Like, what happened during The Snap? Were all of the BTS members snapped? Were none of them snapped? Did only some of them get snapped and not others, resulting in a five-year age gap that would fundamentally change the group forever? I don’t know the answer to any of that.
And if you’re going to put BTS in the MCU, I’m going to need someone answering my questions about that.
C’mon, you know Lizzo would crush any scene they gave her. They’re mind-bending fragments of a reality we want to know more about, but that Marvel hasn’t yet committed to making. The obvious question to that is: “Well, why the hell not?” (BTS hasn’t said much about their addition to MCU canon, though Jimin did tell one excited fan he hadn’t seen Eternals yet.)įor hardcore fans of Lizzo, BTS, Marvel, or all of the above, these one-offs aren’t just cute moments.
We’re lucky enough to hear the BTS track “Friends” in the movie later, but there’s no further mention of the foremost group in K-pop. Second, when Kingo gets pulled into battle and away from his booming Bollywood career, the superhero complains that he was supposed to be performing with BTS the following day. But Lizzo’s suggestion of a PSA with Captain Steve Rogers? That seems like exactly the sort of thing her fans and Marvel fans would want to see. Just reminding audiences that Lizzo and her banger of a song exists isn’t enough to properly represent her or her talents. But the mega-star also pointed out the obvious next step Marvel should have taken: Giving her a well-deserved, onscreen cameo role. In fact, Lizzo is stoked to be in the MCU. Per the rapper-singer’s Twitter, that’s all well and fine. But having characters off-handedly reference some of the biggest names in music and the cultures they represent without offering viewers some greater understanding of why you picked those artists - outside of “Well, everyone loves them” - is deeply dissatisfying.įirst, a few seconds of Lizzo’s “Juice” plays as Sersi’s ringtone. (See the company’s atrocious history of whitewashing and queerbaiting for details.) In the case of Eternals, the thoughtlessness isn’t so egregious as to trivialize identities. Who doesn’t? And therein lies the problem.ĭisney, which owns Marvel and Lucasfilm, has long been accused of offering lip service to cultures they don’t practically support. Let’s start with the lowest level of offenses: Eternals’ Lizzo and BTS namedrops. The result is a resounding argument in favor of dropping meta references of every kind from a franchise that really doesn’t need them. Eternals does a mixture of all three to varying degrees of effectiveness. There’s a fundamental difference between paying homage to something audiences love, using something recognizable to explain a concept, and sneakily laying claim to something that doesn’t belong to you. While pop culture has helped to shape our understanding of Earth-616 thus far, what Eternals does with its references is something else. (“No hard feelings, Point Break,” “Get lost, Squidward,” etc.) By the end of Phase III, real movies like Back to the Future played a pivotal role in explaining the time travel-centric plot of Avengers: Endgame. That proved to be a necessity with Tony Stark throwing around topical insults throughout the Iron Man trilogy and Avengers crossovers. Captain America famously caught up on everything from Nirvana to James Bond following his multi-decade ice-nap.
Of course, referencing real entertainment is nothing new for Marvel. But between Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Batman, Superman, BTS, and Lizzo: Eternals let the MCU get out of hand. I like a cheeky pop culture reference as much as the next movie-goer.