No Spoilers, Sweetie
So, bottom line: I liked Eternals.
Not get-the-tatoo loved it, though there there were parts that I loved. But I had a very fine time for my money in the theater, and have no regrets over time or money.
The Good
For my money, this is one of the most thoughtful, and thought-provoking, films in the MCU. While other super-hero tales have given us moral quandaries, they’ve often been pretty binary “hero’s choices” — do I save X or Y; do I meet my date or stop the bank robbery; do I stomp the bad guy or save the falling plane?
The issues the Eternals deal with are existential ones, with questions of loyalty and love, of purpose, of destiny and pre-destiny, duty, of sacrifice, of service to God, service to humanity, service to family (or families).
While there are structural and other aspects of the film that blunt some of those questions, they are very real, and they get dealt with in different (sometimes very different) ways by different characters.
Remember how Captain America: Civil War felt a bit facile in how it teed up the superhero vs superhero conflict? This movie doesn’t. The decisions made (and sometimes regretted) are organic to the characters and their situations. This movie will always have a special place for me because of that.
This film has plenty of action and adventure, but for the most part it avoids two overdone cliches in MCU movies:
- disaster porn of cities turned into rubble in the course of super-hero villain battles
- giant climactic battles of Our Hero(es) vs hordes of CGI villains.
While there is a Major Threat to Humanity that gets dealt with, ultimately the final conflicts in the film are driven not how many CGI baddies can we pew-pew to pieces, but by those moral questions above, and how the characters reacted to them.
This is a movie primarily about people, not a movie about powers.
The movie is visually lovely, both in terms of a global span of settings, and regarding some set pieces that were truly awe-inspiring.
Also on the visual side of things, given their common origins (if differing specialties), I appreciated the common motifs in their powers and technology. There was sufficient commonality to understand the ties between the characters, but enough distinction to appreciate their differences.
“I did not see that coming,” I thought to myself a good half-dozen times in the film. There are a lot of unexpected twists, most of them quite good. It is a much less linear film than a lot of the MCU.
People emote in this film. People emote a lot. Strong men cry. So do strong women. I am sure that really bugged some of the folk decrying this film, but, again, people not powers.
The Not-So-Good
This movie ramps up very slowly, and ramps down very slowly.
We get a lot of exposition starting off, lots and lots, with tons of flashbacks spanning human history, and then, once we start getting some stakes going, it takes a loooong time to get the band back together.
The individual pieces are done well, and it’s understandable the amount of time things take, given the scope of what we’re addressing, but it feels slow; I was really wondering at points how they were going to end all this, given the time they were taking setting it up. (That they were able to run to 2:37 is a big reason for this — and, since I usually complain about films being cut too short, I suppose I shouldn’t complain much here.)
(My wife, on the other hand, thought it was all well-handled to provide info on all the characters involved. So there’s that.)
On the tail end, we have a long set of denouements, many of them very talkie, some of them very hand-wavy in terms of addressing loose ends. I don’t know what I would necessarily cut there, but I was feeling a bit impatient.
In-between, being something brand-new in the MCU (and, honestly, brand-new in general, as much of this doesn’t follow anything related to Jack Kirby’s Eternals) ends up requiring several pallets of exposition to be dropped in at various times, especially as the protagonists learn things that have been hidden from them or that contrast with earlier infodumps. While interesting, and individually handled decently, it sometimes made things drag.
There are two mid/post-credit scenes, for those wondering if you need to run to the bathroom. Unfortunately, those feel very tacked on, and introduce three MCU characters for future consumption. I was not a fan of any of the introductions, to be honest. I’ll talk more about them in post-spoilers days.
While the Eternals cast is more diverse, the Celestials all kind of looked alike.
As a side note, my wife noted that it was really awkward when the various Eternals hug each other, because their shoulder pads always get in the way.
The Okay
This movie has a huge ensemble — ten members of the Eternals, plus supporting players. It’s impossible to give them all equal time, let alone the time each deserves.
That said, the movie does a decent job of it. There’s a distinct narrative focus on Sersi, with narrative rings circling around her, getting their various turns. While I could use a lot more of practically everyone, most of the characters do get moments in the sun that help us to know them and appreciate them.
As noted, this is not Jack Kirby’s Eternals, but core themes — the Van Danikenesque space gods and super-heroic basis for myths, the names and themes of the individuals, etc. — remain in place. Frankly, I’m fine with that. Kirby’s imagination was amazing, but his writing was full of bombast makes Shakespeare feel subdued.
FWIW, I don’t think Kirby would have had a problem with this film. Indeed, I think it would have inspired him to write a dozen new crazy comics.
The actual origins of the Eternals was significantly shifted from the comics, something I felt disappointment about when it got shoved in my face during the initial screen text. But what was devised in its place successfully drove the rest of the plot, so I’m good with it..
Another non-Kirby aspect I’m fine with is the diversity of the cast. As reference, here’s how they looked back in the day:
Lots of pasty-white (except for the one Deviant there). The same was true for pretty much all the main Eternals cast in Kirby’s day. Most of them men, too, except Thena and Sersi.
Whereas the movie gives us lots of strong women who aren’t dressed in bathing suits. Lots of races and ethnicities, as would be appropriate for beings set forth to interact with the breadth of humanity. Even (gasp) non-het sexual orientation.
None of it felt forced, or weird, or clashing with the original in context of the story. Yet sooooo many fanbois are outraged by these changes. Wonder why?
(In my opinion, if it pisses off Russia and the Middle East, that’s probably a good thing.)
This is the true kick-off of the Cosmic phase of the MCU, as show in both the very nature of this film and its tales of the Celestials and their shenanigans, and in how things wrap up at the end (esp. that first in-credits sequence). We’ve touched a bit on that theme previously, with Captain Marvel and the Guardians of the Galaxy film, but I expect to see a lot more starscapes in the MCU future.
That said, this movie felt oddly detached from the MCU, and its few connections felt a bit forced. It really was very much a stand-alone film, with a couple of exceptions (one of which ended up a significant feature of someone’s motivations). To be sure, my wife, not a Marvel fan, thought that was fine, eliminating the “Oh, you won’t get this if you don’t read the comics or rewatch the movies a dozen times.”
That occurring-in-a vacuum did feel a little strange to me at times, but I also largely didn’t miss it.
Net-Net
I think this movie got a lot of early dumping upon for a few reasons:
- Too many film critics dislike the popularity of super-hero films in general, and the MCU (egads! Disney!) in particular. Throw in an Academy-award winning director “slumming,” and their reaction is going to be particularly harsh.
- For the fanboi crowd, Eternals is too feeling, too morally complex, and too willing to resolve problems in ways that don’t involve fisticuffs and pew-pews. (It may also have too many strong women and too much diversity for some of their tastes.)
For me, I found those all to be strengths. I mean, I like a good rock-em sock-em, comics-faithful, simplistic-redemption-arc film as much as the next person (I maintain that the original Iron Man is one of the best supers films ever).
But this film was also refreshing, in not providing easy answers, or even easy-to-judge characters. Each of the Eternals faces difficult decisions in the movie, makes (or chooses to dodge, or changes their mind on) those decisions, and doesn’t always get it right, because big, difficult, moral decisions rarely end up with a big red or green light next to them to immediately let you know you made the right one.
Eternals is by no means a perfect move. It is (if unavoidably) verbose in its setup, and dragging in its wrap-up. It handles some elements clumsily. Some characters got a short shrift. Some of it feels melodramatic at times (though Kirby would probably smile at those elements).
But it’s a good film, a great kickoff to bigger things in the MCU and maybe some more sophisticated directions, and I’m really curious as to what happens next.
(This is an expansion of my review on Letterboxd)
