The Eternals (Chloé Zhao, November 5, 2021) Movie • Page 15

Some of the flashbacks were fine were they stood such as Phastos at Hiroshima and the romance between Ikaris and Sersi, but there were a few times that I would get invested in the one of the modern day scenes only for it to jump to a long flashback.

It wasn’t a deal breaker, but an edit is just something I’d be interested in as a future rewatch.

The deviants could have also had a smaller amount of screen time. I’m not even sure what the purpose of them returning was except to give a reason to kill off a few characters. I thought that their reemergence due to melting glaciers could have been brought up as an avoidable human error through global warming, which could have fit into the narrative of humans destroying themselves. Nothing came of it, however. It’s just “the glaciers melted and they’re free.”

It probably sounds like I dislike the film, but the good still outweighed the bad. It’s a flawed but solid MCU film, imo.

 

My central thesis on this film is that it being an MCU film is its greatest flaw.

 

I think it’s greatest flaw was simply that almost none of the characters had any development, but I guess it’s hard to find time when you’re introducing 10 superheroes.

 

the hiroshima scene was the worst of the film

 

I felt it was necessary for Phastos. Could it have had a better execution? Sure.

 

It wasn’t quite as bad a scene in execution as some tweets beforehand made it seem… but, it was still a pretty baffling, poor taste decision to give Phastos his emotional scene literally in the radioactive ashes of Hiroshima.

I do love giving him that Oppenheimer moment in his arc, which was my favorite in the film. It just, y’know, didn’t have to be in that setting.

 

That ^

Great realization for the arc, bad location to do it. The team should have went back to the drawing board to figure it out.

 

Another puzzling, easily tweaked choice within another otherwise compelling character thread: Sprite being hot for Ikkaris.

As a Spider-Man and X-Men stan, I respect superhero soap opera, but the eternal child following Ikkaris ‘cause he’s handsome felt… weird, and not great. Which sucks, ‘cause her asking why Arishem made her that way was, in isolation, probably the queerest moment in a film with Marvel’s first gay kiss. (Though, I also shouldn’t & don’t wanna view it through a queer lens contextually, insofar as it did get “solved” so they could have an excuse for the actress aging irl, lol.) Having it be a general yearning for the idea of “growing up” and falling in love would’ve made more sense without changing the plot at all.

And, on a related note, such a missed opportunity not having her talk about that with Makkari present; having an Eternal creation of a Celestial be deaf is such a fascinating choice that would’ve given her an interesting perspective on Sprite’s dilemma. Reminds me of the great work being done by Vita Ayala in the current New Mutants comics.

 

a scene of that magnitude, sure. we have sokovia and dumb made up shit in this comic book film universe. why use a real tragedy and war crime? it’s a baffling, at best, choice

 

If the writers insisted on using any real historical moment, having Phastos present at the Trinity testing wouldn’t have been too bad. It would have been a closer mirror to Oppenheimer, which is what the writers appeared to be going for, but wouldn’t put his scene literally after the complete destruction of 140,000 people.

But, yeah, I agree that a fictional event would have also worked. Like you said, Sokovia was invented for the films. A comic book film doesn’t have to always use real-world events.

 

I remain a massive Chloé Zhao fan, but between that scene (which almost certainly wasn’t her idea, but also almost certainly was something she could’ve rewritten to take place elsewhere)

and the Amazon stuff in Nomadland (which bothered me less than some people but did play uncomfortably as Amazon PR),

she might just be very bad at considering all the implications of what she includes in her films!

 

all the talk was about how she had final cut of the movie. even if she didn’t write it and it was a point marvel pushed, she didn’t have to leave it in the final cut.

 

Most of my critical thoughts about this film are pointed at Marvel Studios, due in no small part to my preexisting cynicism towards their formula. But, it is also pretty illuminating as far as the strengths and weaknesses of Chloé Zhao. She’s fantastic at the whole “feel” part of filmmaking; the storytelling part is a bit more hit or miss.

Makes me hope that she makes more films like The Rider, and that any future genre projects come with a talented writer who can compliment her well.

 

Decided to finally go back to the theaters and this is what I’m seeing in 10 minutes. It’s weird to be back.

 

Druig and Makkari were the stand-outs for me. Would've liked to have seen more of Dane. The rest were hit and miss imo.

 

Did they ever explain how the Bill Skarsgaard deviant evolved to be able to absorb the powers of and kill Eternals, it was just kinda weird like the whole movie it was like we're immortal and then one of them is dead and none of them are like hey I thought we couldn't die, especially Druig

 

Did they think they were immortal or did they just believe that they had incredibly long life spans?

As for Kro, it seemed like absorbing energy and adapting was just one of the Deviant’s evolutionary capabilities. Part of the “oops we messed up” design that the Celestials prevented the Eternals from having.

 

Without having actually seen the movie and hearing what they have to say, I should point out that there is a big difference between someone being immortal and being invulnerable.

 

I think it's really interesting that while the potentially world ending event is the awakening of the Celestial the main conflict of the story is between the Eternals themselves and their opposing beliefs. Kingo ultimately decided to stay out of it, but the rest of them still had to fight Ikaris, and Sprite. By using the Deviants to kill Ajak, and therefore inadvertently allowing the main one to absorb Ajak's powers, Ikaris was indirectly responsible for both Ajak and Gilgamesh dying. This gave his apology to Sersi at the end more weight because it wasn't just I'm sorry I wanted to end the world but also I'm sorry I killed part of our family. His turn at the end--and his love for Sersi--really humanized him for me instead of him being just an evil villain. I guess this is just a long winded way of saying I'm not really bothered by how the Deviant's ability to absorb an Eternal's power was left unexplained.

 

Eternals Is Nobody’s Film

 

Cool.

 

so I really enjoyed this. Loved how outlandish it was.

ultimately feel it could of been great if it wasn't connected to the MCU

 

This is in my top 5 MCU movies

 

Idk about top 5 for me, would have to think more about it, but definitely top ten easy

 

Thought this was okay, I guess.

I enjoyed some of it, but I felt it’s length a few times and that’s never good.

I agree with what was said earlier that having all the flashbacks together may not have been good but I did find the flow jarring at times.