Eternals, the movie that doesn't end

[Tyndmyr]

Alright, seriously, this film is frigging tedious, and may just be the worst in the whole series. It's a good series overall, but this...doesn't feel like a Marvel film. It drags a ton, only about one character is funny, and the whole thing feels like an overly pompous "epic" film.

Yknow how, in a heist movie, there's like ten minutes at the start of the film where the team gets together?

It's about two thirds that, and one third Justice League.

Seriously, there's the big blue boyscout with a bland personality with a powerset of flight, toughness, strength, and heat ray eyes. In case that wasn't clear enough, he actually gets called Superman in the film. I have no idea how Marvel got away with that rights-wise, but hey, subtlety is dead for sure. He is accompanied by the Greek God themed warrior woman with the ability to leap insane distances, and fight with shield and sword/spear....yes, yes, it's Wonder Woman, we get it. Toss some gold trim on her armor and...oh, yes, you did that too. Very good. Let's round out the team with the lithe, red suited superhero with the power of speed, and the black guy with the power of technology and then slap in another half dozen characters who literally barely matter.

Full Disclosure: I haven't read any comics about the eternals, so I have no idea if they're this much of an expy in the comics. But I am, at this point, really tired of Superman and Friends.

The intro part is just...really rough. In almost every Marvel film, you get into the action fairly quickly, but you at least mostly understand whats going on. This one kind of dispenses with that. Also...the acting is terrible. You have people barely emoting as live changing events are happening to them, looking mostly bored.

Spoilery Plot Discussion:

Jesus, there's so much fridge logic in this thing. If it holds together even that long.

If the deaf person can hear, why is everyone speaking to her in sign language? Also...wouldn't that make her...not deaf? She clearly, per the plot, can hear, and says as much. About a third of the time, people just talk to her, and it's fine. Why all the sign language? It's never plot relevant for anything else.

And why on earth would she be designed deaf? Like...if you want to show a situation where deafness is an advantage, or at least where knowing sign language is an advantage, cool. They don't bother with this, though.

They did...not need to delve into Sprite's motivation that much. Look, I get that, it being a marvel superhero film, you are absolutely not going to reference an eternal "kid" in romance. And that's fine. Nobody requires that plot be a part of the film. But realistically, they've been here for 5,000 years. If she wanted romance, she probably could have found it. Her motivation doesn't really make much sense, and is largely superfluous in any case. Just...ditch the squick, eh? The tinkerbell level of metaphor is fine, but the full on rant while literally backstabbing is just kind of over the top villain cliche, while also being kind of dumb.

There is zero consistency to damage or powers. Sometimes things or people get back up. Sometimes they don't. There isn't the slightest bit of coherency to it, so you're mostly just waiting for CGI to end.

Nobody bothers to keep anything really secret. Everyone uses their powers regardless of visibility, and has for...all of history. There is no reasonable way that Shield, etc is unaware of them. They are literally fighting on TV as part of the plot. A documentary is being filmed of their exploits. One of them is a movie star, another is a cult leader. They are the least low profile superheroes in the entire MCU. The whole "why don't the avengers show up?" is just...never addressed. And it's kind of ridiculous.

Why does the god take only three of them for betrayals? More than that betrayed him.

Why doesn't the god care about Thanos? Thanos wiped out half of all life, and they...need life in order to survive, and to complete their life cycle. Thanos had the capacity to end it ALL...and in fact wanted to as part of Endgame...and the Celestials just don't care about him. Okay.

Whatsherface, as part of her plot, can't transform living matter. Except...we see her do so over and over again. She transforms the city bus into flower petals...and, uh, I guess just don't think about the passengers in that scene. Heroism! She transforms a rock into a cloud of birds, and that's pretty obviously living. And later she gets the power to rockify a god, and also to turn an eternal into a human, but nothing else, because of the power of connection...somehow...which cannot be used later for reasons. Okay.

The entire Deviant plot goes pretty much nowhere. I was hoping that we'd have some kind of interesting exchange of philosophy at least towards the end. They now have the same adversary, and the big Deviant has been gaining their power and knowledge, so it seems like there'd at least be an interesting development of that...but nah, just more stabs.

God, this film is rough.

[Psyren]

I loved the film and don't get the backlash. The trailers did a great job of hiding the real villain, and the MCU worldbuilding was solid too.


RE Makkari: Many deaf people can read lips. If she's not looking directly at someone, she can tell they're speaking because of the vibrations she feels, but has to intuit what they're saying. As for why people sign to her, it's called being polite :smallconfused: just because they can read lips doesn't mean putting no effort in is warranted.

[Tyndmyr]

RE Makkari: Many deaf people can read lips.

I'm aware, I work with one. This is clearly not that.


If she's not looking directly at someone, she can tell they're speaking because of the vibrations she feels, but has to intuit what they're saying. As for why people sign to her, it's called being polite :smallconfused: just because they can read lips doesn't mean putting no effort in is warranted.

Yes, understanding language because of vibrations in the air is called hearing.

She explicitly can hear people talking so quietly as to believe they are unheard across a room, without looking at them. We know this, because she does this, and then explains it to them as such. Lip reading is not mentioned.

[Psyren]

She explicitly can hear people talking so quietly as to believe they are unheard across a room, without looking at them. We know this, because she does this, and then explains it to them as such. Lip reading is not mentioned.

They are touching the ground and so is she. That's where the vibrations are felt through. She "felt" them talking and intuited what they were saying, which was then confirmed by Druig.

[Tyndmyr]

She has no trouble understanding speech of people who are distant from her, or flying, at any point in the film.

[Psyren]

She has no trouble understanding speech of people who are distant from her, or flying, at any point in the film.

You mean the ones she can clearly see? Because they're in the air?

This is such a weird hill to die on.

EDIT: Also, even if you're right and she picks up on some things without lip-reading or tremors, being deaf is not a black and white binary between "hears absolutely nothing ever" and "faking it, plothole!"

[Tyndmyr]

You mean the ones she can clearly see? Because they're in the air?

This is such a weird hill to die on.

EDIT: Also, even if you're right and she picks up on some things without lip-reading or tremors, being deaf is not a black and white binary between "hears absolutely nothing ever" and "faking it, plothole!"


It's weird because they are not human, but are constructs specifically designed for a purpose. As such, the question "why make her deaf" is valid.

Same as the question of why make someone permanently a kid is. I didn't choose to make these things front and center, the film did. The fact that it gives them a ton of airtime and then never answers them is, well, on the film, not on me.

She is completely able to hear. At all times. There is no time when she is unable to hear, regardless of if she sees people or not. The film never mentions lip reading, or portrays her as having any difficulty with comprehension, and goes out of its way to portray her as being able to hear things normal people cannot.

The explanations of "lip reading" etc are solely your unsupported speculation, not things the film contains in any way.

[Talakeal]

I liked the movie, but I overall agree with Tyndmyr.

The movie was already long and exposition filled, but I would really like to know more about why the Eternals / Celestials haven't interacted more with the overall Marvel World, especially Thanos and Ego.

The idea that someone who looks 13-14 wouldn't have found an opportunity for romance is such a modern western one, totally unrealistic for someone who has been travelling the world for 7,000 years, and I really wish they hadn't included it at all, or at the very least made it more like she was specifically pining for Icarus rather than just love in general.

And yeah, the idea of a deaf superhero is fine, like there is no reason a deaf person couldn't mutate or be bitten by a radioactive spider or learn magic or whatnot, but when they are specifically designed beings I think they need to try and justify it at least a little.

Really looking forward to Black Knight.

[truemane]

I loved the film and don't get the backlash.
I really like it, and I do get the backlash.

I think Chloe Zhao was trying to take the superhero story to a different place and tell a story of loneliness and family and faith and loss and the degree to which our lives are our own creation or handed to us by the choices of those that made and raised us.

It seemed to me her ambitions were both deep and broad. But it felt like she was unable to move the story far enough out of the base genre template to do it (whether because of outside influence or unfamiliarity with filmmaking at this scale or something else).

It seemed to me that it wound up not quite a super-hero movie in the normal sense but also not quite clearly something else. And all the 'something else' it does manage to be is very, very different from the things many people want to see when they sign up for an MCU film.

The sad part is that I fear the takeaway from this will be 'superhero stories can't be grown up' instead of 'we just have to tell better grown-up stories about superheroes.'

And not for nothing, even though I worship the celluloid Chloe Zhao walks on, I don't think any of the things she does very well translate well to this kind of movie. This is the first film she's ever done where she didn't have sole writing credit, and it was written by a whole committee. If you asked me to guess, I would say this film went sideways at the screenplay level and never really had a chance.

[Psyren]

She is completely able to hear.

No, she really isn't.

As for why - why make one stuck as a kid? Or give them sexualities? Why not give them all the same powers so they have no weaknesses vs. the deviants? Why give them the ability to feel emotions/empathy at all?

The simple answer is that the Celestials are fallible.

And I can at least answer that last one - programming them with the ability to feel empathy makes them better suited to taking down deviants before humanity is capable of defending itself. But emotions are tricky - you can't really sort out the ones you want from the ones you don't. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0980.html) And so the children eventually rebel, like children do.



The sad part is that I fear the takeaway from this will be 'superhero stories can't be grown up' instead of 'we just have to tell better grown-up stories about superheroes.'


I would wait for the opening weekend box office before we discuss takeaways personally :smalltongue:

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Yknow how, in a heist movie, there's like ten minutes at the start of the film where the team gets together?

It's about two thirds that….

Gah. That was one of the most annoying aspects of Birds of Prey, in that their “team” didn’t actually get together until the last fifteen minutes of the film. And then disbanded immediately afterward.


Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
…and one third Justice League.

o gods no. just no.

If this ever shows up on Disney+, maybe I’ll give it a look. Otherwise not spending money on it.


Originally Posted by Talakeal
Really looking forward to Black Knight.

And Hawkeye. And She-Hulk. And Armor Wars.


Originally Posted by truemane
If you asked me to guess, I would say this film went sideways at the screenplay level and never really had a chance.

This sounds very likely, and I can easily imagine how contentious things may have been—although Zhao must have had an idea about that going in.

I’d be very interested in a thoughtful, introspective film about the isolation of immortality, but I’m not convinced that the MCU is the place to tell that story.

[Tyndmyr]

No, she really isn't.

As for why - why make one stuck as a kid? Or give them sexualities? Why not give them all the same powers so they have no weaknesses vs. the deviants? Why give them the ability to feel emotions/empathy at all?

The simple answer is that the Celestials are fallible.

And I can at least answer that last one - programming them with the ability to feel empathy makes them better suited to taking down deviants before humanity is capable of defending itself. But emotions are tricky - you can't really sort out the ones you want from the ones you don't. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0980.html) And so the children eventually rebel, like children do.



I would wait for the opening weekend box office before we discuss takeaways personally :smalltongue:


So you're going with making them young/deaf as an oopsie? Some sort of accident?

They...have been iterated on for thousands of iterations, with the Celestial wiping and reloading them and cranking out new copies, using their previous memories to refine them. This is all explicit, on screen stuff.

So it being just an accident that the Celestial didn't intend is not possible. They are *exactly* what he wants them to be.

Now, if there is some sort of advantage the Celestial sees in having a young Eternal, or a deaf Eternal...cool. Show us that. The film never does.

This does sort of get into the trouble of...why do they rebel this time? They have literally done this thousands of times before. Why now? It'd be interesting if this was a result of their mercy towards the Eternal whose memory wipe didn't take, and uncovering her memories led to growth, but unfortunately that thread doesn't really go anywhere. Instead we get the usual generic "oh, humans are special" stuff. Which, ehhh. This is pretty bland stuff, and doesn't fit the MCU well. We already know that alien races are pretty common, and most of the ones we see live, laugh, love, dream, etc just as humans do.

This is a forgivable thing, because, honestly, the audience also wants the Eternals to finally get to saving the world, but we are not quibbling over minor catgirl details of physics, but rather the fundamental premise at play.
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[Psyren]

So it being just an accident that the Celestial didn't intend is not possible. They are *exactly* what he wants them to be.

You do realize
that they made the Deviants too? And screwed that up as well? It's not just possible, it's the central theme of the movie, they are bad parents.



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[truemane]

I would wait for the opening weekend box office before we discuss takeaways personally :smalltongue:
Fair point. Retracted. Apparently I've already decided that the whole thing is going be a dumpster fire.

I hope I'm wrong.

[Tyndmyr]

You do realize
that they made the Deviants too? And screwed that up as well? It's not just possible, it's the central theme of the movie, they are bad parents.


There is a wild difference between a plan spanning all eternity eventually going slightly awry and accidentally making the same typo five thousand times in a row.



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[Lord Vukodlak]

From what I've heard it doesn't beginning or middle well either.

[Psyren]

There is a wild difference between a plan spanning all eternity eventually going slightly awry and accidentally making the same typo five thousand times in a row.

Have you worked with many flawed systems? Because I assure you, the latter happens ALL THE TIME.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: everyone please do your part to keep this conversation out of the same depthless, endless bog we always seem to always wind up in. You know what I'm talking about. Avoid it yourself, if someone else brings it up, ignore it. Report posts if you think they're over the line. This is just not the place to have that argument.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

And not for nothing, even though I worship the celluloid Chloe Zhao walks on, I don't think any of the things she does very well translate well to this kind of movie. This is the first film she's ever done where she didn't have sole writing credit, and it was written by a whole committee. If you asked me to guess, I would say this film went sideways at the screenplay level and never really had a chance.

I’ve been following critic reviews for the last week and that seems to be the general consensus. She’s mixing her aged vanilla into the MCU’s beef chili. If she’d been making a cake or ice cream instead it would have been great, but she’s not.

Also thus far what I’ve been reading suggests that all my pre-release concerns:




They’re obscure, and will need a fair amount of background to be on screen as a result
Being immortal, super-powered, and Earth-based, the movie needs to explain why they didn’t help out with Thanos
There are a lot of them, so either most of them are going to be stuck in the background or they’re all going to be fighting for screentime
They’re at least in the same tier Carol is in, with all the plot breaking difficulties for lower-tier heroes that implies...and without the ready excuse of ‘space is large and we’re busy in it’ she has


…were valid, sadly. I think this is going to be a skip from me.

[Psyren]

I thought the background, showing them at various time periods in Earth's history and their relationships with one another (but more importantly with the humans under their charge) were great.

I did think the reasoning for avoiding the Thanos stuff was shaky at first, but it made a lot more sense after the big reveal. This also covered the Carol problem.

I think the only one hurting for screentime was Druig. I never got a major sense of what he could really do or how his powers were particularly helpful when facing Deviants.

[ecarden]

Okay, so this movie was...odd. If you went in expecting a standard MCU movie, you would probably be disappointed. I'd heard enough buzz to know it was working differently, so I wasn't surprised by that. I honestly don't know how I feel about it? There are some bits I really liked, some bits I really hated and some bits that just made me want to slap my head at the idiocy of the people involved.

First, broader comments.

I think in this instance they sold it. The thing which convinced their leader to save humanity was undoing the Snap, which is apparently unique in the history of the universe. That is actually a good argument for humans are special.

I really ****ing hate it when they give credit for human accomplishments to aliens. For crying out loud, humans were using the plow before Babylon was founded! But no, it was a gift to humanity from the aliens in Babylon! Bite me that it was a gift from the magical aliens.

Okay, so the Celestial leader can just grab them at any time. We see that at the end. So, uh, why doesn't he? There is no chance that the deviants can prevent the emergence. It is happening in seven days, but something is killing off your defenders and stealing their powers...so, remove the defenders? Or have some sort of remote shutdown? I mean, he has to know that his beacon was destroyed, right? Why not gather them up at that point?

More generally, I can buy that this is the team which has to exist because they've tested all the options. Maybe Sprite's creepy obsession with Icarus is necessary to properly motivate her and Druig's mind control powers are needed to keep sentient life safe and the speedster needs to be deaf because sometimes Deviants develop sonic attacks or something.

However, having lost total control of one creation, their solution was 'make another one and put no controls on it.' And that's without getting into the 'created the deviants and apparently placed them on every creche planet ever simultaneously (or continued to place them, then dump Eternals on afterward? Unclear). It's like the writers forgot the scale of the movie. They've been on earth for 7000 years, but have been doing this for millions, so uh, why are there Deviants here at all? They aren't a natural byproduct of the celestial's presence or anything, they're a created race which was placed to eliminate the non-sentient predators...

Uh, and if you're grabbing people, why not the three who are on the ship you gave them? Grab them all!

Tonewise, I was freaking ecstatic to have something that was not endlessly quippy and was unafraid to both be emotional and let the emotion linger rather than immediately undercut it.

It did go a bit too far in that direction, wallowing in melodrama quite a bit and some of the performances in moments of high tension were...interesting. I've seen some of the actors in other stuff and they're all excellent, so I assume they gave the desired performances, but turning it half a notch down would have been much more effective for me.

The sex scene...existed. I'm not a big fan of them generally and this one was nothing special. Not worth the time in my view. Fade to black a minute earlier and I don't have to awkwardly watch two people pretending to be naked and having sex in a room half full of adolescents and parents (and babies, who were surprisingly not loud).

So, I guessed instantly that Icarus was a traitor, though they put off the reveal long enough that I did start to doubt.

I do agree that what it takes to kill an Eternal appears to vary entirely depending on plot. Druig's survival especially struck me as total bull****, given that even the other Eternals clearly think he's dead.

Icarus is totally bound by Fastus, which is totally a thing he could have done at any point, I'm glad we had a long CGI fight beforehand. NOPE, he just breaks free after being forced down because...uh...willpower? Maybe he was supposed to be being empowered by the Celestial, but Fastus should have been as well?

Super speedster is slamming Icarus around like there's no tomorrow because he...forgets he can fly?

Also, the less said about Sprite being made human the better. It almost made sense based on Circe's powers, but it still just made me roll my eyes.

Uh...yeah...I got nothing.

Finally, I will repeat my comment from Dune. If movies want to be this long, then theaters need to start including an intermission.

TL;DR: Nonstandard MCU movie. Glad it exists. Glad I watched it. Almost certainly won't bother rewatching.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
They’re obscure, and will need a fair amount of background to be on screen as a result….

Obscure, and apparently with a trilogy’s worth of lore stuffed into a single movie.


Originally Posted by ecarden
They aren't a natural byproduct of the celestial's presence or anything, they're a created race which was placed to eliminate the non-sentient predators...

Piecing together what I can from the spoilered comments…

…it sounds as if the Celestials are playing cats and rabbits in Australia. One introduction didn’t work out, so they added another introduction to control the first one…and expected it to work out.

And it really is confusing if the Celestials created individuals of a race with less-than-optimal attributes, e.g. deafness. I’m very much with Talakeal on this: if these individuals were designed to do a job, then there does need to be some justification for why one was designed differently—and why another was apparently designed as a subadult.

For that matter, why give them human emotions at all? Why give them any distractions in the form of attraction or desire? It sounds like the movie never even tries to answer these questions.

[Clertar]

Piecing together what I can from the spoilered comments…

…it sounds as if the Celestials are playing cats and rabbits in Australia. One introduction didn’t work out, so they added another introduction to control the first one…and expected it to work out.

And it really is confusing if the Celestials created individuals of a race with less-than-optimal attributes, e.g. deafness. I’m very much with Talakeal on this: if these individuals were designed to do a job, then there does need to be some justification for why one was designed differently—and why another was apparently designed as a subadult.

For that matter, why give them human emotions at all? Why give them any distractions in the form of attraction or desire? It sounds like the movie never even tries to answer these questions.

Of all the things in the movie (which I liked between quite a bit and a lot), a deaf character would have been quite low on the list of “what will tick off other people who watch this film”.

If I had to think about it, and drawing from comics lore, I would guess that the MCU Eternals were indeed created by the Celestials, but they were created on the basis of existing humanoids, augmenting them with superpowers (in the comics it was based on humans). So they took people who maybe died in an emergence or whatnot as a template, gave them the celestial battery redesign, and out they go. The oiriginal characteristics of the individuals remained, all that was added in the redesign were the powers. And small details like being able to hear the vocalizations of fauna endemic to planet Earth were too irrelevant for a Celestial to even pay attention to.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Re: the deafness, some of the marketing mentioned it protected her from her own sonic boom, IIRC.



I really ****ing hate it when they give credit for human accomplishments to aliens. For crying out loud, humans were using the plow before Babylon was founded! But no, it was a gift to humanity from the aliens in Babylon! Bite me that it was a gift from the magical aliens.

Going to second this; it’s especially grating in a universe with people like Hank Pym and Tony Stark, who can revolutionize technology over a long weekend.



The sex scene...existed. I'm not a big fan of them generally and this one was nothing special. Not worth the time in my view. Fade to black a minute earlier and I don't have to awkwardly watch two people pretending to be naked and having sex in a room half full of adolescents and parents (and babies, who were surprisingly not loud).

A number of reviewers keep claiming it’s the first one in the MCU, but unless I’m badly misremembering, Tony slept with that reporter way back in Iron Man 1. :smallconfused:

[Clertar]

Going to second this; it’s especially grating in a universe with people like Hank Pym and Tony Stark, who can revolutionize technology over a long weekend.





I can see people reacting like that that. It didn’t bother me though, because in fact

going with the bigger theme that the Eternals became reinterpreted as gods by ancient civilizations, our very myths about different gods have them be the creators of all sorts of human inventions.

If in the MCU the Eternals (and Asgardians and other superhuman beings) are the hard reality behind a lot of—in real life fictional—mythology, it makes sense that some attributes and feats that are a part of the relationship between those gods and humanity also carry over to the Eternals.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Clertar
If I had to think about it, and drawing from comics lore, I would guess that the MCU Eternals were indeed created by the Celestials, but they were created on the basis of existing humanoids, augmenting them with superpowers (in the comics it was based on humans). So they took people who maybe died in an emergence or whatnot as a template, gave them the celestial battery redesign, and out they go. The oiriginal characteristics of the individuals remained, all that was added in the redesign were the powers. And small details like being able to hear the vocalizations of fauna endemic to planet Earth were too irrelevant for a Celestial to even pay attention to.

This makes sense, and is probably far more thought than the movie put into it.

But even given this, still not sure what the point of Sprite is. If the aim is to somehow replicate a family unit, why aren't there more like her? If not...then why at all? It's a strange design choice.


Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
A number of reviewers keep claiming it’s the first one in the MCU, but unless I’m badly misremembering, Tony slept with that reporter way back in Iron Man 1.

Yup, and Tony was on the way to other shenanigans in one of the deleted scenes. (“I’m thinking of a number between one and five….”)

[ecarden]

If I had to think about it, and drawing from comics lore, I would guess that the MCU Eternals were indeed created by the Celestials, but they were created on the basis of existing humanoids, augmenting them with superpowers (in the comics it was based on humans). So they took people who maybe died in an emergence or whatnot as a template, gave them the celestial battery redesign, and out they go. The oiriginal characteristics of the individuals remained, all that was added in the redesign were the powers. And small details like being able to hear the vocalizations of fauna endemic to planet Earth were too irrelevant for a Celestial to even pay attention to.


Explicitly not.

We are shown that they are constructed in the world forge as essentially robots.

We're also shown a bunch more of them, all which look like humans, despite being intended to go off into space and protect species which don't look like humans. I choose to believe that was Arisham showing Circe something she was comfortable with, rather than human being the form chosen for eternals more generally, but the mid-credits scene undercuts that a bit.

Regarding

I can see what you're saying, but I still hate it. If they absolutely wanted to go that way, they should have stuck with Fastos's initial suggestion. Or reveal that the Antikythera mechanism was something they created, or something. Anything that is nice, but not necessary would have been better than 'the plow'. I mean, it's not quite as bad for 'ancient humanity are all idiots in desperate need of time travelers/isekai'd people/aliens to tell them how to survive despite doing so for centuries/millennia as some I've seen, but I still hate it.

ETA: Sex scene: I'm assuming the claim is it's the first 'real' sex scene because it lasts longer than 'I'm Tony Stark, I'm awesome, fade to black, wake up to be snarked at by Pepper.' But I honestly haven't dug into it.

More generally, a late occurring note, but a lot of the acting seems significantly better if you assume that their nature as alien robots means they don't react/act the way humans do.

[Clertar]

Explicitly not.

We are shown that they are constructed in the world forge as essentially robots.

We're also shown a bunch more of them, all which look like humans, despite being intended to go off into space and protect species which don't look like humans. I choose to believe that was Arisham showing Circe something she was comfortable with, rather than human being the form chosen for eternals more generally, but the mid-credits scene undercuts that a bit.


Again, going with comic Eternals lore and not implying that it has to carry over on a one-to-one correspondence with MCU Eternals, it fits just fine.

In the comics the world forge also exists, only it’s on Earth, and the Eternals are even more like cosmic robots or androids than they are in the movie. One reason why they are eternal is that if they are killed, the world forge (located on Earth) just recreates the dead Eternal right away, with a brand new body but retaining all of their memories. (I suspect that we might see this in MCU Eternals too, and they will find a “new” Ajax and a “new” Ikaris whenever they reach the off-galaxy world forge.) That was very much the case in Neil Gaiman’s run of the Eternals, on which the movie is directly based.

Even so, comics Eternals were created by the Celestials by taking humans and augmenting them (turning them into Homo immortalis). I can’t think why that shouldn’t also be the case for MCU Eternals: Arishem took human/humanoid individuals as a template for each Eternal. This readily explains the random characteristics of the Eternals, like them being a child, or caucasian, or fat, or east asian, etc. all of these being differences that you would expect if the basis were different conventional human/humanoid individuals to begin with, but not if they were created from scratch as deviant-killing robots.


Edit: I could see this being planned as a future revelation for the Eternals, one step further than the revelation of “we had previous lives that were wipwd from our memory”, it would be “we are actually celestial clones of people that existed”, in the vein of similar revelations with the TVA agents in the Loki series.

[ecarden]

Again, going with comic Eternals lore and not implying that it has to carry over on a one-to-one correspondence with MCU Eternals, it fits just fine.

In the comics the world forge also exists, only it’s on Earth, and the Eternals are even more like cosmic robots or androids than they are in the movie. One reason why they are eternal is that if they are killed, the world forge (located on Earth) just recreates the dead Eternal right away, with a brand new body but retaining all of their memories. (I suspect that we might see this in MCU Eternals too, and they will find a “new” Ajax and a “new” Ikaris whenever they reach the off-galaxy world forge.) That was very much the case in Neil Gaiman’s run of the Eternals, on which the movie is directly based.

Even so, comics Eternals were created by the Celestials by taking humans and augmenting them (turning them into Homo immortalis). I can’t think why that shouldn’t also be the case for MCU Eternals: Arishem took human/humanoid individuals as a template for each Eternal. This readily explains the random characteristics of the Eternals, like them being a child, or caucasian, or fat, or east asian, etc. all of these being differences that you would expect if the basis were different conventional human/humanoid individuals to begin with, but not if they were created from scratch as deviant-killing robots.


Edit: I could see this being planned as a future revelation for the Eternals, one step further than the revelation of “we had previous lives that were wipwd from our memory”, it would be “we are actually celestial clones of people that existed”, in the vein of similar revelations with the TVA agents in the Loki series.




They're millions of years old. Which, well, predates homo-sapiens. I mean, they could be time-traveling kidnapping cloners, but that seems excessive and would just make the Humans are Special problem re-emerge. These Celestials are operating at a universal scale, humans are only relevant to them because they're on one of many worlds that has a celestial baby inside it.

The issue here is the scale. They introduced the Deviants to deal with predators, then the Eternals to deal with Deviants, which I guess is fine, but only for all the ones which were done at once?

This is explicitly supposed to be an ongoing process, with new Celestials being implanted in new worlds, to emerge and create new suns and continue the expansion of the universe, creating space for new life and basically defeat entropy (that last bit is my gloss).

So, why are they still introducing Deviants to the new worlds? Deviants emerge 7000 years ago. If they were always here, there wouldn't be anything but them on earth, so...uh...how do they get there? It can't be that they all went wrong at the same time, because the Eternals are millions of years old.

So, having lost control of the deviants and created the eternals, they then proceed to introduce the deviants to new worlds and send the eternals in because...why? If there are some predators that need to be dealt with, the eternals are more than capable of that. This timeline doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by ecarden
Or reveal that the Antikythera mechanism was something they created, or something.

For me this would almost be worse, since I love the Antikythera mechanism and all that it says about human potential.

But overall I agree that the plow is a uniquely poor choice of “gift,” given that it likely arose independently at the same time in China, and probably elsewhere in the world as well. If they really have to give a "gift," then the Archimedes screw is at least a slightly more involved concept to offer.


Originally Posted by Clertar
One reason why they are eternal is that if they are killed, the world forge (located on Earth) just recreates the dead Eternal right away, with a brand new body but retaining all of their memories.

So, Cylons? Frakkin’ skinjobs.

:smalltongue:

[ecarden]

For me this would almost be worse, since I love the Antikythera mechanism and all that it says about human potential.

But overall I agree that the plow is a uniquely poor choice of “gift,” given that it likely arose independently at the same time in China, and probably elsewhere in the world as well. If they really have to give a "gift," then the Archimedes screw is at least a slightly more involved concept to offer.

I understand that, it was just my best attempt to keep that beat. Though frankly, I'd prefer to cut it altogether. They're already aliens here to save humanity from monsters we can't possibly fight ourselves. They don't need to also be responsible for basic (or complicated!) human inventions. They're plenty cool. Just have Fastos be their tech and show him repairing it and improving it...

[Palanan]

I hear you, and agreed.

Between the large cast and the highly convoluted background, I feel like introducing this slice of the comics would have worked better in a Disney+ series.

A couple of people have already commented how long the movie is, and yet it still doesn’t seem to have enough space to do full justice to all of its themes and characters. Spreading that out over half a dozen episodes would have given them at least twice the overall runtime, and that might have given them more opportunity to balance action, backstory and character growth in each episode.

Presumably that would have been far more expensive, given some of the names involved, but it would have almost certainly given a deeper and better-developed product. With everything I’m reading, both here and elsewhere, it just sounds too jumbled to really work for most people.

[ecarden]

I hear you, and agreed.

Between the large cast and the highly convoluted background, I feel like introducing this slice of the comics would have worked better in a Disney+ series.

A couple of people have already commented how long the movie is, and yet it still doesn’t seem to have enough space to do full justice to all of its themes and characters. Spreading that out over half a dozen episodes would have given them at least twice the overall runtime, and that might have given them more opportunity to balance action, backstory and character growth in each episode.

Presumably that would have been far more expensive, given some of the names involved, but it would have almost certainly given a deeper and better-developed product. With everything I’m reading, both here and elsewhere, it just sounds too jumbled to really work for most people.

It would certainly have given some of the relationships more time to breathe so some of the tragedy landed more. Also, it might have allowed some human characters who actually did things besides being mind controlled, or cheering the eternals victories, or being adorable little pets/love interests.

[Psyren]

Humans are definitely special in Marvel.



Okay, so the Celestial leader can just grab them at any time. We see that at the end. So, uh, why doesn't he? There is no chance that the deviants can prevent the emergence. It is happening in seven days, but something is killing off your defenders and stealing their powers...so, remove the defenders? Or have some sort of remote shutdown? I mean, he has to know that his beacon was destroyed, right? Why not gather them up at that point?

More generally, I can buy that this is the team which has to exist because they've tested all the options. Maybe Sprite's creepy obsession with Icarus is necessary to properly motivate her and Druig's mind control powers are needed to keep sentient life safe and the speedster needs to be deaf because sometimes Deviants develop sonic attacks or something.

However, having lost total control of one creation, their solution was 'make another one and put no controls on it.' And that's without getting into the 'created the deviants and apparently placed them on every creche planet ever simultaneously (or continued to place them, then dump Eternals on afterward? Unclear). It's like the writers forgot the scale of the movie. They've been on earth for 7000 years, but have been doing this for millions, so uh, why are there Deviants here at all? They aren't a natural byproduct of the celestial's presence or anything, they're a created race which was placed to eliminate the non-sentient predators...

Uh, and if you're grabbing people, why not the three who are on the ship you gave them? Grab them all!

It's an interesting question.
It might be that, just like humanity impressed Ajak by stopping Thanos, the Eternals impressed Arishem by stopping Tiamut. He probably saw the Emergence as inevitable, until they prevented it, which forced him to revise all his calculations. I view it kind of like completing the Crucible in Mass Effect 3 or Neo reaching the Source in the Matrix - it's an event of such technological achievement that it forces the Super AI to throw out its old programming and be open to new ideas.


Uh...yeah...I got nothing.

I do!
It's worth pointing out exactly how many of Marvel's heroes are concentrated not just in the US, but in NYC specifically. Stan and Steve wrote what they knew :smalltongue:

This film meanwhile jumped all over, from the UK to Australia to South Dakota to wherever the hell Tiamut was emerging. Sometimes "Avengers Assemble" is just not feasible for every threat, even a global one.


Finally, I will repeat my comment from Dune. If movies want to be this long, then theaters need to start including an intermission.


I seem to remember they used to, come to think of it.

[ecarden]

It might be that, just like humanity impressed Ajak by stopping Thanos, the Eternals impressed Arishem by stopping Tiamut. He probably saw the Emergence as inevitable, until they prevented it, which forced him to revise all his calculations. I view it kind of like completing the Crucible in Mass Effect 3 or Neo reaching the Source in the Matrix - it's an event of such technological achievement that it forces the Super AI to throw out its old programming and be open to new ideas..

That might work for the Why he didn't grab everything or shut it down when the beacon was broken. But why only grab the three left on earth. Sprite I give a pass to as he very nature was changed, but the others, they're just on the space ship he gave them. Distance appears to be totally irrelevant to him, why isn't he grabbing them?



It's worth pointing out exactly how many of Marvel's heroes are concentrated not just in the US, but in NYC specifically. Stan and Steve wrote what they knew :smalltongue:

This film meanwhile jumped all over, from the UK to Australia to South Dakota to wherever the hell Tiamut was emerging. Sometimes "Avengers Assemble" is just not feasible for every threat, even a global one.

Right, but I agree, that none of our heroes (or governments! Or anyone!) apparently lives in the area where the emergence is happening and apparently, despite them being very visible and making almost no effort to hide (such that a child recognizes Icarus from television) somehow no one ever approaches them, but as the giant monster starts ripping its way out of the earth in the area that ought to be the epicenter of world-wide earthquakes...no one notices and shows up?

No War Machine? No Wakandans? No whatever has replaced SHIELD (SWORD? Unclear if that still exists after Wandavision)? They probably couldn't do anything as no one but the Eternals could, but their absence is pretty hard to buy from a narrative standpoint. They definitely ought to be able to track that there's a problem and where it appears to be coming from and at least show up. I understand they didn't want to shell out a bunch of money for a glorified cameo, especially in a movie that's already very long and very full, but it bugs me.

I mean, in the end I think it boils down to, I don't really like the white savior trope even if you sub in aliens for white people.

[Psyren]

That might work for the Why he didn't grab everything or shut it down when the beacon was broken. But why only grab the three left on earth. Sprite I give a pass to as he very nature was changed, but the others, they're just on the space ship he gave them. Distance appears to be totally irrelevant to him, why isn't he grabbing them?

There's honestly a lot of potential explanations, but they al boil down to "How was Arishem programmed?" Which is the driving question behind explaining any seemingly odd super-AI behavior.

For example:

- Can he only watch/manifest at Earth until the Tiamut situation is fully resolved?
- Does he care mostly about Sersi (because Prime Eternal / instigator) and just happened to grab the other two who were in the vicinity with her, and doesn't actually care about the ones in space?
- Does he care about the ones in space but can't locate them because space is big?
- Is he looking into the future and giving the others a chance to stop whatever he's about to do, as another test?
- Was he getting highly specific orders from an even higher being to "grab all the Eternals remaining on Earth for punishment" and executed those to the letter?

I could go on but again, the bold question sums it up.


Right, but I agree, that none of our heroes (or governments! Or anyone!) apparently lives in the area where the emergence is happening and apparently, despite them being very visible and making almost no effort to hide (such that a child recognizes Icarus from television) somehow no one ever approaches them, but as the giant monster starts ripping its way out of the earth in the area that ought to be the epicenter of world-wide earthquakes...no one notices and shows up?

No War Machine? No Wakandans? No whatever has replaced SHIELD (SWORD? Unclear if that still exists after Wandavision)? They probably couldn't do anything as no one but the Eternals could, but their absence is pretty hard to buy from a narrative standpoint. They definitely ought to be able to track that there's a problem and where it appears to be coming from and at least show up. I understand they didn't want to shell out a bunch of money for a glorified cameo, especially in a movie that's already very long and very full, but it bugs me.

Well, the post credits scene has ONE of them - or at least someone adjacent to them - being approached.

But the rest, again, were constantly on the move so I don't see how they could have been. Except maybe by Wong/Strange who appear to be busy.

We also don't know exactly when these events occurred, save "after Endgame."

Speaking of Ikaris on TV:
Superman existing in the MCU (as a fictional character) was a pretty funny reveal. Cap likely read those comics then.


I mean, in the end I think it boils down to, I don't really like the white savior trope even if you sub in aliens for white people.

*snipped*

[ecarden]

There's honestly a lot of potential explanations, but they al boil down to "How was Arishem programmed?" Which is the driving question behind explaining any seemingly odd super-AI behavior.

Maybe I missed something, or its comics canon, but I'm not sure where you're getting Arishem is programmed or a super-AI.

quote snipped above, so I snip below

We're drifting towards a topic that's going to cause moderator issues, so I'll mostly leave it at my initial comment and only add on that 'as a human' I don't find the 'humans are helpless little creatures which need to be protected' to be a terribly interesting storyline.

[Psyren]

Point, redacted.


Maybe I missed something, or its comics canon, but I'm not sure where you're getting Arishem is programmed or a super-AI.

They aren't "AI" as we might consider something like Jarvis. But they are following a rigid set of programming (save the ones that go rogue like Ego) so I find it useful shorthand.

Locate suitable planet, seed planet with baby Celestial, use Eternals and Deviants to guide evolution of local life, harvest planet once civilization reaches X level of energy development, repeat.

A good analogy would be the Titans from World of Warcraft, right down to the seed stuff.


As a human' I don't find the 'humans are helpless little creatures which need to be protected' to be a terribly interesting storyline.

If you're not a fan of the "ancient aliens" hypothesis, well, you're in for a bumpy ride because Jack Kirby most definitely was, and pretty much the entire MCU is based on it.

[Bartmanhomer]

Well first off. I enjoy the movie Eternals. What I like about Eternals is that the movie was very diverse and inclusive which includes a deaf superhero and an LGBT superhero. There wasn't anything that I dislike about this movie. The movie was wonderful. Great storyline and I really can't wait for a sequel. I'll give Eternals a perfect 10 out of 10 stars. :smile:

[Manga Shoggoth]

I seem to remember they used to, come to think of it.

As I recall, that used to be between the A movie and the B movie, not in the middle of the actual film. And it was generally an ad break (To my generation I only have to say "Pearl and Dean"...).

[ecarden]

They aren't "AI" as we might consider something like Jarvis. But they are following a rigid set of programming (save the ones that go rogue like Ego) so I find it useful shorthand.

Locate suitable planet, seed planet with baby Celestial, use Eternals and Deviants to guide evolution of local life, harvest planet once civilization reaches X level of energy development, repeat.

I guess its not clear to me that's all they do? I mean, from the perspective of the anthill outside my door, I probably seem very rigidly programmed. I walk past on a fairly set schedule and always in the same basic pattern, but that's an accident of perspective, not anything else.


If you're not a fan of the "ancient aliens" hypothesis, well, you're in for a bumpy ride because Jack Kirby most definitely was, and pretty much the entire MCU is based on it.

Yeah...if the MCU continues in that direction I'm likely to either be a lot more selective in which of the MCU films I go to, or just cut back altogether as I really dislike that trope and the further away from the person on the ground the less I care.

[Psyren]

I guess its not clear to me that's all they do? I mean, from the perspective of the anthill outside my door, I probably seem very rigidly programmed. I walk past on a fairly set schedule and always in the same basic pattern, but that's an accident of perspective, not anything else.

If the millions of planets following the same cycle claim is accurate, and the memory archive certainly backs that up, then yes, I'd say it's programming.

[ecarden]

If the millions of planets following the same cycle claim is accurate, and the memory archive certainly backs that up, then yes, I'd say it's programming.

I guess I view that argument as the same as the fact that billions of people have reproduced is proof we're all just following programming (which is arguably true at a very high level).

And that's without getting into Ego, though I'm unclear on whether or not Ego is actually intended to a Celestial like these or is something else that also goes by the name of Celestial.

[Talakeal]

I would assume the Eternals just took the forms of random human adults to better fit in with the population, hence why they are so racially diverse. IMO sprite's age isn't really that much of an outlier as mid-teens would be considered an adult for most of human history, and the rest of them range from late 20s to mid fifties. Honestly, the weirdest part for me is that none of them are in their late teens / early twenties, their physical peaks and what most of the population consisted of throughout history before modern medicine.


And that's without getting into Ego, though I'm unclear on whether or not Ego is actually intended to a Celestial like these or is something else that also goes by the name of Celestial.

I assume Ego will just be a "our concept drifted over the years between the films, don't think about it too hard." Which is really kind of a shame, because I think there is still an interesting story to tell about why a Celestial emerged alone and came to the conclusion that he was the only one in the universe.


A good analogy would be the Titans from World of Warcraft, right down to the seed stuff.

They are pretty much exactly Titans from Warcraft. Even down to the leaving their seeded planets in the care of super powerful constructs who take the form of misspelled figures from human mythology.

I wonder if that is just a coincidence of if someone in the MCU actively decided to go in the WoW direction.

[Psyren]

I guess I view that argument as the same as the fact that billions of people have reproduced is proof we're all just following programming (which is arguably true at a very high level).

And that's without getting into Ego, though I'm unclear on whether or not Ego is actually intended to a Celestial like these or is something else that also goes by the name of Celestial.

That gets into questions of who programmed us that are beyond the scope of this forum :smalltongue:



I wonder if that is just a coincidence of if someone in the MCU actively decided to go in the WoW direction.

Uh other way around :smallbiggrin: Eternals predates WoW by like 30 years.

[ecarden]

I would assume the Eternals just took the forms of random human adults to better fit in with the population, hence why they are so racially diverse. IMO sprite's age isn't really that much of an outlier as mid-teens would be considered an adult for most of human history, and the rest of them range from late 20s to mid fifties. Honestly, the weirdest part for me is that none of them are in their late teens / early twenties, their physical peaks and what most of the population consisted of throughout history before modern medicine.

Based on what we see, I don't think so. Or at least, their forms are given to them by Arishem as best I could tell. He may have chosen randomly. I assume (though the bit with a bunch of half-constructed Circe's pushes against this) that eternals on other worlds look like the local inhabitants, so just picking a random set of local appearances would be reasonable.

Sprite's age is...unclear. The actress is 16 now and the filming was over the last two years, so I assume they were going for 13-15? Which honestly makes the 'no one will treat me seriously' thing a bit of an anachronism, especially when ported back millennia ago. Personally I wished they'd just gone with the 'she can't stay places nearly as long as the others as her unaging nature is a lot more obvious' rather than inject the moderately squicky (to my modern sensibility) of her crush on Icarus.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by ecarden
Yeah...if the MCU continues in that direction I'm likely to either be a lot more selective in which of the MCU films I go to, or just cut back altogether as I really dislike that trope and the further away from the person on the ground the less I care.

Very much agreed. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. dabbled in that, in order to explain the presence of mutants Inhumans in their version of the MCU.

It was poorly done and very messy, which is probably why it’s never been referenced again. It would be unfortunate for the main MCU to get too deeply into that.


Originally Posted by ecarden
Sprite's age is...unclear. The actress is 16 now and the filming was over the last two years, so I assume they were going for 13-15? Which honestly makes the 'no one will treat me seriously' thing a bit of an anachronism, especially when ported back millennia ago.

Sprite would be treated even less seriously in tribes dominated by Neolithic warriors, so she remains an extremely odd choice in terms of design. Unless there’s something in her original source genome that made her an ideal candidate, I’m just not seeing the rationale.

[Talakeal]

Uh other way around :smallbiggrin: Eternals predates WoW by like 30 years.

Yeah, but the idea of Celestials being born from planets doesn't.

Looking it up, it seems that it originally comes from the Earth-X books in the 90s and was then brought into the main marvel universe in the early 2010s, about the same time the idea started being explored in WoW.

[ecarden]

Sprite would be treated even less seriously in tribes dominated by Neolithic warriors, so she remains an extremely odd choice in terms of design. Unless there’s something in her original source genome that made her an ideal candidate, I’m just not seeing the rationale.

Her concern seemed to be that no one would treat her like an adult/potential romantic partner, which doesn't seem historically accurate. More generally, as far as I could tell, there weren't original source genomes, they seem to be artificially constructed at the World Forge prior to the evolution of homo sapiens.

[Palanan]

Okay, gotcha.

As far as source genomes, my bad. But it does add one more layer of confusion to what sounds like a highly muddled film.

[Ramza00]

Maybe I missed something, or its comics canon, but I'm not sure where you're getting Arishem is programmed or a super-AI.

quote snipped above, so I snip below

We're drifting towards a topic that's going to cause moderator issues, so I'll mostly leave it at my initial comment and only add on that 'as a human' I don't find the 'humans are helpless little creatures which need to be protected' to be a terribly interesting storyline.

Not really. The Ancient Aliens build civilization predated Kirby and was not part of Marvel but Kirby used it to launch his own ideas. For example he copyrighted a 4 page tv script which was all about Judgement by the Gods, and it was in part a WW2 metaphor. Stuff with Judgement, Armageddon, The Holocaust, What We Owe Each Other, Mass Media, etc.

Then Kirby was re hired back to Marvel and was promised he got to do freedom to do his own thing. And he did so for the first half of the 19 issues Eternals. The goal was not to connect The Celestials, The Deviants, The Eternals, Humans, to mainline 616 Marvel. But Marvel said midway through Vol 1 your sales are not good enough so you better start doing crossovers with our IP. Thus we get Robot Hulk, and the Eternals Vol 1 was canceled after 19 issues.

So Kirby Eternals with those 19 issues are not like The Chariots of the Gods book (which is not Marvel but launched the Ancient Aliens craze with all its creepy stuff I will not talk about due to board rules ), and likewise almost all of The Eternals and Celestials lore came after Kirby in the 1980s and was established by different authors in non eternal books such as “What If?” Issues 23 to 30. It was those issues that connected The Eternals to all these Earlier Concepts including some of the Stan Lee alien races that are part of the “Sol” Solar System which includes Earth.




The main Eternals titles include:

Eternals (vol. 1) #1–19 (written and penciled by Jack Kirby, July 1976 - Jan. 1978)
Eternals Annual #1 (written and penciled by Jack Kirby, 1977)
Thor Annual #7 (September 1978)
Thor (Vol. 1 ) #284-301 (June 1979-September 1980)
What If... #23-30 (October 1980-September 1981)
Iron Man Annual #6 (November 1983)
Avengers (Vol. 1 ) #246-248 (August 1984- October 1984)
Eternals (vol. 2) #1–12 (limited series, Oct. 1985 - Sept. 1986)
Avengers (Vol. 1 ) #308-310 (October 1989- November 1989)
Eternals: The Herod Factor (November 1991)
Avengers (Vol. 1 ) #361, #374-375 (April 1993, May 1994 -June 1994 )
Heroes for Hire (Vol.1 ) #4-7 (November 1997, January 1998)
The New Eternals: Apocalypse Now (also known as Eternals: The New Breed) #1 (Feb. 2000)
Eternals (vol. 3) #1–7 (written by Neil Gaiman, limited series, Jun. 2006 - Feb. 2007)
Eternals (vol. 4) #1–9, Annual #1 (August 2008 - March 2009)
Hulk (vol 3.) #49 (May 2012)
Thor:The Deviants Saga #2–5 (February 2012 - May 2012)
Avengers (vol. 8) #4 (September 2018)
Eternals (vol. 5) #1–4 (January 2021 – present)
Others include:

The Eternal #1–6 (written by Chuck Austen, with pencils by Kev Walker and inks by Simon Coleby, Aug. 2003 - Jan. 2004)

[Psyren]

Based on what we see, I don't think so. Or at least, their forms are given to them by Arishem as best I could tell. He may have chosen randomly. I assume (though the bit with a bunch of half-constructed Circe's pushes against this) that eternals on other worlds look like the local inhabitants, so just picking a random set of local appearances would be reasonable.

To be fair, a ton of other Marvel aliens look pretty human too - Asgardians, Shi'ar, Kree, D'bari, whatever Gamora's people and the Collector's people and the Grandmaster's people are etc. Sure some of them get shades/tints that we don't get but the structure is still there.


Yeah, but the idea of Celestials being born from planets doesn't.

Looking it up, it seems that it originally comes from the Earth-X books in the 90s and was then brought into the main marvel universe in the early 2010s, about the same time the idea started being explored in WoW.

The Earth-X books were still Marvel, just not 616. So still a roughly decade leg up on WoW.

[DaOldeWolf]

Seeing the discussion here and everywhere, it seems like this is a pretty polarizing movie. I am not sure whether this is worth a watch.

[Palanan]

Apparently Zhao has cited Zack Snyder as a major influence for her approach to Eternals.

That’s not a positive for me, but perhaps those who enjoyed the movie can look forward to a Zhao Cut in the next couple of years. With plenty of slo-mo and chanting. :smalltongue:

[t209]

Well, not sure since I am not feeling "Grand Galactic Space Opera that would be compared to 40K's War in Heaven" from the trailers.
I mean what's not to like about intergalactic cosmic demihuman battle across the millenium.

[Angelalex242]

What bothered me is...the Asgardians didn't notice the deviants? Heimdall and younger Odin never noticed all this nonsense going on? Odin's father Bor never noticed this nonsense? Asgard in Hela's day had to have noticed there was a Celestial embedded in Midgard.

Sure, Thor himself was kind of screwing around off planet in this movie, but you'd think he might've noticed some of the nonsense going on in the last thousand years or so.

...ALSO! The Sorcerer Supreme didn't notice any of these shenanigans going on? Dr. Strange can teleport and had to have noticed all this crap.

[Psyren]

What bothered me is...the Asgardians didn't notice the deviants? Heimdall and younger Odin never noticed all this nonsense going on? Odin's father Bor never noticed this nonsense? Asgard in Hela's day had to have noticed there was a Celestial embedded in Midgard.

Sure, Thor himself was kind of screwing around off planet in this movie, but you'd think he might've noticed some of the nonsense going on in the last thousand years or so.

...ALSO! The Sorcerer Supreme didn't notice any of these shenanigans going on? Dr. Strange can teleport and had to have noticed all this crap.

Kingo has a line saying that he knew young Thor.

You're assuming that Doctor Strange is even around. NWH is likely going to explain what he's been up to. He doesn't appear to be present in Shang Chi.

[Bartmanhomer]

What bothered me is...the Asgardians didn't notice the deviants? Heimdall and younger Odin never noticed all this nonsense going on? Odin's father Bor never noticed this nonsense? Asgard in Hela's day had to have noticed there was a Celestial embedded in Midgard.

Sure, Thor himself was kind of screwing around off planet in this movie, but you'd think he might've noticed some of the nonsense going on in the last thousand years or so.

...ALSO! The Sorcerer Supreme didn't notice any of these shenanigans going on? Dr. Strange can teleport and had to have noticed all this crap.

You made an excellent point right there. Someone would have noticed the Deviants and Celestials a very long time ago.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

What bothered me is...the Asgardians didn't notice the deviants? Heimdall and younger Odin never noticed all this nonsense going on? Odin's father Bor never noticed this nonsense? Asgard in Hela's day had to have noticed there was a Celestial embedded in Midgard.

Sure, Thor himself was kind of screwing around off planet in this movie, but you'd think he might've noticed some of the nonsense going on in the last thousand years or so.

...ALSO! The Sorcerer Supreme didn't notice any of these shenanigans going on? Dr. Strange can teleport and had to have noticed all this crap.

Dr. Strange isn’t even the only sorcerer it town, either. If he was too busy, there are multiple sanctums around the globe, and more sorcerers than just him and Wong, as we saw in Endgame.

That said I’m going to add to the list in a different direction: Ego. Being a Celestial, how did either he not notice the Eternals, or (if he’s a different faction of Celestial) how did they not notice him?

[Psyren]

Dr. Strange isn’t even the only sorcerer it town, either. If he was too busy, there are multiple sanctums around the globe, and more sorcerers than just him and Wong, as we saw in Endgame.

Are there? Yes there were plenty during Endgame, but Morbo seems like he was setting out to drastically reduce that number.

Also, it's unlikely there were any Sanctums set up where Tiamut was emerging. They may not even have noticed what was occurring in time.


That said I’m going to add to the list in a different direction: Ego. Being a Celestial, how did either he not notice the Eternals, or (if he’s a different faction of Celestial) how did they not notice him?

Why would they have noticed him? He's not tied to Arishem or Tiamut. And even if they did, he's not a Deviant.

[M1982]

The entire Deviant plot goes pretty much nowhere. I was hoping that we'd have some kind of interesting exchange of philosophy at least towards the end. They now have the same adversary, and the big Deviant has been gaining their power and knowledge, so it seems like there'd at least be an interesting development of that...but nah, just more stabs.
Yeah, that part was just weird so he
achieves the power of speach and reasoning and then neither talks nor reasons with them. What's the point?

Also the matter of scale. The emerging celestial was far to small to be planet sized. Judging from his head and hand, he would have make a mess emerging (mostly due to causing tidal waves I guess) but he would not be anywhere near planet sized.

Also the time scale mentioned. If the celestial are creating whole new galaxies, a timescale of one of them needed to be born every few million years is way to short. Should be every couple billion years

[Wintermoot]

All in all, I liked it, but that's not to say it isn't a flawed movie. Lots of issues, both pedantic and fundamental. Still I like it better than some Marvel movies, but its not very high up the list.



Going in, I expected it to feel crowded with so MANY eternals, but I think they did a good job giving them each individual voices and arcs. If there was one left out, it was Makkari who disappears for almost the entire movie, being the last one assembled. I would've liked them to be more elaborate and clear that she has spent the prior 500 years living in the ship, but going out on speed runs to steal... uh... acquire.... important artifacts and memorabilia. Basically the Eternal Kender.

I enjoyed Druig NOT being the token bad guy, which is what I expected, but rather making good points and being more complex. He ended up being one of my favorites.

There were a lot of short shrifts. The deviants needed a LOT more fleshing out, especially Ghaur or whatever they were calling the main deviant. Why put Dane Whitman in this movie at all? I actually felt almost offended by his end credit scene. They couldn't even decide what person is there to tell him not to touch the ebony blade so its just a mysterious voice off screen? Dumb.

I thought the Starfox, Pip the Troll reveal in the first end credit scene was pretty weak. But there's not a WEALTH of Eternals stories to tell from the established canon, so I guess they are reaching for sequel bait. It's nice that they've established that Thanos WAS an eternal, but that opens a whole sack of works. Can eternals breed? Is Thanos a space robot or the child of other space robots? I have a LOT of questions about this reveal.

Wasn't expecting Ikarus' turn, so that caught me by surprise, but it worked well. My wife and I kept whisper yelling "King of the North" every time he did something epic. I thought the "Jon Snow meets Robb Stark" meetcute was hilarious when the director took a beat to put a hat on it.

For a director without a lot of prior work in the field, I though the action scenes were great. Someone complained about the Eternals being JLA expys. I don't necessarily agree, but if they were, then this is much better than any prior justice league movie. Ikarus' superman work is especially great. I could watch "flash vs. Superman" for days. Every second of Makkari vs Ikarus was fantastic.

I think its funny that Angelina Jolie was the "main" actor in the movie and had all of 15 to 20 lines. Still her dance fighting was beautifully choreographed and I love her morphing energy weapons. I loved the relationship between Gilgamesh and Thena. I loved the scene where Ikarus reveals his evil turn and you have the palpable menace as the assembled Eternals realize that even together they don't stand a chance against him, but then Thena walks in and Ikarus flees. I thought that was an amazingly staged scene doing a good service and showing us Thena's danger level.

I really love that there are combat Eternals for fighting Deviants (Ikarus, Thena, Gilgamesh, Kingo) and teaching Eternals for helping the host races learn and grow (Ajak, Sersi, Sprite, Phastos, Druig) and that the non-combat Eternals are the ones that succeeded against Ikarus in the final showdown.

It's rare for me to think "this movie needed MORE exposition" but I did in this movie.

Alot of the complaints I see here, seem pretty facile. Complaints about "where were the sorcerers during this?" and "why didn't the asgardians know about the celestials". You can lodge those complaints about EVERY marvel movie. Welcome to the reality of a shared universe. Either get over it or leave, but stop complaining about the same thing each and every movie. It's easy to dismiss such criticism. It's meritless. I certainly don't want them to spend 30 minutes out of every 2.5 hours movie providing cute asides to explain why each and every other power in the universe aren't here for this particular incident. The Asgardians DO know about the celestials by the way, and there's no reason to suspect they know or don't know that Midgard was a Celestial Egg. We are talking about a process that takes millions of years. the Asgardians are only tens of thousands of years old. So its reasonable that they DON'T know. but it doesn't' break anything if they know or don't know. No reason why it would've been brought up by Thor in any prior conversation when, for all he knows, the emergence won't be for another several million years.

I was happy for one director, one time, to decide to stage the final climatic battle in the empty expanse of nowhere rather than in the middle of another million person city that needs to be destroyed. I could probably go the rest of my life without seeing another Chicago blow up for a cheap attempt to elicit reactions.

There were too many "hero shots" though. The movie didn't have the frenetic energy of many prior marvel movies. But that's not a bad thing is it? They don't all have to look and feel the same. I'm happy the Deviant wasn't another sarcastic quipster. I could've done without Arishem talking though. Makes him less awesome and fear-inducing to hear his voice IMO.

Someone complained about "they said Sersi couldn't affect organic material but she was always doing it". Well no. You didn't actually listen or watch the movie. Her actual line was "I can't transform sentient beings". Nothing about organic material at all. And when she DID transform a sentient creature, it was treated as unusual and a huge jump in her power. So there's another complaint without merit.

but there are plenty of complaints with merit about this movie. It is flawed. Far from perfect. Certainly no MORE flawed than, say, Dr. Strange or Ant man which had equivalent big universe revelations that open up questions. But I enjoyed it more than I expected.

I think it could've been a GREAT movie with a few changes in script and editing. I'm excited for a sequel.

[Psyren]

The Mysterous Voice isn't actually that much of a mystery, I knew I recognized him in the theater and Chloe Zhao recently confirmed.

It's Mahershala Ali, who has been confirmed to be playing Blade in Phase 4. Presumably the Ebony Blade has had some overlap with the vampires we'll be seeing in the MCU at some point.

There is a comic IIRC that implied Dracula - yes, that Dracula, who is a Marvel character too (https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Vlad_Dracula_(Earth-616)) - was involved with the Ebony Blade in the past. Dracula also has ties to the Darkhold, that lovely book Wanda and Agatha have been messing around with.

Note that this won't be Mahershala's first Marvel character, as he also played the villain Cottonmouth in Luke Cage.

[Dragonus45]

Finally caught it late last night. I find it hard to describe if I like it or not. It certainly tried to do some really cool things and be really different... but the twist for who the real villains were was no where near the level of twist I heard described and the movie just went on and on and on and on and on.

[Wintermoot]

The Mysterous Voice isn't actually that much of a mystery, I knew I recognized him in the theater and Chloe Zhao recently confirmed.



It's Mahershala Ali, who has been confirmed to be playing Blade in Phase 4.

Note that this won't be Mahershala's first Marvel character, as he also played the villain Cottonmouth in Luke Cage.




Then why not have him on screen like Nick Fury in Iron Man? I stand by my criticism. You may think that everyone should recognize every actor's voice, but I don't agree. It would've been better to have him actually on screen. I'm guessing they couldn't get him on stage for one day, so they just had him dub a line and threw it over an empty scene. Who knows, perhaps it was a completely different reveal that they changed when they decided to throw him in. It just felt off-kilter and lazy to me. I honestly would rather they not had Dane Whitman in this movie at all.

I'm excited about his Blade movie. His Cottonmouth was the best part of the Luke Cage series IMO.

[Psyren]

I'd have preferred him on-screen too but it was a funny little teaser :smallsmile: And agreed on his acting chops in that show.

[Clertar]

I'd have preferred him on-screen too but it was a funny little teaser :smallsmile: And agreed on his acting chops in that show.

Killing off Cottonmouth halfway through the season was the Luke Cage series shotting themselves in the foot.

[Psyren]

Killing off Cottonmouth halfway through the season was the Luke Cage series shotting themselves in the foot.

Honestly, I thought Mariah was a great villain too.

The less said about Season 2 and its horrible "Jamaican" accents the better.

[Tyndmyr]

So, why are they still introducing Deviants to the new worlds? Deviants emerge 7000 years ago. If they were always here, there wouldn't be anything but them on earth, so...uh...how do they get there? It can't be that they all went wrong at the same time, because the Eternals are millions of years old.

So, having lost control of the deviants and created the eternals, they then proceed to introduce the deviants to new worlds and send the eternals in because...why? If there are some predators that need to be dealt with, the eternals are more than capable of that. This timeline doesn't make a lot of sense to me.


One way to potentially fix that would be to give the deviants some limited manner of space travel. That would probably mesh fairly well with them escaping Celestial control, and would probably be cooler than them just crawling out of the water?

I've been informed that in the comics there is a massive deviant city under earth, which result in them crawling up from there and what not, and that's also kind of cool, but would be hard to reconcile with the timeline.


Apparently Zhao has cited Zack Snyder as a major influence for her approach to Eternals.

That’s not a positive for me, but perhaps those who enjoyed the movie can look forward to a Zhao Cut in the next couple of years. With plenty of slo-mo and chanting. :smalltongue:

Oof, was unaware of that, but that is...concerning, yeah.

I mean, there are absolutely good filmmaking lessons to draw from with Snyder, as with any famous director, but his signature ultra-compressed micro tales, the lesson she could most have used from Snyder in a film with this many characters, does not appear to even be attempted in this film.

It might be that she just needs to do some in between sized films for a bit. I have to imagine that going from indie films straight to blockbusters is...a lot to cope with all at once. Stepping back to more modest affairs for a bit might help her grow.


What bothered me is...the Asgardians didn't notice the deviants? Heimdall and younger Odin never noticed all this nonsense going on? Odin's father Bor never noticed this nonsense? Asgard in Hela's day had to have noticed there was a Celestial embedded in Midgard.

Sure, Thor himself was kind of screwing around off planet in this movie, but you'd think he might've noticed some of the nonsense going on in the last thousand years or so.

...ALSO! The Sorcerer Supreme didn't notice any of these shenanigans going on? Dr. Strange can teleport and had to have noticed all this crap.

Their method of locating deviants/problems also appears to be "Ask the speedster to scout the entire planet" which seems...less than subtle.

They seem to straight ignore secrecy for most of history, then...evidently have some sort of secrecy in relatively modern times, judging from Sprite's comments about moving....and then go back to not caring about secrecy for the events of the film. There isn't any clear motive for this secrecy, as humans do not generally appear to be a threat to them, and the whole thing seems to be highly muddled, and it's hard to rationalize how both children can recognize them from TV as superheroes and other superheros do not know of them.


Yeah, that part was just weird so he
achieves the power of speach and reasoning and then neither talks nor reasons with them. What's the point?

Also the matter of scale. The emerging celestial was far to small to be planet sized. Judging from his head and hand, he would have make a mess emerging (mostly due to causing tidal waves I guess) but he would not be anywhere near planet sized.

Also the time scale mentioned. If the celestial are creating whole new galaxies, a timescale of one of them needed to be born every few million years is way to short. Should be every couple billion years

Yeah, I considered both things, and...I kind of put that to folks being bad with scale? To a lot of people, millions and billions are both really huge numbers, and a lot of people don't sit down and think about that scale like they would a difference between thousands and individuals.

Realistically, you should have a face that is visible from orbit, literally disfiguring the planet. Which....sounds kind of cool. But probably hard to shoot and tie into the ongoing scene, I guess. *shrug*

[Wintermoot]

[spoiler]Yeah, I considered both things, and...I kind of put that to folks being bad with scale? To a lot of people, millions and billions are both really huge numbers, and a lot of people don't sit down and think about that scale like they would a difference between thousands and individuals.

Realistically, you should have a face that is visible from orbit, literally disfiguring the planet. Which....sounds kind of cool. But probably hard to shoot and tie into the ongoing scene, I guess. *shrug*


There was a line from one of the previews that didn't make it into the movie about the unsnappenating kickstarting the emergence. Implying that the sudden influx of 3.5 billions souls returning in a split second artificially started the celestial birth. I wish they would've stuck with that. That this was premature and ahead of schedule, that the Celestial wasn't actually ready to be born. That would explain why it was smaller and subtly changed the dynamic of what the eternals were doing by stopping the emergence. If the expectation is that the planetary race is capable of space travel and space colonization by the time the celestial is born, destroying the planet, it kind of makes the celestials a little less of a cosmic horrorshow. A little bit.

I don't know... I felt the explanation of what Celestials are for was just... lacking... I hope it gets expounded on more in the sequel. How they integrate into the universe more fundamental and better explained.

I also would've been happy if it has just been the fingertips emerging and no head because then you COULD scale them appropriately with five new mega islands lining the indian ocean at the end.

[Psyren]

Anyone have thoughts on whether

Ikaris, AJak, and Gilgamesh might come back?

For two of them, we have their bodies (albeit they burned Gilgamesh's, but we have an epic level transmuter on the team who could probably reconstruct it) and those bodies explicitly retain their memories, so you could stick those into one of the replacement blanks in "Olympia" and be good to go. For Ikaris meanwhile, we don't have his body since he flew into the sun, but he was part of the Unimind metaconcert (however briefly) so someone may have inadvertently "copied" him too.

For that matter, Sprite was also in the Unimind, so once she ages up a bit as a human they could feasibly "re-eternal" her.

To be clear, I don't particularly care if Ikaris and Sprite come back to the team, but Gilgamesh felt like a bit of a waste.


There was a line from one of the previews that didn't make it into the movie about the unsnappenating kickstarting the emergence. Implying that the sudden influx of 3.5 billions souls returning in a split second artificially started the celestial birth. I wish they would've stuck with that. That this was premature and ahead of schedule, that the Celestial wasn't actually ready to be born. That would explain why it was smaller and subtly changed the dynamic of what the eternals were doing by stopping the emergence. If the expectation is that the planetary race is capable of space travel and space colonization by the time the celestial is born, destroying the planet, it kind of makes the celestials a little less of a cosmic horrorshow. A little bit.

I mean to be fair,
we don't know whether the snap/unsnap had no effect on Tiamut's timing, or what he would have emerged as. This might be why Arishem wasn't particularly mad about their cosmic abortion, or at least is willing to "hear them out" as far as their reasons why.

[Wintermoot]

Anyone have thoughts on whether

Ikaris, AJak, and Gilgamesh might come back?

For two of them, we have their bodies (albeit they burned Gilgamesh's, but we have an epic level transmuter on the team who could probably reconstruct it) and those bodies explicitly retain their memories, so you could stick those into one of the replacement blanks in "Olympia" and be good to go. For Ikaris meanwhile, we don't have his body since he flew into the sun, but he was part of the Unimind metaconcert (however briefly) so someone may have inadvertently "copied" him too.

For that matter, Sprite was also in the Unimind, so once she ages up a bit as a human they could feasibly "re-eternal" her.

To be clear, I don't particularly care if Ikaris and Sprite come back to the team, but Gilgamesh felt like a bit of a waste.



I think Ajak and Gilgamesh will return in new iterations/bodies. Probably as antagonists in the next movie. After all, there's no reason why the Celestials can't just upboot new versions of all of them from the backup store. The emotional weight of our Thena forced to fight a new Gilgamesh is palpable. I wouldn't be surprised if we have a "fighting your evil twins" motif in the next movie with our heroes vs their next iterations who are still loyal to Arishem.

I, personally, don't think Ikarus is dead. The implication is he threw himself into the sun to commit suicide, but my personal belief is that he can survive that and is just going into the sun to sulk for a bit.

I don't think our version of Ajak or Gilgamesh will be reincarnated or brought back, but I think new versions will replace them.

[Dragonus45]

Killing off Cottonmouth halfway through the season was the Luke Cage series shotting themselves in the foot.

Holding off till closer to the end of the series would have been better but his death scene itself was perfectly done as an end to his character arc and a beginning of Mariah’s.

[Tyndmyr]

Anyone have thoughts on whether

Ikaris, AJak, and Gilgamesh might come back?

For two of them, we have their bodies (albeit they burned Gilgamesh's, but we have an epic level transmuter on the team who could probably reconstruct it) and those bodies explicitly retain their memories, so you could stick those into one of the replacement blanks in "Olympia" and be good to go. For Ikaris meanwhile, we don't have his body since he flew into the sun, but he was part of the Unimind metaconcert (however briefly) so someone may have inadvertently "copied" him too.

For that matter, Sprite was also in the Unimind, so once she ages up a bit as a human they could feasibly "re-eternal" her.

To be clear, I don't particularly care if Ikaris and Sprite come back to the team, but Gilgamesh felt like a bit of a waste.



I mean to be fair,
we don't know whether the snap/unsnap had no effect on Tiamut's timing, or what he would have emerged as. This might be why Arishem wasn't particularly mad about their cosmic abortion, or at least is willing to "hear them out" as far as their reasons why.

So, there was a line about that!

They said that the snap delayed the emergence, implying that the emergence would naturally have happened within that five year period otherwise. It was in the ramblings at the Interstellar farmhouse.

The timeframe *appears* to be shortly after the unsnap, so the magic number must be...fairly close to the world's population just pre-snap. It doesn't seem like the population differs greatly from the modern day.

This does have the potential to greatly reframe Thanos's actions....if he believed many or all worlds to get cosmic eggs, preventing them from reaching that magic number may actually be a reasonable course of action. There's not really much evidence for such a retcon, but perhaps it would be an interesting path to take.

[Psyren]

So, there was a line about that!

They said that the snap delayed the emergence, implying that the emergence would naturally have happened within that five year period otherwise. It was in the ramblings at the Interstellar farmhouse.

The timeframe *appears* to be shortly after the unsnap, so the magic number must be...fairly close to the world's population just pre-snap. It doesn't seem like the population differs greatly from the modern day.

This does have the potential to greatly reframe Thanos's actions....if he believed many or all worlds to get cosmic eggs, preventing them from reaching that magic number may actually be a reasonable course of action. There's not really much evidence for such a retcon, but perhaps it would be an interesting path to take.

No I know about that line, I was saying that the Snap/Unsnap may have had an effect besides just helping Ajak get a conscience.

In other words I'm more interested in Arishem's reaction now than Ajak's actions during the flashback.

[theNater]

Saw it today; liked it a lot. There's so much there that it feels like it might benefit from additional viewings.

I did want to chip in on the Celestial decision making discussion:
They are still refining their Celestial making process; they store the wiped memories of Eternals so they can review what did/didn't work for when they make more. This means any given group of Eternals may well include experimental models or the results of experiments with counterintuitive results. Note also that an experimental model that turned out to be less efficient for the Celestial's objectives could still remain in use if it wasn't hindering things so badly as to be worth the energy cost to destroy and replace.

[Lord Raziere]

I liked it.


this is my first time seeing Eternals anything. I liked the dilemma posed and how they didn't know if they did the right thing in the end. now I'm not sure if the Celestials in the comic did any of that for those exact reasons, but they were certainly never all that great regardless, but this seems like a good showing of how they're an alien godlike species with no regard for human values.

I liked the kid saying Ikarus is superman and him disliking it, its a joke that works on many levels for me.

it was a certainly a slower film than most Marvel movies. I liked the various set pieces they did, they showed it all around the world and in these great costumes in the past, and contrast with them like, wearing normal clothes in some dingy house, to show where they are now.

also all the gold, and mostly normal superpowers made me feel like I was watching some Solar Exalted having trouble deciding what to do if their god didn't care about humanity. Thena having this dangerous breakdown only cemented it for me.

the whole film asked questions about how much responsibility they had, what they should do and such. I'm a little disappointed they didn't get the Deviant on their side to team up against Ikarus and just killed him, but he seemed to only want to absorb powers and proclaim himself a weapon pointlessly despite knowing what was happening, so screw him I guess.

like the whole film is about a bunch of immortals figuring out what their place is on Earth and whether they have any right to against their orders, to tamper with the cosmic order and so on. and how a lot of their relationship with Earth is defined by their personal relationships and what they care about and how much nuance there is in what they decide to do, with one of them having beliefs to allow the Celestial to be born but not going to fight or kill anyone over it. while the original plan was to simply put the Celestial to sleep and transfer the humans somewhere else somehow and just killed Tiamut out of desperation.

the fact that it ends a cliffhanger with all the remaining Eternals left on earth being taken for basically interrogation and judgement because that is what would logically happen? good, I like that it wasn't tied up neatly.

I'd say it was a good movie, to me personally.

[Clertar]

Now that a new Ghostbusters film is coming out, it's interesting to compare the current Rotten Tomatoes score for Eternals with the one for the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot :P

[JadedDM]

Now that a new Ghostbusters film is coming out, it's interesting to compare the current Rotten Tomatoes score for Eternals with the one for the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot :P

Not really. There are 337 reviews for Eternals and only 48 so far for the new Ghostbusters. It'll take some time for that to even out.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Not really. There are 337 reviews for Eternals and only 48 so far for the new Ghostbusters. It'll take some time for that to even out.

@JadedDM 2016 he said. This one. (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ghostbusters_2016)

[JadedDM]

Oh, my bad.

In that case, I don't get what Eternals has to do with Ghostbusters 2016.

[Tyndmyr]

Oh, my bad.

In that case, I don't get what Eternals has to do with Ghostbusters 2016.

I thought at first that they meant the new Ghostbusters coming out in about a week, but yeah, I'm afraid I don't see a great connection to Ghostbusters 2016 either. Admittedly, I didn't see the latter film, so I may be missing something.

*shrug*

In any case, by Box Office, Eternals is a big falloff relative to the previous two MCU entries, coming in at #8 while the others were #3 and #1, chronologically....and Shang-Chi's #1 entry is particularly impressive as it was not allowed release in the China market.

It's not out of the theater yet, so the Eternals number could climb slightly, but it certainly seems as if it couldn't possibly catch up to James Bond.

[Zevox]

Just went to see this with some friends. Overall, I enjoyed it - I like the mythology of it, the baseline of the characters, and the twist with one of them in particular. But I think it definitely suffered from having so many characters, and not enough time to fully develop them all.

Energy blast dude and speedster girl both got so little to really do that I never even clearly caught their names, for instance. Hell, energy blast dude sat out the whole ending.

With Hephaestus we went way too abruptly from being told he feels guilty over the atom bomb and has given up on humanity to him having settled down and having a family. Plus we know so little about what he was doing before that we're left to make sweeping assumptions about how directly or indirectly tied to the whole atom bomb thing he actually is, greatly reducing any impact that scene could've had.

Druid got so little development that I actually worry I may have missed part of it due to taking a fairly quick trip to the restroom just prior to the scene where they re-recruit him. And with his powers being mind control and all, there's a lot that could've been explored there that just gets shrugged aside for lack of time to get into it.

The biggest ones, though, are the Deviant and Icarus. The Deviant gains either sentience or the ability to speak after absorbing the powers/memories of two Eternals, which is a cool twist with lots of potential implications and story developments that could come from it.... and then we don't see him again until the ending, where he's a sideshow and ultimately just summarily hacked apart. Very much a case of wasted potential there.

And Icarus - well, I like the twist with him being a villain ultimately, and the schism that creates in the Eternals as a group, I really do. But it's clear from how his love for Circe held him back at the end there that their relationship was supposed to be a big deal, and I don't feel like it was developed well enough. Aside from thinking she's beautiful, what does he find attractive about her exactly? We get a couple of moments between them that are supposed to be romantic, but it's more the "we already established we're a couple and are just reminding you" type, not any clear chemistry or source of their relationship. It really robs that moment of a lot of the power it should've had. And then he just abruptly commits suicide after the Emergence is stopped... why? I get feeling distraught and like he failed, but why does it drive him that far?

It's sad, because there is a lot to this that I like, but it feels like they just really needed to cut some characters out and focus on the most important ones so that everyone got enough development, and they just didn't.

[False God]

I liked the movie. I liked it in part because it wasn't your typical marvel movie.

And honestly, from most of the complaints I've seen of the movie, the dislike seems to stem from people expecting it to be another flashy, explody, punch-em-up and it by-and-large wasn't.

[Eldan]

They don't, where you live? A ten minute break in the middle of movies has been a thing over here for as long as I can remember.

It probably increases snack sales quite a lot, too.

Jeez. How do you even watch a three hour movie without a toilet break?

[Lord Raziere]

They don't, where you live? A ten minute break in the middle of movies has been a thing over here for as long as I can remember.

It probably increases snack sales quite a lot, too.

Jeez. How do you even watch a three hour movie without a toilet break?

Here in the US? By not getting soda and sticking to light snacks, personally.

[Clertar]

They don't, where you live? A ten minute break in the middle of movies has been a thing over here for as long as I can remember.


Same thing over here in the Netherlands.

[Psyren]

They don't, where you live? A ten minute break in the middle of movies has been a thing over here for as long as I can remember.

It probably increases snack sales quite a lot, too.

Jeez. How do you even watch a three hour movie without a toilet break?


Same thing over here in the Netherlands.

Some accountant somewhere probably calculated that the added concessions from breaks here didn't compensate for the missing showtime and they got axed. Such a calculus naturally also disregards disabled people, neurodivergent people, people with small children and other such groups who might have difficulty sitting through a 2.5+ hour movie in one stretch.

[Palanan]

So, according to a new promo thingie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=temM5y6ZytM), this will be released on Disney+ next month, Jan. 12.

That's just over three months since its release in the theater, which seems a fairly brief interval. Seem to recall it was much longer for Captain Marvel, although I think it was about three months for Shang-Chi as well.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

That's just over three months since its release in the theater, which seems a fairly brief interval. Seem to recall it was much longer for Captain Marvel, although I think it was about three months for Shang-Chi as well.

Might be a result of the pandemic - a lot of the movie producers have been negotiating for shorter theater windows.

[Tyndmyr]

Some accountant somewhere probably calculated that the added concessions from breaks here didn't compensate for the missing showtime and they got axed. Such a calculus naturally also disregards disabled people, neurodivergent people, people with small children and other such groups who might have difficulty sitting through a 2.5+ hour movie in one stretch.

Eh, the most popular runtime length is 90-100 minutes, and most don't diverge too far from that.

2.5 hour movies are an aberration in general, and adding an intermission to that would drive it further from the norm. Most films are just better served by being cut down to a more manageable size.

[Psyren]

Eh, the most popular runtime length is 90-100 minutes, and most don't diverge too far from that.

2.5 hour movies are an aberration in general, and adding an intermission to that would drive it further from the norm. Most films are just better served by being cut down to a more manageable size.

I think the MCU averages at 120+. From phases 1-3 the only ones under 2 hours IIRC are Thor, Incredible Hulk, Ant-Man 1&2 and Dr. Strange. Doesn't seem to be hurting them.

I don't disagree that 2.5 is less common, but when they know they'll get the box office regardless they don't have to leave a bunch of scenes on the cutting room floor just to maximize showtimes. These are films people show up for on Wednesday night.

[Palanan]

Eternals is available on Disney+ as of today, so I gave it a try.



Achingly bad. It’s beyond tedious; it’s grindingly slow, strangely disjointed, frequently confusing.

After the first thirty minutes I was just…bored. I forced myself to watch another thirty minutes, up to the pompous reveal of the utterly ridiculous “true mission.”

The main problem is I just don’t care about these people. Apart from Sersei, they don’t have a thimble of personality among them, and the opening “romance” felt utterly flat. There is zero chemistry between Sersei and Ikaris, and their relationship feels shallow and empty.

There are too many characters, too much lore, and the entire story feels like it doesn’t really belong in the MCU. This would have been much better as an eight-episode series on Disney+. That would have given them time to develop each of the characters, not to mention the cosmic backstory, and maybe some actual plot.

As it is, the draggy moodiness and underlying absurdity just don’t compel me to continue. I'm abundantly grateful I didn't spend money on this at the theater.

[Thrudd]

Eternals is available on Disney+ as of today, so I gave it a try.



Achingly bad. It’s beyond tedious; it’s grindingly slow, strangely disjointed, frequently confusing.

After the first thirty minutes I was just…bored. I forced myself to watch another thirty minutes, up to the pompous reveal of the utterly ridiculous “true mission.”

The main problem is I just don’t care about these people. Apart from Sersei, they don’t have a thimble of personality among them, and the opening “romance” felt utterly flat. There is zero chemistry between Sersei and Ikaris, and their relationship feels shallow and empty.

There are too many characters, too much lore, and the entire story feels like it doesn’t really belong in the MCU. This would have been much better as an eight-episode series on Disney+. That would have given them time to develop each of the characters, not to mention the cosmic backstory, and maybe some actual plot.

As it is, the draggy moodiness and underlying absurdity just don’t compel me to continue. I'm abundantly grateful I didn't spend money on this at the theater.

I agree. Not a good one. It really does seem like it wanted to be a ten hour show, possibly more than one season, that had to be compressed into 2.5 hours - except they chose to keep a bunch of disparate "character moments" and minor conflicts instead of keeping the parts that moved the story along a major plotline.
They should have picked two of the characters - probably Sersei and Ikaris - and really focused on their relationship and ideological differences relating to the core mission, instead of trying to give personality, emotional moments, motivations and mini-conflicts for six (seven?) other people, as well as wasting run time setting up a completely random connection to Dane Whitman that doesn't have any relevance to the present plot- he belonged only in a post credits scene. I felt that the state of affairs presented in the flashbacks needed their own flashbacks to explain why these characters were doing what they were doing. It made no sense why Thena's remembering of "past lives" caused her to go berserk and attack her friends/family, or why no one else was similarly affected by having thousands of years of memories.
There seemed to be two major conflicts, one of which needed to be dropped or held off for another movie. Either go with the internal strife angle, with the Eternals fighting one another over whether or not to let the Celestial be born, or the conflict with the power-absorbing deviant that is killing them off and getting smarter and stronger. Probably go with the deviant first, and at the end have it reveal that it was created by the Celestials, which also created the Eternals, and that it was sent to replace them for phase two of the mission, the coming birth (which they never knew about). Then in the second movie, with a much reduced cast (because most of them were killed by the deviant), the time of the birth is drawing near, and they must struggle with having been lied to about their nature and whether or not to continue helping the Celestials. This is where Ikaris chooses the Celestial and Sersei chooses Earth and they battle it out, and it is a much more emotional situation for the viewers because we've had a whole film to establish their characters and relationship.

[GloatingSwine]

The main problem is I just don’t care about these people. Apart from Sersei, they don’t have a thimble of personality among them, and the opening “romance” felt utterly flat. There is zero chemistry between Sersei and Ikaris, and their relationship feels shallow and empty.


I dunno, at least three of them have the personality of "mardy bellend" (Druig, Sprite and Ikarus). And the two that actually do have anything about them that might have been worth watching a movie for are killed off before the plot has got its trousers on yet (Gilgamesh) or just kinda get bored of being in the movie and leave (Kingo).


It made no sense why Thena's remembering of "past lives" caused her to go berserk and attack her friends/family, or why no one else was similarly affected by having thousands of years of memories.


She has memories of previous planets they've exploded, none of the others do.

Otherwise I basically agree with you, there were way to many conflicts and none of them carried weight or emotional catharsis because everyone was either unpleasant or boring to watch.

I wanted the Deviant to win. Even though it wasn't even ****ing relevant to the main stakes of the movie.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I dunno, at least three of them have the personality of "mardy bellend"

Of what now? :smallconfused:

[Lord Raziere]

Of what now? :smallconfused:

Yeah, I looked up that name on both tvtropes and google and got no straight answers, I'm just as confused as you are. :smallconfused:

[JadedDM]

I believe it's British slang. Mardy means mopey or sullen. Bellend means...well, let's say 'jerk.'

[Lord Raziere]

I believe it's British slang. Mardy means mopey or sullen. Bellend means...well, let's say 'jerk.'

Oh. huh. sounds like a name such as "Marty Belland" or something, thought it was some obscure actor they didn't like.

[Clertar]

Oh. huh. sounds like a name such as "Marty Belland" or something, thought it was some obscure actor they didn't like.

Or some dude in Boyd Crowder's gang, in Justified.

[Delicious Taffy]

Boy, y'all are really sellin' me on this movie. Haven't seen an audience reaction this bad since Thor 2.

[Clertar]

Boy, y'all are really sellin' me on this movie. Haven't seen an audience reaction this bad since Thor 2.

Fwiw, I really liked it, and look forward to watching it again once it goes to streaming. I would put it above both Black Widow and Shang Chi in terms of 2021 MCU films.

But my taste in movies is not always aligned with mainstream blockbuster audiences, and with Eternals I'm well aware that I am in the minority :)

[theNater]

Boy, y'all are really sellin' me on this movie. Haven't seen an audience reaction this bad since Thor 2.
It's a lot bigger and slower than other Marvel movies. It worked for me, but I can see how it wouldn't work for everybody. I felt it improved on second viewing, but I realize that's no use to people who can't manage to get through it once.


Fwiw, I really liked it, and look forward to watching it again once it goes to streaming.
I don't know what your streaming set-up is, but it hit Disney+ in the US a few days ago.

[GloatingSwine]

It's a lot bigger and slower than other Marvel movies. It worked for me, but I can see how it wouldn't work for everybody. I felt it improved on second viewing, but I realize that's no use to people who can't manage to get through it once.

Part of the problem is that it's slower without actually using that slowness to any profit. It doesn't actually stop to linger on character relationships, which is why the Sersei/Ikarus conflict doesn't lan, why we dont sympathise with Sprite complaining that she can't age, etc.

Compare Dune. Dune was a slow movie, it covered way less events than Eternals. But it used every moment of screen time to establish something about its world, a character, or the relationship between characters.

And it's "big" but paradoxically also small without ever being personal or intimate, it's got this grand sweep of history, but only ever small conflicts with like one or two Deviants at a time, and again it doesn't connect closely enough with the characters to ever give us an intimate view of their emotional lives.

You know what it is? It's Star Trek: The Motionless Picture of the MCU.

[theNater]

...we dont sympathise with Sprite complaining that she can't age
I was decidedly able to empathise with Sprite, having also wanted things that seem to come easily for others but may be always out of reach for me. But I recognize that I am meeting the movie more than halfway on that.

In the broader strokes, I suspect anybody who's learned that a system they're a part of is vastly more harmful than they knew it to be might find something familiar in the film.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by theNater
It's a lot bigger and slower than other Marvel movies. It worked for me, but I can see how it wouldn't work for everybody. I felt it improved on second viewing, but I realize that's no use to people who can't manage to get through it once.

I can’t even force myself to finish it.

As GS notes, it’s slow to no real purpose. Long, moody shots of people standing around. In most cases they’re not even especially impressive shots in terms of composition, lighting, anything.

I’m barely halfway through, and already there’s a numbly repetitive pattern:

Moody, low-key character interaction.

Then we’re attacked! By a cheesy CGI monster! Let’s respond by going to see one former friend, and having a moody and introspective interlude.

We’re attacked again! By more cheesy CGI monsters! Let’s respond by going to see another former friend, and having an even moodier and more introspective interlude.

Then let’s mix it up by raising our starship from the ground (destroying a priceless World Heritage site in the process) and having yet more moody and introspective interludes.

And was Makkari just sitting in the starship underground for five hundred years?!

If she has a thing for Druig, wouldn’t she want to, I dunno, go find him?

To say nothing of the clunky opening titles packed with cosmic lore that directly conflicts with everything the MCU has told us so far.

Unless someone can promise me that it suddenly becomes outstanding in the last hour of runtime, I’m not seeing a reason to go back to this. It won’t just be the first MCU movie I’ve never finished; it’s the first movie of any genre that I haven’t finished in longer than I can recall.

More reason than ever to be looking forward to BP2. And I’ll probably skip anything else by this director.

[theNater]

I can’t even force myself to finish it.

As GS notes, it’s slow to no real purpose. Long, moody shots of people standing around. In most cases they’re not even especially impressive shots in terms of composition, lighting, anything.

I’m barely halfway through, and already there’s a numbly repetitive pattern:

Moody, low-key character interaction.

Then we’re attacked! By a cheesy CGI monster! Let’s respond by going to see one former friend, and having a moody and introspective interlude.

We’re attacked again! By more cheesy CGI monsters! Let’s respond by going to see another former friend, and having an even moodier and more introspective interlude.

Then let’s mix it up by raising our starship from the ground (destroying a priceless World Heritage site in the process) and having yet more moody and introspective interludes.

To say nothing of the clunky opening titles packed with cosmic lore that directly conflicts with everything the MCU has told us so far.

Unless someone can promise me that it suddenly becomes outstanding in the last hour of runtime, I’m not seeing a reason to go back to this. It won’t just be the first MCU movie I’ve never finished; it’s the first movie of any genre that I haven’t finished in longer than I can recall.
In general, I think it's safe to say that by the 45 minute mark one has a pretty good sense of what one is in for, and anybody who's not into it can safely bail satisfied that they've given it a fair shot.

In your particular case, I think you're within 10 minutes of the last big reveal, which might make you go "wait, what?" and become more interested or make you go "oh, **** that!" and want to break your viewing device. (Or it may affect you not at all). I don't know if that's an interesting gamble to you, but now you know it's available.


And was Makkari just sitting in the starship underground for five hundred years?!
She's been using it as a home base, but she has things newer than 500 years old, so she hasn't just been sitting there.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by theNater
In your particular case, I think you're within 10 minutes of the last big reveal….

Thanks. I have a feeling it has something to do with Ikaris, so why not.


Originally Posted by theNater
I was decidedly able to empathise with Sprite, having also wanted things that seem to come easily for others but may be always out of reach for me. But I recognize that I am meeting the movie more than halfway on that.

Sprite’s character raises a lot of questions, and there don’t seem to be any sensible answers.

If you’re building immortal guardian synthetic people, why give them longings and desires that will only interfere with their mission performance? And if the character must have these longings, for some unknown reason, why make them so difficult to fulfill? It seems tremendously contrived, and there’s no good reason for any of it that I can see.

If the intention is to help them blend in, then why not just create Sprite as an adult like the others and be done with it? What possible rationale can there be for designing one operative to be physically and socially weaker than the others, and perpetually angst-ridden to boot?

[GloatingSwine]

I was decidedly able to empathise with Sprite, having also wanted things that seem to come easily for others but may be always out of reach for me. But I recognize that I am meeting the movie more than halfway on that.

In the broader strokes, I suspect anybody who's learned that a system they're a part of is vastly more harmful than they knew it to be might find something familiar in the film.

Trouble is in the film we've never actually seen an example of her suffering because of it. Hell, the only time we see something related to her age she was being treated as older than her appearance (by the guy in the club at the start) and was uncomfortable with it. This is not a good suggestion that later on she will wish she could age, when we have only seen her be uncomfortable with the idea of being treated as an adult in an adult environment.


Unless someone can promise me that it suddenly becomes outstanding in the last hour of runtime, I’m not seeing a reason to go back to this. It won’t just be the first MCU movie I’ve never finished; it’s the first movie of any genre that I haven’t finished in longer than I can recall.

It does not. In fact at one point Kingo goes to do something far more interesting than be in this movie and we all wish we could have followed him.

[ecarden]

Trouble is in the film we've never actually seen an example of her suffering because of it. Hell, the only time we see something related to her age she was being treated as older than her appearance (by the guy in the club at the start) and was uncomfortable with it. This is not a good suggestion that later on she will wish she could age, when we have only seen her be uncomfortable with the idea of being treated as an adult in an adult environment.

My read on that scene was the exact opposite, namely that she was enjoying being treated as an adult, until the man she was talking to touched her and was in the process of discovering it was an illusion, so it drove home the 'even her powers don't let her join adult society,' message. Though they don't do a great job of making the costs real clear.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by theNater
…I think you're within 10 minutes of the last big reveal….

Wait, that was supposed to be a big reveal?

Ooo, the twist! Ikaris killed Ajak! In the library with a candlestick! In Alaska with the Deviants!

And then the Deviants got magic powers and…evolved themselves? And meanwhile Ikaris has another moody introspective scene?

And then a big emotional confrontation between characters I don’t really know and couldn’t care less about. And then more moody introspection.

Yeah, frack this.



Originally Posted by ecarden
My read on that scene was the exact opposite, namely that she was enjoying being treated as an adult, until the man she was talking to touched her and was in the process of discovering it was an illusion….

This is how I read it as well. Sprite was enjoying the exchange, but the guy tried to touch her hand and reached through the illusion. She covered for it, but that conversation was over.

It does raise the question of where Sprite thought the conversation was going. She’s been on Earth for seven thousand years, she should understand human behavior.

The entire scenario is highly contrived, and simply doesn’t make sense.


Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
Trouble is in the film we've never actually seen an example of her suffering because of it.

This is one of many, many character details that, if we must have it, could have been developed in detail through the course of a Disney+ series.

And it could have been a better-than-average Disney+ series, at least when compared to this year’s crop. A superhero melodrama could have been another interesting side take on the MCU, alongside the goofy shenanigans of Hawkeye and the sitcom weirdness of Wandavision.

As a standalone movie, it just collapses from its lugubrious pacing and grandiose pretensions.

[theNater]

Sprite’s character raises a lot of questions, and there don’t seem to be any sensible answers.

If you’re building immortal guardian synthetic people, why give them longings and desires that will only interfere with their mission performance? And if the character must have these longings, for some unknown reason, why make them so difficult to fulfill? It seems tremendously contrived, and there’s no good reason for any of it that I can see.

If the intention is to help them blend in, then why not just create Sprite as an adult like the others and be done with it? What possible rationale can there be for designing one operative to be physically and socially weaker than the others, and perpetually angst-ridden to boot?
Note that the Eternal's mission carries an inherent contradiction: they have to like intelligent beings enough to be devoted to protecting them, but not so much that they try to stop an emergence. That's an impossibly fine line to walk, especially given that the intelligent beings will vary from world to world, but the Eternals won't. So the Eternals are built with some variety.

Since you won't be finishing, I don't mind telling you that Sprite joins Ikaris for the final confrontation; those longings and desires keep her on-mission(from the Celestials' point of view) longer than Sersi and Phastos, who fit better in human society.

[Palanan]

I see where you’re coming from, but it’s a strange design philosophy. If you’re building synthetic guardians, you can simply instill mission-appropriate imperatives without the bother of messy, contradictory emotions.

If a certain set of behaviors is critical for mission success—e.g. supporting the “loyal” guardian when the others go rogue—I’d think it would be better to have an underlying imperative kick in, rather than trusting to the vagaries of a teen crush, or whatever that is.



My only real question now is, given the movie itself, are the end-credit scenes worth skipping ahead to watch?

[Clertar]

I see where you’re coming from, but it’s a strange design philosophy. If you’re building synthetic guardians, you can simply instill mission-appropriate imperatives without the bother of messy, contradictory emotions.

If a certain set of behaviors is critical for mission success—e.g. supporting the “loyal” guardian when the others go rogue—I’d think it would be better to have an underlying imperative kick in, rather than trusting to the vagaries of a teen crush, or whatever that is.



My only real question now is, given the movie itself, are the end-credit scenes worth skipping ahead to watch?

Both have ramifications beyond Eternals, but your milleage may vary.

Imho the last action scene is some of the best we've seen in the MCU, specifically using a speedster. But again, I really liked the movie.

[theNater]

I see where you’re coming from, but it’s a strange design philosophy. If you’re building synthetic guardians, you can simply instill mission-appropriate imperatives without the bother of messy, contradictory emotions.

If a certain set of behaviors is critical for mission success—e.g. supporting the “loyal” guardian when the others go rogue—I’d think it would be better to have an underlying imperative kick in, rather than trusting to the vagaries of a teen crush, or whatever that is.
But you don't know in advance which, if any, of your guardians are going to go rogue. If you pre-designate one as "loyal" and that one goes rogue, you've lost the entire team.

[Palanan]

Well, color me underwhelmed.

This was just silly.

Pip and Starfox, more characters I don’t know and don’t care about.

And clearly this is a reference to some comic and/or upcoming movie that I’ve never heard of.

Who was the voice behind him?


As for Sprite and loyalty:

Why not make them all immutably loyal?

If you’re building synthetic guardians who need to stay on task, why give them emotions or free will at all? Give them the ability to mimic the basics of human behavior if you must, but always governed by mission priorities, with the ability to override any time they stray off-task.

That seems much more sensible and reliable than imbuing them with the flighty impulses of a species you’re planning to exterminate anyway. If borning a new member of your own species is that important to you, I’d think you’d want guardians who can be relied on without any margin for error.

I realize this is tied into the “Earth humans are special” motif, which annoys the frack out of me, but I just can’t buy the design approach here.

[Talakeal]

And clearly this is a reference to some comic and/or upcoming movie that I’ve never heard of.

Who was the voice behind him?

Blade.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

In your particular case, I think you're within 10 minutes of the last big reveal, which might make you go "wait, what?" and become more interested or make you go "oh, **** that!" and want to break your viewing device. (Or it may affect you not at all). I don't know if that's an interesting gamble to you, but now you know it's available.

Or you can do what I did, and read through the TVTropes page instead.



And clearly this is a reference to some comic and/or upcoming movie that I’ve never heard of.

Who was the voice behind him?

It’s Blade.

[theNater]

...I’d think you’d want guardians who can be relied on without any margin for error.
You would! But the Celestials, being fallible, cannot make things with no margin for error. There is always some chance that some unforeseen circumstance will screw up anything they build. So it's a question of minimizing margin of error.

Suppose you're going to deploy three devices to a task. One can't get it done, two can do it inefficiently, and all three will do it smoothly. If you build them identically in a way that fails in 5% of conditions, you will succeed 95% of the time.

If you build them differently, such that each fails in 10% of conditions, but in different conditions from each other, you will succeed 96.7% of the time.

You get better overall results by having distinct, more error-prone devices than identical, less error-prone ones.

Keep in mind that these Eternals were not custom-built for Earth. They successfully oversaw the births of many, many Celestials before, and gave no indication that they would fail to do so on Earth.

[Thales]

Watched it with some family. Not too impressed. I really liked the aesthetic, and it didn't do a bad job handling such a gigantic cast, shallow as they ended up being.
We were most disappointed in the handling of the power-absorbing Deviant. All that buildup around it, its motivations, it absorbing the humanity and memories and personality of the Eternals it ate... And then it gets dispatched in a few seconds by Thena.

Personally, I was really hoping it would be key to the resolution. The Eternals want to link their power, channel it all into one of them to supercharge that person's power to stop Tiamut from destroying the world. The bracelets weren't good enough. What if instead of the entirely unforeshadowed assist from Tiamut, they turn to the local entity capable of combining their powers? The one who explicitly doesn't want the world destroyed? Have the Eternals all sacrifice themselves to the super-Deviant, merging into one gestalt entity that can draw on all their powers and channel them all together to supercharge either the sleep or transmute ones. With all that Eternal influence, the super-Deviant would also become less of a mindless predator and more positively inclined towards humans. Have its shapeshifting maybe converge in giving it the body (i.e. the actor) of one of the Eternals, at least most of the time.

Now you have a new character, keeping the Deviant's aggression and predator-of-predators aspect, but keeping the Eternals' tendency towards stewardship. Ajak and Gilgamesh aren't entirely gone now either; they're part of the gestalt too. This way, a major plotline isn't essentially dropped, Marvel can more easily use the Eternals in the future by making them not require so many actors, and the resolution ties stuff together better without relying on kind of a deus ex machina.

[Morgaln]

I saw the movie yesterday on Disney+. Overall, I did like it; I liked that it did try to do something different from previous Marvel movies. I enjoyed several of the characters, with Gilgamesh and Thena being my favorites. I especially liked how both Sersi and Phastos were up-front with their (potential) loved ones when the time came and didn't waste time on the tired old "pretend to be normal and keep our identity secret" thing. The visuals were beautiful.

The conflict within the group and the spilt into two opposing factions was, to me at least, much more believable than in Civil War. But then, Civil War is a whole rant for me, so lets not get into that...

I did have a few issues, though:

A lot of the movie was terribly dark; it was hard to make stuff out because you could barely see what was going on in many scenes.



Someone please hand the film makers a map of the Americas. Tenochtitlan (=Mexico City) is nowhere near the Amazon. Druig claiming his cult in the Amazon is where they all lived together last when we see where they split up betrays a serious lack of understanding of geography.

After getting Marvel Pokemon in Shang-Chi (including a box-art Pokemon showdown at the end of the movie), we now get Marvel Zerg in the form of the deviants. Including a figure that could have been their Kerrigan. Unfortunately, the potential was squandered. Kro could have been an interesting character with a legitimate grievance against the Eternals and the Celestials. The movie talks a lot about genocide, but completely ignores how this also applies to what has been done to the deviants. And the only potential champion for their cause gets finished off rather quickly in the end. This would have been such a great angle to explore in a potential sequel.

"We need to wipe out a whole planet because billions might potentially not be born if we don't" is a terrible argument. Especially since we're talking about Celestials, who seem to be functionally immortal. They don't really need new Celestials if the old ones can just keep creating suns. Of course, "humans are special" isn't a great rebuttal. You're basically saying every other species we see (Kree, Scrull, whatever Gamorra is, the list goes on) is fair game to wipe out, just not humans. That's actually somewhat racist (looking at you, Ajak). Of course in the end, they're on their way to stop Eternals on other worlds, so the survivors at least understood that hypocrisy.

Also, "Ikaris is strongest, he should lead us". What the heck, Kingo? You've seen 7000 years of human history and you still think strength equals leadership? Those who don't learn from history, as the saying goes...

[codybene]

Some of my friends were talking about this the other day and I was like "dang it do not spoil it for me!". I haven;t watched this movie and I had waited for it for long time but then when it was finally here I was sick (bummer)... and now, after listening and reading here all of this, my excitement has gone down... I am just happy I will be watching it streaming at home in the cheapest option possible haha

[Psyren]

I'm just happy that, now that it's hit D+, the meme-makers are out in force :smallbiggrin:

https://i.imgur.com/tUhRGPl.jpg

[Olffandad]

I would watch a show about Kingo and his Bollywood adventures with his assistant. What can you do if your only superpower is blasting stuff with lasers? Have fabulous song and dance routines! (Plus show audiences a new culture.)

Phaistos also "grew up" and has a partner and family, so that could be an interesting story.

Everyone else was pretty forgettable.

[Wookieetank]

I would watch a show about Kingo and his Bollywood adventures with his assistant. What can you do if your only superpower is blasting stuff with lasers? Have fabulous song and dance routines! (Plus show audiences a new culture.)

Phaistos also "grew up" and has a partner and family, so that could be an interesting story.


I'd also be down for the adventures of Gilgamesh in Babylonian times.

Maybe do a slightly longer series (10-12 episodes) where the first episode setups up what the eternals are, and then each episode explores who each of the eternals are, and their relationships with one another. And then the last episode or 2 could be setup for a movie.

Overall I did enjoy the movie, but my entire family was making fun of the "oooh look its another shot of someone brooding" by the middle of the movie. Could've easily turned it into a drinking game.

[Delicious Taffy]

I haven't saw the movie yet and doubt whether I should do it or not. Can someone tell me about it but without spoilers?

Important People you've never heard of stand on a beach and argue for seven hours and thirty-six minutes.

[theNater]

I haven't saw the movie yet and doubt whether I should do it or not. Can someone tell me about it but without spoilers?
It's as much a mood piece as a story. I recommend watching the official teaser (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WVDKZJkGlY); if you want two and a half hours of that, that's the movie.

[Thrudd]

I haven't saw the movie yet and doubt whether I should do it or not. Can someone tell me about it but without spoilers?
A group of immortal beings with various superpowers have lived on earth since 5000 BC, instructed by a cosmic godlike being to only fight a specific type of monster that sometimes invades the planet. They go into hiding for a long time and regroup in present day because those monsters are back again, and stronger this time. There are interpersonal dramas and shocking revelations.

[Palanan]

An oversized, unwieldy “team” whose members spend most of the movie scattered all over the world, and who have long moody silences and soulful breakups in between brief action scenes with uninspired CGI monsters.

[Clertar]

An oversized, unwieldy “team” whose members spend most of the movie scattered all over the world, and who have long moody silences and soulful breakups in between brief action scenes with uninspired CGI monsters.

I thought he asked about Eternals, not The Justice League :smalltongue:

[Palanan]

Chloe Zhao cited Zack Snyder as one of her major influences, and the resemblance is certainly there.

[Delicious Taffy]

I thought he asked about Eternals, not The Justice League :smalltongue:
Nah, there were like 5 people in the Justice League. Even the first Avengers has more people than that.

[Tyndmyr]

Nah, there were like 5 people in the Justice League. Even the first Avengers has more people than that.

Yeah, but Avengers had movies setting several of those characters up.

And a lot less brooding.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Honest trailer is up! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EskNsLql-VI) XD