Eternals

Directed by Oscar winner Chloe Zhao, is the latest in the Marvel universe fourth phase films. The Eternals are a group of other world immortal beings sent to earth 7000 years ago by their leader Arishem to protect humanity from a group of evil “deviants” who want to destroy all intelligent life. The group led by Ajak (Salma Hayek) and include the mighty Ikaris (Richard Madden), warrior Thena (Angelina Jolie) and Gemma Chan’s Sersi amongst their number. When they feel they have finally rid the earth of deviants, Ajak sets the group free to spend time learning about humanity until they are called. They spend 1000’s of years hiding amongst humanity, never to interfere, until present day, in a post “blip” world the Eternals come together to fight a new deviants threat.

It feels from early on the Eternals is being asked to do a lot of MCU heavy lifting, introducing a wide array of new characters and possibly setting up a range of story threads. And unfortunately it creaks and ultimately cracks under the weight of that Marvel universe plot building.

The film wasn’t a complete write off for me, there were things I enjoyed. There was some fun with Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo and Ma Dong-Seok as Gilgamesh lightning the mood. And it does some interesting things with the Eternals themselves, making them fallible and ultimately asking questions about their own purpose.

But that’s not enough to overcome its problems. The challenge of trying to introduce so many characters and storylines leads to a disjointed film and ultimately gives us too many new characters to try and care about to a point were you struggle to care for any of them.

With so much to cover, Eternals is long and while I didn’t have a problem sticking with it, it’s clunky narrative made it difficult to engage with fully.

It is not terrible, but it fails to deal with the amount of story, characters and narrative arcs it is trying to develop and is weighed down by the task. And for all its time on screen it never gives itself the chance to build its own characters and story to a point were you don’t care that much about any of it.