'Eternals' review — Chloé Zhao's ambitious, lifeless epic
“When you love something, you protect it.”
They’ve seen it all. The Eternals, superpowered immortals from the planet Olympia, have been on Earth for seven millennia defending the planet from the Deviants, a species of cosmic predators. They have been involved in humanity’s story since before the development of agriculture and have been watching every step of the way. They’ve seen every great achievement and every great failure. Yet, their solemn oath to never interfere with the development of our world always keeps them at arm’s reach. This oath is easier said than done. As centuries of attachments begin to splinter the group ideologically, their greatest challenge yet sends them all on a collision course for disaster.
Less than a year after her awards-darling Nomadland (2020) was released to the masses, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao takes the captain’s chair of Marvel Studio’s twenty-sixth feature film. Eternals is the third MCU film this year, following Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (the latter I neglected to review) and the latest installment in the ongoing Phase Four. Originally slated for release last November, Eternals is yet another casualty of the continued COVID-based delays. Despite my adoration of Zhao in the past for the aforementioned Nomadland and her earlier work Songs my Brothers Taught Me (2015), I cannot help but be crushingly unimpressed at her latest film.
Zhao’s Eternals is one of the most ambitious MCU projects yet. The filmmaker, known for her naturalistic style and minimalistic scale, takes on a far-reaching narrative about immortal beings from far off worlds engaged in a celestial war and the emotional attachments that make the conflict personal. The film also takes on broad philosophical concepts of duty, heroism, and the god complex. For this to succeed, Zhao attempts to find a balance between cosmic and intimate, yet the film is never able to find that perfect middle ground. It can’t balance its characters, emotions, or the divide between the divine and the earthy inherent to the material.
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| Sersi attempts to connect with Arishem. © Marvel Studios 2021. |
The best place to start with this pervasive balance problem is by discussing the Eternals themselves.
First, there are far too many members of the titular team. A film with ten lead previously unestablished main characters seems almost destined to fail. The result is that many of the Eternals feel underdeveloped or unfairly sidelined. Druig (played by the phenomenal Barry Keoghan), who can control minds, has the most fascinating moral quandary of all of the main characters yet is given far too little time to develop those ideas while the uninteresting Sprite (Lia McHugh) is in the film for far too long with nothing to do. Further, the character dynamics between the Eternals are vague at best. If the audience is to believe that these characters have known each other for thousands of years, then each member needs to have a distinct and complex relationship with all nine of the other Eternals. Yet, it was immediately apparent that this wasn’t the case. They felt like co-workers and not the family the film keeps telling us that they are.
And still, Zhao and the film’s other three writers feel like they need to clutter the film even further with a personality-less villain in the form of Krol (Bill Skarsgård), a frustratingly impersonal “one-above-all” character, and a bizarre, empty turn from Kit Harrington as a man whose only purpose to the have the most annoying, desperately vague tease for a future film. I think that Kingo’s valet (Harish Patel), the unneeded comic relief character of the film, has more screentime than some of the Eternals.
I wonder if the writing team has ever heard of the concept of “revision” before.
However, I cannot be relentlessly harsh to Eternals. Eternals is the first time in far too long where I found myself genuinely enjoying the visual style of a Marvel Studios production. While most of their films are shot with uncoloured and overly-digital photography, Zhao never abandons her sensibilities. She brings her usual care and style to this film and it’s reflected in how she captures scenes and frames her shots. There’s some stunning practical cinematography and on-location shooting throughout. The visual effects work is kept to a minimum compared to the rest of the recent Marvel films and the integration between the live-action moments.
Zhao’s ambition with the project is also to be commended. The film largely disconnects itself for the better from the larger universe and effectively establishes its own identity. This is a thing I also noticed with Shang-Chi. Both films are committed to expanding the Marvel universe without feeling tied to the legacy of the rest of the movies. Eternals is a promising creative step for the MCU and I hope that they continue to allow filmmakers with unique visions to make movies out of step with their usual affair.
And while few and far between, there are a few character moments that work quite well. Druig and Makkari (played by Lauren Ridloff as the MCU’s first deaf superhero) have some fantastic chemistry that goes tragically underutilized. Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry as the MCU’s first openly gay superhero) has a wonderful dynamic with his human family that is portrayed quite well. On the whole, Eternals makes a conscious step towards inclusion and diversity in its cast, which is a wonderful goal that it achieves quite well.
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| Ikaris and Sersi share a tender moment. © Marvel Studios 2021. |
The film’s extensive flashback sequences are also quite good and better than the present-day portions of the narrative. The cast is more interesting when they are together and the contrast between the various historical periods and the agelessness of the characters is compelling. I feel as if the entire film should have been set in the past. The flashbacks are the promise of a better film hidden somewhere in the draft pile. They prioritize the connections between the Eternals and how they function as a group. Every time the film returns to the present, it loses all of that energy and promise.
All of these elements result in Eternals being a polarizing film experience. The film feels tragically hollow which is made all the more frustrating with glimpses of better things scattered throughout its gargantuan runtime.
The film’s central component — narratively, thematically, and emotionally — is the epic love story between Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Ikaris (Richard Madden). Ikaris and Sersi’s romance has drummed up quite a bit of press, with most of that discussion centring around the promise of MCU’s first-ever sex scene, and is emblematic of everything I dislike about the film as a whole. Sersi and Ikaris’ story has the promise to be something new, bold, and original and, like the film’s cinematography, both Chan and Madden are good-looking people. But the result of their romance is a pair of performances that are totally lifeless and stilted, a relationship that is talked about more than it is depicted on screen, and a narrative that is better in flashbacks than in the present.
Score: 2
Eternals is now playing in theatres.
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