OnScreen Review: "Eternals"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
After long delays and massive rejiggering of the release schedule because of the pandemic, MCU movies are starting to come at us fast with the release of Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, and now Eternals with Spider-Man: No Way Home just around the corner. Eternals is a sprawling story that furthers the cosmic scope of the MCU along the lines of the Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy entries. Plus, it has recent Best Director Oscar winner Chloe Zhao at the helm. And yet, this is the first Marvel property, film of Disney+ series, that has made me really question the direction the MCU is going.
To set the stage, because the stage needs to be set, the Eternals are a group of superpowered aliens who are sent to Earth to foster civilization and protect it from dangerous creatures known as Deviants. The Eternals spend thousands of years nudging cultures along and tracking down and eliminating the Deviants, though they are told not to interfere in the overall affairs of mankind, which is mostly in there to explain why they were not heard from in anything having to do with Thanos. Arriving on the planet about 5,000 years B.C., they go their own ways when the last Deviants are tracked down around 1500 A.D. But a death and the emergence of new, more powerful Deviants sets them on a journey to get the group back together and to discover that there is more to their purpose on Earth than they realize.
The cast of characters making up the Eternals, sadly a bit unwieldy at times, is inspired by various forms of mythology; or, rather, these mythology we are supposed to know is in fact variations of these “true” characters, and they include Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Druig (Barry Keoghan), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Ajak (Salma Hayek), and Thena (Angelina Jolie). Each Eternal possesses powers of varying degrees.
Everything about Eternals is beautiful, from the actors to the scenery to the cinematography to even the special effects. Zhao has spoken of her influences (Malick, in particular) in how she wanted this film to look, and she nails that. Like Malick, a lot of the movie looks like it was shot during the golden hour. The story jumps around the globe and back and forth through centuries to provide a bit of backstory for nearly every character and to provide a glimpse at the group dynamics at play between them all, though a lot is still lacking in this area. It is a definite problem that several of the characters are inconsistent and do not get as much attention to their motivations as others, Kingo, Sprite, Phastos, Makkari, and especially Druig.
But some of the characters are quite good. I particularly loved the dynamic between Gilgamesh and Thena, with Gilgamesh’s devotion to his friend and a deteriorating condition she struggles with. There was a lot with several other characters I would have liked to have seen fleshed out a bit more. I have seen several suggestions that this film might have worked better as a limited series instead of a feature film, and there may be some validity to that, but I think they could have done a better job at making the feature film they intended to make. The film is clunky, narratively speaking, and hampered with a long runtime with some sections that really lag. There’s also a twist that has been done numerous times in other movies. Certainly some of this could have been cleaned up.
Zhao and company seem to have admirable aspirations for the film, trying to make something that is more than just a standard superhero movie. They want it to be a superhero movie with something on the brain, tackling philosophical questions about being and purpose and connection and even friendship and love. It has its moments when it provokes thought and wonder, but I found equal moments of being confounded and perplexed by a needlessly convoluted storyline and missed opportunities. The main Deviant, Kro, voiced by Bill Skarsgård, is built up to be a credible threat to the group and then his story is completely undercut and disposed off in a secondary part of the final act of the film.
It may seem odd to say after two movies that included nearly all of the known MCU cast of characters just a few years ago, but Eternals is the first Marvel movie that has me genuinely wondering about the direction that Marvel is taking the MCU in Phase Four. And maybe that is part of the problem. Each previous phase has seemed to serve a purpose, whether it be assembling the Avengers or various stages of building toward the ultimate confrontation with Thanos. So far, three films into Phase Four, everything seems to running in place, like there is a lack of an overall narrative thrust to where things are going. It’s like an airplane stuck on the runway for hours awaiting clearance for takeoff. There may come a time, and it may be in 2022 with new sequels for Doctor Strange, Thor, Black Panther on the horizon, that things will look entirely different in retrospect, but right now, we’re still on the ground and want to be in the air and on our way to our destination.
There have been plenty of other movies in the MCU that have had to serve multiple purposes in the greater MCU beyond just serving its own purposes, but Eternals is the first film in the MCU that truly seems to have suffered because of it. It’s far from the best entries in the MCU, but I still wouldn’t categorize it as the worst of the bunch (still looking at you, Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World). Eternals has so many elements in it that I want to love, including an indie director like Zhao getting to play with the massive studio machinery, but there’s too much that holds the Eternals back from achieving greatness. I admire its aspirations, but it is just ok.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars