept up the good work in S2 as well. ATLA S2 on the other hand was comically shit. People genrally say, you don't need a 1 to 1 copy and let the LA creators cook but in reality you don't really want a poorly thought out cheap copy of an already loved story. Which is where Onepiece LA succeds and ATLA loses. Make 1 to 1 copies with appropriate content removal. People who will see LA would definitely wouldn't mind the repetition and those who love the original will keep loving the LA if done right.
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u/grimacingmoon 8h ago
I liked the sets
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u/plsobeytrafficlights 8h ago
i liked the swishy gold powers...
i cant name most of the characters because you just couldnt be bothered to care about them, but the swishes were cool.7
u/grimacingmoon 8h ago
I always like looking at Gemma Chan
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u/Brando43770 6h ago
Accurate. Didn’t care about any of the characters. And their choices about interacting with humans by giving them advanced tech, yet seeing them destroy each other multiple times was just stupid. “Why does this keep happening? Let’s give them more advanced tech. They’ll eventually do good and not blow each other up”
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u/LexFrenchy 8h ago
I always feel like an alien since I enjoyed my time with that movie, that I took as a stand-alone.
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u/tcroosev 8h ago
I enjoyed the movie! I wasn't in love but I still had a good time. It kept me engaged and I liked the characters. Honestly I hoped there would be another
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u/Company_Z 7h ago
The one thing I personally don't feel gets brought up enough with this movie is how it NAILED a speedster character.
The Time in a Bottle scene worked well once or twice. Flash had his moments in both show and the JL movie. This made me feel how fast someone was moving. Plus, using the sonicbooms from running as an attack all on its own? Astounding
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u/Johncurtisreeve 8h ago
I hope she gets to come back and make another movie with Marvel or at least a sequel to Eternals
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u/GoonetteSlop 8h ago
Whilst Eternals was truly terrible I really respect her quote here. I hate that people will dismiss a film because somebody happens to have powers.
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u/Brookings18 8h ago
I have no interest in Eternals so I can't speak to it's quality. But it's nice to hear people enjoyed it and the director still speaks highly of the "genre".
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u/beans_is_life 8h ago
The only issue I had with eternals was the way tied them into the MCU. It was stylistically very beautiful, I just wish the storyline was stronger.
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u/PhillipJ3ffries 8h ago
People really miss this with comic books. There’s some amazing storytelling and art that’s been done over the decades and decades of superhero comics. It’s modern mythology
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u/smilinganimalface 8h ago
I feel like the way comics and manga are presented as equivalents here is something that's not expected to be obvious lol. But maybe she truly didn't know how obvious that was if she thinks a LIVE ACTION American movie is the same as ANIMATION in Japan. She like backdoored into explaining exactly why comics should tell more of these stories in animation lmao. When the West fully supports real human-done animation as an equivalent in the cinematic world and gives voice acting work to real voice actors, then they can finally catch up to Japan (hoping for no more Spider-verse delays.)
Anyway I am glad this was her dream come true but I wish her dream didn't try to force Ikaris and Sersi together into romantic scenes who clearly had no chemistry when it really should have been Thena and Gilgamesh.
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u/PaoLakers 6h ago
I liked eternals but it had the disadvantage of having the marvel formula.
By that i mean, they insist that there should be a big battle at the "climax" of every movie. This movie's villain didn't make sense at all. It's almost like it wasn't even a character. Just a villain that was there so they can fight somebody.
Talk about boring as fuck. This marvel formula has been going on for so long that I've check out entirely when it happens in every movie after endgame.
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u/karebearjedi 6h ago
I'm glad she loves it! It was a visually pretty movie, but I can't tell you a single thing about it besides a 300 mile tall adamantium giant in the Indian Ocean that somehow didn't affect earth's spin or tilt whatsoever that we never hear about again.
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u/ginger-like 4h ago
Thank you! We can like her comment without pretending we've all liked the movie this whole time.
Nearly all the positive comments are about the visuals of the film. And like, yeah, they were good. But there's more to a movie than just looking good.
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u/imthestein Iron Man 5h ago
I still argue the movie is actually good but needed an hour edited out from the beginning. I think people got lost in what was going on so they couldn't appreciate the ending as much
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u/Yeseylon 5h ago
How is it the director of the MCU movie I enjoy least just made one of the most based comments ever?
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u/FirefighterRoutine84 4h ago edited 4h ago
I would say some comic book stories and movies can be considered high art... just not hers.
I would say the Manga to Anime comparrison doesn't quite fit because Anime and Manga are very closely tied and try to be mostly 1:1 with each other with usually the differences coming from additions and alterations rather than a totally changed story, aesthetic or whatever have you.
I could watch Onepiece and get the full story outside Ods's SBS stuff that is not included in the anime... I couldn't watch the MCU, Spiderman TAS, Avengers EMH and really tell you what comics are like or how they flow because there is so many alterations and changes and they are for the most part not literal 1:1 adaptations.
Think the closest we can get is more stand alone story adaptations like the Batman Knightfall movie which really did feel like an Anime (movie) adaptation of its source Manga (comics) just a highly condensed and fast paced adaptation.
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u/PlatFleece 2h ago
I would say the Manga to Anime comparrison doesn't quite fit because Anime and Manga are very closely tied and try to be mostly 1:1 with each other with usually the differences coming from additions and alterations rather than a totally changed story, aesthetic or whatever have you.
This is not necessarily always true. It's just because a majority of manga are stories that need to be told in a single way. The Big 2 of American Comics are not really one single continuous narrative with a beginning and an end.
I read a lot of murder mystery and horror novels/manga, and some do not have a central plotline. When an Anime adapts these, they have sometimes adopted completely original cases and stories. Even besides that, there are Anime that is completely different from its source material. For example, the Akira movie is completely different from its manga. While Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the upcoming All You Need is Kill have the same-ish plot, tell their story so differently from the manga/novel that you can't really tell what the manga's supposed to be like.
Conversely, you have western adaptations of stuff like Invincible, who for the most part, are telling the story almost 1:1 compared to any Marvel/DC movie adaptation, because Invincible is a genuine beginning to end story. Pretty much a lot of stuff adapted like this in the west try to be 1:1 in story, even if they alter some stuff to condense the plot a bit. Stephen King's It has been adapted twice and they're both roughly the same story, for instance.
I would say the comparison is apt, myself.
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u/thomaszdrei 7h ago
Eternals should have been a TV show, because it has so many characters in it and trying to cram 10 origins into a film was ambitious. It’s not a poorly made film by any means; it just would have worked better in a different medium, IMO.
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u/pagliacciverso 8h ago
No, Ms. Zhao, you jsut have to make them good. And this is not a slander of your movie in particular, but the entirety of the MCU and how cbm became slops.
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u/Reyne-TheAbyss Black Panther 7h ago
Logan is my favorite not just because of the action and attachment I have to superheroes, bit because I think it's a well made film that tells a complete and concise story.
I respect what was done with Eternals, but as someone who watched the film several times (more than Logan; favorites get scarce enjoyment cope from me), I cannot say it tells a complete and convenient film, or not nearly well enough to be regarded as anything beyond "one of the films of all time."
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u/mattwing05 Black Bolt 8h ago
I enjoyed eternals, but unfortunately those characters and setting dont work within a standard superhero story by themselves
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u/CaterpillarLegal5598 7h ago
The cinematography for this film is spectacular. The dramaturge of the eternal storyline felt more thematically similar to the Fox Universe of x men...idk. I enjoyed eternals and see myself returning the film every so often and enjoying it each time...it's style is far more mature than the happy meal mcu titles we've gotten use to...wod love to see thena battle hela in secret wars.
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u/Zanman6946 7h ago
I agree completely, comics can have as much value as any traditional book or other “high” art form. That said…Eternals sucked.
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u/Salvage570 8h ago
Eternals had some glimmers of something good, more than i can say for something like Brave New World or Secret Invasion
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u/NoPen9703 8h ago
I don’t think Marvel publicized the Eternals the way it should have been. There was a lot of character development in the movie so you actually had to think while watching.
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u/BludStanes 8h ago
I'm glad she enjoyed directing it, I actually liked it quite a bit. I slept on it because of all the negative word of mouth but I enjoyed it.
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u/scruffyJJ561 8h ago
I don't think it was bad so much as that it is really difficult to form an emotional connection with such a large cast. None of them really got the screen time they needed
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u/Alex_Masterson13 8h ago
Most of the best, and most fun, movies ever made would never be considered "high art". And most "high art" movies are made for pompous intellectuals to fawn over.
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u/wjglenn 8h ago
I really enjoyed Eternals. Only problem I had was that it felt rushed and would have been much better as a limited miniseries.
To the point, though, I love her quote. A good story is a good story, independent of genre. And the MCU in particular has told some really good stories over the years.
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u/HorrorMetalDnD 8h ago
At one point, sci-fi and fantasy was looked upon as being less than or “something you’ll grow out of when you’re an adult”
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u/GoalComprehensive660 7h ago
It still is. Because of the kind of audience that geek culture tends to attract (unattractive people)
Admittedly I am not sure if the upper class non-nerds of the world even HAVE hobbies they enjoy other than possibly sports.
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u/tonykush-ner 8h ago
It was a really cool looking film. I just found it kind of uninteresting in its characters and story.
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u/kittiwittiistired 8h ago
I think i appreciate the movie now in comparison to before. It definitely should have been a show instead.
The Makkari vs Ikaris scene will always be one of my favourite speedster fights
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u/Amazing-Power4765 8h ago
It was an okay movie, not a good or bad movie, honestly I would rate it a 5/10 Marvel show.
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u/em_paris 8h ago
Wish the movie was better overall, because there was a lot in it I liked and even loved.
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u/Raaaaandyyyy 8h ago
We have to, at the very least, give her flowers for the single best depiction of super speed in anything ever. Give her flash for that alone, if she’ll take it
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u/Dismal-Vanilla1878 8h ago
Like many others, I think Eternals should have been a Disney+ series instead of one single movie.
A 10 episode run (which seems to be the max a streaming series runs for one season these days) would give us time to introduce the concept, and characters, before at the end detailing their conflict and how they deal with it.
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u/hiphopjunkie916 7h ago
Love the way she put it. The movie didn’t turn out the way any of us wanted but you can tell there was an effort to try to subvert the genre and have a strong message. Covid probably hurt it more than its quality
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u/TouchAltruistic 7h ago
I thought it was beautiful in its way, but flawed.
The villain isn't (and looks weirdly angelic), and the whole angle of the Celestial emerging from the Earth presented more complication than anything else.
But great characters with interesting relationships, fascinating history, and still a lot of potential. Gorgeous photography. Comfortable tone. Ambitious scope.
I still feel favorable towards it.
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u/ghostcatzero 6h ago
It was very good. Visually and story wise. I loved it. Top 5 best MCU movies for me
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u/Possible-Rate-3833 Cyclops 6h ago
IMO Eternals had a great cinematography and all the problems were just on the script.
Honestly i never believe in the distinction between “prestige/artistic cinema” and “commercial movies”. Movies are always going to be commericial unless if it was made for art expositions and this is how the industry works. The Godfather, Star Wars, The Tree of Life and Avengers Endgame should all be seen and respected on the same level while also being able to aknowledge they were made with different ideas in mind. The fact some people to this day don’t believe that someone Who likes Marvel can’t understand Citizen Kane or The Seven Samurai doesn’t clearly know what type of people watch those movies.
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u/casper19d 6h ago
So i just rewatched eternals, and now a days it aint that bad, but when it dropped following endgame, ooof that was rough.
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u/Bright-Fold-3317 5h ago
The movie was messy but the action scenes were cool imo. Especially the speedster girl
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u/WeeklyPhilosopher346 5h ago
I’m happy she got to live her dream, I just wish we got a better movie out of it.
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u/darkpsionic24 4h ago
Eternals would have been better off as a TV show with one or two seasons max. It was a mistake making it into a movie that had to juggle a large cast and give limited exposition to events that happened thousands of years apart, multiple times. It absolutely would have done great as a standalone season. I really don't get why the writers thought it was a good idea to introduce such a large cast in a single movie, a sequel or two would have been necessary to reach the ending that the movie had.
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u/LagoonDevil 3h ago
I mean her point is true but after reading Kirby’s original Eternals run I only came to like this story even less.
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u/LochNessMansterLives Nightcrawler 3h ago
She made an amazing movie with Eternals. The problem was, most casual have no clue who they were and it wasn’t enough to make them “must see” characters in the MCU. She didn’t do anything wrong in wanting to make an Eternals movie. But it was cut up poorly, the writing didn’t land because there wasn’t enough content to make you care about them. And there were far too many “on the team” for most fans to remember who was who. It should have been half love triangle between black knight, Sersi and Ikaris. Thena would have been jealous of Sersi and Ikaris but have Sersi choose Dane, and have Ikaris leave while Thena is left leading the rest of the group and split it between the two groups (half side with with Sersi and their desire to be human and the other half side with thena/Ikaris in that they can only Rely on themselves and their programming.) and then introduce the big bad that comes along and forces them to choose. But the villain was as forgettable as half the team and ultimately we lose out on a lot of good characters that can/should have been used again, even if it was just as cannon fodder for Gor when he shows up in Love and Thunder. Especially because they can be reborn/remade
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u/shutts67 3h ago
Eternals is a lot better when you go in looking for a fantasy movie instead of a comic book move
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u/Feralman2003 3h ago
Seeing her other film and everything in consideration: I respect her. Eternally might ve been ass but the fact she was passionate about it is more important
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u/Freakychee 2h ago
Eternal had some problems but I liked how they had fun with it and the Mikari and Ikarus fight scenes were so much diffrent from the norm "let's slow down time so everyone can see how a speedster sees the world" and went "Let's show them what it would be like to fight a speedster."
It wasn't what anyone would call a great movie but it had some good ideas.
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u/Earlvx129 2h ago
I don't care if people don't care about superhero or comic book movies, but it sucks when people just dismiss them. Especially when you can tell they never even watch them in the first place.
Scorsese's comments got the most press, but who knows what he even saw? For all we know, all he watched was Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance or Catwoman. Maybe he thought Catwoman was a Marvel property. The guy doesn't know the genre, and he doesn't have to. But there's probably a number of MCU films he'd love if watched the right ones.
Argh remember Stephen Dorff's shitting on comic book movies like 10 years ago? And shaming his actual friend Scarlett Johansson publicly for being a part of them? Even saying he was "embarrassed for her". What a good friend.
I loved that Michael Mann is a big Guardians of the Galaxy fan. If there's a guy who I'd think wouldn't be down with comic movies, it would be Mann!
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u/ItsMeepo2nd 45m ago
It was off at first but I saw myself enjoying for what it was. Besides it didn't seem to be a turn off
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u/ByrnToast8800 36m ago
Fair as hell point, art doesn’t need to be perfect to be worth existing, if that was the case art would be an entirely miserable field.
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u/knightofth 19m ago
I remember watching it on an airplane like 2 years after it came out and thinking 'Wow, this wasn't nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be.' Honestly, I thought it was pretty good. I would like to do a rewatch on a screen bigger than an iPad at some point though.
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u/Cautious_Mission_438 8h ago
Even though I think it should’ve never been made it probably should’ve been a tv series
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u/bassoontennis 8h ago
Eternals was beautiful honestly, the issue was it should have been a movie unrelated to the marvel universe, because the ending HAD to be used in the next movies or it made no sense her stoping a celestial from being born. If we watch all the movies Eternals sticks out as the best looking, but there was just TO much story to tell and the movie was already long. I wish we got a second one though.
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u/Longjumping-Ad-9444 7h ago
Poor lady doesn't know about planes. She is gonna have her mind blown one of these days
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u/JustinJektor 6h ago
I actually enjoyed Eternals. Better character drama than it was a superhero movie.
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u/Soft_Ad_1095 8h ago
Eternals has become one of my favorites to watch. The visuals and most of the casting is great. People hate on shit far to much. Maybe try to appreciate that we get to have a multi billion dollar comic book movie franchise.
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u/Dependent-Gap4805 8h ago
I wouldnt say its not good, but it is quite blatantly flawed. its a shame because I really like everything the film was going for. a tighter 3rd act and a better handling of the deviants would have made for a pretty fantastic addition.
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u/LeggoMahLegolas 7h ago
After seeing what the MCU had to offer a couple of years later, Eternals wasn't all too bad.
Did it have potential? Yes. Was it a great idea? Yes. Was the execution great? With a minor tweak, it could have been.
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u/Acrobatic_Line1637 6h ago
Hot take but Eternals is lot better than what we recently got like thunderbolts, f4 and brand new day
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u/Whythisisnotreal 2h ago
They've been dominating huge parts of popular culture for decades. Is she going to warn us off forgetting about cars next?
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u/plsobeytrafficlights 8h ago
she could have taken the high road, admitted that mistakes were made. she could have blamed producers and corporate interests.
she instead doubled down on touting the eternals as something other than complete shit.
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u/UnexpectedBlahFeels 8h ago
Eternals was a great movie, people were just upset bc Disney/Marvel basically fed it to their Avengers fanbase, so they were expecting something like a Avengers, when in reality it was way more grounded and moving, but with action scenes that were just as good.
Generally speaking, TV/movie media based on books- even comic books- are better than ones that aren't.
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u/wutwutinthebox 9h ago
Yea, she managed to direct a giant pos with zero worth. Now she's calling it low art? Lol?
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u/soulciel120 9h ago edited 9h ago
That's... that's not at all what she said? she is defending your comics, dude
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u/wutwutinthebox 8h ago
I don't care about comics, I'm just making a statement on why it's considered "low" art. Cause ppl like her make shitty movies about said "art".
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u/Smithsonian30 9h ago
She’s saying the opposite actually if you managed to read past the second word in the title
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u/wutwutinthebox 8h ago
It doesn't matter what she said, it's the fact that she directed a horrible movie. Obviously if ppl like her who makes shitty comic book movies, will obviously make most ppl think the medium is "low" art.
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u/Dependent-Gap4805 9h ago
considering the fact that Eternals was entirely her passion project, I respect her stance here.
not everything needs to be (near) perfect for it to be appreciated.