Released: November 2021
Director: Chloe Zhao
Rated PG-13
Run Time: 157 Minutes
Distributor: Marvel Studios/Disney
Genre: Action/Adventure
Cast:
Gemma Chan: Sersi
Richard Madden: Ikarus
Angelina Jolie: Thena
Salma Hayek: Ajak
Kit Harington: Dane Whitman
Kumail Nanjiani: Kingo
Lia McHugh: Sprite
Brian Tyree Henry: Phastos
Lauren Ridloff: Makkari
Barry Keoghan: Druig
Don Lee: Gilgamesh
I think it goes without saying that 2020 was a very bad year for everybody. With a pandemic that ravaged the entire planet and killed millions of people, everyone was wondering how we would come back from that, and it was a legitimate question. Everything shut-down except the essentials like grocery stores and gas stations and mail delivery. For movie buffs like myself it hit particularly hard because not only did movie theaters shut down across the globe, but movie studios had to either push back their movies until things got to a point where theaters could open again, or push their movies onto streaming services, which some studios did. Towards the end of 2020, we began to see movie theaters open back up with precautions in place to prevent COVID from spreading. So, while there were a few movies that did open, like Tenet, 2020 was a massive loss as far as film content goes. As more and more people got vaccinated, more theaters opened up and more movies started getting released throughout 2021. 2021 is going to be the year that the movie industry bounced back, especially in the second half of the year. September saw one of the best MCU movies ever released: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. However, it was October that really brought movie theaters back to life: No Time to Die, Halloween Kills, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Dune. There were certainly others, but these are the ones that I saw. The year’s not over yet, and we’ve got some more big ones coming, but for now, I’m going to review Marvel’s latest: Eternals
The film opens 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia when a tribe of fishermen are attacked by large beasts. At this moment a group of human-like beings fly in and battle the beasts. These beings are known as the Eternals, led by Ajak. The Eternals were created by Arishem, an ancient, god-like alien. It turns out that these beasts that attacked the humans were known as Deviants. The Eternals are only allowed to interfere when Deviants are involved, yet these immortal super-beings have shaped human civilization for thousands of years. In the present day, a global “earthquake” forces the Eternals to reunite. To say any more about the story would be spoiling several surprises, and I’m not going to do that. There’s a lot of really interesting ideas at play here, especially when to our people’s various mythologies and how these beings influenced those myths. The movie even has the audacity to shake things up in regards to OUR creation and the creation of our world. It’s a distinctively different kind of MCU story than we are used to seeing, but it is STILL an MCU movie at it’s core. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of world-building here, and it almost moves too fast at the expense of the characters. There’s a number of high-level concepts here that I really found interesting, but some of them don’t quite stick the landing.
One of the coolest things that Eternals expands on are the Celestials. These god-like beings are incredibly massive, but in the MCU, they’ve shaped the universe and created the Infinity Stones. Arishem The Judge is the big red giant that orders the Eternals around. This is one of the main reasons why you should see Eternals in theaters. The scale and size of these beings is incredible. We’re definitely getting into the cosmic side of the MCU here. If you’re a fan of the MCU movies, you’ve seen these Celestials before. There’s a scene in the first Guardians of the Galaxy in which the Collector shows Star-Lord and company the stones and the beings that created them. It was brief, but it opened up the universe quite a bit. NOW, we’re seeing these beings up close, and it’s one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen in a Marvel movie. I also really dig the idea that Ajak, Sersi, and company have had their hands in nearly every major event in human history, from Babylon to World War II. It kind of re-writes how the world is perceived in the MCU.
I’m going to this out of the way: The action in Eternals isn’t that great. It’s a bunch CGI-laden stereotypical superhero stuff that you’ve seen in countless movies. They’re not bad, but there’s nothing in here that will stand out in the same way that the bus sequence from Shang-Chi did. See? I remember the bus sequence because it awesome. It was well-choreographed, unique, and incredibly fun to watch. With Eternals, there’s nothing here that screams “iconic.” I have to admit: I actually prefer the stuff that happens BETWEEN action set-pieces. It’s far more compelling to me. I don’t know if it’s because Chloe Zhao lacks experience with these kinds of movies, or if it’s an issue with the script. Ms. Zhao is an Academy-Award winning director known for Nomadland. Did that really make her the best choice for Eternals? I guess time will tell. I’m not necessarily a fan of exposition dumps, but the quieter moments when the characters are discussing the moral and ethical implications of what they’re doing or not doing is incredibly intriguing. You don’t really see that in MCU movies these days. Eternals took a risk by focusing on those ideas.
There’s another element of this film that I feel is hit-and-miss: The characters. The acting is fine, but a number of the characters feel pretty flat and uninteresting. I’ve found myself drifting towards Gemma Chan’s Sersi and Bryan Tyree Henry’s Phastos. These two characters are probably the most complete out of all of them. The movie’s got an outstanding cast, but a number of them like Angelina Jolie are under-utilized. I will admit that seeing Richard Madden and Kit Harington on screen together was awesome, because these two actors were in Game of Thrones, but they haven’t shared a scene since the first season of that show. That was cool, and those two actors are awesome, but there wasn’t enough screen time for Kit Harington’s Dane to really connect to. Richard Madden’s Ikarus is pretty much the poor man’s version of Superman. He flies through the air and shoots laser beams out of his eyes. That’s ANOTHER glaring problem. The Eternals’ powers are not fully explored or explained. The film also suffers from an issue that’s plagued a lot of MCU’s movies for over a decade: The villains. The MCU has had problems with having compelling villains. Most of the time, they end up being CGI-monsters or lame characters that lack any sort of motivation. The Deviants in Eternals are just another entry in a long line of terrible villains. These things are nothing more than giant CGI dog-like…things. There is an explanation for these things and why they do what they do, but the Deviants are still lame.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, Eternals got slapped with a 48% critic rating, making it the lowest-rated MCU film to date. The audience rating, as of this writing, sits at 81%. Eternals is obviously not going to be a movie for everyone. There are enough issues with the film that will turn people away, but I feel that the good stuff outweighs the bad, if just barely. Personally, I’m intrigued by the can of worms that this movie just opened. The implications of what’s happened in this movie and in the post-credits scenes will be felt in the movies to come. There is definitely going to be another Eternals movie. I have no doubt of that. But the question remains of how the events of this film will tie in with movies like Guardians of the Galaxy 3 or The Avengers. Now that the audience has been exposed to these planet-sized Celestials, what is there in the universe that can threaten THEM? There a number of god-like beings in the comics that can be brought on board, but the one I think will be on the minds of a lot of people is Galactus. If you don’t know who Galactus is, he is a planet-sized being that ISN’T a Celestial, but comes from a time before the Big Bang. He devours planets to survive and uses what are called Heralds to find those planets. One of those Heralds is the Silver Surfer. Sadly, the last time Galactus was featured in a Marvel movie, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Galactus was turned into a giant fart cloud and went out like a bitch(fuck you, Tim Story). He’s one of those villains that the MCU needs to build up to, much in the same way that the MCU built up to Thanos’ main appearance. He’s just one of the many super-galactic threats that Marvel can draw from, and I really can’t wait to see where they go from here.
To sum up: I really like this movie. Not necessarily for the action sequences, but rather the ideas and the implications of what’s happened in the movie. I’m very intrigued by where the MCU goes moving forward. Hopefully, Kevin Feige will be able to do something incredibly spectacular before he leaves Marvel and Disney. Eternals is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think time will be kind to this movie, especially when future movies start being released.