Marvel’s Eternals: Did It Miss the Target?

Marvel Studios

Jack’s Score – 66/100 | Rotten Tomatoes – 47% | Audience – 80% | IMDb – 6.9/10

This article will have a spoiler free take, and then get into detailed spoilers when breaking down the plot.

After a what feels like forever, movies are back in theaters on a somewhat normal release schedule. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was the box office hit that fans needed it to be to achieve that normalcy. After its success, as well as the success of the other Marvel projects released in 2021, my hopes were high for Eternals. While the trailer left much to be desired in terms of plot, Chloe Zhao’s visuals grabbed my attention and left me optimistic about the new direction she brought to the MCU. After watching the movie this past Wednesday, I left the theater feeling unsatisfied and discomforted by the story that had just unfolded before me. Even now as I am writing this, something about Eternals simply doesn’t sit right with me.

Off the bat, I want to say that my theater-going experience was sub-optimal. A heckler in the front got bored at a point and started shouting the movie back to the rest of the crowd and then began trying to fight people in front of him. While I don’t think that this greatly affected my thoughts on the movie, it was distracting and caused me to miss important dialogue and scenes.

This movie was in no way unwatchable. The acting was stellar, as it almost always is in these movies, as were the visuals; the trailer was only scratching the surface of the grandeur of this movie. Where Eternals falls short is the story itself. The plot is convoluted and the character interactions are often contradictory. Some characters serve no purpose or go through any character development. The story arc as a whole feels rushed and would have served better as another of the Disney+ shows. While Eternals might be worth a trip to the theater for Marvel fans, casual viewers might want to wait for this one to hit Disney+.

SPOILERS START HERE

The film introduced us to three of new categories of beings: Celestials, Eternals, and Deviants. Although Ego the Living Planet, Star-Lord’s father from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, calls himself a Celestial, it is apparent that the Celestials we see in Eternals don’t operate on the same level.

Let’s kick this off by looking at the Celestials. We get very little information as to the motivations of Arishem, the Celestial in charge of the Eternals. He is nothing more than a dispassionate and (seemingly) all-powerful being that has one goal: to create more Celestials through a process called the Emergence. Initially, he created the Deviants to be his harbingers of the Emergence, but after they evolved to contradict their purpose, Arishem created the Eternals to defeat the Deviants and usher in the next Celestials. He is nothing more than a puppeteer and while it is frustrating how little we know about him, I can assume that to be intentional.

The Deviants, however, are severely underdeveloped and misused in this movie. Instead of leaving them as characterless creatures, such as the Chitauri from The Avengers, the creatures are written with greater purpose while still failing to make them relevant to the story. One of the Deviants evolves by sapping the lifeforce of Ajak and Gilgamesh, and is killed without a second thought by Thena in the climactic battle. The Deviants serve to be nothing more than a minor distraction to the team throughout the movie while attempting to be delivered as forsaken and misunderstood creatures that are simply trying to survive.

The Eternals… the Eternals are so scattered all over the board I don’t even know where to start. It is clear that Gemma Chan’s Sersi is the lead of this movie, and I’m glad that they found a role for her outside of Minerva in Captain Marvel. Makkari, Phastos, Gilgamesh, Thena, and Druig are all appropriately used. Ajak is killed before we really get to connect with her character, which also diminishes the twist of Ikaris’ betrayal. That twist also has problems in its own right. It isn’t presented as a shell shock reveal that the audience finds out about when the team does, but something that simply happened a couple days prior to the start of the story. It is done in such a laissez-faire way that it did the opposite of what it was intended to do and actually pulled me out of the story.

Kingo was sidelined in the final battle because he agreed with Ikaris but wouldn’t fight his family, something I thought would be used to bring him in deus ex-machina style to the final battle, but he simply had no true impact on the story. Kumail Nanjiani is a great actor and was sorely underused here. Sprite was a terrible character. I can understand the frustration of appearing as a human child for centuries and the loneliness that might come with something like that, but her unrequited love for Ikaris was a plot point I did not need. Simply feeling like an outcast from the people of Earth and the rest of the team was enough character motivation for her to want to move on from this world.

My favorite moment in this movie might have been from Kuran, Kingo’s chauffer. In a movie that could not keep me invested, his scene when Kingo leaves the team and Kuran realizes that he will die in a matter of hours almost brought me to tears. As for the Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman, the other human character, his lack of screen time made it hard for me to be invested in his relationship with Sersi.

Simply put, Eternals would have worked better as a Disney+ show. Give the property 9 episodes at 30-40 minutes each, the same format as WandaVision. Then, use the first few episodes to introduce the characters – how they came together, parts of their adventures after the split, where they are now and how they got there – get the viewers invested. This solves the problem with Ajak and Kingo’s characters. Then give two episodes to the Deviants, flush them out to extend beyond that odd suspension they had in the movie. Finally use the final episodes to reveal Arishem’s true plan, Ikaris’ betrayal, and the fight to stop the Emergence. With a less rushed story comes the solution to most of the problems in this movie.

Overall, Eternals fails to hit the mark on this attempt to stand out. Introducing a new, unknown property is difficult to do, more so when trying to stand apart from what comes before. While this movie is below average for me and ranks second to last in my rankings for Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, I am excited to see these characters in future installments in the MCU.

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