I'm sorry, man. I expected this to be an awesome action movie since the trailer was showing all these cool looking powers, but it turned out to be just a history lesson that had a bunch of nonsense filler. I didn't read any reviews prior to watching it. But if the majority said this movie sucked, then I agree. Hopefully, they make up for this with the Kang storylines.
Watched the movie through...not entirely legal means. As a huge MCU fan, I can say with absolute certainty that Eternals is the worst movie in its database. Thor 2, early Hulk, Iron Man 2 are all at least rewatchable. Not only do I not want to rewatch Eternals, I wish I didn't spend the 2:30 or so, watching it the first time. Spoiler-free review: @Haymitch was actually on the money - the movie felt like Marvel's version of Justice League. With the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, you'd think Marvel wouldn't fail at slapping 10 random people together (each with distinct personalities and/or powers) that have to do with space. Seriously, how does an Oscar-winning director + Angelina Jolie + MCU budget fail so hard? Boggles the mind. Characters: Makkari (Flash), Ikaris (Superman), Phastos (Bruce Wayne intellect to make Tony Stark tech), Sprite (illusion powers), Kingo (finger guns? lol), Gilgamesh (Iron Fist), Druig (mind control), Thena (materializes weapons out of nowhere), Cersi and Ajak, the leader. To me, I only cared about two characters when they were introduced (Kingo and Gilgamesh) and by the end of the movie, I couldn't care less if Eternals 2 had any of the original cast returning. Story/plot: On the surface, it makes sense. But if you turn on your brain, you'd ask a lot of basic questions, like 'why didn't Arishem simply do ____?' or 'what was even the point of casting A-listers / known actors if you were going to waste them?' It was as if Marvel went out of their way to cast big names instead of casting unknowns that were perfect for the part. No one knew who Chris Hemsworth was before Thor. No one knew who Tom Holland was before Homecoming. Chris Pratt was the fat dude from Parks and Rec before GotG. And now the three are synonymous with Thor, Spider-Man and Star-Lord. tl;dr - It was bad. 2/10 only because Gemma Chan and the movie locations were beautiful. Otherwise, 1/10. Spoiler review to follow. Mostly me asking questions.
You should spoiler this. Some of your descriptions are spoilery. ********************* Just watched it, non-bootlegged, on a cinema screen as all action movies should really be watched. I really liked it. It was far from perfect but it did the job it set out to do. Yes, I’m a fanboy and that might be why I liked it more but I’m not a forgiving fanboy when it comes to terrible movie making. Looking at you, Fox, and you, Warner Brehs Spoiler light review that should be spoilered anyway. Spoiler I thought this was better than Captain Marvel, Shang-Chi, Thor 2 and Hulk. just a better put-together, cohesive movie. I won’t go into the typical ‘why didn’t they do this!’ Nerd gripes. I can make those about almost any movie. I haven’t read any reviews but I will infer why it’s getting somewhat panned. The flashback origin dialogue is ham fasted and spoon feeding the audience. Lazy story-writing. But it does get better as the movie goes on. (This same sort of spoon feeding went on in Shang-Chi, by the way. I hope this isn’t the path Marvel is going down. Give your audience some credit.) It seems to lack a little identity. Is it a comedy? Is it an adult movie with the very PG sex scene? Is it a kids movie based on the aforementioned spoon feeding? It has -very- little to do with what we’ve seen of superheroes in the MCU. Some people may be sour grapes about that. The Deviants were pretty cookie-cutter ‘evil aliens’ and underwhelming. Pretty disappointing given the source material was completely different. What I liked: The actors all did a good job, better than I expected, TBH Kumail Nanjiani was hilarious. I actually liked the analogue to the Justice League. They were a more ‘mortal’ version of those characters….which is exactly what Marvel Comics was built on. The huge scope of the story was well conveyed. This will have lasting ramifications on the MCU I think with this cast they could have made another Guardians of the Galaxy, but maybe it wasn’t going for that vibe. I’ll give it a B, rounded up from a C+ for effort. Not close to the worst MCU movie, but it has its charms. @Dr of Dunk audience score on RT is 86%. Don’t believe the ‘critics’ completely.
One thing I liked about this movie: it's refreshing to see that there's no Superhero Act here. All the Eternals are entirely open with their SOs / spouses about the fact that they're extraordinary. No hiding the truth. That said, movie was bad. One of my biggest gripes: a specific part of the plot. Spoiler So in the movie, Jon Snow literally asks Cersi why the Eternals didn't step in and stop Thanos. To which she replies something along the lines of "we don't interfere with human issues." Ok, good for you. But the whole point of Arishem's mission was to ensure that there's enough human life on earth, to eventually take/drain so that a celestial could be born. Thanos' goal directly opposed that mission. And assuming Arishem could see all the possibilities to defeat Thanos (1 in 14,000,605), was Arishem really going to risk the Avengers not finding a way to reverse the snap? If Thanos accomplished his mission and the population would halve everywhere, it would take a long time to get the population back to "ready for Celestial" status. Not to mention, other planets would go through the same thing. imo it would have been in Arishem's best interests to send the Eternals to either stop Thanos or to help the Avengers reset the snap. Ikaris Spoiler I get it. Basically a clone of Superman, and he doesn't have much of a personality. But damn, could you inject any sort of personality into the character? Be more pissed off that Ajak skipped over you when deciding who to give the floating jewel thing to. Show more conviction when you're the only one that wants to continue doing what Arishem told you to do. Literally be anything except a piece of bland toast. Anything. What a waste of Richard Madden. What was the motivation behind him wanting to continue with Arishem's ways? All your correspondence from Arishem was through Ajak first, and then Cersi. If Cersi really wanted to stop Ikaris, couldn't she just fake going into a trance and then make up some stuff about how Arishem is letting us have free will? Ikaris would have no choice but to believe that. Sprite Spoiler So let me get this straight. She straight up backstabs Cersi as Cersi is trying to figure out how to stop the Emergence, all because she wanted to look like an adult and felt disrespected that she wasn't 'made' to look like one? And then in the epilogue, Kingo and Cersi basically said "we'll forget you tried to kill Cersi lol. we aight." and tried to act like nothing ever happened? WTF kinda lazy writing is that? Cersi should be pissed af that Sprite tried to murder you. Also, she joins Ikaris' side because...because she loves him? After Ikaris abandoned the group or whatever for 500 years or something? Convoluted. Ajak Spoiler What a waste of Selma Hayek. I don't understand why she was the appointed leader. Was this Arishem's doing? I doubt it, since Arishem would have immediately given the jewel to Ikaris instead of having it go to Cersi. Was it a vote? Was it self-appointed? The leader should have either been Ikaris (powers) or Thena. Arishem Spoiler Just how powerful is Arishem? I mentioned "Why didn't Arishem do ____?" in my earlier post. So, why didn't Arishem simply delete Cersi / any entity that could jeopardize his mission, and create a new Eternal? If they're all creatable and programmable anyway, just kill anyone that doesn't follow your vision and create someone that will.
Haven't seen the movie and no plans to anytime soon. The trailers didn't look particularly eye catching and the dialogue sounded very hokey so wasn't expecting much. All that said given how much MCU has been made it's no surprise that they will have a dud sooner or later.
All valid points. Icarus was certainly the most wooden of the characters. I blame some of the 'acting' issues on bad dialogue writing/editing/directing. Missed opportunity when Selma is riding a horse and has a tight-fitting jacket thing on so her perfect jugs don't bounce. Movie might rate better on RT if they did. I try not to nitpick these movies too much. It's a rabbit hole. These aren't movies made by fans for fans, they're movies made by companies for general consumption. If the movie is generally well made, good script, well directed and shot, and gets to the conclusion successfully, I let go the stupid **** I see. I can get really granular on anything. For example, I have a book idea for immortal humans, and one of the premises is that they know their own bodies and other people's so well that they can spot a lie in body language, even the smallest tick. They have such profound control of their bodies that they can dodge anything by using all of their senses including feeling the lightest change of air on the hairs of their bodies. They're apex humans. Think of how experience beats talent 9 times out of 10 in your everyday scenario. This would be experience and talent beating newborn talent 99,999 times out of 100k. So when I see these people who have been alive for 7k years (or any 'immortal' characters in movies/TV) miss basic ****, it's a little mystifying to me. But it's a movie, so I just let it go. This is more and more common, especially for the Asian market. It seems big effects and overall story arcs are more important than great movies over there. It may be that things that Westerners value in movies just aren't the same.
been lagging behind in my superhero movies. couldn't finish blek window and haven't seen shang-chi. akwafina should retire from entertainment and jump off a cliff. i really hoped this movie would be good tho. sad brehs are displeased.
Shang Chi should hit Disney+ soon. I agree, Akwafina is...just kind of awkward. Not pretty, not especially talented, saggy body, gross voice, not funny...I need to just invest in a social media manager to pump me up so I can get into some Marvel movies. I wanted to note that this is more of a Sci-Fi movie than anything else. You could fit the MCU references into a single paragraph.
Saw it last night. Give it a C-. After watching Zhao's Nomadland I knew going into this movie that expecting the same MCU/Disney formula was not a good move and I was right. The cinematography was definitely more auteur than the other MCU movies and tried to break from the MCU formula but the story just felt..."umm...okay....I guess that's cool". Like the movie didn't really serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things (because we all know that it should be tied or will be tied to the MCU somehow). That being said, I still enjoyed it and would rather rewatch this than Captain Marvel.
Meant how was my first post spoilery. The hardest I went was touching on what each person's power was, since the movie barely even did that.
I mean, it's fine not to nitpick the extraordinary stuff like the origins of the Eternals or whatever. But simple things like character motivations, you can definitely get into. That being said, you're the MCU - not some indie company trying to find a foothold in this space. Also, you get an Oscar-winning director to direct a bunch of known actors, and that's the final product? Furthermore, you literally have a blueprint on what to do with an ensemble cast that's established (Avengers 1, 2, 3) and an ensemble cast that is a completely new property (GotG). I'm glad this movie wasn't more hyped, because that means even more people would have been let down. A bad product tends to have a bigger spotlight when every other product they've put out for 10 years has been successful. They really fumbled the ball on this one. If you're a Marvel / MCU fan, still go see this movie, just so you can check it off the list. But it just wasn't a good movie.
Can't blame them, when you get "**** YOU" money - you can basically say....**** YOU to anyone that asks you to work. DD
