Eternals review

ETERNALS:

LATEST MCU FILM EXPLORES A LOT OF INTERESTING IDEAS AND HAS A VERY LIKABLE CAST, BUT AT TIMES IT FEELS A BIT OVERSTUFFED! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

MARVEL STUDIOS

A new team of heroes has evolved in Eternals

 

            Director, Chloé Zhao (Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider, Nomadland) brings a different kind of superhero team to the big screen in Eternals, the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and based on the characters created by the legendary, Jack Kirby. I may not have been a frequent Marvel Comics reader, but I at least knew many of their characters (Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, etc.), I didn’t know anything about the Eternalsuntil this film was announced, so there is no way I’d be able to do a comparison between the movie and the comic and unlike other obscure Marvel characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy, these guys felt more like the Marvel team that only extreme comic book nerds knew about. 

            Even the trailers for this movie weren’t really grabbing me that much, to me, it felt like the ads were telling me “Here’s another Marvel movie”, didn’t feel like an event, but instead a placeholder in-between Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Spider-Man: No Way Home. I was at least interested in seeing it and even the worst MCUfilms I wouldn’t really categorize as bad (Iron Man 2 and 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain Marvel, Black Widow), but are undoubtably inferior to other, better films in the series. 

            Given that I had pretty much no expectations with this film, is Eternals a pleasant surprise and one of the most game changing MCU films or is yet again, another one of the lesser installments of the franchise? It’s the latter, but there’s a lot that I really admire about this film.

            For example, the scenery in this movie is absolutely gorgeous and much of it was shot on location (Remember when the MCU used to shoot movies on a set instead of a green screen? Seems like it was so long ago!), most of the acting is top notch, and the film has a lot of interesting themes about humanity, beliefs, and a choice between letting the human race die so a new race of beings can live. Honestly, I think it could have been one of the greatest and most story driven MCU films we had ever gotten, but often it feels a bit overstuffed and at times unfocused in the storytelling department with a lot of noticeable attempts to stitch together a bunch of forced MCU tropes into this almost standalone film. 

            The film follows a group of ancient beings who have been living on Earth for thousands of years known as the Eternals, aliens from a planet called Olympia. However, sometime after the events of Avengers: Endgame, an unexpectedly tragic incident forces this group of super-beings, which consists of Sersi (Gemma Chan-Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Humans, Crazy Rich Asians), Ikaris (Richard Madden-Game of Thrones, Cinderella (2015), Rocketman), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani-Silicon Valley, Stuber, The Lovebirds), Sprite (Lia McHugh-Totem, The Lodge, Into the Dark), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry-Widows, If Beale Street Could Talk, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff-Wonderstruck, The Walking Dead, Sound of Metal), Druig (Barry Keoghan-Dunkirk, The Green Knight, The Batman), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Ajak (Salma Hayek-Desperado, Frida, House of Gucci), and Thena (Angelina Jolie-Girl, Interrupted, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Maleficent 1 and 2), who have been separate from each other for many years to reunite in order to stop mankind’s most ancient and deadliest enemy, the Deviants while also preparing the Earth for an event known as the Emergence. 

            The film also stars Bill Skarsgård (The Divergent Series: Allegiant, Atomic Blonde, It) as the voice of Kro and David Kaye (Ratchet & Clank) as the voice of Arishem the Judge. 

            Overall, Eternals is definitely one of the MCU’s most ambitious films and has a lot of things to admire about it, but unfortunately, it’s at the cost of strong character development, despite most of the cast delivering decent performances. As I was watching this film, I kept thinking back to the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and how it did such an excellent job establishing each individual member of the team allowing the viewer to be more invested and have a connection with those characters, Eternals sadly doesn’t have many moments like that. 

            Aside from a few genuinely funny characters and lines (Most notably from Nanjiani and Tyree Henry, both of them got the biggest laughs out of me), most of the characters in this film exist just to give exposition about the Eternals’ backstory and their mission, and not much else aside from that, sadly it isn’t that interesting. 

            For the most part, the acting is good and the characters themselves seem are interesting, but the lack of character development really makes it harder to get attached to them. It feels like a movie that could use one more rewrite and a better way to deliver its exposition. 

            With that said, the film is gorgeous to look at (Especially on an IMAX screen which made the scenery and action feel larger than life) and often some of the good old-fashioned MCU fight sequences are exciting and fun to watch. I would say it’d make a good turn your brain off movie, but I feel it would be too long for that (The runtime is almost as long as Avengers: Endgame and it doesn’t need to be that long). 

            Here’s something you’ve probably never heard before about a Marvel movie, the villain is really weak, and he somehow manages to be even less memorable than the villain from Thor: The Dark World. It’s just another CG monster bent on destroying the Earth with little to nothing interesting about him and the second villain that’s later revealed just felt like it was in response to the fact that the villain they got is as interesting as a cardboard cutout, you’d think since the MCU is already in Phase Four and had some amazing villains during Phase Three, they would have figured out how to make consistently great antagonists for their films…but nope. 

            I will say, even though the character development isn’t that great, some of the characters themselves are quite interesting as Eternals is home to the MCU’s first openly gay superhero and their first deaf superhero and both of them are portrayed quite well without ever feeling forced or clichéd. 

            Eternals is a perfectly serviceable installment of the MCU that explores a lot of interesting ideas and has a very likable cast, but it doesn’t quite have the same charm as some of Marvel’s other team-up movies. If you’re an MCUpurist or have the least bit of curiosity regarding this film then by all means, go see it, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as what many critics are saying about it, I just feel this movie could have been much better than what we got. 

            There you go, MCU purists only is recommended, everyone else should just wait for Spider-Man: No Way Home to come out next month.