THE ETERNALSPathetic! An excellent cast is wasted on lousy story.
THE ETERNALS
Pathetic! An excellent cast is wasted on lousy story.
Film Review © 2021 by Trip Reynolds
Fantasy / Martial Arts / Science-Fiction / Super-Hero / Drama
THE STORY: Over one million years ago, the enigmatic and all-powerful Celestials created two immortal species, the humanoid but god-like Eternals (known as Homo immortalis), and Deviants, beastly creatures who seek to destroy both the Eternals and normal human beings. Eventually the Eternals defeated the Deviants and peace reigned for over 5,000 years; during this time the Celestials directed the Eternals to disperse and live quietly among humans until summoned to return to their command. Then, suddenly, after thousands of years of peace an Eternal is apparently killed by a Deviant, which prompts the remaining Eternals to reunite in anticipation of a cataclysm of galactic proportions.
THE BIG PROBLEM: This story is set in the "Marvel Universe," and in the Marvel Universe there are literally dozens and dozens, perhaps, thousands of both good and bad humans (genius-level), mutants, witches, warlocks, and extraterrestrial beings who monitor and can sense or perceive even the slightest ripple in space, time, the environment, earth, humanity, etc. The trailer for the 2021 film "Spider-Man: No Way Home," clearly shows Dr. Strange has an immediate awareness of the multiverse. This film blatantly ignores this reality, which is no different than watching a man brandishing a gun while running in the center of Times Square New York and not one police officer can be found. Yes, that's ridiculous. Likewise, to think someone as devious and conniving as Dr. Doom is unaware of his potential demise is, well . . . just dumb. We must hold Marvel's showrunner Kevin Feige responsible for this . . . crap.
Presented in no particular order, here is just a short list of beings "in the Marvel Universe" who routinely monitor or would have quickly perceived any change in the Marvel (print or cinematic) Universe:
Powers? Let's not forget, Magneto, who as the master of magnetism (X-Men: Apocalypse), has the power to tap into the earth's magnetic core; he would have clearly sensed a disturbance created by a Celestial at the Earth's core, but such obvious deductions are ignored by this script. Keep in mind, Disney now owns the theatrical rights to all of the Marvel characters previously controlled by Sony (Spider-Man), 20th Century Fox (Fantastic Four, X-Men, New Mutants, Deadpool, etc.), and Universal Pictures (Hulk, Namor, etc.), so it can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants with any Marvel Comic Book character. Given the $26.8 billion Disney has generated from the MCU film franchise, you'd think they'd have enough money for a few timely placed reaction shots, but no, Disney is both cheap and stupid.
The failure of the script to address these and other blatant continuity errors make this film nothing more than yet another Kevin "lack of imagination" Feige production.
As mentioned in some of my previous reviews of MCU films, although I no longer regularly collect comic books, my collection of over 30,000 books included the Eternals. One would think, but one would be wrong to think the writers and producers of The Eternals would have read all Marvel Comics stories about The Eternals. I have, which includes "The New Gods," which Jack Kirby created for DC Comics and later re-imagined as "The Eternals" for Marvel Comics. Does it matter? Of course, it does, because "things" are starting to look the same.
How dumb is this script? Consider this, regular humans (without super powers) have been monitoring earthquakes and volcanoes for hundreds of years if not thousands. You'd think scientists and military would be immediately alerted to conduct on-site investigations on the strange phenomena of simultaneous earthquakes and volcanoes erupting around the planet, yes??? But no, not in the MCU, because "regular" humans are just too stupid to do what regular humans have been doing since the dawn of time - investigate. That's what humans do, we explore, investigate, we discover. "Space . . . the final frontier. These are the voyages of the . . ." Get it? Well, get this, the centerpiece of this film is not humans versus humans, or humans versus Celestials, or humans versus Eternals, but Eternals versus Eternals! Betcha didn't see that coming, did ya! That's the most original idea the leadership team at Disney and Marvel Studios could come up with, really? Considering the "cosmic scale" that defines the importance of Celestials in the MCU, wow, that's a rather banal story idea to launch this new franchise.
How dumb is this script? We're (the audience) lead to believe the Eternals did not get involved in the war against Thanos because it was a "human" affair, and not worthy of their involvement. That's a bunch of MCU crap, and demonstrates the failure of the MCU to maintain continuity with the characters and timelines previously realized in the MCU. Thanos could have easily snapped his fingers to wipe out the existence of every planet including Earth, which would have simultaneously disintegrated the Celestial hidden not only in the Earth's core but throughout the universe! Again, the script is dumb.How dumb is this script? It's a well-established practice for film directors to use storyboards to plot scenes for an entire film. Therefore, comic books, which literally function as storyboards, should be a directors dream, because the visual plotting has already been done. So, why does the MCU frequently deviate from the carefully crafted, well-written "scripts" of the comic books? Answer: Because they can! Many film producers seriously believe they can do a better job telling the story cinematically than the written source material, or they can't figure out how to convert or translate the written source material into a film. Consequently, the filmgoer is often left with a hodgepodge of images and dialogue "based" on a book, but the finished product doesn't actually represent the character and scope of the written source material. That's what the MCU has become; a pathetic hodgepodge of superhero zips-and-zaps.
There's an immense lack of imagination in this film. The intellect and superpowers wielded by the Eternals are not particularly better or more potent than such as wielded by earth-based humans (Tony Stark, Henry Pym, Nick Fury, etc.) or mutants, or Inhumans, or extraterrestrial beings who reside on Earth. There's an expectation that Eternals, as immortals, should be stronger, faster, and smarter, but in this film they are not. Makkari, the speedster of the Eternals does not appear any faster than "Quicksilver," the speedster of the X-Men. Similar comparisons can easily be made between the Eternals and other characters in the MCU, and the failure to scale-up the film properties to the immense power scale of characters and storylines in the comic books makes the films repetitive and protracted. This pseudo-epic has a running length of two-(2) hours and thirty-six-(36) minutes that should have been trimmed by no less than sixty-(60) minutes.
There's an immense lack of imagination in this film. As slick and as technologically advanced as CGI and related special effects has progressed, the visual images created by Jack Kirby set "the standard" not only for comic books, but for how superheroes are represented in film, but not every concept, not every image in the comic books is easily translated into film. Case in point, in the 2007 film, "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," we never saw Galactus. Why is this important? In the "big picture" of the Marvel Universe, in order to survive, Galactus consumes entire planets; which clearly makes the threat posed by Thanos as insignificant. In the Marvel Comic Book Universe a character's powers, strength, intelligence, weapons, etc., are well-defined, so we clearly know how the Eternals measure up to other characters; but in the MCU, extremely powerful beings like the Celestials and Galactus are cloaked in darkness, and all we get are actors dressed-up as lower level superheroes pointing and gesturing zips-and-zaps at each other until someone falls down, supposedly defeated. Yada, yada, yada. This CGI formula is too damn predictable, boring, and fails to give characters the purpose and depth represented in the comic books.
Contrary to the comic book, but consistent with Disney's demonstrated practice as a hypocritical social justice warrior, one of the Eternals, Phastos, (Brian Tyree Henry), the only Black man in a lead role (of course), is portrayed as a homosexual who prior to heading off to battle passionately kisses his lover goodbye. And this scene was necessary because? Likewise, Sersi (Gemma Chan, an Asian woman) and Ikaris (Richard Madden, a White male) also had a heterosexual love scene. And this scene was necessary because? Noticeably missing was a love scene between a disabled 40+ year-old White female veteran and a non-binary transgender illegal Latino immigrant. Get it? Otherwise, acting by all players was Marvel-superhero-by-the-number-stay-within-the-lines. Although not nearly as subdued as her captivating but robotic performance in "Humans," Gemma Chan's performance was the most watchable aspect of the film. Sadly, the acting talents of Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, and Ma Dong-seok as Gilgamesh were wasted.
Direction by Chloé Zhao was totally Marvel-by-the-numbers-SFX-action-based-sequencial-visual-storytelling. Editing by Dylan Tichenor and Craig Wood was profoundly terrible, jumpy, and EXTREMELY predictable. Instead of a briskly paced action film lasting just over ninety-(90) minutes, film has a pedestrian, "here's comes yet another flash back sequence," pseudo-epic running length of, again, two-(2) hours and thirty-six-(36) minutes that should have been trimmed by no less than sixty-(60) minutes. Yes, a sequel is planned, but Kevin Feige will likely screw it up too!
RECOMMENDATION: Do not see this film. 'Nuff said.
STARRING
DIRECTED / WRITTEN / PRODUCED BY EDITED / CINEMATOGRAPHY / ART BY Gemma Chan as Sersi
Richard Madden as Ikaris
Angelina Jolie as Thena
Salma Hayek as Ajak
Kit Harington as Dane Whitman
Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo
Lia McHugh as Sprite
Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos
Lauren Ridloff as Makkari
Barry Keoghan as Druig
Ma Dong-seok as Gilgamesh (as Don Lee)
Harish Patel as Karun
Bill Skarsgård as Kro
Haaz Sleiman as Ben
Esai Daniel Cross as Jack
Harry Styles as Eros
Alan Scott as Patrick
Hannah Dodd as Sandra
Adrià Escudero as Diego
Sebastián Capitán Viveros as JanoPlus, seventeen-(17) more!
Directed by
Chloé ZhaoScreenplay by
Chloé Zhao
Patrick Burleigh
Ryan Firpo
Kaz Firpo
Story by
Ryan Firpo
Kaz FirpoBased on the Marvel Comic
Book Character created by
Jack Kirby
Produced by
Kevin Feige, p.g.a.
Nate Moore, p.g.a.
Co-Produced by
Mitchell Bell
Produced by
Kevin Feige, P.G.A.
Executive Produced by
Victoria Alonso
Louis D'Esposito
Kevin de la Noy
Edited by
Dylan Tichenor
Craig WoodCinematography by
Ben DavisArt Direction by
Susannah Brough, Assistant Set Dec Art Director Todd Ellis, standby art director 2nd unit
Matthew Gray, supervising art director
Patrick Harris
Oliver Hodge
Megan Jones, set dec
Aja Kai Rowley, additional photography
Matt Sharp
Jonathan Marin Socas
Tom Weaving
