Eternals (Spoilers)

[Umbran]

I assume Dane is going to become Captain Brittain or something? Guessing that's excalibur and he's a descendant of Arthur.

If you want to know...

Spoiler: Dane Whitman...

In the film, they specifically note Thena playing around with Excalibur on the Eternal's ship, so Dane doesn't have that.

In the comics, Dane Whitman is the descendant of the Black Knight, and wields the Ebony Blade. The Ebony Blade is powerful, but cursed, which is why Dane has such a struggle over picking it up in the post-credits scene

The whole Eros, brother of Thanos just sounded stupid.

Eros/Starfox is stupid. Not just in the movie, but in the comics, he's an overconfident jackass with emotion control powers that are kind of non-consensual. Really problematic stuff.

However, there's a note in his introduction that is... extremely interesting.

Starfox arrives with Pip, and introduces himself as the brother of Thanos (which is consistent with the comics). He also addresses the people on the ship as "my fellow Eternals" or words to that effect.

And there, we have to stop for a second. Thanos claims to be a Titan. Unless there's adoption involved, that means Eros is also a Titan. That implies that the Titans are Eternals, but not under Arishem's rule. Interesting that Arishem would not stop one of his own creations from eliminating half the population he needs to birth new Celestials, isn't it?

Mind you, we know that Arishem can and will lie. And I find his claim that Celestials are responsible for star formation to be... extremely unsatisfying. I would rather take it that Arishem is lying like a rug.

Spoiler: Speculation...

The comics origins are that the Celestials created both Deviants and Eternals - that part is fine. But in the comics, neither group is under the control of the Celestials. I suspect that Marvel is aiming for this as well - Arishem has some Eternals on various planets, but they have this tendency of breaking away when confronted with the truth. The memory erasure is more likely about maintaining them as servants than about "relieving the burden of memory".

 

[MarkB]

I assume Dane is going to become Captain Brittain or something? Guessing that's excalibur and he's a descendant of Arthur.

Well, we know it's not Excalibur, because the Eternals had Excalibur stowed on their ship.

 

[Gammadoodler]

My main issue with the movie is that it basically all the Eternals kinda felt like they were sketches of characters more than actual characters. Basically all the "characters development" happens through montage (usually action montage) and "conflict" flashbacks that are consistently focused on "the grand scheme of things".

We're meant to believe Sersi and Ikaris have loved each other for millenia, but it's not even clear at any point what they even like about the other. Hell it's barely apparent they even know anything about each other beyond how dreamy the borh are. Their entire "romance" as shown is just a series of historical cuddlings.

It's especially problematic because Sersi and Ikaris are on screen basically the entire runtime and they don't seem to do anything more than service the plot and bring the viewer to the more interesting characters (Seriously, we could have used a bunch more Gilgamesh, Phaistos, Druig, and Makkari).

I think the reason is that there is too much time setting up and resolving "threats". And the threats frankly aren't that interesting, and, pretty early on, we get to know too much about them through zero effort on the part of our protagonists. We're just...told..about one big celestial baby and some number of undermanaged exterminators..ok. Do either of these threats have an agenda or a motive? Not really, they just kinda exist so our characters can fight them or talk about them.

And, what's more, the stakes aren't that high for the team since they'll all reset anyway. It's just all the "love" the good guys have for humanity despite very little evidence of relationships with humans. Sersi has one pretty new boyfriend and zero friends. Boyfriend is on screen less than 10 minutes. Phaistos has a husband and young child..on screen less than 5 minutes. Druig has some cultists/slaves. Makkari is just hanging on the spaceship. Theena and Gil are hiding out in the desert. Sprite has one dude they hit on in a bar. Ajak is just kind of on a farm somewhere. And then there is Kingo...Kingo has a valet, his valet has lots of screen time, he's very charismatic. He's with Kingo for decades, easily the most significant representative for humanity in the entire film. And Kingo's like "F that guy. I trust Broody McBrooderson over here. What we really need a new featureless giant god."

It was still an entertaining movie along the way with a few nice action pieces. It just all felt a little toothless.

Edit: it's weird to kind of end up ranting about a movie you enjoyed. C'est la vie?

 

[Janx]

Thousands of years where their highest priority was fighting might have had something to do with it. We can add to that how he seems to have been Ajak's right hand for most of that time, such that the assumption would have been that he'd take command. Choosing Sersi was a surprise, and there was no explanation, making it harder to accept.

yes, but they also had since the 1600s of not fighting and coming to other conclusions.

Nobody'd been in command for that long.

it can go either way, but I found "he's the strongest" as the crappiest argument and sign of defective thinking for choosing a leader. period.

 

[Umbran]

yes, but they also had since the 1600s of not fighting and coming to other conclusions.

They arrive 7000 years ago, and them spend only 400 years or so not on a wartime footing. So, like 6% of their time. And that 6% is spent essentially leaderless - the arrangement really implies that leaders are for times of fighting. So, that non-fighting time is not spent thinking about leadership.

And, when they need a leader again, it is in a time of fighting, at first blush against the old enemy. Falling back into old thought patterns seems perfectly natural there.

...I found "he's the strongest" as the crappiest argument and sign of defective thinking for choosing a leader. period.

Don't get me wrong - I agree that it is a crappy argument. However, it is also a natural and understandable argument to make (at least for human psychology, which is largely what we see in the Eternals).

 

[MarkB]

My main issue with the movie is that it basically all the Eternals kinda felt like they were sketches of characters more than actual characters. Basically all the "characters development" happens through montage (usually action montage) and "conflict" flashbacks that are consistently focused on "the grand scheme of things".

We're meant to believe Sersi and Ikaris have loved each other for millenia, but it's not even clear at any point what they even like about the other. Hell it's barely apparent they even know anything about each other beyond how dreamy the borh are. Their entire "romance" as shown is just a series of historical cuddlings.

It's especially problematic because Sersi and Ikaris are on screen basically the entire runtime and they don't seem to do anything more than service the plot and bring the viewer to the more interesting characters (Seriously, we could have used a bunch more Gilgamesh, Phaistos, Druig, and Makkari).

I think the reason is that there is too much time setting up and resolving "threats". And the threats frankly aren't that interesting, and, pretty early on, we get to know too much about them through zero effort on the part of our protagonists. We're just...told..about one big celestial baby and some number of undermanaged exterminators..ok. Do either of these threats have an agenda or a motive? Not really, they just kinda exist so our characters can fight them or talk about them.

And, what's more, the stakes aren't that high for the team since they'll all reset anyway. It's just all the "love" the good guys have for humanity despite very little evidence of relationships with humans. Sersi has one pretty new boyfriend and zero friends. Boyfriend is on screen less than 10 minutes. Phaistos has a husband and young child..on screen less than 5 minutes. Druig has some cultists/slaves. Makkari is just hanging on the spaceship. Theena and Gil are hiding out in the desert. Sprite has one dude they hit on in a bar. Ajak is just kind of on a farm somewhere. And then there is Kingo...Kingo has a valet, his valet has lots of screen time, he's very charismatic. He's with Kingo for decades, easily the most significant representative for humanity in the entire film. And Kingo's like "F that guy. I trust Broody McBrooderson over here. What we really need a new featureless giant god."

It was still an entertaining movie along the way with a few nice action pieces. It just all felt a little toothless.

Edit: it's weird to kind of end up ranting about a movie you enjoyed. C'est la vie?

The characters didn't feel very original. They actually lampshade how like Superman Ikarus is, and most of the rest are existing supers with the serial numbers filed off. And the way their powers manifest is just Doctor Strange magic only a little tidier.

It all felt rather obvious. I didn't specifically think of the whole Celestial-egg thing, but I was expecting it to turn out that the Celestials had made the Deviants ever since the opening exposition.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

My main problem was that basically Arishem and Tiamut came across as discount Galactus, with the Eternals filling in for both the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four. And it seems really weird for Marvel to be doing a discount Galactus story.

Galactus is more powerful than any single Celestial, so it fits.

 

[Ryujin]

They arrive 7000 years ago, and them spend only 400 years or so not on a wartime footing. So, like 6% of their time. And that 6% is spent essentially leaderless - the arrangement really implies that leaders are for times of fighting. So, that non-fighting time is not spent thinking about leadership.

And, when they need a leader again, it is in a time of fighting, at first blush against the old enemy. Falling back into old thought patterns seems perfectly natural there.



Don't get me wrong - I agree that it is a crappy argument. However, it is also a natural and understandable argument to make (at least for human psychology, which is largely what we see in the Eternals).

Now I would buy that argument, if the original leader wasn't the party's healer.

 

[Umbran]

Now I would buy that argument, if the original leader wasn't the party's healer.

That was a fait accompli they didn't need to consider.

 

[Gammadoodler]

The characters didn't feel very original. They actually lampshade how like Superman Ikarus is, and most of the rest are existing supers with the serial numbers filed off. And the way their powers manifest is just Doctor Strange magic only a little tidier.

It all felt rather obvious. I didn't specifically think of the whole Celestial-egg thing, but I was expecting it to turn out that the Celestials had made the Deviants ever since the opening exposition.

It's interesting. I didn't mind the power similarity so much. What I did mind was that they pretty consistently seemed to only be as powerful as was necessary to move the plot. And the range of individual power levels for that purpose was too great. Ikaris, Gil and Theena can all solo the deviants until it's inconvenient for them to be that powerful.

Edit: and we're meant to think that this group that is struggling to take on 1-3 deviants midway through the movie is the same group that killed alllll of the deviants as of 400 years ago.

I do think though, that, if you know you're superheroes powers are similar to another's, then your priority should be on showing the person behind the powers, and they mostly didn't.