Eternals - Movie Review (3/10)

Browsing some reviews for the MCU’s latest entry, Eternals, I saw someone say that people are only complaining about this movie because its attempting to be “emotionally mature” when they have gotten so used to kid focused content. I guess to some people emotional maturity amounts to bringing up questions that have already been treaded in previous (and better) movies while posing characters for a model shoot every 10 minutes. Might just be me though.

Chloé Zhao latest is a story introducing the Eternals to the MCU – a group of cosmic beings sent to Earth to protect its inhabitants from the mutant “deviants” and help shepherd humanity into the future. Throughout the film we slowly learn secrets that have been kept around the group that in turn lead to huge questions on morality as these characters fight among themselves and others in an attempt to question their own creator. In theory.

In practice, however, what we have a colorfully presented story about essentially nothing. Sure, we have a three-act structure. Sure, we have to save the world. But what is undercutting this story is not immortal beings coming to love the existence of mortal creatures or exploring the uncaring morality of a God – but a story about kicking some people around until one of them takes their metaphor too seriously (you’ll understand what I mean if you see it). The main reason for a lot of this is due the fact that the story does a lot more “telling” than “showing” – I heard many times the Eternals say they cared for each other and how they are a family, but aside from the odd paring I did not buy their dynamic at all. This may not seem all that important, but the climax of the movie quite hinges on loyalties that characters hold to one another that we are never aware of. The object through which they defeat the big “bad” is also a “macguffin” that we find out can “operate” in a way just because we are told it does. This all leads to a serious case of information drought that works to isolate me from the characters rather than pull me towards them.

Talking more on the characters, at its current stage, the cast is seriously too big. There are way too many intertwined characters being introduced for them to not be the main focus of the story. You could take out about 30-40% of them that currently do nothing more than fluff up the runtime and still be left with a sizable chunk to work with. The motivations of the characters don’t make sense either. Why is Phastos (Brian Tyree henry), the only eternal with a human family, not the main character that goes on to motive others to join? It seems out of all of them, he is the one with the biggest stake. But no, instead, he needs to be the one to be convinced. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) was also thrown in at the end haphazardly. I’m happy a deaf character was able to join a superhero team and be featured so prominently but she seriously has no reason to be there other than that the script demands all of them join. Same with Druig (Barry Keoghan) who controls humans like pawns to make them stop fighting or Sprite who at no point shows any interest in saving humans and as such tagging along. My problems with Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) are somewhat personal. It was great to see a south Asian man in the MCU, but did he really have to be the comic relief, when there is another south Asian man who is also the comic relief? And introducing with a Bollywood dance number that’s not even good? For all its claims of representation, it really failed me as a brown man. My point is: There could have been so many points you could have explored with a cast this huge! Fuck telling a story about another world ending threat. Put these characters into emotional tangents. Explore their unique relationship with every single other character. Rather than telling snippets of stories through flashbacks thousands of years earlier, make that be the full focus. Take some inspiration from Scorsese and create a grand opera that builds these characters up (The Irishman’s decades spanning story comes to mind). I don’t want to just see a sex scene and have that be the only point of love! I don’t want just one scene of someone looking at another couple to show their jealousy. Explore these! How do you have more than 2 and a half hours and I still don’t care for half of the characters – and that’s still me being generous.

Having ranted enough about the characters, let me quickly touch on the other points of the film quickly. This is probably the most natural looking MCU film, and that probably stems from the fact that it was shot on real locations, so good job on that. But its nowhere near MCU’s best looking film as its being touted – Ragnarok and Guardians (I&II) still take the cake for me. The dialogue itself is stiff and ham-fisted. I never really got a real sense of how each character talks. On the acting front, Richard Madden (Ikaris) feels like the only one trying to give his character an emotional balance. Others are fine but they never really jump out as being good or great. I really wish we got more from Kit Harrington, I was excited to see the Game of Thrones starts reunite on a screen.

With all the bashing I have done, it might be curious that I ended up giving it a 3 but I have reasons. For all its failures, there is still an attempt made at exploring all the ideas I have mentioned above, but they all get either the minimal attention or are undercut by bigger, dumber things. But there is still some heart pored into it, and thought it did not resonate with me, I cannot ignore it completely. I just wish with a cast this large, Chloé Zhao could have given us the best team-movie for the series.