Eternals turns the adventures of ageless space gods into just another Marvel movie
Even with Chloé Zhao behind the camera and agreeably weird source material, the MCU won't bend its own formula
Film Reviews Eternals
“In the beginning” read the first three words of onscreen text. You won’t find the next few in the King James. They come instead from a different kind of bible, an official handbook of back-issue backstory and trading-card statistics. After a decade-plus of superheroes with messiah complexes, the world’s biggest ongoing movie franchise has finally, officially found religion, adding literal gods to its ever-expanding roster of wizards, extraterrestrials, and wizardly extraterrestrials with the names (and skill sets) of gods. Eternals, the studio’s latest $200-million, two-and-a-half-hour extravaganza, offers an origin story of cosmic proportions: nothing less than an explanation for all of life in the universe, at least the Marvel Cinematic one.
This is vintage Jack Kirby stoner shit. The famed artist, worshiped like a god himself in some circles, introduced the Eternals in the anything-goes 1970s. His idea was: What if the legends of Greek mythology were actually ageless superheroes, stationed on Earth for thousands of years, playing protector to the planet’s superstitious masses? That one of them can, effectively, turn water to wine implies that this cavalry of spacemen and -women may have been immortalized and deified as a few other holy figures in Earth’s storied history of organized belief systems. Not that Disney would explicitly go there.
Eternals brings to the screen a whole team of them—a kind of ageless X-Men from the stars. Our entryway into their ranks is Sersi, the aforementioned manipulator of inanimate matter, who’s gained a real affection and respect for her charges over the millennia. (She’s played by Gemma Chan, who’s already appeared as a different character in a different Marvel movie. Are there now so many of these films that they have to start recycling cast members?) Sersi has an on-again, off-again, Sam-and-Diane thing going with the mightiest of her coworkers, Ikaris (Richard Madden), whose powers are so similar to Superman’s that some kid actually calls him Superman.
That’s just a fraction of the call sheet. There are quite a few of these Eternals—too many even for a movie of this length. We also get Kingo (a newly ripped Kumail Nanjiani), who can throw bursts of glowing CGI energy and has spent the 20th and 21st centuries posing as a dynasty of Bollywood stars; perennially childlike illusionist Sprite (Lia McHugh); the deaf and Flash-fast Makkari (Lauren Ridloff); embittered mind-controller Druig (Barry Keoghan); blade-generating cipher goddess Thena (Anjelina Jolie); tech/weapon support Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry); resident puncher Gilgamesh (Don Lee); and wise, maternal team leader Ajak (Salma Hayek).
Eternals leaps around in time, flashing back from present day to scenes from 7,000 years of history; some half-a-century after 2001: A Space Odyssey, blockbusters are now counting on audiences repeatedly following the eon-spanning shift from thrown femur to spacecraft. Where were these heavy-hitters when the Avengers needed them, a casual viewer might wonder. The film addresses that, awkwardly shoehorning in talk of franchise brethren. Turns out the Eternals have a pretty narrow jurisdiction: Their bosses, towering space gods called Celestials, have deployed them to our blue marble only to deal with a rampaging species of generic, sinewy beasties called Deviants, which seems like a rather inefficient use of superheroic resources. (Deviants are not to be confused with Variants, another recent addition to the MCU canon; Marvel might need to start issuing a glossary with every ticket sold.)
The director and co-writer this time is Chloé Zhao, making an astronomical leap in budget and scope from her last movie, the Best Picture-winning drama Nomadland. Prerelease buzz centered on the supposed real-world tactility she was said to have brought to this series of rotating green-screen backdrops. Indeed, Eternals has some nice, pretty vistas. It also has an actual (albeit very brief) sex scene, adding a touch of fleeting carnality to a weirdly sexless movie world of virginal super soldiers and chaste romances, and a tone marginally more solemn than the average MCU multiplex-filler, appropriate for a story that literally spans the annals of human existence.
Yet Eternals proves, maybe once and for all, that who’s behind the camera of these quality-controlled blockbusters may not matter so much. What’s the difference in shooting a real landscape and just generating one on a laptop if it’s going to serve as wallpaper for another round of visually undistinguished comic-book combat? As an action movie, Marvel’s latest offers more of the weightless digital same: variably convincing avatars of the actors darting across ashen beachfronts, tossing fireballs and tendrils. Where Nomadland evinced a clear Terrence Malick influence in its fluid, butterfly-in-the-wind camerawork and cutting, Eternals occasionally suggests what The Tree Of Life might look like with Kevin Feige micromanaging the awe and wonder over the filmmaker’s shoulder. However singular Zhao’s sensibilities, they’re no match for the uniformity of Marvel’s previsualization protocol.
The bigger problem here may be that the characters seem a little previsualized, too. Despite the depth of the ensemble (and the acting talents assembled to bring it to life), these Eternals really only come in three varieties: brooding, quippy, and both. It’s difficult to imagine any of them spinning off to a solo vehicle. Last summer’s similarly themed The Old Guard could be something of a drag, but there was a logic to its mopiness: Endless life would lose its appeal after a few centuries, wouldn’t it? Eternals flirts with the melancholy and the neurosis that countless lifetimes of service might instill in its eponymous supergroup, only to essentially conclude that thousands of years on the planet just turn you into, well, a second-string Avenger.
The plot ends up amounting to a kind of big-budget Big Chill, as the Eternals slowly reassemble after a death in the family. Zhao keeps it moving along, across continents and ages and passages of breathless expository information, without ever transcending the pro forma MCU storytelling template. It’s distinguished this time mostly by tonal gearshifts that might give even thick-necked Thanos whiplash: In between jokey scenes of demigods addicted to cell phones and the usual sitcom interpersonal conflict, these characters wring their hands about genocide and free will. They also pop into the fresh atomic ruins of Hiroshima, in a scene that rivals X-Men: Apocalypse’s field trip to Auschwitz in the arena of questionably tasteful historical revisionism.
A decade ago, the idea of a big-screen treatment of these particular superheroes would be inconceivable. While the Eternals may be among the most literally godlike characters in the whole Marvel catalog, their book also qualifies as decidedly obscure source material; no one would call them household names. Yet Eternals never truly taps into its nutty, ’70s-prog-rock potential, from a visual or a narrative perspective. It’s probably good for business that Marvel can cram one of its weirder, more out-there properties into a one-size-fits-all formula for success. But when even the story of ancient, planet-sized gods and their undying servants comes out looking like just another Marvel movie, one might be forced to conclude that the studio is starting to leave the eccentric pleasures of its comic-book universe on the page.
422 Comments
I didn’t think The Old Guard was a drag at all. I thought it was a blast.
I really enjoyed it too. The thought of someone from the past living in the future (or present day) is a concept that intrigues me.
The Old Guard was pretty good.
Same.The linked review was a positive one, too.
It was a typical Netflix action film. Top-drawer actors, decent script, well-shot, no real budget for movie-level stunts or effects. I think of them as a kind of middle-ground between TV and film.
Netflix originals tend to have a limited ceiling, but their floor is also pretty high.
Yep. Every film is between a 6/10 and a 7.
I thought the action scenes were kind of perfunctory and if any of them went on any longer they would have dragged, but the actual plot and character interactions were interesting enough that I found it to be overall compelling viewing.Also nice to see your name again around these parts, I don’t think I have seen you in a while and its always good to see another regular from before the kinjapocalypse!
That’s fair. I thought the action sequences were fine, but they certainly weren’t Fury Road or Dune.
Also, thanks! I struggle with Kinja, lots of log-in problems and the like, so I’m not around often. But it seems to be behaving slightly better this past week? Maybe?
I could go as far as “fine,” they were at least coherent and effective. I just watch a LOT of action flicks and its always a bummer when mid-to-big budget movies can’t deliver an action sequence as exciting as some of the lower budget and Direct-to-Video/Streaming stuff I watch. But Old Guard didn’t have endless shaky-cam, quick cuts, distracting green screen/CGI, or any of the over or undersaturated color schemes that so many movies have, so I will give it credit there.Reply Notifications actually seem to be working again, as it brought me right here instead of making me expand and search through all the comments for your response. Maybe somebody finally bothered to push an update or something. We can only hope Kinja is back to being crappy but semi-functional instead of shitty and broken!
Count me in with TaumpyTearrs at being delighted to see you here again. (I, meanwhile, have been relegated to the greys, due to losing the login details for my previous account and needing to create a new one). I hope things are going well for you and you enjoyed that new Venom film.
The same thing happened to me, hence the name change. I was greyed for a long, long time, and then suddenly wasn’t. Not looking a gift horse so on and so forth.
I haven’t seen it yet! I know! I know! But I had to prioritize Dune.
I still haven’t been to see Dune yet! And I really, really want to see it. But organising babysitting was already a right chore, and now I’ve got myself a breakthrough Covid infection. Hopefully by the week after next it’ll still be on somewhere.
I hope you’re feeling better!
Oh yeah, much better thanks. Though everyone else in the family got it too.And at the weekend I finally got to see Dune! I liked it and thought it was good. (Though the soundtrack’s a bit heavy on the Hans Zimmer Brown Noise, imo).
“Even with Chloé Zhao behind the camera and agreeably weird source material, the MCU won’t bend its own formula”
You say “even with” Zhao, as though the MCU hasn’t bent its own formula already, for the likes of Thor: Ragnarok or GotG, or Disney+ shows like WandaVision and Loki.
Hell, even Winter Soldier was more than “just” an MCU story.
“the world’s biggest ongoing movie franchise has finally, officially found religion, adding literal gods”
Thor.
Their bosses, towering space gods called Celestials, have deployed them to our blue marble only to deal with a rampaging species of generic, sinewy beasties called Deviants, which seems like a rather inefficient use of superheroic resources. Which is ironic since, in the comics, Thanos is a Deviant…Also, when you get right down to it, the Eternals are basically the Inhumans except the protagonists don’t own slaves.
Don’t kink shame celestial beings.
I guess America was just being “kinky” from 1619 to 1869…
Eson still probably told them to not get involved.“Why?”“Got a message from my boss. Kevin said …”
Plus the Inhumans have a history of vaguely interesting characters and stories (I do say vaguely). But that show ruined our chances of ever seeing any of that on screen.
Well the Inhumans thrown into a blender with the DC New Gods. Kirby has a great visual style but he read Chariots of the God once and kinda decided to do that in comics for the next couple decades over and over
That, plus he was bouncing back and forth between Marvel and DC during that time, so he had to keep re-skinning his ideas as well.
Kirby was inarguably the towering, singular genius of his medium.It’s just that his medium was comic book art, not comic book scripts.
There’s some truth in that, but Kirby was messing mythological stories and characters well before that book was published.
That’s a little uncharitable: I think it’s very clear he was excited by the mythic storytelling possibilities that the Silver Surfer and Galactus suggested and sort of transmuted that aesthetic with his “Tales of Asgard” segments and then constructed a pantheon of “NEW GODS”. The relationship of the New Gods to Earth was supposed to be roughly analogous to America and the USSR’s to third-world nations (with Superman as a bizarre curveball that no one, even Darkseid, expected when he started poking around). THE ETERNALS is more explicitly influenced by CHARIOTS and that might have been a measure to differentiate it from the NEW GODS he had been forced to abandon in his move back to Marvel.
Thanos has the Deviant gene, but he’s not a Deviant.Yer slippin’, Lazzy!
Isn’t Thanos half-Deviant, half Eternal. His brother is Eros/Starfox
The Eternals and Inhumans have some broad similarities — the superbeings with a shared culture, the alien origins, a loose connection to the evolution of humans — but are very different in purpose. Inhumans are a reclusive civilization, hidden from the world like Shangri La, the mystical utopian retreat in the novel Lost Horizon. The Eternals is a meld of Kirby’s fascination with sci fi classic 2001: A Space Oddyssey and classical mythology. The Inhumans are an exotic culture trying to preserve itself, the Eternals are pawns in a cosmic game (or elements in a cosmic experiment).
I always read it as the Kree were imitating the Celestials when they created the Inhumans to act as a version of their Eternals. Their massive ego about the greatness of their civilization and all that. Of course their experiment is a smaller scale than the Celestials b/c they are not space gods.
And than later on the Celestials also created the X-Gene for funsies.
That may be true as far as character motivations go in the stories published after original Kirby (co) created appearances (with the caveat some those narratives were retcons or addendums of the existing stories), but I don’t think Kirby had that in mind when he first made both groups.
No of course not. Kirby worked quick and the ideas came fast.
Shhhh we don’t talk about Inhumans after that TV show….
We’re not dragging the Inhumans of Agents of SHIELD into that mess, they were baller and should be talked about a lot!
Incorrect. Thanos is an Eternal with the Deviant gene.
strictly speaking, thanos is not a deviant; he’s an eternal with the deviant gene.i am fully aware of how stupid that distinction is.
I believe Thanos is an Eternal in comics, with a recessive deviant gene that makes him look like he does. Much like Reject, the beautiful Deviant, except the reverse.
Correction; Thanos is a Eternal with what is called “Deviant Syndrome”.Basically, he’s a very powerful Eternal that looks superficially like a Deviant.Yes, that is a retcon. It’s better than the Alex Ross/Earth X explanation that Thanos is part Skrull due to the look of his chin. My eyes are just recovering from being rolled back so far from that silliness. It’s like something John Byrne dreams in his sleep.
Thanos being connected to the Skrulls makes a tiny bit of sense, as the Skrull Deviants won their genetic arms race centuries ago and the entire current-day Skrull species are Deviants.
I guess the Celestials decided that Deviants would be marked by wrinkly chins. Who are we to wonder at their grand designs?
Which is what bothered me about how the Deviants were depicted in this movie. They should have been humanoid but on the more grotesque and monstrous side.
Yeah, now that we’re post-release, spoilers, blah blah: it seemed like they were heading towards making that one Deviant a character, but then they just stopped. It felt like an abandoned idea, although I hate proclaiming things like that when I don’t know.
Yeah they pretty much wasted Kro, the Deviant in question, who actually had a romantic relationship with Thena in the comics.
Ah man, imagine if the screenwriters massaged the timeline enough to make the evolved Deviant the source of the genes that Thanos’ parents spliced into him.
I believe in comics Thanos was an Eternal with a Deviant gene that gave him his appearance. His echo in the Deviants was Reject, the beautiful Deviant. Straight up beauty = good and ugly = evil. Not to subtle there Kirby…
“weirdly sexless”
Yeah, isn’t it weird that superhero movies aren’t drenched in sex the way most PG-13 movies are?
“Eternals flirts with the melancholy and the neurosis that countless lifetimes of service might instill in its eponymous supergroup, only to essentially conclude that thousands of years on the planet just turn you into, well, a second-string Avenger”I feel this is kind of the pull of the movie for myself, and I guess I hope Zhao leaves a bigger impression than the conclusion found here, but we’ll see.
Wow, 157 minutes! No kidding!
Yes, the length seems…eternal.
Well done general. I will kneel before you for that one.
Plus add in the ads and coming attractions.
By the way, news from opening day (Friday) at my theater: NO ads, NO previews. Very strange.
“Damn, that’s a long movie.”
“Which bliyat made this film so long?”
The same length as dune…I find this complaint silly as dune was boring and even more visually monotonous….
The difference between The Eternals and Dune is that I’ll definitely watch The Eternals at some point, and I definitely won’t watch Dune ever.
Um. Aren’t’ Thor and Loki technically “Gods”?
i deeply loved ‘the rider’ and thought ‘nomadland’ was a flawed, but ultimately very good movie.aside from the ones that have come out this year, i’ve also seen every mcu movie and have generally liked most of them, and loved a solid handful.i should be charged up for this one, but i cannot get over how much this movie just looks like homework.
I haven’t seen a Marvel movie since Spider-Man: Far from Home and I’m not in much of a hurry to catch up. The Avengers movies tell a fairly self-contained story that wraps up nicely with Endgame, and I don’t feel like committing to another 22 movies or so to get that sense of closure again. Seem like a good run.Now, when the next Thor or Guardians of the Galaxy comes out, I guess some of the fan service will go over my head. So be it, I guess.
I haven’t seen a Marvel movie since Spider-Man: Far from Home and I’m not in much of a hurry to catch up. To be fair that’s only Black Widow and Shang-Chi.
Somehow it feels like more. Maybe because there are now, what, 3 or 4 MCU shows on Disney+.
Five when Hawkeye starts next month
Nomadland was poverty porn like her other film She works with great editors and cinematographers… honestly that’s what zhao is bringing to the mix…
That’s an interesting point. I think sometimes when we talk about directors, a huge amount of that is credit that should go to cinematographers.
I liked The Rider a lot, but Nomadland was like a rough sketch of a movie with beautiful cinematography. Take that away and you’re left with some disconnected skits with wildly uneven acting.
Isn’t Chloe Zhao the credited editor for Nomadland?
sorry, “Nomadland” was poverty porn (brought to you by Bezos ™!)“The Rider” was miserabilism, there’s a difference
I tend to disagree with Dowd a lot of the time, but I think it’s telling that a film that attempts to introduce 10 characters at once doesn’t seem to be successful at introducing any of them. This has been sort of a running problem with ‘team’ superhero movies for awhile and it’s sort of telling that the most successful of all of the movie franchises was the one that introduced all of the team’s core members in other movies beforehand, even if Hawkeye’s introduction was more or less just a slightly extended cameo in Thor.
That’s the exact reason why I suspect – not seen it or anything – that a large number of them might not survive past this movie. Future ensemble movies would be a whole hell of a lot easier to manage if there are only 2 or 3 Eternals sticking around.
A bunch of dead Eternals would kind of undercut the title, no?
No, they’re just eternally dead now.
No one would suspect it! Which is exactly why I suspect it.
Well, it’s had to develop an ensemble when half the movie is action scenes. (Technically, you can develop characters with action, but that requires a lot more creativity.)The Avengers already showed that you don’t actually need a bunch of setup movies to do a good ensemble. It does a masterful job of setting its characters up in just a few scenes so that even someone who hasn’t seen a Marvel movie would love it (and considering the relative box office takes of Phase 1, a large chunk likely hadn’t.) And while the characters had technically been in previous films, Norton Hulk was basically a different character, Window was a generic femme fatale, Hawkeye was a glorified cameo, and Thor’s personality was retooled.
I saw that movie in theaters in 2012 with someone who had never seen a marvel movie and they hated it, and honestly they were 100% right none of these mcu movies are worth a higher rating than a c-. None of them.
Given that films like Alien, Aliens and Predator seemed especially successful at introducing multiple characters whose names and attributes I can remember decades later just from watching the films, that *is* telling.
I’m generally a fan of the MCU, but I’m also generally a fan of Star Wars and thought Rogue One was absolute garbage because of how lousily it introduced and developed characters we were supposed to care about. Considering maybe five people on the planet give a shit about the Eternals…yeah, my interest in this movie is solely based on seeing what Zhao does with such a bizarre studio choice.
This has been sort of a running problem with ‘team’ superhero movies for awhile
But what is a “team superhero movie” other than a movie where everyone is a hero?Lots of Marvel movies juggle multiple supporting characters. So if Eternals is set up where there’s a core cast of Eternals and then supporting members within it…that should work out okay.I’m still interested, because I know NOTHING about these guys and the last time that happened (Guardians, Shang Chi) I enjoyed it.
I’d say that Guardians did a pretty good job of introducing its characters, but I do agree that Marvel movies that try to stuff too much stuff in can really suffer. I think Avengers: Age of Ultron is a pretty good example of this, as is Thor: The Dark World, since it suddenly introduces a bunch of Asgardians and expects us to care about them.
It’s interesting to see Marvel retool as it goes. Black Panther is a huge hit and the role of Wakanda is emphasized in projects. Captain Marvel is a mild failure and they clearly cut down her role in Endgame. I wonder, if this flops at the box office, whether they might find a way to simply ignore the Eternals entirely. But maybe it’ll be a huge hit, the success of Shang Chi showed clearly how little my predictive power is worth.
Captain Marvel made a billion dollars. And Endgame was almost complete by the time it released (they came out like two months apart). Carol’s role was modest in Endgame because she’s insanely overpowered, and for the time being it’s best to keep her on the sidelines and use her as a last resort, lest she become a narrative cheat. It has nothing to do with any so-called “failures.”
As noted to the other comments correctly noting my mistake, I am entirely off-base here. Not sure how I got it so wrong (apart from relying on personal impression instead of bothering to look it up), but either way, you’re totally right!
If this is true why did they make her shut down her Youtube channel and take a break from social media? Have you seen the video excerpts from her joining other cast members on the promotion circuit? At a bare minimum Renner, Cheadle, and Hemsworth can’t stand her. I doubt very much they’re the only ones.
Everyone has their pet Marvel contrarian hot takes, I guess mine is: I really loved Captain Marvel. I think it improves upon repeat viewings. The only thing I don’t like is the Gwen Stephani needle drop late in the picture – but that’s it. I enjoy that Larson underplays the role. I didn’t expect how she got her powers – it was a unique enough origin story. Marvel was due for a Super-Woman. Her payoff in Endgame was awesome. And I resolutely do not care about on & off set TMZ style gossip.
I liked how it basically served as a prequel to Agents of SHIELD.
I was pretty disappointed with “Just a Girl” being used in the action sequence, despite me loving that song back in the day when the movie took place. Especially when “Celebrity Skin” by Hole popped up in the end credits. If they had not gone for the most popular songs, I really think “Violet” by Hole would have kicked ass in the action scene and “Just a Girl” would have been fine for the end credits (and “Violet” would have been more era-appropriate as “Celebrity Skin didn’t come out until ‘98).
I think I said it in that film’s review, but “Volcano Girls” by Verucca Salt would have been perfect in that fight scene…and way less on-the-nose.
in what way was captain marvel a mild failure? it’s the 6th highest grossing MCU movie of all time. it was a huge financial success.
Maybe from a quality standpoint, not from a financial standpoint. From what I remember, Captain Marvel didn’t make a cultural impact the way Black Panther or the Spiderman movies did (high bar, I know), if you leave aside all the incels complaining about Larson’s outspokenness.
The black panther movie was sub par…-It had such bad unfinished CGI I asked for my money back-The accent that the main character was allowed to use by production was ill-conceived and borderline hostile to every single culture on the planet…-if there ever was a Mary Sue if I saw one…-it was honestly just boring –
The CG was definitely sketchy, and even outright bad in the final fight. I’m actually kind of surprised they haven’t fixed it in rerelease.
The accent was… eh. I’ve heard worse fake ones and real ones that sound very close. I’m just glad they didn’t really go for the supremely stereotypical ‘Hollywood African accent’ and went for a blend of real ones. They specifically used the Xhosa language and accent as the base for Wakanda and let the cast use variations to differentiate the tribes. Which led to interesting accents as Shuri’s actress is from Guyana but also British and M’Baku’s actor and tribe members went for a more Nigerian blend in the accent. Chadwick Boseman was definitely overextending the accent and generally seemed to be overly focused on his pronunciation. You’re not using the term Mary Sue properly.
To each, his own on the boring thing.
No-one talks about the god-awful accents! Will Smith level bad “Tell de troot!”
You are totally right. I honestly thought it had done tepidly but in retrospect that’s so far off base, I’m not sure what I was thinking of.
You must have been replaced by a Skrull.
Also worth noting that Endgame was done filming before Captain Marvel started; her part was already cemented before her movie even came out. In fact, Endgame was her first time playing the character. Understandably the writers of Endgame didn’t want to use her overly much in a movie that was about fan service wrap ups for the rest of the huge ensemble cast.
What, Captain Marvel was a giant success.
I don’t think her role was cut down at all in Endgame. Her role was actually shot for that before she actually had shot Captain Marvel.
IIRC Brie Larson filmed her Endgame stuff before Captain Marvel – her role was small and generic because they didn’t really know much about her as a character while filming. I’m definitely excited to see where she can go from here out.
Edit: I saw below you didn’t double down on this, so nevermind. No need to pile on.
uh….you realize that Endgame was filmed BEFORE Captain Marvel, right? Black Panther was also filmed very close to Infinity War, so it’s not like the decision to include Wakanda in IW was a reactionary measure….you’re a fucking idiot.
You’re a fucking moron.
What? Captain Marvel wildly exceeded expectations. It made over $1.1 billion globally and $426 million domestic.
If anything, Disney underestimated it, as the Russos filmed Captain Marvel’s parts in Endgame before production on the solo film started. Since Infinity War and Endgame were also basically done deals as far as story around the same time as Black Panther, you could also argue they underused Wakanda and Black Panther, even though the feature decently enough in Infinity War.
Maybe you just think Captain Marvel was a failure because you are among the legions of Brie Larson haters?
Don’t you know all super-heroine movies are failures? Except for Wonder Woman 1? It’s amazing when people even notice the women in the team movies. Not going after OP, just noting fanboy reactions over the years.
As others have stated, Captain Marvel’s role in Endgame was actually filmed first, and Brie Larson has stated that no one knew how she was really supposed to be portrayed since the script hadn’t been finalized for her solo film yet.
They rushed Captain Marvel’s movie, and still made something that was fun and let Sam Jackson and Ben Mendohlson shine steal a lot of scenes. I still think they didn’t know what they really wanted Carol’s personality to be and just went with a generic cocky pilot one that had her smirking all the time when she wasn’t quipping. Add in the really forced and narrative-interrupting empowerment messages and music choices and it kinda got cringe-worthy. I get that they wouldn’t have been as stereotypical in the 90’s where the film takes place but they could’ve definitely done better. Particularly with her childhood flashbacks.
It should also be noted that the film had some serious pushback and review bombing from a certain negative online crowd that dwell within their own echo chambers of hate. On top of that, Captain Marvel in comics is frequently used as someone who’s on the wrong side of conflicts since Marvel has been throwing the character under the bus for storylines for decades. The character was getting a lot of hate for the Civil War 2 comic storyline, which also reminded people of how she was portrayed in Civil War 1 and it just led to a mess of “Captain Marvel is the worst” attitudes.
Even with all that the film still did fairly well, and better than many others.
Never really liked the Eternals in the comics. The most interesting stuff about them was the people above them pulling the strings, which is why I’m excited about this. The implications of the larger MCU as a result of this are pretty exciting. I know that’s a stupid take, considering most Marvel movies only advance the larger plot within a post credit scene, but whatever. I’m 20 movies invested into this huge franchise. I’ll follow it until they run of stuff to make
Yeah, I’ve long assumed Eternals exists not just to swell up the roster of available MCU characters, but to help set the stage for an MCU that will be cosmic in scope most of the time instead of occasionally.
And that’s where marvel needs to be careful. Once you get into “super heroes saving the universe against progenitor space gods”, it a slippery slope of trying to top it with even higher stakes going forward. Like I recently skimmed the DC wiki about Batman: Death Metal, and it’s just so ridiculous how there are supreme gods, and then gods a dimension above them, and then some sentient force or something above that, all controlling an infinite multiverse, and yet the heroes always pull it out. It’s just makes my eyes roll and it’s hard to take seriously. Even Gurren Lagan knew when to reign it in. Lol.
I am a life long comic book nerd but up until a few years ago if someone said “The Eternals” I would say “Who?”.
I vaguely remember reading Neil Gaiman’s re-launch attempt from the mid-2000’s but that’s it.
Exactly. Which is why I have next to no interest in this. With every single Marvel movie release, I’ve had some kind of familiarity with even the most obscure characters. With the Eternals, the name evoked no recognition for me other than “Oh yeah, ‘70s Jack Kirby space-god shit, right?”
Starlord man, I mean wait a minute…
did you grow up in the 1970s? I always would remember them as that New Gods rip off that everybody knew existed but never actually read. (Yes, i know Kirby was ripping himself off.)
There’s a pocket community on the internet that is ardent in its belief that comics from the 1970’s were awesome and the films should be more faithful to the source material. I read those comics, though, and most of them were nearly unreadable. If, as a director or screenwriter, you go back to that material and extract a single idea that you can spin a new story around, in my book that’s a job well done.
I’m all for taking Kirby’s art direction and putting it on the big screen, but some of his storylines were questionable
I’m all for taking Kirby’s art direction and putting it on the big screen That’s one of the many things I liked about Black Panther – some of the interiors in Wakanda looked like they were pulled right off Kirby’s pages.
I’m all for taking Kirby’s art direction and putting it on the big screen,Same, the MCU could benefit from his colorful aesthetic, especially space gods. Say what you will about Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but at least he made the New Gods look other-worldly. The Eternals just look like, well, famous people.
His second run on Captain America (Mad Bomb era) was a total mediocrity. Man couldn’t write to save his life.
If Eliot Kalan couldn’t stand them, nobody can.
I love Kirby’s work and acknowledge its enormous influence on the industry, but there’s been there’s weird over-correction of sorts to the whole Stan Lee thing in the past 10-15 years of deifying everything he did.His art was generally always great but his storytelling choices through his DC era and return to Marvel in the 70s was frequently questionable.Eternals is a concept which has largely never caught on with wide comic audiences, despite repeated attempts to relaunch it over the years.That said, I really enjoyed the 2006 relaunch of it and I’m really looking forward to seeing how this movie plays out.
The Eternals seem an awful lot like the Justice League from Outer Space. Ikaris is Superman, Thena is Wonder Woman, Makkari is the Flash, Druig is Martian Manhunter (e.g. mind powers). Phastos is Bruce Wayne (as their genius tech-guy, not as a Batman analog). Sprite has light/image powers (nearest thing to Green Lantern, though not really).
Even the original Infinity Gauntlet run was quite bad. I’m not saying the Brolin film version was perfect, but those issues were tough to get through.
I think Thanos and a lot of Marvel’s cosmic crew are great characters in their own right, but the Eternals have always felt like an off-brand New Gods to me. I love Chloe Zhao, and the MCU is at it’s worst a still solid enterprise, so this was well worth the shot taken.There may be a tonal, well, not ceiling so let’s say box that the MCU abides by even when it stretches that they can’t quite shake. For me, it was that the What if series never got as wild as it could’ve set as completely one-offs.
But your just talking about the finale two episodes of What If. I’d argue that series just slapped together it’s overarching continuity for the finale but it WAS one-off storylines until that point.
So tell me, what was it actually that you didn’t like about it? Cuz ur above argument is not valid.
It’s not just a matter of plot connections, it’s the kind of story and arcs that are used. Tone and structure I thought What if was all pretty standard with different winners and loser and some body swaps, and ultimately tied up to a superteam. I suppose the Black Widow/murder mystery and bro-comedy Thor mean there was more variety than I give the whole series credit for, but not a mediation of fame, like the good half of Hancock, or coming-of-age with powers like Chronicle, but instead instead origins for heroes and villains and the Watcher frame of “heroes always find a way.” With their Dr. Strange both I guess. The MCU isn’t entirely bereft of flex from it’s standard story, but it always ropes it in. Like Wandavision being about grief until it’s time to fight and put it back into the universe box. Gwen Stacy becomes Spider-Woman and the entire episode is from Peter Parker/photojournalist’s point of view is what I mean. A What if body swap with a dash of Marvels, not just a punch-up.It wouldn’t be a tentpole blockbuster, and maybe it was foolish to imagine anything else at this size and budget, but for the Eternals Chloe Zhao clearly set up hopes for more than anybody recruited yet with me. (And I haven’t seen it, so maybe it’ll work for me?) Even before this review I was thinking of how much Terence Malick I see in her work, so I hoped the opening of Tree of Life, or Sprite running through the woods like The New World. Okay, not the Eternals, I always pictured something like 20 minutes of the Silver Surfer watching nebulae form and continents shift.Can superheroes tell a story that doesn’t end in a fight? Yes. Will it happen in a franchise tentpole movie? No. I thought What if was a pretty open space to shake it up though.
Dr Strange ended without a fight – there were lots of fights leading up to the final conflict, but in the end the big conflict with Dormammu was solved by negotiation. The movie was pretty weak in other areas, but I did like that part.
Strange won with his clever wits and persistence, by setting an unsolvable trap. That was different from just a smash-fest.
I’m largely with you, although I have taken quite a bit to the most recent run, which really works hard to give them a different identity, different themes, and a different focus than the various X-Men/Avengers/Inhumans they could otherwise be a little too similar to.It’s unfortunate they couldn’t follow/build on that, as it could have provided a workable explanation for where they were during the Infinity War, and also allowed them to use the voice of “The Machine” as a built-in narrator
Is that Kieron Gillen? I would have thought they would grab as many ideas from him as they could.
When other people TALK about The Eternals I find them to be interesting, but I have never really gotten into their comics. Jack Kirby was a genius, but I think The Eternals are more compelling as part of his narrative than they are in reality. I read years of Avengers comics, and any time an Eternal was brought in, no matter how much they were sold as fun, or sexy, or strong, they bored the hell out of me – even now I can’t tell you much of what they did (I think Sersi was in a love triangle and Starfox…smirked a lot…and Gilgamesh was memory holed after about two issues??). So putting them in the MCU, where they will have to be a part of a larger ensemble, feels to me like Feige just not knowing what else to do and having a lot of money to burn. It’s a shame The Inhumans was made as such a spite project by a hack, because the idea of them (a woman with literally killer hair…an adorable dog…a man who will shatter cities if he tries to speak…) probably would have been more fun for viewers if done properly. I do hope the film does well enough to keep exploring these characters, and these excellent actors, but I have no interest in seeing it…although to be fair, other than a few movies most of my MCU interest amounts to the Disney+ shows and perusing online commentary.
it would’ve been interesting to see where Kirby’s run had gone had it sold well enough to continue for a few dozen more issues. It felt like he was ultimately going towards a “deviants, eternals, and humans must learn to co-exist harmoniously in order to survive the Celestial’s judgement”, which might have been interesting. We’ll never know tho
Considering I had no idea (as well as AV Club writers) how great Shang Chi would hit with audiences, I’m starting to like this new phase of Marvel. They’re stepping away from their main line to let audiences grow to love new characters instead of finding the 10th way to bring back Loki.
It was pretty silent at my theater when Shang Chi first popped up on screen, now the next time he appears…ya just know the theater is going to go nuts 🙂
Right, but to me, it seems like these Eternals SHOULD be the major ones pulling the strings, but it seems like they’re just the Lord of the Rings Maiar? Following the analogy, Eternal’s bosses=Creation God(s) aka Eru of LOTR, and the Avengers would be closest to the Fellowship?So if the Eternals don’t pull the strings, why are we even doing this movie? Oh wait, I already know the answer, so we can have mysterious gods-above-gods to refer back to in the next 15 sequels.I’m too old for this shit. The minute an Eternal shows up in a Spiderman or Marvel film I actually care about, I’m walking out.
I largely agree with this. The Eternals seem fine whenever I’ve seen them in the comics (mostly Neil Gaiman’s version) but I’m always MORE interested in the fact that they’re pawns/heralds/envoys/our only hope against the Celestials. And the looming threat of the Celestials is a weird ticking time bomb for the entire setting, with beings of unfathomable power whose judgments are as arbitrary as they are unstoppable, making everyone from Thor and Odin to Doctor Doom and Mr. Fantastic look like helpless monkeys flailing about with sticks.
So yeah, I’ll absolutely shell out the cost of a movie ticket to see a slow, meandering story about a bunch of really good-looking immortals debating their role in the service of a grand design of armor-plated space gods. That just means I’m likely to get MORE space-gods.
I really liked Nomadland and The Rider, so this is disappointing, and generously I’m thinking this is just a mismatch. If they’re going to continue making these movies, I hope they do continue to try to find ways to put a new spin on them. I know he’s shown no interest, but Bong Joon-ho would probably be a better fit and would make a really interesting superhero movie.
Ok, so that guy in the center of the screen shot *isn’t* Sebastian Stan?
Richard Madden
I read the original series when it came out. Even as a kid, I could tell it wasn’t very good. The dialog was horrible. The only thing good about it was the art. 10 year old me gave up on it after about 5 issues. I don’t have high hopes for this film. I understand the characters have been re-imagined several times over….still a hard pass from me. Especially at 2 1/2 hours. I think this flops.
Eternals is a concept which has repeatedly failed to catch on over the 45 years or so Marvel have had them.The only significant success they’ve had was the Neil Gaiman miniseries from 2006-07 but even then, it wasn’t exactly dominating the charts (though that is also because it was coming out along with Civil War (and vaguely ties into it) and DC’s One Year Later which were both a big deal at the time.
Well, in the jump from comics to film, the Guardians of the Galaxy went from “Who?” to well … you know in film. Could in theory happen here but I think it’s going to be an uphill climb. I suspect I’m going to give the win to Agents of SHIELD’s Inhumans for Marvel non-human elites (as opposed to those other ones) when all is said and done.
Absolutely and I’m certainly hoping this gives the characters their due and makes them work in a way that they haven’t in the comics.I’ve got high hopes.
We’re Australians.We don’t do high hopes.You know that.
Haha indeed. Even low expectations aren’t worth having after the endless disappointments of the Howard era and the Tories of the past eight years with their strong “yeah, nah get fucked ay” vibe.
I can at least have the memory of blocking Howard’s toilet with a particularly big dump and then elbowing him in the back in the race to hide the evidence of my crime (or civic duty from your point of view).
I can’t stand the prick and the continuing deification of him by the tories remains a source of great annoyance.
It’s because Gaiman is good at recognizing immortality, omniscience, near-omnipotence, and having a personal relationship with your creator who you KNOW to be a real being, as great traits for interrogating philosophical concepts. This goes against the house style Marvel wants, both in comics and cinematically, which is “snarky explosion hits sky laser good”.
The Eternals would thus be better as a movie like The Fountain or, as mentioned, 2001. That’s simply not for everyone, though, which makes it less salable.
After a decade-plus of superheroes with messiah complexes, the world’s biggest ongoing movie franchise has finally, officially found religion, adding literal gods to its ever-expanding roster… Except for Norse gods, which are sort of described as being aliens, but still… Kirby went from Thor & Asgard to New Gods with DC to this. The Eternals didn’t catch on because it was hardly revolutionary by the time it was published. And frankly, the comic just wasn’t that good.Also, Zhao may be a talented filmmaker but superhero movies requires a different set of skills that aren’t a necessity in other genres. Being able to dump the lore onto a viewer, film the requisite action scenes, while still being able to develop interesting characters is not something every director can do, even the good-to-great ones. And Kirby, despite all his brilliance as an artist – wasn’t exactly a model of clean storytelling to begin with.
So, less Ryan Coogler-Black Panther, more Ang Lee-Hulk. That’s a shame.
Yeah, it’ll be *pretty as fuck*, but not terribly engaging. Which, IMO, is mostly a problem with the property.
People remember Ang Lee’s Hulk as being distinctive among superhero movies, unlike The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton.
Coogler’s black panther was terrible and had unfinished cgi while ang’s hulk told a full story with ground breaking vfx
But he still looked like Shrek with a Paul Simon wig.
I think it’s an exaggeration to say that *every* Marvel movie swallows its director. That’s certainly the case for a lot of them, which is why they snap up promising young indie people and have them toe the line: no one watches Captain Marvel and sees a Boden and Fleck film. But Ragnarok and Black Panther prove that it’s not only possible to leave your mark, but to be wildly successful with it, too.I think that there will be an adjustment at some point. Feige is a lot of things, but he’s not dumb.
Ragnarok, yeah, but I didn’t see anything particularly specific about the direction of Black Panther.
i would even say the thor thing is a very specific example where they had a franchise that people didn’t seem to like very much, but starring a character they needed to keep, that just so happened to have an actor who had recently proven comedy bonafides.thor 3 is an exception that proves the rule.also to the original commenters point, i really liked the idea that boden and fleck were directing captain marvel, because i really loved their other movies (sugar, in particular, is fantastic), and then they really didn’t bring any of that to the movie, and have since been replaced on the sequel.
Captain Marvel wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either. Action movies draw on a specific set of directing skills. And sci-fi action is even more specific.
Maybe it’s not particularly obvious, but it’s definitely there. Killmonger was raised in Harlem in the comics, but here he comes from Coogler’s native Oakland. And Ludwig Goransson was a frequent collaborator with Coogler before getting the Oscar-winning gig here.
Okay, but what do those facts actually result in? Can you honestly say the movie would look or feel any different if Killmonger was from Harlem? It’s not like the brief scenes in Oakland are in any way specific to that place.Same for the music. Can you repeat any melody from that score from memory, because I certainly can’t.
Setting his origin in Oakland rather than Harlem expands awareness of the black American diaspora within the MCU a bit more. Another director might not have bothered to make that subtle distinction, but Harlem is such an easy default for “black America” within our pop culture landscape.
From what I’ve heard, the score was pretty celebrated at the time and a couple of themes (Killmonger’s Theme and United Nations) got some high praise for its incorporation of African instruments and phrases into its score, and I liked those myself.In terms of direction, I’d start with costume design which he and Boseman took pretty seriously. Also, as a Black moviegoer, I noticed that the way that he filmed Black actors was much more flattering than in other Marvel movies on the whole and a lot of people commended the film for the women in the film and I think that fits with Coogler’s tendency to focus on the inner lives of women who often play supportive roles to Black men in his film (Tessa Thompson’s character in Creed and Octavia Spencer’s in Fruitvale Station come to mind). I also listened to a podcast where someone drew a great line between Oscar Grant, Donnie Creed, and Killmonger that was pretty compelling. All of that being said, Black Panther was Coogler’s third film, so I don’t know if there’s as much as, say a Raimi or a Whedon, so there’s that.
It’s really, really hard to prove a negative here, but given how Black Panther dealt with racial inequality and the reckoning between outright hostility and peaceful protest, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Coogler very much had a lot to do with what worked about the film and the message it managed to work in while also succeeding as a superhero film. Like, are you really saying Jon Favreau could have made Black Panther?There was also the long take fight in the casino, very much a personal touch if you’ve seen Creed. (Another example of Coogler walking into an existing universe and both honoring it and expanding it in interesting new directions.)
Black Panther was extremely overrated. It is at best a mid tier marvel movie. Plus, it was a CGI packed overload that made Speed Racer look spartan.
Yeah, I didn’t really get that either. Black Panther’s casting was fine. It was a fun little movie with some historical and cultural commentary and great costume design but at the end of the day, it’s just an ‘ok’ movie that got way more praise, as a movie, than it had any right to, were it not for the cultural barriers making the movie dared to cross in a major Hollywood film.Chadwick Boseman’s introduction as T’Chala/Black Panther in Civil War was far more compelling and exciting than in his own movie, imo.
100% correct.
I agree with OP. Black Panther has a different feel with cinematography and style than other movies that I think is because of the Director.
Really? It fit in very well into the Coogler pantheon. The complicated relationship between parents-children, one of whom dies at one point, Oakland, change, rebellion, etc. I saw a really nice continuation of several themes he explored in Fruitvale and Creed and the story felt quite personal as well.
Captain Marvel: not enough Ben Mendelson! Which I admit, not the point of that movie, but that was my strongest takeaway.I do think there’s something to sensibilities that align a little better with traditional superheroics that even Black Panther and Ragnarok had the benefit of and let them stretch and be bigger successes.The Eternals have always been kind of hard for me to warm up to. The last/most I read of them was that Gaiman series from a while back, and while he’s a wonderful comics writer his superhero stuff has always felt a little intellectualized. (I’m more familiar with his Black Orchid take than his Miracleman run, admittedly)
Life: not enough Ben mendelson
I don’t think anyone genuinely likes the comic book Eternals.
Marvel is happy to get New Gods sloppy seconds — and have Jack Kirby happy-ish and working for them again, once upon a time — and, now, since the DCEU made such a muddled mess of them, they get to box DC out of doing much with them in the future, as they’d hilariously appear to be rip-offs of Thanos and the Eternals if they got a more coherent airing in a future DCEU film.
I’ve seen relatively few of the total Marvel film set but from my perspective Black Panther was like a bottle episode in movie form. It takes place almost entirely within Wakanda and while Killmonger getting control of vibranium would have been a bad thing globally, was ultimately about an attempted palace coup. It doesn’t need to interact at all with the rest of the Marvel universe.
I think The Eternals are the black sheep of Marvel’s comic catalog. Marvel gets these great writers and artists to do either a limited series or a somewhat ongoing series, that ends up getting cancelled eventually. To me, The Eternals doesn’t grasp the awe as say The Inhumans, which Marvel fucked that one up by not making that and instead making an Eternals movie instead. The Eternals doesn’t have the consistency to always be in a comic book readers mind that they would ever be popular like the Avengers or even The Inhumans.
Black Panther’s direction was not that distinctive, and while I’d say that Waititi and Ragnarok, Gunn and GotG, and even Whedon with the Avengers, you could say the directors’ mark was clearly visible, I’d argue it’s because their style is already very close to Marvel’s default style.
That then defeats the point of the argument, since when people ask for directors to be allowed to do their thing in a Marvel movie, it’s because they want something different.
To be fair, the style was essentially defined by Favreau, Whedon, and refined by Gunn. The Russos elevated the storylines/action with The Winter Soldier while still maintaining the characterizations/interaction previously established. Of the early MCU films, I think Captain America was the only one not to follow that formula that was consistently solid. Thor 1 and 2 were kinda bleh. Ant-Man outright copied Iron Man 1 (even the villain was just Stane 2.0) after Paul Rudd apparently took over following Edgar Wright’s leaving. Captain Marvel was just plain rushed and still somehow managed to be enjoyable aside from the stereotypical soundtrack choices. Black Widow was a film that should’ve been released immediately after Civil War.
“I think Captain America was the only one not to follow that formula that was consistently solid.” Yeah, you could definitely see the fingerprints of the guy that directed The Rocketeer and Hidalgo in that one.
Right. These are action-adventure movies. They are a genre. So, I ignore/scoff at complaints about Marvel movies that amount to wanting them to not be action-adventure movies. It’s an irrational complaint, like complaining that James Bond movies are spy-adventure movies.
Something I’ve noticed is that the supposed “house style” takes on new elements with each writer/director. With Whedon it got snappier and more ensemble-based; with Gunn it got more vibrant and irreverent; with Waititi it got dryer. It’s like a creative Katamari.
Oh jeez. Now I’m going to have nightmares of Kevin Feige in a Prince cosplay costume cackling madly as he rolls up every IP on the planet.
nananananananana
…Batman?
Get me a two page treatment and I’ll see if Disney will take a meeting.
I would argue Iron Man 3 shows its director quite a bit, much to its credit.
I know it’s a little odd to offer up the Russos as an example of directors putting their own stamp on MCU films, but seriously: watch Captain America: The First Avenger, and then watch a few episodes of Arrested Development and Community (especially A Fistful of Paintballs and For A Few Paintballs More) and then go watch The Winter Soldier — I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that what we now think of as the “MCU house style” is the Russo Brothers’ style.
Agree with others. Ragnarok and maybe even Ant Man? Yep, different. Black Panther? Nope
Thor 1 definitely had some Kenneth Branaugh touches.
Guardians 1 & 2 are very much James Gunn movies. As 1 example, the soundtrack songs in those movies are chosen with a precision that no other Marvel movie comes close to.
Avengers 1 is definitely Whedon.
Thor 3 is Taika silliness all over.
Winter Soldier is very much a Cold War thriller that happens to star Captain America. (An argument could be made that First Avenger is a throwback to simpler war/adventure movies)
These are the exceptions tho’.
You’re missing Iron Man 3 which definitely felt like a Shane Black movie.
I knew I’d miss one or two.
I don’ think every MCU entry swallows its director, but I do wonder if there’s something to the idea that Marvel “takes care” of the action scenes for directors if they choose to place their focus elsewhere. It might explain why so many of these fights are snoozy.
Unless I’m misinformed/misremembering, most of the films share the same second unit, which handles a lot of the action scenes (though a few directors opted to do the fights themselves).
I suppose second units can cause a sameness, no matter who the main director is.
There definitely is a sense to me that the early storytelling in most of the Marvel movies is where most of the distinctiveness lies, and then the final action packed third feels like the house moving in and taking over. Occasionally it won’t be the finale, in Civil War it was the airport fight, while the battle at the end was small scale but extremely personal stakes, but that is an outlier.
I do wish we could have big middle battles with the director having a personal ending.
Taika Waititi already mostly fit into the Marvel mould. Other than infusing it with some Kiwi pride, the movie was another example of the Marvel formula, albeit a very good example. James Gunn is the same. His “loveable asshole” schtick fits right in a whole cinematic universe full of loveable assholes, as long as he toned it waaaay down.Both Waititi and Gunn have unique characteristics that won’t disrupt the Marvel formula, but Chloe Zhao, from what I have seen, does not. Apparently, her naturalistic cinematography was the one thing that survived, and even that seems to have been a stretch for Marvel. She would have been a better fit for something like the drifter Superman that Man of Steel tried and failed to do.As for Black Panther, I agree that it does break the Marvel mould. Though, I have a feeling that they gave Coogler more leeway because another Patty Jenkins incident on their first black superhero movie would be a PR nightmare. Still, Coogler was clearly willing to play ball. There’s no mistaking that awful, faceless Panther-vs-Panther CGI fuckathon for Coogler’s work.
I’ll add IM3 for at least a different vibe.
My MCU hot take is that the movies where the director’s style shines the brightest are the Ant-man movies. If you watch Down with Love and Bring it on!, it’s clear that the same dude directed Ant-man 1 & 2.
Sounds about right.
So, was the thing coming out of the side of the cliff in Shang-Chi a Deviant too? Lots of tentacle-y creatures going on in the MCU lately.
probably got a bulk deal from the VFX house.
That’s just to improve their box office numbers in Japan
No, that was The Dweller in Darkness. He’s a demon and one of the Fear Lords.
Looks like Chthulu and Cobra Commander made a baby who hit the gym.
He seems nice.
good civ
Given how the “MCU is formulaic” talking point always rang kinda false to me, and how heavily the review leans on and labours it without actually expounding on it (besides the observation that this action movie has action scenes), I’m inclined to take this one with a heaping bowl of salt until I’ve seen the film for myself.That aside, it’s pretty funny how many times Dowd quips that the cast are the most godly characters we’ve seen yet, and in the same breath mentions the giant celestial beings that they answer to.
And apparently one of them dies, which isn’t something gods tend to do
*Loki, Odin, Frigga, and Heimdall have entered the chat*
they’re not gods in the sense he defines in the article
Loki: “..I er ..got better”
Yeah, but Asgardians don’t strike me as powerful as these guys. And did they consider themselves gods (I know Loki does, but he has issues), or were they just happy to let the Vikings consider them as such?
In Thor 1 it was up in the air (Fandral has that “throw a little lightning around and the mortals worship you as a god” line), but by Ragnarok they definitely see themselves as gods. They just know that gods aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Asgardians are not gods and neither are the Eternals, literally just god like to us puny lil humans
I think my frustration, and this review seems to confirm this, is that even in Phase 4 the MCU still hasn’t figured out how to tell compelling origin stories. For me Shang Chi was too similar to Black Panther, for all the good and the bad, in terms of set up, structure, admittedly nailing all the cultural aspects, but being unclear about what kind of person our main character is and what he wants in anything other than a very broad, thematic sense. Captain Marvel was unfairly squished between the two biggest films of the series, but the character was still painfully generic, the one thing they could have focused on inside of the bigger MCU narrative, and this looks like it might do the same. I love MCU movies so I’m biased but it does get a little old when Origin stories mostly function to get me excited for what comes next instead of telling a complete story about it’s title character.
Yeah, that’s fair. Could be worse though, at least we no longer get reboots like clockwork every 1-3 films 😛
I totally agree. I still love the majority of the movies, even the generic ones and even the worst ones beat the schlock that was hollywood blockbusters from the era before the superhero boom.
Show your work on that one, bud.Jesus Christ the revisionism on you comic movie stans…
Don’t worry, you’ll get to watch Batman’s parents get shot in Crime Alley again and again and again. The MCU won’t take that away from you.
What?Sorry, do you think I’m any more in love with the awfulness over at DC/Warners?For that matter, Villeneuve and his Dune Part One can take a long walk off a short pier.
We might have been Kinja’d here. Higher up the thread we were talking about the endless cycle of reboots that the MCU supplanted.
I wish it wasn’t so common a problem that we make it a verb.
Yep. At least they’ve kinda fixed reply notifications now.
The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King, The Star Wars Prequels, Shrek 2-4 and Puss in Boots, Avatar, Jurassic Park 3, Planet of the Apes, the men in black sequels, The majority of pierce Brosnan’s James Bond movies, Pirates of the Caribbean sequels… Honestly the list goes on and on and on…I don’t consider myself an authority by any stretch, but I was in high school at the time, when one might consider me the prime demographic for these movies and even then I remember them being offensively bad. Of course there are the Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man 2’s, and such, but on a month to month basis of summer releases when I was in high school things were pretty bleak.
Sorry, but if your argument is that tentpole franchise material pre-comic boom was worse than tentpole franchise material post-comic boom, you’re out of your damn mind.And even IF I indulged that argument, I would counter that at least the pre-comic boom franchise material wasn’t all one big bullshit superpower slurry.Personally I think it’s same as it ever was in terms of quality. Some good, some bad, some in between.
Maybe it’s just cuz I was young but the only reliably creative tentpole studios/franchises was pixar. I just don’t have much nostalgia for the early 2000’s blockbusters, and very few were as ambitious as a movie like Endgame. I’m not talking movies in general, cuz I largely agree in terms of good, bad, ok it’s about the same as it ever was. There’s just more than ever. That said I totally understand if you think I’m crazy because I probably am.
I think it’s difficult to know what the standards are and to keep perspective. Especially if you ARE on the younger side. I’m a Xennial, so I’ve been around for the blockbuster boom of the 80s (granted, I didn’t make double digits until the latter half of the decade) into the 90s. If you were born in the 90s or 00s? The perspective is likely different. Especially if you grew up post-Blade/Raimi Spiderfilms/Xmen.That said, I don’t know that I would classify Endgame as “ambitious”. I mean…. What is really that ambitious about it? It’s the narrative capper on multiple phases of films leading up to it. That’s not ambition, that’s plain old satisfaction. There was no risk involved. Infinity War was a riskier proposal and even then not really. What were the aims of Endgame that make it an outlier in relation to other blockbusters or franchise entries? The interconnectedness of the MCU is itself *sort of* ambitious, or at least it was initially. Having proven itself MASSIVELY successful with the first Avengers film, that interconnectedness stopped being impressive.I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum or be unfairly harsh about the MCU (and the DCEU and the Star Wars U and every other fucking contemporary extended goddam IP boondoggle) but I just don’t see any of it as particularly special or worth the breathless adoration it gets. I LIKE a lot of it. I was really into the Netflix Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Punisher series. I dug most of the Phase 1 movies (and I know I’m in a minority but I prefer Norton’s Hulk). Somewhere around Guardians, which I also really enjoy, I started to burn the fuck out. It just got to be too much and very samey. At this point? Like I say: slurry. There are standout moments from a lot of it. But generally I’m pretty bored with the grand IP cthulhu that is the modern blockbuster scene. *Maybe* you have a point about the older blockbuster scene being “worse”, I dunno. Maybe these are “better” movies from a craft POV. But the older scene had more variety. Hell, at this point even the Fast & Furious characters are comic book superheroes!
I consider endgame ambitious because it kills it’s primary antagonist in the first 15 minutes of an almost 3 hour movie, has an absolutely bonkers plot that brings him back for the finale, and along the way gives extremely satisfying character moments for just about every major character, including a hammer. Having two Nebula’s existing in the same reality, and having their hard drive brains merging is pretty heavy sci-fi in my eyes and having that be the way they bring 2015 Thanos and Gamora back into the narrative is extremely impressive to me personally, but I know not everyone loves that movie. That said, I do actually agree with you about the explosion of cinematic universes and IP franchises we’re living through. I love marvel movies, but I think only one of them would land in my top 20 movies (but the fact that I don’t automatically know which one does say something to the quality of their best films). But I also never really looked to mainstream blockbusters to scratch that deeper itch for me. I’ll take a Hirokazu Kore-Eda “After Life” over any entry in the MCU any day, but as far as flashy blockbusters to argue with nerds with over the internet I think we’re pretty lucky that they’re even half as good as they are.
(sigh) This is probably a semantics thing. “Ambitious” means “not easily done or achieved”. And nothing you mention seems all that difficult for the MCU at this point. In relation to other movies, in the context of an earlier time? Maybe. But not by the time Endgame rolled around.
MCU movies are review-proof anyway I guess.
Yet Eternals proves, maybe once and for all, that who’s behind the camera of these quality-controlled blockbusters may not matter so much.This is nonsense. You’re actually arguing that it didn’t matter whether, for instance, Taika Waititi was the director of “Ragnarok?” Your point proves nothing if you have to ignore all counter-evidence in order to sustain it.
the exception proves the rule
Gunn is another good example as Guardians of the Galaxy working had a lot to do with him.
I think his point would be even the generic, by the numbers MCU movies are successful so the Taika’s/Russo’s/Gunn’s are almost exceptions to the rule. For my personal money, all the best MCU movies are directed by people with unique voices, but as far as visual style the movies all very much look ‘of a piece’ which is perhaps what he is criticizing here.
I think his point would be even the generic, by the numbers MCU movies are successful so the Taika’s/Russo’s/Gunn’s are almost exceptions to the rule.
The fact that you’re including a pair of directors who made four of the movies, including the three biggest crossover movies in the series, is extremely telling. The Avengers flagpoles should be the most generic and studio-driven of the bunch, but Russo Avengers movies feel distinct from Whedon Avengers movies.
Just want to say that I agree with you. I see variation in every marvel movie, but I’m also a big fan that is largely on board with the entire MCU. I don’t think it is above criticism though, and it’s certainly worth noting that most of the visuals could be interchangeable with maybe the exception of the Kirby inspired backdrops of Thor: Ragnarok. The one huge win for DCEU and specifically Aquaman is they made Atlantis feel like such a huge, sprawling place in a way most marvel movies don’t.
I think they visuals that they use for Doctor Strange are pretty creative as well
Thats because Whedon is a lil jerk boy
I think it’s maybe that if directors are looking to make wackier takes on MCU properties, Disney gives them some license. But if you’re trying to make something truly artful, the Mouse might take pause, Black Panther notwithstanding.
I think this is possibly true, but I also bet if Chloe Zhao turned in an Eternals script that reduced Kevin Feige to tears but barely fit in with the larger MCU they’d do what they could to make it work.Having not seen the eternals obviously, I’m betting its another kind of clunky, semi anonymous origin story the way all marvel origins stories are with the exception of Guardians.
Actually I would argue that it’s less about the directors themselves or their aesthetic choices and more about story/script control. I’ve watched Taika’s other films. And Gunn’s. Their aesthetics aren’t INvisible, don’t get me wrong, but what stands out WAY more in relation to their Marvel output is story, character, dialogue, etc.
Their point is giving Hollywood’s favorite new “it girl” director a pass, because they don’t want to consider she might be a flash in the pan. Not that I don’t wish her success. Lord knows we need more passionate, skilled directors.
Ragnorock fucking sucks and is for babies. Homeboy isn’t funny. James Gunn is for edgy gen xers Both suck and are two of the worst directors in modern film.
That’s a cogent, well-reasoned take. Bonus points for misspelling the title.
No that’s how it’s spelled you idoit
Everything about this movie seems so bland. A bunch of superheroes no one has ever heard of fighting the most generic CGI monsters imaginable against a muted backdrop. This is just impossible to get excited for.
Ahhahahaahah Wait I knew it Every interview with whomever was stuck in front of a camera kept saying it was going for ditko visuals and from what I saw from the trailers it looked nothing like ditko’s bright colored illustrations…Who the hell thought a muted color plallette was a good idea?!?Next time when u r trying to go for ditko just resurrect joel schumacher’s corpse…It will definitely do a better job and understand the assignment! And stop with the overuse of cgi it looks insane and not in a good way. Somebody get Some of those Stan Winston school kids over to Disney stat there was no reason for the main villain to be full CGI/cartoon!
“Where are my visuals?” LOL!
Damn you guys giving a C+ to a major studio release is the equivalent of a D – or F on a normal grading scale. I know it looked bad but was not expecting this.
They gave a C+ to Infinity War.
And it deserved it! Especially the second part…The overuse of bad cgi was was distracting… and that onetime-up scene at the end was just off-putting…
Kind of the opposite, AVC reviews tend to skew low, so it’s more like a B or an A on other sites.Sorta like how i09 reviews often skew high, and need a few points docked to compare with other outlets.
Av club does not tend to score low, the original commenter is correct to most people this will be like a d or f.
(AV Club + io9)/2
That formula could use a ±
Seems the reviewer doesn’t like Marvel movies (just look at the derisive tone to describe anything having to do with them), and thus, shockingly, found a way to not like this particular Marvel movie. Imagine that.
I don’t know why I’m rooting for Marvel movies to fail now. Am I still angry about Daredevil? (Answer: Yes) Is it their total refusal to try new things that we keep asking for? Is that there’s so much content and it’s exhausting and I can’t just separately enjoy anything? Probably a collection of all of those things. Am I gonna have to catch up with What If AND Chang-Shi AND Eternals to see Spider-man? Ugh. I’m tired already.
So you want new things, but there’s also too many things?
I know, I know, first world problems. It just feels like they had a winning formula and now they’re not messing with it in a great way. What am I going to be left with? DC movies? They’re so bad that they threw in lesbian characters of color as main characters and no one even noticed.
Why is a lesbian actress of colour a bad thing?
Would you still be rooting for the MCU to fail if you knew Daredevil’s cancellation was a Netflix call and not a Disney one? It was a pretty standard Netflix cancellation, their metric only cares about new subscribers, and the Marvel shows had already had their sub generation impact a few years back. Disney was all set to let those characters roll.
it’s because all their movies are generic as fuck, no matter what people might tell you with “but what about taika? gunn?..” they all play out the same, with the same beats, quips and muted color palette and the same CG clusterfuck in the third act where the whole movie falls apart.also like one meme nicely put it (referencing mostly venom).. people at this point get excited to watch a mediocre movie just for the post-credit sequence which sets up another movie, that might be mediocre. the whole interconnectednes is really starting to drag everything down, since nothing ever stands on its own, and like another poster said, feels like doing homework at this point.also really wondering how all of this will age in a couple of years, outside of the marvel fanatics will anyone actually rewatch any of these movies knowing how they are never quite finished and often require other movies to get the full impact of who any of these characters or their motivations really are.
I think it’s that some of the movies are starting to feel like homework? The only two I haven’t seen are Hulk and Thor 2, and there was some stuff going on in Endgame where I thought, “Oh shit, I didn’t see Thor 2. Really? That’s what your asking of me? I only saw Thor 1 because there was a Rifftrax.”Nothing about Eternals looks interesting to me. A bunch of superpowerful immortals who never interfere with human events except all of the times that they definitely do? After Chang-Shi, a movie that’s the same as other movies except in this one everyone is Chinese? Do they want an award for that? Do they think I’ve never seen a marital arts drama before?A LOT of phase one was carried by the charisma of the actors involved, and now the actors aren’t allowed to see full scripts, and sometimes have to scenes in green screen rooms without other people around and they’re not even sure what movies they’re for. (This is true) I think that adds a level of dullness to it.
It sounds like these movies just aren’t for you. I don’t like horror, but I don’t have a problem with the continued production of those kinds of movies because clearly other people get something out of them.
The difference is that MCU and already existing IP movies are arguably sucking up all the oxygen ($$$), There is a genuine concern that the finances of making movies these days is homogenizing movies to a sad degree. And stifling creativity.
I enjoy MCU stuff. I love Star Wars. But I think it’s a real concern when for the top 10 movies in a given year, 9/10 are sequels or based on existing IP (and 7-8/10 are Disney).
That is a concern I’ve seen a lot, but I don’t know what the solution is other than just not seeing the movies. At some point they’ll probably stop making Toy Story movies, but people keep watching them, so we’ll probably see Toy Story 10 one day. As you say, Disney is a big part of this. I think it’s more of a Disney thing than a strictly MCU thing, but the MCU is the most visible sign of it.
The solution is for giant corporations to stop doing what giant corporations do and maximize profit above all. Which, good luck with that.
I hate it, but I don’t know the solution.
WE are the solution. If the audience stops buying into the incestuous IP fuckery they’ll stop indulging it. Universal’s “Dark Universe” stopped at The Mummy because it tanked. (Not helped by the fact that it was terrible AND a lot of people clearly feel loyal to Brendan Fraser)
That’s serial storytelling. You’re complaining about serial storytelling.
I think the point they’re trying to make is that in good serialised storytelling, the movies should be enjoyable in their own right while also building towards a larger whole, whereas they feel in the MCU’s case the individual instalments don’t have much merit of their own beyond setting up and teasing future developments.
Serial storytelling as an exception in film is mostly fine. But boy does it feel like that’s the ONLY fucking thing studios are throwing money at these days.
I remember watching Return of the Jedi with no prior knowledge and thinking “who are these people? What’s going on!” I think that was a failure on the film’s part, and clearly not mine.
Do you have something against capitalization? (Asking for a friend…)
Well written, I have stopped with endgame and am done with the MCU. too much work trying to keep everything strait and I just do not have the desire to rewatch any of them. Walked away and not missing them.
If it makes you feel better, I very much doubt Shang-Chi, Eternals or What if will have any impact on the next Spider-Man movie outside of getting you ready for the idea of a multiverse.
Why would you need to see What If, Shang-Chi, or Eternals to see Spider-Man? I haven’t seen Eternals yet but what about those three titles, in any way, seems like it would be related to Spider-Man. I can confidently tell you that at least two of the three (probably three of the three) have zero ties to Spider-Man. You’re just whining.
I’m still very interested, since the visuals look DCEU-tier. Saw critics making many comparisons to Zack Snyder’s DC movies too, so I’ll take that. The Eternals are far from the most interesting bunch in the comics, but this movie has everything right going for it so far that the only possible letdown for me would simply be the plot.Relatedly, Dowd officially reviewed a Zack Snyder movie(Army of the Dead) better than he did an MCU movie. Never thought the day would come.
Which is weird because Army of the Dead is actively bad. The ending is especially heinous in that it completely forgets the existence of one of the main characters. What a shit show.
Eternal is basically Disney version of Justice League but no one know who they are. With bland character and muted color.Just look at Guardian of the Galaxy, nobody know who they are. But they have interesting and colorful character. The designer whom decided that the Eternal wore the same costume with different muted color should be fired.
The Guardians also have an existing fanbase, and are way more of a known quantity to comic readers. Their 2000s comics run was quite popular, and reinvigorated Marvel’s cosmic line.Eternals have always been a tough sell.
And even as a niche, Guardians had wacky fun shit like a talking raccoon. Eternals is grave. Just a shitty New Gods, which was already a comic that proved that even geniuses need editors.
New Gods ended up having staying power, at least. The Eternals don’t even have unique, distinguished designs for its characters. Like, I know Ikaris since he’s always on the covers, and Sersi was an Avengers. But Gilgamesh? Kingo? I can’t even picture them in my head. Meanwhile, I can easily picture Orion or Mr Miracle or even Lightray. A dude with a funny feather hat? Kanto, no matter how much they redesign his costume. A hulking large dude/monster thingy, usually with a mane? Odds are it’s Kalibak.
Dowd has reviewed DC movies higher than mcu for some time now
Dowd knows pure KINO when he sees it.
This is gunna flop so hard. The marketing sucks, nobody gives a shit about any of these characters, and now all the nerdy sites are publishing their negative reviews today (two weeks in advance). This should have been a Disney+ show if they felt so inclined to do anything with this IP. Would watch a Captain Marvel 2 than this.
Damnit I was hoping I could get high as hell and see some trippy sci fi shit. Color me disappoint 🙁
Oh, you still could, it’s just a question of dosage…
“Eternals occasionally suggests what The Tree Of Life might look like with Kevin Feige micromanaging the awe and wonder over the filmmaker’s shoulder”this is perhaps the most cursed thing you’ve written oh my god
It is an outstanding description.
The OG comics are awful, so this is actually good news.
Dad Bod Gawd would be fine.
The Eternals are admittedly minor characters in the Marvel Comics Universe at large, so I was surprised that they were making a movie. It’s a weird premise, and one that might not translate to the screen all that well. That being said, the visuals look incredible here. It’s a Marvel movie, they already have my money.
putting the MCU connection aside, every single bit of marketing material released for this film make it look unbearably boring.
“Just another Marvel movie” sounds pretty good to me considering they are great movies. Jeez guys.
Ggreat is a very strong, I would say aggressively medicore films that make money for some inexplicable reason, like transformers or fast and the furious despite the low quality
Interestingly it takes Chloe Zhao to note what’s been true about marvel directors from the beginning. REALLY funny how that works.
Okay, but people have been complaining that the Marvel house style stifles the directors for ages now. Since at least Age of Ultron, I wanna say.
Yeah, no. People have been saying this since almost the beginning of the MCU. Nice try though, Wokey McWokerson.
The comic book hero concept feels played out. There is nothing I think they can do that would make it fresh. They already even did the comedic angle. It is time to pull the plug on the genre.
LOL, good luck with that.
Won’t spend money in the theatre for it but will watch on Disney +. Why you ask? 2 words Gemma Chan. My god that women is stunning.
Oh, goody — A.A. Dowd is reviewing this movie.Brace for a shitty snarkass hot take….
Like your comment?
Difference is, I’m not taking good money to turn out uninformed, undeservedly arrogant and bad hot takes.A.A. Dowd is….
When all of this started- Iron Man- there were a great many comments about the verisimilitude. The armor looked and worked as if it was something that could exist in our present day reality. Thinking about it for about a half a second puts the lie to all of this- hey, Tony, how does that thing absorb shocks? But within the movie’s just a bit more advanced then our present day environs- it worked. Over the past eighteen thousand years of Marvel movies, this has been relentlessly pushed back. Norse gods- nah. Just advanced tech. Clarke’s law and all that. Well. Okay. there’s magic- but it’s really just, you know, probability manipulation and some quantum horseshit that sounds good. Well, okay. There _is_ magic. Good old fashioned witches and warlock stuff. And now Iron Man can keep his suit in his locket, with a chunk of Pepper’s hair, and it can absorb atoms from the atmosphere and create new weapons and new tech at will. Oh, and we _made _ a _guy_. It’s not at all like our day to day reality, except in some of the shooting locations. And the verisimilitude is long, long gone. Replaced by increasingly boring computer sprite spectacle. Endless battles, as weightless animated thingamabobs fight in scenes so poorly choreographed we cannot be sure what the hell just happened. Why was Iron Man a decent selling comic? Spider-Man? Why was Captain America a popular character for decades and decades?Because comic books are soap operas. Forget the smash and bang action. Forget the splashy comics? The nebbish gets powers and still cannot get the girl. The kid born with powers is shunned by the society they try to help.We follow, we empathize, we root for them because they are- fancy clothes aside- people with problems we understand, and we want to see them overcome these problems. It gives us inspiration and hope.Nothing wrong with a dust up. But all that “Cool!” shit is not what keeps people coming back. This is being left behind.
S you basically explained everything the mcu does not do, just flashy lights and bad cgi
Unpopular opinion, perhaps, but I think “Nomadland but with super heroes” would be deeply weird and unpleasant. Each have certain genre expectations, and while spins and subversions are good, I think sometimes we go too far in the direction of wanting these movies to be what they’re not, and then end up disappointed.
Nomadland was good, but lacked plot. I’d like to see debra granik take a shot at a weird superhero movie. Both “leave no trace” and “winters bone” are incredible, and they make me wonder what if.
I haven’t seen Leave No Trace, but I dig the bleak building horror of Winter’s Bone. I would give that a shot, though not sure for which story.
I absolutely recommend “leave no trace”. It’s kind of a mirror of “winters bone”, so that’s why I think their director could do something interesting with supes.
Oh, and Thomasin McKenzie is a fuckin revelation
They also pop into the fresh atomic ruins of Hiroshima, in a scene that rivals X-Men: Apocalypse’s field trip to Auschwitz in the arena of questionably tasteful historical revisionism.hahahahahahahahahah
Been watching a lot of pre-CGI movies. Wish we would get the balance right. CGI is great for the thing that used to be called “Optical Effects.” It’s also great for background work (ie scenes with thousands of extras, building the Boardwalk in Boardwalk Empire, etc.). Perhaps it should be used to replace gun/recoil on set in view of recent events. But practical effects should still have a huge place in the cinematic world, because they’re just clearly better at so many things. Plus, because one has to really problem solve with practical, it means the director gets to be more inventive, rather than pre-visualize everything like a video game cutscene. All the visual feasts of modern filmmaking have a healthy combo of the two, and the reliance on CGI alone dates movies almost as soon as they come out. There’s simply no reason practical effects shouldn’t be a huge part of modern filmmaking, alongside CGI and other modern advances.
There’s a school of thought that Lord of the Rings is so good because Peter Jackson had the good luck of being the first person to figure out huge CGI crowds…and he still used lots of practical effects.
I would say the other preferred use of CGI should be to hide the zippers, as it were. Hide safety harnesses on stunt men, or to finish off set pieces, as opposed to making the entire movie in front of a green screen.
tbh this sums up Eternals as well as anything:“why did kumail need to roid out to play a guy who shoots finger lasers”https://twitter.com/banalplay/status/1450640606045380617?s=20
He didn’t. That was his own decision. One of the producers actually called him and asked him to reign it in,
yeah there was a quote from chloe zhao who was like ‘wow, i hope he didn’t feel like he needed to do that for me’…literally noone asked him to!
at least they gave him one scene with bare arms, although he doesn’t really flex or anything
Scorcese was right. Marvel movies are not real films. They are really just formulaic video games that are becoming even more dependent on real world celebrity of a given actor for knowing in-jokes with the audience, rather than exploration of character, content, and the art of human expression.
Two hours and thirty seven fucking minutes? Fuck ALL of that.
Oh look at that, 9 minutes longer than Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead.
But several scores lower!I thought Army of the Dead was bad and this looks good to me, but I will milk this joke for as long as I could because I just find it so funny.
I believe I recall someone said Eternals will be the Logan of the MCU. I’m going out on a limb and saying no…
I’m sorry, but if the thesis of this review boils down to, “It’s not as weird as the shitty comic books it was based on!”, then the grain of salt I’m taking it with is the size of a house.I personally like the Marvel movies because they dare to add a bit of grounding to comic book concepts, so that even the truly weird (Rocket Raccoon, I’m looking at you) can be digested by the non-hardcore audience. And while Marvel aficionados may lament that Beta Ray Bill hasn’t made his debut yet, I’m kinda glad he hasn’t, because that will likely be a bridge too far.But hey, far be it from me to try and change the course of the onrushing, trendy flood of Marvel movie backlash.
nice persecution complex. why can’t marvel people just realize that maybe movies are sometimes just bad, even their little capekino by daddy feige. the thing has 58% on metacritic, but sure it’s just dowd with a “hot take” it’s not that the movie is actually shit.
I’ll judge for myself if the movie is shit or not when I see it. I might come to that conclusion on my own, considering that there seems to be a trend of diminishing returns from the studio lately. But Dowd’s review wasn’t anything more substantive than Marvel fatigue, which is in vogue right now.
The Eternals are okay in the comics. They were never my favorite but I love Marvel and I would pay to watch Gemma Chan open her mail. Do the kids still have mail?The Kirby film that needs to be made is The Demon, Etrigan, a DC character.
This feels like a review of a lot of stuff. Does the movie contain any Variants? Like is Kang in this? Then why the dig about Marvel needing to issue glossaries. Did you spend a portion of the movie wondering if the big CGI string dogs were probably alternate-timeline Kangs because they both have names that end in “iant?” Were you similarly confused by the Frost Giants, because they’ve been in these things for a while, so I hope you’re okay there (they’re huge and blue for reference).Same with Gemma Chan. Did she stop halfway through a scene and say “Hi, I’m Gemma Chan. I played Minn-Erva in a different film, but the sky is dark because the stars are all already being used in every other Marvel movie so I hope you’ll put up with this terrible inconvenience!” Like, review the fuckin’ movie, Eeyore.And hell, review it as a C- or whatever, that’s cool. I’m not here to fanboy for Marvel. I just want to read a review of what’s in this one, not check out your tight five impression of Andy Rooney talking about Marvel movies these days.
dumb and unfunny
Despite being a life-long Marvel reader, even I said “Huh? Why?” when Eternals was announced. Obscure can work (no one outside Marvel fandom know who the Guardians were at first), but this team is a whole ‘nother level.I’m surprised Disney dumped $200 million into this at this time. It will do well only because of the timing—people wanna go to the movies, and there are few films to see. Still, I don’t see this one being near the top if anyone’s top ten Marvel list.
I don’t know who this Jack Kirby person is, but The Eternals are a TOTAL ripoff of DC’s New Gods.
I appreciated this.
Well New Gods are a TOTAL ripoff of Kirby’s Inhumans, so THERE.
I won’t read the review yet.I’ll go see the film, but this concept was almost much better suited to a television series like the other Marvel shows on Disney Plus. It could have had 6 – 8 episodes, with various degrees of general drama and talking or action. You could get some extended glimpses of some of the characters, including what they were doing at various points in Earth history. In one sense, Eternals, despite being one of Marvel’s fringe concepts in the comics, could have been set up as a Game of Thrones style affair. Without the nudity. Depending on how the movie does at the box office… Well, it should still be looked upon as an option.
Don’t worry, the review barely says anything as to what the film is actually about.
That would be a synopsis. Which many reviews contain! But is not a requirement of a review.
Inhumans probably deterred them from that.
Post-viewing: there are definitely some moments when I thought, at the time, “this would have landed better if the previous phase of the story had been active in my mind for longer than an hour”.
Sweet christ. What did 110 minute movies do to make Hollywood executives hate them so much?
One of them clearly wedgied them and stole their lunch money in high school.
Execs actually prefer shorter movies; More showings at cinemas.It’s the fans that seem to always clamor for long movies. I keep seeing people being all excited at the prospect of nearly 3 hours MCU movies.
If you want me to pay 20+ dollars and risk my life I want something to risk my life for
Viewers learned all of the wrong things from Lord of the Rings.
Especially because so many of these movies are so artificially full! One would not have to work all that hard to trim these down. When it comes to an action movie, I think there ought to be a soft cap at 100 minutes, hard cap at 110. Anything more is just filler.
The author of this piece is forgetting how brave it is for the MCU to have a Chinese woman of color direct a major movie these days. Shame on you for attempting to step on all the progress we’ve made.
I’m not sure how someone looks at her resume and decides that she would be a good choice to direct a comic book movie.
I do like that the mcu uses some of their lesser known characters. It can work out really well as seen in Guardians of the Galaxy.
The moment I realized one of the characters was name KINGO, I rolled my eyes and realized I would never watch this.
Now that your eyes are properly rolled maybe you can tell us more about why the name Kingo bothers you so much
This…doesn’t feel so much like a review of the film, as a general series of complaints about the omnipresence of the MCU. Which, fine, whatever, but maybe this isn’t the space for that? I dunno, maybe I won’t like the movie, but I like the idea of the Eternals, and I like Chloe Zhao, and frankly Feige hasn’t let me down yet, so I’m inclined to take a review this negative with a few grains of salt.
If you didn’t feel let down by Thor 2 or Iron Man 2, I’m going to need more than a few grains to go with your opinions.
Well they are in bottom 5 of MCU movies, so don’t worry too much. It was hard to be let down by Thor 2, when Thor 1 was…meh at best. And Iron Man 2 wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it for what it was; and generally, I have a different standard for the Phase 1 movies. Hope that removes some grains of salt.
That’s totally fair, though, because it is, as you say, the “MCU.” All these things are intended to be interconnected; none of these movies exists in a vacuum.
That’s true, although it’s worth noting that that was definitely less omnipresent during the initial movies. Sure, Iron Man 2 introduces Black Widow, but Iron Man 3 doesn’t move anything forward (Phase 2, I know, but still). Heck, even the Infinity Stones info dump in Thor 2 was clearly recorded after the fact. Just something I find interesting about the early movies.
Solid point there. The greater extended universe is a more recent development in the grand scheme of things. (And now that you mention it, it’s crazy to think how Iron Man 3 is essentially a bottle episode.)Also, I admit that my knowledge of the entire MCU is not exactly substantial. Thanks for the courteous convo, PP. Tip of the cap to you.
It would be odd to review the Platinum Dunes remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street without addressing the prior films or the general aesthetic of Platinum Dunes as a horror film remake producer. There’s *context* for the larger MCU mention.
Kinda what I’m thinking. I think film critics are just tired of the MCU, and this movie might just be where that dam broke. I’m not saying it’s definitely good, but a lot of the reviews feel more like statements of displeasure with the MCU in general than specific reviews.
That seems to be all film criticism has become for some reason
How many more years does this marvel thing have left I mean, it’s been going on a little over a decade but they’ve already pumped out f-ing two dozen of these things right? Y’all aren’t sick of superheroes yet?
It’s like that fad ‘food’ that everyone’s always talking about. Haven’t you had enough food yet guys, seriously? I’m shocked that people continue to enjoy things they like over periods of time. I don’t understand why they don’t get burnt out and revert to my opinions on stuff. Stupid people! Stop pretending to like things!
I wonder how much longer books have. People have been reading for decades I wonder when the bubble will burst. Soon I assume, it must!
How bout action movies? That’s gotta have a shelf-life to it. I correctly assume that people at one point will have seen enough action and or violence in their life time.
Why are you here reading this Jeremy Thain? If it’s out of some hope that people will stop liking superhero movies Ive got news for you: I have an entire bookshelf of Marvel comics…. I will probably go see these things my entire life. You’ll be waiting a long time buddy.
I guess that makes me an idiot for liking something. How dare I?!
Really? 5 replies? Sis is a little too pressed about this silly little issue, full naming me like I’m being put in time out. Dude, Superman isn’t going to sleep with you.
I love Chloe Zhao’s work, but I question the logic of hiring a director renowned for sparse and understated storytelling to helm a movie based on a comic series known for the vibrantly crowded batshittery of Jack Kirby.
This is the same grade Dowd gave Infnity War. I hope this is that good.
FWIW I had it at a B. Not as brightly-lit as Kirby’s vision, but it does poke around his sense of scale. And the group shows it’s worth rooting for when it all shakes out.
eesh It’s almost matched Thor the Dark World on RT
Sounds horrible, as expected! Fuck the MCU, the strongest avenger was luckyrat.
Disappointing to read this, but not entirely unexpected. Marvel seem to be treading water right now. I wouldn’t say they’re laughing all the way to the bank, but they’re only a couple of steps away. Black Widow and Shang-Chi were enough to put me off CGI set pieces forever.
If Raimi’s film is by-numbers MCU nonsense I think we can all give up.
Eternals turns the adventures of ageless space gods into just another Marvel movieI dunno man, I kinda like those Marvel movies. A 157-minute runtime does feel like it’s asking too much though.
I don’t understand complaints about runtimes. A movie may be too long or too short for what it’s trying to do, but you have to actually see it to make that determination, IMO. It depends on the story being told. A movie that’s trying to introduce a bunch of new characters with an expansive backstory? It probably needs to run longer than a movie that focuses on a few characters that we already know. Insisting on a 2-hour max runtime was a big part of what was wrong with the Justice League theatrical release.
I’ve seen three-hour movies that flew by. I’ve seen 82 minute movies that felt like an eternity.
but you have seen this film multiple times? These are completely forgettable popcorn films, they should be an hour and a half max. Whatever happens everything will be solved by violence, there is only a limited amount of what can happen.
I haven’t had the urge to see a Marvel Movie since Endgame (even Spidey and I loved Spidey as a kid more than all heroes) and until the new Spider-man comes out I probably won’t see any of these Marvel movies at all.I think Spidey, GOG 3, Thor 4 are the only one’s that interest me, while for some reason every new DC movie I have a lot of interest in.
Looking over the reviews, they are really soft for a Marvel film. And critical acclaim is something this film really needed (Chloe Zhao should be just fine, however), especially as there’s a spoiler plot twist in the film that certain fans will probably hate. Could this be the much-speculated first MCU flop since The Incredible Hulk? It could happen. At least Marvel got Shang-Chi to work in terms of trying out new ideas.
Look forward to it either way. Love it or not MCU is just getting started. I just saw the calendar, Marvel is dropping 7 movies in 2023, I think 1 or 2 is Sony’s marvel films too
Are they tho…? After that”Marvel invites you back to the movies” video they put out and then recently bumping back the majority of the films that video announced dates for, I’m really not holding my breathe anymore. If Thor comes out within this year I won’t believe it until I’m sitting in a theatre watching it at this point. Marvel doesn’t care about the fans anymore.
Why is every image I’ve seen from this movie so dour and colorless, like they were created by the people from the Neutral Planet from Futurama? The muted color palette and dull, overcast, low-contrast visuals are a general complaint I have about the MCU, though this film seems to take it to an extreme. It’s like they feel like that any bold visual choice is something that could potentially put off someone, so they go for this generic mush.I thought these movies were supposed to be fun. “Eternals” seems like a “neither-here-nor-there” film. Not as fun as it should be, but doesn’t have enough depth to justify the overly self-serious tone.
I’ve been curious watching film Twitter’s reaction to this movie beginning in the last couple years and intensifying in the last few months. Starting with the disproportionately hostile reaction to Kumail Nanjiani beefing up, and continuing with the fury about Marvel daring to market it as a Real Movie, it’s been pretty weird. Is it because it’s the most diverse movie they’ve made like some have claimed? I don’t know. It just seems to have snowballed at a bizarre rate to the point where I think it may be affecting the way critics are scoring it.
Because of the dumb, binary Tomatometer (Movie is either Fresh or Rotten, no nuance!) these things usually have high percentages by critics saying things like, “Yeah, it’s a fine movie. Competently made, red tomato,” because they have to pick one or the other, but with this one it seems like they’re giving essentially the same kinds of reviews but marking them green instead of red, and it’s interesting. Are critics and people who desperately want to be known as cinephiles just tired of superhero movies?
And why are the only two Marvel beefcakes people have leveled internet hate campaigns against the ones who were doughy funny boys and are now maximally shredded funny boys? Is it because they seemed safe and sweet and fun, and are now jocks?
I don’t get any of this. I’m going to see it, and it’ll probably be a fine movie. Competently made. Red tomato.
So Marvel/Disney decided to ignore that the Eternals and Deviants (thanks to the Celestials as an experiment) are actually evolutionary offshoots of humanity and that they share a common ancestor with humans billions of years ago. I guess they didn’t want to delve too deep into the concept of evolution.
Where were these heavy-hitters when the Avengers needed them, a casual
viewer might wonder. The film addresses that, awkwardly shoehorning in
talk of franchise brethren. Turns out the Eternals have a pretty narrow
jurisdiction:
I feel like they’re just making it up as they go along with explanations that have so many plotholes that you can drain spaghetti in them. And any time Marvel/Feige say they have a “plan” with their expanded universe I say they’re lying.
Yawn
Just stay off my lawn as I say too many orbiting CGI fights, superhero drops, and tone-deaf snarky comments make most of these films uninteresting. They’ve become a cinematic WWE. And a LOT of people like that obviously, but, meh…. “gods” cracking jokes and no real risk and tension just saps them of interest.
Just leaving this here because it mentions a lot of similar criticisms and some readers hereabouts seem to think Dowd is some kind of negative nancy.https://slate.com/culture/2021/10/eternals-marvel-movie-review-angelina-jolie-gemma-chan.html
In some respects, this review and many others read more like disappointment with Zhao not being able to go off the MCU rails than being substantively about the movie itself. Maybe I’m totally off base, but had this been directed by Generic E. Journeyman, it would have fared better with critics who generally have disdain for the MCU.
Considering this was clearly a set up movie for the rest of the MCU and that I actually did rather enjoy it, the only real complaint I have was there was not enough Kumail Nanjiani (he absolutely killed it, though I honestly enjoyed most of the performances).
Oh no all those articles about how JACKED AND SWOLE Kumail Nanjiani is now were for nothing
Those articles weren’t for nothing! They 1) Inspired a few of the people who read them to get off the couch and start taking steps to improve their health, because “if he can do it, I can do it,” and2) Inspired a bunch of other people to go online and get snitty and jealous of the guy who put the work in and got the results he wanted. Yeah, he had some help from test-boosters and trainers, but he’s still the guy who put the gym time in (likely hours a day, 6 days a week) and he’s still the guy who had to choke down steamed chicken, broccoli, and egg whites for a year.
And the reason for the surprise is what? Marvel will never take chance (unless it’s a minor character they don’t care about if it fails). They want every Marvel movie to make as much money as possible. They have a formula down and that’s what they are going to use. The only place they take chances are on the streaming side and even there they don’t get too far outside of the box.
The Eternals are nothing BUT minor characters
Saw it. Liked it a lot, until the last three minutes. The Dane Whitman stuff was awkwardly stuffed in, and the arrival of the Celestial to Earth was a huge moment that I don’t thing got the weight or context it deserved. The movie chose a really weird moment to end. Also… Gemma Chan is a lousy actress. Everyone else in that cast ran circles around her. She had basically two expressions… slightly happy and completely blank.Also, the Starfox post credits scene was kind of lame. Did nothing for me. That super speed beatdown was GREAT, though.
Comic book movie looks like comic book movie: C+.
The low standards people who eat this shit up will keep eating this shit up until the end of time.
My biggest problem was how…fucking…dull the characters were (except for Kingo. Kumail seemed to be truly enjoying himself). Everyone else just seemed to be standing around, delivering lines. And.I.kept.waiting for them to do something with Kit Harrington (who gets shorter shrift than Zendaya in Dune). Yeah, I know who his character is, but in this movie, it’s just an extended cameo.
And can we quit doing reverb when important dialogue is being said. I swear, I could only understand half of what Arishem said half the time. Maybe that was everyone else’s problem in the movie.
Very disappointed.
It’s nice to see that the idea I put on these comments at least 3-5 years ago finally got put into place. That is, putting the trailer for the film in with the review. I’m not gonna take credit.But I am. It only took until November of 2021 to do this?? JFC. I’m lazy as fuck too but what happened to you AVC?? Fuck your Gawker idiots and just do it.
I’m also just now noticing that this review was posted on October 26.Knew nothing about it until today, November 5. Wasn’t on the frontpage, wasn’t anywhere. This despite comments from 10/26. I refresh my screen all the time…I was gonna take the blame, but??You guys at the AVC really, really need to figure shit out.
Oh no! This Marvel movie feels just like a Marvel movie!
If you pay money to see this movie you are a Rube who is being tricked. Total fucking garbage.
Saw it. Liked it a lot. Not perfect, a hair too long, but I enjoyed it.I guess I’m a Rube who was, uh, tricked or whatever.
I just saw Eternals. It might make my top 5, definitely top 10 favourite MCU films… This review and the whole Rotten Tomatoes thing definitely have their heads way up their asses.
Brian Tyree Henry and Kumail Nanjiani were both fantastic. The mythology, the cinematography, I just really liked this Marvel film. Critics be cray.
Saw it tonight. I knew it was getting some poor reviews and I did my best to keep an open mind, but they’re largely right. Personally I think its the worst Marvel movie ( close to 30 movies with just a couple of duds is still a great average). It’s just so bland, tired and lifeless. I thought it might also be because I have no connection to the source material, but I had no background with Guardians or Capt Marvel either and I liked them a lot more (especially Guardians). It’s not even “well, a bad Marvel movie is still a good movie”. The whole thing is just MEH. I popped for Patton Oswalt though
Ditch most of the named characters, and just give me a sequel with Black Knight and Pip the Troll, you Cowards!
Holy shit this looks hilarious. Too bad that Marvel will remove every element of earnestness while being blandly competent to make a completely forgettable film.
Well I would call this movie a LOT of things, not all of them good, but “Just another MCU movie” isn’t one of them. If anything it reminded me of, of all things, David Lynch’s Dune. It’s alternately charming and boring, beautiful and overlong, thoughtful and kind of stupid. It has the makings of the first cult MCU movie. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to hate it but in a few years there will be a small but passionate cadre of people who will yell at you if you say anything else is the best MCU movie. I can’t quite recommend it, but it is something to watch. I will say this, don’t go see it after 5 PM. I went to an 8:50 show and by the end I was STRUGGLING.
Did you find it benefitted from the theatre experience (beyond what it would for any movie)? I loved The Master, for example, but I’m glad I saw it at home where I could get up from time to time or take a break. I don’t mind shelling out the cash to see Eternals on the big screen, but if it doesn’t really add anything, I might just wait to see it at home.
Hmm, I’m not sure. The sets (particularly for the opening sequence & big climax) were gorgeous, but I can’t say that the big battles were anything that needed to be seen on a big screen. Tbh it might be a movie where you enjoy it more if you can pause it a couple times to take a break.
Thanks! It sounds like it might be a sit at home with takeout and adult beverage kind of movie for me.
I have a feeling a lot of people are going to hate it but in a few
years there will be a small but passionate cadre of people who will yell
at you if you say anything else is the best MCU movie
You summed it up great, especially this quote. I can definitely see it being a meh film for most, but for the small number that likes it, they will REALLY like it. I can already envision the blog posts 5 years or more down the road titled “Why Eternals is actually the best Marvel movie”
Hell, maybe in 3-4 years I’ll consider it the Season of the Witch of the MCU. I doubt it, but who knows?
This one was so good and I don’t get what the problem is.
I read some comics as a kid, and I never liked it when they got “bigger” in scope. These ones where you are basically saying they are gods like Galactus and others were always boring to me. There is no way to “beat” them that was not ridiculous, their motivations were never really grounded or made sense, and there was no drama to it at all.
Enjoyed the movie. Action had stakes and emotion. Fuck you
*spoilers*
having seen this I wonder if audiences will have any issue with the idea that the Eternals are just robots? Are we going to tune in for their lives and loves? Sersi did not explicitly take the governor off their inability to evolve so the main characters are all just clockwork non-oranges, no?
she did turn Sprite into a “human” at the end but that it was implied that was only possible under pretty unique circumstances.
I didn’t care about Eternals & went to this primarily out of
obligation to the MCU. Going in with low expectations turned out to be
the right strategy, as it allowed me to enjoy it. I was shocked too! While Eternals didn’t always reach its lofty ambitions, I was impressed by how much actually did work.https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2021/11/06/hope-springs-for-marvels-eternals/
I enjoyed Eternals quite a bit. But I’m also a big fan of other sci-fi franchises that focus a lot on ancient cosmic aliens manipulating civilizations across the galaxy/universe, like Stargate, Babylon 5, Mass Effect, etc.
The portrayal of the Celestials also boosts my confidence that the MCU will do a good job with Galactus and the Phoenix Force.
It seems like this movie less proves that it doesn’t matter who is behind the camera as much as it really, really matters who’s behind the keyboard. This movie didn’t have a previs problem, it had a script and character development problem. The visuals were the saving grace of this film.
I saw it tonight and yes, 100 percent agree with this assessment. Visually spectacular, zero character development. Or rather, characters developing by some other character saying “as you know, you feel this way.” Too much relied on shorthand from other story-telling conventions without actually even using those conventions, just hinting at the existence of them. It felt like a first draft.
It’s very odd that Dowd would conflate bad writing with a previs problem. Does his spite for Marvel movies run that deep, or does he really misunderstand how these movies are made? Chloe Zhao reportedly pitched the concept of this movie to them. My biggest defense of this movie, especially in comparison to other Marvel origin films, is that the movie did a good job of explaining who the Eternals were, and what they wanted. The individual characters were poorly sketched out, but I thought they did a good job communicating the struggle and what it means to be an “Eternal” vs whatever Shang Chi’s character arc was supposed to be.
Yes, I got why we should care about them as a unit and as a concept, but not why we should (or even they should!) as individuals. We needed more of them being together eating shawarma or something, not just fighting things. To your other point, I actually was pretty underwhelmed by Shang-Chi for the reasons you give. I’m going to be the odd one out of the critical consensus and say I actually had the most fun with Black Widow, the most appreciation for Eternals for what it was trying to accomplish, and the most meh for Shang-Chi.
Strangely enough I think we are in complete agreement. I was surprised by how much I loved Black Widow, excepting a few goofy plot details. Shang Chi had amazing fight sequences but very underwhelming characterizations and story arcs for basically every character. And Eternals is probably the best looking with the coolest concept, but cardboard characters who say the most generic dialogue I think we’ve seen in a Marvel Movie. Who says Marvel movies are all the same??
I’m about a week (two weeks?) too late to join in the discussion on this, but I actually really enjoyed this one. I went in having heard all the negative word-of-mouth, having read the reviews, and expected some wild mess… but I left very pleasantly surprised. There are certainly some moments where the film stumbles, but holy cow, I don’t think a Marvel movie has looked this good… ever. I absolutely see some of the criticism of the performances being wooden, but I think that was deliberate in some places and the result of lines that needed a little more polish in others. Regardless, I’d love to see more of these characters — and who knew that under all that dour Game of Thrones-ness, Kit Harington was actually incredibly charming and funny, even?
I’m about a week (two weeks?) too late to join in the discussion on this, but I actually really enjoyed this one I’m even later, but I just saw it yesterday, and I pretty much loved it. I saw it in the theater, but as soon as it shows up on Disney+ I’ll watch it at home too. My take on the movie? Not enough wacky Kirby visuals, but…some. (The giant red god was great, and that “mysterious rock formation” at the end was perfect.) Liked the cast a lot and the look of the whole thing. I hope like hell they do another one because those two end credits bits were a ton of fun.
I don’t know. The screenplay was the worst Marvel screenplay in years. Just comically (no pun intended) bad dialogue, clumsy exposition, plenty of characters calling others they’ve known for thousands of years by their names so the audience would know. Sure Zhao was saddled with kind of a lame unknown property and there were smaller moments that worked, but I think it’s fair to blame the director/screenwriter here as much as it is the house style. It was just so disjointed, and it felt every minute of 2.5 hours. If anything the parts that felt more Marvel-y were the highlights.