Just saw Eternals and wanted to put out my thoughts in a spoiler friendly area.
So currently the Rotten Tomatoes Audience score is about 80%, and that's how I generally feel about the movie. All of the pieces felt great, but somehow when put together it felt like something was missing. Something was just a little....off, and its hard to exactly put my finger on it. Yet I want to applaud Marvel for this movie, because I feel like its going out of the comfort zone. Its an attempt to combine more traditional Marvel fare with a grander more artistic piece, and I think its mostly works....and I definitely want to see more of that from the Marvel machine.
Graphically its stunning. They truly make the Eternal powers look otherworldly and alien. Their costumes are gorgeous. The ancient world sets are beautiful. Thena's weaponry is just seamless. The celestial does seem truly cosmic and impossibly grand of scale.
So we get a true twist in this movie, and I do give Marvel some credit....apparently their seemingly nonstop rollout of trailers just kept distracting us from what they were truly going for in this movie, and so the twist was a good one. But at the same time, it also comes very abruptly and pretty early, it feels like we have barely stepped on the carpet before its pulled from under us. Yet I also appreciate that when the common critique in a marvel movie is the "faceless horde", we are given a conflict that is both impossibly grand in scale and yet.... very human. I also appreciated that the Eternals did not just side one way or another with the whole "should we birth an eternal and let humanity die". There was division, there was conflict.... to beings that had lived for 7k years (technically much much much longer if you get into their pasts lives), there is still the capability of real big picture thinking....and to some of them we are talking about killing billions to create trillions across the universe, and that conflict was shown in the various divisions. That said, once the ball got rolling, pretty much everyone picked a side and just went with it (especially Kingo who was ready to walk away from the whole thing, but then just came back once it was time for the shakedown).
The Indian Valet was in some ways the star of the show, and I think its no coincidence that is basically the embodiment of humanity's best qualities. He's loyal, brave, kind, humble, always prepared (seriously how many cameras does he have)..... he really does feel like the prism of humanity the Eternals channel when they choose humans over an Eternal.
Now does the plot truly "work"..... eh it does and it doesn't. On the one hand, the fact that the Eternals were told not to interfere in human conflicts makes a lot more sense, because in many ways "they don't care". But I mean on the other wouldn't it be more efficient to just have Druig get everyone to bang like bunnies and have a million kids.....or have Phaistos start developing super medicine to keep everyone healthy and populating as much as possible. Or hell.....have Eternals going around and collecting the Infinity stones, that seems a great way to just birth Celestials (especially when several of them have been on Earth for centuries). Then you have Guardians 2.....so Ego (a celestial) put a seed on Earth....where there is already another Eternal? So did Ego know.....did Arishan?.... while I can respect the Eternals not getting involved in a lot of things, did they not do anything when Ego was just hanging around on Earth? How about when Ultron was going to launch an asteroid and muck up their beautiful little birthing bed? Funny enough while it makes perfect sense they didn't interefere with Thanos (at the end of the day that's just a minor setback on galactic timescales).....but the actual single world ending threats should have been an immediate Eternal response....because now you are killing a celestial.
Also if we want to dig in deep.....why would Arishan make different types of celestials in the first place? The whole point was to create unchanging beings capable of killing deviants....why not just send like 5 Ikaris' (super powerful and incredible loyal) and just take care of business? there is no reason given why each celestial is so distinct and unique in form and powers. Or if you are going that route, why wouldn't you tell them the real mission right at the beginning so they don't form attachments. And if they object....then you take that model offline and replace them with a new one....you don't leave a possible traitorous model on mission and just "hope" they don't find out the master plan. The problem is when you are dealing with plots of this scope....the cracks really do start to form.
Ultimately I think my issue with the plot at the fundamental level is.....for such grand of scale at the end of the day it felt like very little changed in the grand scheme. Earth has a big new marble mountain....cool. The Celestial is going to judge earth one day in the future....eh what else is new we have a world ending event every other week at this point. Maybe they will do something where the death of the celestial has some real consequences (perhaps in like the next Captain Marvel where we seen some galactic consequences)....but for now it just felt like another day at the Marvel office.
And lastly there is always the "eternal issue" (hehe) of why aren't "XYZ" people involved? Now most of our current hero pool I could respect are just not people that the Eternals would call up. There is however one good exception.... Dr Strange. Especially when there was a time when they needed a "lot of juice" to power up Druig......seems the Sorceror Supreme would at least get a mention. But frankly I think Marvel has just decided that once you go down the lampshade route, forever will it dominate your destiny. I mean you could literally just add 30 minutes to every movie explaining why XY and Z hero isn't involved..and I think Marvel has just decided to let that go. That said, I think its high time we got some "rules" on the magic side. Wizard magic right now just seems ridiculously, incredibly powerful....like anything is on the table.... and so every problem is starting to feel like a "why not just bring in the wizards".
One thing that I feel very strange saying considering the star studded cast.....the acting feels "wooden" at times. When they were like "oh its because Sprite is in love with Icaris" I was like.....um, she is? Like there was 0 moments of chemistry there.....none. Even Angelina suffered from it at least at the beginning, and it got a little better over time. It was so noticeable to me that I wondered if it was an intentional direction....aka make them feel more "robotic" in some ways. And of course, the movie is both long and not long enough. With so many characters, it feels like we just scratch the surface. I respected it for some of the characters that were basically backdrop (I loved Gilgamish but he was a background character and they treated him like one, which I can work with)..... I think it was Druig that I felt it the most. Druig seemed both this important character with a lot of incredibly interesting history, but he also got very little characterization.
So yeah, a lot to say.... I'm not fully sure how I feel about this movie. Compared to a Shang Chi that I left the theater going "that was great!", this movie did not hit that mark. But I think a few years from now I might think about this movie when many of the others have faded to grey. Time will tell.
So currently the Rotten Tomatoes Audience score is about 80%, and that's how I generally feel about the movie. All of the pieces felt great, but somehow when put together it felt like something was missing. Something was just a little....off, and its hard to exactly put my finger on it. Yet I want to applaud Marvel for this movie, because I feel like its going out of the comfort zone. Its an attempt to combine more traditional Marvel fare with a grander more artistic piece, and I think its mostly works....and I definitely want to see more of that from the Marvel machine.
Graphically its stunning. They truly make the Eternal powers look otherworldly and alien. Their costumes are gorgeous. The ancient world sets are beautiful. Thena's weaponry is just seamless. The celestial does seem truly cosmic and impossibly grand of scale.
So we get a true twist in this movie, and I do give Marvel some credit....apparently their seemingly nonstop rollout of trailers just kept distracting us from what they were truly going for in this movie, and so the twist was a good one. But at the same time, it also comes very abruptly and pretty early, it feels like we have barely stepped on the carpet before its pulled from under us. Yet I also appreciate that when the common critique in a marvel movie is the "faceless horde", we are given a conflict that is both impossibly grand in scale and yet.... very human. I also appreciated that the Eternals did not just side one way or another with the whole "should we birth an eternal and let humanity die". There was division, there was conflict.... to beings that had lived for 7k years (technically much much much longer if you get into their pasts lives), there is still the capability of real big picture thinking....and to some of them we are talking about killing billions to create trillions across the universe, and that conflict was shown in the various divisions. That said, once the ball got rolling, pretty much everyone picked a side and just went with it (especially Kingo who was ready to walk away from the whole thing, but then just came back once it was time for the shakedown).
The Indian Valet was in some ways the star of the show, and I think its no coincidence that is basically the embodiment of humanity's best qualities. He's loyal, brave, kind, humble, always prepared (seriously how many cameras does he have)..... he really does feel like the prism of humanity the Eternals channel when they choose humans over an Eternal.
Now does the plot truly "work"..... eh it does and it doesn't. On the one hand, the fact that the Eternals were told not to interfere in human conflicts makes a lot more sense, because in many ways "they don't care". But I mean on the other wouldn't it be more efficient to just have Druig get everyone to bang like bunnies and have a million kids.....or have Phaistos start developing super medicine to keep everyone healthy and populating as much as possible. Or hell.....have Eternals going around and collecting the Infinity stones, that seems a great way to just birth Celestials (especially when several of them have been on Earth for centuries). Then you have Guardians 2.....so Ego (a celestial) put a seed on Earth....where there is already another Eternal? So did Ego know.....did Arishan?.... while I can respect the Eternals not getting involved in a lot of things, did they not do anything when Ego was just hanging around on Earth? How about when Ultron was going to launch an asteroid and muck up their beautiful little birthing bed? Funny enough while it makes perfect sense they didn't interefere with Thanos (at the end of the day that's just a minor setback on galactic timescales).....but the actual single world ending threats should have been an immediate Eternal response....because now you are killing a celestial.
Also if we want to dig in deep.....why would Arishan make different types of celestials in the first place? The whole point was to create unchanging beings capable of killing deviants....why not just send like 5 Ikaris' (super powerful and incredible loyal) and just take care of business? there is no reason given why each celestial is so distinct and unique in form and powers. Or if you are going that route, why wouldn't you tell them the real mission right at the beginning so they don't form attachments. And if they object....then you take that model offline and replace them with a new one....you don't leave a possible traitorous model on mission and just "hope" they don't find out the master plan. The problem is when you are dealing with plots of this scope....the cracks really do start to form.
Ultimately I think my issue with the plot at the fundamental level is.....for such grand of scale at the end of the day it felt like very little changed in the grand scheme. Earth has a big new marble mountain....cool. The Celestial is going to judge earth one day in the future....eh what else is new we have a world ending event every other week at this point. Maybe they will do something where the death of the celestial has some real consequences (perhaps in like the next Captain Marvel where we seen some galactic consequences)....but for now it just felt like another day at the Marvel office.
And lastly there is always the "eternal issue" (hehe) of why aren't "XYZ" people involved? Now most of our current hero pool I could respect are just not people that the Eternals would call up. There is however one good exception.... Dr Strange. Especially when there was a time when they needed a "lot of juice" to power up Druig......seems the Sorceror Supreme would at least get a mention. But frankly I think Marvel has just decided that once you go down the lampshade route, forever will it dominate your destiny. I mean you could literally just add 30 minutes to every movie explaining why XY and Z hero isn't involved..and I think Marvel has just decided to let that go. That said, I think its high time we got some "rules" on the magic side. Wizard magic right now just seems ridiculously, incredibly powerful....like anything is on the table.... and so every problem is starting to feel like a "why not just bring in the wizards".
One thing that I feel very strange saying considering the star studded cast.....the acting feels "wooden" at times. When they were like "oh its because Sprite is in love with Icaris" I was like.....um, she is? Like there was 0 moments of chemistry there.....none. Even Angelina suffered from it at least at the beginning, and it got a little better over time. It was so noticeable to me that I wondered if it was an intentional direction....aka make them feel more "robotic" in some ways. And of course, the movie is both long and not long enough. With so many characters, it feels like we just scratch the surface. I respected it for some of the characters that were basically backdrop (I loved Gilgamish but he was a background character and they treated him like one, which I can work with)..... I think it was Druig that I felt it the most. Druig seemed both this important character with a lot of incredibly interesting history, but he also got very little characterization.
So yeah, a lot to say.... I'm not fully sure how I feel about this movie. Compared to a Shang Chi that I left the theater going "that was great!", this movie did not hit that mark. But I think a few years from now I might think about this movie when many of the others have faded to grey. Time will tell.
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