Director Chloé Zhao’s celebrated Oscar turn directing Nomadland fails to excite and emotionally challenge her new MCU characters, despite putting them into physically intimate scenes for the first time in a Marvel film product. This not very merry band of heroes has been in the background, watching over the development of Earth and its inhabitants for thousands of years. This story fits into the MCU Timeline just after Avengers: Endgame when half the population of Earth returns following the reversal of Thanos’ culling.
This script by Zhao, Patrick Burleigh and Ryan Firpo take Marvel down a new path as another of its lesser known comics woven into its other movie property timelines. In this case the Eternals are a collection of super-powered beings who have been protecting Earth and humanity for thousands of years. They are forced to “put the band back together” when the Deviants, who were supposed to be extinct, suddenly appear. The Eternals’ main directive has always been to protect the planet from this primordial threat to humankind. The Deviants are snarling, slightly canine-esque demons with the obligatory scary, long, razor sharp teeth.
The Eternals take their orders from an omnipotent, god-like power, Arishem, who calls the shots. He’s visualized as an oversized, ghoulish multiple red-eyed version of the children’s classic cartoon character “The Iron Giant.” It struck us that saying Arishem’s name resembles , Hashem, the Hebrew word Jews use to refer to God.
Ajak is the team leader played by Salma Hayek who suffers from displaying a droll, dour, sourpuss face syndrome much like the others display. They’re all just very serious. Even with their powers, there’s not a one in this boring bunch you’d like have a beer with at the tavern. And CGI streaming gold weapons from their hands and eyes meant to be lethal is a poor use of special effects and used so repetitively, you start to hope that a more exciting secret weapon will appear.
It’s hard to imagine that any of these new heroes will become fan favorites, mainly because they have a mostly vanilla, bland aura. It starts with Thena (Angelina Jolie) whose eyes sometime cloud over which turns out to be a metaphor for the whole team. Take Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) as Icaris. He can fly and shoot lasers with his eyes while looking good in his special suit, but he has a constant dull, sullen look. That facial expression must be viral because Gemma Chan’s (Crazy Rich Asians) Sersi exhibits the same vacant facial feature. She’ absolutely stunning, and can transform objects on a dime, but can’t seem to make her face come to life.
Then there’s Druig (Barry Keoghan) who can get inside heads and control minds. Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) gets to deliver a few good laughs and provides some comic relief as a fire throwing Bollywood star. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) is a female speedster à la Flash. Compassionate strongman Gilgamesh (Ma Dong-seok) teams up with Thena. Finally, spiky red-haired Sprite (Lia McHugh) can create optical illusions while looking like Peter Pan and yes, she dreams of growing up to become an adult!
Bryan Tyree Henry does the best job exhibiting emotion reacting as Phastos, the master inventor who slowly doles out technological advances for humans. But even he hits a clunker in this time-bouncing plot line when, standing among the ruins of Hiroshima after the 1945 nuclear bombing, he wails, “What have I done?” It’s groan worthy.
Introducing all of these characters at once was a big mistake. None of them seem well-developed, nor fascinating or extraordinary. Slingling gold beams just wasn’t enough. One of the highlights was seeing the Star Wars comic in the hands of Sprite. But that’s not enough either. The best part of the experience, after waiting more than 2 and a half hours, are the mid credit scenes. Chloe Zhao is a very talented director, but perhaps it was too much to expect her go from the sparse, quiet life of Nomadland to this special effects driven action blockbuster with a huge cast of characters who are not very exciting. This Eternals is not one for the ages.
Walt Disney 2 hours 37 minutes PG-13
In Theaters Now
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