Eternals (2021)

8 Reasons Why (Almost) Everyone’s Wrong About Eternals

“Tomorrow’s just another day, and I don’t believe in time.”

—Hootie and the Blowfish

At some point during my two-plus-year education on Slow Cinema, under the tutelage of indie filmmaker extraordinaire Sujewa Ekanayake, Martin Scorsese made his infamous comments about comic-book movies not being “cinema”. Sujewa and I have returned to this point during many podcasts, never really settling anything, but prompting me at one point to ask if it would be possible for someone to make a Slow Cinema comic-book movie.

I may be misremembering this particular exchange, but Sujewa (ever the optimist) said “sure”—though I’d bet his response was tinged with doubt.

For the uninitiated, Slow Cinema is not synonymous with glacial pacing or boring subject matter. It’s deliberate filmmaking with an indie-film sensibility, which eschews quick-cuts, celebrity cache, and special effects in favor of slice-of-life storytelling that speaks to themes greater than those of the fleeting pop moment.

Doesn’t sound like Guardians of the Galaxy 3, does it?

Chloe Zhao’s Eternals is now upon us, and I’m not prepared to call it “Slow Cinema” (maybe “Slow Cinema-adjacent…kinda?”), but it does move the Marvel Cinematic Universe further into the realm of heady, big-picture ideas that Disney+ TV shows like WandaVision and Loki began exploring with its “Phase Four” marketing storyteling plan.

The film tells the story of the Eternals, a team of godlike beings sent by an even greater force called the Celestials to protect Earth from ravenous dog-like monsters called Deviants. Led by Ajak (Salma Hayek), the Eternals accomplish their mission and spend thousands of years apart, wandering the planet and awaiting permission to return to their homeworld of Olympus. Things go awry, of course, when a more powerful breed of Deviants pops up in modern times, forcing our heroes to reconcile, reunite, and reconfigure to save mankind.

Those are the very broad strokes, and there are a handful of clever developments that, surprisingly, didn’t make it into the trailers.

I absolutely love this movie. No, I’m not a Marvel shill (paid or otherwise). No, I’m not trolling the trolls who believe in the vast Rotten Tomatoes conspiracy. I am (or, more precisely, was) one of the foremost skeptics of Eternals going in. No one is more surprised than me that I not only liked what I saw but consider this to be one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

I can feel the comments flooding in already (or maybe that’s just wishful thinking; nobody reads this site*). But before you burn a hole in your keyboard, allow me to present some rebuttals to the criticisms I’ve seen leveled at Eternals since its release last week. Read them all, or pick whichever ones speak to you, and enjoy my preemptive response to your invective—which also, strangely, counts as a review.

Eternals is too long. I could point out that, at 2 hours and 37 minutes, Eternals is only two minutes longer than Denis Villeneuve’s weekend-winning remake of Dune and 6 minutes shorter than the latest Bond outing, No Time To Die—and then ask, “What the hell are you complaining about?”

Instead, I’ll point out that the MCU’s crown jewel, Avengers: Endgame, is 24 minutes longer than Eternals—and is actually the second half of a larger film that runs exactly 5-and-a-half hours. So, again, what the hell are you complaining about?

Eternals has too many characters. There are 11 characters in Zhao and co-writers Patrick Burleigh and Ryan Firpo’s titular group, and a handful of supporting characters whose combined story interest takes up about a fifth of the total runtime. This leaves two full hours for the main cast to explore one central mystery. Compare this to the MCU’s billion-dollar goldmine, Endgame, which heaped subplot upon side plot upon A-B- and C-plot, and inspired the Screenrant article, “Avengers: Endgame Cast: All 59 Returning Characters”.**

Eternals plays with time too much. The main story of Eternals takes place over seven days. In classic Hero’s Journey fashion, the character roster increases as the story gains momentum, like a narrative snowball rolling down a hill of inciting incidents and crashing into what could very well be the end of the world. As the disbanded Eternals are reincorporated, we get proper introductions.

This often involves jogging back centuries or millennia to events that either expand upon or spin out of the prologue. From Babylon to the Amazon to Hiroshima, we catch up with triumphs and tragedies throughout the years, which informed each team member as a person (for lack of a better word) and as part of the larger group of stranded immortals. None of this is window dressing or filler. It all matters to our understanding of who we’re watching, why we should care, and how the climactic outcome might shape all Marvel movies going forward.

Yes, you’ll have to pay attention; no, not every character gets a full arc (more on that in a minute); yes, Eternals lacks the “pew pew” panache of thrill-a-second comic-book-movie warfare. But it invites the audience to really think about what these characters are going through; how humanity has grounded and changed them (sometimes for the better, sometimes not); and even how we as mere mortals prioritize issues great and small in our own blips on the sacred timeline.

Speaking of which, are you really asking me to believe that the same mainstream movie culture that venerates Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan has trouble keeping up with nonlinear narratives?

Please.

I could also dig into WandaVision and Loki—you know, the literal foundations of Phase Four—but I’ve already over-responded to this non-argument.

Eternals wastes Angelina Jolie. It’s true that one of the film’s marquee stars gets sidelined for much of the film. It’s also true that there’s a very good reason for it. Her character, Thena, is the inspiration for Athena, the Goddess of War, and in early battle scenes against the Deviants, we get a lot of energy-sword-wielding, CGI-Jolie-flipping action. Soon after the team achieves victory (keep in mind, I mean “soon” as in runtime; storywise, it’s probably thousands of years), she develops a sort of immortal Alzheimer’s disease, which leads to a self-imposed exile (as well as the deepening of a bond with another character, which comes back around in a truly noble and stirring fashion).

It’s akin to the relationship between Black Widow and Hulk from earlier in the MCU; the key difference being we actually get to see the cause and effects of this relationship—rather than having a bizarre lovey-dovey dynamic sprung on us mid-movie.

I’ve also read interpretations of Jolie’s performance that suggest she looked bored throughout the film. I can’t speak to the actress’s degree of engagement, but I can say that we get sparks of battle-hungry vigor early on and then settle into a more subdued portrait of a character losing sight of themselves—which necessitates their not taking center stage or being called upon to bear the story’s emotional heft.

Indeed, there are a number of characters who either die too soon or offer up only a taste of their eons-spanning personality profiles—profiles that could very well be fleshed out in sequels, which Marvel has been known to dabble in.

Remember how Joss Whedon wasted Elizabeth Olsen in Avengers: Age of Ultron? Remember how pissed off we all were at the Russo Brothers when they casually dropped “Stephen Strange” into some Winter Soldier dialogue—and we never heard from that character again?

Yeah, me neither.

Eternals is too woke. This was actually my biggest concern heading into the movie. The marketing surrounding the film (which includes not only advertising campaigns but also press releases and interviews with talent and studio execs) went out of its way to taut Eternals’ diversity. Between race-and-gender-swapping characters from their comic-book incarnations, to highlighting the gay relationship of one of the central characters, and even rendering one Eternal deaf (in addition to race-and-gender-swapping them), I completely understood the suspicions of the Internet’s so-called “toxic trolls”: that the blockbuster would be more of a platform for social issues than a springboard for good movies (Patient Zero for these concerns is Captain Marvel herself, Brie Larson, whose public denunciations of “40-year-old white dude[s]” launched a million hate videos).

Add to this the fact that the Eternals trailers did absolutely nothing for me (or for legions of other Marvel die-hards who were unaccustomed to Terrence Malick-inspired shots of beaches and wistful looks in their comics adaptations). I wondered if Marvel was trying to shield itself from criticism of a bad movie by playing the Diversity and Inclusion card—a card, I might add, that has already cost them vital overseas revenue, with bans in Chinese and Middle Eastern markets.

The truth of the matter lies in the film itself, and it saddens me to say that a lot of this bullshit conflict could have been avoided had Disney/Marvel been confident enough in Zhao’s film to simply market it as a great new Marvel story, instead of a “groundbreaking” and “important” cultural milestone.

Eternals does diversity right, by showcasing a wonderfully talented and charismatic cast of multi-ethnic performers banding together to save the world. Race is never made an issue. Neither is sexuality. That same-sex relationship is presented in as matter-of-fact a fashion as the straight relationship that anchors another key aspect of the story. Zhao and actors Brian Tyree Henry and Haaz Sleiman don’t resort to the flamboyant swishing about and lisping stereotypes that signify so much of how gay men are still signified in media.

When the much-ballyhooed kiss happens, it’s during a moment of genuine drama, a beautifully realized “come back to me” embrace that even the most bigoted loser would recognize as a love that transcends categories and judgment.

As for Makkari (played by deaf actress Lauren Ridloff)—holy shit. This is the definition of an incredible character. She’s a speedster, meaning she runs super-fast, and she’s also a bit of a loner—though not necessarily by choice. Like Jolie’s Thena, Makkari doesn’t get a whole hell of a lot to do in the main web of stories, but she made me see past Ridloff’s so-called disability and marvel at her charisma, playfulness, and the deeper mysteries of her character, which will hopefully garner more attention later on.

Watching a lot of the anti-woke reactions has been disappointing, but not very surprising. The commentary from those who’ve seen the film is indistinguishable from those who let their assumptions about the messaging keep them from watching it. Many of these folks claim that their problem with Diversity and Inclusion doesn’t stem from innate prejudice, but rather a perceived cultural tinkering that seeks to upend popular franchises by deconstructing classic films and replacing their (largely) white male protagonists with women and/or people of color. I’ve seen aspects of this play out in other movies, but not in Eternals—which celebrates the melting pot of humanity—wonders, warts, and all.

Eternals is too derivative. I’m usually the first to cry “foul” when a movie nakedly and liberally cribs from other sources, and there’s no denying that Eternals is one part Prometheus, one part Transformers: The Last Knight, one part every other Marvel movie, and one part Slow Cinema.

But there’s something to be said for stealing a bad idea and turning it into a good one. Ridley Scott raised a lot of very interesting questions in his long-denied Alien prequel, in which it was revealed that mankind is basically a failed celestial science project (and that the famous xenomorphs were deployed as gooey, toothy erasers). But he flubbed the landing and resorted to a lazy quasi-remake of his landmark sci-fi horror film with Alien: Covenant. Eternals answers those questions “the Marvel Way” and adds several layers of universal political intrigue for good measure.

As for the Transformers connection, that involves a plot development that I won’t spoil here. Suffice it to say that Michael Bay lifted one of the most iconic characters from the 1986 cartoon and dropped it like a hot frying pan full of bacon grease. Eternals utilizes the same concept to much better effect, not only visually, but in posing profound ethical questions that haunt the film from almost the beginning to the very end. I’m not ruining anything by saying that this involves the inevitable, climactic, world-ending threat—but I hadn’t expected to wrestle with the notion that maybe the Earth should be allowed to die (or that the marquee heroes would take up the issue amongst themselves).

The Eternals are joyless, overpowered, and unrelatable. That’s definitely the vibe I got from the trailers, but having watched the whole movie, I can only imagine that the people who still make this claim were sitting furrow-browed and cross-armed for two-and-a-half hours, bitching to themselves about the movie not being Avengers 5.

Had they paid attention (or been honest with themselves), they would have picked up on the wide personality spectrum on display in Zhao’s film. From the resolute would-be leader Ikarus (Richard Madden) to his inquisitive and cautious-in-love ex-girlfriend, Sersi (Gemma Chan) to the Bollywood megastar, Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), and the sullen god-trapped-in-a-twelve-year-old-girl’s-body, Sprite (Lia McHugh), there is no shortage of emotion, humor, and tension coursing through the Eternals’ team dynamic.

Look closely, and you’ll see characters switch roles over the centuries as the reality of their situation sinks in and their prospects for a long-promised future gradually dim. This is a fine tapestry of diverse (there’s that word again) performances that plays like The Avengers for adults.

If you’re concerned about dreary, one-note characters, I’d invite you to check out Frances McDormand’s baffling Oscar win for Zhao’s previous film, Nomadland. Eternals is the antidote fo that movie’s stubborn helplessness in the face of adversity. Sure, McDormand might have been “relatable” to depressed Twitter addicts who assume everyone is as fed up with humanity as they are, but I found the movie to be an exercise in parody and futility. How many kind, outstretched hands can one person swat away before viewers say, “Alright, fuck you, too, I guess.”

The characters in Eternals aren’t happy-go-lucky superheroes; they have more than their share of hang-ups, moral quandaries, doubts, and nihilistic fantasies. But they balance one another out in ways that average moviegoers may just find to be hopeful without being sappy; nuanced but not defeatist.

Many Marvel films are insular to the point of ignoring the man-on-the-street POV (i.e. the mere mortals who have to live with the likes of Hulk smashing up their office buildings or Thanos snapping loved ones into nothingness on a whim). The Eternals find themselves in a between space; they’re godlike entities to the citizens of Earth, but they’re just as awed and afraid by the greater Celestial machinations as we would be by Asgardian politics.

Eternals doesn’t really fit with the other Marvel movies. And this is a bad thing? First off, that’s not entirely true. We don’t get any cameos from Falcon or the Winter Soldier; Vision is nowhere in sight. But the events of Infinity War and Endgame directly impact Eternals’ main plot. And the mysterious post-credits scene definitely speaks to some potential Phase Five deliciousness.

It’s refreshing to walk into a Marvel movie only having to know one or two key bits of information, rather than requiring several days’ worth of homework. I wouldn’t mind seeing how the Eternals gel with the reconstituted Avengers (or X-Men or Fantastic Four, for that matter), but I could also kick up my feet and smile at a trilogy centered on Sersi, Sprite, and Kingo (and Kingo’s humourous, heartwarming valet, Karun, played by Harish Patel).

The long and short of it is that, yes, Eternals is a colossal bore…for those lacking patience, heart, and imagination.

*To both of my faithful readers: I’m kidding and I love you.

**Oddly, the article’s title is slightly different, but the one I referenced pops up verbatim when searching “number of characters in Avengers: Endgame”.

Looking for a more balanced perspective on Eternals? Watch Kicking the Seat’s fiery round table review with Earth’s Mightiest Critics!