It’s Like Guardians, but Doubled and More Serious
A group of superheroes have been on Earth since the early days of mankind. They have been tasked by the Celestials, a god-like race, with protecting the earth from a vicious group of aliens, named Deviants. Although helping the human race advance, they were not allowed to intervene in conflict or anything else, if it didn’t involve Deviants. After their assumed extinction, Deviants have started to attack again and it is up to the Eternals to protect the Earth again.
This was a long and ambitious movie. It’s no surprise that the fanbase had high expectations of this one. Coming after the groundbreaking event of Endgame, and being helmed by award winning director, Chloe Zhao, this sounded like a way to continue the studios momentum. Somewhere in the formula, it proved to be too much to handle.
Unlike the Avengers, we are introduced to a brand new team in one film. It worked for the Guardians, but why didn’t it work here? Maybe it’s because the Guardians felt self-contained, without worrying about events happening elsewhere in the MCU. Although the movie doesn’t pry too deep into events like The Snap, it still reckons with it. Another big difference is that we follow the group from the early days of mankind on Earth.
[Warning: Spoilers]
Adding to the ambition of this film, is the fleshing out of most of our new cast. I say most, because not everyone is given a full exploration of character. For the leader, Salma Hayek’s Ajax, barely gets any screen time. She almost feels as a plot device for our next two characters. Gemma Chan’s Sersi and Richard Madden’s Ikaris are in a conflict as Ajax’s successor after her mysterious death. It becomes a fight between a reluctant leader that happened upon the position and a devoted follower, who has god-like powers. And then we have some other members, like a cult-leader, the only one in a kid’s body, and the reason for nuclear warfare.
Barry Keoghan’s Druig had a genuinely interesting character. Having the ability to control people is indeed powerful, maybe enough to end world conflict. We don’t know if he has this capability, as we catch up to the character as they are running a small cult in the woods somewhere. Bryan Tyree Henry's Phastos also had an interesting story. Assisting mankind’s advancement with a few nudges. It all leads up to a moment that felt in poor taste, you know, the one with the bomb. Most everyone else on the team had meager scraps within the movie, except for one other member.
It’s not all doom and gloom with this team, but we also got a much-needed comic relief with Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo. Along with Harish Patel’s Karun, this duo provides us with a decent balance in moods. Kingo is definitely the quippy one of this group, and that wasn’t hard to achieve with Kumail’s comedy background. His character’s story didn’t have a big impact on the overall narrative, and this is capitalized with his sudden exit near the end of the movie.
With the Eternal’s big motivation for action being the Deviants, they ultimately had little importance. Yes, the sudden appearance of them sparked the team’s reformation, but that’s mostly it. With stuff like intra-team conflict and finding their place among mankind, who has time to follow these nondescript goop monsters? The subplot that involved the evolved one that could absorb powers was thrown by the wayside as it ended up fighting one of the most minor members of the team in some cave somewhere. Bringing in an actress like Angelina Jolie to end up being a silent character felt like such a waste.
Although the trailers revealed most of them, the visuals look great. For a galaxy level conflict, it’s expected to have big flourishes of computer graphics filling up the screen. It doesn’t get overwhelming at any point, which probably is attributed to the big bad not being a goop monster. The graphics were able to blend in well on a small level, like when casting abilities, but big creatures were harder to believe.
This was a great attempt at going against the formula, but in the end, it bit off more than it can chew. With a star studded cast, it was a shame that we didn’t get to spend more time on each one. This probably would have worked better if it was split into parts, but we probably would not learn what could have been. I look forward to how the Eternals are implemented going forward.