While the movie industry has taken a hit from the pandemic, there was a time where dozens, if not hundreds, of movies were being released in a single year from various studios. It can be overwhelming to try and determine which movies are actually worth seeing in theaters.
This is where sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb come in. On these sites, anyone can review a movie once it has been released. Sometimes, critics who have been invited to exclusive premieres can review a movie before its release.
While this can provide moviegoers with some idea of the quality of films, it does beg the question: just how reliable are these sites?
Rotten Tomatoes has been called into question after the premiere of the latest Marvel movie, “Eternals.” This film features a cast of characters who are diverse in terms of race, gender, disabilities and sexual identity.
Many were shocked that after its red carpet premiere in mid-October, the score “Eternals” received from Rotten Tomatoes was an abysmal 53%. This score is the lowest rating a Marvel film has ever gotten, taking the title from “Thor: The Dark World,” which holds a 66% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
In addition, “Eternals” has a score of 6/10 on IMDb, where any IMDb user can leave a review for a movie whether it’s been released or not.
Can a movie really be judged so harshly before it’s even been released to the public?
One explanation for what may have happened is that “Eternals” was review bombed by those unwilling to accept a movie that features characters of colors as well as homosexual characters.
This theory gained support when Kumail Nanjiani, a Pakistani-American actor who portrays the character Kingo in the film, tweeted, “Looks like we’re upsetting the right people” in response to the negative reviews. The tweet has since been deleted.
A piece from Insider reveals that on IMDb, “Eternals” was “review bombed because of the LGBTQ representation in the movie.” Many of the negative reviews it received were from people uncomfortable with its openly gay family, LGBTQ representation which, according to Insider’s Kirsten Acuna, “is not shoehorned in, like in previous MCU stories such as ‘Loki.’”
On the other hand, “Eternals” is an incredibly ambitious story. While Marvel is no stranger to ensemble casts, nine main characters to follow could get a bit overwhelming.
The trailers for “Eternal” also reveal that the Eternals are incredibly powerful beings who have lived on Earth for millennia. This begs the question, much like when “Captain Marvel” was released, where were they during the fight against Thanos? While world–building is one of Marvel’s trademarks, it can be hard not to build themselves into a corner.
Another thing to consider is that these scores do not reflect the film itself. It is merely the percentage of positive reviews out of all of the reviews the film has received. On Rotten Tomatoes, 91 out of 172 critics left positive reviews for “Eternals.” On IMDb, 53.9% of the reviews were an eight out of ten or higher.
With its release to the general public on Nov. 5, time will tell just what kind of movie “Eternals” really is.
