Certificate: 12A
Running time: 156 minutes
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Keoghan
Directed by: Chloé Zhao.
The story: An immortal alien race, who have been in hiding for thousands of years, emerge to protect the human race against their evil counterparts known as the Deviants.
The verdict: No matter how much one tries to avoid it, a film fan cannot help but hear and see whisperings of the latest films before their general release. In the case of Eternals, these whisperings immediately set alarm bells ringing - it’s not very good, it’s boring and slow, it’s the worst marvel film ever. By release day, Eternals had earned its place as the lowest rated Marvel film in the franchise. Could this really be true though? Could Academy Award winning director Chloé Zhao have given Marvel fans a terrible film? Is Zhao even capable of directing a bad film? The answer to all these questions is thankfully a resounding no.
Eternals is certainly a different brand of Marvel film, and not without its flaws, but for it to be as derided as it has been is completely unmerited. Imagine for a moment a group of gods who arrive on earth to protect it and then end up spending thousands and thousands of years living amongst humans. These supremely powerful celestial beings are nothing less than the stuff of legend, virtually undefeatable, and yet on earth they develop human fragilities without even realising - jealousy, familial disputes, the beauty and heartbreak of love.
That exquisite combination is exactly what Eternals is - a blend of mythology, legend and superhero action but with an emotionally nuanced concept. Eternals does the big action sequences, and does them well, but Zhao also includes plenty of highly charged emotional scenes which are much quieter. Zhao wants the audience to not just see these characters fighting the bad guys, she wants you to know them, see their journey and to try and understand them.
I think in this way, Eternals won’t work for some audiences because it does spend a significant amount of time layering a backstory. This involves multiple jumps in time and some amount of exposition. Personally, I had no issue with this as I actively wanted to see these characters’ origins and understand where they’d come from. For all intents and purposes, the celestial beings that make up the Eternals is akin to The Avengers. Both are sets of superheroes with very different personalities, but unlike The Avengers, audiences haven’t had the advantage of multiple films to introduce each character. Thus it makes sense that Eternals needs a certain amount of exposition.
Eternals is also a visually arresting film and there are so many beautifully framed shots which have Zhao’s trademarks all over them. I loved the look of the film and found it very appealing to the eye.
I also really liked the cast in this. As a Game of Thrones mega fan, I couldn’t help but throughly enjoy seeing Kit Harington and Richard Madden together again. But fangirling aside, I thought that there were some really good performances here and I especially liked Gemma Chan as Sersi, Richard Madden as Ikaris, Kit Harington as Dane and Harish Patel as Karun.
Eternals does stray from the well walked MCU path and not all these deviations work well. It’s not a spoiler to say that Eternals has Marvel’s first sex scene and I’m not sure how well it lands. Eternals also sometimes struggles to juggle all its tones which causes some of the jokes to fall flat, though in fairness I chuckled many times too.
But I cannot deny that I really, really liked Eternals. I loved the mythological elements and in spite of the slower scenes, I was never bored or unengaged. I found the character dynamics fascinating, the action scenes really fun, and I thought it all just looked really great.
Eternals has an ethereal beauty to it and an intriguing story, and I would watch another Eternals film in an instant. Add in the super exciting post-credits scenes (there’s both a mid-credits and a post-credits scene) and overall this was a great cinema experience. I don’t agree with the low ratings at all.
The rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and a half
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