Why the Male-Dominated Reviews of The Eternals are Problematic
The male point of view overpowers female voices and shapes which movies get made
Confession: I’m an MCU superfan. My three kids are superfans. I’ll be dressing up as Scarlett Witch from WandaVision for Halloween and I’m darn gleeful about it. I’ve gobbled up every MCU film upon its release for most of my adult life, and I plan to keep on gobbling.
The Eternals doesn’t hit theatres until November 5th, and I’ll be first in line to see it in my favorite locally-owned movie house. I might be costumed.
Will I let my love of Marvel keep me from holding it accountable for its gender and diversity disparities?
The Eternals represents a massive step forward in representation. It’s the most diverse cast in the history of the MCU, and goddammit that matters. There’s positive representation of disability and queer representation. It’s been a long time in coming, but Marvel is a cultural juggernaut that can move the needle.
This film is the first in the MCU to be directed by a woman of color. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be perfect, but it does mean that it’s made from a perspective that’s not a cis white man’s. Of the 26 films in the MCU, 21 were directed by cis white men. Those that weren’t are:
- Thor: Ragnarok — Taika Waititi, 2017
- Black Panther — Ryan Coogler, 2018
- Captain Marvel — co-directed by Ann Boden, 2019
- Black Widow — Cate Shortland, 2021
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — Destin Daniel Cretton, 2021
- The Eternals — Chloe Zhao, 2021
Yeah, it took ten years of filmmaking for Marvel to hand over the reins of a film to a diverse director. It took thirteen for them to hand a project over to a woman as a solo director.
If you know anything about geek/nerd culture, you’ll know that a sizable chunk of the fandom gets real loud when you move away from cis white guy dominance. See: Rotten Tomatoes changing its algorithm because folks were mad about Captain Marvel being a girl.
I’m sorry folks, I just cannot believe that the reason that the reviews are so bad for The Eternals has zero to do with its definitive change in representational direction and perspective. Whether it’s revelatory filmmaking or not, I feel so many shades of Captain Marvel with this one. It’s time for dudes to make some room.
Let’s be clear here — the bad reviews almost all say that there's too much talking and not enough fighting. They say it’s slow and melancholy. Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly says that the film is “deliberately unrushed.” Rachel Lieshman’s piece on the Eternals in the Mary Sue says to go in for the vibes and you’ll be golden.
This movie is different than other Marvel movies and that’s on purpose y’all. It’s clearly told from a different perspective than what we’re used to. I think we ought to embrace that.
Aren’t comic books movies for guys anyway?
Nope.
Marvel films specifically are closely split in terms of the gender makeup of their audience according to Statistica.
I have not seen The Eternals — all of the reviews discussed in this piece are early reviews from previews that reviewers got to see before it hits the cinema for general audiences. I try to stay away from these things in general because spoilers, but good Lord they’re hard to miss right now. Before a single regular-person Marvel fan like me has seen the damn thing, it’s already been torn down in the minds of the general public thanks to movie reviewers. The Eternals is the Marvel movie with the lowest score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing — one point below Thor: A Dark World.
We’re not gonna get ruffled about that because Thor 2 ain’t that bad. The worst Marvel movie is better than most good DC movies.
Perusing the heavily mixed early reviews of the upcoming Marvel film The Eternals, I noticed something. Nearly every single one of these movie reviews are written by men. Not like, a lot of them are written by men — like I had to dig around to find any written from a woman’s perspective.
There is definitely more to life than the gender binary, and we clearly need wider representation in all forms of media that embraces the voices of people across the gender spectrum. Film critics deserve to have their own identities and we want their honest reviews. That being said, there is a legacy of cis male dominance in this area, and that is in sore need of dismantling.
I decided to put a number on it. I know, even in incognito mode I’m not escaping my own filter bubble. Because I actively seek out female voices to read, you’d think I should skew towards that in the results, but that’s clearly not the case. Of the top twenty, 16 out of twenty are written by men — 80%. (Read to the bottom of this piece for the full list.) It’s a little shocking, and not only because the reviews are almost universally negative.
This statistic from USA Today highlights the incredible dominance of the male point of view in film review, and it matches what my anecdotal Google search showed with The Eternals.
When a film bombs with early reviewers, that has a patently negative effect on the box office. Are you heading into a movie that everyone says is boring and terrible? If it wasn’t a Marvel movie, I’d think twice about it. My time is limited and movie tickets are expensive.
While lots of movies make a ton of money with terrible reviews, crappy reviews sometimes have a significant effect. Male-dominated reviews value the male point of view over a woman’s perspective, which continues the cycle of devaluation of women’s work. The poor buzz around this film is a step backward for representation in film. Marvel stood by Captain Marvel in spite of this same kind of thing, so I’m hopeful. That willingness by Marvel to put more diverse people behind and in front of the camera despite the negativity is one reason I stan Kevin Feige. Box office matters, but the messaging and the willingness to grow that messaging in an inclusive direction are equally important.
Maybe I’ll come out of The Eternals agreeing with the negative reviewers — anything is possible. I might be like “Gosh, Chloe and the gang just missed the mark with an over-bloated and eternal movie about people staring at the sky for no reason. Thank the gods that Spider-Man: No Way Home is coming out in five weeks.”
I doubt it.
I’ll leave you with the top twenty reviews that pop up in my Google incognito search. Here are the sixteen reviews of The Eternals from men.
Variety by Owen Gleiberman — ‘Eternals’ Review: Chloé Zhao’s Marvel Movie Is Finely Crafted but Needed More of Her Personality to Be Marvelous
USA Today by Brian Truitt — Review: Marvel’s overstuffed ‘Eternals’ is a star-studded exercise in superhero excess
The Wrap by Robert Abele — ‘Eternals’ Film Review: Chloe Zhao’s MCU Movie Is Colossal, Cosmic and Refreshingly Close Up
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang — Review: In Marvel’s epic ‘Eternals,’ a cosmic breath of fresh air ultimately turns stale
Forbes by Paul Tassi — Marvel’s ‘Eternals’ Is Now The Worst-Reviewed MCU Movie, Below ‘Thor: The Dark World’
Indiewire by David Ehrlich — ‘Eternals’ Review: The MCU Confronts God Itself in Chloé Zhao’s Huge but Overly Familiar Superhero Epic
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney — Chloe Zhao’s ‘Eternals’: Film Review
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle — Review: With ‘Eternals,’ Marvel is scraping the bottom of the barrel
NY Post by Johnny Olekinski — ‘Eternals’ review: One of Marvel’s worst movies so far
AV Club by A.A. Dowd — Eternals turns the adventures of ageless space gods into just another Marvel movie
Rolling Stone by K. Austin Collins — The Hot Gods of ‘Eternals’ Will Bore You to Death With Their Feelings
Slant by Jake Cole — Review: Eternals Gets Caught Between Challenging and Reasserting Marvel Formula
The Guardian by Steve Rose —
Eternals review — magic hour meets PowerPoint in Chloe Zhao’s Marvel yarn
Collider by Matt Goldberg — ‘Eternals’ Review: An Ambitious Narrative Slams Against the Limits of Superhero Cinema
Uproxx by Vince Mancini — ‘Eternals’ Sure Is A Big Attempt At Something
Cnet by Mike —
Eternals review: A convoluted plot lets this unique Marvel entry down
Now here are the four reviews of The Eternals from women in the top twenty results. 50% of these are positive, versus 12% of the reviews written by men.
Slate by Dana Stevens — Eternals Is a Disaster of Intergalactic Proportions
Entertainment Weekly by Leah Greenblatt — Eternals review: There’s less super, more story in Chloé Zhao’s melancholy Marvel chapter
Vanity Fair by Cassie da Costa — There’s No Life in Chloé Zhao’s Eternals
The Mary Sue by Rachel Leishman — Go Into Eternals for the Vibes and You’ll Have a Great Time
Autumn Karen is a ghostwriter, professor, single mom of three boys, and an unfinished doctoral clinical psychology student. She shares stories of her life, explorations of equity, and guidance on writing on her Medium blog.
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