Long, convoluted, boring, and confusing. I really didn’t like this movie. I’m sad to admit that.
I hate to say it, people, but I really didn’t like Marvel Eternals much.
Actually, at all.
I’m a longtime fan of the Marvel films and I regularly watch anything related to Marvel. I’ve always been a fan of the heroes and stories we get transported to. Although I like the characters of DC a little more, I always felt like Marvel had better films and cinematography. So, when I went to dive into Eternals, I was expecting something as spectacular as I was used to getting from Marvel.
Unfortunately, I was greeted with a massive slap on the face from a film so convoluted and long, it bored me within the first half-hour.
You might be wondering why this is. Well, I’m going to break it down for you because I have to.
With Eternals, we’re introduced to the idea that there are celestials that are basically gods of life that create life on other planets with the intention that another god will be born from that life. Basically, the gods will be born out of the planet that they kaboom when they decide it’s time to wake up.
Apparently, there are these beings called Eternals that are a group of people who go around and help creatures of different planets stop these big bad guys called Deviants because they were commanded by Arishem, their god basically. Arishem looks more like a flaming Decepticon, but we’ll look past that.
Now, these Eternals are super powerful and because of that, people came up with mythology based off of them. Basically, Athena and Icarus and so many other mythological stories and creatures are actually from these Eternals. So, aliens! We love a good alien story here. I’d know. I write them.
However, I felt like the concept itself was bizarre. The idea that aliens had a role in human creation is certainly not a new SciFi story idea, but the execution of it didn’t seem to make much sense to me in the film’s context. Firstly, if Arishem and these Celestials are so powerful, why did Arishem need to create Eternals to correct a mistake he made? Wouldn’t it make sense that if Arishem is a god that he would just take care of it himself? Unless the film didn’t explain to us everything. Which would be possible.
The Eternals have been alive for Earth’s history for over 7,000 years and must reunite with each other in order to stop the Deviants. The story mainly focuses on Sersi (Gamma Chan) as its main protagonist. She was the least engaging protagonist in any Marvel film I’ve seen in a while. I felt like her character had nothing interesting or exciting going for her. I was just left baffled at how little I cared about her role in the film.
On top of this, the movie was frickin’ long. It’s 2h30 approximately in run-time. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem with me normally. I’ve sat through all the Transformers movies by Michael Bay and they were about 3h each, so I know a long movie. I sat through all the Godfather films too. Long movies don’t bother me.
However, the long movie has to actually be engaging!
Eternals was a long, boring movie. It was full of so many plot details and messy flashbacks that I found myself scratching my head midway through trying to figure out what the heck story I was watching anymore. It felt like I watched a summary of a TV series instead of a movie, which I don’t think should be a goal of any filmmaker to have happen.
There was simply too much happening for a film. I didn’t feel like I was given the proper chance to care about any of the characters and any deaths fell flat and meant literally nothing to me. The acting wasn’t exactly the best either, but I felt like Ikaris’ performance was the most believable and interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jolie and her acting, but I felt like this movie didn’t do her any justice. I’d much rather just watch Maleficent if I want to see Angelina Jolie acting in a good movie.
There was simply too much going on for me to care about any of it, and it made me feel like I was being forced to watch this movie for a chore.
The script also felt like it was dragging for an unintentionally long period of time for no reason. The attempt at witty humor also felt like it wasn’t given much effort. Most Marvel films include humor because we all love a good laugh, and I’m not saying they need to be depressing, but this film depressed me with its just downright bad humor. Compared to other recent Marvel releases, something just felt off about Eternals for me.
I get what this film is going for: Some deep philosophical messages mixed with some intense alien SciFi jargon and a lot of mythology and history. However, if you want to deliver mythology and history and aliens and philosophy into a film, you have to actually know what you’re trying to tell me. I wasn’t sure what the message of the movie was besides the interjected speech about “free will” at one point. And if that was supposed to be the message, there are better ways to write a story about that.
All in all, Marvel Eternals left me disappointed and feeling as though I just wasted a good portion of my life I’m never getting back. It was boring, messy, and full of details and plot points that were too much for a film of this size. After hearing about its sequel, I honestly have no clue how much more of Eternals I can take.
I understand that at the end of the day, it’s Marvel, but the formula it was attempting to follow was flawed for a movie of this type. It attempted to mix too many styles into one and it didn’t feel right to my head. Even for a movie to watch and not to care about the story of, I can watch literally anything else. In fact, if I wanted a good action movie with no care for the plot, I can just go watch Olympus Has Fallen or Transformers. At least the action in those was interesting.
Let me know what you thought about this movie in the comments below.
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