MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "The Eternals" (2021)

So... most of you who know me will know that I can be very opinionated about a lot of things. I am a person who either really, really likes something or I utterly despise it. There is rarely, if ever, any middle ground.

So, this is going to surprise many of you... as it surprised me when I got about halfway through it.

I do not have strong feelings about The Eternals one way or another.

It is neither great nor terrible, neither is it either good or bad. It just... is.

It committed for me, at the halfway point, possibly the worst sin a film can make, making me think eight deadly words:

"I don't care what happens to these people."

I don't like it. I don't hate it. I don't... anything. I have spent 156 minutes of my life watching a thing... and I could have just as easily spent 156 minutes doing literally anything else and would have felt just as fulfilled, if not more so. It's not that the film is bad... but I also really can't say that it's good.

Like I said, it just is.

That's it, really. I can honestly just stop the review here and you'll have about the same effect as if you had watched it yourself, but for less time and money investment. The pieces of something interesting are here and it's clear that Marvel wanted to make a big push with the Eternals given how this film is set up, but there's honestly just... nothing here.

"We're here for the Ren Fair."

Like the robotic parts the Eternals are made from, the film is empty and hollow and really gives us no character despite the ridiculous amount of runtime. That's not to say that the actors are bad, if anything some of them are more sedate. There aren't any performances that really stand out or are all that memorable. A joke here and there, maybe, but even for the MCU the whole affair is surprisingly drab and humorless.

I suppose I should actually talk about the film, maybe give you some kind of basis to work off of. The film concerns itself with (what else?) the Eternals, a race of being created by the Celestial Arishem to come to Earth and protect it from these creatures called the Deviants. They have watched, moving silently through the centuries, waiting for the time of the Gathering when... oh, sorry, I already reviewed that. Although, ironically, Eternals does open with a text crawl very much in line with Highlander, which could have been an intentional homage.

A pity, then, that Highlander manages to do with Eternals can't in using the time periods throughout the film to build up their characters and make them appealing and likeable. The Eternals have been on Earth since around 5000 BC... and while we see them in various points throughout history, we don't really see them. We get very few bits of character development that really don't amount to anything. The problem with this being that said development is spread way too thin over way too many characters and so no one really has a chance to fully crystalize beyond some basic character traits.

Honestly, the biggest problem that this film has is that it's trying to cram in so much in so little time. That's the death knell of the whole thing. There is so much exposition that it feels like it's not just two, but three or even four scripts that have been Frankensteined together. I hate it because I'm actually a big fan of the theory of ancient aliens. Y'know, Chariots of the Gods? and that sort of thing. The thought that alien cultures came to Earth and guided or otherwise helped humanity develop into what they are now. It's honestly a really neat idea that I could honestly see being a big contributor to humanity's rise as a species.

I mean, you've seen us, right? We can't get everyone to shut up and agree on a way to tackle a pandemic and we for some reason allowed Logan Paul to exist.

... like, not exist from any particular point, literally just exist.

"Hello! I am definitely not a villain!"

But yes, the idea that aliens helped humans out (for whatever reason) really does fascinate me. So, I would say that I'm irked that Eternals takes this and makes it... boring. I'm not really irked, though... just bored.

So, as I said, the Eternals are here and have been here for thousands of years at the behest of Arishem the Judge, a Celestial who is all about protecting like in the universe or something along those lines. To set up our cast we have Sersi (Gemma Chan), an Eternal who can transmute matter by touch. We have Ikaris (Richard Madden) who is literally just Zack Snyder's Superman. No, really, I'm not kidding. Director Chloe Zhao stated that she was directly inspired by it. Seeing as we want nothing but the best, clearly we want to emulate... something that doesn't really work.

At all.

Another big name we have is Kumail Nanijani playing Kingo, an Eternal who apparently decided to go be a Bollywood star after the band broke up. He serves as comic relief... sort of. As I said, this film is pretty damn dry for an MCU film. Kingo also fires energy projectiles from his hands.

There's Sprite (Lia McHugh), an Eternal stuck in the body of a child with the ability to cast illusions.

We have Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) as the inventor of the Eternals as well as being the MCU's first openly gay superhero, something which does actually factor into his motivations, so points there. He's also the only member of the group who got a genuine laugh out of me with a perfect deadpan delivery about an incident with IKEA, so points there as well.

It makes sense in context.

Gilgamesh (Don Lee) is an Eternal with the superpower of punching things really, really hard and he has a deep love for Thena (Angelina Jolie), who was once a great warrior who could project energy weapons but has since become a little coconut and banana sandwich crazy due to a mental disease.

For the last three, because this is a lot of people, we have Ajak (Salma Hayek) the healer and conduit of the Eternals to the Celestials, Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) who has the power of superspeed and is also deaf, and finally Druig (Barry Keoghan) who has the powers of mind control over humans. He also happens to be the one who is very obviously evil, but weirdly enough doesn't end up being the villain of the movie or indeed even of the team.

Alright, so... you see that exposition dump I just did there where I basically stated outright who they are and what their powers were? Congratulations, that's basically the first hour or so of the film... with honestly about that much effort put it. You know what's missing there? Character. The reason to care.  The first part of the film is "these people exist and do things". It is not "these people exist, they do things, and here's the reason to care".

I think DC is gonna sue somebody...

It doesn't really get any better than that. We have way too many characters doing too much and nothing is really given any time to develop or breathe. We're supposed to have some emotional connection with the relationship between Sersi and Ikaris... and we're missing that all-important reason to care. It's kind of a thing in visual media - show. We need to see something... and we see two people making moony eyes. Yes, they have been together for millennia... but that's glossed over and bloated with so much extra stuff that it has no real impact.

The same goes for things like Sprite's grumpiness over being Tinker Bell, never being allowed to grow up because that isn't how she was programmed to be. Yeah, programmed, because the Eternals are apparently robotic or cybernetic in the MCU. I have no idea if that's the case in the comics, because in all honesty, the Eternals are such a niche part of Marvel Cosmic lore that even I didn't really know all that much about them barring a few individuals such as Thanos and Starfox that manage to cross over into the large narrative.

... oh, yeah, by the way. Thanos gets mentioned in this as seems to be the fate of every Marvel property after Endgame. The Eternals have a really lame excuse for not helping fight him. Moving on.

The plot picks up with the return of the Deviants, a race of beings that Arishem sent the Eternals to Earth in order to kill, returning. They murder Ajak and leave the rest of the team reeling... and Sersi in possession of a magic orb that allows her to communicate with Arishem, who tells her that it is almost time. For what? Why, the birth of a Celestial, of course! However, it seems that the birth of a Celestial means that the Earth will be destroyed seeing as it's going to hatch from it like an egg...

So, needless to say, Sersi has a problem with that as do... some of the others? Kind of? We aren't really given a lot of time to process this or for the Eternals to process their guilt at having sacrificed dozens of worlds to fulfill Arishem's designs. It's kind of a big problem with the whole thing: nothing is given any time to breathe. So much is thrown at us and... it has no impact.

Honestly, the only things in the film that do have impact are Arishem's promise that he's going to come and judge the Earth, the arrival of Starfox (Harry Styles... for some reason?), and Dane Whitman (Kit Harrington) about to pick up the Ebony Blade when he finds himself confronted by a very different Blade (Mahershala Ali).

"Hello, I am one of the only interesting things in this movie."

...so, really, the last ten minutes of the film are the only ones that have any real impact on the MCU going forward. Sad, really, that we have an entire film before that that is just so... boring. There's just... too much. The film is so densely packed with exposition and action set pieces. It tries to introduce too much too fast and it really, really doesn't succeed. I've heard people say that this is the worst MCU film yet, but I honestly can't agree. For me, that's still Iron Man 3, something that failed so completely in its concept and had so many failures in logic as well as making the main character so utterly pathetic that I just... really can't stand it.

Eternals for me is, again, too much crammed in and not given enough time for anything to have any real effect. I do enjoy the set up for new things to come... and that's really, really it. Honestly, even that wasn't worth getting through the movie for.

...okay, maybe Starfox. Harry Styles was an odd choice, but he might actually do well with it and I'm actually curious to see where they take him what with Thanos being dust.

...also of note is Pip the Troll, played by Patton Oswalt.

Really, guys? I know he was already in the MCU (and technically so was Oswalt), but Peter Dinklage is literally right there. That casting was hand delivered to you!

Will we see the Eternals again? Undoubtedly. Despite the crammed story and iffy CGI, the film did actually make a profit at the box office, although whether or not that translates to an actual profit for Marvel and Disney after all of that is a question left to be answered. If anything, we know we'll definitely see Arishem coming to deal down great vengeance and furious anger and if Starfox and Pip don't make it into a Guardians movie, then what is even the point?

...oh, yeah. And Black Knight, Blade, and possibly the Midnight Sons as well.

In summation, Eternals is the film that when people say they don't like superhero films, it's the film that I imagine that they're talking about. Which should sound much, much more damning than it does. They may be forever, but their presence in the MCU may not have the same longevity...

The Eternals is brought to us by Marvel Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures.