Eternals

Even from the first teaser for the film, there was a feeling that the new Marvel movie, the Eternals (or just Eternals for some reason) would be an incredibly divisive movie. Being based on a race of characters from the original marvel comics (but ones that were never really that popular), the chances of a MCU film working with these offshoot new faces were possible but would take a lot of effort to pull off. Considering that the Guardians of the Galaxy brought a new life and high reception to a comic that wasn’t as well known, its proven that it could be done with the correct handling, but its safe to say this movie wasn’t met with the same amount of praise as that film. Beginning eons before the MCU, a group of alien beings known as the Eternals come to Earth to help the planet evolve and grow. They consist of Ikaris (played by Richard Madden), Sersi (played by Gemma Chan), Kingo (played by Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (played by Lia McHugh), Phastos (played by Brian Tyree Henry), Makkari (played by Lauren Ridloff), Druig (played by Barry Keoghan), Gilgamesh (played by Ma Dong-Seok), Thena (played by Angelina Jolie) and leader, Ajax (played by Salma Hayek). Together, they existed throughout the centuries assisting humanity, but a disastrous event caused them to separate. In modern time, Sersi discovers that a species known as the Deviants are arising from the planet, lashing out and causing harm to the populace . Trying to find the cause of this disturbance and realizing the Celestial’s might not be as great as they say they are, Sersi has to get the rest of the Eternals back together to stop this possibly world-ending threat. As soon as people got to see it,  it was already being review-bombed as one of the worst MCU films released. Unfortunately, while it’s hard to imagine that this is the lowest point in the franchise (Thor 2 and Iron Man 2 can still hold that title), it is definitely one of the lesser films to be released in its entirety.

To be perfectly fair to this movie, Eternals was not going to be an easy to adapt; while Marvel has tapped into God-like beings in their previous films, these characters were ancient alien deities that came from an even larger group of space deities, it definitely had a stranger more sci-fi edge to it that felt very rooted in early Marvel’s goofiness with some of its designs, so it needed a redo if it was going to survive in the modern Marvel framework. Considering this was one of the first movies within the MCU’s phase 4, this was going to try to be unique from the basic format, and that was a big aspect of the film as it was being created. What went wrong with this is that the movie’s narrative is incredibly shaky, even downright awful. The trailers couldn’t even get across an idea of what the film was about and its no different when actually watching it (it takes the movie until the halfway point to have an actual end-goal), and considering the movie is roughly two and a half hours, it can be a bit of a drag. This different feel and laborious pace mainly comes down to the choice of director. Chloé Zhao has proven herself to be a very capable director through her other work, but her style of extreme nature-based atmospheric pictures doesn’t exactly mesh well with a franchise that is at least known for its more high-octane personality. Its nice to have a change of pace, but it’s a little too much in the other direction, which results in the movie feeling pretty and atmospheric, but also hollow, aimless, and even pretty dull. Even when the movie reaches its climax, knowing the reasons why it’s happening makes it even more idiotic and unfulfilling, its not a narrative that broadens the imagination a franchise like this could have done and there unfortunately isn’t anything too exciting in this film. The script for this film written by Zhao along with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo and Kaz Firpo is ironically a little too ambitious and even far-stretching with some of its almost existential questions and concepts, which don’t really match the tone of this world, and that mixed with the somber tone, world and characters, results in the film being hard to connect with as well as just kind of uninteresting.

For a movie with a main cast this big, it makes sense that this would be a character-driven film. Normally, this would be a positive thing as a movie that is more focused on its character-building as opposed to an overly complicated narrative is usually more connectable, but the large cast of characters means a lot of them go underdeveloped. Its impossible to expect each character to make a substantial change by the end of the film because some get roughly 20mins of screen time while others get the full length. Its also a movie that is still hampered with a lot of expositional talk in order for the story to function, so that already causes less time to develop character, but the movie also has a ton of back-and-forths between characters. Again, this would normally be a betterment for the film, but it’s so cramped in with plot details and character backstories that it never really feels like it has time to breath, which ironically makes the film too rushed and too slow at the same time. With that said, all the actors are actually really likeable and do good performances. Despite the costumes being pretty dull, their powers do help them stand out just enough (despite some just being variations on plasma shots) and no-one of the group was necessarily unlikeable, it just needed a smaller cast to flesh out the ones that mattered. Sersi, for example, is a decent lead, is acted well by Gemma Chan, and comes the closest to developing at all, but she doesn’t have much focus because everybody else needs attention. Seeing these godly beings go from observing earth to enjoying living in it is interesting, fits with the message of most of Marvel’s movies, and does lead to several different experiences which are, to be fair, interesting in their own right, but it’s not given the dedicated time for a majority of it to truly sink in.

If there’s anything that even this movie showed promise in from the trailers, it would be in its visuals, and this is where Zhao is really in her element. Her movies are often gorgeous looking and really show off the landscape in a breathtaking manner, and this movie benefits from that a lot. The environment shots are very nice to look at and capture this sense of realistic grandeur that no other Marvel movies has capture, and one that is very much needed for a movie about beings higher than most others in their universe. A majority of the cinematography by Ben Davis capture this scale that is needed for a story that should have magnitude and presence to it and this even translates into the action sequences. From the trailers, it honestly looked like the action would be one of the weaker aspects of the film, but thankfully, whenever action is used, its done pretty decently. Its filmed in a close-quartered almost shaky cam like angle where it feels more ground-level, but strangely not difficult to keep track off. Its never hard to see what’s going on and when fists start flying and beams start firing, it does provide a nice jolt away from the usual slow-paced dialogue sequences. Its ironic that in a film where the action and fighting looked the most ‘samey’ from other marvel pictures, the film could have used a bit more of it just to provide a contrast from all the talking. The special effects for the film are mostly pretty decent, except when it comes to the villains, they looked absolutely awful and it’s not just in effects, but in design also. They just look like reject ‘ninja turtles’ mutants which have Venom mutagen injected into them, its easily one of the worser parts of the film.

Overall, the mixed reception for Eternals is understandable, and even to some respects, the movie isn’t even that worthy of being seen on the big screen. The movie definitely doesn’t have the same annoyance factor or blandness that suffer the worst of the MCU, but its hard to say that its pros are that extensively better and that its cons aren’t very similar. The movie is perfectly passable, but that’s just it, acceptable and tolerable is strangely not that frequent in the MCU, and that level of quality is going to picked up on when it happens. The acting is good, and the visuals are impressive, but its nothing to cry over and it most likely won’t stay too long in your head once you’ve seen it. Decide for yourself if it deserves the critical rating that it has and see if these Eternal beings have the lasting power for you.