Director: Chloé Zhao
Writers: Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo
Cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kit Harington, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Ma Dong-seok, Harish Patel, Bill Skarsgård
Runtime: 156 mins.
2021
The marketing is sweaty to insist that this is Marvel's Eternals, and with good reason; the 26th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe adapts material less familiar to the general audience than anything that came before. The source for Chloé Zhao's movie is a Jack Kirby experiment in vibrant, phantasmagorical cosmic comic imagery meant to tickle our thirst for the incomprehensible. The movie is incomprehensible in a more pedestrian way. The greatest loss between original and adaptation is the otherworldly imagery, which has been replaced by sunwashed wastelands and underlit forests.
Thank the multiple gods for Arishem, the singular blast of successful imagery in the film. Arishem is a Celestial, an elder god that maintains the glue of the universe. He is a sort of dispatcher for the Eternals, humanoid immortals who occupy developing planets and do battle with the nasty nasty Deviants (which look like tentacle dogs or whatever). Whenever the Eternals are speaking with Arishem, the physical world peels away as if tissue paper, revealing an enormous cherry red being too immense to visualize all at once. Whenever the Eternals aren't speaking with Arishem, they tend to be sitting around doing not much of anything or maybe watching a war happen. Their spokesperson contacts Arishem at semi-random intervals. Eventually, around two hours in, Arishem uses a Powerpoint Presentation to unveil the basic stakes. This is the plot.
From the ponderous opening scrawl (In the beginning...), it is clear Zhao and her squad of screenwriters are completely at a loss when it comes to worldbuilding, plotting, and characterization. Nothing in the prologue is necessary, because all of it is repeated within the movie itself. Characters meander about knowing that they're supposed to reunite with each other but not seeming to know why or for what. Payoffs are paid off without being set up. Characters yell their motivations because they had never been dramatized. One character simply leaves the film before the teamwork-themed climax because he feels like it. No tragic break-up with the team, no swooping in to save someone at the last minute. He just goes home.
It's a shame because the film has assembled a pretty interesting cast. There's Gemma Chan (Sersi: transmorphs physical materials), Richard Madden (Ikaris: flies and shoots eyeball lasers), Angelina Jolie (Thena: strong and fights good with weapons), Salma Hayek (Ajak: heals? and is the leader), Kumail Nanjiani (Kingo: also shoots lasers but out of his fingers), Lia McHugh (Sprite: illusion powers and is child), Brian Tyree Henry (Phastos: technology), Lauren Ridloff (Makkari: fast), Barry Keoghan (Druig: controls sentient beings), Ma Dong-seok (Gilgamesh: magic fists). Some come off better-- Henry, Ridloff, Keoghan-- and some come off worse-- Madden, Jolie, Hayek-- but none can salvage the complete dearth of meaningful character advancement. Characters simply are one way, then when the time comes for the twist they have to be a different kind of way. Nobody affects each other in this movie.
What irks me the most is how little consideration is given to how an eternal being might think, act, or behave. These folks have been on earth for seven thousand years, and at no point do they express themselves any differently than a 21st century dude might. What is it like to bear the weight of history? Is sex different after a few thousand years? Does one start to think of humans as playthings or dust motes after enough generations have passed? What slips of language from previous eras might occur? What disgust or elation might they experience at contemporary cultural practices? The screenwriters seem unwilling or unable to investigate what it would be like to be these beings. At one point the team uncovers their spaceship buried deep beneath an archaeological dig in the Middle East, and they find their final team member Makkari hanging out and reading a book. She meets them with a wink and a smile.
She was just... hanging out... and reading a book... after being buried... for centuries?? Why is this character not stark raving mad?
Phastos is a Black, openly gay superhero-- Marvel's first. Much has been made of this in The Discourse. Right wingers are upset about the diversity (I guess?) and liberals rush to defend Marvel's progressive gesture (are we really going to celebrate cynical corporate diversity after 25 films without it??). And here I am wondering... what does it mean for a seven thousand year old immortal to be gay? After seven thousand years, countless romantic and sexual encounters, and perpetually shifting social norms, I can guarantee that every single one of these heroes is gay as hell. Yet there is no acknowledgement that sexuality is complex and everchanging, just the tacit acceptance that these heroes are straight and this one is gay.
The incuriosity is galling to me, but that isn't even the worst of it. Around halfway through the film, we get a flashback in which the aforementioned Phastos, supposed liberal progressive icon, takes responsibility for the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You see, it was he who gave humans access to technology so many eons ago.
"Diversity" and "representation" are so often used in liberal politics to cover over continued structural white supremacy and colonialism. To take responsibility for one of the great atrocities of history away from the American military-industrial complex, and to put it in the mouth of a singular individual (a Black, gay individual no less) is far more ugly than just making another movie full of white dudes. There's a reason MCU scripts have to be approved by the Pentagon. Eternals serves the function of reinforcing the status quo. I am reminded of The Flintstones and The Jetsons, which create the illusion that a very specific set of 1950s American gender norms exist in perpetuity through all of history.
1 / 5 BLOBS
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