Eternals
SCREENPLAY: B+
Chloe Zhao and the other writers apparently spit at the book of screenwriting rules. Or perhaps they’re much too refined for spitting. Probably that. But spit or no spit, they do something people say can’t be done. They write a story with ten main characters covering thousands of years. Some people need to stop complaining that we don’t get to know all ten Eternals as well as we know our BFFs. I would suggest noticing how well we actually do get to know them: VERY well. It’s a great feat of writing.
ACTING: B
I was worried about the amount of fame spread across the screen. Famous people sometimes aren’t the characters they play as much as they’re themselves. Like, in all the movies he’s done, I can’t remember even one of Dwayne Johnson’s character’s names. He’s just Dwayne Johnson in every movie. Or at least The Rock.
This cast does a great job embodying their characters and shedding their public personae. I was watching Thena, Ajak and Kingo instead of Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek and Kumail Nanjiani. They subdue all that star power and become new people. Some might find many of the performances “stiff,” but life probably gets a bit dull after millenia. I mean, show a spoon to a two year old and their eyes light up like they’ve stumbled across Blackbeard’s hidden treasure. I can’t remember the last time I’ve looked at a spoon like that.
CRAFT: A
I can’t stop thinking about the landscapes and how beautiful this movie was. And those shots of the two hugging with the sun sneaking through. Just delightful. Chloe Zhao brought her A game. The jump scares were well executed, and also few and far between. That made them even more effective.
INTEGRITY: A
A lot of people may think less of the movie because it isn’t a typical MCU flick. I applaud it for not being a typical MCU flick. Take Shang Chi. That movie kicked its way in a different direction during its beginning. But by the end, it was like the MCU monster came in and ate away all its originality until the usual MCU stuff was all that remained. Eternals fought off the MCU monster and stayed true to its vision.
There’s a ridiculous amount of pressure on Marvel to give the masses what they want. Folks love the MCU monster! But like all good things, it’s going to get boring at some point. Eternals made the commitment to be different. Whatever you think of the finished movie, it’s a necessary Marvel movie.
FINAL COMMENTS:
This film wants to redefine what a Marvel movie can be. That’s going to be unsettling for some MCU diehards.
Chloe creates a world-hopping adventure that never leaves planet Earth. The film looks downright beautiful at times. Like it or not, the MCU will need to stretch out into new directions, and I don’t think this is a bad one.
Many MCU flicks revolve around the hero’s need to find out who they really are in order to gain the missing ingredient that will help them win the big battle at the end. The Eternals will learn who they really are, but their discovery is used a different way. They need to discover themselves in order to decide whether or not to even fight the big battle. It’s not a given that they will, and that forges a different type of tension. The human race’s survival is always on the line in the MCU, but we never doubt the heroes will fight for us (even if we may doubt they can win). Here, it’s not certain that they will save us.
This misdirection of tension makes me look inward a lot more than usual, and that’s the beautiful trick of the movie.