'Eternals': Hopefully Not
Had Chloe Zhao put an iPhone on a tripod, bought a few action figures, and mashed them around (sound effects and all), we’d have had a better chance of feeling something. Instead, Marvel Studios burned $200 million for this movie - and now here we are, sifting through the ash. It sounds incredibly harsh, vindictive even, but there was close to nothing about this film that had any merit. We all know what Marvel is capable of after films like Iron Man (2008) or Avengers: Endgame (2019). Even Zhao's credibility as a director had been firmly established, after Nomadland (2020) made her the second woman (and first woman of color) to win best director at the Oscars earlier this year. So think of this review as an autopsy; an investigation as to what went wrong. I wish I weren't writing with such hostility, but I get uptight about films drawing this much money and attention with such an abstruse lack of concern for film as a form of artistic expression.
Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, and Ryan Firpo teamed up to write the screenplay and hatched a completely confused and lazy story that blindly follows the superhero blueprint. These superheroes arrive on screen, turn to somebody else, and say their name / what superpower they have. Zhao Burleigh and Firpo failed to couch these intros in any sort of organic conversational context whatsoever. They hold meetings in an effort to determine the best way to go about saving the world, and there is no formality written into them whatsoever. Instead, we're subject to an effluvium of under-the-breath sarcastic remarks that are aimed at making us laugh. The price of these cheap laughs up front is an audience that is never convinced to buy into this congregation as important, or serious at all. Somehow, though the stakes are literally as high as they could possibly be in this script (fate of the planet and all), it feels like nothing is ever on the line for these characters. There comes a moment where Sersi (Gemma Chan) explains to her mortal boyfriend (Kit Harrington) that she is a superhero. Chan arguably has more acting chops than any of her cast members - with the possible exception of Kumail Nanjiani - but the writing could not be saved. And just like that, in a matter of minutes, the entire concept of the film - the bedrock upon which Marvel seemed to hope to build another franchise - is completely trivialized.
After receiving the news that the prime eternal, Ajak (Salma Hayek), has died , Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) looks over his shoulder and reacts. This is one of the only pieces of decent acting in all 156 minutes of this thing. Salma Hayek had no business being in this movie. Every time we open on a shot of her, Hayek is seemingly posing for a calendar shoot, completely absorbed with the way she is coming across, not present in the scene whatsoever. Again, I hate to sound mean, but the talent pool is too large to be showcasing this abject caliber of acting in such a major way. There are a lot of talented women in line, and Eternals demonstrated nothing that justified Hayek being at the front of it. Angelina Jolie delivers a blank performance as well, denuded of any true intention.
Kumail has some good scenes. There's an old adage in acting: you can't pretend to be funny. See, even bad actors can pretend to be serious. So thank goodness for Kingo. I could go on about how Kit Harrington (Dane) or Richard Madden (Ikarus) let us all down, but this script was never going to lead anywhere good. I'd rather shift focus to a few elements of Eternals that are so uniquely poor that they are actually very interesting to watch. Firstly, the two love interests (Ikarus and Sersi) engage in a completely passionless kiss. I mean, you can literally feel the director calling action on what looks to be at least the eleventh take of this recrudescence. These two dated for like 7,000 years. They get back together, even for a moment, and it is the blandest, most vacant kiss that I've actually ever seen on screen. What follows is the first ever sex scene in a marvel film, obviously doomed from the beginning. This movie somehow even neglected to care about fundamental things like set design or editing. When Sersi arrives at the Land of Eternals, it is totally boring, flat, and unimpressive. We can see where the stage ends and the green screen begins. In dialogue scenes, the editors did not take enough care to make sure that the light matched from take to take, cutting from cloudy takes to sunny ones with no passage of time and on characters who haven't moved. It's an absolute mess. I mean I could truly write a part II of this review.
What is the takeaway here? Aside from a stern warning, hopefully saving some of you money, I think perhaps Eternals is a demonstration of sacrificing directorial vision for a nice, fat, Marvel Studios paycheck. We essentially get ten main characters, taking place throughout the galaxy and over millennia; in this way, Eternals is the inverse of a movie like Nomadland, a film about one woman traveling through desolate middle-America. Chloe Zhao can do so much better, and she hopefully will. As for Marvel, well.... let's hope this new Spiderman movie (Dec. 17, 2021) shows up at our places of work with a dozen roses and an apology.