Eternals
If this is what Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is going to be like, could we just skip it and move on to Phase Five? When Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was released a few months ago, I declared it the worst MCU flick up to that point. Eternals is so, so much worse. It makes Shang-Chi look like Endgame.
Thousands of years ago, the Celestials, giant god-like beings that are also possibly robots of some kind, created the Eternals so they could fight the Deviants, monsters that the Celestials also created. Unless Celestials are supposed to be nearly omnipotent children smashing their action figures together, that premise makes no fucking sense, but it's the cornerstone of Eternals.
The Eternals that were sent to Earth, Ajak (Salma "Let's Get" Hayek), Sersi (Gemma "Charlie" Chan), Ikaris (Richard "John" Madden), Thena (Angelina "It's Come To This" Jolie), Kingo ("Harold And" Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite ("Princess" Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree "John" Henry), Gilgamesh (Don "Bruce" Lee), Makkari (Lauren "Riddle On" Ridloff), and Druig (Barry "White" Keoghan), killed off the last Deviant 500 years ago and have just been kind of hanging out ever since.
When the Deviants pop up again, the Eternals have to get the band back together, which takes most of the movie's ridonkulous two-and-a-half hour runtime. Then there's a lame ass attempt at a twist that will fool about 3% of the audience, the movie ends, and for almost everyone it will evaporate from their memories faster than the third night of an epic bender.
It doesn't help that Thena gets some sort of superhero madness that isn't explained, comes and goes at random, and doesn't impact the plot at all other than wasting loads of time. Or that the Eternals aren't supposed to alter the course of human history but do so over and over again. Or that Sersi's power is that she can alter matter, but she specifically can't alter sentient beings. Until she can. How did her power change so dramatically? Eternals says, "Fuck you, that's how."
Ol' Cinemavenger is all for pushing boundaries and battling sexism, racism, etc., but maybe if Marvel had focused more on story and less on shoehorning in its first sex scene (totally PG-13 and therefore totally worthless), some man-on-man smooching, and a completely unconnected Bollywood number Eternals wouldn't have been such a Celestial-sized fuck up.
February 4, 2021