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ETERNALS (Spoiler Discussion Thread)


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I watched it last night and it was perfectly cromulent. It helped that I had literally no expectations and expected it to be the drizzling shits. The characters were all underwhelming, but was fine for a streaming movie. I really hope there isn't a sequel though. The most interesting characters didn't show up until the credits. Keep them and lose everyone else.

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On 1/14/2022 at 4:55 PM, The Natural said:

As soon as Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings were free as part of the Disney+ subscription I watched them day one unlike Eternals. I'll try and catch it this weekend. Not expecting much as the trailers did nothing for me and cosmic MCU isn't my thing at all barring Thanos.

Just finished watching Eternals and considering the above, I enjoyed the film more than I thought. There's good things in the film, the cinematography and some of the Eternals: Kingo played by Kumali Nanjiana, Druig played by Barry Keoghan and Angelina Jolie's Thena. Mahd Wy’ry moved me having lost two members of my family to Dementia. Kingo's valet, Karun played by Harish Patel was another plus point and Ramin Djawadi returning to score, he was at the MCU's beginning with Iron Man.

Onto the stuff I didn't like...taking Kingo out of the final battle was stupid, stupid as Randy Orton would say. I felt the running time even breaking the movie into chunks. Richard Madden and Gemma Chan have anti chemistry as Sersei and Ikaris. The Eternals must be the laziest superheroes twiddling their thumbs not permitted to interfere in human affairs when the likes of Thanos and Loki strike.

Eternals is not the worst Marvel Studios movies when The Incredible Hulk, Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 3, Iron Man 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp exist. 

Time to read your reviews!

Edited by The Natural
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My updated MCU rankings would look like:

27. The Incredible Hulk (2008).

26. Thor: The Dark World (2013).

25. Iron Man 2 (2010).

24. Iron Man 3 (2013).

23. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018).

22. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).

21. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).

20. Captain Marvel (2019).

19. Black Widow (2021).

18. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

17. Ant-Man (2015).

16. Eternals (2021).

15. Thor (2011).

14. Doctor Strange (2016).

13. Black Panther (2018).

12. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).

11. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019).

10. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017).

9. Thor: Ragnarok (2017).

8. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).

7. Avengers: Endgame (2019).

6. Iron Man (2008).

5. Avengers Assemble (2012).

4. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021).

3. Avengers: Infinity War (2018).

2. Captain America: Civil War (2016).

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).

Edited by The Natural
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3 hours ago, The Natural said:

The Eternals must be the laziest superheroes twiddling their thumbs not permitted to interfere in human affairs when the likes of Thanos and Loki strike.

This is their origin story, though. They weren’t superheroes until they decided to go against their own mission and put humanity first. Until then, they were just powerful.


It’s like they were Spider-man after he got bit but before Uncle Ben dies through his inaction.

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Watched Eternals last night and mostly thought it was bland and dull.  I feel like the Eternals are a tough sell to audiences.  If you aren't familiar with the comics, you have a lot of characters to introduce in a short amount of time and almost have to do an exposition dump to get all the backstory in.  If you are familiar with the comics, well, you're probably still not interested.  Eternals have never been pushed heavily by Marvel and have made relatively few appearances in the past 20 years.  There was a mini-series about 15 years ago written by Sandman writer Neil Gaiman, but that was quite a while ago, and the monthly series that spun out of that (w/o Gaiman) lasted 9 issues.  Eternals have never really been interesting to comic fans and I'm guessing a lot of fans only hazily know the backstory.

When the movie was announced, the owner of a local comics shop dismissed the Eternals as discount New Gods.  There's some truth to that.  Jack Kirby probably really wanted to write the New Gods, but DC canceled his Fourth World stuff prematurely, so he ended up back at Marvel trying to tell New Gods stories with the not-New Gods.

I guess Marvel thought that, if they could turn GotG into a hit, they could turn any property, but Eternals are closer to the Inhumans characters no one wants to write than GotG.  And Marvel's attempt to elevate the Inhumans writers do want to use didn't go all that well.

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I might rank this below Iron Man 2 & 3.  Definitely below Thor 2.  What the hell was this supposed to be?  We were dozing off on it Saturday and had to finish it Sunday.

It was really over-ambitious.  When you need an opening crawl and numerous exposition-heavy data dumps, you're trying to do too much.  This is a movie that had to teach us all about Celestials, Deviants, and Eternals, their whole background, and then try to make me care about a whole group of superheroes I knew nothing about.  Just too much stuff crammed into one movie.  Having taken years to bring the Avengers together, you'd think the Marvel folks would understand this is not the way to do it.  Jesus what a mess.

I agreed with posters who said:

  • Sersi and Ikarus had no chemistry.  I don't even know who the guy who played Ikarus was but I agree he looked too much like Bucky.  And it's fitting the best role I ever saw Gemma Chan in was playing a robot.  "Stare puzzled into middle distance" is her one gear.
  • WTF with Kingo just walking out?  Did Kamil quit on the DL?
  • Just fucking show BLADE on film if that's what it was supposed to be.

 

Just ooooof.

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2 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:

I don't know. There's this other really popular thing Disney owns that suggests audiences can keep up with that kind of stuff.

I thought about Star Wars when I wrote that, but there is a difference.  I don't feel like explaining it because your post is more about snarky gotcha bullshit than it is about discussing a point, so it's not worth getting into.  You have hoisted me upon my petard and win the internet points for the day, I guess.

Edited by Technico Support
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3 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I might rank this below Iron Man 2 & 3.  Definitely below Thor 2.  What the hell was this supposed to be?  We were dozing off on it Saturday and had to finish it Sunday.

It was really over-ambitious.  When you need an opening crawl and numerous exposition-heavy data dumps, you're trying to do too much.  This is a movie that had to teach us all about Celestials, Deviants, and Eternals, their whole background, and then try to make me care about a whole group of superheroes I knew nothing about.  Just too much stuff crammed into one movie.  Having taken years to bring the Avengers together, you'd think the Marvel folks would understand this is not the way to do it.  Jesus what a mess.

I agreed with posters who said:

  • Sersi and Ikarus had no chemistry.  I don't even know who the guy who played Ikarus was but I agree he looked too much like Bucky.  And it's fitting the best role I ever saw Gemma Chan in was playing a robot.  "Stare puzzled into middle distance" is her one gear.
  • WTF with Kingo just walking out?  Did Kamil quit on the DL?
  • Just fucking show BLADE on film if that's what it was supposed to be.

 

Just ooooof.

Ikaris was Richard Madden, aka Robb Stark of Game of Thrones.

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On 1/16/2022 at 7:04 AM, Control said:

This is their origin story, though. They weren’t superheroes until they decided to go against their own mission and put humanity first. Until then, they were just powerful.


It’s like they were Spider-man after he got bit but before Uncle Ben dies through his inaction.

They kinda were. They were protecting humanity from attacks by the Deviants for years. They were the inspirations of humanity's myths, legends, folklore and religions.

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23 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

They kinda were. They were protecting humanity from attacks by the Deviants for years. They were the inspirations of humanity's myths, legends, folklore and religions.

Well, they were only protecting humanity from Deviants to prevent the overculling of the human race so that we could meet the population density and technical advancement necessary to facilitate the ascension of another Celestial.  Arguably, this is also the reason why they stayed out of human affairs.  Death and social upheaval were always a part of the plan.

I am still kinda fuzzy as to why the Celestials did not have the Eternals oppose Thanos since his galactic extermination program directly interfered with the birth of new Celestials, but I guess the Celestials didn't really care since the population decrease would only delay the inevitable and the feat could never be duplicated since the Infinity Gaunlet was consumed during the Snap.

Then the Avengers came along and put things back on track by undoing the Blip.

It also looks like the Eternals did not stand against Thanos because he was also an Eternal, only he was from Titan.  I guess we'll find out more later.

Edited by J.T.
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1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

I thought about Star Wars when I wrote that, but there is a difference.  I don't feel like explaining it because your post is more about snarky gotcha bullshit than it is about discussing a point, so it's not worth getting into.  You have hoisted me upon my petard and win the internet points for the day, I guess.

As far as I can tell, the difference is you enjoyed one more than the other. Which is fine. I just don't find that a scrawl and heavy exposition means a piece of media is trying to do too much. I also don't find a scrawl and a bunch of exposition makes Blade Runner unwieldy. It just strikes me as a weird knock against this thing. 

While I'm at it, I've seen a lot of talk about how Marvel should have learned from their success of building out the Avengers over time when people knock this movie. But it's not like there haven't been plenty of movies over time that successfully introduce a team of new characters in a new world and tell a two-ish hour story to relative critical and commercial success. It's fairly common. In this franchise alone, GotG is right there doing just that and covering a lot of new worlds and information and doing so quite winningly. If this movie fails in some ways, I don't think it's fair to suggest introducing too many characters and teaming them up too quickly is one of this film's chief failings. The larger arc of Marvel mega events is an exception to how things are normally done, not the rule.

Thanks for the points though. 

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To be fair, I think the Eternals were probably as clueless as everyone else as to what was going on. The main fight of Infinity War took place in Wakanda and that place is pretty off the map. Unless you knew, then you weren't going to be there. They obviously got clued in to what happened after the fact when 1/2 the population of the universe disappeared. Now why they didn't help in San Francisco during Endgame, I don't know.

It also makes me wonder how not one Eternal on Earth got blipped. That's astoundingly good luck.

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4 minutes ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Do we know of any other robots that got blipped? 

They are living beings. The robots line from Kingo seemed like a flippant way to describe what they are, but they're still living, breathing beings. It's not like they're all Visions or Ultrons.

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7 minutes ago, Craig H said:

They are living beings. The robots line from Kingo seemed like a flippant way to describe what they are, but they're still living, breathing beings. It's not like they're all Visions or Ultrons.

When Sersi is being introduced to the concept that they'd been "built" and "programmed" as "synthetic beings," Sersi concludes that they'd never been "alive." Can't recall if anything else contradicted that, but maybe.

Certainly more sophisticated and advanced than Vision or Ultron though. 

Edited by John from Cincinnati
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24 minutes ago, Craig H said:

To be fair, I think the Eternals were probably as clueless as everyone else as to what was going on.

You could probably say that about every Eternal except for Ajak since she could commune directly with Arashem.  If Arashem had no idea what Thanos was up to, he'd be the dumbest cosmically aware entity ever.

As to why didn't Arashem have the Eternals stop Thanos, what would it matter?  The Celestials could've probably afforded to wait out the effects of the Snap given that it could never be repeated and if the Avengers somehow reverse the Snap, then the ascension of Tiamat and other Celestials happens on schedule.

Edited by J.T.
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I'm more wondering if Arahsem was growing a Celestial on Earth, why was he fine with Ego's little seeding Earth himself (and almost winning that)?  And Thanos' snapping would've fucked all the Celestial's growning, not just Tiamat. And is(or, I mean, um, was) Thanos still an Eternal-Deviant hybrid and Eros a straight Eternal?  That wouldn't make them immune from the Infinity Stones (as seen by Thanos getting snapped himself).  

 

34 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Now why they didn't help in San Francisco during Endgame, I don't know.

Endgame's final battle was in Upstate New York(Esopus, NY, to be exact by establishing shots).

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38 minutes ago, Raziel said:

I'm more wondering if Arahsem was growing a Celestial on Earth, why was he fine with Ego's little seeding Earth himself (and almost winning that)? 

IIRC MCU Ego was an aberrant Celestial that kept manifesting his consciousness on new worlds when he drained the previous host world of resources. 

Either Arashem figured that one Celestial hijacking Earth and ascending was as good as another, or maybe Arshem knew that Tiamat's seed would eventually consume Ego since Ego is a planet sized living creature and Tiamat would ascend anyway, or (thanks to what we have learned from Loki) the TSA worked behind the scenes to help the Guardians win and keep the Golden Timeline singular.

This is the stuff I hate about comic book multiverse settings.  Too many variables.

38 minutes ago, Raziel said:

 And Thanos' snapping would've fucked all the Celestial's growning, not just Tiamat.

It would only delay the process and the Celestials being cosmic beings could probably wait for thousands of years for the galactic population to recover.  The Infinity Gauntlet was destroyed during the initial Snap, so it's not like Thanos's plan permanently screwed over future ascensions.

But the Avengers fucked up Thanos's plan and brought everyone back, so Tiamat's ascension was back on schedule.

Edited by J.T.
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On 1/18/2022 at 11:28 AM, Matt D said:

Sersi and Ikarus having no chemistry is a feature and not a bug.

You'd have chemistry issues too if you were apart from each other for 700 years. Just saying.

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On 1/18/2022 at 12:57 PM, J.T. said:

IIRC MCU Ego was an aberrant Celestial that kept manifesting his consciousness on new worlds when he drained the previous host world of resources. 

Either Arashem figured that one Celestial hijacking Earth and ascending was as good as another, or maybe Arshem knew that Tiamat's seed would eventually consume Ego since Ego is a planet sized living creature and Tiamat would ascend anyway, or (thanks to what we have learned from Loki) the TSA worked behind the scenes to help the Guardians win and keep the Golden Timeline singular.

This is the stuff I hate about comic book multiverse settings.  Too many variables.

It would only delay the process and the Celestials being cosmic beings could probably wait for thousands of years for the galactic population to recover.  The Infinity Gauntlet was destroyed during the initial Snap, so it's not like Thanos's plan permanently screwed over future ascensions.

But the Avengers fucked up Thanos's plan and brought everyone back, so Tiamat's ascension was back on schedule.

The movies thought too small. Eliminating half of all life was Thanos' first act in Infinity Gauntlet. Then he started tangling with all the cosmic entities next and handed their rears to them as well.

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