- Whatever else it accomplishes, Chloé Zhao's Eternals accidentally makes an argument in favor of Marvel's oft-criticized "house style" of blockbuster moviemaking. Finally, we have a contribution from an acclaimed indie film director who isn't afraid to take risks...and it pretty much sucks. Don't get me wrong, Eternals isn't quite at the bottom of Marvel's increasingly overflowing barrel, but this is a surprisingly lifeless and bloated film. When the most cosmically ambitious and epic entry in your franchise is also the most boring, you've got a problem.
- But who are the Eternals? That's what you should be asking because their self-titled comic has averaged only about one issue per year since Jack Kirby first created them in 1976. Like much of Kirby's 70's output, the Eternals are a strange mix of big ideas, silly names, and unconvincing writing held together by his iconic art. Without the art, though, they look like a Superman knockoff named Ikaris (Richard Madden), a Flash knockoff named Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), and a Wonder Woman knockoff named Thena (Angelina Jolie). Other deities represented include Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Druig (Barry Keoghan), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), and Ajak (Salma Hayek). The star of the film, though, is Sersi (Gemma Chan), who faces the daunting task of remembering the names of all nine other Eternals while saving the world.
- The nominal villains of the piece are ropy, CGI-generated terrors known as the Deviants, who vanish from the film right around the time they start to get interesting. They don't even have names, though, which makes it a little difficult to care about their fates. The rest of the conflicts are between the Eternals themselves, who slowly realize that their fealty to the godlike Celestial Arishem (David Kaye) may result in the complete extermination of humanity. I'm not really sure what the counterargument is, but a few characters do end up siding with total armageddon. In any case, there's a few tragic deaths, a few stupid deaths, and something called the Uni-Mind that is one of the aforementioned silly names. It's at times like these that I have to remind myself that Jack Kirby's groundbreaking work on Thor and the Fantastic Four earned him a pass on everything that came after.
- So, given everything I've written, why don't I rank The Eternals as the absolute worst Marvel movie? I will charitably grant that the acting is a mixed bag, with Chan delivering a strong performance that counterbalances Jolie phoning it in. I will also note that the film portrays an impressively diverse set of characters, including a deaf superhero and a gay superhero. The location filming is sometimes very striking and the cinematography (by Ben Davis) occasionally beautiful, too. But then there's that other 90% of the film that consists of bland CGI battles and Eternals ponderously walking across the screen. Brief glimpses of love stories and Bollywood musicals suggest that Zhao might have been getting bored, too. The perfunctory post-credit scenes threaten to weave Black Knight (Kit Harington), Pip the Troll (Patton Oswalt), and Starfox (Harry Styles) into a sequel, but here's hoping the Earth will be completely destroyed before then.
