Eternals
marvelSince the release of Spider-Man: Far from Home in 2019, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been stuck in a point of struggle. Both series and features fail to build an engaging Phase Four for the universe, with stagnant developments for established narratives and uninteresting new stories being found. Continuing to build towards the future, Eternals hoped to turn things around, and with Chloé Zhao coming off not only a Best Director Oscar win but also arguably her magnum opus Nomadland, it seemed like the film might just be able to do so. Sadly, this potential is never realised, as Eternals fails on nearly every level, becoming one of the most boring films in the MCU to date.
While there are many areas where one could start with Eternals, the story itself feels demanding enough to deserve to go first. Serving as an origin story for not just 1 but an entire group of characters, Eternals is rather ambitious when it comes to scope but clearly bites off far more than it could ever chew. The film jumps erratically around – not just between characters but also time periods – creating a confusing narrative to follow. It is hard to keep track of what characters are where, who knows what, and what each character thinks of each other when the structure and layout of the film feel so jumbled.
This proves to be a massive issue for the film as, due to this, it is incredibly hard to become immersed or engage with it; this makes the audience aware of every minute passing. While a 90-minute feature might be able to get away with this, Eternals holds a staggering 157-minute runtime which crawls as slowly as possible. Eternals easily takes the title of being the most taxing viewing experience in the MCU to date, with the experience being genuinely painful at parts. The thesis found within the film is bland, further proving that there is no point for the film to demand the audience sit through such a long runtime and, sadly, the film isn't even fun.
The characters and humor of Eternals are genuinely grating. Since Guardians of the Galaxy, the MCU has crafted a very specific type of humor and with every entry, this style grows less and less funny. By now, every joke and character quirk is to be expected and has been seen already in some form in the MCU alone much less the larger cinematic landscape. It doesn't help that the acting within the feature ranges from decent to terrible. While Brian Tyree Henry clearly is the MVP of the film, others like Barry Keoghan feel completely out of place. The chemistry of the group is nonexistent and there isn't a single true standout who feels worthy to be seen anytime in the future of the universe. Especially when the characters are as flat narratively as they are in Eternals, the focus goes to their individual personalities and the film simply lacks anything fresh or worthwhile in this department. Everything feels incredibly basic and simple, with the only real point of depth being the pain these characters face seeing humanity consistently fall around them.
Even this, however, holds a strange perspective, as the characters seemingly influence human development, not only leading to fun moments like the first properly queer character in the MCU being the one responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima but also a strange undercutting of the human species which has been ultimately the soul of the universe up to this point. How the film decides to use history feels confusing and cheap, only furthering the frustrating viewing experience one has when watching the project.
With a $200 million dollar budget, the film should at least be able to have some fun action scenes but, again, Eternals fails. While the action is visually competent, it feels so bland coming not just from what has been seen in the MCU but the superhero genre for the past few decades. Seeing these characters with incredibly basic powers fight completely generic CGI monsters holds no charm or intrigue. At least something like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings managed to create interesting set pieces on occasion, such as the bus battle, here there is nothing. The action speaks to a larger issue rooted within the film, it simply is too generic.
While many hoped that Zhao might be able to bring her unique style to the MCU, any sign of her involvement feels erased, with the film feeling like every other MCU project to come before it. At this point, the MCU alone is 26 feature films deep with over a decade of releases. While there has been some evolution within this – specifically with the release of Guardians of the Galaxy – as of recent, things have become stagnant and honestly painful. Every film might change a few details about their exterior but ultimately provide the same formula with the same recycled ideals that are just beyond boring at this point.
Eternals is nothing short of a disaster. Easily not just the most boring MCU film but also simply the worst, Eternals is the perfect example of everything wrong with Phase 4 of the MCU. Rather than pulling the audience in film by film as the series heads towards some worthy grand conclusion, Phase 4 feels less interesting by the minute. There hasn't been a single project not to feel somewhat disappointing, and the experience of watching Eternals is so off-putting that the idea of seeing a follow-up feels genuinely painful.
