‘Eternals’ was the first Marvel film I skipped watching in cinemas since ‘Guardians: Volume 2’ and, by sheer coincidence, it turned out to be what I consider as the worst attempt at a MCU movie to date.
Like, this thing was bad. So bad, I’d rather have marathoned ‘The Hulk, Thor: TDW and Captain Marvel’ then sit through this 2 and a half hour peice of overproduced garbage.
It may be a bias. I might be too critical comparing the film with the mastery of ‘Shang-Chi’ and ‘No Way Home’ although I’m genuinely baffled how the same studio can produce these two works of art and whatever ‘Eternals’ is within the same year.
Online, the film has been moderately recieved, scoring a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes and though that might be low for a MCU film – I think that score is still being too generous. Poor acting, plotholes that would put Cinema Sins to shame, disingenous and bland writing, all mesh together to create this discombobulated peice of frankly offensive cinema. We’re first introduced to a plethora of characters, where I think is where Eternals makes’ the first of it’s many mistakes – too many characters and not enough fucks to give about them. Unlike your typical cast films, such as ‘Oceans 11’, or better yet – Marvel’s own ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Eternal’s fails to characterise their cast in enough depth that they come across as memorable.
Dialogue between the characters seem forced and disingenuous with the film failing to develop any sort of interpersonal relationships among the cast. I think films like Guardians work because of the way the writer focuses in on Star Lord and his relationships with the others, whilst still managing to consistently develop the lives of the other Guardians. Eternal’s doesnt do this – and it results in the characters of the film being extremely disinteresting and having next to no progression through the movies runtime.
Furthermore, the film is shrouded in this obsession to remove itself from the ‘Marvel Forumla’ – all in the meantime adopting these age-old superhero tropes from other films that the MCU has purposefully neglected in the past. If you removed all mention of ‘Thanos’ and sat me to watch this movie, I would’ve thought it was either an indpendent studio behind it – or the third cut of Justice League. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like Chloé Zhao know’s if she want’s this film to be a ‘Shang Chi’ or another ‘Nomadland’.
To make things worse positive views on this film come across as even more elitest than the negative ones – and that’s coming from a guy (with little to no film experience) that just called a film with a $200 million budget ‘offensive’.
The film is praised for it’s ‘diverse cast’ (even though the writing fails to create a genuine relationship with any of them). It’s held on a high pedestal for being more ‘dark and mature’ even though it makes the film feel dull and agonisingly slow (contrasting your MCU expectations)
Unfortunately I’m running out of space, however on the lighter side, the VFX are pheonemal (as usual) and the actors do their best to work with the bad writing. I hate to be a debbie downer, but this film just didn’t hit where it needed to, although I implore you to watch it and tell me your opinions, personally however, I think i’ll be placing it in the same boat as the Incredible Hulk, and giving it a miss in my next MCU Marathon.
