What a brave new world Kevin Feige must live in. He must fell really proud and secure that he’s bringing the MCU into a nose dive of obscurity with the trend of trash he’s overseeing. ‘The Eternals’ comes out November 5th nationwide, and I think no one is excited except those in Kevin Feige’s brave new world of diversity and inclusivity. He’s already had two flops on his hands with both ‘Black Widow’ and ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ failing at the box office despite the one sided press saying the opposite. ‘The Eternals’ and their gender swapped, LGBTQ representative characters, seems like a win win for only half the audience goers who don’t even read or buy the comic books. Plus, we have a Kevin Feige, who is adamant about focusing on representation, and what that means for certain communities, in his movies, rather than the original concepts selling the MCU. If Mr. Feige isn’t careful, his reputation for producing suck, might surpass that of Kathleen Kennedy’s destruction of the Star Wars universe.
Representation is Proving to be a Recipe For Failure
Kevin Feige has led the charge, interview after interview, of making sure he says and does the wokest things possible. This is the man that helped usher in 12 years of MCU greatness that unfortunately ended with ‘Avengers: Infinity War’. I’m leaving out ‘Endgame’ on purpose because as much of a fan fest that that was, the story was riddled with waving hands of who could be the “wokest”. But, this shouldn’t surprise us at all, because Kevin Feige has been trying to get Marvel diversified and represented since the first Avengers movie. Well, Kevin Feige has been in control of the entire ship from the MCU to the comic books since October of 2019 and we have seen an MCU explode with inclusiveness and diversity across all their mediums. He has had three Disney Plus TV shows air that no one is talking about since they debuted, and two lackluster movies that haven’t made a profit. All done for the cause. In ‘WandaVision’ we saw Dr. Strange get cut out of the ending of the show because he was a problematic, over powered white guy. We had a Sam Wilson(who is a great character in his own right as Falcon) take over the mantle as a race swapped Captain America telling us we all need to do better. We saw Loki in ‘Loki’ be changed to gender fluid when he was nothing of the sort in the comic books. In addition, we had a potentially great Black Widow movie, that would have made sense to come out four years prior, play second fiddle in her own movie and gender swap the villain of Task Master to a girl. Then Kevin decided it would be a great idea to make a movie about an unknown character, named Shang-Chi, only to have it fail at the box office, becoming one of the worst box office bombs ever, for Marvel. ‘Shang-Chi’ was also prevented from being released in China, but hey, at least we got the asian representation. Checkmark for Mr. Feige. Next we have a Hawkeye show where Hawkeye will replaced by a character named Kate Bishop, Thor is going to be replaced by Jane Foster, Iron man is being replaced by Iron heart in the next Black Panther movie, and Dr. Strange is going to be killed off in his next movie. Welcome to the M-She-U.
Another Unknown Set of Marvel Characters
Enter ‘The Eternals’. This movie might do well, it might do bad, but the trend isn’t in Kevin Feige’s favor. He’s releasing a movie that won’t get a release in China, which is the biggest foreign market share of the box office, because the director, Chloe Zhao, is basically persona non grata. The characters are a virtual unknown and have never been a hit with comic book fans. I think Feige picked this group of heroes on purpose, because he thought he had the most flexibility to change them into a diverse and inclusive vision. There are three gender swapped characters plus a male character that is made gay and is in a relationship. Not to mention that Feige gave almost autonomous control over the direction of the movie to Chloe Zhao who seems more committed to portraying representation and feelings rather than a superhero movie. In an interview on the red carpet from Variety, at the premiere of ‘The Eternals’ Kevin Feige committed to ‘The Eternals’ being just the beginning of representing the LGBTQ community.
“There have been gay heroes before in the comics. It is more than past time in the movies. It’s just the start.”
"There have been gay heroes before in the comics. It is more than past time in the movies," Kevin Feige says of the Marvel film's first gay superhero. "It's just the start." https://t.co/F6rov2HB1g pic.twitter.com/XZXMs5G4zo
— Variety (@Variety) October 19, 2021
Not only that, Kaz Firpo, the co-writer of the screenplay added that they wanted to make sure that they depicted what real life was like growing up with gay parents.
“It’s real life… I grew up with two moms, and it was part of my life just in a very normal way, [Ryan and I are] from the Bay area; it’s something we wanted to see reflected in this film. I think the way we’ve done it, and the way [Director Chloé Zhao] has brought it to life, it’s beautiful. It’s very nuanced. It’s not hanging a lantern, we’re not screaming it from the hilltops. It’s just showing that this is real life and these are real people.”
In addition to that, Haaz Sleiman, who portrays Phastos’ husband(Phastos is being portrayed as a gay man in the movie contrary to his comic book alter ego) in the movie, thought it was important to show how loving a queer family can be.
“Brian Tyree Henry is such a tremendous actor and brought so much beauty into this part, and at one point I saw a child in his eyes, and I think it’s important for the world to be reminded that we in the queer community were all children at one point, we forget that because we’re always depicted as sexual or rebellious. We forget to connect on that human part.”
Should We Make This the Hallmark Movie of the Week?
Does this, at all, sound like a superhero movie you would want to see? I mean, if Kevin Feige wants to start making touchy feely romance movies, then maybe ‘The Eternals’ fits the bill. But, come on man, I don’t know anyone who is excited about this. Superhero movies are about action and not what checkmark I’m crossing off. I mean, Feige has even crossed off his checklist, that one of the Eternals is the first deaf superhero portrayed on screen. Wow. I think we are going to see an audience that is tired of the woke politics in their movies and that are starved for some plain old unmitigated fun that doesn’t have an agenda. Once Mr. Feige gets a few more bombs under his belt, is when we might actually begin to see some changes, but until then…
Related: In Unexpected News…Superman’s Gay
