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.
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