The Eternals (film) - Marvel

[Neil]

Oh dear...

[MinionZombie]

Saw Mark Kermode's review of this. Naturally he was full of praise for the film's "diversity", but that's all fucking pointless if the film's shit and boring, which seems to be the general consensus. The audience reviews are higher, but there seems to be a suggestion that this is review bombing by Marvel devotees who can't fathom the possibility that Marvel can make a duff movie. Hearing more and more about it, it just sounds more and more boring. Marvel's gigantic problem is what on earth do you do after Endgame? That felt like the climax to everything. Spider-Man Far From Home was a nice little breather afterwards, which actually did a nice job handling the post-Endgame vibe in the MCU, but the outlook of Phase 4 is rather dull and mediocre. This has gone on too long. This is like trying to eat another Christmas dinner after you've just polished off a handful of After Eights post-dessert.

[EvilNed]

I saw it yesterday and I have to say - it was better than I expected. Not much better, but better. It takes it's time finding it's feet but once it manages to stand up it's quite entertaining with some good fights in the middle act. I was afraid that it wouldn't be able to manage the humorous side of Marvel as well, but there's one of the Eternals (Kumail Nanjiani) who is so in love with himself and plays this aspect to great effect. Damn near close to the best part of the movie! The ethnical diversity of the team actually makes sense within the context of the plot. Their origin is such that it kinda makes sense for them to be a very diverse group. The same cannot be said of some of their features. I'll spoiler mark a very, very small spoiler here and you can decide to read it or not - I wouldn't say it really ruins the film. Keep in mind that they are portrayed as alien to this planet from the very first scene, the prologue is them arriving at Earth, with no prior knowledge of each other - but they are always shown to be in contact with their overlord and a clear sense of purpose: To defend Planet Earth from threat. However:   About halfway through we learn that their Overlord actually engineered them and that they are a type of robot, organic or bionic or whatever. Why, oh why would their alien overlord design one of them to be deaf? And one of them to be overweight? Why would this galactic overlord design his prime defenders with these features? In what way does deafness contribute to that Eternals fighting ability? Anyway... My main gripe is the challenge itself. Basically the Eternals take it upon themself to revolt against the galactic order of things and right about then... Things start to become a little bit abstract. And I'm not even sure that I agree with their decision to do so. Within the rules set forth in the film I actually kinda thought they were the bad guys. There's a (criminally underused) lesser villain as well, and I even understood him better than I did the Eternals.