Directed by: Chloé Zhao
Starring: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie
Eternals really didn’t do anything for me. The movie is fine, the performances are fine, the action is fine, the story is fine, everything is just fine. The movie doesn’t excel in any one category and is largely unmemorable. It doesn’t help that the movie is way too long. That’s to be expected with a movie like this that is trying to balance so many different characters. And even though the movie tries to give each one of the Eternals their own motivation and backstory, I still had an extremely difficult time connecting to any of them. I don’t think this movie is a trainwreck, it’s totally watchable but it is definitely a lower tier Marvel movie. I think they’ve committed to the Eternals and they will return and be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but I could also imagine never seeing some of these characters ever again.
Breaking down the plot of Eternals is difficult because it’s quite convoluted but I will try my best. I think it’s best to start with a brief glossary of terms because this movie throws a lot of terminology at you really fast. It’s easy to get confused.
Eternals: a group of superpowered immortals who are sent to earth by their creator to fight an evil race of beasts called Deviants. The Eternals are: Ajak (Haek), Sersi(Chan), Ikaris (Madden), Kingo (Nanjiani), Sprite (McHugh), Phastos (Tyree Henry) , Makkari (Ridloff), Druig (Keoghan), Gilgamesh (Lee), and Thena (Jolie).
Deviants: a race of evil beasts who look like massive mutated dogs who come to Earth with the goal of destroying all human life. One deviant kills an Eternal and absorbs their powers gaining sentience in the process.
Celestials: god-like planet-sized entities that have massive amounts of cosmic ability with the power to create entire galaxies.Notable celestials include Arishem, the creator of the Eternals.
The “Emergence” : a catastrophic event that accompanies the birth of a Celestial. Tiamut is the Celestial who is inside the earth, his birth would mean the destruction of the planet.
Uni-mind: a process where all Eternals can link up to combine their power and give one of them a huge boost in cosmic strength.
Now that we’re caught up on the terminology, let’s get to the story. The movie starts off in Mesopotamia in the year 5000 BC as we see the Eternals battling with a Deviant. We learn that the Eternals are sworn to defend the planet against Deviants but cannot interfere with the course of human history in other ways. We flash forward to the present and we follow Sersi who is now living in London. She, Sprite, and her boyfriend Dane (Harington) encounter a Deviant. It was believed that the Eternals had killed all the Deviants centuries ago but now they’re back. Ikaris flies in and helps them defeat it.
Sersi, Ikaris, and Sprite want to know why the Deviants have returned, so they travel to South Dakota to seek out their leader Ajax for answers. They discover that Ajax has been killed by a Deviant. The three decide to get the band back together and venture out to find the other Eternals. Kingo is a famous Bollywood actor with a delightful valet named Karun.
Gilgamesh and Thena are living in seclusion in the Australian outback because Thena has developed “Mahd Wy’r,” which causes her to randomly lash out in violent attacks. Druig is a kind of cult leader in a small jungle village. Phastos has settled down with his Husband and 10-year old son but still lives with the guilt that his inventions were used by humans to commit heinous acts of death and destruction like the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. And Makkari was just relaxing in their old space ship, The Domo, reading books.
Sersi tells the rest of the group that the earth will be destroyed when the Celestial Tiamut is born. Phastos devises a plan where the Eternals can use the Uni-Mind to link up and combine their powers allowing Druig to take control of Tiamut’s mind forcing him back to sleep giving humanity more time to find a solution. Here, we learn that Ikaris had known about Earth’s pending destruction the whole time and it was actually him who killed Ajax because she had begun to question Arishem’s leadership. The Eternals fight with Ikaris but in the end he decides to join the Uni-Mind granting Sersi enough power to turn the emerging Tiamut into marble. Plagued by guilt, Ikaris decides to commit suicide and fly into the sun, although I suspect we will be seeing Richard Madden again. The rest of the Eternals go their separate ways.
The final scene sees Arishem come to Earth and abduct Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo and vows to return for judgement. In typical Marvel fashion there are two post-credit scenes. The first scene sees the introduction of Harry Styles to the MCU as the Eternal Eros, Thanos’ brother, and his assistant Pip (voiced by Patton Oswald). The second scene shows Dane Whitman getting the Ebony Blade signaling that he will return as the comic book character Black Knight. In that scene we also hear a voice off-screen that has been confirmed to be Mahershala Ali who has been cast as blade.
Let’s start with the positives first, I think that this movie is very well cast. Everyone fits their characters very well and for the most part I enjoyed all of the performances. I also liked all of the history references and seeing the Eternals inserted in important historical moments. The film had to do a lot of heavy lifting in fleshing out the Marvel cosmic universe. The movie is really dense with new terminology and lore but I think that it is mainly coherent. Most viewers will be able to understand the things that will be important moving forward in the MCU.
Now the negatives, there are significantly more of these. I think the main problem this movie faces is trying to balance way too many characters. Marvel has done a team up movie successfully in the past with “Guardians of the Galaxy” but that is a group of 5, and one of those is a tree that barely talks. Ethernals is trying to juggle ten different characters and tell a compelling narrative and I don’t think it quite gets there.
While I enjoyed most of the performances I don’t think any of these characters were particularly memorable. Kumail Nanjiani was probably the most charismatic and interesting of the Eternals but even then, his character didn’t have much of an arch. I was really impressed with Lia McHugh. I think she has a bright career in front of her but she wasn’t given too much to do. The movie completely wastes Salma Hayek and Angilina Jolie in pretty nothing roles, two of the most famous actresses of the last 20 years and you can’t give them anything compelling to do or say?!?
However, the greatest character offense is done to Gemma Chan. Chan plays Sersi who is supposed to be the new leader of the Eternals but it looks like the writers forgot to give her a character because she is so incredibly bland and lifeless in the movie. I don’t blame Chan one bit, she was just saddled with an awful character. Sersi is technically driving the plot forward, she is the main Eternal fighting to help save Earth but other than that we know nothing about her. Oh I’m sorry, that’s not technically true, we know that she is in a relationship with Dane and was in a relationship with Ikaris. Most of the time Chan is simply forced to look off into the distance with a concerned look on her face. She never really shows much emotion and doesn’t have any character arch of any kind. If she is going to continue to be the leader of the Eternals I really hope they work on improving her character moving forward.
Visually, the film again looks fine. The design and execution of the Deviants is absolutely horrible. They look like the most generic zombie beasts/creatures that you can find in the cheapest mobile games. There is a leader of the Deviants named Kro, who develops emotions and evolves past being a mindless killing machine but I had so little interest in that character that I basically blocked him out of my mind. The fight scenes are basic Marvel fare, there are a lot of beams of light shooting everywhere. All of the characters seem completely weightless, there is no impact to any of the attacks. This is a common problem with many Marvel movies and at this point I’ve stopped expecting anything better.
This movie also continues Marvel’s villain problem. There is no official villain, Kro might be considered a villain, Arishem is a distant villain, and I guess Ikaris is the most substantial threat but you know the whole time that in the end he will do the right thing and help his friends, which robs any tension from the story. The movie does introduce the Celestials more fully into the MCU. Celestials have been mentioned several times in other movies but this is the first full explanation we’re getting. They are set up to be the ultimate power in the universe. I think that this is setting up an eventual Gallactus reveal down the road. For the time being it seems like all of the Marvel heroes, including the Eternals, can’t match up with a Celestial, so if Gallactus shows up and easily disposes of one he will immediately be seen as the most imposing threat in the Universe.
There was one thing that I noticed in the movie that threw me off. There were two separate mentions of DC properties in this movie. Characters name-dropped both Batman and Superman and I can’t help but think that that was intentional. I can’t remember any DC properties being mentioned in other Marvel movies. So, this confirms that Superman and Batman exist in this universe, the fictional characters not the real heroes obviously. I don’t know why they would include this, I just thought it was interesting to point out.
Ultimately, I think that Eternals will be a quickly forgotten movie. At this point, the Marvel machine is so big and rolling so fast that any movie or TV show that is underwhelming or underperforms will just be brushed aside by the next thing coming down the pipeline. There might be a bit of discourse for the next week or so about The Eternal’s shortcomings but all that will quickly disappear as Spiderman approaches and attention is shifted to that. I think that Eternals has some good bits and pieces and maybe with a tighter script and less characters to deal with, it would have been a really good Marvel movie, but as is, it is definitely towards the bottom of the list.
