Making an Eternals movie was always going to be a tricky proposition. Jack Kirby’s comics, while undeniably brilliant and incredibly influential, aren’t necessarily the kind of thing that makes for blockbuster cinema. Yes, there are plenty of punch ups and just as many explosions, but these weren’t superhero stories as much as they were philosophical inquiries.
So far, Marvel’s Phase Four has been an extension of everything we’ve already seen. WandaVision to What If…?, Black Widow and Shang-Chi, while unique and interesting in their own right, were nevertheless cut from the same cloth. They were the continuation of a well established formula. They were the kind of superhero fare that we were familiar with. About individuals who were endowed with extraordinary abilities. About good and evil. About great power and great responsibility.
This is different. While clad in the trappings of a comic book movie, Eternals isn’t really about superheroes. At least not as we’ve come to understand them. Much like the comics that it’s based on, Eternals is Marvel at its most grown up, a movie that eschews the usual CGI slugfests for a more philosophical and meditative look at the relationship between humanity and our many gods. It doesn’t always achieve its narrative desires, but it’s nevertheless an intriguing first step in a bold new direction for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Celestials from Space!”
After a brief dalliance with DC, where he would create New Gods, The Forever People, and Mister Miracle, Jack Kirby returned to Marvel in the mid-1970s with different preoccupations. He had already spent the first half of his career essentially inventing superhero comics as we knew them (The Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, X-Men, Black Panther), and was beginning to move away from the more traditional trappings of the genre. Like a lot of people at the time, Kirby had become fascinated with pseudoscientist and renowned crackpot Erich von Däniken, and wanted to use the comics medium to explore ideas of theology, mythology, and metaphysics.
Inspired in no small part by von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods, Jack Kirby would create Marvel’s headiest comic book: The Eternals. Which was essentially his version of a creation myth, in which massive, inscrutable space gods called the Celestials seeded the Earth eons ago, populating the planet with three distinct species: humans (that’s us!), Deviants (grotesque, evil creatures, born to conquer and enslave), and Eternals (immortal, superpowered beings, dedicated to protecting humanity from the Deviants).
Chloe Zhao roots her version in the same core concepts: ever living gods, malformed villains, with humans unwittingly caught in between.
The structure of this movie is simple enough. The aforementioned Deviants, long thought extinct, have unexpectedly resurfaced on Earth, causing our Eternals to once again assemble in order to save mankind. Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), and Sprite (Lia McHugh) set off on a road trip to get the band back together again, all the while filling us in, by way of flashbacks, as to their origins and the immutable influence they have had on humanity’s history, progress, and evolution.
Everything in this movie is new. It’s a lot of new characters to wrap your head around. It’s a lot of new concepts and new information to grasp. And just like how Jack Kirby’s thought experiment ended up becoming an essential part of the firmament of the Marvel Universe, it seems like Chloe Zhao has been tasked with birthing a whole new origin story for the MCU.
I’m just not sure that she pulls it off completely.
“The Gods Are Coming Back!”
These days, reviewing Marvel movies feels a lot like judging a MasterChef final. You’re down to the last three chefs, everyone who’s left is of a pretty high calibre, and deciding on a winner boils down to the nittiest of picks. Kevin Feige and company have this whole blockbuster routine down pat. Movie after movie, they’ve somehow managed to find that elusive balance between fan service and mass appeal, by creating big, exciting spectacles, that nevertheless remain rooted in emotion and humanity. Even their lesser works (I’m looking at you Thor: The Dark World and The Incredible Hulk) have just about enough heart to mean something.
Eternals is a good Marvel movie. Whether or not it’s a great one can only be ascertained in hindsight. In fact, it reminded me, in many ways, of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Like Joss Whedon’s sophomore effort, this too is a movie that juggles having to tell its own epic, standalone story, while setting up every Marvel movie that is yet to come. By itself, Eternals is an interesting proposition, but only because you’re going into it knowing that it’s just another chapter in the MCU’s never-ending story.
Now, having to do all of that set up is a big burden to carry, and there are moments when you can feel this movie almost buckle under that pressure.
In fact, the thing that saves it is its ensemble. Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie bring their legendary screen presence to bear in two wonderfully understated performances. Gemma Chan and Richard Madden have fantastic chemistry together. Kumail Nanjiani is both funny and cool. But it’s Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos, torn between his responsibility to the cause and his love of humanity, who ends up being the movie’s MVP, giving us the most nuanced take on a reluctant god that’s forced to live amongst us.
“The Day of the Gods!”
My one criticism of Eternals, and it is a big one, is that it suffers from the same aloofness that plagues all of Zhao’s previous works. An observational detachment that might have worked for Nomadland, but only serves to further distance us from this story about a group of gods who are deciding the ultimate fate of humanity.
When Kirby told this story he made it a point to always have an audience surrogate. He was aware that these larger than life characters needed something to ground them or the reader just wouldn’t care. No matter how interesting the plot, or how exciting the action, we just wouldn’t be emotionally invested unless there were real human consequences.
At first, I thought this might be Kit Harrington’s role as Dane Whitman, but seeing that his part in the movie is pretty much an extended cameo, there is little else here that keeps us connected on an emotional level. While Zhao does a much better job than Snyder did with his Justice League, both movies unfortunately share a similar fault in keeping the real world at arms length. In Eternals, as it was in Justice League, we are asked to relate to characters that speak about humanity, as opposed to being a part of it.
“When Gods Walk the Earth!”
Eternals may not be Marvel’s most exciting film, but it is definitely the most interesting. It is also a movie that could only happen now. One that is hoping that the MCU’s existing brand power can convince the mass audience that this is science fiction they can get behind. That all this talk of Celestials, Eternals, and Deviants, with their funny but familiar names, are characters they will want to spend the next decade of their moviegoing lives getting to know.
Eternals is A LOT of movie. It is beautiful to behold and a triumphant tribute to the genius of Jack Kirby. It doesn’t always succeed, but it’s got enough Marvel DNA to keep you intrigued and entertained throughout.
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