12 Nov Eternals Review by Jim Washburn

By Jim Washburn

November 11, 2021

BLUF: Eternals is a radical departure from the MCU formula audiences are trained to expect. Whether or not you enjoy it will likely boil down to how much you enjoy a contemplative drama vice the standard sci-fi action-adventure.

Chloe Zhao’s Eternals is a wonderful film, with some deeply emotional themes, that happens to feature characters that are from Marvel’s stable of comic book characters. In fact, the story and themes would probably function perfectly well as a standalone film devoid of comic book characters. That said, I also feel like a movie this beautiful and ambitious would never have been made were it not part of the most financially successful movie franchise in history. So, from that perspective, I’m grateful that it is part of the MCU, because audiences have been gifted a unique and wonderful departure from the MCU formula.

Eternals tells the story of a group of superpowered characters sent to Earth 7,000 years ago to protect humans, particularly their social and technological development. Their primary opponents are creatures called Deviants, savage, mindless beasts bent on exterminating human life. After 6,500 years, all the Deviants are gone, and the Eternals, suffering from the fatigue of spending WAY too much time with each other, split up and go their separate ways. It’s only when a new Deviants show up in modern day that they gather again to figure out why and what to do about it.

That’s pretty much the whole story. There are twists and turns, which take the setup in a new direction, but the overall story is not complicated. And that is important, because where the film shines is in the character interactions combined with Zhao’s talented direction.

If I could sum up the experience as simply as possible, Eternals is what you would get if Terrance Malick decided to make a comic book movie. I love Malick’s movies: he leverages cinematography, embraces minimal dialogue, and focuses on the emotional interactions of his characters. But he also takes these to such an extreme, that although I love his films, I must be in the right frame of mind to watch them. They are challenging, methodically paced, and often dwell on deeply emotional thematic material at the expense of consistent narrative storytelling. His films are an experience, and I would point interested viewers to The Thin Red Line, The New World, and The Tree of Life to understand what I am saying.

To Zhao’s credit, she embraces a Malick-lite approach that she seamlessly combines with a muted Marvel perspective. Many (though not all) of the characters have powerful emotional journeys throughout the film, and this is entirely rooted in the nature of the characters themselves. Per the title of the film, the characters are endowed with a form of eternal life. And the philosophical nature of living through hundreds of generations of human life, observing every important world historical event, and becoming more and more entwined with the unique nature of mortal humans, provides incredibly fertile ground for the characters of the Eternals.

For example, one of them, Sprite, was created as a young teenage girl and does not age. And though she has incredible powers and the memories and experiences of an adult, she has never been able to experience critical aspects of humanity her fellow teammates take for granted. Another character, Ikaris, has such a deeply rooted loyalty to the Eternals mission on Earth that he struggles to reconcile the fact that the mission seemingly ends, and he has no purpose for a time. Each character struggles with powerful challenges that are all centered around the unstoppable march of time and how those contrasts with their existence outside of time.

Zhoa’s true skill is meshing these powerful themes with undeniably beautiful cinematography and a runtime that allows the characters and the scenes they occupy to have room to breathe.

And that is where the film’s shortcomings become evident. The action scenes are few and far between, and generally amount to punch fights, without a great deal of uniqueness to set them apart, which is tough in franchise replete with (at this point) hundreds of fight scenes, including some of the most complex and intricately choreographed action ever filmed. Eternals is pretty bland in the action department and were it not for my investment in the characters, the action would have been distractingly flat. I will also go so far as to say that some of the performances were anemic. I just don’t think Kit Harrington is a very good actor; his turn as John Snow in Game of Thrones was successful only because the character in the show seemed to reflect Harrington’s personality more than a demonstration of a skilled, nuanced performance.

I also find it mildly humorous that Eternals not only references two prominent DC superheroes (Batman and Superman), but clearly modeled some of the Eternals team after Justice League members, notably Wonder Woman (Thena), Flash (Makkari), Superman (Ikaris), and Martian Manhunter (Druig & Sprite). It made me think that Eternals feels more like a Zack Snyder DC film without his remarkable eye for action.

But overall, I really enjoyed the experience of watching Eternals. And I want to emphasize the “experience” part of that sentence, because like Malick’s films, Eternals is thematically and emotionally challenging in a way that is massive departure for the MCU. Eternals is beautiful to watch, introduces some solid characters (that will hopefully return), and represents the first Marvel movie in a long time to truly break the mold and try something radically new. It is not perfect, but it is ambitious and unique, and I’ll take it.

Pros:

• One of the most unique MCU films
• Visually beautiful
• Thematically dense and layered, prioritizing emotion over formulaic action comedy
• Confident storytelling with methodically paced character work
• Second post-credits scene may have had a cameo I’m REALLY excited about

Cons:

• Lackluster action scenes
• Some actors were…miscast, to be generous

Rating: 4/5
Chloe Zhao has crafted an excellent hybrid film that combines the best of Terrance Malick’s cinematic style with the necessary trappings of a Marvel comic book movie.

Review by Jim Washburn