Saturday Night Live debuted its newest impersonation of former President Donald Trump, played by cast newcomer James Austin Johnson, who ripped on Marvel's newest theatrical release, Eternals.
Appearing on the show's most recent cold open, Johnson-as-Trump referred to the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film as "that awful Eternals movie," saying the problem with the film was "it was too diverse." He said, "It was too diverse and no one wants to see that. The movie's rotten, just ask the tomatoes, okay?"
The joke about the film being "rotten" is a reference to Eternals' Rotten Tomatoes score, which currently sits at 47% on the Tomatometer with 293 reviews, making it the MCU's first "rotten" film. However, the film has proven to be divisive among critics and general audiences, as it does hold an 81% audience score, aggregated from over 2,500 audience reviews.
Even with the negative reviews from professional critics, Eternals was still subject to review -bombing by fans on IMDb who targeted the Chloé Zhao-directed film for its inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters -- making SNL's joke about the film being "too diverse" all the more poignant. In response to the thousands of one-star reviews, Kingo actor Kumail Nanjiani responded on Twitter saying, "Looks like we're upsetting the right people."
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has previously stated that Eternals' Phastos, played by Brian Tyree Henry, may be the first openly gay character in the MCU, but he will not be the last. "There have been gay superheroes in the comics. It is more than past time in the movies," Feige said. "It's just the start."
Prior to the film's release on Nov. 5, co-star Gemma Chan, who plays Sersi in the film, discussed not only the importance of the multicultural superhero cast but how the film didn't fall prey to tokenizing its diverse characters. "You know what, it feels like, we talked about this quite a lot," Chan explained at the Eternals world premiere. "When we kind of met each other and had worked together for a bit, we realized that we'd been cast... that there were elements of each of us in our characters and that's why we were cast. So, you know, it is diversely cast but it doesn't feel tokenistic."
Directed by Chloé Zhao, Eternals is currently playing in theaters.
Source: YouTube