The Eternals explain why they didn’t stop Thanos from wiping out half the universe in new trailer
The Marvel film is slated for release on November 5, 2021
Film News Eternals
The final trailer for Marvel’s Eternals has arrived and those Eternals have some explaining to do. In the first trailer, we watched the Eternals encounter the ancient humans for what we assume was the very first time. In a voiceover, we learned that though the Eternals have watched the humans complete their little tasks and go about their daily little lives for centuries, they have never interfered. But now, those humans want some answers.
“Why didn’t you guys help fight Thanos or any other war? All of the terrible things throughout history?” Kit Harington’s character Dane asks Sersi (Gemma Chan). When a visibly stricken Sersi tells him that they were instructed never to meddle, it doesn’t really look like it’s a good enough answer for Dane.
And it may no longer be a good enough answer for Thena (Angelina Jolie) either. “We have loved these people since the day we arrived, when you love something you protect it,” Thena says in another scene, hinting that it’s finally time for the Eternals to hit back at the status quo.
Though the trailer—in true Marvel fashion—is loaded with battle scenes that look as majestic and otherworldly as the Eternals themselves, we do also get some humor courtesy of Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). In the last shot of the trailer, Ikaris (Richard Madden), believing that Phastos has built “the perfect safe house” puts his whole fist through the dining table he assumed was made of out vibranium. A wholly impressed Phastos informs him that actually, the table was from the “fall collection. Ikea.”
Eternals was written by Matthew “Kaz” and Ryan Firpo and is directed by Chloe Zhao (who walked away from this year’s Oscars with the awards for Best Picture and Best Director). In addition to Harington, Chan, Jolie, Henry and Madden, the stacked cast list also includes: Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, Don Lee, Lia Hughes, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, and Lia McHugh, among others. Though filming for the movie wrapped back in February 2020, the release of Eternals was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially slated for theaters in February 2021, Eternals will now be released on November 5, 2021
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I know someone think MCU have too many jokey moment, but I liked that IKEA gag.Anyhoo this seems okay, but I’m not sure it’ll do Guardians Vol 1 numbers (obvs factoring in the current pandemic).
I like how Brian Tyree Henry undersells it, giving it an extra “beat” of pause before replying.
Hah, that beat! That was my big takeaway from the trailer; I was watching thinking, “gee, they’re really giving that some space,” and then pivoted to, “ok, this is getting weird.”
Eurgh there’s nothing worse than coming back to your previous post(s) and spotting typos.
Double annoying that I can’t correct them after more than 15 minutes.
Kinja sux. It is known.
I kind of think it’s going to have to fit into the Guardians mode of being raved about with an actually somewhat unique vision in order to make decent money. If it gets Black Widow reviews I think it’s going to bomb.
I thought reviews for Black Widow were okay?
Granted I’ve mostly seen UK reviews and probably give Empire magazine too much weight on grading of MCU films.
That’s sort of what I mean. Black Widow got “it’s a Marvel movie, you know the deal” type reviews. I think that the Eternals needs “It’s not just a Marvel movie, it’s a new experience, must see”
Ah right, that’s a very valid point.I suppose it’s possible the trailer doesn’t properly hint at the overall tone Zhao has created for the film?
We’ll have to wait and see I suppose.
Is this considered product placement for IKEA? If so, I dont think I like it being the stinger at the end of this trailer. That feels extremely corporate.
I feel like Zhao is the only reason I’m interested in this. The Eternals have never really grabbed me.
Granted, this is the trailer, but just from a cinematography perspective it looks better than any other Marvel movie.
There’s a huge contrast between the action shots and the dialogue shots; I don’t think Zhao got a reprieve from Marvel’s proclivity towards pre-vis.
Not seeing it tbh.
It looks gorgeous, but I’m just not much of a fan of of those oversized creatures they’re fighting. I don’t really know what alternative direction I’d like them to take, but these wrestling matches with generic alien monsters all go the same way: they’ll roll around furiously, the creature will have the hero pinned down at some point and its open jaws and teeth will come up to one inch of the hero’s face for a few seconds, then it’ll probably end with the creature getting killed while on top of the hero, who in the end catches his/her breath with the heavy weight of the dead creature on top of him/her.
They’re super powerful! But not that powerful! Just like .. selectively powerful, at the right time! Their power is drama!
I think that is The Tick’s power, too. At least in the comics.
Hey! How about a spoiler alert!?
Zhao and the fact that I don’t believe Disney would let such a dumb, boring comic be adapted unless they had some idea of how to make it interesting enough to move tickets and merch.The Eternals are only interesting in that they’re concrete proof that even geniuses need editors.
I don’t know anything about them from the comics. But this looks like it could be a completely different universe and lose nothing, right? Is there any story-driven reason why this has to be in the MCU? Or would it be virtually identical even if Captain America didn’t exist, for example?
I bought the first couple of issues of the original run when I was a kid. Even then, I could tell the writing was horrible. It’s taken several decades of “re-imagining” to make them seem interesting. It’s hard to be cautiously optimistic.
The Eternals have never really grabbed anyone. People point to GOTG as the hopeful precedent for this movie, but at least COMICS fans liked GOTG going in. (on opening night there was a lady there dressed in absolutely stellar Gamora cosplay, so it was doing some clicking with fans in advance)
This trailer does sell it pretty well though; that first trailer made me think it was going for the people who fell for that first Man Of Steel trailer and thought it was going to be some Terrence Malick thing.
I listened to about 50 minutes of Elliot Kalan explaining why I had never heard of the Eternals on The Flop House.
Based on their publishing history, it seems like they never really grabbed much of anyone.
Yeah it’s like all of my friends who have read some comics and usually follow the more popular characters…know nothing about the Eternals. I’ve been reading comics forever and have to kinda give them a crash course.
Oooh so they fight the grass wolves from Lady in the Water
“We were instructed not to interfere in any human conflicts unless Deviants were involved”[pushes glasses up nose] Thanos is a Deviant.
“So why didn’t you stop Gary Glitter?”
Does that mean they’re going to take care of Bill Cosby for us?
“We thought you guys had that covered! That was on US?!”
[straightens bow tie] In the comics. In the movies Thanos is an alien from a planet coincidentally named Titan.
Actually, Titan is a moon…
“That’s no moon.”
Is it Saturn’s moon Titan, or some other moon coincidentally named Titan?
In the comics Saturn’s moon. In movies planet.
Saturn’s Moon
That kind of cracks me up. The moon Titan is somewhere between Mars and the Earth’s moon in mass. Thanos would be a relative weakling to an ordinary human. Puny Banner could have whipped his ass.
Earth-616 Thanos got his head chopped off by Thor. Thanos from another timeline (a deviant) came back & tried to take over the universe. They could have helped in Endgame by that logic. Anyway, I do get the many deviant word-play jokes & think this movie looks pretty damn cool.
[Pushed glasses even farther up nose] …in 616.
To be fair I’m pretty sure Thanos’ brother Eros would be a higher priority what with him having the power of mind controlling the pleasure centers of the brain…Yes, the Avengers let the guy with the power of date rape on the team. Fortunately in the comics Gamora killed him to stop Thanos from coming back to life and there’s a solid chance he’s never coming back.
I liked Starfox even if he did have a stupid creepy power. In my head Dazed and Confused era Matthew McConaughey would be an ideal casting.I daresay we’re not going to get any more Thanos related characters in MCU, so we’ll never see Eros on big screen.
I like how all the white folks on that cover are super-excited about Starfox and the black woman is the only one with the appropriate level of skepticism.
I wouldn’t say it’s just her. Thor looks relatively concerned, and Hawkeye is clenching his jaw in fear.
Wasp and She-Hulk looked turned on, which is somewhat disappointing.
Wasp and She-Hulk looked turned on, which is somewhat disappointing.
worse than slut-shaming, is shaming a woman for failing their savng throw. ALL DICE MATTER
What? Thor and Hawkeye are both grimacing. That’s 50/50.
I and others don’t see what you see.
by no means is She-Hulk “white”
Ok, so ‘Shunk’ is obviously the sound of a sword stabbing someone through the heart from behind, but is ‘FWFH’ the sound of it coming back out, slicing through the air, or the spray of blood off the edge of the blade? Or maybe whoever that is standing in front of Gamora got a little blood in their mouth and now they’re spitting it out?
To be fair I’m pretty sure Thanos’ brother Eros would be a higher priority what with him having the power of mind controlling the pleasure centers of the brain…Yes, the Avengers let the guy with the power of date rape on the team.Potential date rape. He could always get consent first.Interesting conundrum, though. If I had that power, you can bet all my dates would be going home satisfied, but of course I wouldn’t use that power until consensually sealing the deal.But could that power end up influencing consent? If I start using my power while, say, working my way from second base to third, and then my date gives the go-ahead to go further, that doesn’t seem kosher. Especially since non-super-powered, real-world me has been tagged out numerous times trying to steal.
this is a power that 1. nobody Good would exploit unduly, and 2. anybody with more than Wisdom 11 should know to never ever tell absolutely anybody that they have it.
I really don’t see how this could be a power useful to any hero. An heroic therapist, maybe, working with the clinically depressed? Otherwise, it’s just a neat ability to have once your partner has already consented (and you haven’t used said power to cloud their judgment).I mean, I wouldn’t mind having Killgrave’s power, either, but even if I’m using it on assholes who deserve it, 1) who am I to decide who really “deserves it,” and 2) that’s still a massive violation of someone’s rights — even unrepentant assholes
Oh god, is that the horrid sequel to the excellent Thanos/Thanos Wins 18 part series in the lower panel?
No that’s Donny Cates’ run on GotG.
“[pushes glasses up nose] Thanos is a Deviant.”In the MCU? In the comics perhaps, but this is not the comics, as such it does not matter what happened there.
Even if the comics, I bet he has at least three different origins at this point.
And wasn’t he an Eternal anyway?
He’s an eternal with genetic disorder known as “deviant syndrome,” not an actual deviant.
Ooh, I hope they do a flashback where all the Eternals argue over the technicalities and everyone just pushes their glasses up their nose for 25 minutes.
I was wondering if I was going to have to go super-nerd on this comment, but thankfully you did it instead. Cause we can’t have someone on the Internet be wrong. https://xkcd.com/386/
No, he’s a mutant Eternal, which is different.
And even then, Wanda and Pietro were mutants. Then they weren’t.
They probably didn’t even know Thanos was around until the battle at Wakanda, and by then it was too late. Nevertheless, I kind of expect Marvel to make Thanos a not-Deviant.
Things may have changed in the last 30 years of continuity, but I believe Thanos is an Eternal.
I know it’s probably already been mentioned, but in comics he is an Eternal or Titan, just with a Deviant gene. One issue of the Eternals mentions it occurs on both sides, sometimes treated as outcasts, plus the rare instant shown where an Eternal and a Deviant fell in love.
I would also add that not only Thanos is an Eternal with a Deviant gene, but Thena-Jolie’s character-in the comics was the one that loved a Deviant, named Kro. I read it a long time ago so rusty since don’t want to pay for a monthly Marvel account to access those comics.
I get that the MCU has an aesthetic, and I’m not saying I have the answer here, but this looks just so… generic. When I think of The Eternals my first thought goes to the epic Kirby splash pages of old. His work had such a unique campy pop art sensibility that I feel really had a chance to shine in The Eternals. In my mind it’s synonymous with the title and it’s sorely lacking here. I think this same missing sensibility is part of why none of the Fantastic Four movies ever did well. How you translate his whole ‘vibe’ to a live action setting is beyond me. I just know this doesn’t hit the mark.
Exactly, Cosmic Marvel has a vibe(well a few different ones) and the MCU has not really got them right yet. Thor 3 and the GOTG have come close as well as a little of Doctor Strange but the “main line” Avengers flicks stick to the more boring Hollywood scifi asthetics
Yeah, I think the Grandmaster’s tower in Thor 3 had a little bit of it but that’s the only thing that comes anywhere close, at least to me.
You’re crazy. The visuals and style look incredible.
You are entitled to your bad opinion. ;P My biggest fear is that this film is going to be Ang Lee’s Hulk version 2.0.
And I guess you’re entitled to having absolutely no idea what a good movie looks like. You do you!
@listen2themottoYou want to personally insult me because we have different opinions on a purely subjective topic about a superhero movie? You can kindly fuck all the way off. Dismissed.
It’s so interesting to see the responses to this trailer. Some have called it very different from what they seen of the MCU and stunning. Others have called it generic and flat. There’s no middle ground. I think this movie might be the MCU first film that splits the fanbase.To your point about the aesthetic, I think its similar to the Final Fantasy situation with Amano art, not sure how familiar you are with that. I imagine that such Kirby art and designs would be extremely difficult and expensive to make happen anywhere outside paper. And maybe even off putting. But that’s just my opinion of why it’s never happened from both sides even, DC and Marvel movies.
No i absolutely agree, I think if they just mimicked Kirby’s aesthetic in live action it would look goofy. As for being the first divisive MCU film? I mean… Captain Marvel came out in 2019.
Yeah, they just look like a bunch of…peoples. Say what you will about Zack Snyder’s Justice League, at least those New Gods were otherworldly. This looks like Inhumans but with a budget. I know more than the average movie-goer about comic characters and these are a deep dive even for me. Guardians proved familiarity doesn’t always matter, but raccoons and tree peoples jumped off the poster. I feel like this is going to be a hard post-snap sell unless its epic scope gets people interested.
Exactly. Pretty much every single MCU costume looks like it was designed by the same person. I mean, it was great the first few times compared to those old foam muscle costumes from back in the day, but we are beyond derivative now.
I recently saw the first trailer for this in IMAX, and turns out it the visuals do really pop when it’s on a massive screen – that opening shot of the ship was spectacular, and the Bollywood shot was great too. It seems like a sense of massive physical scope could sub in for Kirby-ness in capturing an otherwordly weird aesthetic, but unfortunately 99% of people won’t be seeing this on an IMAX screen, so I’m not sure how that helps as a practical matter.(I do still get annoyed at the washed out the colors of most MCU movies, though.)
You got to admit, with half the universe gone, there’s a lot more room to stretch out and I finally got a primo spot at the beach!
less lines at the ice cream stand later too!
I can finally get those cronuts everyone was raving about in 2013!
The stand is having staffing issues, though. “Ever since the Snap, people just don’t want to work anymore” say the owners. The idea of paying higher wages hasn’t occurred to them.
Don’t even get me started about the lines at Disney! I mean sure I missed some friends and family but it was worth it to be able to ride Space Mountain twice without a wait!
But they tripled the entry fee to compensate for lost revenue and NEVER lowered it again!
Listen, Disney is an expensive vacation. You just gotta accept that you or your partner really don’t need two kidneys and selling one will get you at least a two days at the park(one if you eat there too)
Shouldn’t have stopped at half
I might be able to finally snag a PlayStation 5.
I feel this has a nice sentiment about loving humanity/community while we’re still in the pandemic, even though it’s hard to watch things unfold. Also it is very beautifully shot.
“You know that thing you’ve been joking about for months? Well, we were actually ahead of you on it the whole time, and we’ve just been fattening you up like a Christmas goose, biding our time until the day of the chop.”
Wow, OK. I understand why they waited so long to show the Deviants. They are … yeah. Weightless CGI squiggle monsters from planet generica.
To be fair, Eternals was always just Jack Kirby’s Fourth World with the serial numbers filed off.
True but they could have at least made the deviants look more Kirby inspired.
That is amazing!
And aren’t they also kind of Inhumans, take 3?
Those are just the Deviant’s “attack dog” type creatures. The only actual Deviant they showed was the one that was talking to Thena and lifting her off the ground with his tendrils. I’m assuming that’s Kro as that’s the only specific Deviant that has been mentioned as being in the movie.
Who also looks nothing like any comics Deviant.It’s not a high crime, but it is rather odd for the MCU, which has, so far, hewed pretty close to comics-derived looks, rather than the totally different-looking “re-imaginings” that pre-MCU supers movies often had (and that this seems to have).
If Kro, then in the comics, Thena and he are a couple or at least star crossed lovers.
The Eternals are sorry if their decision not to stop Thorax offended you.
If the Lorax had laser eyes or some shit, the Onceler was a dead man.
That table really tied the room together.
With every trailer, it is blowing my mind that after 20+ movies (minus the first 4 character movies) they are finally letting a director use cinematography for a whole movie and not a single scene. This looks gorgeous.
I feel like we have an impoverished idea of constitutes “gorgeous”, these days. In the Mood For Love is gorgeous. The Conformist is gorgeous. Days of Heaven, Werckmeister Harmonies, Barry Lyndon.This looks . . . Instagrammable.
I’m definitely more interested in this now that they’re showing off more of the grand cosmic weirdness of the movie. It has more of a 70’s cosmic sci-fi vibe than Jack Kirby clutter vibe, but that’s okay. The Deviants still just look like cgi sludge.
I really hope the villains aren’t all just big CGI monsters.
I’m hoping for cute little bunnies with sharp teeth. And flame throwers.
MORE Lokis?! Fuck me…
this guy wants more Lokis to fuck him.
Who doesn’t?
The croc doesn’t interest me.
He just might, but remember that he said, “Love is a dagger,” so he is probably into some intense stuff.
Couldn’t they have at least just talked to Thanos. Tell him that his plan is a bad idea. That usually works.
It got super weird that we got literally no conversations about that with anyone for the entirety of Phase 1. What’s sad is that the MCU’s version of Thanos would’ve only been enriched by progressively unraveling in response to completely solid criticisms of his plan. He was set up as a traumatized individual using a Grand Plan (and genocide, at that) as a terrible coping mechanism for events that completely broke his brain. It would’ve been wonderful to watch his thin veneer of detachment and rationality get stripped away until we were left with nothing but a maelstrom of hurt and rage.
The most recent What If episode made a fun joke out of it though, so there’s that long-term payoff for ya.
The larger the MCU gets, the more it needs to explain why certain elements don’t appear when they ought to. To wit, why other Avengers were absent from solo sequels; the Ancient One and/or Dr. Strange ignoring threats like Malekith; Wakanda excusing itself from all of human history; Captain Marvel patrolling space until she isn’t; and of course the Inhumans chillin’ on the Moon.
Cool that Chloe Zhao gets a shout out in the trailer. I don’t remember any other Marvel trailers giving special mention to the director before.
That’s because Zhao has an Oscar on her belt. I believe that is a first for the MCU (even Branagh had only been nominated).
Weird to think this was originally supposed to come out before she would have gotten it.
I know why they did it, I just think it’s cool that they did it. It takes some of the air out of the “Marvel’s directors are just interchangeable work-for-hire gigs” argument.
I thought Coogler’s name was attached to the Black Panther film but however I’m a fan of his so maybe for me I just associate Black Panther with Ryan Coogler all the time.
Boy howdy does everything they’ve shown of this movie not look interesting. The heroes look generic, the CGI looks terrible and the villains … I see why they waited until now to show the villains.I’ll watch it because Marvel Studios has earned my benefit of the doubt, but I’ve never been less interested in one of their films going into the theatre.
Nah, don’t let the brand command you. Skip it until you hear if it’s good (like actual good, not just Marvel passable) or not.
I’ve just realized, this is… probably gonna come up A LOT, isn’t it? Every single new corner of the MCU for the forseeable future is going to have to cover ‘so where were you guys when half the universe was dead for five years’.I feel like that’s gonna mess up a lot of attempts at being relatable when they try to include someone who’s meant to go for that, like Kamala Khan, or whenever they inevitably try to do the X-Men….although maybe they lucked out there in a weird, horrible way. After all, when they wrote in the snap and its aftermath, most of the world had never dealt with a global, terrifying and unfeeling event of mass death that hung over every day of their life for years. But now…
I think Kamala is gonna get her powers post snap, so that will clear herI think the F4 and X-Men, when they are introduced is gonna be due to a something having to do with parallels universe and “timey whimey” stuff and thus the excuse was “We were even in your universe yet!”
Hopefully they can handle the X-Men like House of M already happened but we just don’t know it because the world forgot as well. Then whatever happens in Dr. Strange with Wanda brings them back.
I keep thinking about how the MCU’s first stretchy superhero will be Kamala. Like, Reed Richards will turn up and be seen as a Ms. Marvel wannabe.
The rumor I saw based on some production photos going around is that they may be changing her power set to be some generic glowy hand bullshit. I really hope not
I keep wondering if this will finally be the first time in history this special effect will look good in live action.
That’s gonna make things even messier.
I think mutants are going to entire the MCU as a side effect of The Snap. Bring brought back rewrote a bunch of people’s DNA
I’ve long thought the FF were the 50′-60’s superhero story we didn’t get, and they should be stuck in dimension x or whatever, and then return out of time to warn us about the….PLOT. Like they were contemporaries with the 1st Ant man or whatever, but their adventure meant they blipped out.
That’s actually kind of an interesting idea for a comic story. Imagine if the Avengers had not been aware of the Infinity Stones and so never noticed Thanos in the first place, at least not until it was too late? Kind of like the antithesis to the old trope where the villain describes their plan in great detail before wandering off and allowing the heroes to escape whatever dumb death contraption they were subjected to now knowing exactly how to stop the bad guy.
It could be an interesting story, but it doesn’t really fall into the superhero genre if the superheroes are just chilling and then one day half of them just distintegrate into dust and they never find out why.
Yeah, probably not enough meat on the bones to flesh out a complete story but it is kind of interesting how superheroes never really have to do any investigating to unearth villainous plots. The bad guys always seem to drop the evidence right on their front door.
I mean, there have definitely been superhero stories where they have to solve the mystery of what the villain is doing and then race to stop them, but I think one reason we don’t see that very often is that superheroes have superpowers. If the villain is operating secretly, they’re by definition doing things that most superpowers aren’t particularly useful for countering. You might see situations where the villain needs to steal some kind of rare, high-tech thing, and the heroes get a tip or clue and try to stop him, but they’re just too late. This does allow for superheroics because the villain has minions who are there to stall the heroes while the villain escapes, but the heroes are usually still in the dark as to why the villain wanted that thing or what he plans to do with it.
Captain America: Civil War is an instructive example, because Zemo’s plan is almost entirely subterfuge and misdirection. All the superheroics we see in the movie are either unrelated to Zemo (e.g. the opening action scene in Lagos), or are related to hunting down Bucky (the Bucharest sequence; the Berlin sequence after Zemo activates Bucky), or are the superheroes fighting each other (the airport battle, the final sequence). The heroes in the movie are rarely ever even near Zemo; the only two specific occasions are when he’s impersonating the psychiatrist at the Berlin facility (and he escapes almost before they realize something’s amiss with him) and at the very end when he’s watching them at the HYDRA facility, at which point he doesn’t care if he dies (and in fact tries to kill himself). The only time Zemo directly attacks the heroes is when he sets off the bomb at the U.N., and the heroes don’t even realize something is afoot until approximately two seconds before the explosion.
Excellent points
What If
Ordinary folks in comics are supernaturally even-keeled and will recover from almost any imaginable trauma in no time flat, with the occasional exception of a civilian who is so traumatized by something that happened that they turn into a supervillain.
That’s why I always rolleyed at (of all possible criticisms of that movie) people complaining about those guys getting punched through a wall in Green Lantern. In a comic, they’d be getting up with little swirlies drawn around their heads two panels later; civilians don’t get accidentally killed by the hero in one-off, swiftly-moved-past slapstick disasters in these stories. Didn’t need to actually see it in that movie to know those were the rules it was playing by.
They can always take the easy route and say they were snapped out of existence for five years. You bring up a good point, though.
Well the Celestials were the ones who created the X-Gene in the first place in the comics. Seeing mutants spring up as a consequence of active Celestials would be one direction to take it.
That would be a much better way than using the multiverse to continue the Fox version of the characters.
For X-men, you could simply write a story that said that the snap activated the mutant gene or otherwise caused it, along the lines of “some people came back wrong”.
Maybe it’s the comics reader in me, but the “why didn’t you stop X” line of questioning just exhausts me because pulling on that narrative thread gets you nowhere.In the comics, there are something like 25-30 heroes that live in NYC within a 20 minute subway ride of each other and they’re not constantly popping in to others’ stories. Sometimes we just have to suspend disbelief.
Yeah anything that happened to Peter Parker after issue 1 of Amazing Spider-Man could have been dismissed with “why doesn’t the Fantastic Four just help Spidey beat Chameleon, Vulture or Dr Octopus?”
heroes that live in NYC within a 20 minute subway ride of each other and they’re not constantly popping in to others’ storiesTrue. But putting them all (at first) in New York, a real city in the real world, was a stroke of Stan & Jack genius. So then they could pop into one another’s stories, which hadn’t happened much in DC comics. But yeah, with so many of them in the same city it does seem like, for instance, Daredevil and Luke Cage would always bump into each other. (Are Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem close to each other?- I’ve only been to NYC once. And didn’t see either of them!)(It was artistic and cultural genius, but marketing genius as well. Particular book with sagging sales? Why, Spidey, the most popular Marvel hero across a large demographic, could show up and boost circulation – in comics as diverse and non-Spider-man-related as Killraven or Shang-Chi. And of course later Wolverine served the same purpose.)
They’re far apart in Manhattan terms if not in actual geographical terms. It would be pretty easy for someone living and working in Harlem to not cross paths with someone living and working in Hell’s Kitchen. On the other hand, if someone in one neighborhood heard of trouble in the other, they could hop on the subway and get there in there in under an hour.
Most of the new characters are going to have origin stories that start after the snap. And of the ones that don’t most have pretty decent excuses. Shang-Chi can basically say “Well, the snap happened in Wakanda, which I had only even learned about a few weeks earlier, and it’s not like I was invited to go punch aliens.” Moon Knight and She-Hulk both presumably have post-snap power origins, and we’re already seeing the Eternal excuse. The rest of the newcomers are kids so far.
Kamala Khan is easy. She’s 15. I think it’s likely mutants will either appear as a result of the Snap or some multiverse shenanigans.
Kamala is so small scale I barely see the issue, these though, are fucking gods letting it happen. The whole “we were not to interfere in the ways of men” is just ridiculous, f “your kind” wiped out half the galaxy
I mean, anyone younger than about 25 has the excuse of being a teenager or even an actual child when the snap happened. Kamala in particular would easily fall in the category of “why would a normal 11 year old from New Jersey have to account for their whereabouts during an alien invasion?”Likewise, even older heroes can pretty easily have their origin either during the Blip or after it.What’s more, both of Thanos’s attacks come pretty much out of nowhere. Even Ant-Man wasn’t really aware of what was going down because he was busy with his own thing. Why and how would a hero like Daredevil or Jessica Jones, even if they came directly from the Netflix MCU, know to show up for a fight?The Eternals premise with them being so old and so powerful and watching humanity etc etc puts them in a position where, yeah, they probably ought to justify their noninvolvement. But like… Blade? Dude was probably busy fighting vampires and not paying attention to the cosmic stuff. Doesn’t really need exploring.
Well, Daredevil and crew theoretically could have helped out in New York if they happened to be around. But even if Feige had been inclined to allow such a cameo, there still would have been a whole, “wait, who are you guys?” “oh, don’t worry about it, goodbye!” issue. Before seeing IW, I was heavily in favor of Netflix/AOS cameos in the background, but it really wasn’t feasible with the direction it went in.
Honestly, I’m glad they didn’t do that. I get where the TV/movie divide gets frustrating, but I’m not a huge fan of cameos for the sake of cameos, just to prove everyone is there. The MCU generally doesn’t go too overboard with them, but it gives me hives in Star Wars.It makes the universe feel a little smaller, and it also locks characters into a position for future stories for no particular pay off.
Realistically, could the Netflix Defenders even have been any help in New York? Thanos’ goons were there for what, ten minutes? And Dr. Strange’s sanctum is downtown, isn’t it? It would have taken a while for anyone in Hell’s Kitchen to get there, and Luke Cage is up in Harlem.
Something I should’ve said (it was late and it didn’t occur to me when I wrote that comment) was that I’m not expecting the question to be ‘why weren’t you actively doing something about this world-encompassing problem’, but rather ‘how were you personally affected by this world-encompassing problem’. Like how you don’t expect every single person to have some story about trying to stop the pandemic in some meaningful way, but you would expect everyone to have a story about how they were affected by it.Kamala Khan shouldn’t necessarily have a story about how she helped during that time, but she would have a story about how she dealt with it. And that’s going to happen for… I’m gonna say every single MCU hero, at all, until the MCU inevitably dies. The MCU will not last long enough to outlast feeling like it has to explain what people were doing and how they were affected by that event.
Ah, I get you. That IS question we’ll probably see a lot, and you know in some ways there are real world precedents for it. After WWII, a lot of movies had to grapple with how people were affected by the war, if men served and so forth. And like you mentioned, now we have the pandemic.
I don’t know anything about the Eternals… Would they not have been able to be snapped out of existence by Thanos? Were any of them?
I don’t think they would have been snapped, based on the plot details that were leaked:https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/massive-marvel-spoiler-might-ve-163708488.html
That’d be a great comic relief moment in the movie for sure.“Yeah okay, listen, the Holocaust. Yes. Very serious. Very dramatic. Tears. Eggshells. Whole nine yards. But Thanos? We took some karma for that one. Half of us ended up getting snapped out of existence after we decided not to stop him. That was a teaching moment. We’re reflecting on that one.”
Possible answers include: “We weren’t working that day”, “That wasn’t part of our job description”. “If you have a complaint go tell our manager”, “You think this is an easy job? YOU do it” and “Look, we’re just doing this until our band takes off.”
I liked how in the final season or two of Agents of SHIELD they knew there was no way to reconcile their storyline with the snap, so they stopped even bothering. Extra funny because they’d gone out of their way in the finale of the season before those (set one year earlier) to have the events concurrent with Thanos’ attacks.
Well, after saying they were told not to, there was a smash cut to Eson the Searcher and as we saw in that flashback in Guardians 1, you do *not* want to cross him lest you have a world ending event.
It’s also weird that everything has to take place five years in the future now.
…actually, that’s suddenly made something occur to me. Regardless of the exact dates that Infinity War and Endgame take place, five years is long enough for pretty much every democratic nation on Earth to have at least one election, since to the best of my knowledge most nations tend to hold them every three to four years.Instead of another superhero story, can I instead get a story about what the hell an election campaign looks like in that world? That sounds absolutely fascinating.
i suppose there are some left-leaning superheroes, some right-adjacent superheroes, some libertarian “don’t tax my powers” superheroes, some super-woke i-will-avenge-microaggressions superheroes, and why wouldn’t citizens with powers give super-endorsements?
Unbreakable promises — Luke Cage
Swing together to victory — the Amazing Spider-man
Wake up, sheeple — the Winter soldier
HULK SMASH — the Incredible Hulk
Half of that star is for the last line of the post, half for username.
Half of that star is for the last line of the post, half for username.
they both round up to one each. This is how you game The System.
I would assume most if not all countries postponed elections if they were taking place within a year or two, and more than a few just continued under marshal law.
Absolutely, but also, the world itself doesn’t know they’re in for a five-year wait. For all they know this is just the normal state of things now.We’re kinda learning now, it takes aobut a year, year and a half for people to think that sort of big but passive disaster is over, even if it is blatantly not. So at first, yeah, elections probably got postponed—although I think in some cases elections were instead moved forward in the case of ‘oh crap the Prime Minister of Australia got turned to dust along with half the country, we need a new leader to start sorting things out’. But after a few years, the new normal would be settling in–eventually, you HAVE to hold a proper election. And I want to see that.
I’m not a Marvel person, but this looks good, and I think it’s because Zhao pushed to make the movie she wanted to make.
Yeah. My fear is that the movie she wanted to make has nothing at all to do with the source material.
What Ang Lee’s Hulk wasn’t an unqualified success? 😉
https://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/1006-the-successful-failure-of-ang-lees-hulk/Not really…
Honestly their costumes look kinda washed out and unremarkable.
Say what you will about the original Kirby designs, but they definitely stood out a lot more
I don’t know. Nina Garcia would say these are overdesigned and Michael Kors would say it looks like Vegas meets a monkey’s exploding ass.
I’m not saying their original design would necessarily look good in live action, but you would definitely remember them (something i can’t really say about the costumes from the trailer)They ARE supposed to be nigh-immortal beings with superior alien technology, they NEED to stand out. (At least when they are trying not to blend in)
I am literally triggered by your comment, lol.
Salma Hayek could pull off that green outfit, no doubt. Not sure about the rest.
Costumes are fine. The haircuts, er….
Thought they were on par with the costumes on Titans:
I liked King Kirby’s New Gods more, not much more, but more.
Oh, thank god, CGI monsters for MCU characters to fight for the back third of the movie. Nature is healing.
I’ve never dismissed the criticism of the MCU about how the movies have a template and little deviation … they’ve just used the template so well, and had such great characters, I’ve never cared.This is the first movie where even I’m going “okay, the pattern’s worn thin, do something new”. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but man, this trailer just looks super-generic.
wild that the same director is the one who did nomanland. wasn’t interested in this film until i found that out.
Dane is The Black Knight, a long serving Avenger in the comics.
There is a strain of fandom that feels it necessary to answer the question of “why didn’t hero save us from X if they were around the whole time” and I just can’t think of anything I’m less interested in than that
Worrying so much about lore and world building and what not can ruin almost anything. It’s why it’s always been best to ignore the Star Wars EU when watching any of the movies.
Oooh, time for the Internet’s favorite game…. Is THIS the one where the MCU goes off the rails?
Spoiler alert: No, it is not.
i wish they didnt always have to desaturate everyones costumes. A little color wouldnt kill em. I guess theyre too afraid of a comic book thing not being taken seriously.
So in the Far From Home trailers, they really tried to convince everyone that Gyllenhaal was going to be a good guy, but the only bad guys they offered in the trailers were the generic CGI monsters, so we knew there would be a bad guy reveal for him. Are we taking bets yet on which Eternal is secretly a bad guy here?
Any related bets on whether Jolie’s character is a villain vs. whether they’ll use her inherent air of villainy as a red herring?
Angelina Jolie because I can’t see her wanting to do more of these things.
Well obviously it’s Barry Keoghan.
Having first seen him in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer…. yeah.
See also recently in The Green Knight.
Yeah but come on, Mysterio.I don’t deny that they did such a good job making him so sympathetic and likable that I did curse his sudden but inevitable betrayal, though.
I still find it confusing seeing these GOT actors (Madden and Harrington) and the fact their characters are dealing with a character named “Cersi”, although she seems to be on their side. very British movie indeed with Gemma Chan , Fish and Chips banners in what is obviously a UK city street scene, and the end of the trailer having links to MarvelUK social media. very excited to see Bryan Tyree Henry , I hope his role is significant unlike his small scene in Joker.
While I find the visuals absolutely gorgeous, I find it really difficult to get excited for this film. Not even because the concept is lacking, but because it is introducing a relatively big cast of new characters that fill out a completely previously unexplored mythos in the MCU. While at the same time there is a world-ending threat looming in the background. This just feels like asking one movie to do far, far too much.
On a more fun note, I do enjoy how blatant a Superman-ripoff that one character is. However, on the negative side, what is it with MCU and underwhelming villains?
Hey kids! We can save this farm (this town, this school, etc.). Let’s put on a show!!
Wait, so does that mean half the Eternals were dusted for five years too? Or are they somehow special enough that they are immune to infinity stone shenanigans? Not getting involved with human affairs I kind of get if that’s what their creator(??) said, but just standing back and letting themselves get snapped seems harder to buy. Everything I know about the Eternals I learned from commenters here and on io9 so there is a bunch about this movie I’m missing out on. Looks cool, though!
This looks terrible. Is it just me?
Selma Hayak is still smoking hot
I never read comics, so I have no long-standing familiarity with or affection for the Marvel universe.But I’ve enjoyed (most of the) films.This just convinces me even further that the MCU now is just scraping the bottom of the barrel.Nothing about this looks remotely interesting.
I don’t know why but those costumes they’re wearing look uncomfortable. It looks like it’s holding their shoulder back in this stiff position. You’d think Marvel would spring for better costume material that looks like they wear this all the time. I thought the Eternals are not aliens and share the same ancestors with the Deviants and humans.
It’s not too much of a stretch. The only reason the Avengers know of Thanos’ ultimate plan is that Banner arrived to warn them. As far as the rest of Earth knows, some aliens attacked and Iron Man drove them off crisis averted!
Retconning an explanation is weak. It also reveals poor long term planning. If you’re going to add new characters in the future leave enough room so that characters can be filled in seamlessly. And it doesn’t help it looks like Marvel is making it up as it happens and contradicts the whole we have this “grand plan”. They make WWE’s Raw and Smackdown look like they know how to plot a story arc better. I mean I’d be satisfied if the Eternals were trapped for centuries or recently (by pre-Infinity War Thanos?) and finally escaped to see a whole new world they missed out or a power vacuum.
This looks very good, and interesting. I like the idea of the Eternals not being able to ever intervene; Thanos is a Deviant in the comics, and I wonder if they’ll bring that in at all.
he is not a Deviant in the comics, he is an Eternal that has the Deviant gene. Some Deviants have the Eternal gene.
I’ll bet money the “why didn’t they intervene” was shot later in an effort to tie this movie—a movie with characters no one was remotely interesting in seeing as the next major Marvel release—into the previous Thanos storyline.
I’m going to see this out of curiosity for what’s next in the MCU, but I’m still not excited for it specifically.
If the movie is very good, it won’t matter that the original comics were meh New Gods re-dos. I’ve seen bits of the original GotG, and they weren’t all that great. What I wonder about is Kirby’s thesis that virtue is located in the blood. All the Deviants are bad, right? Because they are Deviants.
Why don’t these lazy Celestials take care of their own Deviant problem they created?
They’re too busy doing inscrutable cosmic things.
The biggest problem with this Eternals movie it’s that it’s an Eternals movie. There is no memorable character in that comic. And Jack Kirby meant to create a story outside the Marvel universe (he didn’t like the shared universe concept) so it doesn’t fit well at all.
Who’s Tannos?
Actually Tannus, the god of lying on the beach.
The only place this shows up is on the main page. Not under “Clips” “News” or “Latest”
I hope these actors got all their money on the front end cause I doubt the back end money is going to be any good. I’ll watch it on Netflix.