Skip to main content

Eternals (MCU, 2021)

We now come to the time when we begin looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4 films and let’s just start with the worst: Eternals.

Summary: Immortal beings who live among us are called once more to defend humanity against an ancient threat that has returned. But who are the heroes and who are the villains and when all is said and done, do I really, truly care? A resounding answer of “No!” ensues.

Eternals should have been a very different MCU film. It poses intriguing questions. It wants to examine those in an action/superhero film context, which is fine. Unfortunately, it’s an action/superhero film within the MCU and that means it has to tie back to the 25 films that preceded it while at the same time setting up characters and events for future films. In the right hands, with a studio willing to create something outside of its established universe, it might have worked.

Or maybe not. It’s a surprisingly lifeless affair. No one demonstrates any real sense of passion. The few times someone tries, it comes off contrived and trivial. And make no mistake, there are serious ideas at play here. Forgive the minor spoilers that are needed to explain this.

The Celestials are a race of super-duper massive uber beings that created the known universe (the head of a dead one forms Knowhere, a place seen in several previous MCU films, including Guardians of the Galaxy). The Celestials give birth to stars, which in turn give birth to all other forms of life. The Celestial Arishem sent the Eternals to Earth to defend humans from the Deviants. Deviants are big beasties that love feasting on intelligent life. (Why? Don’t know.) After believing they have stomped the last of the beasties from existence, the Eternals opt to hang around Earth for the next several millennia.

Arishem needs intelligent life to grow on Earth in order to feed a new Celestial, Tiamut, who is growing inside the planet itself. This is because the true mission of the Eternals is to preserve intelligent life, in this case, humans, until there’s enough for Tiamut to feed on and be born. So the Eternals need to protect humans from Deviants so that Tiamut can destroy them later.

You see the moral dilemma here?

This is the sort of thing that superhero, or even vast science fiction films, are good at discussing, concepts they revel in exploring. Within these genres you may create a massive moral conflict and really dig into the issues involved because you can take them to the extremes. The Deviants are, in essence, trying to prevent Celestials from coming into existence. The Eternals are, in essence, defending the nursery. And Celestials are needed because they create all life in the universe. In exchange for billions of humans dying, a Celestial like Tiamut may bring trillions of other lifeforms into existence.

Does the film delve into these, or other, issues. There is faint lip service, but no real debate, no actual discussion or argument. The lines are drawn immediately. You know where everyone stands. And you also know who is going to lose. There are no surprises. This is the same crap that undermined all debate within prior MCU films, e.g., Civil War. It’s lazy and makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place.

The film is also completely undone by the other films leading up to it, especially Infinity Wars. Thanos’s snap is going to eliminate half the human race. This is a direct threat to the Eternals mission on Earth, i.e., protecting humans. Yet they did nothing. Now, suddenly, after the Blip and all the people are back (see Endgame), and Deviants are again a threat. Thanos, not so much; roaring beasties, sure.

It doesn’t help that several of our heroes come across as authoritarian dictators. One uses mind control to enslave a create his own commune; he’s supposed to be one of the Good Guys. He wraps himself in the cloak of moral superiority while stripping humans of free will because He Knows Best.

Marvel, at least under Disney’s stewardship, hasn’t so much lost its moral compass as thrown it away.

Even here, it takes an effort to work up sufficient give-a-damn. The film is such as complete mess. I’m struggling to remember a single scene, a single moment, a single note of music, a single image, a single anything, that stands out. There’s nothing. Writer-Director Chloe Zhao is a more humanistic director yet here...nothing.

In the end, Eternals is a waste. A waste of talent, money, resources, and time. Time will tell if there’s a single reason for it to exist at all.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Not the Hero We Deserve, But the Hero We Need

The Dark Knight is the best film I’ve seen in years. Not just the best “superhero” film, but the best film of any type. It’s not perfect, not quite a masterpiece, but it’s flaws are, to me, tiny and overwhelmed by the time the film ends. While relatively bloodless, it is consistently brutal, not just in what it depicts but in the themes that drive it. TDK is a film for adults, please leave the kids at home. Let’s deal with those “flaws” first, the largest being the character Rachel Dawes . In Batman Begins , I blamed Katie Holmes . Her acting was weak, to say the least, which is regrettable in that who she is and what she says and does are important to the film. Critics agreed and either for that or other reasons, Katie was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal , who is a better actress. Yet here she’s weak, real weak. Maybe it’s the character, not the actress, which is frustrating because Rachel is a pivotal character. The film,...

John Wick: Chapter 4

No sense in playing coy, this is a great film. I’ve seen it twice and while I don’t quite love it in the way I love the first, original John Wick , it’s my #2. It’s a little overlong, has some wasted space and time, has one absolutely pointless and useless character, and generally ignores the realities of firefights, falling, getting shot, hit, etc. All that notwithstanding, it’s a great action flick, has a genuine emotional core, and is well worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Summary: John Wick (Keanu Reeves), last seen saying he was fed up with the High Table, goes to war to obtain his freedom. Some of the most incredible action scenes ever filmed ensue, culminating in a very satisfactory finale and a devastating post-credit scene. The first Wick film was a surprise hit. It was a simple, straight-forward tale of vengeance told in a simple, straight-forward manner. Where it stood out was its devotion to human stunt work, on exploiting long camera shots that ...

We pause now for a minor rant…

“My car has a flat tire.” “You should buy a new car.” Every time I hear President Obama and other Democrats talking about “health care reform,” that’s what the conversation sounds like. A health care crisis is declared and the only solution is to replace the entire system. At most, around 15% of the American population is without health care insurance. Ignoring the fact that for most of them, this is a matter of choice, it also means that 85% are insured. And of that 85%, something like 70+% like their current coverage and don’t want the government to touch it. So for the vast majority, the current system works and works great. Yet, because of the minority for whom it allegedly does not...toss it all, start again. Admittedly, regardless of insurance coverage, it all costs too much, but again, the only accepted approach to controlling costs are to throw out everything and turn it all over to the government. Tactics that are proposed to address specific cost issues are not consid...