Film Review: Eternals
Images courtesy of Marvel Studios.
Eternals is not exactly what I expected it to be, but then again what did anyone expect this was going to be? Marvel went rogue with the marketing on this one.
I usually don’t watch trailers but it’s impossible to avoid the posters, especially when they’re plastered all over the country. With superhero movies, the poster is typically enough to give you the vibe of a movie, but not with this one. Marvel wanted to go all artsy with it and unfortunately for them I started expecting some big shift to the style, structure and even genre.
After three short hours and a lot of surprises, I was disappointed.
I say three short hours because the runtime of Eternals was insanity but didn’t feel bloated. How bold for an origin story to demand the same time on screen as Endgame or Titanic, but here we are in a world where Eternals is a three-hour movie. I couldn’t believe how the time flew, though the people behind me in the cinema certainly didn’t agree with my views on the runtime.
One thing we did agree on though, was how rushed the ending felt.
Multiple villains sprinkle the film: some twist villains, and some big baddies building anticipation for large, mysterious segments of the film. Unfortunately, all of the villains, both big or small, unanticipated or expected, feel half-baked in either their executions or the speed with which their narrative concludes. The Eternals are much more engaging and resourceful with their screen time, which is necessary when the movie attempts to flesh out like eight heroes equally.
Throughout the movie common themes of Marvel are dealt with, but the way they are observed in Eternals feels more complex than before. Themes of loss, mental health, religion, and mortality are dissected in fresh ways which reminded me of the movie I thought I’d be seeing – something revived and unafraid. Thena suffers from ‘Mahd Wy’ry’, an affliction that presents the burdens of living through countless genocides and atrocities. Sprite, like all Eternals, cannot age, but is the only ‘child’ of the group. Eternals spends due time weighing the benefits of agelessness against the cost of lost humanity throughout this plot-thread. The character that most interested me though was Druig, an Eternal who chooses to create peace and harmony at the potential cost of humanity.
On the other hand, the main antagonists of the film – Deviants, a race of near-immortal monsters, and historical enemies of the Eternals, reminded me an awful lot of Doomsday from Batman V Superman, and when comparisons are so easily drawn with Batman v Superman you know not to take them lightly. The poor things were interesting, especially as the film gave them time to breathe and build empathy with the audience, yet the last we see of them feel felt like disrespectful treatment to say the least. To me it just felt as though Deviants were treated as a ploy to set up an alternative plotline – a shock twist that was exciting, no doubt –but at what cost?
Eternals toys with the idea of human evolution, tracing our timeline through its century-spanning plot and pondering the effect of nature vs nurture on a grand scale.
Eternals is showing in cinemas now.