The Eternals

The Eternals as a Marvel movie with an ambitiously “different” style is a welcoming concept, especially when the conventional superhero formula is starting to get jaded. But I am disappointed how this interesting addition to the MCU, with magnificent cinematography and varied examination of its characters, ultimately felt so dull and… boring. Clocking in at 2 hours and 36 minutes, The Eternals is the second longest MCU movie after Avengers: Endgame. And it felt like a very slow 2 hours and 36 minutes. That is way too damn long. The fact that “it could be longer” according to director Chloe Zhao makes me groan like a kid at a lecture.

Zhao goes on to state the reason, “You know, it's ten characters, the Celestials, and 7,000 years. There's a lot going on.” Well, ten characters is exactly the problem. Ten is one too many characters to care equally about, which is what the movie tries to do with no avail. All the Eternals end up sustaining their personalities with jarringly verbose dialogue rather than meaningful actions. As a consequence, their attempted development from emotionless androids to complex humans falls very short, a fresh idea that had so much potential in the MCU. I can’t even point to a favourite character because they all felt superficial and shallow, both fleets of protagonists and antagonists alike.

To beat a dead horse, much of the dialogue is also committed to exposition, namely lecturing the audience who the Eternals are, where they come from, yada yada. These exposition dumps don’t cover a substantial amount of the movie, but they do frequently interrupt the flow of the story. Imagine watching an interesting fight or a real heart-to-heart dialogue, and then being immediately followed up by this monotonous stretch of documentary on the 7000 year history of the Eternals. I found it disconcerting and suffocatingly unnatural. Granted, some of the best visuals and sense of grandeur occur during these expositions. However, when beautiful CGI is so commonplace nowadays, the real operator between good and bad cinema is creating scenes that explain themselves with minimal words. I believe in Zhao’s capabilities to do so, given her impressive accolades in filmmaking. But here, she fails, though I'm sure her creative hands were a bit tied under the studio's management.

Simply put, The Eternals tries to do too much: introduce a fleet of new characters without any precedence, set the stage up for complicated lore, and of course, show off heroes fighting as any superhero movie does. It’s not the worst Marvel movie, but nevertheless quite forgettable despite having a different flair compared to others. The implications of this movie in the MCU emanate no hype and I have zero interest in what they do with these characters in future projects. Now, I do acknowledge my admiration for the diversity of the cast. One Eternal was even deaf, which was awesome to see on screen. Yet, I feel this diversity was not respected well. What is the purpose of diversity and unique identities in The Eternals if they don’t translate into deeper, more compelling stories? It’s just not comparable to Black Panther or Shang-Chi.

When I watched Dune (2021) last year in theatres, I thought it was everything that The Eternals tried to be. Both movies had similar goals, spending nearly 2.5 long hours to do some substantial worldbuilding from scratch while boasting a spectacle of visuals. But only one, in my eyes, was a truly immersive movie experience. On the other hand, The Eternals felt more appropriate as a TV series, another add-on if you will, to the already saturated MCU for getting us attached to the characters for future projects. Understandably, there is this question of whether the production quality, for the grandeur of divine CGI aliens and all, can be replicated for TV. Part of me also wonders whether a pitch-black theatre, if it was not for COVID, could have improved my appreciation of the visuals and overall viewing experience of The Eternals. Maybe, though I give the pitch-dark theatre a better chance of putting me to sleep. It’s such a shame, because the “ancient aliens kind of sci-fi trope” is an intriguing premise that I had great expectations for since the movie’s announcement back in 2019. And sometimes, I think fresh ideas can make up for mediocre production. But I could never guessed my excitement for gigantic gods and ancient aliens being fiercely extinguished by technical elements that were ultimately lackluster and poorly executed.

The absurdity of the script illustrated in this always funny Pitch Meeting: