Eternals
I finally saw “Eternals” because...of course I did. It’s a Marvel movie, and even though the reviews were not stellar and I was not particularly amped for this movie, the thought of skipping it completely gave me knots in my stomach. I did not feel good about it at all so I decided to see it. Better later than not at all, right? I went into the movie with low expectations which, I think, helped. I liked it, I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it. I don’t know if I would pay to see it again of my own free will. Who am I kidding, of course I would! It would just be an excuse to go to the movies. The
movie fan in me would probably go to the movies for anything, but the critical part of my brain wants to not really watch this again or even put it with the other Marvel movies in the MCU.
I think where it went wrong is that this movie could not decide if it was an artistic movie or a Marvel-action movie. Chloe Zhao, who is a more artistic director (I mean, look at Nomadland), was the director and it seemed like there was a divide while making this movie. Chloe Zhao was pulling to make the movie her way and the higher-ups at Marvel were pulling to make the movie their way. I think if Chloe Zhao had to adhere more to the Marvel formula then it would have worked out better. There are some other problems I had with the movie, though, so I am not sure that anyone can blame Chloe Zhao for hurting the movie by herself.
There were just too many characters, in my opinion. There was not adequate time to dig into each character's backstory and learn and care about them. I think that this movie could have made a
great limited series where each episode was dedicated to one of the Eternals. Speaking of the characters, though, I thought they were interesting. I love Gemma Chan, as Sersi! I just trust her. She has a motherly-type quality that I can’t quite put my finger on. Richard Madden was good as Ikarus. (I could not get the song “Burn” out of my head from Hamilton, though! “You’ve married an Icarus. He’s flown too close to the sun.”) This is obviously a different Icarus than the Greek myth, but I love how a person could draw that connection to him! It gave the movie some fun depth! Angelina Jolie's character of Thena, it took me almost the whole movie to be able to discern if it was Athena or Thena, was fine. Her and Gemma Chan were the deciding factors on this movie for me. In my mind, she is high class so every movie of hers is also high class, which is NOT true. I know that, but I continue to think every movie of hers is going to be fantastic. I did not like how her character was not there all the way, mentally. It just didn’t make sense to me and I feel like the writers didn’t flush out her character in their minds enough to give her a satisfying character arc.
Usually, after I see a movie I sit and think about it, it marinates inside of me and I start to subconsciously pick it apart in my mind. That did not happen for this movie. I saw it a week ago, I started my review, forgot about it, then came back to finish it. This movie does not have the ability to penetrate the emotions and stay in your memory like other Marvel movies do. It’s really too bad. If you haven’t seen Eternals by now, you’re probably not really stoked to see it anyway, so I would say that you don’t need to hurry and go see this movie in theaters. That makes me sad to say, because I LOVE when movies are huge “must-see” cultural events. “Eternals” was not that way, though.
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