Not to put too much of a downer on things, but looking at the recent unsavory reception to have greeted The Little Mermaid and The Marvels in particular, it’s not difficult to imagine trolls and review-bombers sharpening their knives in anticipation of Netflix’s incoming espionage blockbuster Heart of Stone.
After all, if the Disney live-action remake can suffer at the box office to such an extent people are coming right out and admitting it was down to racism, while at the same time the Captain Marvel sequel took just 24 hours to become the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most-disliked trailer ever, then a big budget action thriller that’s already dubbed several heavyweights of the genre as relics might end up right in the firing line.
Let’s hope that’s not the case, though, considering how Jennifer Lopez’s The Mother is now one of the streaming service’s Top 10 most-watched original movies of all-time, but Gadot nonetheless used all the trigger words the basement-dwellers hate with a passion while talking up Heart of Stone with Empire.
“I realized that there was an audience for a female action protagonist. I grew up watching Bond, and Mission, and Bourne. I wanted to create a really strong, female-driven action movie that is for everybody, not a male story that’s been done many times already.”
With Heart of Stone gunning for an August 11 release date on Netflix, let’s cross our fingers in the hopes that common sense prevails, even if recent history has unfortunately shown that it’s far from guaranteed.
