Eternals (Spoilers)

[DrunkonDuty]

Caught up with the movie last weekend.

I enjoyed it. (I admit that I have enjoyed almost everything Marvel so maybe that ain't saying much.)

I liked the dysfunctional family dynamic. The competing themes of family and duty were handled well and tied into/moved the plot nicely.

Loved the look of it. I especially loved CGI Babylon, I mean really loved it... Just gave me little chills although I can't put a finger on exactly why.

I don't think the acting was "wooden." I think it was a very definite directorial choice, to give the character's a sense of otherness, yes, but also of guardedness. Most of them went their separate ways centuries ago and were pretty tired of one another's company even then. So, now that they're getting the band back together, everyone is feeling very wary. Druig, for instance, has some very strong differences of opinion with the rest. We don't see him begin to relax until he's back in the same room as Makkari. And it's not a big surprise that Ikaris is very guarded and even traumatised. We see it even with Sersi and Dane at the very start of the movie. She is super guarded around him. Dane, to contrast this, is super open about everything. (Almost everything.)

The Deviants were a red herring, both for the audience and the characters. Which is a nice parallel, gives me a smile.

Over in the Eternals Trailer thread it was mentioned that Arishem's version of events is open to being debunked later. I suspect we'll get some very different points of view later as Phase 4 develops. I mean, I certainly hope we'll discover that "the Celestials create energy by something... blah blah" is just Arishem blowing smoke. Arishem's unreliability is suggested by Starfox in the post-credit sequence, so let's hope that particular bit of "lore" gets written out/retconned. Also, Arishem tells Sersi that the Eternals are robots who can't evolve... yet she later discovers she is capable of growth and augmenting her powers, which seems to contradict this.

Anyhoo, must dash.

 

[ART!]

Finally saw it this weekend - and loved it.

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.

100%

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.

Agreed, although I wish we had another couple examples of that. Sersi has Dane, but he's barely in the movie.

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.

I wouldn't be surprised if Arishem is always experimenting with new models and designs for his Eternals because things are always going wrong - from his perspective; Eternals always go astray in one way or another, and Arishem hasn't learned his lesson yet.

There are gaps in the Eternals' understanding of the Celestials and their doings, and i hope that gets followed up on in future MCU offerings.

Shang Chi was a more enjoyable / fun movie experience, but I already find myself thinking more about Eternals, and I'm keen to see it again.

Same. It's really sticking with me.

Part of what got me thinking about things was going over it with my wife and daughter after we saw it. They didn't like some things, and having read some of the comics and read a few things about the movie I was able to explain a few things, but some stuff was more conceptual and tonal. The notion that (some? all?) planets (only ones capable of supporting life?) are created by Celestials and have a sleeping Celestial in them is...a lot to swallow.

That and the fact that the Eternals were involved in human history and affected it in significant ways, and how Phastos lamented nudging technology - there's something a little patronizing about their attitude, and it begs the kind of questions any "ancient astronaut" stuff does: do we need them to explain human advancements and survival? This movie says we do/did?

Saw it and liked it, the mythology was fun (battle of Gilgamesh and Enkidu and Peter Pan reference made me grin) and would have been fun to see more adventures in history - but alas time constraints.

I really liked that it didnt feel like an Avengers movie and the story brought that soap opera sensibility and actual deaths.. Changing the origin of the Eternals and Deviants was an unexpected but imho great change that adds to the tragic nature of the group.

I didn't quite catch that Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight - how was it protrayed? Sprite was telling the story, right?

"Tragic nature of the group" hits the nail on the head, I think. This movie is as much a tragedy as one is likely to get in a "super hero movie". It's a very sad movie in a lot of ways, and I got teary-eyed multiple times.

 

[Older Beholder]

Just a mention that Eternals is on Disney+ now, for anyone interested.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Just watched it and it was all great, except one thing that did not make sense, except for story advancement. These seeds that grow into new Celestials are shown being inserted into the cores of the planets, so by the time the Celestial has grown enough to actually emerge to the surface, it should have done irreversible damage to the core and mantle and so on to the surface. In other words, the way is sounds is that if a Celestial has reached the point that it is visible, then the planet should already be doomed.

Oh, and I loved the Death Star in the closing credits illustrations. lol

The second end credits scene teasing Dane becoming the Black Knight was cool too. And who was the man that mysterious voice belonged to?

 

[Older Beholder]

The second end credits scene teasing Dane becoming the Black Knight was cool too. And who was the man that mysterious voice belonged to?

I read that it's Mahershala Ali as Blade.
Originally I thought it might be The Watcher.

 

[WayneLigon]

That was one of the longest five hours of my life. At least twice I was thinking 'OK, things should start moving into the last act any mi-- there's forty more minutes left?!'

Too bad this is the version of The Eternals we're now stuck with for who knows how long.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

That was one of the longest five hours of my life. At least twice I was thinking 'OK, things should start moving into the last act any mi-- there's forty more minutes left?!'

Too bad this is the version of The Eternals we're now stuck with for who knows how long.

I am guessing you are just exaggerating or being sarcastic, but the run-time is 2 hours, 36 minutes, and when I watched it yesterday, it was over quicker than I expected.

 

[Ryujin]

Unfortunately, this movie left me wanting. The visuals were good, if not great. The choice of cast was very good. It was, however, more a collection of moments that worked individually than a cohesive story, to me. Perhaps what I was missing, was that the Eternals are supposed to be the font from which all modern human superheroes essentially spring? They aren't supposed to be alien robots, in the old lore I remember, but rather humans who were evolved and empowered by the Celestials. Changing their origin and purpose that much left me cold.

Then again it's a property that was screwed over from its very inception. They didn't get a full run in the comics, then were later used as a spice to flavour other ongoing properties.

I think that the best part of the movie was quite likely the post credits scene to prepare us for Black Knight.

 

[Dire Bare]

That and the fact that the Eternals were involved in human history and affected it in significant ways, and how Phastos lamented nudging technology - there's something a little patronizing about their attitude, and it begs the kind of questions any "ancient astronaut" stuff does: do we need them to explain human advancements and survival? This movie says we do/did?

This bothered me as well. I was trained as an anthropologist in college, and learned to absolutely LOATHE the "ancient astronauts" pseudoscience theories that have important societal advancements (especially of brown people) be the result of alien intervention rather than human ingenuity.

I don't like it any better as a trope in my fiction. Still, overall enjoyed the film.

 

[Dire Bare]

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.

Thanks for starting the thread . . . I've been avoiding it until the film released on Disney+!!!

I agree with a lot of your thoughts here . . . and disagree with some others. Overall, I also enjoyed the film. I don't mean to diminish your opinion of the film, but some of your critiques on story choices bug me . . .

Why are the Eternals tasked with not interfering with human conflict? Because . . . genre. This is, at its heart, a four-color story that has always been a part of the larger Marvel comic-book universe. If the Eternals could more directly intervene . . . this would be an alternate universe story. Human history has to remain identifiable to the viewers. Worrying about supposedly more logical choices misses the point of the storytelling, in my view. You do point out some in-universe contradictions or goofs, but to me they aren't glaring and don't bother me, even if technically correct.

Why didn't the Eternals give Dr. Strange, or some other MCU hero a call for some backup? This is, for me, the same answer as above. Genre. This story is set within the larger MCU, but isn't a Dr. Strange story, or an Avengers story . . . its an Eternals story. Its the same reason Spiderman doesn't call up his friends in each of his movies. We of course get crossovers from time to time, but they are rare enough to be special and fun (so much that we have a word for them, "crossovers") or serve to introduce a B or C-list character that couldn't front their own movie. If the MCU were the real world, Spiderman would definitely be calling up his Avengers buddies on a constant basis, but . . . .

EDIT: Quick add here . . . the comic-book universe the Eternals spring from is wildly bloated and complicated not just with individual characters, but also various superhuman groups. The MCU long ago reached this point as well, and the Eternals adds to it. We have mutants, inhumans, eternals, magicians, mystical martial-artists, aliens, gods, super-serum soldiers . . . . in this story, the Eternals make some jokes about the various Avengers, but otherwise doesn't deal with all of these complicating power-groups, because to do so would be too limiting to the storytelling. To try and "logically" work all of these groups together into a coherent narrative just can't be done. It CAN be done in superhero storytelling, but not within the MCU (or DC universe, for that matter).

Why do the Eternals all have a different power-set, and not all be Ikaris powerful? Again, genre. The Eternals are a superhero team and each member has to be distinguishable from the others, they all need their own "hook". And the "team" trope is a mismatched group of folks whose skillsets all compliment each others, so that they HAVE to work as a team to succeed. This adaptation took this further with our team having not only a diversity of magical skills, but a very purposeful diversity of ethnicity, dialect, gender, orientation, and even age . . . both to cater to modern tastes but also to further lean into the "mismatched team" trope.

Why did Arishem keep the true purpose of the Eternals secret from . . . most of them? He wanted servants who would be motivated to help and defend the people of the planets they were tasked to. So, the lie that they were helping "lift" these species into utopia. The question for me is, why did Arishem tell some of his Eternals the truth? Why did Ajak need to know the truth in order to do her job? Why not keep them all ignorant until the last minute when the new celestial rips itself out of the planet? They all get mind-wiped at the end anyway.

Again, not trying to diminish your own thoughts and opinions, just wanted to provide a counter.