Marvel & Manga/Anime Don’t Mix!

One thing I love doing is watching a good movie.  

You know, there’s something classic about watching television, you don’t really even think about it, it’s natural. Sometimes, especially at my age, you just kind of been watching TV a whole life. To a certain extent. Storylines replay themselves. Characters & roles repeat themselves, and you kind of spend your time kind of comparing all the different versions.  

Previous movies or versions of the movies that you’ve seen before, have pretty much the same similar type of roles and characters and storylines and plots to the current version that you’re watching that time that day, and you are just really like:  

“You can say like. OK, OK, I can see where they did that.” 

 Or 

“OK, I can see where they did this. It kind of all goes in together too.” 

The patterns of movies will always be reciprocal. The magic of movies is all about the execution, of those patterns, roles, and characters. 

This weekend I watched Marvels The Eternals, Thursday night opening night for my area. It was not executed great. That is pretty much all can say about that, in a nice way. I’ve made a podcast already talking about. @Blacksaid I discuss the pros and cons of the movie.  

Honestly Friday evening driving home I was listening to NPR (Click to listen) and they were interviewing Chloe Zhao the director of Eternals. Honestly, I felt like she did not really put all that much into the movie based off the interview flow or answers she gave. In my opinion based off the interview she was more concerned about making it “Manga” like than she was producing a high-quality film. As I am writing this, I am also pulling up that interview on NPR.org just to make sure I am not misquoting her replies that made me feel this way.  

Because listening to an interview while driving, is a lot different from listening while at home. Yeah, what I heard the 1^st time is exactly the sentiment she delivered. I think with her love of Manga and anime, Marvel would have done more justice for her as director & us as an audience to allow her create her own franchise of Manga or Anime style characters & storylines opening a new branch of the multiverse.

This did not translate very well. If I think about Eternals as an anime show then I guess it would make sense as to why there was no real storyline or flow to the movie. It was all over the place and a bunch of pointless roles and people.  

I do remember back in the late 1990’s when the anime bug hit Black America or at least that is when it hit my hood. For most of us it was over once we got past the scantily clad characters and the occasional nudity scenes and animated characters having sex. It almost delivered us back to that Voltron era in the 80’s but it was not as well written, and we were older, so it only became a thing for the guys who weren’t seeing real boobs or having real sex. Along with the girls who just wanted to be different and really didn’t know what they wanted. They loved dressing like the female characters, I think they were finding new ways to explore their sexuality and looking for acceptance. I was like dressing like a different type of freak!

Anime always frustrated me because no matter who I asked or how long I watched it, I could never get a substantial answer to the question of: 

“Why are they all fighting this seemingly impossible to beat monster?” 

“Who was the monster?”

“What was the Monster’s origin story?”

Every single episode was pretty much the same thing a main character whose origin story I had no idea of and he was always afraid of the same monster and arguing with the same people. Obviously, the Eternals will be returning they are a full franchise at this time, I hope Marvel finds a better director.

I am a fan of Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” I actually watched it twice and feel like it deserved all the awards, but I do not feel like this is her lane.  Better yet Marvel should let her create her own storyline in the full fledged spirit of anime and manga so she can shine, telling those stories. I most likely will not watch, but I bet they will be fantastic!

It doesn’t matter how many big names they throw into the roles, if there is no character development and no real storyline, or relatable storyline at the most least, then it will be a franchise of flops!

Honestly there was need for Salma Hayek or Angelina Jolie to be in the movie. The kiss Bryan Tyree Henry shared with his husband was probably the only part of that character fit for him. The rest of the character was very lame & under developed. I don’t blame him, but I just feel like it was thrown together, because he is a great actor form the previous projects, I’ve seen him in. In 3 hours, they didn’t build any relationships between the characters and the audience.  

The failed attempt at building a love story aspect between Sersi & Ikaris was faint at best. The star was the comedic duo the Batman & Alfred relationship between Kingo & his assistant now that did deliver, but it was also out of place kind of ehh over done. There was not enough of Druig and Makkari at all! Gilgamesh could have been left out honestly as well. They did nothing for him. Sprite was a star though, she played her role very well, and actually fit the character.

Marvel was depending on the big names to push the show over the top, but Marvel didn’t give them enough to work with. This project should have been released directly to Disney plus they could have broken it down into episodes probably including a lot of the scenes that were cut out, and I think it would have been better.  

Wrapping up it was a disappointment basically. Marvel fought so hard to break a lot of the typical comic book norms by making everything super diverse and inclusive, on that I give them an A. When it comes to actual product and viability, action and fighting sequences (which were so poor it wasn’t even worth mentioning) the quality, the storyline, the engagement and buy-in from the audience I give Eternals a F!