'Eternals' is Ambitious, Gorgeous and Very Long
Watching 'Eternals', which has the best hand scene since 'The Last Jedi' 👌🏼
Chloe Zhao’s ‘Eternals’ is a change of pace for the MCU, slower yet more intimate and with a lot of emotional resonance. It’s not as formulaic as its predecessors and is beautifully shot and considered. Fresh off her Oscar win from ‘Nomadland’, Eternals feels original, but heavy exposition and a lengthy run-time hinders the film.
Stars: Gemma Chan, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Keoghan, Lauren Ridloff, Ma Dong-seok, Bryan Tyree Henry, Lia McHugh
🙈🙈🙈 Mild Spoilers 🙈🙈🙈
🍿 The Good Bits 🍿
🍿 ’Eternals’ is a super ambitious film that has a massive scope, spanning 7,000 years, the universe and the present day. It follows a group of superheroes called the Eternals, a group tasked with protecting Earth from demon-monsters called Deviants.
🍿 There’s plenty of ideas and concepts that hasn’t been tackled before in the MCU. ‘Eternals’ poses philosophical questions and themes around growing old, what it means to be human, and one’s destiny. It also challenges the notion of “Is the greater good always better?”.
🍿 The representation in the film doesn’t feel forced. It is very energising to see a deaf superhero and a multi-racial cast. For a movie about humanity and existence, this is very fitting and appropriate. There’s space for the film to breathe that allows the audience to have moments to dwell in. I loved all the interracial friendships and relationships, because I feel like this is not as visible a lot of the time in Hollywood movies!!
🍿 The film is well acted, funny and intimate. Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) was the most humorous. He lives as a successful Bollywood actor (masquerading as different generations - grandfather, father, son as time goes on as he doesn’t age) and is followed around by his valet who films constantly because everything is content!! Very modern and relatable.
Sprite (Lia McHugh), the Eternal who can do visual trickery yearns to live and experience life as a human, giving up eternal life, like Arwen in the ‘Lord of the Rings’. Unlike Arwen, Sprite does it for herself and not for a dude because #yolo and why not I guess!
Thena (Angelina Jolie) and Gilgamesh (Ma Dong-seok) share a really, really cute friendship and all their interactions are so wholesome, which adds another dimension to the group’s dynamic.
🍿 There’s a nice hand scene that is probably the best hand scene since ‘The Last Jedi’ 👌🏼. It’s very subtle though (I’m probably thinking about it too much).
🍿 The Not-As-Good Bits 🍿
🍿 There is a lot of complexity in the script, which was written by Zhao, Patrick Burleigh (‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’) and Ryan Firpo. Given new characters and concepts like the Celestials have never been introduced in the MCU before, a large chunk of the time is dedicated to exposition, so the film can feel quite dense.
🍿 The story jumps in between the past and present and as a result, is a bit uneven and whiplash-y at times. There’s a scene of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing which felt a bit forced. I do honestly kinda feel a bit awkward when a tragedy of that scale is used in a movie for depth or poignancy.
🍿 I feel like this is a Marvel origin movie for ten characters, or at least we have to get to know all of them in a very limited space. I don’t know how else they could have got around this but kudos to Zhao for creating a world and an engaging story within a lot of constraints.
🍿 Kit Harrington wasn’t in it as much as I thought he would be!! Wanted a bit more of a reunion for the Stark brothers!
I think the film is definitely one that’s very different to any other film in the MCU, much like ‘The Last Jedi’ was to Star Wars. Whether you like it will be up to your taste and expectations, but I found that after 26 MCU movies, something new and bold is very much welcomed.
Four milkshakes out of five.
Thanks for reading, and as always, if you’ve seen it, let me know what you think!
Warmest virtual regards
frankie’s MILKSHAKE CLUB