From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch. He has been revisiting the feature every six months or so to look back at the new releases in the previous half-year. We’ve covered Black Widow, The Suicide Squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and now we finish off with Eternals.
Jack Kirby was one of the most creative and dynamic creators in the history of mainstream comics, starting in the days before World War II (where, among many other accomplishments, he created Captain America with Joe Simon), and continuing into the 1960s, when he and Stan Lee collaborated to create the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Thor, the X-Men, and the Hulk, among many many others. Creative and contractual disputes led to Kirby defecting to DC in 1970 (where he created the “Fourth World” characters of the New Gods, the Forever People, Apokalips, and Mr. Miracle), but by 1976, he’d returned to Marvel.
It was then that he created the Eternals.
Kirby was always interested in doing new takes on mythological beings, as seen in his work with Thor at Marvel and the Fourth World stuff at DC. To that end, part of his reunion deal with Marvel in the mid-1970s (besides working on Captain America, just in time for the Bicentennial, and Black Panther) was to create The Eternals.
Kirby’s notion was that giant powerful beings called Celestials experimented on early proto-humans, creating two divergent spinoff species: Eternals, who were nigh-immortal and powerful but having the same general appearance as humans, and Deviants, who were more animalistic in appearance and more genetically unstable. The Eternals lived in secret, but occasionally guided humanity, and were worshiped as gods. Among the Eternals were Kronos (Chronos), Zuras (Zeus), Ajak (Ajax), Makkari (Mercury), Ikarus (Icarus), Thena (Athena), Phastos (Hephaestus), etc.
The book was cancelled after nineteen issues, its plotlines left unfinished. But other writers took the baton and ran with it. Powerful beings on Titan, created by Jim Starlin as part of Captain Marvel’s storylines, and on Uranus, from the 1950s Marvel Boy series by Stan Lee & Russ Heath, were retconned into being part of the Eternals, and Roy Thomas and Mark Gruenwald & Ralph Macchio finished off the Celestials storylines in the pages of Thor. In addition, it was established that other species in the Marvel Universe were similarly experimented upon—with the Skrulls being examples of Deviants who took over their home planet.
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The Eternals continued to show up here and there, including in a twelve-issue miniseries by Peter B. Gillis, Walt Simonson, Sal Buscema, Keith Pollard, & Paul Ryan in 1985 and a seven-issue miniseries by Neil Gaiman & John Romita Jr. in 2006. The latter was followed up by what was supposed to be an ongoing series by Charles & Daniel Knauf, Daniel Acuna, Eric Nguyen, & Sara Pichelli in 2008, but it only lasted nine issues. They were all killed off in a 2018 Avengers story arc by Jason Aaron & Ed McGuinness, but were hastily resurrected in 2021 as part of a new ongoing series by Kieron Gillen & Esad Ribić.
That ongoing series was prompted by the release of an Eternals movie, which was first announced in 2018 as being in development as part of the post-Endgame Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
While Celestials have been mentioned before—Ego described himself as a Celestial in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2—this movie provides their apparent purpose of guiding the universe in various ways.
Kirby’s Eternals were almost entirely white people—Phastos was a token POC, at least—and mostly male. Director Chloé Zhao—who petitioned to do an MCU film and was interested in doing her own take on the material, inspired in particular by Kirby and Gaiman’s work—went for a more diverse take. Ajak and Makkari are gender-swapped, with the former played by the Latinx Salma Hayek and the latter played by Lauren Ridloff, who is both a POC and deaf (Makkari is deaf in the film as well). Phastos is gay, played by Brian Tyree Henry, with Haaz Sleiman and Esai Daniel Cross as his husband Ben and son Jack, respectively. Asian actors Gemma Chan (who previously played Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel), Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in this rewatch in Men in Black International), and Don Lee play, respectively, Sersi, Kingo, and Gilgamesh. The Eternals cast is rounded out by Richard Madden (Ikaris), Lia McHugh (Sprite, also gender-swapped), Barry Keoghan (Druig), and Angelina Jolie (Thena). Supporting them are Kit Harrington as Dane Whitman (the real identity of the Black Knight in the comics, a state of affairs hinted at by the post-credits scene), Harish Patel as Kingo’s valet Karun, Harry Styles as Eros of Titan, Bill Skarsgård as the voice of the Deviant Kro, David Kaye as the voice of Arishem the Celestial, and Patton Oswald as the voice of Pip the Troll. A voice heard in the post-credits scene talking to Whitman has been confirmed to be Mahershala Ali in his role as Blade.
The movie is set up for a sequel, likely adapting the general storyline of the Celestials judging humanity, though no second Eternals film has yet been announced. Ali’s announced-but-not-yet-scheduled Blade film is likely to have Harrington in it. The presence of Eros and Pip in the mid-credits scene may also indicate that some of this may be followed up on in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, since Eros and Pip have been heavily linked to Gamora, Drax, and Nebula in the comics.
The movie also hits Disney+ today, showing impeccable timing…
“You know what never saved the world? Your sarcasm…”
Eternals
Written by Ryan Firpo & Kaz Firpo and Chloé Zhao & Patrick Burleigh
Directed by Chloé Zhao
Produced by Kevin Feige, Nate Moore
Original release date: November 5, 2021
In present-day London, Sersi follows up a day of teaching with a date with her boyfriend Dane Whitman. Whitman asks to move in with her and she refuses. Whitman think it’s because she’s a wizard like Dr. Strange, especially since he heard Sersi’s roommate Sprite say (a) she broke up with her last boyfriend a hundred years ago and b) that he could fly. Sersi’s reply to (b) is that he was a pilot—but then a Deviant named Kro attacks them.
Ikaris, the ex-boyfriend in question, shows up to help Sersi and Sprite (who is eternally a teenage girl) fight Kro, who can heal himself. Ikaris tells a shocked Whitman that he, Sersi, Sprite and seven others were sent by the Celestials to Earth seven thousand years ago from the planet Olympia. Whitman is nonplussed to say the least, and wants to know why the Eternals never got involved in any of humanity’s wars, or the Chitauri invasion, or the fight against Thanos. Sersi explains that they’re only supposed to defend humanity from Deviants. But they’d killed the last one in 1521—or so they thought. Since then, they’ve been waiting for further instructions from Arishem, the Prime Celestial.
We flash back to Babylon, with Ajak, the Prime Eternal, being cautioned by Arishem to not get too attached to this planet when Ajak expresses admiration for humanity. Phastos is also discouraged from showing humanity a steam engine, being forced to settle for a plough. Sersi and Ikaris fall in love and get married in India.
During the final battle with the Deviants in 1521—which was fought alongside the Spanish invasion of Tenochtitlan—Thena suffers from what’s called the Mahd Wy’ry, which causes her to turn on her fellows. Once the battle is over, Ajak offers to cure Thena, but at the cost of her memories. Gilgamesh offers to take care of her so she won’t lose her personality.
With the Deviants seemingly eradicated, and the Eternals not all agreeing on how to proceed—Druig, for example, believes they should help humanity, and he uses his mind-control powers to end the Spain-Aztec conflict—they go their separate ways.
In the present, Sprite, Ikaris, and Sersi go to South Dakota to find that Ajak is dead, killed by a Deviant. When they arrive, the sphere that Ajak used to communicate with Arishem passes to Sersi, to her surprise.
They go to India to recruit Kingo, who has become a Bollywood star (and also the “descendant” of past movie stars, all of whom were him of course), and he only agrees to help to avenge Ajak. His valet, Karun, accompanies him to record a documentary. Their next stop is Australia, where Gilgamesh and Thena were also attacked by a Deviant, which brought back Thena’s Mahd Wy’ry.
Sersi notices the different paintings Thena created, all of planets being destroyed. She manages to make contact with Arishem, who reveals the truth. The Eternals did not come from Olympia, but were created by the Celestials in the World Forge. Their job is to safeguard the planet until the time of Emergence, when a new Celestial—in this case, Tiamat—will be created from the ashes of the destroyed Earth. The Deviants’ purpose originally was to maintain the balance between predator and prey, but they evolved into predators themselves. Arishem’s solution was to make the Eternals incapable of evolving. Each time there’s an Emergence, their memories are wiped and the cycle starts anew on a new world. (Thena’s Mahd Wy’ry is due to her memories not being completely wiped during the previous Emergence the Eternals were involved with.) There are also tons of other Eternals on other worlds…
The Eternals are devastated. They resolve to try to save the planet, and that means they need the help of Druig and Phastos. Druig has taken over an entire village in the Amazon and is more than happy to live in peace there, and Phastos has been living in Chicago since atom bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, having lost faith in humanity. Kro and other Deviants attack the village, and Gilgamesh is killed. Kro absorbs his energy, and now can walk upright and speak.
To honor Gilgamesh’s sacrifice, Druig agrees to go along. They then go to Chicago, where Phastos is living with a mortal husband and their son. They convince him to (reluctantly) go along—though it’s his husband Ben who actually convinces him—and they go to their spaceship, which is in Iraq. Makkari is living there, and she joins them. Phastos’s notion is to use the Uni-Mind to link them all so that Druig will be powerful enough to control Tiamat and keep him from emerging and destroying the Earth.
The other shoe then drops with Ikaris. We flash back six days. Ajak reveals that the Emergence is almost upon them, as the energy from the Hulk restoring half of life in the universe was the final piece needed for it to happen. But Ajak is resisting their function: the people of this world beat back Thanos and restored the half of life he eliminated. They can’t just let them die.
Ikaris, however, wants none of it, and takes Ajak to where the Deviants have been gathering and leaves her to be killed by Kro. Then he brings her back to South Dakota and leaves her body for him to “find” alongside Sersi and Sprite.
When the Emergence is about to happen, the Eternals take sides once the truth about Ikaris is revealed. Sprite—who has been secretly in love with Ikaris this whole time—joins him. Kingo abandons the fight all together, not wishing to go against Arishem’s wishes.
The battle is joined. Phastos is able to activate the Uni-Mind and Sersi gets the powers of all the Eternals on her side, enabling her to use Druig’s power to freeze Tiamat before he can destroy the Earth. Meanwhile, Thena takes care of Kro.
Ikaris, wracked with guilt over betraying his friends and especially his erstwhile lover, flies into the sun. Sersi grants Sprite mortality so she can grow up and live a full adult mortal life. Sersi returns to London (and to Whitman), Phastos returns to Chicago (and to Ben and Jack), and Kingo goes back to being a Bollywood star. Thena, Druig, and Makkari take off in their ship and try to seek out other Eternals to tell them the truth of their existence.
Arishem summons Sersi, Phastos, and Kingo and allows them to get away with what they’ve done—for now. The Celestials will be back to judge them—and Earth.
Thena, Druig, and Makkari find themselves joined by Eros of Titan (brother of Thanos) and Pip the Troll. On Earth, Whitman takes possession of the Ebony Blade…
“When you love something, you protect it.”
Eternals has been one of the most polarizing installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if not the most polarizing. It’s hardly the first time Kevin Feige and his merry band of loonies have taken Marvel characters who weren’t exactly A-list and tried to make them into stars. In fact, that’s kinda how the MCU started, since Iron Man was always strictly B-list before 2008. And then we have the gold standard, Guardians of the Galaxy.
The Eternals are not quite as obscure as the Guardians were before 2014, but they faced a much bigger problem: they’ve never been all that popular. Jack Kirby’s original comic was cancelled in mid-story, the 1985 miniseries switched writers partway through and nobody either noticed or cared, and rarely is Eternals mentioned when people discuss Neil Gaiman’s comics oeuvre. Jason Aaron’s wiping them out in Avengers in 2018 was probably seen as a mercy killing.
To give Chloé Zhao and her co-writers credit, they almost pulled it off. The story is magnificently epic in scope, and manages to tell a story on a grand scale that fits nicely within the established MCU.
Unfortunately, there are two factors that torpedo the film from being what it can be, one an objective issue, the other a more personal issue of mine.
The first is a rather unfortunate cast bloat. There are just too many characters here, and very few of them are well served. Most of the actors are doing the best they can, but there just isn’t space to give them room to breathe. The only characters who really work are Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos and Angelina Jolie’s Thena. The former’s eagerness to aid humanity in the flashbacks and his complete burnout in the present day is beautifully played by Henry, while Jolie invests you fully in Thena’s disturbed state.
Almost all the rest of them are either underused or are too busy serving plot functions to actually be interesting characters. Or both.
Salma Hayek gives Ajak the perfect gravitas, but she’s dispensed with early on in the movie, and every time she’s off camera, the movie misses her charisma. Gemma Chan doesn’t get nearly enough to do as Sersi because she’s needed to move the story along. We get frustratingly little sense of her as a person. It’s a waste of Chan’s talents, sadly.
Lia McHugh and Kumail Nanjiani manage to stand out mostly by being funny—Sprite is a snot of the highest order, and Kingo has completely thrown himself into the role of the egotistical movie star to hilarious effect. Unfortunately, Sprite’s unrequited romance with Ikaris seems to mostly be there to give them an excuse to give Ikaris another ally, and Kingo feels like he’s mostly being removed from the climax because there are too many characters to fit on screen.
You could remove Lauren Ridloff’s Makkari and Barry Keoghan’s Druig from the movie and it wouldn’t change hardly anything, as the two barely participate. It’s to Keoghan and Ridloff’s credit that they sell the attraction between the two of them, but it’s entirely on the actors, as the characters are pretty much nowhere.
It’s also very easy to buy Don Lee’s Gilgamesh’s affection for Thena, the devotion they have for each other also shining through in Lee and Jolie’s performance, but Gilgamesh is killed off, and while it’s nice to have the man killed to have an effect on the woman for a change, it still feels like the character was killed mostly so there’d be one less person to try to give lines to.
That just leaves Ikaris, who gets the most screen time and the most interesting character arc, done in by a charisma-free, don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-beautiful performance by the leaden Richard Madden.
It’s funny, there are a lot of ways that this movie reminds me of Watchmen. The death of one of the main characters drives the plot, we get multiple flashbacks, one of the main characters turns out to be a bad guy, and there are way too may characters to fit in one movie.
Indeed, one of my issues with the Zack Snyder adaptation of Watchmen was that the story was badly served by whittling it down to a feature film’s running time, and the same holds true for this. For this to truly achieve the scope it needs to succeed, for the characters to actually have the space to be characters instead of plot movers, for the breadth and depth of the storyline to really get a chance to shine, this needed to be a six-episode series on Disney+.
Unfortunately, the most interesting and compelling characters in this movie about the Eternals are the humans: Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman, Harish Patel’s Karun, Haaz Sleiman’s Ben, and Esai Daniel Cross’s Jack. Whitman is the most enjoyable part of the film’s early minutes, and his loss in most of the rest of the film is keenly felt. Ben and Jack provide Phastos with the kick in the ass he needs, and they serve as a reminder of what (some of) the Eternals are trying to save. And Karun is an absolute delight, Patel’s superb comic timing dovetailing nicely with his earnestness and (not entirely justified) belief in the Eternals. Patel grounds the movie, and his departure with Kingo when the latter buggers off is also a major loss to the film.
Which leads me nicely to the second factor that damages the film: it isn’t about superheroes. The one thing that the MCU has never lost sight of is that its protagonists are in the business of saving lives, and are in this to help people. Even those of a less heroic bent—Tony Stark and his dancing ego, e.g.—are still mortified by the notion of innocent people dying because of their actions—or inaction.
Until now, because the Eternals aren’t heroes. They seem to be set up as heroes, but we learn before long that that’s an illusion. They’re protecting the planet because it’s an incubator for a Celestial. Some of them are still at least pretending at being heroic, but many of them either actively don’t (Ikaris, Kingo, Sprite) or are very bad at it (Druig, Makkari) or are summarily killed when they get heroic impulses (Ajak).
I think that’s why some people had trouble getting their arms around the movie: it’s not about heroes. The protagonists themselves barely manage to make it to heroism.
Worse, the villains are reduced to boring CGI monsters. In the comics, the Deviants are smart, clever, devious, and dangerous. Kro is a worthy foe to the Eternals because he’s brilliant and nasty. In this movie, the Deviants are massively and disappointingly uninteresting.
It’s a pity, as Zhao has filmed a visual feast of a movie. This is a lush, beautiful motion picture, with some of the most spectacular visuals of any film in this rewatch. Zhao is an absolute master of framing, of lighting, and of simultaneously showing grand spectacle while never losing track of the fact that she’s filming people. She manages a perfect blend of grandiose and intimate.
But all that great work is serving only to present an overstuffed, undercooked narrative that really needed a lot more than even its 157-minute running time to do it justice.
***
Thanks, everyone, for following along on this latest gaggle of superhero movie rewatches. Come the summer, we should have a bunch more to look at, including the December 2021 releases of Spider-Man: No Way Home and The King’s Man, plus the current early 2022 docket includes Morbius, The Batman, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And I’ve got a few older movies that I missed in my previous go-rounds that I also plan to cover. Meantime, keep reading my Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch every Monday, and I’ll continue reviewing the new Star Trek shows on Paramount+ as well…
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest short story is “The Light Shines in the Darkness,” part of the superhero shared-world anthology Phenomenons: Every Human Creature, available for preorder from Crazy 8 Press. Other contributors include superhero veterans Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Dan Hernandez, Paul Kupperberg, Ron Marz, and Geoffrey Thorne, along with Ilsa J. Bick, Michael A. Burstein, Russ Colchamiro ,Mary Fan, Glenn Hauman, Heather E. Hutsell, Aaron Rosenberg, Hildy Silverman, and Marie Vibbert.
I’ve said this before in past Tor posts, but the Eternals for me are not unlike the Inhumans.
I get they’re part and parcel of classic Marvel. I get they’re the brainchild of the King. I get the concept.
But they just don’t click with me.
Hell, you brought up Gillen and Ribic’s current run. Gillen’s the only reason I’ve been willing to check it out. Journey Into Mystery is one of my all-time favorite Marvel runs and I was curious to see what Gillen would do with the concept.
(To his and Ribic’s credit, it’s been good. It’s not on the top of my monthly reading pule, but it is better than I’d expected it was going to be).
One thing I didn’t really have space to get into in the rewatch, but wanted to mention in the comments, is that one scene that connected this to larger MCU really pissed me off:
At one point, Sprite asked, “So now that Captain Rogers and Iron Man are both gone, who do you think’s gonna lead the Avengers?”
Excuse me? WHAT ABOUT BLACK WIDOW? She actually, y’know, led the team during the five years of the Blip. And she also died.
But once again, the two men are all anybody can talk about. Sigh.
(My anger at this was greater when I saw the movie in theatres in November. It’s been ameliorated some by Hawkeye, in which one of the major themes was Clint and Yelena both suffering mightily from Natasha’s loss.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This would have been pretty great as a serial though I’m not sure it would achieve the sense of grandiose that was on the screen. However the story overall would have been far better served.
I really did not know who these folks were but enjoyed the concept. The fact that you had this Deviant beast absorbing powers and evolving seemed like it could have been the entire story, or a lead-in for a story. I really wanted to explore that one more (I did not know his name was Kro) though again, there was that visual of just Tiamat’s fingertips showing up that was pretty impressive.
I guess overall I’m glad they tried, but man, just not enough time for the characters.
Also, I guess there’s now a major shipping lane obstacle with some fingers. Could you mine those and use them for anything? :D
“this needed to be a six-episode series on Disney+”
This is the capsule review right here. This movie doesn’t breathe.
This movie could have been about a superhero: Kro, the Deviant trying to stop the Emergence not by killing innocents the way his forebears did, but by killing the Eternals perpetuating the Celestial cycle.
@2,
Yeah, I mean…I can get it in-story.
The MCU Steve and Tony, more than the others, represent the team at its height and the better times before Thanos and the Snap. They’re the two most visible, iconic, and beloved members within the context of the MCU (as Thor is a God, Hulk is feared, and Nat and Clint are by their natures in the background and out of the spotlight).
But yeah, it is frustrating.
@3 Remillard
Actually having them dealing with Kro as the primary conflict would’ve been brilliant with Tiamat’s awakening being the plot of the first film, that way we establish the Eternals as heroes, before turning the entire thing on its head in the second film.
I personally thought that Eternals had a major pacing problem, but I think KRAD hit the nail on the head. The epic scope needed a film, but the story needed a serial. The love for humanity thing in particular, I don’t feel like it shined through too much, except with Ajak. I didn’t feel their attachment, though I guess that’s part of the point as not all of them loved humanity that much.
Also KRAD, thank you for the phrase “Charisma-free” I laughed at that probably more than I should have.
As for the too many characters point, this movie does have the sensation of if Avengers had been the first film of the story. In that regard it may be more relevant to compare it to the Justice League…both versions, as it has the “this needs more room to breathe” issue of Whedon’s while also highlighting why you sometimes need a Snyder Cut miniseries.
I don’t know, I want to like this one more than I do because it is a different approach, it’s slower and more deliberate. I don’t know. Even after reading this review and other people’s comments, I can’t pinpoint why it doesn’t hit for me.
Initially I hated the movie, finding the first half hour incredibly flat with way too many flashbacks. By the end though I quite liked it and liked it even more on rewatch. The deviants could have been a lot more interesting though and agree with everyone else about how this should have been a series.
The MCU ruined (and I cannot stress that enough) The Eternals.
Yeah, this story and these characters would have been better served as a Disney+ series. The movie ended and the audience had a muted reaction (unlike say the elation and active applause that greeted the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home). My brief summation to my movie-going companion was, “It was interesting.” I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it either and I’m not excited about the prospect of ever watching it again. It was certainly beautiful and a visual feast though. It was cute when Madden’s and Harrington’s characters met up briefly since of course they played brothers on Game of Thrones. I think this rare critical and commercial failure for MCU could also be a rare instance where the studio doesn’t greenlight a sequel and the general movie-going audience wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But if any potential sequel could significantly better it, then they should at least make the attempt.
@10,
I think this film could end up being the Age of Ultron of Phase Four (i.e. a film that didn’t play well at the time, yet plays better in retrospect based on the long-term set-up-and-pay-off).
After the setup in the Guardians films, we’ve formally got the Celestials on the board, which has cracked open the Marvel cosmology even further beyond what was done in the Guardians 1 and 2, or Captain Marvel.
Establishing they preceded the Big Bang and the Infinity Stones in theory establishes the pre-history era that could be used for Galactus and his origin come Fantastic Four — to say nothing of Al Ewing’s ‘Eighth Cosmos’ concept from his Ultimates run (which could play into the larger Multiversal narrative currently underway).
Introducing Starfox opens the door to Mentor, while introducing Pip opens the door to the Universal Church of Truth.
And of course, introducing the Black Knight opens the door to bringing in Otherworld, the Starlight Citadel, and the Captain Britain Corps (to say nothing of Blade’s VO cameo setting up his film).
I made the mistake of reading everything up to Gaiman’s miniseries before the movie. The movie isn’t The Eternals. It’s something that got a few ideas from The Eternals and decided to name its characters after the ones in the comics.
In the comics, Druig is evil enough to make his obviously-based-on-Nazi-scientists flunky think he’s crossed the moral even horizon.
Ikaris and Sersi are probably the Eternals who are closest to humanity but it’s for different reasons. Ikaris loves humanity and seems a bit in awe of humans. Mortals lay down their lives for each other, something he is literally not capable of doing. They regularly endure suffering and pain that he never feels. Despite living for only a few short years, they try to build for eternity. Even though he’s seen all these efforts come to nothing in the end, he’s still in awe of the never ending attempt.
Sersi, on the other hand, feels a bit superior to humans. But, she deals with living forever by being very much in the moment and is always on the lookout for the next party. She loves to be adored. She also loves the the human arts, especially ones like dance that are to be experienced in the moment.
Part of the point of Sersi and Ikaris is that they have enough in common to be good friends but enough differences that they aren’t going to be more than that.
And let’s not even start on what they did with Thena and Kro’s complicated relationship.
None of that was in the movie.
Ellynne: This is hardly new for the MCU, starting with the very first movie, as Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark bears only a slight passing resemblance to the character that has been a mainstay of Marvel Comics since 1963 — ditto Peter Quill and Stephen Strange. Thor in the comics speaks far more formally than Chris Hemsworth does, Bucky Barnes was not Steve Rogers’s best friend growing up, not meeting him until after he became Captain America, Henry Pym and Janet van Dyne are not from an earlier generation of heroes and co-founded the Avengers, Hawkeye was a former carny turned super-villain turned super hero who doesn’t have a wife and several children living in rural America, Drax is a human who was transformed by A’lars of Titan into a killing machine intended to kill Thanos, Rocket and Nebula’s personalities are completely different, Wong isn’t a sorcerer, Jim Rhodes’s military days are way behind him and he never made it as far as colonel, etc., etc., etc.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Maybe, if I’d come to the movie with no expectations, it would have been OK. Maybe, if I’d read the comics years ago, I’d have just rolled with the changes. I might even think they were changes for the better.
But, when I went into the theater, I really wanted to see something closer to what I’d read.
Ellynne: Fair enough. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
*Indeed, one of my issues with the Zack Snyder adaptation of Watchmen was that the story was badly served by whittling it down to a feature film’s running time, and the same holds true for this. For this to truly achieve the scope it needs to succeed, for the characters to actually have the space to be characters instead of plot movers, for the breadth and depth of the storyline to really get a chance to shine, this needed to be a six-episode series on Disney+.*
Could not agree more with this sentiment about this movie. There are brilliant performances but not enough time for everyone to shine and the small side stories this concept could have are full of potential. It isn’t a bad movie per se, but it suffers from what my friends and i call Set-Up-It-us, which is somewhat understandable, but still.
Richard Madden is very pretty to look at and Ikaris in this film seemed to be his audition for the Man of Steel as the whole time I was getting Superman vibes. I could easily see Madden taking on that role at some point or at least a different version of Supes in the DC multiverse.
Just watched this movie on Disney+. I have seen every MCU movie in theaters since the Avengers got me hooked on them. Heck, I’m one of the suckers who went to see Marvel’s Inhumans (which was just the first two episodes of the TV show) in the theater.
But this one I hadn’t been anticipating very much and then seeing the reviews I decided I’d wait to see it.
I’m sure glad I did. Someone above compared it to the Inhumans and I feel like that is a pretty good equivalent.
Obviously the quality of this was miles above Inhumans, as this had MCU movie budget dollars behind it. The visuals were very impressive and so on. But it still ended up being ‘meh.’
I thought maybe I didn’t enjoy this movie because I had no foreknowledge of any of the characters. But then I remembered how much I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy. Maybe it’s because I prefer MCU movies that are more “grounded” (Winter Soldier still stands as my favorite MCU movie). But then I remembered how much I’ve enjoyed “out there” MCU properties such as Ragnarok.
I don’t know. Possibly a lack of humor? That might be it. This movie felt more like a DCEU movie, to me, than an MCU one.
But yeah, it didn’t sit well with me. Aside from a feeling of malaise on the whole, several plot points just sorta bug me too, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole.
As something of a fan of the ancient near East, I had some issues with some of what was depicted of that era.
1. Babylon : Ancient Egypt called and would like to point to Memphis. Also Uruk.
2. Invention of plough: Czech Republic ploughing since 3500 BCE.
3. Mesopotamia: Where the Heck was either the Tigris or Euphrates in that opening shot? ( Mesopotamia = Greek, meaning “between two rivers). Bonus = Babylon was in MESOPOTAMIA.
Snyder’s Watchmen was just dreary and tedious. This one I actually enjoyed, despite its flaws. The Deviants being the big one. While I like that their physical design seems to be out of wire, similar to the filigree the Celestials and Eternals use in their constructs, that’s about all good to say about them.
Minor points: 1)Sprite looks to be about 14 or so. For most of history she’d have been a legal adult, though I can understand them not wanting to go there. 2)Kirby’s Eternals were the gods and monsters of myth. These Eternals are seven gods of myth — some explanation where all the rest of the myths came from (“Oh, Sprite made up a LOT of stories.”) would have been nice. And Gilgamesh, as others have pointed out, lands on Earth about a millennium too late to birth the legend.
A bigger point is that it doesn’t pull off the moral dilemma. We have nothing but Arishem’s word the destruction/birth cycle is necessary for the universe — why believe him any more than Thanos? And we never really see the nobility of humanity that inspires Ajak to course-correct.
Sprite’s discussion of the Avengers leadership is so out of left field, it felt like bad product placement.
I like Makkari more than you did, though.
@11 & 13,
I am completely awed by your superlative geekdom
Quoth Fraser: “And we never really see the nobility of humanity that inspires Ajak to course-correct.”
Yeah, we did, in Endgame. Ajak specifically said that the thing that inspired her change of heart was that it was humanity that restored the 50% of life that Thanos wiped out.
And I liked Makkari fine, my issue was that she had basically nothing to do….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Kirby had wild imagination, and left to his own devices, like with the New Gods and the Eternals, his creations could be kind of gonzo. My first thought when I heard about this film was, “How’s that going to work?” So many characters, so much wierdness, so big a scope of time. I came away being impressed how well they carried it off, and created a coherent movie length story. There were some excellent performances (I loved Kingo and Karun especially), and the visuals were great. It is not my favorite Marvel movie, but I ended up enjoying it.
The final battle in particular reminded me of nothing so much as a boss fight in a recent Final Fantasy game, what with the outfits and the glowing traceries and magical zapping &c. This is not a complaint.
@21,
You’re too kind.
I probably am overthinking it, but half the fun of the MCU for me is has become trying to figure out the long-term narrative based on what each new project brings to the table and my knowledge of the comics.
If anything, it’s actually more fun now than it used to be. From 2008 onward, we knew that the arc was the build towards Avengers. From the end of Avengers (and the Thor 2 mid-credit sequence), we knew it was the build to Thanos and an adaptation of Infinity Gauntlet.
But now, in the post-Endgame era? With the emphasis on the Multiverse, I mean, I think I know where it’s going.
But I’m not certain yet, so it’s fun being along for the ride.
Rewatched this couple days ago and it’s better on second viewing. I won’t go into much detail (pressed for time in RL), but it actually does fit together, despite them trying to tell too many stories at once. One example is knowing about Ikaris’ lying and misdirection. I now think a possible motivation for him killing Ajak was that he thought he’d get the direct line to Arishem. That Ajak had a choice in the matter seems arbitrary, though. It gets more confusing when Kingo keeps calling him “Boss,” being grossly sexist in ignoring Sersi’s new leadership role.
I’m looking at this movie as an introduction. It will stand better when the follow-up materializes. Clearly there are plans for the Eternals to return. Perhaps the Galactus mythos will be folded into this conception. Just the fact that we saw Arishem, although in very static scenes, puts this beyond other attempts with cosmic scope, like The Rise of the Silver Surfer. And the scope of what happens to Tiamut is grand enough.
So I like it a bit better, but still don’t love it. It’s better than middling. Side note: maybe when IPs are currently stretched like taffy to feed the starving pop culture maw, we’ll get more and more middling content (like the Boba Fett series… but that’s another discussion). The Age of Mediocrity it shall be called, when you won’t hate or love a thing, you will just shrug.
Largely agree with your review. Too many characters and too much happening and not enough time to tell the story.
It says something that I was more excited for the other characters that were introduced (Whitman/Black Knight, Eros, Pip, Blade) than I was for any of the main Eternals.
A “few” you missed instead of a “couple”? Then sounded read what was posted while you were on Christmas break.Good! You will have a bit more to do between releases of new movies! LOL!
That should read “you did” I missed that mistake in the preview, now I can’t fix it.
I really wanted to like this more than I did, and I thought I would like it more because I usually can lean into the ‘weird’ a litlte more.
But I found myself kind of bored and I think you bring up a good reason why – there are so many characters but they are so…bland. The funny thing is Makkari and Druig’s relationship seemed to have way more chemistry/fire in the maybe 10 seconds of flirtation we got with them than Sersi’s relationship with Ikarus OR Dane. It doesn’t help that the two characters seemed so bland my husband actually didn’t even realize at first it was a different character.
It also used a few tropes I am not a big fan of (or at least can be really overuse)
1)Everything cool humans has done is basically aliens. And in this case, apparently even general science (galaxies forming, etc) is also just…aliens. Like, I get there is some weird religious symbolism going on here (in Him we move and live and have our being) but it’s not THAT literal, ususally.
2)Also, humans – specifically Earth humans – are so spunky and determined that aliens/gods can’t help falling in love with us despite all our flaws. I mean, this can be done well – Wonder Woman for example. In fact, Ajak was a little too reminiscent of WW to me.
I also agree we don’t really see a ton of heroism or affection or chemistry – either between humans, or each other. Maybe some of that is intentional as they are intended to be more…removed, and not all equally devoted to protecting Earth. But it seemed like there were a lot of things that did have the potential to be interesting.
For example, Sprite’s dilemma of forever being a child who can’t experience adult/mature love…I really liked how Kingo has the ability to see what is happening, in part because he recognizes stories. But even her crush on Ikarus is very much told and not shown.
Phastos arguably is more interesting, and even Druig could have gone an interesting direction…like we’re gonna ignore that he’s just mind controlling a whole village out of his own misguided idea of what is ‘best’ for humanity? (Also, where did the Irish accent come from?)
I agree Kingo just got kind of…shoved out of the story. While I can understand the ambivalence after everything being overturned, it just felt like they didn’t really address it, and then later, he’s just hanging out with them again.
Part of it might also just be that there’s a point in the MCU where I think there can only be so many huuuuge threats and secret societies before it just starts to feel like nothing even matters or is surprising.
My husband also pointed out that the Eternals’ reason for not interfering with Thanos doesn’t even make sense because Thanos delayed the Emergence, so you’d think they DID have a vested interest in stopping him. I don’t know, the movie just didn’t gel for me.
Remember, though, that other than Ajak, none of the Eternals had a clue regarding the emergence. They would not have any reason to expect Thanos would be of any interest to the Celestials. And even Ajak, if she wasn’t already beginning to lean humanity’s way, would only look at it as a minor delay. What would a century or two needed to regain the lost population mean to the Celestials who plan in multiple milleniums?
True – but I guess I was just thinking that the Celstials themselves would have sent new orders. But you’re probably right that in the grand scheme of things it would just be a delay.
(Hmm…would the Snap have impacted celestials?)
(Hmm…would the Snap have impacted Celestials?)
Emergences all across the cosmos would’ve been derailed by the halving of all life, so yeah, I’d imagine Thanos did catastrophic damage to their immediate plans.
As to whether any of them individually fell to the Snap…yeah, that’s a good question — and better answered by someone more versed in deep Marvel cosmology than myself.
Mr. Magic,
You may be right, but I got the impression that only one Celestial emerges every million years. Only Tiamut would be emerging in the current era. The next one wouldn’t be of interest for a million years.
Now, that was my impression. I could be misremembering something or simply misinterpreting the information the movie gave us.
@34 Even less.
When Arishem gives Sersi the breakdown, he says that he seeds worlds for a Celestial to be born every billion years.
As Arishem predates the Big Bang, that put us at up to 13 Celestials born between then and Tiamut.
Finally watched this for the first time tonight, and I actually really liked it, though I agree with all your critiques in the review. The Emergence should’ve just been the main threat, with Kro being seeded for future stories. Instead, the Deviants plot goes nowhere and Kro is dead (sad trombone noises). I hope they get a sequel, I’m interested in seeing where it could go. I do think this is the most beautifully-shot MCU film.
On an interesting side note, is this the first time the MCU recognizes the DC universe with Jack calling Ikaris Superman? So does this mean DC comics exist in the MCU? Did I miss something or is this a first for the MCU films?
@36 There are a couple references to ‘Super Friends’ sprinkled through, but that’s a vague enough name.
In Homecoming, Peter’s ‘enhanced interrogation mode’ comes out as a Christian Bale bat-growl, but that’s aesthetics.
This is the first overt thing, so taken together, DC comics, cartoons, and movies exist in the MCU
Oh yeah, that was another thing I felt kind of fell flat in the movie for me – the whole thing with Kro gaining sapience and coming to his own realization felt like it could have been an interesting place to go; Eternals and Deviants teaming up to stop the cycle.
But the Deviants were just really bland/generic CGI monster villains.
This film should’ve been character and basic concept introduction only, taking place entirely in the past and ending on the revelation that the Eternals are synthetics and that the Celestials are going to reap the human race in the future – thus splitting our cast. They could then spend years ignoring each other, knowing that they’d eventually have to fight each other to the death over the emergence of the Celestial. Instead, they wanted to race to make these characters relevant and to make some pretty complicated ideas understood through bland exposition – this could’ve easily been two films, although they’d have to seriously flesh out the first film. The cast wouldn’t feel over packed if we had a chance to care about a single one of them, and their eventual present day reunion in part two would’ve been ripe with meaningful call backs. Ikarus in particular has all the charm and nuance of a slab of concrete, but they all feel like relative newborns despite the fact that they’re thousands of years old. As it stands there was no room for meaningful character development, and we learn the true nature of the Eternals in the first 30 minutes, then race to cull as many of them as necessary to tell a simplified, coherent story in the next entry. Abysmal pacing and story telling results. It’s almost hard to believe this came from the same studio that spread the Thanos conflict tale across dozens of movies.
I saw it last night. I really liked it. Not my favourite, but definitely a worthy addition.
Was I the only one to get vibes of a Superman vs Wonder Woman battle in the Thena/Ikaris fight in the climax? ( And Flash vs Superman with Makkari).
Well, I came into this with no knowledge of the Eternals and low-ish expectations given the poor audience response. However, I enjoyed it quite a bit — though that might be largely because I spent much of it in a pleasant Gemma Chan-induced haze. The cast overall was pretty good; I didn’t care much for Druig, and Sprite didn’t do much for me, but Phastos worked pretty well, I really liked Makkari (wonderful smile and expressions), and Karun was a delight.
Some of the concepts were quite fanciful, but I liked the ambiguity and the twists. I liked it that there wasn’t any clear-cut good or evil; Arishem was just promoting the larger cycle of life in the cosmos, and even the Deviants were just doing the job they were made for and were just as much victims as the Eternals. I was hoping that Sersi would find some alternative way to get Tiamut out of the Earth, rather than just killing it. So I was disappointed by that, but I like it that the story had that ambiguity and uncertainty over who was doing the right thing. Of course letting Earth be destroyed isn’t right, but the Celestial and the other lives it would’ve created had a right to exist too.
It’s certainly a gorgeous-looking movie, with great scenery and cinematography and impressive visual design, as well as some spectacular-looking people. Even the Deviants are beautiful in a way, as Karun recognized.
The climax strains my suspension of disbelief. That much mass pushing its way out from the center of the planet would tilt Earth’s axis and cause a global catastrophe, and the seismic upheavals of its movement would probably have killed everyone. Still, the final visual of that head and fingers sticking out of the planet was very Kirbyesque. But then, Kirby was a guy who invented a planet called Transilvane that had devil horns sticking out of it.
Also, the post-credits stuff did little to engage me. I mean, isn’t Eros/Starfox the guy whose superpower is to psychically or pheromonally make people desire him sexually? Isn’t that creepy as hell? I guess they could reinterpret his powers, but we already had a guy in this movie who mind-controlled people and the film was strangely okay with it. And Starfox and Pip both looked extremely authentic to the comics.
So if Eros is Thanos’s brother and he’s an Eternal, that means Thanos was an Eternal too, right? Unless one of them was adopted. I guess that could explain why Arishem didn’t let the Eternals intervene with Thanos..
The big problem is introducing these characters into a world ending event so soon after the Thanos and the infinity saga, I feel if they had dropped fed these characters in over a few years on various Disney + series and then made this move in say 2025 then it would have gone down a lot better, mostly peoples reaction now is who are these characters and why should I care?
@42/chadefallstar: I actually felt that the feebleness of the Eternals’ excuse for not helping out with Thanos worked in the movie’s favor. It helped establish how limited and rigid the Eternals’ existence was, how they were just cogs in Arishem’s machine (almost literally, as it turned out) following his amoral instructions. Their job wasn’t to save the world, just to counterbalance the Deviants and tend the garden until it was time for Tiamut to feast.