The good, the bad, and the Eternals. Oh boy, do I have a lot to say about Marvel's 3rd feature film of the year. Eternals was on my most anticipated list this year, and I have to say, after leaving the theater, I liked it, but I wasn't in love with it. I came out with mixed feelings. There were things that I really liked, but also some things I didn't like. This is probably the most difficult movie I've ever reviewed. Marvel is really diving deep into their bag of tricks and pulling out some pretty unknown characters. They tried it with Guardians of the Galaxy and it worked, but this time I'm not so sure. If you know nothing about the Eternals (like most people), they are a race of immortal beings with superhuman powers who have secretly lived on Earth for thousands of years to protect humanity from the evil Deviants. It's really hard not to talk about this movie without spoilers, so I'll split this review in two parts, the first being spoiler free.
Let me begin by saying that Eternals is not a bad movie. The Rotten Tomatoes score is stupid. It's not even close to The Incredible Hulk, Thor: the Dark World, or Iron Man 3 bad and the fact that it's rated lower than those is insane. It falls firmly in the middle of the MCU pack for me. It's big and absolutely gorgeous looking. The CGI and fight scenes are awesome and it introduces us to a new world with really cool characters that I'm excited to see more of. If I had to use one word to describe Eternals it would be ambitious. And I hate that word. It's overused in the movie making business to describe things that are just flat out bad. Eternals truly is ambitious to a fault. Chloe Zhao is a brilliant director. She's got two Oscars to prove it. But there was simply too much going on in this movie to make it anything above average. In 157 minutes Marvel introduced us to Celestials, Deviants, Eternals, TEN new heroes with different powers (11 if you count Dane Whitman - we'll get to him later), a love triangle, and a whole new world of lore. That's a lot to take in, and it requires a lot of exposition and fleshing out. Eternals spent a lot of time with characters sitting around in a circle discussing who they were and what they were doing. That's no fun for anyone. Too much exposition becomes tedious for an audience and leads to questionable dialogue from the characters, but it was necessary here to figure out what the heck was happening and who everyone was. Zhao did the best she could, working characters and their personalities into the conversations. And speaking of characters, the Eternals are comprised of Ajak (Salma Hayek), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Sersi (Gemma Chan), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Druig (Barry Keoghan), Gilgamesh (Ma Dong-seok), and Thena (Angelina Jolie). When you have so many characters, it's hard to give them all time to shine. I would love to see more of all these characters in the MCU, but the standouts to me were Madden, Chan, Nanjiani, and Ridloff.
Nanjiani's Kingo was my favorite of the group. He felt so much like an MCU character. After that I really liked Chan's Sersi. Thank God Kevin Feige corrected his mistake of making Chan a backup character in Captain Marvel and brought her into the MCU for real. I also liked Ridloff's Makkari. She's the first deaf superhero in the MCU and her superspeed was really well done. The character I am most excited to see in the MCU is Sersi's human boyfriend, Dane Whitman, played by Kit Harrington. He was only in the movie for a few minutes, but has a huge role to play in the future (that's in the spoiler section!)
Not only did I think the cast was great, the score and visuals were beautiful. I expected a Chloe Zhao movie to look fantastic but this is one of the absolute best looking and sounding Marvel movies, period. The fight scenes were really cool and the shots were gorgeous. Technically, Eternals is top notch. It just all comes back to the fact that everything was so rushed and there was just too much for a 2.5 hour movie. This would have been so much better as a Disney+ series, with time to dive into the plot and characters more. You could dedicate an episode to each character, give us time to get to know them and flesh them out. That would be perfect. It took the entire movie just for the team to come together. Druig and Phastos are super cool characters and they were gone for most of the movie. The Deviants were so lame and completely unnecessary. Kill them off and dedicate the final two thirds to character building.
Eternals doesn't feel like a Marvel movie, which is not a bad thing. I love cosmic MCU and I want the MCU to expand and get weird and introduce us to wild characters. Maybe the bar was set too high, but I felt mildly disappointed in what I got. It's enjoyable and could have been great, but the source material is so heavy and there's just so much happening that it becomes a jumbled up mess with not nearly enough development for some key characters. It's been incredibly hard to review this without spoilers so lets get into it. IF YOU DON'T WANT ETERNALS SPOILED SKIP TO THE LAST SECTION
Ok, let's get into the meat and potatoes here. One thing I really loved about Eternals is that there is no clear good guys or bad guys. I never expected Ikaris to turn heel, but even so, that didn't make him a "bad guy." Killing Ajak was obviously bad, but he did so because he was following the orders from Arishem, who he believed in. Even Sprite and Kingo agreed with him. Sersi and the other Eternals saving the Earth was good, but by doing so they sacrificed the birth of a Celestial, essentially killing any life that could have been created in another universe. Lots of gray area there in right and wrong. And you can see what I mean by a lot going on in this movie. That's confusing just to type. Ikaris is very cool and clearly the most powerful Eternal. His laser vision is sick, but I laughed out loud when he flew into the sun. Talk about on the nose. Is that supposed to kill him? Can't he just be reborn by Arishem? And speaking of Arishem, I couldn't understand a word that dude was saying. I needed subtitles for that.
The biggest spoiler things I need to talk about is the two credits scenes. The mid credits scene was one of the craziest credits scenes the MCU has had. It introduced us to Eros aka Star Fox, who is the brother of Thanos. And he's played by pop culture star Harry Styles. Styles is a good actor. He's got swagger and seems so cosmic, a perfect fit for this role. The end credits scene was my favorite though. Back to Kit Harrington's Dane Whitman from earlier, he will become the Black Knight. The Black Knight is a super integral character to the MCU and wields a cursed sword called the Ebony Blade. In the end credits scene, Whitman opens a box with the sword and before he can pick it up a voice calls out to him. That voice is none other than Blade, the MCU's vampire killer, played by Mahershala Ali. That is sick as heck. I am so excited to see them both in the MCU. They are gonna be connected to Moon Knight and all kinds of stuff. It's gonna be epic.
That's it for the Eternals. I liked it, but I didn't love it. It's definitely worth watching because of the huge implications it will have on the future of the MCU. The world of Marvel is expanding, it's gonna get weird and I'm pumped to see the adventures of these new characters. This week I also caught Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho. It was a cool thriller that looked great and made me like Thomasin McKenzie and Anya-Taylor Joy even more. The Harder They Fall on Netflix is fantastic. I could dedicate a whole post to that one. It's a black western with a killer soudtrack, awesome gunplay, and a loaded cast that includes Idris Elba, Lakeith Stanfield, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, and one of my new favorite actors, Jonathan Majors. He's a freakin' superstar, man. Crushes every role he has. I liked The Harder They Fall so much, it's number 2 on my top ten list of 2021 so far, just behind Dune. Be sure to check it out. I'm not sure what my next review will be but we are heading towards the end of the year which means a lot of great movies will be coming out so be sure to stay tuned!
- BH
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