Eternals

 2021, d. Chloe Zhao - in theatre

I read a nonsense article yesterday that was trying to form some point about how ironic enjoyment is now just enjoyment... or something. I don't know.  I couldn't follow.  Caring about what's "cool", whether it's ironic appreciation or not, is so beyond any point of importance in my life at this stage.  But in all its overwrought facetiousness, this article, stating that basically anything "could be, arguably, cool", still gets a dig in at the expense of Marvel, and the people who enjoy Marvel product.

The millennials that have taken to Letterboxd confirm this.  Shitting on Marvel is a new the new posture-of-cool pasttime for cinephiles.  People are giving Marvel's latest, Eternals one-star reviews.  These aren't the typical cis-het white male trolls who tank the Rotten Tomatoes scores and spam message boards or whatever because they have a shit-for-brain-thinking and have been convinced that people of colour or women or LGBTQ+ representation in film and television and life is somehow is a direct assault against them.  The Letterboxd crowd tend to be cinephiles who appreciate film in all its different textures and flavoures.  But Marvel has fast become a passe flavour, it's an out of vogue style, it's an attention-stealing cultural omnipresence that is now something "too mainstream" or "too big" and it rubs people the wrong way, to the point of doling out one star reviews for what is otherwise an ambitious and barely, if even, moderately successful time-spanning heroic epic.  Eternals, just by nature of having the "Marvel" brand attached finds people knocking it severely, not for what it is, but for what it represents as part of the overall Marvel, or even Disney infrastructure.

 Truth, Eternals is a messy film. It opens with a text crawl, which is never a good sign, and then introduces us to a cast of characters aboard a spaceship 7000 years in the past.  This cast are the 10 actors who make up the Eternals - Salma Hayak (Ajak), Gemma Chan (Circe), Richard Madden (Ikarus), Bryan Tyree Henry (Phastos), Kumail Nanjiani (Kingo), Angelina Jolie (Thena), Lia McHugh (Sprite), Lauren Ridloff (Makkari), Don Lee (Gilgamesh) and Barry Keoghan (Druig). They are venturing to Earth - assigned a mission from a Celestial, one of few gargantuan ancient cosmic beings that are the creators of life across the cosmos - to purge the Earth of the threat of Deviants.  They land on Earth and help protect a primitive human culture from a Deviant attack, thus starting their mission.

All of this set-up, which is a good 10-15 minutes at the opening of the film, could have been simply explained in a couple quick expository sentences throughout the film.  Nothing we see or learn here isn't repeated or intuited later in the film.

The story then steps into the modern day London as we follow Circe on her way to work as a teacher.  She is dating a colleague, Dane (Kit Harrington) and living with the ever-youthful-looking Sprite.  On her way to work, she spies an artifact being promoted by the Natural History Museum that she herself created centuries ago. At work she helps protect the kids when an earthquake happens.  Following the tremor Circe, Dane and Sprite are attacked by a Deviant, though the Eternals believe they had eradicated them in the 1500's. Ikarus, Circe's former husband of 5000 years returns to their aide.  It's time to start getting the band back together.

In the first hour, the modern day sequences are lively and bristling with a sense of excitement and discovery, but the film doesn't trust the modern day sequences to properly exposit and convey the history and dynamics, and douses the fire with flashbacks. I'm typically all for "show, not tell" if it's worthy, but a lot of these flashbacks take so much time to make such a simple point.  The negotiation between flashback and modern day in the editing doesn't ever really find a proper rhythm but is handled less poorly in the second and third acts.

Much of the flashbacks are concerned with Circe and Ikarus' romance, and, frankly Chan and Madden have very little chemistry (she connects much, much better with Kit Harrington).  Madden's character is rather stone-faced, and, as we learn, he's a true believer, a true soldier dedicated to his mission, his emotions can never get in the way of that, but they do to what should be (but isn't apparent) internal conflict.  It's a role Madden plays fine, but it's not very exciting.  Chan, then, is left with carrying the weight of that relationship while also winding up as de-facto leader for the Eternals and key POV character for the film.  Chan is a likeable enough presence, but the fact that her command of the Enternals is in doubt by the others means Chan's command of the screen also wanes as a result.

But with Ikarus and Circe being the dry, powdery center of the jawbreaker, each of the other performers gets to be a layer of sweet or bold flavour that surrounds them.  Of the remaining 8 Eternals, at least 6 of them stand out greatly.  Thena has a known disease that causes her mind to go into a recessive mode and she, the most fomidable warrior on the team, lashes out at anyone around her.  Gilgamesh is the bruiser, the super-strong one with the softest heart who takes care of Thena.  Kinga has spent his time being a Bollywood superstar for generations (and his valet Karun (Hiresh Patel) follows him on every adventure).  Sprite has spent thousands of years trapped in the body of a pre-teen,and  while she's coping with her circumstances the hardship weighs on her.  Druig, with the power to control minds, just wants to stop all of humanity's hatred and violence, but they have been forbidden in interfering with human existence.  Phastos, having helped humanity evolve technologically and getting increasingly disenchanted with humanity by the way they use those tools -for violence and war- that he abandons all hope for humanity, only to find him with a husband and child and a renewed sense of love and hope.

Again, it's the modern day aspect of these characters that bring the film to life, but, unlike in the first act, the act two and three flashbacks help flesh out the history rather than just sit numbly within it.  I think that part of the reason the earlier flashbacks are there are simply to get more of Hayak into the film.  I really only count a couple scenes that she appears in to have any real weight on the overall story.

The film culminates not in a big, ugly CGI battle with a slew of Deviants (which it could have so easily been), instead it's a family squabble -- ala Civil War-- but with the fate of the Earth (and something else) on the line, and I appreciate that as conflict much more than waves of nameless aliens or robots.  It gives each character a chance to shine with their powers and abilities while also carrying the weight of their relationships and their choices into the conflict.  There's also a whole Deviant sub-plot going on throughout the film that unfortunately doesn't amount to anything meaningful, the thrust of which probably got lost in the re-writes or edit.

The visuals of the film are at times stunning.  Zhao has a thing for vistas, and there are those aplenty as she pulls back to give the action, or drama, or romance greater weight by being part of these gorgeous shots.  It looks very different from every other Marvel, and is the aspect I like the most about it.  People bemoan the "pre-visualization" that Marvel does for the action/superpower sequences and there is a bit of lost personality in some of that.  But some of these fight sequences seem influenced by, if not fully tailored by Zhao, so I don't fully understand where the pre-vis starts and the director's film stops.

Like Shang-Chi this film manages to find its own unique space in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and sits almost completely outside of most everything else that Marvel's done so far... but it cannot completely avoid the occasional reference to the Avengers or Thanos (not at all critical to enjoying the movie) nor the demands of contributing to building the MCU further.  There is a damn awkward sequence at the end with Chan and Harrington which leads into the post-credits scene.  Madden's character comics fans will know as the Black Knight... this aspect is completely ancillary to the events of Eternals and shoehorning it into the film is one of those things that drives the Marvel haters bonkers.  The thing is, I agree with them.  Shang-Chi and Eternals should really stand on their own and not have to seed in "the future" in their main text.  Had the "universe expanding" been left to the post-credits where only the fans are going to stay (like the earliest Marvel films), then that's preferable, but laying up a big tease in the final minute of the film is frustrating.  Same with the mid-credits sequence that sets up the sequel and yet another new character, all of which is completely extraneous to the events of the movie, and, I'm sure to most but die hard Marvel comics fans, fully confounding.

I get it.  But, then again, two or three minutes of this kind of thing shouldn't be enough to ruin the whole feature experience, even though people's mileage on Eternals will definitely vary.  Either you're going to buy into it or you won't.  I had a hard time with this multicultural band of very human-looking characters being on a spaceship heading towards earth 7000 years ago, speaking with English Earth accents and sign language.  It didn't feel right.  And some of those flashbacks, the film doesn't really capture the sense of living for thousands of years in these characters very well.  But it does capture the cosmic scale, and superheroic nature, as well as these characters' humanity (or lack thereof) and connection to humanity (or lack thereof).

I liked this messy, messy production by and large, and I understand and agree with the authentic criticisms of its flaws.  It was a risk on Marvel's parts, promoting little-loved, little-known characters with a very weird background to the forefront with a huge budget, epic-scale movie.  Yeah, it's a lot, and it goes for it, and actually tries things differently than what other Marvel films have done in the past, and, I think, will lose out a bit as a result.  But what I don't get is the hate, the complete detesting of the film that seems inspired simply by being a Marvel product.  More than that, I don't understand why people who seem predisposed to disliking Marvel product continue to consume it for the sole purpose of shitting on it loudly and vehemently.   Why waste your time?  If you don't enjoy engaging with these products, then why do it? And then you turn your lamentable fear of missing out into a sense of superiority and punch down on anyone who happens to enjoy it earnestly...sigh, it seems a little pathetic.

Shitting on Marvel is now a "cool" thing to do.  Eventually, trends will shift and shitting on Marvel will be seen as passe, but we likely have a ways to go yet.  I'm already getting tired of complaining about the complainers.

Updated: Ranking Marvel (including D+)

        the top tier - my favourites, all just good stuff

1. Avengers: Infinity War
2. Captain America: Civil War
   
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Thor: Ragnarok
5. Spider-Man: Homecoming
6. Captain America: First Avenger
7. Captain America: Winter Soldier
8. Avengers: Endgame
9. Black Panther
10. Loki
    
11. Ant-Man
12. Avengers
13. Wandavision
    
    the second line - stories I like but perhaps don't fully resonate
    
14. Iron Man 3
15. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
16. Black Widow
    
17. Doctor Strange
18. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    
19. Ant-Man and the Wasp
    
20. Captain Marvel
    
    third wave -- flawed but still fun, stuff I'll still go back to
    
21. What If...?
    
22. Spider-Man: Far From Home
23. Eternals
24. Falcon and the Winter Soldier
    
25. Avengers: Age of Ultron
26. Iron Man 2
    
    the bottom - the ones I don't know that I even want to watch again
    
27. Thor: The Dark World
28. Iron Man
29. Thor
30. The Incredible Hulk