Thursday, January 13, 2022

Eternals


I’ll admit I watched this, as opposed to say, “Shang Chi”, precisely because of the critical drubbing it received (47% on Rotten Tomatoes, 52 on Metacritic). Just naturally contrarian that way I suppose.

It’s definitely the least Marvel-y Marvel movie, though I’m not sure that makes it actually good. The differences are kind of refreshing. The heroes do not spend the whole movie trading quips back and forth to ironically comment on the action. The final battle is not fought against a faceless army of CGI monsters. More to the point, the movie is easily at its weakest when it tries to do all the typical Marvel things—the action sequences are kind of rote and uninspiring CGI fests shot in near-darkness, the humor mostly falls flat, and attempts to tie it into the greater MCU feel incredibly forced.

Whatever the talents of Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao (haven’t seen her other movies, to be honest), a Marvel movie was not the best fit. There’s some genuinely intriguing and original dynamics going on between the characters and some beautiful cinematography, but it all feels squeezed into the straitjacket of the superhero action genre.

It is overstuffed, even at two and a half hours long. We’re introduced to a team of 10 superheroes called the “Eternals”, or rather, we’re introduced to three superheroes, and then another one, and then another two, and then another and then and so on and so on.

About three-quarters of the movie is spent on scenes of people standing in a rough V formation somewhere with austere natural beauty, and then explaining the rest of the movie to whichever character they’ve just met. This doesn’t leave much room for the villains, of which there are two, just to further compound the problem.

The premise is that these Eternals have been sent to the Earth by a “Celestial” super-being called Arishem, supposedly to protect humanity from alien predators called the Deviants. In flashback we see the Eternals killed the last Deviant sometime around the year 1500 and then they… just kind of hang out for a bit. Jump to the present day, when Deviants start to reappear and the Eternals have to get the crew back together again. One. Person. At. A. Time. By standing in a rough V somewhere with austere natural beauty.

It turns out though that the whole mission is a cover story, and their real job has been to ensure Earth reaches a big enough population for a new Celestial to be born out of the planet’s core, a process which is going destroy the Earth and kill everyone living on it. Celestials, in turn, are responsible for birthing new stars, which leads to the creation of new planets and new life. The circle of life etc. thank you Lion King. In theory the dilemma facing the Eternals is whether it is better to sacrifice humanity so that other worlds and other species may get a chance at life, or to save the Earth at the cost of the unborn godling.

The trouble with this, as in all of Marvel’s high stakes “save the universe” stories, is that as part of a franchise the result is a foregone conclusion, so the dilemma never feels like much of one. Oh, two or three characters voice reservations, but human-genocide is too extreme to make us feel it’s a real option and the majority of the team is just instantly and immediately on board the “save the humans” train without a second thought, so we never really explore the question in any detail.

It’s just one way the movie raises interesting questions or ideas, then immediately discards them.

The concept of a superhero movie where the superheroes discover they are not, in fact, heroic at all is an intriguing one, but like I say the instant they discover the truth (after Arishem just blurts it out) they immediately start behaving heroically. In some ways it does feel like a rehash of the concept from Captain Marvel, but there at least her immediate switch to hero mode made sense, whereas with the Eternals it’s just baffling—if they were created-slash-programmed by the Celestials, why lie to them about their mission? Why not program obedience into them?

Another casualty of the obfuscation of the plot is the Deviants themselves, which are revealed to be another creation of the Celestials, originally designed as a kind of predator-extermination device to ensure humanity has enough ecological space to evolve, but which escaped the Celestial’s control and ran amok. The parallels between Eternals and Deviants are kind of toyed with, but ultimately the only narrative purpose of this thread is to act as a red herring to distract you from the big twist/reveal. 

Along the way the movie also raises and then skips over things like the dementia of Thena (Angelina Jolie), the loss and (almost immediate) recovery of faith by the group’s tech whiz Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), and the philosophy of telepath/mind control guy Druig (Barry Keoghan) who thinks humanity would be better off if he was allowed to force us all to be nice.

One or two characters say the word “family” a couple of times as if that was the movie’s theme, though I think it works better as a tale about duty versus emotion or empathy.

Cut the number of characters in half and focus more on the dynamic between the putative leader, Sersi (Gemma Chan) and not-Superman-but-c’mon Ikaris (Richard Madden) and I think you would’ve had a decent flick. Madden in particular is the best thing here, with a juicy role and a character torn between duty and affection (the romance with Chan lacks on-screen chemistry though, especially compared with the instant and easy affection of Keoghan and Lauren Ridloff, who plays yet another hero I haven’t had time to introduce yet).

The conclusion, mid- and post-credit stingers are all typical Marvel fare, setups for future sequels and introductions of some character you’re supposed to know from the comics. Two people who were quite happy to see humanity exterminated are suddenly friends with the family again. Someone hugs another character who quite literally stabbed them in the literal back with a literal dagger literally two scenes ago. Ha ha, no hard feelings. Some dude shows up and after a dramatic pause says, “Hi, I’m Gleepwurp.”

For all that, I do feel a lot of affection for this movie. A lot of it is just seeing guys like Richard Madden and Kit Harington again. I kind of feel bad for them the way Game of Thrones ended, so seeing them in other roles is like seeing an old high school friend doing okay. Like, I was delighted to see Madden in his little part in ‘1917”. Good for you Rich, don’t let that show get you down, keep on doing your thing. Same for you Kit. I have this irrational urge to give them a hug and tell them it will all be okay. Dad’s here, buddy, dad’s here. I got you.

Hm. Guess it did turn out to be about family after all.

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