Mark Reviews Movies: ETERNALS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 4, 2021

"In the beginning" begins Eternals, and if there's an opening statement that imbues more grandness on a story than that, this movie would have started with it instead. The so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded in ways that likely were unthinkable when it first began only 13 years and, somehow, 25 movies (not to mention the recent boom of TV shows within this universe) ago. Here, perhaps, is the most significant expansion of the history and mythology of these superhero tales, as an alien squad of super-powered beings arrive on Earth with the emergence of early humans and guide the species' continued development for millennia.

These are no mere superheroes, in other words—or at least they aren't in terms of how ordinary people see them. They are gods and heroes of ancient myth within human storytelling. When people speak of the man who flew too close to the sun, they are actually talking about Ikaris (Richard Madden), one of those Eternals who arrived on the planet in 10,000 BC with others of his kind, such as the epic hero Gilgamesh (Don Lee), the warrior goddess Thena (Angelina Jolie), and the craftsman Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). From then until now, these entities have helped and shaped the course of humanity for better and, obviously, for worse.

The setup of director Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo's screenplay certainly suggests something different and far more significant than the stuff we've come to expect from this ongoing—and seemingly never-ending (although now we have a starting point, at least)—franchise. The movie's opening scenes, which feature the Eternals within their stone monolith of a spaceship floating by the flaming sun and engaging in fierce battle with monsters hunting early humans, are strange and mysterious.

The images and action are preceded, of course, by a lot of text, explaining their origin from another race of celestial entities, appropriately called Celestials, in the battle against those monsters, called Deviants, in some cosmic back-and-forth between good and evil. There's a lot less strangeness and mystery in such blunt and bland exposition.

That's the real battle of this movie, which is a theoretically ambitious but practically routine superhero tale. At its thematic core is the story of immortal beings, whose existence in human history was vital and celebrated, even as they're now filled with regret for their actions and inaction, longing for some purpose or sense of fulfillment, and uncertainty for what's to come.

The central idea of these characters is fascinating and woeful, especially as flashbacks show how their leader Ajak (Salma Hayek) made a clear line of when the Eternals could and could not interfere or help humans throughout history. If the Deviants were killing humans, as they start to again in the present day after a long absence, the Eternals were obliged to become involved. If humans were slaughtering each other, these powerful beings were only allowed to watch. As Phastos sees how his spark of rudimentary invention millennia ago led to unthinkable destruction in the 20th century, the Eternals saw a lot.

All of this material, as the Eternals' history on Earth is revealed, feels like its own, isolated, and far more engaging tale. In practice, though, all of that is merely back story and exposition for the real plot. That sees Sersi (Gemma Chan) bringing the Eternals—the aforementioned ones, as well as Sprite (Lia McHugh), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), and Druig (Barry Keoghan)—back together to fight the emerging Deviants across the globe.

How does one make characters with this much cosmic, existential, and philosophical potential into vessels for a series of scenes of exposition, interrupted by generic sequences of computer-generated action? Somehow, superhero movies will find a way, apparently.

The answer in this case, at least, is to make them the next step in a series that has perfected a formula to the point of undermining even characters as powerful and enigmatic as these. The movie jumps back and forth in time, not as a way to illuminate characters or theme, but as a way to keep the plot going and to offer additional action (Zhao makes good use of the budget to give us gorgeous, globe-trotting backdrops—and then cram a bunch of computer-generated noise into the frame).

There are so many superheroes here, being introduced for the first time, that the screenplay has little time for them as characters. They are mostly interchangeably bland, aside from their glowing-gold powers and the melodrama of Sersi's love interests (She goes from a five-millennia slog of lazy sex with Ikaris to a less-developed relationship with Kit Harington's Dane Whitman, whose purpose is apparently being saved for some later adventure). The exceptions are Nanjiani, whose Kingo has become an egocentric Bollywood star (publicly, multiple generations of stars in the same family), and Henry, who brings a thoughtful sense of tragedy to Phastos' guilt over what devastation his inventive spark has wrought.

Something as huge in scale and scope on the surface shouldn't seem this dull and perfunctory. Eternals and its superficial treatment of characters who deserve more, though, ensure that's the case.

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