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:

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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 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 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!"

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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.

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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. 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

[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.

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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. And so the children eventually rebel, like children do.

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

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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.

{Scrubbed}

[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

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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

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

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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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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.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrubbed}

[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.

Spoiler: I hate the Humans Are Special trope...but

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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.

Spoiler: I hate the Mozart was an Alien trope...and

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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.

Spoiler: The Celestials are incompetent...

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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).

Spoiler: The twist...

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

Spoiler: Power levels...

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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.

Spoiler: Absence of other players...

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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

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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…

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…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…

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…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”.

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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.

Spoiler: I hate the Mozart was an Alien trope...and

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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.

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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.

[Clertar]

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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

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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

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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]

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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.

Spoiler: Eternal Origins

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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

Spoiler: Gifts from the Gods

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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

Spoiler: twist, be warned

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that their nature as alien robots means they don't react/act the way humans do.

[Clertar]

Explicitly not.

Spoiler: Eternal Origins

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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.

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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.

Spoiler

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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.

Spoiler: Except age...

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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.

Spoiler: On the deviants

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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

Spoiler: Antikythera

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Or reveal that the Antikythera mechanism was something they created, or something.

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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

Spoiler: Forge

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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.

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So, Cylons? Frakkin’ skinjobs.