Marvel Studios’ Eternals is a huge movie. Huge in scale, huge in story, and huge in character. The latest Marvel epic introduces a whopping 10 new heroes to it’s cinematic universe. At the helm of this giant project is Oscar winning director Chloé Zhao who is able to leave her mark as a director amongst the MCU and it’s ever-growing roster of creative talents.  

 

Eternals tells a story that spans across almost all of humanity’s history. Starting with the first civilizations in Mesopotamia all the way to the MCU’s present day. This spanning story shows some flaws in the movie’s pacing. The entire first act goes back and forth between the present and the past. With constant flashbacks, figuring out what to focus on is somewhat of a chore to the viewers. Thankfully, the second and third act entirely focuses on the present. This makes the story feel a bit more streamlined, which is great, but we also lose on some cool aspects of the past storyline. Setting the characters and having all of the past stuff in the beginning would have been better pacing wise and would have avoided the constant back and forth between eras and plot points. For example, the first scene rapidly showcases some basic personality points and powers of every Eternal as they arrive for the first time on earth. We then jump immediately to the present day where we are expected to care about these characters we just saw for the first time two minutes ago, as if we’d spent the past 11 years developing a love for them on the big screen with heroes like Iron Man and Captain America.

 

Character wise, Eternals is great, even if some feel drastically under-developed. Of course, it’s to be expected with the movie having to introduce 10 new heroes as well as their backstory, their powers and their personal struggles while also telling an interesting story. Some characters are clearly at the forefront. Namely Sersi, Ikaris and Phastos. This leaves some of the most intriguing characters (Druig, Makkari, Gilgamesh and Thena to name a few) without some much needed screen time to flesh out their characters even more. Some missed opportunities are also at play to make us crave more of these characters. Thena’s issues and Makkari and Druig’s relationship, just to name a few. Most of the sequences are character centric, which leads to some excellent one, like the dinner scene, where the Eternals actually feel like a dysfunctional family. But, also some not-so-great ones, where characters just stand around delivering unnecessary lines to each other. All around the board, acting is great but it makes these poorly acted/directed scenes stand out even more. 

 

Visually, Eternals is stunning. With beautiful cinematography, fight choreography and camera work. From Mesoptomia, to the incredibly well designed Babylon, the time jumps from scene to scene just look gorgeous. Each Eternals’ powers look amazing and they all flow together very well, making them fit together as a team that have been together since the beginning of time; literally. Good cinematography is undeniably important but to tie all of that together, high end editing is key. 

 

With some amazing twists, a great musical score and a character centric story that, at times feel weak, at times is incredibly strong, Eternals is a more than welcome addition to the MCU. With some amazing representation and characters with some great potential future in the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe, the future of the Eternals is something I am extremely looking forward to.

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With fans leaving the cinema wishing for more backstory on the 10 new heroes, Marvel could have (and this is a BIG ‘could’) benefited slightly more by taking the usual 45-55 minutes from our standard Disney+ episodes and used it to really dig deep into the history of the Eternals. It would have been an amazing Disney+ series. Letting each character and plot points grow at their own pace would have made a better, much more in depth storyline for the Eternals, where we’ve given the time to attach ourselves to specific characters due to a lot more screentime. 

 

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