Eternals
Eternals is perhaps Marvel’s biggest gamble to date, and arguably, its most divisive film in some time. Its slow-paced plot and emotional detachment may leave many viewers underwhelmed, while others may feel that Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s millennia-spanning fantasy is precisely the type of fresh approach that the Marvel Cinematic Universe needs.
Premise: Seven thousand years ago, ten immortal super-powered beings know as Eternals were sent to Earth by the near-omnipotent Celestials to protect humanity from the Deviants, a race of intergalactic apex predators. After wiping out all of the Deviants on Earth around 500 years ago, the Eternals went their separate ways while they waited for further orders. But when a Deviant resurfaces in present-day London, Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden) and Sprite (Lia McHugh) realise that they must reunite the rest of the Eternals.
Review:
Eternals is likely to split audiences between those who enjoy the fact that it is very unlike any other film in the MCU, and those that dislike it for the same reason. Personally, I’m all for branching out from the “tried and tested” formula, and many MCU films have successfully done this, from Thor: Ragnarok‘s epic space-opera, Guardians of the Galaxy‘s sci-fi extravagances, or more recently, Shang-Chi‘s magical martial arts fantasy. But all of those films still retained the sense of excitement, adventure and humour that the Marvel films have become known for, whereas Eternals, for the most part, is a much more contemplative and humourless movie.
For a film that has a ticking clock baked into its central plot thread, Eternals has no real sense of urgency during its (arguably too long) 2 hour and 40 minutes runtime. I don’t mind a slow pace when it feels like it’s atmospheric or character building (for example, I loved the slower paced first half of Dune: Part One), but there are a number of sections in Eternals that feel like they unnecessarily take a lot of the momentum out of the film.
“…it feels like there are too many characters to give all of them sufficient development…”
The cast are generally all great, and they do what they can with the material they’re given, but with ten “main” characters to balance, it feels like there are too many characters to give all of them sufficient development. The film primarily focuses on Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Ikaris (Richard Madden), who both get more to do than most of the other cast, although Lia McHugh gets a decent amount of screen time as Sprite, the immortal being eternally trapped in the form of a teenager, while veterans Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie do a lot with a little in their supporting roles as Ajak and Thena.
Kumail Nanjiani comes very close to stealing the show as Kingo, the one Eternal who is really embracing the advantages of immortality on Earth, but he is disappointingly side-lined for large sections of the movie. It’s also nice to see that Eternals has one of the most diverse casts in a major blockbuster, not only in terms of ethic diversity, but also with deaf actress Lauren Ridloff playing Makkari, and Brian Tyree Henry playing the first openly gay superhero in the MCU. Barry Keoghan and Don Lee round out the rest of the Eternals, while Kit Harington appears briefly as Sersi’s human love interest, and Bill Skarsgård has a small voice cameo. It’s also a nice touch that all of the Eternals have different superpowers, especially as not all of their powers are combat-related.
“…some of the final act surprises worked well…”
But lack of character development aside, the film’s main problems are more plot related than cast related. For the most part, the “putting the band back together” plot is fairly underwhelming (although I will say that some of the final act surprises worked well, even if they were a long time coming). Equally, the way the film deals with exposition is fairly inelegant (especially when compared with how seamlessly Dune: Part One recently delivered its complicated backstories). Here, we have a lengthy crawl of text at the opening just to set the scene, and then the real plot of the film still doesn’t start until a character randomly and inexplicably delivers a massive exposition dump partway through, just so the characters know what’s actually going on. The film wants to deal with a number of interesting themes regarding morality and the greater good, but it never feels like it satisfactorily explores any of them in any real depth.
Visually, the film is beautifully shot, even if it does feel at times like Chloé Zhao filmed the entire movie during the golden hour. The location work really pays off (the film never feels like it was shot on a soundstage), and the CGI is equally impressive, especially with its depictions of the Eternals’ various powers. The Deviants themselves are also impressively realised in CGI, although they’re still fairly forgettable as antagonists, largely because they are really little more than monstrous forces of nature, rather than villains per se.
“…a millennia-spanning cosmic fantasy about galactic space-gods, immortal beings & the creation of life in the universe…”
Overall, there’s no escaping the fact that Eternals feels oddly detached from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For better or worse, it’s its own thing – a millennia-spanning cosmic fantasy about galactic space-gods, immortal beings and the creation of life in the universe, all of which feels very far removed from what else is going on in the MCU. In fact, it almost feels like Eternals could have been written as a completely standalone film, and then someone came along and added a handful of references to Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, just to make it feel like it was part of the same connected universe. The same is true of the humour in the film, of which there is very little – and what little there is feels like a handful of random jokes were added during a late script rewrite.
I know there are people that will really enjoy Eternals as a welcome change from the usual tone of the MCU, but for me, there’s no escaping the fact that the lethargic pace, underwhelming plot, and limited character development made this the most disappointing entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for some time.
Of course, despite all of the other ways in which Eternals is unlike any other MCU film, it does still have the traditional two post-credit scenes, which could potentially be setting up separate new MCU films as well as an Eternals sequel.
Update:
Since writing this review, I’ve seen Eternals two more times - and I have to say, it’s really grown on me.
They say that you shouldn’t have to watch a film twice to enjoy or understand it, but the thing about Eternals is that you only understand after you’ve watched it once that it’s not actually the film it’s pretending to be when you first watch it. I’m still trying to avoid explicit spoilers, but suffice to say that the film is not really about reuniting the disbanded team or about protecting the Earth from the Deviants. Instead, its real themes are more to do with faith, dogma and religious fundamentalism, and the film is far more of character-driven tragedy than it is a plot-driven adventure. What I mistook for emotional detachment during my first viewing is in fact emotional repression, and the actor I was least impressed by on my first viewing has now become my favourite performance on subsequent viewings. I still don’t want to say too much about specific third-act developments in order to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t seen it yet - but if, like me, you were underwhelmed after your first viewing, I would certainly recommend revisiting this film, as you’re likely to see everything in a whole new light once you know what’s really going on.
