REVIEW: ETERNALS, YES IT'S THAT BAD

[number six]

Marvel's Phase 4 (5?) adventures into dredging up level ZZZ comics instead of moving forward with the Fantastic Four or X-Men continues with Jack Kirby's The Eternals. Never heard of them? Well chances are this might be the last time you hear of them altogether so that's fine.

The Eternals is a group of beings created by the Celestials to fight deviants.. which are basically generic alien monsters. The Eternals don't age but a bunch of them die so they aren't completely immortal which begs the question of how they managed to survive 7,000 years without one having an accident. They are forbidden from interfering with humanity except when they aren't.. they are a secret yet everyone knows their origins and one of them is a bollywood star. They were specifically created yet one of them is a 14 year old girl and another one is deaf. Really none of this stands up to any sort of scrutiny so don't think about it.

The goofball plot isn't even the main problem though, it's that you just simply don't care about any of these people. Obviously there are too many characters here so you only get very, very surface level information about each. It's a situation where most of the protagonists are really just a super power and what diversity box they check.. but being gay and able to invent things or being deaf and being able to run really fast isn't an actual character.

And that's the crux of the problem. For any movie to succeed you need to be properly invested in the characters.. like the good guys, hate the bad guys and want to see the protagonists solve the dilemma. In Eternals you have generic superhero's fighting a poorly defined menace and you just don't give a damn about any of it. So each scene just kinda happens, you feel nothing and then they move on to the next scene.

If they were going to attempt this they really should have done it as a tv series. With maybe 10 episodes you could have some character development and make the plot interesting but as it stands it's just a boring mess. It's like watching random scenes from a TV show without really understanding the plot or the characters. I'm sure this only got made because it checked all the diversity boxes but at the end of the day diversity doesn't equal good entertainment on it's own.

Final Verdict: Hard pass. Black Widow only got a few months as Marvels' worst effort. Do check out the post credit scenes on Youtube though.. they tease more interesting characters.. hopefully the failure of this movie doesn't drag down The Black Knight.

[RussG]

It looked every bit the mess you described just from anything and everything I saw about it post release and after.

They are going for C tier stuff in marvel and showcasing it as popular and fresh.  BS.

Give us the A tier heroes or nothing at all.

[number six]

It looked every bit the mess you described just from anything and everything I saw about it post release and after.

They are going for C tier stuff in marvel and showcasing it as popular and fresh.  BS.

Give us the A tier heroes or nothing at all.

Well in the right hands even a C tier marvel comic can be good.. we saw that with Guardians and more recently with Shang-Chi, but this is another instance of an indie director that doesn't really 'get' the material and a bad script ending up in a mess of a film.

[RussG]

Well in the right hands even a C tier marvel comic can be good.. we saw that with Guardians and more recently with Shang-Chi, but this is another instance of an indie director that doesn't really 'get' the material and a bad script ending up in a mess of a film.

Good point.  Guardians (I bought and read the comics in the late 70's and early 80's) was fantastic and Shang-Chi was awesome too and I had my doubts.

[k7]

i liked the ghost rider comics, and look at the mess they made with those movies.

have not had a good punisher movie, although i respect the thomas jane version more than the average joe.

[Niloc]

Wow, Eternals is some weapons-grade nonsensium.

Marvel has had some bland ones, movies I'd give a "C" grade to, but this is their first D or F.

Lots of Marvel movies have a problem with hoards of nameless enemies, always robots or cyborgs of some kind, so it's OK to slaughter thousands of them in a PG-13 movie.
I'm still not sure what the hell those things in the first Avengers movie were and where they came from. Aliens? Robots? - usually doesn't matter though because you're interested in the rest.

Eternals has the same problem with bland, generic enemies, but in this one I also didn't care about the heroes at all, and couldn't tell who had which powers for the most part.
Power is a problem too... they're clearly not all created equally. I mean "I'm a really cool 3D projector person" could be useful, but it's not much compared to instant healing, mass mind control, super strength, speed, flight, eye-lasers, etc.

They put it out on Blu-Ray and streaming a few days ago. Odd choice not to rush it out for Christmas sales, but I guess they knew it wouldn't sell well anyway.