[Weekly Update] January 23, 2022

Lunar New Year is this February 1st!

If you are celebrating it, happy new year! It's definitely difficult to celebrate a reunion festival in the pandemic. Hopefully many of you still get to visit your loved ones. And if you can't, I hope you still treat yourself to a nice celebratory meal.

And if you don't celebrate the new year. Well, you are invited to my Chinese New Year. So use that as an excuse to have a nice and relaxing night! We'll have some movie recommendations. More on that later.

CHANNEL UPDATE

• Hope you enjoy our video on the infamous Irish Kung Fu movie: Fatal Deviation! This movie is so much fun, even many of my Irish viewers agree it is a movie deserving of cover. But hopefully, I'll get to talk about a better Irish film soon.
• For our next video, we'll be highlighting some (or maybe just one) comedies from Mainland China. Comedy is one of the most popular genres in China. It's also one of the genre that suffers the least in terms of government regulations and censorship. Because of that, it becomes the go-to genre for filmmakers to talk about societal issues and even socio-political topics. And we'll talk about some of them.
• Still thinking about doing a video on Malaysian cinema.
• Finally, for this month's bonus video, let's talk about Little Shop of Horrors, and compare its divisive Director's Cut ending.

MEDIA TALK

• With The Eternals now released on streaming, talks surrounding the film begins again. With it being the lowest rated MCU film to-date, expectations were low.
• But then, I start hearing people say the film really isn't that bad. I certainly agree. The Eternals is a lot more enjoyable than Black Widow. And the worst film to me is still Captain Marvel.
• Also, let's not forget that Age of Ultron isn't exactly a master piece either. In terms of sheer disappointment, that is the biggest one to me.
• The point is, I don't think The Eternals deserve all the negative reviews. And I think a lot of you also agree with me on this.
• And this reminds me a of big problem with film reviews these days. I've noticed the problem back when Dark Knight Rises was released. But The Eternals really solidified my belief in this:
• Film reviews often measures the hype more than the quality of the film.
• The Dark Knight Rises, when first released, was critically acclaimed. I thought I was high, because I did not enjoy the film at all. I thought it was a structural mess, with a non-sensical story and ending. It's only about a year later, people began to agree that the film isn't very good.
• The Last Jedi was also a very hyped-up film. It follows The Force Awakens, which was loved by many. And pre-release reviews for The Last Jedi, as far as I can remember, are overwhelmingly positive. Heck, even now it stands at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• The Eternals is sort of an anti-hype film. All of the industry filmmakers I've talked to thought the movie is gonna suck. There is no hype for it, because there is no Eternals fans out there. Even Disney seemed to gave up on the film, because the only advertisement I saw about the film is from Ziploc.
• Other examples of movies having good pre-release reviews only to be divisive includes Man of Steel, Age of Ultron, Captain Marvel, and freaking Mulan (I kid you not).
• So, why?
• Well, it's pretty much no secret that a lot of those pre-release reviews were written by critics who are working for the film distributors. Meaning they aren't reviews, they are publicity pieces. In fact, they often has a small print at the bottom of the webpage, saying that "this is an advertisement".
• However, there is also another reason. A lot of critics are scared of criticizing hyped-up films. Not because they would anger the film company. But it would anger the fanbase.
• Before the release of Cyberpunk 2099, a gaming journalist tweeted out a criticism about the game's potential seizure inducing visual sequence. She was immediately attacked and doxxed online. The game has yet to be released.
• Indeed, in today's media landscape, where everyone has equal access to sharing their opinions, people seem to be less and less capable of respecting other's differences in taste and views.
• A lot of the beloved media franchises are big part of people's identity. So when a film that's important to them is criticized, people feel like they are being criticized for liking it. And their instinct is to fight back.
• And when the consequences of a negative review is being doxxed, it becomes very dangerous to give out one. This fear may have been one of the reasons for score inflation.
• At the same time, when a film with no fans come out, when negativity is risk free, the film becomes a sort of scapegoat. The Eternals's review score, I think, doesn't reflect the film's quality, as much as it reflects critic's opinion on the MCU in general. They are just very tired of the franchise.

And that's the update! A bit of a rambling this time, but hopefully you still find it an enjoyable read. The bonus video will come out in a few days, so I'll see you then. In the mean time, have a good week!