A Richmond filmmaker is happy to see Disney and Marvel hire a woman of Asian descent to direct its latest movie, but she wonders if focus on diversity and inclusion took away from telling a good story.
"I feel the director tried too much to be inclusive and everything was left on the surface. In a way, inclusion has become a jargon that almost hurts the quality of the work," said Richmond documentary filmmaker Ying Wang.
Beijing-born director, Chloé Zhao, directed Disney and Marvel’s Eternals which premiered earlier this month. Zhao also made history earlier this year as the first woman of colour to win an Oscar for Best Director for her movie “Nomadland.”
Eternals has stirred a significant amount of debate on social media since it hit North American screens on Nov. 5.
It earned $281.4 million, globally in the first three weeks, it actually earned less than previous movies in the Marvel universe series.
Regardless, many have praised the movie for taking a huge step towards diversity and inclusion. Others, however, have criticized the film saying that it’s boring and doesn’t fit the “traditional Marvel” norm of intensity and high drama.
Richmond filmmaker Sam Huang, who watched the film recently, is of the former opinion.
"For many people, it's beautiful and uplifting to see a female director with an immigrant background to be given a chance to direct a mainstream Marvel Movie. This is super encouraging news for minority directors and filmmakers like me," laughed Huang.
He added that it's nice to see Marvel push for diversity in superhero movies by collaborating with a multicultural cast for this film, including Pakistani-American comedian Kumali Nanjiani, English actress Gemma Chan, and deaf actress Lauren Ridloff.
The film also features a Bollywood dance sequence with 50 dancers.
However, on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes, Eternals was given a score of 5 out of 10, which is the worst of any Marvel movie.
Wang, who said she almost fell asleep watching it, added that she thought the problem was the movie featured too many characters and failed to adequately develop any of them.
