 with Kevin Fallon Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
This Week:
Ain't You Tired, Marvel? In our new reality, there are life's simple truths. Very famous, very rich people will be "immunized" idiots. Here in Pete Davidson's New York, yet another celebrity woman will be photographed on dates with the comedy world's most eligible tattooed noodle. And, if it's a Friday, a new Marvel movie is premiering.
That's barely an exaggeration. This weekend, Marvel's Eternals is released. That comes just two months after Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings premiered. Black Widow was two months before that. That's not to mention the four TV series this year that produced weekly episodes—WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and What If…?—and the upcoming Hawkeye, out later this month.  But for this oh-so brief window, the spotlight is on Eternals, the $200 million, 156-minute (lololol) entry into Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's a peculiar one in the studio's canon. We've become accustomed to talking about these movies in a way that's almost become as streamlined as the aesthetic that the universe fastidiously adheres to. Yet we don't seem to know quite what to make of this one.
Outside of The Avengers-connected films, which turned its actors into global superstars, it features one of the studio's most celebrity-stacked casts, with Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Game of Thrones alums Richard Madden and Kit Harrington, and Kumail Nanjiani's discourse-igniting jacked body leading the credits. It is the first film from director Chloé Zhao after she made history at this year's Oscars with Nomadland. It's tracking to have, at least in pandemic-era terms, a stellar box-office debut. Yet it's also, apparently, terrible?
According to Rotten Tomatoes scores, so take that metric with a grain of salt, it is officially the worst movie Marvel has ever released. It is the first Marvel movie to be given a "rotten" rating. The Daily Beast's own Tirhakah Love called it "one of Marvel's emptiest movies yet," ruling it "all bland fight sequences, cold flashbacks, and blank faces taking in stunning vistas."
Listen, The Eternals lost me at the phrase "156 minutes." But hear me out: Is it really the worst Marvel movie yet? (Thor: The Dark World is right there.) Or are we just tired?
Eternals seems to exist in the bizarre liminal space between expectations and indifference.
Let's first talk about that indifference. I'm so old that I remember when, 26 Marvel movies ago, they were call-all-your-friends, buy-your-tickets-ahead-of-time, let's-chug-some-Red-Bull-and-go-at-midnight once-a-year events. Not only are these movies now being released in a saturated pop-culture market, competing against the roughly 300 TV shows released on streaming services each week, they are battling their own buzz.
Or, maybe, Marvel doesn't care about that buzz anymore; a two-month half-life is now enough time to cycle through people caring about a new Marvel movie and then forgetting about it.
But I say people don't necessarily forget about it; they get overwhelmed by it. Marvel fatigue is real. What we're learning is that there is a treatment, too. It's not caring about the new Marvel movie. Anecdotally, it seems that's how many people seem to be medicating ahead of the release of Eternals.
But then there's the whole expectations thing.
Once in a while, Marvel does something genuinely cool. The studio will actually recognize its place of power and, let's face it, monopoly in the film industry and its influence, and take that responsibility seriously. With Eternals, Marvel seems to be listening to the conversations we've been having culturally… or, at least, pandering to them.
A female woman of color was hired for the director's chair and allowed to let her aesthetic disrupt the sometimes ridiculed visual formula mandated for Marvel movies. It features an inclusive cast, including Nanjiani, Gemma Chan, Brian Tyree Henry, and Lauren Ridloff, who is deaf. There is—gather your pearls for clutching—a sex scene. Not only is there a gay superhero, but he has kids and a husband, and is even allowed to kiss him!
Then, after checking every box of what critics and commentators have said they wanted—even demanded—the movie is panned to the point of "worst ever" labels? If you listen closely, you can almost hear a Marvel executive bellowing in his office, "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME??!!"
My dude, I think we just want a break.
Obviously, when you're doing "firsts" on a scale at the level of a Marvel movie, you're going to get side-eyed by people who aren't satisfied. Yes, Zhao's sunbursts and landscape shots are stunning, but are they compatible with a superhero movie? Yes, there are major strides happening in representation. At the same time, congrats to all women who look like Salma Hayek, who finally can feel validated. Then, too, there's the question of at what cost? Marvel made Kumail Nanjiani extremely hot. And also possibly gave him body dysmorphia?  It's about time for there to be sex in a Marvel movie. We are finally acknowledging that, beneath those spandex suits, there are pee pees and vajayjays. More—and would you believe it—the people whose lives exist on a level of adrenaline normal humans may never know would actually use those body parts after a busy day of saving the world. That said, according to my colleague Laura Bradley, the sex scene is not worth it: "Have you ever seen a 6-year-old lay a Ken doll on top of a Barbie doll and then just kind of stare at them because they don't really know what happens next? That's basically what we're working with here."
And I think we're all tired of film studios acting like they threw the first brick at Stonewall because they dared do something as brave as acknowledge that there are gay people in the world. Hooray, the MCU's first gay superhero! And he knows how to kiss! Also, the movie apparently blames him for the bombing of Hiroshima. So let's all just take a minute to unpack that.
The annoying thing about the Marvel onslaught and the ensuing exhaustion is that it makes things that should be important so messy and, as reviews show, so easy to criticize. There's the classic Hollywood cautionary tale, that if you try to be progressive and it isn't well-received that no one will try again. That's an obvious fear here, given the lukewarm critical reception.
But then there is the way fans are reacting. The extremists seem to be split. Some tried to "review bomb" IMDb with one-star reviews out of homophobic outrage that there is a gay character. Others have accused critics of being racist or homophobic themselves by not supporting a film that is inclusive.
Those two things would ordinarily be written off as sideshows amidst a groundswell of excitement for a tentpole Marvel movie, except, in this case, the groundswell doesn't exist. The studio has stopped bothering with tents, so now the circus runs free. Those distractions become the story. So does the indifference.
I beg of you, then, supreme Marvel beings, give us a break. We need it. You need it, too.
Why Aren't Y'all Watching Queens? Did you know there is a TV show airing right now in which Eve and Brandy have multiple rap battles? Or that the icons of definitive Y2K-era music are, on a weekly basis, performing at the top of their game to new music? And that, in between, they are blessing us with top-tier acting in one of TV's most underappreciated genres, the nighttime soap opera?  Queens, which so far has aired three episodes on ABC and is available on Hulu, is one of my favorite new shows of what's considered the traditional "fall TV season." (Climate change has affected TV as well; generally speaking, the seasons are barely recognizable anymore.) What I don't know is why everyone isn't talking about it.
I'm loath to use any word once it's been bastardized by Mark Zuckerberg's tiny mouth, but there is something deliciously "meta" about this series.
The general conceit is that a four-woman group called the Nasty Bitches that had chart-topping, MTV-minted success in the late '90s and early '00s is back in the headlines 20 years later when a hot new artist samples one of their big tracks. Each of the foursome is unfulfilled with how their lives ended up since—an overextended mom/housewife, a struggling has-been artist, a closeted churchgoer, and a flailing C-list celebrity—and agrees to forgive the past that led to their initial breakup and ride the wave of buzz into a career resurgence.
Yes, this is exactly the plot of Girls5eva. That is a satirical comedy. This is a nighttime soap opera. Either way, who cares. There's millennium nostalgia and fun music. Why is this not the plot of all TV series? If we can have three "Chicago" universe series and 75 Law & Orders, we should have at least half a dozen shows paying tribute to the greatest era of modern pop music while simultaneously giving juicy starring roles to iconic female entertainers in their 40s.
Beyond the whole "getting the gang back together" framework of the early episodes, Queens tracks what happens to celebrities of the magnitude that Nasty Bitches reached. (Think some semblance of TLC in the early aughts. Or, well, Eve and Brandy.) It's a spectrum of settling back into civilian life and perpetually chasing the high of that stardom, at least as portrayed on the show. At a time when we're obsessed with "where are they now," that's surface-level intriguing content—even more so when you cast the series with performers who were at the height of their careers at that time.
Listen, in 1998, you couldn't tell me I didn't understand all the complexities of romance and heartbreak. Sure, I was in seventh grade. But I had Brandy's Never Say Never in the "1" position of my multi-disc boombox, and was capable of working myself into a heavy sob while lip-synching along to "Have You Ever?" or "Almost Doesn't Count" on a particularly emotional day. And Eve? Let's just say I missed school one day after oversleeping because I was up all night attempting to download "Who's That Girl?" on Napster using the landline AOL connection we were only allowed to dial into when everyone was in bed.
The series also stars Naturi Naughton, who was a member of the Destiny's Child-striving girl group 3LW, and Nadine Velazquez, who… starred in the NBC comedy My Name Is Earl. (OK, not all of the casting is meta.) Queens is by no means a masterpiece, and definitely falls short in comparison to the last great nighttime soap set against the music industry, Empire. But it's such an easy, engaging watch. The cast is legitimately great, and the way the series tackles the nuanced idiocy of nostalgia is really smart.
Ciao Bella, Lady Gaga Welcome to your weekly update of "All The Things I Can't Stop Thinking About When It Comes to Lady Gaga in House of Gucci, a Movie That I Still Have Not Seen."
Following last week's Pulitzer Prize-worthy trailer comes the real treat: A Lady Gaga photoshoot and interview for a British Vogue cover in support of the film.  The images? Stunning. The quotes? I will be contemplating every word of each one until my death bed. My final words: "I have loved you all. Also, Lady Gaga would have been a combat journalist if she wasn't a pop star, and the day before the inauguration walked around the Capitol looking for evidence of the insurrection."
Outside of that surreal tidbit, Gaga stated that she stayed in character while filming House of Gucci, which included speaking exclusively in her character's Italian accent, even while not on set. I love this because Lady Gaga's Italian accent in the trailer for House of Gucci is unequivocally absurd—in a way that is very fun!—and I delight in the idea of anyone in her life having to converse with it on a daily basis for months.
It's less an authentic accent and more that thing when a friend of yours who has distant Italian relatives talks normally, until you're at the deli ordering a sandwich and suddenly makes this whole big thing of saying the word "mozzarella." "Prosciutto?" For them, the "o" doesn't exist. They have also probably corrected you once for ordering a "panini" instead of a "panino," because "panini" is plural.
Someone let me see House of Gucci!
Best Actress-Winner Kristen Stewart I am pleased to say that Spencer, which is released this weekend, is very good, and Kristen Stewart will almost certainly win Best Actress at the Oscars for playing Princess Diana.  I can also warn that people are going to be very pissed off by this movie, which, again, is very good, but is being marketed in a way that Diana fans and looky-loos will have no idea that they are not signing up for a traditional Lady Di biopic and instead are about to watch an auteur's interpretation of a weekend in an icon's life as a ghost-story thriller.
That is to say, it is weird! Brace for that (or prep by watching director Pablo Larraín's Jackie, which applied a similar treatment to the story of Jackie Kennedy Onassis). But also get excited. The movie features what might be my favorite acting scene of the year, a stand-off between Diana and Charles that takes place on opposite sides of a billiards table. It's so good!
Am I Adele? Adele released the tracklist for her upcoming album this week, which apparently includes a three-song section transcribed directly from my texts at 1 am on Saturday nights. 
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Is ‘Eternals’ Really the Worst Marvel Movie Ever?
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