Review: Eternals - 2021

Story - The Eternals are a team of ancient aliens who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years. When an unexpected tragedy forces them out of the shadows, they are forced to reunite against mankind’s most ancient enemy, the Deviants.
Cast - Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Keoghan, Salma Hayek
Crew - Chloé Zhao (Director/Writer), Patrick Burleigh (Writer), Ryan Firpo (Writer), Kaz Firpo (Writer)
Runtime - 156 minutes

         

Everyone knows how the MCU and Disney as a whole are experiencing an extreme audience shift in all their franchises and properties. Ever since Avengers: Endgame the general audience seems to have slowly moved on from the Superhero movies and big blockbuster franchises. Mission Impossible, Fast and Furious, and the DCEU, franchises all around are experiencing disastrous Box Office numbers and the MCU is no exception.

The Covid pandemic accelerated the use of streaming and people stopped going to the theaters, even now, 2 years after the pandemic is over people have become accustomed to staying at home and waiting for movies to trickle down to their preferred streaming services.

In my opinion, Marvel started to lose its footing after the release of Black Widow (2021), I don't think the three TV shows released after Endgame -WandaVision, Loki, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier- affected them directly. This was the first movie after theaters closed,

people expected this to be a big event and to continue with Marvel's script quality but sadly only found disappointment in the Box Office, characters that were altered beyond recognition - TaskMaster- and drama between Scarlett Johansson and the executives.

A couple of months later, Eternals was released, and while I did not watch it on the big screen I did see the entire drama happen in real time. With horrible critics and audience scores, one of the worst Box Office runs of Marvel, and apparently everyone in the crew hated each other -which some people say was Chloé Zhao's fault- it was apparent that this was the start of something big in the Disney empire, their golden goose was starting to show signs of sickness.

I decided to watch it today, I've been seeing a lot of Twitter talks on how this movie was misunderstood and underrated, I was planning on never watching it but I guess it was time. I gave it a shot and it was one of the weirdest movies I've seen from the MCU.

Let's start from the way I watched it, I used the Disney+ copy, I don't own the movie on 4K and I have no idea if it would be worth it to get it even after this review. Utilized the IMAX Enhanced version, I think it is the way to see these movies, but I haven't found anything that directly states the contrary. 

When starting the intro is a clear reference to the Blade Runner intro text, highlighting Eternals and Deviants in the scroll. I was very impressed by the CGI done for the space, it is vibrant, and detailed and fills the screen nicely. sadly this is also when problems start, the use of IMAX scenes is at best impressive, they fill your screen with amazing visuals, but most of the time it is inconsistent, almost as distracting as Transformers: The Last Knight, shifting almost every 5 seconds between IMAX and non-IMAX.

The film tries to be taken seriously, maybe as seriously as Blade Runner due to its moral and ethical implications and conflict, but it lacks focus, shifting between realistic and ethical dilemmas on how eternal beings don't want to help humans and jokes about Superman or Batman. The end result is a Marvel movie with big tonal shifts that don't know what to be, I can only assume this was -perhaps- Kevin Feige's way to control the situation a bit, it does feel like two people battling each other for control.

Repercussions in this movie are non-existent, it feels like not even the MCU as a whole wants to assume responsibility or even acknowledge what happened. This is one of my biggest issues with the MCU and in contrast to the DCEU, DC's superhero actions have repercussions in all their movies, not only for gags or briefly mention it but regular people start acting differently, are scared, they don't trust heroes. In the MCU you can have a planet-sized robot come out from the ocean and there isn't any damage to the Earth -Volcanic eruptions, Giant Tsunamis, and Earthquakes- but in the 14 projects made after this movie the only mention is on a small part of a news site, not even the front page! It is funny to say even 2012 (2009) has more global repercussions from the damage made to the earth and it is an Emmerich movie!

In the middle of the movie, the Eternals, in Tenochtitlan, decide to have "free will" and to separate, now, you're telling me, they had 500 years of wandering the Earth and they never did anything with Slavery, WW1, and WW2? They have been established to have feelings, they are not robots and can do what they want, even involve other humans to battle for them, The implication of white people, to be involved and shape the cultures and religions of brown people is just... icky.

Even with those problems, it is maybe the most "Movie" a Marvel movie has felt in years. The implementation of CGI and the environment is one of the best, especially now that we have been getting awful graphics in the past year. Chlóe Zhao, after winning her Oscar for Best Director, went to this project because she felt connected to it, and even when I think she was given a weird script, the direction is one of the best. 

Been Davis, the cinematographer for this movie has had a weird career, his work here is one of the best in any Superhero movie ever, there are some amazing shots, scenes in the dark of night look balanced and it is very pleasing to the eyes.

The cast gives all their power to try and salvage this movie, I don't think anyone dropped the ball, well, except Harry Styles. It is nice to see such a diverse cast and it is a shame they were put in this trainwreck. Advances in representation are present here, Phastos, a gay black man played by Brian Tyree Henry, and Makkari a deaf Afro-Latina played by Lauren Ridloff. With the exception of Gemma Chan and Richard Madden, most of the cast is underutilized, some being killed before the half of the movie and the rest sporadically talking with other characters. Kumail Nanjiani attempts to give a Bollywood-style dance sequence but this also feels small, especially when we compare it to RRR (2022). 

Eternals offers one of the best cinematography and acting found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with an amazing cast and interesting concepts it sadly lacks the focus needed to carry an almost 3-hour movie. An interesting 236 million-dollar experiment made only possible by one of the biggest corporations in the world and one of the most successful franchises in all cinema history. Perhaps this movie would have benefited from having a smaller scale, one that dealt with the human condition and morals, but being a Superhero movie made by Disney they would rather gamble 250 million dollars on a movie that is a mess rather than 50M on a film who can, not only give them better Box Office results but even an Oscar on an above the line category like DC has. Time will tell if they will shift focus or keep wasting their money away on vanity projects, The Marvels is releasing this Friday, November 9, the only thing I can say is, good luck.

         

Final Score - 2.5/5