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Director Chloé Zhao applies her distinctive aesthetic imprint to “Eternals,” but she can only do so much to bend the Marvel Cinematic Universe to her will. The result is a blockbuster of unusual gentle beauty that also strains to fulfill the gargantuan requirements of a massive action spectacle.

It is, in short, a bit of a mess. It is also—and I cannot stress this enough—2 hours and 37 minutes long. And yet because the talented, eclectic cast is so enormous and so much world-building must occur, “Eternals” ultimately feels rushed and unsatisfying. The mythology here is both dense and frequently silly, with the movie grinding to a halt around the one-hour mark for an extensive information dump. By the end, you may still be unclear as to what’s going on, but you also may not care.

Zhao, the newly minted Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Director for the spare and intimate “ Nomadland ,” does offer a great deal of her signature style, though. For those of you who found the choice of Zhao a fascinating one and wondered what her version of the MCU might look like, you’ll be happy to learn she manages to find magic hour wherever she goes, from a breezy sunset on the shores of ancient Babylon to ominous storm clouds gathering on the plains of present-day South Dakota. Working with cinematographer Ben Davis , who also shot “ Guardians of the Galaxy ,” “ Doctor Strange ,” and “ Captain Marvel ,” she consistently provides opportunities to let us slow down, take a breath, and enjoy a moment of naturalism and stillness. You can feel the sunbaked heat of the windy Australian outback. An action scene set in a torch-lit forest at night is especially stunning.

Unfortunately, they don’t last long. Because there is a big, noisy comic book beast to feed.

Zhao and her fellow screenwriters Patrick Burleigh and Ryan Firpo & Kaz Firpo lurch around in time in an ungainly fashion to tell the story of a group of immortal beings living secretly on Earth. Each has his or her own specific abilities but, collectively, they share the quippy humor that’s become so typical in Marvel movies. The casting and characteristics on display here are revolutionary and, at first, cause for inspiration that we might be in for something totally different. There’s a natural diversity at work in ways we haven’t seen from the Avengers, for example. From the leadership of Salma Hayek ’s Ajak and Gemma Chan ’s Sersi to Brian Tyree Henry and Haaz Sleiman as a gay couple with a young son to Lauren Ridloff ’s Makkari, whose hearing impairment is her superpower—the inclusive nature of “Eternals” feels both exciting and effortless. Angelina Jolie ’s Thena is a ferocious warrior who also suffers from mental illness, which the film handles sensitively. Conversely, Lia McHugh livens things up as the androgynous, forever-young Sprite.

Perhaps most striking of all, two characters have actual sex, which is unprecedented and long overdue in a cinematic world where everyone is super-hot and muscular and dressed in form-fitting costumes. The scene is brief, but it accomplishes so much to indicate a deeper and more vulnerable sense of humanity in these comic book figures. Tony Stark and Pepper Potts probably did it. Clint Barton definitely did because he had kids. But most other romantic relationships have featured benign flirting at most, so to see these characters behaving like grown people in this manner is yet another example of the potential lurking within “Eternals.”  

There is also a plot, however, which will escape your mind as quickly as it entered. Briefly, the Eternals have scattered across the globe in the centuries since they arrived on Earth in a spaceship that resembles a behemoth, black marble Dorito. All along, they’ve been stealthily guiding humanity and fighting ravenous, sinewy monsters known as Deviants. But a potentially cataclysmic event forces them to leave the comfortable lives they’ve forged for themselves, reassemble (if you’ll forgive the word choice) and use their combined superpowers to stop what is essentially the apocalypse. Again! You don’t need to be deeply steeped in Marvel lore in general or Jack Kirby ’s trippy comic series specifically to follow “Eternals”; aside from a brief reference to Thanos, and why these heroes didn’t step in to stop the events of “ Avengers: Infinity War ,” this feels more like a standalone film than most in the MCU. Having said that, of course you’ll get more out of the movie if you’re a fan, and the obligatory end-credit sequences will mean more to you, too.

Chan’s Sersi, with her transmutational abilities, and Richard Madden ’s Ikaris, a versatile, Superman-type figure prominently as centuries-old, on-and-off-again lovers. Charismatic as Madden is, though, Chan enjoys greater sparks with Kit Harington as her mortal, London-based boyfriend, Dane Whitman, who shares Sersi’s interest in archaeology. Whatever emotional stakes may exist between any of these characters eventually take a back seat to flying around and zapping monsters with eye lasers. You can feel the struggle in trying to juggle it all. And the climactic action extravaganza is so glossy and cacophonous, it could have been plucked out of any number of soulless, sci-fi spectacles over the past decade, smothering all the smaller charms we’d enjoyed along the way.

A newly buff Kumail Nanjiani offers some laughs as a pompous Bollywood star, Don Lee provides a kind presence despite his hulking power, and Barry Keoghan merely has to show up to make us feel his unnerving vibe. All of these actors prove they’re up for the challenge of trying to establish complicated characters within the frenzy of the MCU machinery. Frustratingly, they—and Zhao—can only serve as cogs.

Only in theaters on November 5th.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Eternals (2021)

Rated PG-13 for fantasy violence and action, some language and brief sexuality.

157 minutes

Gemma Chan as Sersi

Richard Madden as Ikaris

Angelina Jolie as Thena

Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo

Lia McHugh as Sprite

Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos

Lauren Ridloff as Makkari

Barry Keoghan as Druig

Ma Dong-Seok as Gilgamesh

Salma Hayek as Ajak

Kit Harington as Dane Whitman

Bill Skarsgård as Kro (voice)

Harish Patel as Karun

Writer (based on the Marvel comics by)

Writer (story by).

• Patrick Burleigh

Cinematographer

• Dylan Tichenor
• Rawin Djawadi

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Chloe zhao’s ‘eternals’: film review.

Jack Kirby’s 1976 comic about humanoid defenders of Earth births a new chapter for the MCU, with an ensemble featuring Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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It was probably unrealistic to expect Chloé Zhao, independent film’s foremost spiritual chronicler of the American West and an Oscar winner for Nomadland , to completely reinvent the superhero movie. Nevertheless, Eternals does bend the ubiquitous fantasy genre to some degree to fit the director’s customary vein of humanistic intimacy measured against an expansive natural-world canvas. The attention to character, group dynamics and emotional texture makes the film often feel more alive in its quieter moments than its fairly routine CG action clashes. But the depth of feeling helps counter the choppy storytelling in this new tangent in the MCU narrative.

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New, of course, is a relative term given the amount of cross-referencing that’s now a requirement of most Marvel movies and TV series. While the Eternals — defenders of Earth from a faraway planet who have lived among humanity for millennia — are a fresh crew, they drop repeated references about the chaos wrought by Thanos when he erased half of all life across the universe (in Avengers: Infinity War ) and question who will lead the Avengers moving forward. Some overlap seems inevitable.

Release date : Friday, Nov. 5 Cast : Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie Director : Chloé Zhao Screenwriters : Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo; screen story by Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo, based on the Marvel Comics by Jack Kirby

Two post-credits teaser scenes reportedly hinting at the direction of future installments were chopped off the end of the film’s first New York press screening. (Thanks for the trust, Disney.) But word leaked from the Los Angeles premiere the same day about one in particular, which had fans hyperventilating in rage or excitement — or both — about the casting of a pop culture heartthrob as the junior sibling of an MCU supervillain.

Further clues for Marvel Comics aficionados as to how ongoing plotlines will develop come from the name of seemingly human bystander Dane Whitman (Kit Harington), who drops vague hints in the final scene that there’s more to him than meets the eye.

In a first taste of the movie’s tendency to dump exposition by the bucketload, an opening crawl traces the Eternals back to the dawn of time, when the immortal beings from the planet Olympia were sent to Earth by the Celestials to protect humanity and civilization against marauding alien apex predators known as Deviants. Those dragon-like monsters are first seen emerging at startling speed from the waters of Mesopotamia in 5000 B.C., attacking a prehistoric tribe with their massive jaws and lance-like tendrils, until the Eternals swoop in to save them.

Jumping ahead to the present day, we learn that the Deviant threat was defeated centuries earlier. The Eternals disbanded their once-tightknit family and went their separate ways, some integrating harmoniously with humans, some seeking solitude or pairing off in isolation, and others chafing at the rules that prevent them from using their powers to intervene in mankind’s conflicts.

One of the most content of the Eternals to live among humans is Sersi ( Gemma Chan ), an ancient artifacts specialist at London’s Natural History Museum, who keeps her co-worker boyfriend, Dane, in the dark about the transmutation powers that enable her to convert matter by touch. She also serves as a surrogate big sister to Sprite (Lia McHugh), a 7,000-year-old storyteller with the power to conjure illusions, unhappily trapped in the body of a preteen punkette.

Part of Sersi’s resistance to taking her romance with Dane to the next level seems to be due to an on-off history with Ikaris ( Richard Madden ) that spans centuries. A fighter endowed with the power of flight and eyes that shoot destroyer beams, Ikaris appears conveniently just as a global earthquake reawakens the Deviants. Emerging out of the canal at Camden Lock, the monsters this time appear to be directly targeting Eternals, not humans, their lethality magnified by a newfound ability to heal themselves.

The script by Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo and Kaz Firpo uses the comic introduced in 1976 by Jack Kirby only as a baseline, creating its own world imbued with a contemporary sensibility. There are a lot of lurching shifts, both geographical and temporal, before the band of 10 distinctly drawn Eternals and their respective powers come into focus, loosely split between fighters and thinkers.

The diversity of the principals that was already apparent in advance marketing is even more notable in the film itself. Not only do Black, Latina, and East and South Asian characters get to don the latex suits, but representation extends also to queer and deaf Eternals. Not to mention the witchy other-worldliness of Angelina Jolie . It’s to the credit of Zhao and her appealing ensemble that this mix actually feels organic to the story and not merely like woke pandering. It also fits with the key element lifted from Kirby, the Uni-Mind, which allows the Eternals to overcome their differences and consolidate their power into one mighty collective force.

The matriarch of the group is Ajak ( Salma Hayek ), a spiritual guide who’s been chilling, cowgirl-style, in the sleepy hills of South Dakota when the Deviant reemergence calls for the band to get back together. Ajak can generate a golden sphere that allows her to communicate directly with their Celestial maker, Arishem (voiced by David Kaye). But neither the origin story nor the details of their purpose on Earth have been truthfully conveyed to the Eternals, creating ambivalence from some about the mission that reunites them after centuries apart.

While the zigzagging convolutions of the storytelling can prove frustrating, particularly in the film’s lumpy first half, there’s plenty to keep you engaged in the mix of camaraderie, friction and rivalry among the bantering Eternals, who are not without vulnerabilities. The script finds humor and poignancy in the challenges of a group of soldiers forced to find their purpose in a mortal world that for the longest time has not required their special skills.

The most amusing comic relief comes from Kingo ( Kumail Nanjiani ), who can mold firebombs to hurl in battle with his bare hands but has spent the years becoming a one-man Bollywood dynasty. Working his eyebrows like the cheesiest of matinee idols, Nanjiani is clearly having a blast playing an endearingly vain character, trailed with fawning loyalty by his human valet and videographer, Karun (Harish Patel). The mentions of Kingo’s blockbuster Shadow Warrior screen franchise almost demand a spinoff series.

Others are more burdened by their cosmic gifts. Sullen Druig (Barry Keoghan) has retreated into the Amazonian jungle, embittered by humanity’s self-destructive nature and by the veto on him using his mind-control powers to end their cycle of violence. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), a deaf speedster, is bored and restless with her exile on Earth. And techno-savant inventor Phastos ( Brian Tyree Henry ), troubled by the role his developments have played in human tragedy, has sought comfort in domestic stability. The matter-of-fact presentation of a loving gay family represents a breakthrough for Marvel.

Jolie’s Thena, a warrior able to generate and morph filigreed golden swords and spears at will, suffers from a form of dementia known as Mahd Wy’ry, a kind of memory overload that makes her a danger to her companions. That yields a touching bond with jovial strongman Gilgamesh (Don Lee), who signs on as her protector, keeping her away from harm in the Australian Outback. But the key relationship is in the romantic crossed wires of Ikaris, Sersi and Sprite, who stand in for Peter, Wendy and Tinkerbell in a Peter Pan scenario that eventually puts them on opposing sides of a divide.

Zhao seems more invested in this emotional interplay than the many battle scenes, which take place everywhere from the Aztec empire to the Amazon. The clashes are efficiently choreographed but somewhat rote, even if it’s a thrill to see relative elders like Jolie and Lee busting serious moves — the former with balletic grace, the latter like a brick wall in motion. The muted excitement of the fight scenes is perhaps due in part to the antagonists being interchangeable CG monsters, random creepy-crawly destroyers rather than the foot soldiers of a compelling villain.

That said, the Eternals’ ability to generate gold geometrical force fields and weaponry delivers some cool effects work, at times suggesting the intricate beauty of art nouveau draftsmanship with hints of M.C. Escher.

Overall, the film benefits enormously in terms of texture from the wide-ranging location work, with the majority of settings simulated in various parts of the U.K. and the Canary Islands. Those include the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Babylon, Tenochtitlan and the Gupta Empire, impressively re-created by production designer Eve Stewart, as well as stops in modern-day London, Alaska, Mumbai and Australia, among others.

The visuals have an epic scope that renders the Eternals, for all their superhuman powers, inhabitants of a recognizable world, scarcely different from the mortals among whom they hide in plain sight. The action generally is staged against physically imposing settings without relying too much on greenscreen trickery, a choice validated by Ben Davis’ sweeping naturalistic cinematography, which gives the film a less synthetic look than the average MCU joint.

For those of us growing “mad weary” with superhero fatigue, there’s no escaping the usual drawbacks of a prolix run time, a dense overabundance of plot and the narrative limitations inherent in the formula. For all the millions of fans who keep the MCU industrial machine humming, there are millions more who just can’t get too worked up about folks in fancy athleisure wear facing off against mutant lobsters penciled in by digital animators.

But from the early image of Sersi emerging from a London Underground station at Piccadilly Circus to the dreamy strains of Pink Floyd’s “Time,” the soulfulness, the contemplative weight of Zhao’s vision at least puts this among the more interesting and original entries in the ever-expanding canon.

Full credits

Production company: Marvel Studios Distribution: Disney Cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Harish Patel, Haaz Sleiman, Esai Daniel Cross. David Kaye Director: Chloé Zhao Screenwriters: Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo; screen story by Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo, based on the Marvel Comics by Jack Kirby Producers: Kevin Feige, Nate Moore Executive producers: Louis D’ Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Kevin de la Noy Director of photography: Ben Davis Production designer: Eve Stewart Costume designer: Sammy Sheldon Differ Music: Ramin Djawadi Editors: Craig Wood, Dylan Tichenor Visual effects supervisor: Stephane Ceretti Visual effects producer: Susan Pickett Special effects supervisor: Neil Corbould Casting: Sarah Halley Finn

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Eternals Reviews

Chloé Zhao is an incredibly talented filmmaker who is responsible for some of the best films of the last decade. Eternals is sadly not one of them.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2024

Eternals the movie suffers from the same thing The Eternals comic did — it focuses more on a concept than it does on characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Oct 16, 2023

The Eternals is a jumbled mess because it has to include the origin story plus detail the long lives of the 10 major characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 10, 2023

Chloé Zhao‘s Eternals is Marvel’s most philosophical film to date, teaching us about evolution, humanity, love, and the nature of good and evil.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2023

Chloe Zhao’s Eternals is a triumphant! A slow burning story that was epic in nature, beautiful in character development, & Brutal when in its action scenes. So many thoughts, so much ambition, but truly something that the MCU hasn’t seen yet.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Eternals has its moments but its massive scale never allows the characters to live in their world.

Chloé Zhao still follows some of Marvel's success formulas, but her unique style brings new attributes to the cinematic universe, such as the distinctly gorgeous cinematography and the profound themes of faith and humanity.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 25, 2023

There are plenty of good ideas here, singular moments to love and appreciate. But at the end of the day, the writing for Eternals trips itself up.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2023

Ultimately, Eternals is a superhero movie for people who don’t like the usual superhero fare. It’s far more concerned with grand emotions and the thin line between hero and god than it is with quippy one-liners and over-the-top action.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

As a whole, it’s somewhere in the middle; and I hope it’s not the last time Marvel allows a prestigious director to take a shot in the MCU and give a bold take on the formula, flaws and all.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Feb 13, 2023

We've seen lots of heroes fight for revenge, duty, honor, glory or adventure, but rarely love which is a prime motivating force for all of us.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 6, 2023

The narrative is simultaneously too large and too small. With personal relationships defining the narrative of a cosmos spanning opera ... As far as MCU goes though this isn't a terrible direction for them to explore.

Full Review | Original Score: 50/100 | Nov 18, 2022

[Chloé Zhao’s] Marvel debut is the opposite of anything she’s ever done — she has created something stale, repetitious, and heavy-handed. I’m sorry to say Eternals is a massive disappointment.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 21, 2022

The result is a beautiful look into the joys and sorrows of humanity that also doubles as an entry point into some of Marvel’s stranger cosmic storytelling.

Full Review | Aug 17, 2022

I couldn’t help but think of how it would have fared better as a Disney+ streaming series. There’s very little here that screams big screen movie, and giving the characters and their stories more room to develop would have helped tremendously.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Eternals is a jam-packed, ambitious and oddly imperfect addition to the Marvelverse.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Eternals may be one of the weakest Marvel movies yet, but there is still enough to enjoy as it propels us into a new and uncertain future for the franchise.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 18, 2022

Chloé Zhao tries to shove a sappy essay on the virtues of mankind and the value of loving humanity despite its flaws into a lackluster superhero journey of ten vapid characters who spend the entire film disproving her theory.

Full Review | Original Score: F | Apr 12, 2022

ETERNALS is love! Chloé Zhao has created such a beautiful film. Her superheroes are awe-inspiring supernatural beings and at the same time so deeply human.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Mar 15, 2022

We have to wonder what kind of movie Zhao would have made left to her own devices. We suspect it would have less CGI monsters and more ruminations on character, immortality and watching humanity evolve.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 13, 2022

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Pop Culture Happy Hour

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'Eternals': A Marvel movie for everyone who complains about Marvel movies

Glen Weldon

Ikaris (Richard Madden) and Sersi (Gemma Chan) in Eternals . Sophie Mutevelian/Marvel Studios hide caption

Ikaris (Richard Madden) and Sersi (Gemma Chan) in Eternals .

Eternals is the latest film belonging to that great, teeming, not-so-riotous achievement in cross-platform multi-vertical corporate synergy/narrative cat-herding known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

You perhaps read the above and rolled your eyes. Maybe you muttered something unkind under your breath as well. If you didn't, you assuredly know someone who did. That's just simple statistics: Superhero films have become our cultural furniture; they're the steady, unceasing hiss of universal background radiation none of us can escape.

And today, with the debut of every new film and television show, more and more prospective audience members find themselves aching to escape, to rid themselves forever of these children's characters and their microweave pajamas and their hypertrophic musculature and their too-tidy, infantilizing morality tales.

It's not a backlash, really, because backlash suggests a reflexive reaction driven by a sudden, overwhelming need to reject, to force out, to detoxify. What some critics and audiences are manifesting now, as they find themselves wading clavicle-deep through whatever particular numbered MCU Phase we find ourselves in, is something softer and sadder — a weariness bred by familiarity.

So it's strangely fitting that Eternals , the latest MCU film, should take as its organizing principle that selfsame feeling of fatigue — the sort engendered by long years of observation, and the creeping sense that you're seeing the same stories play themselves out, over and over.

The only difference, of course, is that in the film, it's not we, the moviegoing audience, who are weighted down by that weariness, but instead a fractious, ten-member family of immortal and impossibly hot aliens who zap sinewy space-lizards with their eye-beams and finger-lasers and magic swords made out of gold filigree.

... Tom ay to, tom ah to, really.

Karun (Harish Patel), Gilgamesh (Don Lee) and Sersi (Gemma Chan). Sophie Mutevelian/Marvel Studios hide caption

Karun (Harish Patel), Gilgamesh (Don Lee) and Sersi (Gemma Chan).

How Eternals engages with the top 10 go-to MCU complaints

Even the weariest anti-Marvel zombie among us can stipulate that the studio's hiring of Chloe Zhao to direct and co-write their latest film was surprising. Zhao's previous movies ( Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider, Nomadland ) are intimate meditations about laconic outsiders and the insular communities they find as they try to secure for themselves a lasting emotional purchase, set against the vast expanses of the American West. They're imagistic, elliptical and character-driven ( don't say tone-poems don't say tone-poems don't say tone-poems ) odes to both human frailty and the immutability of the natural world. As a director, she'd rather frame a flinty face in golden-hour light and let her audience impute the thoughts and feelings roiling beneath its surface than fill her scripts with dialogue that lays it all bare.

And given all of that, Marvel still said, "Great, got it, good, let's hand her a plot choked in 7,000 years of backstory and a CGI budget Michael Bay would chew his own leg off for. Greenlit!"

You'd be forgiven for assuming that Zhao's directorial presence would get buried, caught up in the gears of the MCU machine and ground into the same uniformly fine powder that gets baked into every Marvel movie.

And it does get ground up, to a certain extent. But not entirely. And as a result, the film pushes back against the usual complaints offered up by those who harbor a performative disdain for Marvel's cinematic output. Let's take them one at a time:

1. Marvel movies are formulaic, anodyne, made-by-committee

Eternals doesn't follow the usual formula — or at least, the narrative formula it does follow is one of those weird, abstract, unsolvable equations. The film utterly lacks the familiar superhero-movie feeling of plot threads neatly tying themselves up, of Chekhov's gun finally discharging, of moments foreshadowed in the opening minutes landing at the climax with the satisfying whump of a car door closing.

Zhao's penchant for abstraction and nuance manifests in a host of ways: The lines the film draws between its heroes and villains shift in ways that are, in the MCU at least, novel and intriguing. The plot, such as it is, doesn't churn ahead like an engine that has been tooled, lubricated and filed down for four-quadrant success. No, it sputters, stalls and jerks forward. Yes, there are big fight scenes — many, in fact — but they're dealt with like the lima beans you have to finish to get to the dessert Zhao truly cares about: Talking, feeling, and — especially — talking about feelings.

In the context of the MCU, then, Eternals is weird .

2. Marvel movies depend too much on backstory laid out in too many previous films for audiences to keep track of, if they hope to understand what the hell is going on

Not true here! The story of Eternals exists alongside the history (the pre-history, technically) and events of the previous MCU films. In a nutshell:

The Eternals are a group of ten immortals who were sent to Earth 7,000 years ago by an immense, all-powerful being — a Celestial, in Marvel parlance — called Arishem. They are tasked with protecting Earth — but only from one very specific enemy, a race of giant dogs/small dragons called Deviants, whose flesh is composed of greyish ropes that give them the look of cornhusk dolls from Hell. (They ... do look kind of goofy, it has to be said.)

At first, the Eternals walked among humans, imparting their wisdom and offering protection via the unique abilities divided among them, including laser-eyes, super-speed, energy-fists, magic swords, mind-control, finger-rays, illusion, matter-transformation, healing, and uh ... engineering. (It's better if you don't question things at this early stage; just roll with it for now.)

Thousands of years ago, when the Deviants were finally destroyed, the Eternals expected to be summoned home. They weren't. So for much of human history, they've attempted to go underground, and contented themselves to watch as we puny humans descend into war and greed and hatred and not curbing our dogs or re-racking our dumbbells, etc. Some Eternals became disgusted by humanity's endless, cyclical penchant for destruction, others admired our resourcefulness. All of them, however, grew weary of their mission, and of us, and of each other; most have retreated from any interaction for centuries at a time. And all the while, they've held to their oath not to intervene in human history, lest we, their charges, grow dependent on them, and stop evolving.

That's the setup. Note how completely divorced that whole ennui-of-immortality theme is from issues like where the glowing MacGuffin-du-jour might be found, or how a dimensional portal filled with space-eels might open up, or whatever the hell the Quantumverse might be. Familiar heroes get name checked, yes, as do events like the Snapture (which MCU characters continue to refer to as the Blip, because they are unimaginative and super basic). But mostly, the movie cordons off its characters and leaves them to deal with their interfamilial squabbles.

Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Karun (Harish Patel), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Sprite (Lia McHugh), and Sersi (Gemma Chan). Sophie Mutevelian/Marvel Studios hide caption

Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Karun (Harish Patel), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Sprite (Lia McHugh), and Sersi (Gemma Chan).

3. Marvel movies are ugly-looking films that descend into dark, muddy, incoherent CGI slug-fests in the final reel

Eternals ' cinematography is where's Zhao's directorial voice is most strongly and clearly felt. She bathes scene after scene in the last rays of sunsets, and places her characters small in the frame so they get dwarfed by the vast landscapes of a desert oasis, a volcanic island, or the American prairie.

She insisted on shooting in real-world locations, and it turns out you can tell the difference between a windswept beach in the Canary Islands, say, and some vast Atlanta soundstage covered in green screen. It's easily the most gorgeous MCU film to date, and the stark, lonely beauty of the places she captures can't help but color the mood of the film, gently underscoring the loneliness of immortal life, and the desire to retreat from the noise of humanity.

There's a climactic big battle, of course, but it mostly plays out in the bright light of day, on a beautiful white-sand shoreline, so while what actually happens during the big fight may get pretty silly, and may involve characters exclaiming dippy nonsense like "Uni-Mind!," you'll at least be able to follow it all without squinting.

4. Marvel movies are emotionally arid and aromantic, with a pre-adolescent disdain of intimacy. (Read: Why don't these insanely hot people ever bone?)

We get some hot — well, lukewarm — PG-13 boning! We get a tender, romantic same-sex kiss!

We, uh, also get an adolescent who romantically longs for an adult, and even if we're quick to slap an asterisk on it, (they're both immortal), it's still pretty disquieting.

5. I don't know or care about these Marvel movie characters

Guess what! Nobody does!*

*Okay, somebody does. You can probably find a nerd out there eager to lecture you on the difference in power-sets between Sersi and Ajak, but none of these characters have made their way off of the comics page and into the cultural ether in any meaningful way.

We're in Guardians of the Galaxy territory, here. You're dealing with a blank slate, effectively, and everyone else is going in as blind as you are, which means the film has to set up ten different heroes, their powers, their personalities, and their respective interpersonal relationships, from scratch.

It's a tall order, and the film makes a yeomanlike effort. Team leader Ajak (Salma Hayek) offers motherly concern, handsome Ikaris (Richard Madden) flexes his jaw muscles, vain Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) provides desperately-needed jokes, Gilgamesh (Don Lee) is soulful and protective of Thena (Angelina Jolie), who keep going full ham on her own family, and Sersi (Gemma Chan), Eternals ' central protagonist, radiates compassion and, later on, worry.

Zhao has never directed a cast this large, or one as studded with celebrities, and if the various acting styles on display fail to cohere, they do manage to complement each other. (Barry Keoghan's marble-mouthed Druig, for example, clashes frequently with his super-siblings, but then: He would.)

She's also dealing with a phenomenon unique to the MCU: Whenever an established, charismatic screen presence like Jolie plays in the Marvel sandbox, it can seem awkward, like when you're a kid playing with action figures in your bedroom and out of nowhere one of your parents sits down and starts playing too.*

*This is known as the Secretary Pierce Phenomenon, named for that time in Captain America: The Winter Soldier when Robert Freaking Redford said "Hail, Hydra." Just, like, out loud. As if "Hail, Hydra" was an actual line that Robert Redford might say.

You might have noticed that many of the Eternals' names — Gilgamesh, Thena, Ikaris, and also Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) — resemble names from ancient myths. That's fully intentional, and one of Eternals' coolest ideas: That these ten characters inspired our myths and legends. The film plays with this notion just enough, without letting it bog down the present-day action.

Gemma Chan and director Chloé Zhao on the set of Eternals . Sophie Mutevelian/Marvel Studios hide caption

Gemma Chan and director Chloé Zhao on the set of Eternals .

6. Marvel movies have too much exposition

No, yeah, that's true here, as well. It couldn't help to be, really, given that we're introducing ten new characters with thousands of years of history, and a whole new set of conflicts previous films haven't even hinted at.

For the first time in MCU history, we get an opening scroll that tosses off lots of proper nouns — weird names and capitalized terms and historical events. The film stops dead, from time to time, for beautiful people to debate the fate of the planet and their respective roles in it.

But even here, Zhao's hand can be detected. She's careful to tie those discussions to each character's current emotional state, because the Eternals are a family, and they each see their mission slightly differently. Those differences breed both alliances and conflicts. Thus, the choices these characters eventually make are driven by their personal beliefs, not simply the demands of the (really pretty silly) plot which, yes, does happen to involve a ticking clock, why do you ask?

7. The stakes in Marvel movies are so uniformly desperate and dire — "We have to save the universe! Again!" — that there are effectively no stakes at all

See point one, above, in re: talking about feelings .

Yes, the Earth is doomed. It's an MCU movie, that comes factory pre-installed.

But Eternals ' squabbling-family dynamic means that the film foregrounds the kind of emotional stakes that will be familiar to anyone whose ever sat through a Thanksgiving dinner. These characters hold grudges and nurse simmering resentments over centuries, they argue and entreat with each other, they goad and snipe and reconcile.

Which means the film's story — which features significantly more reveals and reversals than is typical of the MCU, and a twist you might not see coming — feels more intimate, more personal, and admits more shades of gray into the proceedings than you're likely expecting in a film featuring characters shouting things like "Uni-Mind!"

Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Sprite (Lia McHugh). Sophie Mutevelian/Marvel Studios hide caption

Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Sprite (Lia McHugh).

8. Marvel movies feature wall-to-wall glib, jokey banter that undercuts any tension, and makes every exchange between the characters feel like it's been punched up by the same six comedians in some Burbank writers room

Not a looming issue here! Really not!

Kind of wish it was, though!

Most of the Eternals are earnest and open-hearted; they say exactly what's on their minds, all the time. And as mentioned, this is one talky film, and most of the time, the talk in question centers on how someone's feeling, or recently felt, or is about to feel.

Which makes the two shining exceptions to this rule — Nanjiani's Kingo and Henry's Phastos, both of whom come outfitted with the standard MCU Sardonic Quip Package TM we've come to expect — seem like snarky water in a vast, parched, achingly sincere desert.

9. Marvel movies are predictable. The good guys win, the world gets saved. Lather, rinse, repeat

This is where the decision to futz with the formula by introducing so many new characters works in the film's favor. Not every Eternal will make it through to the credits, and their various allegiances to each other will undergo a series of changes.

News flash: No, the Earth doesn't end, but the life the Eternals have known for 7,000 years (and that we have known for 2 hours and 37 minutes, which can seem like 7,000 years if you haven't managed your fluid intake) does come to an end.

10. Marvel movies are for children and childish adults, and they have crowded out movies for real adults

Chloe Zhao makes the kind of movies you're talking about. She won two Academy Awards for her last one. She will make serious bank on this Marvel movie, which she has managed to infuse with her sensibility, despite a massive corporate infrastructure engineered to maintain a uniformity of output that keeps directors like her from doing exactly that.

She will take the money and the clout she made from this film and go on to make movies to your liking, having added to her skillset the successful negotiation of impossibly massive global logistics involved in MCU filmmaking, That won't make her a better director, of course, but it will make her a uniquely experienced one — and, not for nothing, a director able to choose her next project.

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Eternals review – magic hour meets PowerPoint in Chloe Zhao’s Marvel yarn

The Nomadland director manages to get some nice-looking shots and personal drama in her superhero debut, but there’s just too much mythology to explain

T he Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it is but a provincial backwater compared to the colossal scope of this latest addition, which covers such vast expanses of space and time that squeezing it all into one movie is almost a scientific breakthrough in itself. Everything about Eternals is huge, which is both its strength and its weakness. In terms of visual spectacle, it gives us cosmic vistas that would not look out of place on a prog-rock album cover or a documentary about the Big Bang. The story spans the entire globe and the entirety of human civilisation, from Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from the Australian outback to ancient Babylon, with innumerable CGI-heavy set pieces along the way. Sitting through the endless credits (which many will do to catch the very last bonus scene) you get the impression every VFX artist in the world was employed in making this. Some of their work is agreeably bizarre; some, it must be said, is downright terrible.

Along with the epic scope comes an equally huge, and refreshingly diverse, cast of characters; these include Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie , Salma Hayek and Kumail Nanjiani. There is also an epic mythology to get our heads around: even before a line of dialogue is spoken, three dense paragraphs of text explain how our 10 Eternals came to earth to protect it from the predatory Deviants (sort of skinless, sinewy beasts with prehensile tentacles) at the behest of Arishem, “the Prime Celestial”. If you’re lost already, bad luck: there’s plenty more to come, which demands some planet-sized chunks of exposition. At times if feels like you are watching a very sophisticated PowerPoint presentation.

The Eternals have superpowers: Madden’s alpha-Eternal Ikaris can fly and shoots beams from his eyes, Jolie’s Thena fights with magic weapons, Lauren Ridloff’s Makkari is super-fast, and so on. But they are less your standard-issue Marvel superheroes than immortal, indestructible gods, who have been living among us incognito for the past 7,000 years. “Why didn’t you help fight Thanos?” one ordinary human reasonably asks. Eternals can only intervene when Deviants are involved, they say. Like the Wakandans in Black Panther, the Eternals are divided over how to apply their superiority. Power, responsibility, loyalty and unity are overriding themes. But there are very few moments when these immortals actually come into contact with humans, which makes their plight feel somewhat abstract. It’s only when the Eternals’ own fates are jeopardised that they really take an interest in saving us little people. To reveal more would be spoiling the plot’s surprises, and would require explaining terms such as “the Emergence”, “the Mahd Wy’ry” and “the Uni-Mind”.

It’s certainly… different. One of Eternals’ biggest surprises is its director: Chloé Zhao , who won two Oscars earlier this year for Nomadland, her lyrical, semi-documentary survey of America in the here and now. There are superficial aesthetic similarities – a lot of magic-hour sunset scenes – but the two films could not be more different. The trademark of Zhao’s previous work was their intimacy and realism. Eternals is a gigantic exercise in un-realism.

Zhao at least manages to ground the story in some personal drama. The film’s emotional centre is Chan’s matter-transforming Sersi who must reassemble the Eternals in the face of a new threat, although she’s still smarting from her recent break-up with Madden’s Ikaris. (By “recent”, we’re talking 2000 years ago.) Lia McHugh’s Sprite also holds a candle for Ikaris, but being trapped in the body of an 11-year-old girl puts her at a disadvantage. There’s an un-Marvel-like sex scene between two naked people, and a gay character kisses their same-sex partner – although both these moments are fleeting. Nanjiani provides some much-needed comic relief as Eternal-turned-Bollywood movie star Kingo (though Harish Patel as his documentary-shooting “valet” feels like a misstep). Jolie’s real-life star power is somewhat dimmed by her character’s unconvincing personality disorder. And some of the minor Eternals barely get time to make an impression.

That’s the problem: there’s just too much going on: it’s all headed towards yet another “race against time to stop the really bad thing happening” climax. It’s not exactly boring – there’s always something new to behold – but nor it is particularly exciting, and it lacks the breezy wit of Marvel’s best movies. One of the strengths of the MCU to date is how it has taken time to define each character individually and lay out the grand narratives over successive movies, building a sense of momentum. Here, it’s all thrown at us at once. It’s like coming into Avengers: Endgame cold without having seen any of the preceding instalments. Most mortals will simply find it too much. Bigger isn’t always better.

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Eternals Review

It’s hard to overstate how much of a coup it was for Marvel Studios to hire Chloé Zhao as the director of Eternals . Plenty of high-profile filmmakers have walked through its doors, but Marvel is, first and foremost, a producer-driven studio, guided by the five-dimensional chess moves of Kevin Feige , who can see the studio’s future like Doctor Strange with the Time Stone. Directors come and go, but Feige is always there.

Zhao feels different. The most recent winner of both Best Director and Best Picture Oscars (for Nomadland ), Zhao brings prestige and critical cred. She is an impressively understated, tender, ground-level kind of filmmaker. Her first three films, all carefully paced and driven by characters over narrative, harnessed the psychogeography of American landscapes to better understand marginalised people surviving on the fringes. What happens when this most humanistic of director is let loose with superhumans?

There’s a fascinating tension in Eternals between the unstoppable force of the Marvel project and the immovable object of Zhao’s artistic sensibilities. In many ways, this looks and feels nothing like any Chloé Zhao film we’ve seen before. Her regular cinematographer, Joshua James Richards, is out; Marvel lenser Ben Davis is in, along with the truckload of CGI necessary for superhero stories. Zhao’s trademark realism and semi-documentarian approach is gone, substituted by stiff fantasy exposition and blockbuster conventions. No bad thing in themselves, but anyone anticipating the first ‘arthouse Marvel’ should temper their expectations.

And yet in many ways, this film looks and feels nothing like any previous Marvel film. There are, for example, at least a couple of firsts: a genuine sex scene, and an onscreen gay kiss — unheard of in the normally rather chaste MCU. She finds room, too, for visual flair and authorship, even within that blockbuster framework; her love of a wide-angle panorama or a Terrence Malick-esque sunset lends this Jack Kirby cosmic romp a much-need earthiness.

Playing on such a colossal stage, it’s inevitably challenging to keep the focus at the (super)human level.

It’s an important counter-balance, in fact, because Eternals is nothing if not ambitious. In many ways this is Marvel’s Genesis story: a Star Wars -style opening crawl sets things up in biblical proportions (“In the beginning…”). The Eternals, we are told, are not just Earth’s true mightiest heroes, but essential cogs in the engine of human evolution. Like the monoliths of 2001: A Space Odyssey , they nudge us along at the key turning points of civilisation, and provide inspirations for ancient human myths.

This is storytelling on an epic scale, spanning from 5,000 BC to the present day, the stakes laid down by the godlike Celestials. The film’s confident structure barrels between flashbacks and locations, trotting the globe from ancient Mesopotamia to the gardens of Babylon to the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan to, erm, Camden High Street.

Playing on such a colossal stage, it’s inevitably challenging to keep the focus at the (super)human level. Zhao takes her time introducing everyone properly, devoting much of the runtime (at 157 minutes, this is the MCU’s second-longest film after Endgame ) to getting the team of ten back together, after centuries apart. It’s undeniably refreshing to see such a mix in the line-up — these ancient immortals talk in Irish brogues or American Sign Language without ever feeling the need to address it — but some characters leave more of an impression than others.

The definite standouts are Kumail Nanjiani ’s Kingo, an Eternal who takes on a second career as a Bollywood star; his ‘valet’ Karun, played by Harish Patel , who supplies a scene-stealing everyman befuddlement; and Angelina Jolie ’s Thena, effortlessly regal and classically aloof. Richard Madden ’s Ikaris and Gemma Chan ’s Sersi have trickier jobs; as steely heroes and nominal leaders, they’re lumbered with generic dialogue (“We’re a team — we should stick together!”) and smothering earnestness.

It’s surprising, in fact, how earnest Eternals can be. Sometimes that’s a welcome contrast from Marvel’s stock-in-trade snark. As with Star Trek ’s Prime Directive, the Eternals are bound into a non-interventionist policy — only fight the Deviants, otherwise leave well alone. Is it moral, the film ponders at one point, for superheroes to simply sit back and let humans commit genocide?

More frequently, though, it seems to fall into familiar traps about saving the world and learning to work together as a team; when a giant, CGI-heavy battle begins to thwart another potential apocalypse, you start to feel a formula being leaned on. It’s a stunningly successful formula, of course. But it means, despite that exciting name on the director’s chair, this is still business as usual for Marvel — a continuation, rather than a great leap.

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Marvel’s Eternals is big, beautiful, and empty

Marvel’s epoch-spanning epic has too many heroes but still feels empty.

By Chaim Gartenberg

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Eternals is Marvel’s biggest swing in years. It’s an attempt at a prestige-style film directed by Chloé Zhao, fresh off her Oscar win, at a size and scale that none of Marvel’s previous films have tried. But despite its grand ambitions, the film gets lost in its ponderous ideas and caught in the constraining box of what an MCU film has to be. 

Eternals aspires to an almost biblical scope. The opening crawl of the film (yes, there is an opening crawl) reads like an early page of the Book of Genesis, explaining who Arishem, the Prime Celestial, brought light to the universe. The film bounds across thousands of years of human history, has no less than 10 main characters, four villains, a love quadrangle, and even Marvel’s first on-screen sex scene. 

The basic plot of Eternals is as follows: for thousands of years, a team of immortal superheroes — the eponymous Eternals — has been living in secret amongst humanity on Earth, sent by the god-like Celestials to help nurture mankind and protect them from the villainous Deviants. The Eternals have spent centuries hidden among humanity, their epic feats mistaken for mythological gods. (But, as the film explains, the Eternals were only allowed to protect against Deviants, hence their absence in the many, many world- and universe-threatening crises of the previous MCU films.) 

The core Eternals team is comprised of 10 main characters, each with their own special powers: Sersi (Gemma Chan), who can transmute objects to different elements; Ikaris (Richard Madden), who basically is a Marvel-ized Superman with flight and laser eyes; Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), who can fire energy blasts from his hands; Sprite (Lia McHugh), who can cast illusions; Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), a superhuman inventor; Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), who has super speed; Druig (Barry Keoghan), with mind control powers; Gilgamesh (Don Lee) with super strength, and Thena (Angelina Jolie), a powerful warrior who can summon weapons from thin air. Leading the bunch is Ajak (Salma Hayek), the “Prime Eternal,” who possesses healing powers and can commune with Arishem as a sort of priest/mother for the rest of the Eternals.  

If that feels like a lot, it’s because it is. Eternals does its best to introduce the characters, along with their relationships, powers, and goals, but it’s a lot of backstory to cram into the two-and-a-half-plus-hour film. (That makes it the second-longest MCU movie to date, after the three-hour Avengers: Endgame. ) By default, some of the Eternals are more “main” characters than others: Cersei and Ikaris get a lot of time to hash out their relationship, while Phastos and Makkari are effectively side characters. Nanjiani’s Kingo does the best to steal the show — his character has spent his centuries on Earth building a Bollywood dynasty — but he still gets sidelined a lot in favor of the more central characters.  

It’s not that Marvel movies can’t handle this many characters. The jam-packed Avengers films, or even the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, are testaments to the studio’s talent at coherently cramming dozens of heroes into a single film. But Eternals has an uphill battle that starts with the fact that we’re meeting all these characters for the first time despite Marvel’s 20-plus films and shows. 

All of this would be fine if the Eternals were actually doing interesting things. But the first half of the film consists largely of showing us how the Eternals drifted apart 6,500 years into their mission of hunting Deviants and a “getting the band back together” sequence of slowly reassembling the team to battle the resurgent Deviant threat. 

Eternals constantly bounces between not having enough and too many things going on

A mid-movie lore dump helps kickstart an actual plot, but even that consists more of different combinations of Eternals standing around and arguing over a cosmic-scale trolley problem. Eternals is constantly bouncing around between not having enough going on and suddenly having too much to be concerned about. One of Eternals’ antagonists doesn’t appear until nearly two hours in. Another persistently shows up in the movie but isn’t even given a name on-screen. A key character simply opts out of the third-act fight sequence entirely, unremarked by any other characters until returning out of thin air for the film’s conclusion. And of course, Marvel can’t help itself from hamfistedly setting up future sequels and spinoffs in Eternal’s cliffhanger ending and post-credit scenes (of which there are two, both of which feel more like moments to elicit gasps from comic book fans than any real concrete teaser).

For all its flaws in plot and pacing, Eternals is a beautifully shot movie. A lot has already been made about director Chloé Zhao’s insistence at shooting much of the film in actual, real-world locations instead of the MCU’s characteristic green screen sets, and the difference is clear. Eternals ’ dusty deserts, clouded beaches, and lush rainforests feel real in a way that the CGI landscapes often don’t, with soaring views and sunsets lending a tangibility to the more fantastical goings-on. 

The requisite fight scenes are also great; the Eternals put together its toy box of complementary powers to fun effect, and the golden curlicues that are used as the visual shorthand for everyone’s powers are a nice change from Marvel’s typical color-coded energy blobs.  

Marvel’s most diverse film yet (although the bar is exceedingly low)

Eternals is also Marvel’s most diverse film by far, a bar that, while being so low as to be easily stepped over, is still an achievement to note, belated as it is in the studio’s decade-plus-long run. It is legitimately refreshing to see a wider range of actors on screen beyond the cadre of Chrises, even if the much-hyped debut of Brian Tyree Henry’s gay hero practically feels shot in a way to make it as easy as possible to excise for overseas box office requirements. 

Ultimately, though, Eternals tries to be too much — and it suffers for it. The film’s lofty goal of being a creation myth for the Marvel universe has potential, but it’s far too much to cram into the constraints of a modern superhero film. It’s no use seeing where these heroes came from if we don’t have enough time to care about who they actually are.

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Marvel’s Eternals dreams big and falls hard

Confusing comics characters make for a very messy movie

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Chloé Zhao’s 2020 film Nomadland begins with sparse lines of text that set up an entire world of loss. A sheetrock plant in the real-life town of Empire, Nevada, shuts down in January 2011. In six months’ time, Empire’s ZIP code is discontinued. It’s a ghost town. A stable-seeming environment is revealed to be constantly in flux, sometimes with frightening and destabilizing speed.

Eternals , Zhao’s follow-up to her acclaimed Academy Award-winning film, also begins with explanatory text. This time however, it’s more lore than story, about beings from another planet brought to ours for a purpose the audience won’t fully grasp until the end of the film. It is withholding and not inviting, as if, from the very start, there are two forces at war for the kind of film Eternals should be.

The latest film from Marvel Studios is equal parts puzzle piece and experiment. Eternals expands the frontiers of the MCU providing hints about what its future may hold while also being a project of formal ambition. Zhao deliberately breaks from the well-established Marvel formula to tell a more sweeping and mature story — the sort of story the filmmaker is known for. The script takes the sort of seismic shifts that can happen around us in six brief months and blows them up on a geologic scale across thousands of years, through the eyes of the most consciously diverse cast in a superhero blockbuster. Eternals , however, is ultimately haunted by that formula, continually yielding to the familiar whenever it tries to show us something new.

Eternals is also saddled with one of the densest premises in Marvel Comics history, a relative anomaly in the large stable of memorable characters created by comics legend Jack Kirby. Even the considerably streamlined film version can’t lay the groundwork without heaps of exposition: The Eternals, the film’s opening text describes, are superhuman champions from a world called Olympia, dispatched to Earth by a cosmic god named Arimesh, a Celestial, in order to defend humankind from the monstrous Deviants. Throughout history, the Eternals have been here, helping humanity by fighting off Deviants and slowly providing technological advancement — to a certain point. Because the Eternals have another mandate: They cannot interfere in Earthly conflicts that don’t involve the Deviants.

This is the reason the film gives — in an actual conversation, between characters — for The Eternals taking a raincheck on Thanos’ genocidal rampage or any of the horrors and atrocities of the past. It’s a bit hard to swallow, especially when the film goes to great special-effects lengths to depict historical moments of mass destruction. To the film’s credit, part of Eternals narrative arc is its characters wrestling with the morality of this mandate. The misfortune of putting this dilemma to characters who live for thousands of years is pretty simple: The longer the characters take to let awful stuff happen before they do something about it, the more they seem like chumps.

In the present day, however, it’s pretty easy for the Eternals to follow this mandate. All of the Deviants on Earth have been wiped out, but instead of being offered a ticket to their home, Olympia, they’ve been effectively abandoned by their god and gone their separate ways, living in secret among the people of Earth. The exposition pauses and the action begins when Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Sprite (Lia McHugh), who live in London as a teacher and an (eternal) 12-year-old, respectively, are attacked by a not-so-extinct Deviant who also seems strong enough to kill Eternals. When the Superman-esque Ikaris (Richard Madden) arrives to help fend the Deviant off, a mini Eternals reunion becomes a full-blown road trip to get the family back together and figure out what’s going on with the Deviants.

From here, Eternals becomes a hybrid travelogue and historical epic. As Sersi, Ikaris, and Sprite reunite with their seven other “siblings” across the globe, the film flashes back to pivotal moments of their time on Earth, reflecting on their relationships with each other and humanity. They’re in Mesopotamia in 5000 B.C. kickstarting the Bronze Age; then they’re in Babylon in 575 B.C. seeding the wonders of the Hanging Gardens; then they’re in 1575 Mexico watching in shock as genocidal Spanish colonists murder the people of Tenochtitlan. In cross cutting from one era to another, Zhao begins to emphasize place more than anything else — even action scenes seem to fade to take a backseat, a momentary interruption to the interpersonal drama of the Eternals as they question their role in the places around them. They fall in and out of love with each other, and humanity. They meet and are rebuffed by their god, Arishem the Celestial. They spend most of the film in doubt, unsure of what to do or believe.

But Eternals is contemplative to a fault. Every time a new character is introduced, the ones we’ve previously met re-explain the story, and the same agreements and disagreements play out. In the best moments, Zhao allows the film to breathe around its most well-realized characters, like Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) who has settled into life as a Bollywood star and joins up because he wants to turn the adventure into a documentary about him saving the world with his ridiculously powerful finger guns. Less bombastic but equally compelling is Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), the Eternal inventor who, out of guilt for accelerating human technology to atomic war is possible, has retreated into a quiet domestic life with his human husband and son in the suburbs.

The film’s cast is too big to give every character a fulfilling arc, but the film’s script by Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo devotes most of the film’s runtime to its least compelling characters. Sersi, with her vague power to transmute inanimate matter from one form to another, most effectively shown off when she turns a speeding bus into rose petals, is the de facto protagonist, but also a listless one: She is torn between her life pretending to be mortal and dating her historian boyfriend Dane (Kit Harington) and her grander purpose, which she starts to question, but only when forced to. It’s almost like the Eternals take their vow of nonintervention so seriously that they also refuse to drive the film’s plot.

Much has been made about what Chloé Zhao brings to the MCU as a filmmaker, largely stemming from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige gushing over her insistence that Eternals be filmed on real locations , and not largely on green-screened soundstages, as many Marvel films are. The result is distinctive, but also strangely hollow. It’s as if, in order to accommodate the needs of a Marvel blockbuster, Eternals could only stage its action in the most barren of natural environments: a beach, a forest, a desert. Places big and open enough that a soundstage could be approximated, however begrudgingly. When it’s time for the naturalism of the film to give way to artificial action, the result is surprisingly demure — with one spectacular exception at the very end, Eternals’ action is quite small; a strange contrast to its grand scope. When the heroes “suit up” for their final fight, it almost feels wrong, or reluctant.

The pat descriptors Marvel executives like Kevin Feige append to MCU films don’t hang so neatly on Eternals . Genre shorthand does a poor job of conveying what a viewer should expect. There are no heists, no spycraft, no strange new worlds nor hidden fantasy realms. Eternals is a meandering film about being estranged from your family, and how difficult it is to get the stones up to finally see them again. It’s two and a half hours full of people many thousands of years old going from place to place and talking about the good old days.

After over a decade of the MCU formula’s dominance, it’s easy to mistake Eternals ’ deviance for profundity. Films that wrestle with difficult experiences can often be difficult to watch, and intentionally so. Unfortunately, Eternals isn’t bold, merely incongruous. The simpler explanation is truer: Eternals is a mess.

It’s a movie concerned with conveying scale, about big ideas and forces that move on a geologic timetable beyond any one life. It wrestles with a morality that stretches beyond the considerations of one person or one planet, with purpose when time and distance have next to no meaning. The Marvel output bucks and protests under these conditions. The company’s plot-driven blockbusters are overwhelmingly concerned with the present, and to an arguably greater extent, what’s next.

Eternals considers where we are, where we’ve been, and how much it’s changed us, if at all. These are largely internal ideas that are not easily translated to superhuman brawls in dim environs, where the beauty of the natural world is just a blank canvas for lasers and punching. Every fight is like a tether pulling Eternals back to the ground when it would rather fly. Each scene expounding on the cosmology of the MCU does more for movies we haven’t seen yet than it does for the one we’re watching.

Movies can be big enough for ideas like this: difficult conversations of cosmic import with no clear answer, angry confrontations with an uncaring god, and whether or not our moral compass should shift as our perspective and reach grows. But a film must create a world where those questions matter, to its characters and to its audience. In a few short lines, Zhao did that with Nomadland . Eternals , however, just isn’t big enough. Or perhaps the Marvel Cinematic Universe is just too small.

Eternals is out now in theaters.

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Visually strong but talky MCU tale has violence, sex scene.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie's themes include the conflict between sa

Central characters willingly put themselves in dan

The ensemble is racially and ethnically diverse; A

The Eternals use their superpowers and superweapon

Adults exchange lingering looks, kisses, and embra

Language includes "s--t," "hell," "ass," "oh God,"

On camera: iPhone, Star Wars book, Ikea; off-camer

Adults drink beer at a party and liquor on a plane

Parents need to know that Eternals is an epic-scale Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) adventure directed by Oscar-winning writer-director Chloé Zhao. It focuses on a team of ancient aliens who emerge after the events of Avengers: Endgame to battle the monstrous Deviants they thought they had defeated…

Positive Messages

The movie's themes include the conflict between sacrificing the few for the many and understanding that humanity is responsible for unthinkable violence but also great beauty, art, and curiosity. When you love something, you protect it. The story encourages teamwork, empathy, compassion, and unconditional love. The Eternals love and respect one another, even when they disagree.

Positive Role Models

Central characters willingly put themselves in dangerous situations to save humanity/defeat villains. Gilgamesh selflessly cares for Thena, who is brave, fierce, and loyal. Sersi is compassionate and empathetic. Sprite is clever and quick-witted. Ikaris is devoted and faithful to his cause. Druig prioritizes peace. Kingo is entertaining and ambitious. Makkari is courageous and well-read. Dane is loyal to Sersi. A few characters are willing to do something immoral in order to stay faithful to their mission/do what they think is right in the end.

Diverse Representations

The ensemble is racially and ethnically diverse; Asian, Latinx, Black, White, and deaf actors are authentically represented (their characters are aliens). Characters use sign language to communicate. Phastos is the first openly gay hero in the MCU.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

The Eternals use their superpowers and superweapons to defeat scary, aggressive monsters known as Deviants (one of which eats a parent in front of a child in the movie's opening scene); some goopy gore when they're killed. Characters are injured but usually healed (or can heal themselves). Human bystanders are killed by the fighting between Eternals and Deviants. Gun and knife use. The Eternals witness soldiers committing genocide during the Aztec Empire. The bombing of Hiroshima is shown, along with its afermath. Global earthquake, volcano eruption. Spoiler alert: Main characters die/are killed, and Earth is threatened with total destruction.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Adults exchange lingering looks, kisses, and embraces. There's one love scene that shows bare shoulders/backs and passionate kissing; sex is clearly implied. A married couple kisses farewell. Another couple never kisses but flirts and hugs. An Eternal who's perpetually young complains about not being old enough to experience love (and has an overt crush on an older team member). One relationship is loving and affectionate (the two characters have lived together for centuries) but not overtly romantic.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "s--t," "hell," "ass," "oh God," "sucks," "mental." Middle-finger gesture.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

On camera: iPhone, Star Wars book, Ikea; off-camera, Marvel has a ton of tie-ins for all its movies.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults drink beer at a party and liquor on a plane. Gilgamesh offers other characters mead, ale, and homemade liquor fermented with spit. A character in a post-credits scene seems drunk. Joke about being drunk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Eternals is an epic-scale Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) adventure directed by Oscar-winning writer-director Chloé Zhao . It focuses on a team of ancient aliens who emerge after the events of Avengers: Endgame to battle the monstrous Deviants they thought they had defeated long ago. With a cast that includes Gemma Chan , Kumail Nanjiani , Salma Hayek , and more, this is one of the MCU's most diverse outings; it features the franchise's first deaf character and first openly gay hero. It's also arguably the MCU's most mature and character-driven film to date. It has themes of sacrifice, unconditional love, and teamwork, but also far more romance than usual -- including the MCU's first on-screen love scene (naked shoulders and all) -- and very scary creatures, one of whom eats a parent in front of his child in the movie's opening scene. While there are lots of talking scenes, action violence is also frequent and often devastating, both in a large-scale way (genocide, natural disasters, destruction) and an intimate one (betrayal, loss, grief). Weapons are used, and spoiler alert! main characters die/are killed. Language includes occasional but not frequent use of "s--t" "ass," "hell," etc., and characters drink socially. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Kids say (85)

Based on 38 parent reviews

Worst Marvel Movie Ever

Zhao gives your kids the sex talk, what's the story.

In Marvel's ETERNALS, a prologue explains how Earth (and presumably every other planet in the universe) was created by planet-sized life-bringing acient beings called Celestials -- who were soon thwarted by monstrous beings called Deviants. So the all-powerful Celestials fashioned a supernatural, immortal group of guardians called Eternals to battle the Deviants. The Earth-assigned Eternals, led by Ajak ( Salma Hayek ), spend millennia killing Deviants, but some of the team begins to wonder whether their mission of not getting involved in human affairs and advancement is wise. After the last Deviant is killed, Ajak allows her subordinates -- including Sersi ( Gemma Chan ), Ikaris ( Richard Madden ), Thena ( Angelina Jolie ), Kingo ( Kumail Nanjiani ), Phastos ( Brian Tyree Henry ), Gilgamesh (Ma Dong-seok), Druig (Barry Keogh), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), and Sprite (Lia McHugh) -- to go their separate ways, although a few live undercover together. Centuries later, in the present day, a Deviant resurfaces, forcing the now-estranged crew to reunite after a tragedy. Together, they must decide whether to stay true to the Celestials' mission or intervene on humanity's behalf.

Is It Any Good?

Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao is a gifted director, but this crowded, overly expository Marvel entry doesn't quite come together, despite impressive visuals and an excellent, diverse cast. The MCU has never shied away from big ensembles, particularly in the Avengers movies or Guardians of the Galaxy , but it's difficult to feel invested in all 10 of the Eternals' character arcs when the screenplay centers on empathetic Sersi, who was once married to Ikaris but was at some point abandoned and, centuries later, is now with a new beau, human teacher Dane ( Kit Harington ). She and the inexpicably younger-than-everyone else Sprite (who's forever an adolescent, while the rest of the Eternals are adults) are sisterly, and the movie positions them -- and the Superman-meets-Captain America-like Ikaris -- as the "main" Eternals. The movie's plot is fairly straightforward, so the real tension is in the relationship dynamics, since each Eternal has a different level of faith in their original mission. The most fun in this overwhelmingly serious film is when the movie reintroduces Kingo, who has played four generations of Bollywood superstars in India. Nanjani brings welcome comic relief to a surprisingly somber story. Harington's Dane is also entertaining, especially after he discovers the truth about his girlfriend's past (accepting it with a calm that makes sense, considering this is a universe that survived Thanos' Snap).

It's difficult to discuss the cast without mentioning something obvious for anyone who watched or is familiar with HBO's hit series Game of Thrones : In Eternals , the one-time Stark brothers (Madden and Harington) reunite on screen and are both in love with the same woman, who is named Sersi (yes, it sounds exactly like Cersei). Watching the men who played the King in the North and Jon Snow say "I love you, Sersi" is just trippy enough to take viewers out of the moment. A casting director (or Zhao herself) was either clever or misguided with that coincidence. Audiences might also wind up with unanswered questions about the nature of some of the other characters' relationships. The only Eternal who has a fulfilling traditional life in the present is Phastos, Marvel's first openly gay hero, whose husband and son are another highlight of the occasionally rambling drama. There are definitely rousing action and set-piece battle sequences, but this is a film primarily about relationships that doesn't quite hit the mark, despite all of the attractive, talented actors making heartfelt speeches to one another.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the various forms of representation in Eternals . Why do diverse representations (not just racial/ethnic, but also age, sexual orientation, and disability) matter? Which forms of representation seem authentic/organic to the movie's story? Are there any that you think could have been improved?

How does the amount of romance in this movie compare to the love stories in other Marvel movies? Was it surprising to see an on-camera love scene in an MCU film?

Does action movie violence impact viewers differently than more realistic violence? What about large-scale destruction vs. more individual moments of peril?

The movie has a large cast. Did you feel like all of the characters got equal treatment? Which ones do you feel should have been more prominently featured? Did anyone's story get short shrift?

How do you feel about the Eternals' mission and their directive to not get involved with humanity's progress other than to protect them from the Deviants? Do you think you would be able to stand by while suffering happened?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 5, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : January 12, 2022
• Cast : Gemma Chan , Richard Madden , Angelina Jolie , Kumail Nanjiani
• Director : Chloé Zhao
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Asian directors, Female actors, Asian actors, Indian/South Asian actors
• Studio : Disney/Marvel
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Superheroes
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Empathy , Teamwork
• Run time : 157 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : fantasy violence and action, some language and brief sexuality
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Eternals Is Nobody’s Film

It was supposed to be different, wasn’t it, with its commitment to real locations and imagery not wedded to the artificial? Trailers teased as much — lush jungle, water cresting over gnarled rocks, sunsets peeking through outstretched hands. A reflection of the sensibilities director and co-writer Chloé Zhao developed in films like the evocative The Rider and far less evocative Nomadland . Eternals , the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has been poised as her powerhouse, meant to push this slick, tangled universe further than ever before, into a realm where an auteur’s visuals stick and the characters — played by the likes of Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek — seem soulful, rather than like action figures with scant interiority beyond what the narrative needs to push a story along. But for all its bluster and its vastness of time, Eternals feels strangely vacuum-sealed.

Spanning 7,000 years of human history, the film follows an immortal superhero group from a faraway planet tasked with shaping humanity’s development and fending off the big bads — the Deviants, a group of colorful CGI monsters that look like countless other colorful CGI monsters— with a variety of matter-manipulating, energy-harnessing, weapons-transmuting abilities. Ajak (a criminally underused Hayek) is the ballast for the group, a maternal font of support leading them through all these centuries. She’s joined by Sersi (the ever-gorgeous Gemma Chan), perennially late and a bit of a phone addict, who, in scenes with her former romantic partner of 5,000 years, Ikaris (Richard Madden), is all clenched jaws and downcast gazes. Thena (Jolie, forever deserving better) is a warrior who physically struggles with the weight of thousands of years of memories curdling in her brain. The dynamic between Thena and the bruiser Gilgamesh (Ma Dong-seok) could have teased out some tender intimacy, but the film doesn’t spend the time to really dig in — to this relationship or any other between its ten or so main characters. There are battles in Mesopotamia and Babylon, and trips to the twilight expanse of outer space. There’s a drably choreographed and shot Bollywood dance number introducing Kumail Nanjiani’s superpowered movie star, Kingo. But as the film grows more convoluted (with references to Celestials and Avengers and even some DC characters, if you can believe it), the actors struggle to bring the world-weariness necessary for us to care about any of them.

You would think this an impossibility, given how effective and charismatic they’ve been elsewhere. But even the best actors among them seem to strain to find a way to stand out and add the touching foibles that make a superheroic character memorable. Perhaps most notably, and despite Nanjiani’s strenuous effort, the comedy in the film doesn’t suit any cast member’s distinct talents. It’s a reminder that asking wildly different actors to do the same thing — deploy the kind of irreverent banter that’s come to define MCU dialogue — only serves to flatten the franchise’s supposedly expansive worlds. Zhao has neither the deftness nor the interest in elevating this homogenous speaking style, but the reliance on quippy humor speaks more to how Marvel and its stakeholders misunderstand the allure of stars in the first place. Here, they are interchangeable; the cutesy, digestible comedy presence of Nanjiani cranes toward the angled glamour of Jolie until there’s almost no distinction between them. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Marvel’s first deaf character, has some spunk when she’s given anything to do, but it’s not enough to distract from the banality around her.

The grander Eternals story, littered with MCU plot holes that get carelessly papered over as more and more heroes and villains make themselves known ( where have they been? ) and the most powerful figures in MCU’s known arsenal remain absent, doesn’t help to ground the stars or dialogue in their cosmic backdrop. In a conversation with her little-seen mortal boyfriend, Dane Whitman (Kit Harington), Sersi explains why the Eternals didn’t help in “all the other wars,” specifically when Thanos snapped half of humanity out of existence. “We were told not to unless Deviants were involved,” she says with that same level, silken tone Chan uses no matter the tension or shape of a scene. (Nonetheless, we get a shot of Phastos, played by Brian Tyree Henry, in 1945 Hiroshima, crying about aiding the technological development that led to genocidal results. Yes, you read that right.) Dane, comic readers might note, is the alias of the Black Knight, but he unfortunately factors very little into this narrative. (That he’s nonplussed by his girlfriend’s status as an ancient alien will give you a sense of how he functions in the plot.) That doesn’t stop him from getting his own end-credits scene. For all the talk about Eternals standing on its own, Marvel still can’t help but tease out upcoming properties. Endless foreplay without climax — this is how Marvel has shaped audiences, to always be eager not about what you’re currently watching but the next thing.

A star is a powerful tool in a director’s arsenal. They bring rich, complicated histories that can be subverted, played with, even alluded to in film. They can bend light, move their bodies in that exceptional way. But if they aren’t used properly, they become nothing more than marketing tools. Zhao and cinematographer Ben Davis’s camera understand that the actors are beautiful, but in a clinical way — the way you might admire a particularly lush red rose in a photograph. Given that the script doesn’t treat the actors as individuals, but rather as vehicles for bland jokes and exposition, one might turn to the action sequences to glean any idea of who these people are. But in the first major set piece, the camera is static, lacking a kineticism to make the punches reverberate. There are minute touches — Thena has a balletic brutality that would be more intriguing if CGI didn’t render her body weightless. But whether the Eternals are fighting in desert terrain or hurtling through space, no one character is permitted to stand out or evoke awe.

A sex scene between Sersi and Ikaris fares no better, filmed from the chest up, chastely focusing on their faces. It’s ten seconds of loving missionary, not exactly the sort of groundbreaking sensuality these films are in desperate need of. For all its commitment to magic-hour sunlight, the film’s quiet gestures at beauty fail the requisite MCU love story. Once again, Marvel has ensembled an undeniably gorgeous array of actors only to have the sexual chemistry between them be slim or nonexistent. Of course, a franchise obsessed with deities and aliens continues to fumble one of the greatest pleasures of being a human being.

Eternals is buoyed along by questions about the worth of humanity. Why do these superpowered aliens care at all about humans, beyond the fact that they were told to? Sure, Phastos has a husband and a young kid. But what about the rest? What drives them beyond a murky desire to do the right thing? There’s gristle to Druig’s (Barry Keoghan) slim portion of the story. He can control people’s minds and has been doing so with Indigenous folks in the Amazon for generations. It’s a queasy turn that the film never unpacks, shuffling it offscreen before we spend too long grappling with what it might mean. Marvel has grown so powerful in part because of how it treats diversity and identity as a checklist; the Eternals characters indeed range in ability, race, and sexuality. But what does it matter to have, say, a gay kiss onscreen, when there’s no heat behind it? What does it matter if the women are of various hues and ages if you don’t care about their interiority?

With Eternals, Marvel proves itself to be nothing more than a staid, lumbering black hole. What’s the point in pulling in Hollywood stars if you’re just going to obliterate them? Jolie is one of the most fascinating, complicated, and high-profile celebrities to have ever existed. Her history can’t help but shape a film — a franchise, even. Her physicality can’t help but bring dimension to an action scene. She can’t help but make a movie her movie. And yet despite the heft of Eternals , it’s marked by emptiness. In the end, Eternals is nobody’s film.

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Eternals review: "Gives the MCU the kick in the pants it needs"

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Chloé Zhao gives the MCU just the kick in the pants it needs at this phase in its evolution.

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

After 13 years, four Avengers, and 21 other blockbusters, we know what to expect by now from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’ll be action and spectacle and clever character crossovers, with enough slyly knowing humor to offset the occasional tragic exit or life-decimating blip. 

There have definitely been bumps along the road, not to mention a woeful dragging of heels in the diversity and inclusion department. What cannot be queried is that Kevin Feige and his pals have constructed Hollywood’s most dependable hit factory, with a guaranteed global audience more than happy to gobble up more of the same.

The moment Eternals begins, though, they’ll know they’re getting something different. A Star Wars-style scroll unfurls a new cosmic mythology, one in which all-powerful beings named Celestials rule the roost from the heavens, while ageless warriors – the Eternals of the title – do their bidding on Earth. A dizzying opening salvo locates these heroes, 10 in all, in Mesopotamia in 5020 B.C., using their superpowers to defend a beachhead from a snarling sea-beast armed with whirling serpentine tendrils. 

The customary Marvel logo, meanwhile, is accompanied not by Michael Giacchino’s stirring fanfare but by Pink Floyd’s "Time" – a canny choice for a film that spans 7,000 years of human history and spends much of its two hours and 30-odd minutes hopscotching between millennia like a hyperactive Tardis.

On paper, the boundless imagination of comic-book innovator Jack Kirby and the low-key naturalism of Oscar-winning Nomadland director Chloé Zhao seem irreconcilable poles apart. On screen, though, they combine to create a movie of epic scale and ambition, with a keening, pensive soulfulness at its heart that invites serious contemplation on existential imponderables. 

The Eternals – nominally led by Salma Hayek’s Ajak, a maternal healer with Wonder Woman’s taste in headgear – are tasked with battling 'Deviants', like that aforementioned sea creature, and have been expressly instructed not to meddle in human affairs. After so many centuries, though, how can an empath like Sersi (Gemma Chan) not have affection for the mortals she co-exists with? And how can a shape-shifter like Sprite (Lia McHugh) – a fellow immortal doomed for all time to be the girl who never grows up – not feel curious about what life might be like as a mature and fecund woman?

These aren’t the sort of questions Iron Man or Thor had much room for as they hared about the galaxy in search of Infinity Stones. Indeed, there is much more of a Zack Snyder’s Justice League vibe to the MCU’s latest ensemble, which we see gradually reunited in the present day in response to a series of mysterious earthquakes that portend a rupture in the current world order. 

Exotic flashbacks to ancient Babylon and 16th-century South America reveal why the now-separated Eternals require reassembling, as well as the reason the once-fearsome Thena (a rather underused Angelina Jolie sporting a stilted English accent) isn’t quite the force she used to be. A witty pit-stop in India, meanwhile, has Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo reinvented as a Bollywood leading man, complete with a loyal valet (Harish Patel) documenting his every utterance.

Putting the team back together takes up so much time it’s inevitable that some members get less attention than others. It is unfortunate that it’s Brian Tyree Henry’s gay family man Phastos and Deaf actress Lauren Ridloff who are most noticeably sidelined, the latter’s much-heralded casting as speed dynamo Makkari amounting to little more than a cameo. 

Breaking new ground

In the year of CODA and Rose Ayling-Ellis on the UK's Strictly Come Dancing, it’s a pity that more was not done to integrate Ridloff – and the sign language in which she so eloquently converses – more fluently into the story. As it is, we’re left wanting more from her – something that can’t really be said of Richard Madden’s Superman-ish Ikaris, Barry Keoghan’s sullen mind-manipulator Druig, or Kit Harington’s Dane, a beige love interest for Chan’s sensual Sersi, whose role seems set to be expanded in future instalments.

Fans expecting the slam-bang escapism of Black Widow and the genre-based certainties of Shang-Chi may be initially wrongfooted by Zhao’s tinkering with the established formula. Yet her daring pays off with a movie that, for all its players’ Guardians-style banter, has a purposefulness and gravitas that feels strikingly akin in places to Denis Villeneuve’s recent Dune. 

This is certainly the first Marvel film to reference both the Hiroshima bombing and the Tenochtitlan massacre of 1520, while the connections it draws between overpopulation and extinction seem explicitly tailored to contemporary environmental concerns. That it can do this while also putting Don Lee’s Gilgamesh in a fuzzy pink romper suit bodes well for a franchise that looks eminently capable of developing in more than one direction.

Eternals reaches cinemas on November 5. For more, check out everything to expect from Marvel Phase 4 .

Neil Smith is a freelance film critic who has written for several publications, including Total Film. His bylines can be found at the BBC, Film 4 Independent, Uncut Magazine, SFX Magazine, Heat Magazine, Popcorn, and more. 

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Eternals First Reviews: Marvel's Most Unconventional Film Yet

Critics say director chloé zhao applies her unique sensibilities to the marvel formula to deliver an epic story with big implications for the mcu going forward, even if it doesn't reach the top tier of the franchise..

Could Eternals   actually be one of the lesser installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ? It’s surely one of the most unique and ambitious of the franchise, helmed by recent Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao ( Nomadland ), and it features as diverse a cast of characters as can be, as well as arguably a more epic scope than even the last two Avengers movies.

Yet the first reviews for Eternals put its Tomatometer score in the bottom four of the 26 MCU features, alongside Iron Man 2 , Thor: The Dark World , and The Incredible Hulk . That’s still on the fresh side, but the takes are generally more mixed than usual. Perhaps this will change later as more reviews come through, but it’s indeed a surprising twist for now.

Here’s what critics are saying about Eternals :

How does it compare to other MCU movies?

“Ranks among the better entries of the MCU… In terms of raw ambition and scope,  Eternals  belongs in the same camp as Black Panther .” – Brandon Zachary, CBR

“This critic finds it easily landing in her top 10 MCU films, and perhaps even in the top 5.” – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

“Among the more interesting and original entries in the ever-expanding canon.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“More conceptually interesting than most MCU entries.” – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

“It refreshingly bucks convention by not following the studio’s typical story and aesthetic formulas.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

“ Eternals is by far Marvel’s bleakest film.” – Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm

“As much as it pains me to say it, Zhao presents one of the weakest MCU offerings yet.” – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

(Photo by ©Marvel Studios)

Will Marvel fans still love it?

“There’s no doubt that Marvel devotees will once again lap it up and might even forgive the rather shambolic nature of this offering.” – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

“It’s still very much a Marvel movie.” – Molly Freeman, Screen Rant

“It doesn’t have to be perfect to be good, and it doesn’t necessarily need to shy away from the stuff people like about the MCU to be unique.” – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

“This is still business as usual for Marvel — a continuation, rather than a great leap.” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine

“That Eternals feigns at such freedom only makes it harder to stomach when it falls back on the same old song.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

What about fans of Zhao’s films?

“It’s the work of a singular director… the likes of which has never been seen in Marvel before.” – Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm

“ Eternals does bend the ubiquitous fantasy genre to some degree to fit the director’s customary vein of humanistic intimacy measured against an expansive natural-world canvas.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“In many ways, this looks and feels nothing like any Chloé Zhao film we’ve seen before… Anyone anticipating the first ‘arthouse Marvel’ should temper their expectations.’” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine

“This truly isn’t the film any of us were expecting from this hugely accomplished filmmaker.’” – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

“It’s clear that Zhao, in signing up for this project, made a decision to put her highly expressive and idiosyncratic style on the shelf, and to embrace the straight-up expository conventionality of Marvel filmmaking. That’s something of a disappointment.’” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“Effectively illustrates why even the most independent-minded of filmmakers are powerless to evolve an apex predator franchise that doesn’t have any Darwinian impetus to adapt.’” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Is it actually the best of both worlds?

“ Eternals  is not exactly the arthouse fare we’ve seen before from Zhao but it isn’t a typical superhero tentpole either. When it finds the sweet spot between both is when it works the best.” – Don Kaye, Den of Geek

“Both a Marvel superhero epic, as massively conceived as they come, and unquestionably Zhao’s version of one, as attentive to beauty and intimacy as it is to the expected fate-of-all-life concerns.” – Robert Abele, The Wrap

“Her fingerprints are all over every frame and yet her distinct, grounded, character-driven style doesn’t clash with what’s expected from the genre, only magnifies the greatness lying in its underpinnings.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

“At times, it does find issues with knowing how to balance the aspects an audience has come to expect with an MCU film and Zhao’s instincts.” – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

“What makes Eternals feel special is that, for once, the director genuinely cares as much about the character within that spectacle, as the spectacle itself.” – Robert Abele, The Wrap

Will it remind us of any other movies?

“Marvel has made a Dune -sized, Dune -length, and almost Dune -portentous superhero movie.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“[It] has a purposefulness and gravitas that feels strikingly akin in places to Denis Villeneuve’s recent Dune .” – Neil Smith, Total Film

“ Eternals plays like an extravagant blockbuster riff on  The Tree of Life .” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

How is the script?

“The writing team of Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, Kaz Firpo weave these stories together through masterful uses of vignettes that tie together the past and the present.” – Josephine L., Geeks of Color

“Seven thousand years is a lot to cover in just over two and a half hours, but Eternals pulls it off perfectly.” – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

“What keeps  Eternals  from elevating to the top tier of the franchise is that its massive scope can sometimes play against the story.” – Brandon Zachary, CBR

“ Eternals tried to do too much… Sadly, there were too many cooks in the kitchen.” – Kirsten Acuna, Insider

Is there any levity?

“Yes, there is fun; plenty of stunts, jokes, combat, visuals, twists and, for the romantics, more than one love story, and not all of them straight, thank god.” – Robert Abele, The Wrap

“ Eternals has humor in spades thanks to both Kingo and Sprite. While much of the comedy is fun and entertaining like most Marvel movies, there are other times when a joke undercuts an important emotional moment.” – Molly Freeman, Screen Rant

“When the screenplay — by Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo — does try to wink at the rest of the MCU with jokey asides, the dialogue is jarringly out of place.” – Esther Zuckerman, Thrillist

(Photo by Sophie Mutevelian/©Marvel Studios)

How does the movie look?

“Zhao’s work with cinematographer Ben Davis makes it a sight to behold.” – Brandon Zachary, CBR

“Ben Davis’ cinematography earns top marks. His eye for naturalism shines a spotlight on the characters’ humanity, providing an interesting, beguiling sense of wonder and joy witnessing extraordinary beings and creatures placed in ordinary locations.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

“The cinematography here is a amazing…It is absolutely gorgeous to watch. Nearly every scene is breathtaking — and when the action is brought into it — WOW!” – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

“Ben Davis’ sweeping naturalistic cinematography… gives a less synthetic look than the average MCU joint.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“Compared to the diarrheal computer goop of the Endgame finale, this might as well be Dogme 95.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“Breathtaking but otherwise time-consuming nature shots can start to feel like a bit of a chore.” – Amelia Emberwing, IGN Movies

What about the visual effects?

“Some of the bigger special effects are so monumental they circle past realism and all the way back around until they achieve a sense of awe that’s been sorely absent from the MCU.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“The special effects team killed it… The style and aesthetic are so ethereal, futuristic, and cosmic all at the same time that I was in awe every time I saw it on screen.” – Josephine L., Geeks of Color

“The Eternals’ ability to generate gold geometrical force fields and weaponry delivers some cool effects work, at times suggesting the intricate beauty of art nouveau draftsmanship with hints of M.C. Escher.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

And the action?

“The clashes are efficiently choreographed but somewhat rote, even if it’s a thrill to see relative elders like Jolie and Lee busting serious moves.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“The action of  Eternals  is, for the most part, grounded in reality largely because Zhao films the fight scenes in daylight and on location… This makes the movie feel more immersive and the action more thrilling as a result.” – Molly Freeman, Screen Rant

“Arguably the least adrenaline-pumping Marvel escapade to date.” – Damon Smith, PA Media

“What action we get is mostly the same ‘superpowered heroes shoot effects out of their hands or throw punches to defeat CGI-created monsters.’” – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Is the diversity of the ensemble appreciated?

“It’s to the credit of Zhao and her appealing ensemble that this mix actually feels organic to the story and not merely like woke pandering.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

“The movie presents [it] with a no-big-deal effrontery that makes them a winning prototype of a more dynamically inclusive superhero world.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“I truly believe everyone will find someone that they resonate with on screen.” – Josephine L., Geeks of Color

“Touted as Marvel’s first deaf superhero, Lauren Ridloff is underutilized and feels like a mere check of the diversity box.” – Kirsten Acuna, Insider

Who stands out?

“It’s [Don] Lee’s grasp of nuanced facets that genuinely wows, combining humor, heart and physical acumen, making him the picture’s MVP.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

“Best is Nanjiani, who takes his usual comic persona in a dramatic direction as he wrestles with a painful existential conflict and blasts energy bolts from his hands.” – Don Kaye, Den of Geek

“The definite standouts are Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo… his ‘valet’ Karun, played by Harish Patel… and Angelina Jolie’s Thena, effortlessly regal and classically aloof.” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine

Does it have a villain problem?

“Watching super-powered immortals go at it with powerful monsters or even each other only provides so much in terms of stakes.” – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

“The Big Bad being battled isn’t a traditional villain… [This] blunts the audience’s collective cathartic release, as they may yearn to see invincible heroes overcoming an uncontrollable evil mastermind.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

Will we want to watch it multiple times?

“There is a lot going on here, so seeing this movie more than once is something that is highly recommended.” – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

“On the whole there isn’t much here in a way of plot to make anyone want to sit through this more than once.” – Linda Marric, The Jewish Chronicle

Will it make us hopeful for the future of the MCU?

“I can only hope we see more MCU entries daring to ask existential questions about existence that don’t have easy answers.” – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

“Bodes well for a franchise that looks eminently capable of developing in more than one direction.” – Neil Smith, Total Film

“If this is what the future of Marvel looks like, sign me up!” – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Eternals  is in theaters on November 5, 2021.

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Eternals review: There's less super, more story in Chloé Zhao's melancholy Marvel chapter

They'll save the day, but they're not hurrying.

When did Marvel become a mood ring? Early on, their movie multiverse was mostly helmed by amiable experts-for-hire ( Jon Favreau , Kenneth Branagh ) in a sort of soylent superhero style more notable for its general competence than flair. Then came the auteurs and their looser, bolder takes: Taika Waititi's gleefully loopy Thor: Ragnarok ; Ryan Coogler's culture-smashing Black Panther ; Destin Daniel Cretton's breezy, balletic Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings . But Eternals is the first to be overseen by a recent Oscar winner still fresh off her own watershed: Chloé Zhao, who became the only woman of color (and second female overall) to ever take home the Best Director prize, for last year's sparse, elegiac Best Picture winner Nomadland .

It's a long way from Frances McDormand in a van to the center of the MCU, and no mere mortal is stronger than a $20 billion franchise; Eternals (in theaters Nov. 5) still molds itself faithfully to Marvel form — the winky banter and convoluted origin myths, exotic scene-setting (London! Hiroshima! Ancient Babylon!) and clanging third-act showdowns. But Zhao's imprint is also hard to miss in the movie's steady thrum of melancholy and its deeper, odder character arcs. Her sprawling cast's superhuman powers tend to belie their extremely human traits: They fight, fall in love, and fall prey to their own egos; some have serious day jobs and even non-Eternal husbands (or at least Brian Tyree Henry 's Phastos does).

Being stuck on Earth for a few thousand years, maybe, will do that; how could anyone embed that long with the natives and not have some of it rub off? For the first time too, the heroes actually look — improbably gorgeous symmetry aside — a lot like the world they're meant to protect: a panoply of skin tones, sexualities, and physical abilities. Many have already noted that the movie marks the series' inaugural inclusion of a Deaf superhero ( The Walking Dead 's Lauren Ridloff) and same-sex screen kiss (between Henry and Haaz Sleiman, the actor who plays his handsome architect spouse). It also happens that the group's leader, Ajak ( Salma Hayek ), is portrayed by a Latin woman in her 50s (give or take several millennia), and that the heart of the movie is Gemma Chan 's Sersi, a gentle, self-effacing empath who only seems to use her powers because she has to.

Bodyguard 's Richard Madden plays her erstwhile lover, Ikaris, a soulful troubled type idolized by the elfin shapeshifter Sprite (Lia McHugh). A Valkyrie-blond Angelina Jolie swings her movie-star weight as the rampaging warrior-goddess Thena, and Kumail Nanjiani famously bulked up to play Kingo, a sunny bachelor who makes elaborate Bollywood musicals in his spare time and shoots cosmic projectiles from his hands like an electrified Spider-Man. Dunkirk 's Barry Keoghan lurks as the mutinous mind controller Druig, while Don Lee floats in and out as Gilgamesh, an affable elder and keeper of the volatile Thena. Granted time off for good behavior and general peace times, they've been scattered across the globe for centuries when the call comes in to reunite; the threat, naturally, is no less than the annihilation of mankind, and the enemy are Deviants — ornery beasts that look like skinned dinosaurs and cut a swath of city-burning, people-eating chaos wherever they go.

Zhao, who co-penned the script with several credited screenwriters, moves through her assorted story lines in a way that seems almost deliberately unrushed, stopping often and leisurely for extended character moments: Kingo's thriving side hustle as a self-made movie mogul, Sersi's ongoing romance with a remarkably understanding civilian ( Game of Thrones ' Kit Harington ), Sprite's longing to be set free from the prison of her perpetual adolescence. The looping flashback structure and relaxed, intimate pacing has the odd effect of making the fate of the free world feel a lot less urgent than it probably should; the movie frequently comes off less like a standard MCU tentpole than a metaphysical family drama whose black sheep just happens to be Thanos.

That probably won't thrill a lot of fans who come for the wham-bam deluge of intergalactic battlefields and Infinity Stones, even though there's more than enough noisy CG battles and byzantine mythology in its 2-hour-and-37-minute runtime. The teasing finale — and a left-field pop-star cameo in the post-credits scene — virtually guarantee a sequel; whether Zhao's mournful, slow-burn brand of eternity will get her invited back to do that is a question only the gods of Hollywood's bottom line can answer. Grade: B

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The Hot Gods of ‘Eternals’ Will Bore You to Death With Their Feelings

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

You’d think it’d be pretty cool to be an Eternal. After seeing Eternals — Marvel Studios ’ latest movie, out Nov. 5 — I’m not so sure. In the first place, you’re immortal, or something like it, which on the upside means you get a front seat to the slow but steady ascension of human civilization. The trade-off is that the fellow Eternal you dated for 5,000 or so years, who left you for no reason, will be your co-worker for life — forever. You’re also stuck with the human form you were given at the outset, which is great news if you’re hot in an eternally recognizable, Western Civ 101 sort of way, but a pretty shitty deal if you, a verified superbeing, were born into the body of a pubescent (read: moody) 12-year-old.  

And your boss sucks. Hierarchy and teamwork are your bag, so you can’t really question why it is that you take orders from a sentient boombox in the sky. Or why you’ve been saddled with refurbished Power Rangers costumes for eternity. Or why you have to follow so many rules regarding the do’s and don’ts of your time on Earth, the most prominent being: Don’t intervene . Colonialism, genocide, global warming, atomic bombs. Shit hits the fan about a thousand times per century and, despite having the power to stop it, you can’t — it’s not your place. Thanos, schmanos: Not your problem. Your sole purpose is to battle the so-called Deviants, those skinless, reptilian beasts with ribboned musculature and a newfound taste for Eternal blood. Deviate from that plan and the galactic boombox, better known as Arishem the Judge, will get you. Finish the assignment a few centuries early, and you’ll nevertheless remain deployed on Earth, beholden to its rules — just in case the job isn’t really finished. It’s enough to drive an Eternal mad. And in fact, the Eternals’ minds are at constant risk of cracking under the pressure of all that history and — will no one admit it? — boredom. No amount of emphatic emotionalism, heroic grandstanding, or Instagrammable, earthbound beauty can distract from this fact. But Eternals , which was directed by Chloé Zhao, certainly tries — ad nauseam — to make the case. Zhao’s movie, co-written by the director with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo, rightly sees this franchise as the globe-trotting, centuries-spanning epic that it is. It tries to take us everywhere, give us glimpses of everything, from Mesopotamia in 5000 B.C.; to Tenochtitlan in the 1520s, overrun by an invading Spain; to the Hiroshima of 1945, just minutes after the bomb; to present-day Alaska, Mumbai, South Dakota, London, Iraq. Only spy capers and travel guides rival this movie’s global reach. But even they can’t treat you to the sight of Deviants going full-on Jurassic Park on a gang of hapless Neanderthals. 

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Eternals stars Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie , Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani , Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, and Lia McHugh — the youngster of the bunch — as our titular superheroes. All are imbued with distinct powers and attitudes and suggestively familiar names: Thena , Ikaris , Gilgamesh . It would seem that the Eternals are not only Earth’s protectors (Avengers notwithstanding), they’re also the inspirations for some of its most enduring, godly myths. Hence the opportunities afforded by a central cast this large and varied, whose personalities can’t help but pull the movie in as many different directions as there are stars. Jolie, as Thena — a warrior goddess who fights with weapons made of cosmic energy — gets to hero-pose her way through action scenes in ways that only Jolie can make look good. Lee’s Gilgamesh brings the fearsome fists; Henry’s Phastos has a genius mind for engineering. The leader of the group, Ajak (Hayek), gets to call the shots and react to things with significant facial expressions. The leaders of the movie are Ikaris (Madden), who can fly (duh) and shoot destructive beams from his eyes, and Sersi (Chan), who can manipulate matter at will. 

Not that this is how they spend their days, nowadays. While Kingo (Nanjiani) is off in Mumbai fashioning himself into a one-man dynasty of Bollywood icons, Druig (Keoghan), a controller of minds, hides out in a jungle with a colony of laborers in his keep, and Makkari (Ridloff) — the MCU’s first deaf superhero and, for my money, the smartest Eternal of the lot — hides out in the supergroup’s spaceship to wait out the centuries until it’s time to go home. 

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If only it were that simple. You can’t go home again — isn’t that the line? It’s no spoiler to say that “waiting it out” eventually ceases to be an option; humanity must come under threat, a threat worse than even Thanos, otherwise there’d be no movie. As it is, there’s barely a movie to begin with. Somehow, despite all the nods toward emotional complexity and women’s empowerment, all the caring, cross-cultural gestures of goodwill, the movie whittles itself down to the obvious inner and outer battles, a tepid romantic drama that goes nowhere, and group dynamics that peaked circa the first few Fast & Furious movies: “family,” teamwork, faith in humanity despite the actual inclinations of the humans in question. Eternals is a movie full of opportunities, most of which it sidesteps in favor of its least charismatic heroes, its least interesting questions. Some of this is the fault of a redundant emotional structure that takes the audience’s intelligence for granted. At one point, we get a trio of scenes in which, after someone dies, the gang must get back together after years of living normal human lives, and, with each member of the team that gets reintroduced to the story, we get a ritualistic repetition of a deadening dramatic pattern. Someone breaks the news; someone else mourns the news; then everyone rallies, heading off to the next exotic locale to ruin yet another person’s day. It’s like a game of telephone in which the message being passed on is simply the sound of someone’s slobbery weeping. I’d been curious to see what Zhao, who up to this point has worked in a domain far afield from the Marvel Universe, would bring to a movie of this scope. Her previous films got attention for their mix of documentary realism — down to the use of nonprofessional actors — and the more movie-ish style of indie drama that earned her a regular spot on the Sundance roster. They were defined by the director’s insistence on immersion. Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017) were both filmed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota, with locals often playing versions of themselves. The best picture–winning Nomadland (2020), fronted by Oscar winner Frances McDormand and set among the modern Southwest’s real-life nomads, co-starred some of the same people who’d lent their life stories to Jessica Bruder’s book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century , on which Zhao’s film was based. These movies hit and miss, but Zhao’s visual style — her instinctive reimagining of the Western genre’s mythic vistas and natural environments — became a hallmark. Much of that style carries over into Eternals — where it gets exposed, more plainly than before, as a kind of cultural tourism. Mesopotamia, Iraq, indigenous empires: They’re all mere backdrops to the Eternals’ ability to engage with these cultures, learn the languages, feast on the riches of ancient history in beautified montages of the cast’s most attractive actors doing Attractive People things. After the U.S. decimates Hiroshima, what we get is — nothing. Zhao’s Hiroshima feels more akin to present-day Chernobyl, a ghost city, all of the suffering in the wake of the bomb completely absent, all of the actual victims of history evaporated, as if Thanos, not an atomic bomb, had wreaked this havoc. Everything has been cleared out of the way but for a pair of weeping Eternals questioning the destructive path human progress has taken. It’s an easier portrait to paint if the actual human toll is neatly cropped out of the picture. 

This would matter less in a movie less cumbersome on the humanitarian front — a movie in which saving Earth, weighing the one versus the many, thwarting deep, dark, intergalactic plans of total destruction, wasn’t such a tiresome, single-minded pursuit. Or a movie that didn’t go so far out of its way to beautify the Eternals’ ostensible empathy for humanity with indigenous cultural props hovering around in the background. They’re a part of this planet, after all, these alien saviors of ours. Yet their interactions with it are laughably limited; the idea that any of them care enough about Earth to want to save it is so taken for granted that merely asking the question makes the movie fall apart. Zhao’s camera is often positioned just below the eyeline of her heroes, who fall into picturesque V-formations out of habit, ever-ready for their class photo: a guaranteed promotional meme. It leaves the impression of a humanity looking up to these gods, this veritable goof troop in their god-awful, color-coded suits. So: Where’s humanity? Who’s doing all that looking? I’m not asking for more no-line extras in exotic costumes or more bit parts written for boyfriend characters. I’m asking about actual people.

Not that the Eternals — who get jerked through the movie’s banal melodramas, same-old action sequences, and snoozy central romance — are exactly triumphs of characterization. One character stabbing another in the back (literally, not figuratively) proves one of the more surprising turns in the movie. But the psychological seeds of that act are so loudly and nonsensically signaled that there’s nothing satisfying about it. The most interesting things about these heroes are their moral predicaments, both those that they share as a group and those that arise as a consequence of their individual powers. There’s a Celestial (capital C, as this is another class of superbeing) system of checks and balances at play in this story, in which the Eternals prove a crucial cog. This occasionally results in problems worth dwelling on — which the movie has little time to do, what with all the predictable emotional beats it’s too busy hitting, all the hero poses yet left to strike.

“You do not turn against your family,” one of our heroes eventually shouts. Spoken like a true alien; real families, or at least the kinds worth watching movies about, embrace their dysfunction. Yet even when the Eternals fight amongst themselves, they’re boring about it. Eternals is so busy showing off what it can do, where it can go, that it bypasses and overlooks what it really has to offer. There are real dilemmas, real battles of interest buried beneath the soft-pedaled, naturally-lit, cozy surfaces of this movie. But like everything of genuine interest here, those strands are the supporting players to a tired lead act — much in the way that the couple with actual chemistry in this movie takes a constant back seat to its Hot, Boring Leads. Eternals is good at telling us where to look, at impressing us with its manufactured sense of grandeur. What it lacks is any credible sense of what’s actually worth seeing.

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Eternals (2021)

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• November 5, 2021
• Gemma Chan as Sersi; Richard Madden as Ikaris; Angelina Jolie as Thena; Salma Hayek as Ajak; Kit Harington as Dane Whitman; Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo; Lia McHugh as Sprite; Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos; Lauren Ridloff as Makkari; Barry Keoghan as Druig; Don Lee as Gilgamesh; Harish Patel as Karun; Haaz Sleiman as Ben; Esai Daniel Cross as Jack

Home Release Date

• January 11, 2022

Distributor

• Walt Disney Studios

Movie Review

Well, the Bible got the In the Beginning part right.

But according to this story, Earth (and pert near every other planet) was the work of massive alien beings known as the Celestials. Alas, the planetary crust had barely cooled before their creations were soured by nefarious deep-space creatures dubbed Deviants. Those Deviants were a ravenous bunch—so nasty and (for the most part) toothy that they threatened to devour everything the Celestials had created.

The Celestials were too busy floating in the void of space to take direct action. So clearly, some galactic police were needed to safeguard creation. So the Celestials made the Eternals—mega-powered beings with your typical super array of physics-bending talents—to protect their precious planets and fight the Deviants. And those Eternals were a speicalized bunch, given strict instructions to not muck around in planetary affairs unless a Deviant was involved.

But here’s the thing: If you’re an Eternal, you’re eventually going to run out of Deviants to fight.

That’s what happened on Earth. The planet’s collection of Eternals had done a super-great job battling their natural foes. They ignored wars and famines and all manner of woes to exterminate the planet’s Deviants. By around the year 1500 or so, there were no Deviants left.

And then things got a little depressing. A couple of Eternals wondered why, with so much time on their hands (being eternal and all), they couldn’t help the planet in other ways. One or two openly questioned their leader, Ajak. And since YouTube hadn’t been invented yet, the Eternals began to bicker a bit over how to keep themselves busy.

Ajak told them—nicely—to just take off. Their jobs were done. Why not spend a few centuries living normal lives? And so they went their own ways, each to live as he or she thought was best.

Sersi, the crew’s expert matter manipulator, wound up in London, living in a flat with fellow Eternal (and eternal 11-year-old) Sprite (because London flats are apparently that expensive). She snagged herself a boyfriend—a fellow named Dane Whitman—who had no clue that she was almost certain to outlive him. She lectured at the Natural History Museum and diddled on her phone. She looked at her life and thought, Yes, it was good .

But no one told the Earth-bound Deviants that they were supposed to be extinct.

One lovely London evening, Sersi and Sprite spot a couple of Deviants wreaking havoc on a city street and with a hankering for a little Eternal gumbo. The two fight the things, but the battle could’ve gotten out of hand had not another Eternal—Ikarus—literally flown into town at that very moment. As the strongest Eternal, Ikarus completes the Deviant beatdown and says hello to Sersi and Sprite, whom he’d not seen for 500 years or so.

But clearly, these Eternals have more on their plates than uncomfortable reunions. Where did those Deviants come from, anyway?

No, it was not good. Not good at all.

Positive Elements

The Eternals sometimes call themselves a “family,” and they do seem (for the most part) to care for one another.

And there’s no better illustration of that connection than the relationship between Gilgamesh and Thena. Both are strong warriors. But, alas, Thena is apparently going crazy—which makes her pretty dangerous. It’s something (leader Ajak tells us) that happens to many Eternals after a while. The only way to cure it is to wipe Thena’s cerebral hard drive and start fresh. But Thena doesn’t want to forget, and Ajak promises to take care of her—which he does for centuries.

Thena also says one of the movie’s more poignant lines: “When you love something, you protect it,” she says—thinking perhaps of Gilgamesh’s protective care, but also of the Eternals’ centuries of work. “It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

Turns out, to protect Earth—something that most of the Eternals have come to love—will require untold, and unexpected, sacrifices. And many of these super beings are willing to make them.

Spiritual Elements

We could spend the rest of the review unpacking Eternals’ incredibly messy spirituality. And caution: There will be some possible spoilers in this section.

The movie is telling its own myths and weaving, if you will, its own religion—one that contains elements of ancient pagan beliefs and Eastern philosophy, but that still is very much its own thing. And if we try to overlay Christianity on top of the creation/destruction myths of Eternals to see if we can find some sort of Christian meaning in it all, we’re in for some disappointment.

If we make the Celestials (especially the Celestial Prime, Arishem) analogous to God, that would make the Eternals their angels, and rebellious ones at that: Turns out, what Arishem and many of the Eternals differ on what is the right thing to do, cosmically speaking. Now, Christians know what became of angels that rebelled against their Creator … and it wasn’t good.

But perhaps the movie’s Celestials aren’t worthy of obedience. We go back to Thena’s statement that we should protect the things we love. Without getting into the details, the Celestials aren’t really about protecting their creations: Rather, those creations are a means to an end. That’s very out of character with the God that we know.

The Eternals, then, are probably more analogous to Prometheus—a Grecian god/hero that gave the gift of fire to humanity against the gods’ wishes—than Lucifer.

Eternals takes plenty of cues from Classic paganism and ancient myth. Gilgamesh takes his name from an ancient Sumerian hero. Sersi, Ikarus and Thena all stem from Greek gods and heroes, and Thena is repeatedly namechecked as the Greek goddess of war. (The names and, in some cases the abilities of Makkari, Ajak and Phastos, characters we’ve not gotten to in this review, also can be traced back to Greek story and mythology.) While one Eternal reminds another that he is not literally a god, it’s suggested that the Eternals are the basis for the myths—and devotion—that sprang up around them.

Despite all this spiritualism, the film seems to do its best to distance itself from any breath of Judaism and Christianity. We hear a snarky reference to Noah’s ark, and a character does paraphrase Scripture, saying “The truth will set them free.” And one Eternal does buzz by Rio de Jamario’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue.

Instead, the story seems to lean more into Hinduism: Two characters get married in what appears to be a Hindu ceremony, while a funeral rite is presided over by an Indian mortal. And the themes of the cycle of creation and destruction—big themes in Hinduism (and other faith systems)—undergirds much of the film.

Obviously, a lot of the powers we see here resemble magic.

Sexual Content

The only currently married couple we meet here is a same-sex couple—Phastos and his human mate who are raising a son in Chicago.We see the two share a lingering goodbye kiss and hear a great deal about how much they love each other. Both are clearly dutiful fathers. Though Marvel has had other nods to LGBT characters, this is the first gay relationship that the MCU has depicted onscreen.

We have a few other couples to make note of here, too. Sersi and Ikarus are the most notable. They, too, got hitched (in the afore-mentioned Hindu ceremony) But that comes literally centuries after the two have sex for the first time—which, in a first for a Marvel movie, we see on screen. It’s not R-rated, of course, but we do see them partly disrobe and lay down on some rock/sand as the camera films them from the shoulders up, engaged in a bit of movement.

While Ikarus and Sersi didn’t officially divorce, Ikarus did mysteriously take off for 500 years—enough, you would think, for a common-law divorce—and Sersi found a new lover in Dane Whitman. The couple kisses and flirts as well, and Dane’s put off by the fact that Sersi refuses to move in with him.

Two other Eternals (Makkari and Druig) appear to be a couple, too, and we see them engaged in flirty behavior. Sprite, who’s eternally 11, has a crush on another Eternal, and she’s pretty frurstrated that her “age” makes it impossible for her to be with him. She’s an illusionist, and she turns herself into a young adult woman at a nightclub to flirt with an unsuspecting mortal.

Women sometimes dress in ever-so-slightly revealing garb, and most of the Eternals’ outfits are skin tight.

Violent Content

The movie has plenty of the violence we’d expect in superhero flicks, so I won’t belabor that too much.

But this is an important note: Despite their moniker, a few Eternals die here. One particularly bright Deviant can suck the life literally out of them (through a bevy of organic tubes he stabs into them), leaving them lifeless, discolored corpses. Another is apparently immolated. Most of the Eternals are beaten mercilessly, too—punched and kicked and punched and stabbed and thrown and punched some more.

The Deviants die far more gorily. One has its head sliced off, splattering goopy black blood over his adversary. Another gets cut into pieces. A third is turned into a tree. They’re shot and stabbed and sometimes partly vaporized, though one has the ability to heal itself.

Meanwhile, mere mortals like you and me deal with violence, too. One man is eaten alive by a Deviant, and several others are wildly imperiled. But often their biggest threat comes from each other. The Eternals watch as Spanish Conquistadors gun down Aztec warriors in the latter’s capital city, Tenochtitlan. (Only a bit of mind control from an Eternal stops the carnage.) An Eternal kneels at the center of Hiroshima, post-A-bomb, looks at the devastation and rails that humankind isn’t worth saving.

A global earthquake rattles a museum classroom filled with children. (Sersi saves one girl from a falling stone by turning it to dust.) A massive disturbance causes the ground to wave like the ocean and for the ocean to roil like a storm on Jupiter. We see images of entire planets exploding from the inside. We hear references to “the Blip,” which took out half the population of the universe.

Crude or Profane Language

Three s-words and a handful of other profanities, including “a–” and “h—.” God’s name is misused about four times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Sersi, Dane and Sprite hang out in a nightclub where many folks are drinking beer and other alcoholic beverages. Sprite masquerades as a young woman. But when the man she’s with tries to touch her hand and finds that it’s an illusion, she tells him that he’s just had too much to drink.

Gilgamesh serves an alcoholic beverage to his friends that he says was fermented in his own spit. When someone mentions the worldwide earthquake, he recalls it. “I thought I was drunk,” he says.

[ Spoiler Warning ] In a post-credits scene, a drunken troll named Pip makes an appearance.

Other Negative Elements

There’s plenty of duplicity at work here, but I’ll leave it at that.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the whole plot of the Eternals revolves around imperfect creators. This particular cinematic creation is far, far, far from perfect itself.

Aesthetically, it’s a rare misfire from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directed by Chloé Zhao, fresh off her well-deserved Oscar for Nomadland , Eternals nevertheless suffers from too many characters, too many villains and too many complicated plot points. Audiences must soldier through a great deal of narrative exposition to get to the (admittedly cool) action sequences—which are then, in turn, followed up by still more narrative exposition.

Last time I checked, superhero movies are supposed to be fun . This film is pretty to look at and sometimes visually spectacular—but it’s also often rather humorless, dense and dull. If I was to rank movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’d say that this and Thor: The Dark World bring up the MCU rear.

But Thor: The Dark World , at least didn’t have Thor and Jane having sex on screen. And while the Dark World certainly boasted its own non-Christian elements (Thor’s title, after all, is the “god of thunder”), it knew not to take its mythos too seriously.

Eternals , meanwhile, cherry-picks elements from a bevy of faiths and stirs them up in a big pot of nothingness, offering us a bargain-bin full of gods but no divinity, no transcendence, no meaning at all. At the core of all its pained theology lie truths that would seem banal in humanistic sing-along songs for second graders. Follow your heart. Love will find a way.

Eternals focuses on characters that, as the name suggests, never really die. (Well, mostly.) But this movie? I can hope it disappears quickly and is forgotten, even in the MCU canon.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Despite Being one of MCU’s Lowest-Rated Films, Eternals Defeats All other Marvel Movies to date in One Regard

M arvel Studios’ Eternals had quite the potential to be the next big ensemble hero-featured hit franchise of its own. But the failure of the movie altered the wind of it in a different direction. The box office failure of the 2021 movie was not the only factor to the potential end; or at least, the blurry future of the movie; the dismay among critics also mattered to a great extent.

But the movie has a lot to celebrate, including the cast. Hollywood veteran Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, and several other stars graced the movie. But in one aspect, the movie surpasses almost every other Marvel movie released to date. Thanks to director, Chloé Zhao, as was revealed in the Marvel Studios documentary, Assembled: The Making of Eternals .

Assembled: The Making of Eternals Revealed Why Eternals Is Ahead Of Other Marvel Movies In This Regard

Other than the stunning and varied cast, Marvel’s Elernal had the ultimate creative freedom as the project roped in Chloé Zhao, who has an Oscar to her credit for her Frances McDormand-starrer 2020 neo-Western drama, Nomadland . Zhao helming the project was the next big thing to a promise as the director pushed the project to the boundaries of the studio to film the movie on location. The movie was filmed on Spain’s Canary Islands and some other sites. 

“You want to see the character in relationship to the world behind them. It’s very difficult to make that feel real on stage. So going to a location was a very natural progression,” Zhao said in Assembled: The Making of Eternals (via Variety ).

Superhero movies, in particular, are rare to have the most real location filming as the majority of superhero movies or rather action movies are filmed inside studios, mostly because of the convenience and reducing the overall cost.

‘At least Marvel trusts its directors’: WB Gets Blasted For Shelving Batgirl As Eternals 2 Confirmed With Chloe Zhao To Return

But Zhao’s vision for the movie and her license to do the movie on her terms have created an astounding record of the movie being one of the most on-site shot Marvel projects.

Will There Be Eternals 2 ?

Despite the poor box office and critical reception, Eternals made quite a splash among fans assuming a potential sequel on the card . However, as far as the assurance is concerned, the project is dangling on a ‘maybe’ considering the recent updates . Previously, Zaho has shown her acute interest in returning to the project to direct. “I would be back in a second working with the team at Marvel for sure,” she told The Playlist .

However, as the uncertainty of the project was soaring, her comment on the potential sequel also turned hazy as she bluntly replied to The Hollywood Reporter in March last year, “No comment,” upon the query regarding the sequel.

“I knew I could learn from him”: Marvel Director Chloe Zhao Begged Close Friend Denis Villeneuve to Watch Dune Before Release to Make $402M Eternals

Eternals producer and vice president of production and development at Marvel Studios Nate Moore had rather sad news for the movie, “It’s not something that is a must-have,” he told The Toronto Sun . 

“Obviously, we have ideas of where we could go, but there isn’t a hard and fast rule where we have to have three of these things and this is the first,” he added.

Marvel boss Kevin Feige has rather peculiar enthusiasm for Harry Styles ‘ Starfox and Patton Oswalt’s Pip the Troll. “The adventures of Eros and Pip is something that is very exciting for us,” Feige told MTV News at San Diego Comic-Con 2022.

So, what does it mean for the project? Styles’ post-credit cameo was definitely promising but as of Eternals 2 , the studio seemingly has no interest in putting it in the calendar of theatrical releases, but Marvel is also not in line with entirely giving up the idea of a sequel, it is hard to tell.

Stream Eternals and Assembled: The Making of Eternals on Disney+.

Screen Rant

Eternals’ massive celestial plot hole finally addressed by marvel.

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Marvel TV Change Shows The MCU Is Learning From Its Phase 4 & 5 Blunders

Zac efron's mcu comments make his mcu debut more likely, marvel studios executive addresses potential for spider-man: the animated series revival after x-men '97 cameo.

• She-Hulk episode 2 addresses Eternals' Celestial Tiamut, filling a major plot hole in the MCU.
• Marvel is starting to connect Eternals to Phase 4 and beyond, signaling a shift in approach.
• Rumors suggest upcoming Marvel movies like Captain America or Avengers may dive deeper into the Eternals storyline.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally addressed Eternals ' Celestial plot hole about Tiamut thanks to She-Hulk: Attorney At Law episode 2. Chloé Zhao's Phase 4 MCU movie was always bound to create some massive questions for the franchise. The Eternals living on Earth for thousands of years was a big enough reveal for audiences to digest, but Eternals ' ending raised an even bigger plot hole. It was revealed that Tiamut the Celestial was growing inside of Earth and was ready to be born, destroying the planet in the process. The Eternals stopped this from happening to save humanity, but that meant Tiamut was frozen in the middle of the ocean.

While most MCU movies leave lingering questions, Eternals having a Celestial emerge from the ocean is about as big as they get. The moment had since begun to frustrate MCU viewers as Marvel never addressed any of the fallout from a game-changing world event. In the time since Eternals ' release, there have been more references to a Captain America musical and Doctor Strange's Spider-Man identity spell than the most shocking global event since The Blip. Understandably, some began to wonder if Marvel was ever going to address the Celestial-sized revelation.

Related: Eternals Theory Reveals 1 Celestial Who Actually Sided With Earth

How She-Hulk Addresses Eternals' Much-Ignored Celestial Twist

Now, Eternals ' Celestial plot hole has finally been addressed by Marvel in She-Hulk episode 2. Early on in the episode, Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) is using her computer and the camera shows the website she is looking at. It is at this moment that She-Hulk references Eternals ' Celestial Tiamut by having an article linked on the website with the headline: "Why There Is A Giant Statue Of A Man Sticking Out Of The Ocean." The headline indicates that those in the MCU do not understand who Tiamut is or how he got there. But, She-Hulk episode 2 at least acknowledges Eternals ' massive Celestial mystery and shows that people in the MCU are just as curious to know more as viewers are to see the fallout.

MCU Phase 5 Can't Keep Ignoring Eternals

She-Hulk 's Eternals reference is just one of a few connections Marvel has made to the movie in Phase 4. The MCU needs to change in Phase 5 and stop ignoring what Eternals introduced. Marvel Studios has not confirmed any plans for the Eternals characters going forward, including appearances in other MCU projects or announcing Eternals 2 . The divisive response might not have helped elevate the franchise's importance, but Marvel can not continue to act like Eternals ' events never happened. There are teases that Kumail Nanjiani's Kingo will be referenced multiple times going forward, but that is not enough.

The Eternals might not be confirmed to factor into the Multiverse Saga plans at this point, but the MCU has multiple chances to involve the characters and storylines in Phases 5 and 6. The key here is that She-Hulk: Attorney At Law needs to be the start of more Eternals acknowledgments in the MCU.

Where Eternals' Celestial Change Can Next Be Addressed In The MCU

Following She-Hulk: Attorney At Law , there has been little to nothing in the way of MCU shows & movies that address the wider ramifications of a Celestial rising up from out of the ocean. However, rumors have surfaced suggesting Captain America: Brave New World may be the first movie after Eternals to meaningfully address this development. Though this may initially sound like unusual placement, the overall plotline that's been teased thus far would help these rumors make sense if true, since the increasingly paranoid state of Marvel's US government certainly would have been worsened by Tiamut's failed emergence.

Failing this, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars would be the logical place for the MCU to address this particular plot twist and what it has meant for the Earth. This is both because the Avengers movies naturally work well as an overview of more recent events in the MCU timeline - making moments like this easier to bring up - and also because major Earth-threatening events like this may have changed how many governments and heroes alike look at a group like the Avengers, which could potentially make the difference in allowing them to reform after Avengers: Endgame .

The Emergence Isn't The Only Loose Thread From Eternals That The MCU Needs To Tie Up

While a Celestial bursting up from the Earth is of course the most major Eternals moment the MCU needs to address outside of the movie, it's not the only one of its kind. Notably, Eternals closed with the introduction of MCU's version of Starfox, played by famous musician Harry Styles, as well as Patton Oswalt's Pip the Troll, leaving the story on perhaps its most mysterious note.

The nature of this big movie moment - combined with the star power of Styles and Oswalt - means the future of both characters needs to be addressed sooner rather than later, and ideally in a way that explains more about the stories and lives of the MCU iterations of these figures. This is especially true since Starfox's familial ties to Thanos become less pertinent to address with every release since the major villain's final Avengers: Endgame fate.

Similarly, the future of the MCU would benefit from addressing the prospective future of Kit Harrington's Dane Whitman, who seemed set to take the Ebony Blade and become the hero known as Black Knight as of the end of the movie. However, as of April 2024, the character is reportedly involved in no movie in the works according to Harrington, suggesting he may not be part of the current Multiverse Saga plan.

With Whitman's future uncertain and the fate of humanity also unclear - as the film ends with Arishem deciding to judge the memories of Phastos, Kingo, and Sersi to see if he will allow humankind to live - the vast majority of Eternals remains a series of open plot lines that are as of yet to be unaddressed again some years later. Hopefully, the MCU's wide-reaching multiversal future can open up new ways for the franchise to address these storylines instead of pushing them to one side as the Multiverse Saga continues to unfold.

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Eternals is the 25th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is part of its fourth phase. Over 500 years ago, when the ten Eternals complete the task given to them by the Celestial Arishem to wipe out the invasive alien species known as Deviants that roam the earth, the group decides to go their separate ways as they find themselves at odds with how to continue their interactions with humanity as they grow and learn. Blending into society, the Eternals continue to live their lives in the modern day until the Deviants emerge again. When one of the Eternals is supposedly slain by a deviant, events are set in motion that will reunite them once again to discover why the Deviants have returned and what the true intentions of the Celestial have been for all these millennia. 

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‘gasoline rainbow’.

Five teenagers embark on a road trip to a “party at the end of the world” and encounter many fellow misfits along the way in the latest from filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross.

There’s an uncommon sweetness to this film, which is less about running away from something and more about discovering the road of life is littered with goodness, if you know where to look. There’s a loose, languorous quality to “Gasoline Rainbow,” which the Rosses shot using a mostly improvised format, a collaboration between actors and filmmakers. It feels like a home movie, or a documentary — a capture of a slice of life in which there’s no plot other than whatever happens on the road ahead.

A destination wedding that goes nowhere.

‘mother of the bride’.

At a surprise last-minute wedding, the mother of the bride (Lana, played by Brooke Shields) gets another surprise when she discovers that her daughter is engaged to the son of her ex-beau, Will (Benjamin Bratt).

“Mother of the Bride” is directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) with an apparent allergy to verisimilitude. Early on, we are told that the opulent Thai ceremony will be bankrolled by Emma’s company (she’s an intern) and livestreamed to “millions of eyes.” These fantasies of pomp and circumstance often serve to make Lana and Will’s budding romance feel like a B-story to the action — although that may be a blessing when the best screwball gag this movie can muster is a pickleball shot to the groin.

Watch on Netflix . Read the full review .

Chris Pine goes off the deep end.

In Chris Pine’s directorial debut, he plays a pool cleaner who is enlisted to help uncover a mysterious water heist.

The sure-why-not plot, modeled on the California water grab in “Chinatown,” is less interesting than the charismatic cast that rambles along with Pine on his excellent adventure. Pine’s yarn was savaged when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but the sour response is a bit like getting mad at a golden retriever for rolling around in the grass.

Small drama, big stars.

Seeking asylum, a young Nigerian woman (Letitia Wright of “Black Panther”) navigates the complications of applying for permanent residency in Ireland in this drama from writer-director Frank Berry. Josh O’Connor of “Challengers” also stars.

At the beauty salon where she works, Aisha’s rightly cagey as she listens to her customers. But at the shelter, she turns warm, when she gives makeovers to fellow immigrants. As he did for his award-winning prison film, “Michael Inside,” Berry used nonprofessional actors with intimate experience of the system — here, Ireland’s International Protection Office, which processes asylum applications — he wanted to depict. It’s a gesture that keeps the film from lapsing into melodrama.

Bonus review: A rural throuple

It’s not immediately apparent how courtly intrigue figures in “A Prince” (in theaters) , Pierre Creton’s spellbinding French pastoral drama, though sex, death and domination hang palpably in the film’s crisp, Normandy air.

Creton looks to the divine powers and chivalric codes that fuel swords-and-shields epics like “Game of Thrones,” but whittles these elements down to a mysterious essence. Eventually, the film shifts into explicitly sexual and mythological terrain with a B.D.S.M. edge.

The story is slippery by design, loosely tracking the gay coming-of-age of an apprentice gardener, Pierre-Joseph. Throughout the film, a series of wordless and seductively austere tableaux, he forms bonds with various individuals in his rural community. Multiple narrators speak in retrospect, as if looking back from the afterlife at the characters onscreen.

Pierre-Joseph eventually comes to form a throuple with Alberto and Adrien, his mentors. The naked bodies of these much older gentleman appear suggestively weathered next to their younger lover’s sprightly form. Yet there is no mention of taboo. That passion could bloom in such spontaneous and unexpected forms is part of this enigmatic film’s potency.

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The New Mad Max Is a Welcome Return Trip to Movie Valhalla

Furiosa may not ride as eternal as fury road , but it’s still jampacked with visionary weirdness..

The 2015 release of Mad Max: Fury Road , a 30-years-later sequel to the last installment of George Miller’s 1979–1985 action trilogy, occasioned a critical and popular response that was nothing short of rapturous. The reemergence of Miller as a director of pedal-to-the-metal vehicle-chasing action (in the intervening decades he had focused on family films like the talking-pig classic Babe: Pig in the City and the animated-penguin tales Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two ) seemed to rekindle the spark, not just of this particular franchise, but of the moviegoing public’s enthusiasm for both practical stunt work and postapocalyptic world building.

The omnipresence of dystopias in mass-produced entertainment over the past four decades began, at some point, to leach the concept of the “bad future” of its imaginative power. All the bad futures tended to look the same, with muddily lit underground bunkers and rag-clad protagonists tromping through bombed-out cityscapes and highways full of abandoned cars. Miller’s vision of the Wasteland (played on film by the crimson-sanded deserts of Australia and, in Fury Road , Namibia) is something entirely different: a colorful dystopia served up with visionary weirdness and an abundance of wit. Stick shifts made of human femurs with screaming faces carved into the joint, a villain in a three-piece suit with a World War I gas mask strapped fig leaf–style over his crotch, motorcycle helmets fashioned from human craniums, and ropes strung together from vertebrae: Such are the steampunk accoutrements of the future according to Miller, which, though it may be a place of lawless cruelty and unfathomable human suffering, is at least going to look thoroughly rad.

Fury Road , which ran exactly two hours, took place in an equally compact time frame, with Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa and Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky first chasing, then being chased in the opposite direction by, the henchmen of Fury Road ’s despotic Immortan Joe (played in that film by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who died in 2020). Miller’s latest, Furiosa : A Mad Max Saga , takes the opposite temporal tack: It’s a two-and-a-half-hour epic that takes place over about 15 years, with the eponymous heroine growing from a traumatized preteen girl (played by Alyla Browne) to a grim-faced young woman in her mid-20s (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Furiosa is an origin story for a heroine who perhaps didn’t need one: Theron’s vengeful scowl beneath that raccoonlike mask of black mechanical grease told us all we needed to know about the past life of this fierce road warrior with a buzz cut and one metal hand. But if it lacks the narrative compression and nonstop forward motion of Fury Road, Furiosa never skimps on the other main features one comes to a Mad Max movie for: deranged production design and thrilling action. Volkswagen camper tops welded to the bodies of muscle cars, hurtling over the dunes in pursuit of giant tricked-out “war rigs” with stamped-tin ceilings and chrome skulls mounted on the hood. Grand-scale stunts that involve a dozen or more performers on screen at once, pursuing and escaping one another via car, motorcycle, parasail, or a kind of metal footwear best described as “sand skates.” Strange gladiatorial festivals where flaming hulks of cars are lowered by chain off a cliff so as to hover perilously over the milling crowds below. The Mad Max film series is not based on a comic book, though it has inspired at least one of them. But it has a comic book’s manic energy and physics-defying spatial logic. Even Taylor-Joy’s physiognomy, with those wiry, willowy limbs and huge wide-set eyes, seems to have alighted from the world of comics or anime. Miller often chooses to frame the action in bold compositions that play up this graphic style, alternating punchy close-ups with rapid zoom outs that show us the setting from a bird’s-eye view.

The first hour or more of Furiosa focuses on the title character’s childhood. Raised in the Green Place, a hidden matriarchal oasis with abundant food and water, young Furiosa is kidnapped at around age 10 by an itinerant biker gang. They deliver her into the hands of an unstable warlord, Dementus (an all-in Chris Hemsworth), who both grows attached to the little girl and makes her witness acts of horrific barbarity. Midway through the movie, Dementus mentions, with startling offhandedness, that he once had his own children who died; whether by way of remembrance or as his own comfort object, he goes around with a grubby teddy bear strapped to his chest. Furiosa remains mute while Dementus holds her captive, refusing to reveal the location of the Green Place, but her status as a healthy, well-nourished child makes her a valuable piece of property. After Dementus is forced to hand her over to the Wasteland’s absolute ruler Immortan Joe (now played by Lachy Hulme), Furiosa sets about planning her escape, her survival, and her slow-simmering revenge.

Furiosa’s story has an elemental quality that makes it impossible not to root for her as she evades her pursuers; joins forces with a sympathetic fellow traveler, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke); and awaits her climactic encounter with the sadistic, vain, yet oddly self-aware Dementus, one of the more interesting blockbuster villains in recent memory. But with its division into chapters with ponderous titles like “The Pole of Inaccessibility” and “Beyond Vengeance,” Furiosa often feels padded, constructed with a stop-and-start pacing that places it in unflattering relief next to its careening predecessor. I found myself wishing it had taken advantage of its longer running time to flesh out characters and relationships—for example, the implied but barely explored romantic connection between Furiosa and Praetorian Jack—rather than to further drive home the point that, yes, Furiosa is an unstoppable badass in search of some well-earned payback.

To Miller’s credit, there’s never a sense that he is recycling ideas or cynically milking his own franchise. The stunts may be created using a mix of practical and digital effects, but the result still feels handcrafted and personal, with admirable contributions from production designer Colin Gibson, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and editor Margaret Sixel (all of whom won Oscars for Fury Roa d, and the latter of whom is married to Miller). Meanwhile Miller, who recently turned 79, is already pondering a sixth Mad Max chapter, one that would follow Max a year before the events of Fury Road . He has spoken in interviews about how the Wasteland universe, in all its peculiar geography and economy and cultural specificity, has lived in his head for more than 40 years ; it would be a crime to let the success or failure of any individual film (the worst one so far has been Beyond Thunderdome ) get in the way of the playing out of that internal saga.

At one point in Furiosa , an ill-treated underling, negotiating with his warlord for better treatment, demands that his leader provide “double the maggot mash and the roach rations.” That line, in all its cheerful grotesquery, describes how I feel about the prospect of another installment from the Mad Max universe. It doesn’t have to be perfect—and it will, without doubt, be gnarly as all hell—but even after another two-and-a-half-hours, I’m still hungry for another helping.

• May 21, 2024 | See B’Elanna Assimilated By Hugh To Fight Space Bugs In Preview Of ‘Star Trek: Defiant’ #15
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• May 19, 2024 | Interview: ‘Discovery’ Writer Eric J. Robbins On Efrosians And More Star Trek Connections In “Labyrinths”
• May 17, 2024 | Inside How ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Transformed A Toronto University Library Into The Eternal Archive

Inside How ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Transformed A Toronto University Library Into The Eternal Archive

| May 17, 2024 | By: Michael Cassabon 12 comments so far

Last week’s episode of  Star Trek: Discovery,  “Labyrinths,” featured an unusual location: the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. Star Trek fan Michael Cassabon, the Director of Advancement for the University of Toronto library system, assisted the production team on site and wrote about his experiences with the show and what makes the Fisher Library so unique.

David Ajala as Book, Elena Juatco as Hy’Rell, and Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham in Star Trek: Discovery ‘s “Labyrinths” (photo: Paramount+)

When Star Trek came to the Fisher Library…

Melissa Warry-Smith, the location manager for Star Trek: Discovery (and most recently Section 31 ), and her team approached the University of Toronto in summer 2022 with a very big ask: to boldly film where no one has filmed before. As Canada’s largest keeper of ancient manuscripts and antiquarian books, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library holds powerful knowledge within its high, thick walls. It is a globally renowned rare book library, a gorgeous monument to human knowledge, but it is not known for being a filming location. Like, never.

But Warry-Smith’s thoughtful approach to the Fisher as the location for the Eternal Archive made a lot of sense. It wasn’t just that the Fisher’s brutalist architecture and vast interior space looked very sci-fi, but it also made sense because “Labyrinths” underlines the work of librarians and archivists in the preservation and pursuit of knowledge, intrinsic to the core values of Star Trek.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at University of Toronto (photo: Paramount+)

The Fisher’s (almost-eternal) collections

If Hy’Rell were here, she would tell you that the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is a marvel. Its collection spans millennia, from a Babylonian cuneiform tablet dated 1789 B.C.E. to original drafts by contemporary Canadian luminaries like Margaret Atwood. The library houses four of Shakespeare’s folios, over 800 bound manuscript volumes pre-dating the 15th century, and 40 Egyptian papyri from the 3rd century B.C.E.

The Shakespeare folios, among other real-life ancient texts, make a cameo appearance behind Burnham and Book in the display cases during the mindscape scenes. Shakespeare and Star Trek, of course, have been connected since the beginning.

You likely know Sir Patrick Stewart spent much of his career as a Shakespearean actor. What’s somewhat less known is that William Shatner also performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario—a two-hour drive from Toronto. At the 1956 festival, Shatner was Christopher Plummer’s understudy in Henry V . When Plummer fell ill, Shatner stepped in, leading to his big break. As fans of the Star Trek movies know, Plummer later played Klingon General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , which itself takes the name of its title from Hamlet (act 3, scene 1).

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham in front of Shakespeare’s folios (photo: P+)

Filming at the Fisher

The Fisher is at the heart of the university’s main campus, which lies at the heart of the city of Toronto, one of the most diverse cities on the planet.

Modern-day Toronto is part of Trek canon ( SNW: “ Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”); for those of you keeping track, the library complex is a few blocks away from where the child Khan Noonien-Singh — the notorious ancestor of La’an — lives, and where an alt-universe Captain Kirk was killed trying to restore the timeline.

It is almost unheard of for filming to take place at the Fisher Library, but a rare exception was made for Star Trek: Discovery . Our library’s leadership believed that this collaboration would be a wonderful opportunity to showcase the enduring relevance of libraries in the human quest for meaning. Libraries connect people to the information they seek in their quest for knowledge. The executive producers dedicated the episode with thanks “to librarians everywhere, dedicated to the preservation of artifacts, knowledge, and truth.”

It was also important that the library was not just a pretty face in the background but was playing the role of a key “character” essential to uncover “the greatest power in the known galaxy,” as Dr. Kovich tells Michael way back in the season’s first episode. Kovich, of course, is played by the legendary David Cronenberg, an alum of the University of Toronto—it makes one wonder if he knew where the final clue was all along!

Filming at the Fisher occurred over three nights to avoid disrupting students and researchers. The production crew was remarkably efficient and respectful, especially given the tight schedule due to the impending medieval manuscript exhibition—our first in-person event since COVID-19. Every precaution was made to avoid putting the real-life ancient manuscripts in danger. The production crew was quite impressive in their respect and care. They had experience filming in sensitive locations in Toronto in the past; for example, scenes of Vulcan earlier in the season are filmed at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

This isn’t the first time Star Trek has filmed at a library at the University of Toronto. U of T has a system of 40 libraries, and the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “Children of Mars”—the mini-prequel to Star Trek: Picard —was filmed at the library at U of T’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Crew getting set up at the Fisher Library (photo: Michael Cassabon)

Behind the scenes

The mindscape scenes between Book and Michael were filmed on the Fisher’s mezzanine level. For the action-packed sequences, however, sets were constructed at Pinewood Studios to replicate the Fisher, prioritizing safety.

Highlights for me included chatting with David Ajala over burgers at a food truck just outside the set and meeting the legendary Jonathan Frakes, whom I addressed as “Captain Riker.” Frakes is a big fan of librarians’ work and was a producer and director on the TV series The Librarians .

The absolute highlight for me was meeting Sonequa Martin-Green. She is as amazing and magnetic and gracious as everyone says. After watching her interact with the cast and crew, it was clear how they became a family, largely due to her leadership on and off the camera. David Ajala introduced me to Sonequa in the green room, which was our library admin conference room across from my office. The first thing she said to me was “Thank you for lending me your name [Michael].”

Sonequa Martin-Green flashes the Vulcan salute (photo: Paramount+)

A sense of destiny

This season of Discovery focuses on the quest for meaning, and filming at the Fisher felt serendipitous. The library’s dedication to preserving and exploring knowledge through the application of new technology mirrors Star Trek’s themes of discovery and understanding. Fittingly, the University of Toronto is situated at the heart of the city’s Discovery District, an area renowned for its concentration of research institutions, hospitals, and tech startups dedicated to innovation and advancement. It is also appropriate that the filming took place in a university library, considering how many researchers, scholars, and leaders have been inspired to pursue their careers in part because of Star Trek.

Michael P. Cassabon is the Director of Advancement for the University of Toronto library system and a lifelong fan of Star Trek. 

The Fisher Library on  The Ready Room

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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My Favorite Location for a Trek series, EVER!

My faves Trek locations would be the campus used for OPERATION ANNIHILATE and the fort from ARENA.

Least favorite ( by far ): the brewery from 09. It would have cost them almost less than nothing to lay black garbage liner on the floor to cover up the bare cement, a solution we Super-8 filmmakers used going back to before STAR WARS. I asked the 09/ID production designer about that when I interviewed him for TOMORROWLAND and he had nothing to say about that one at all except the usual ‘we had to cut corners somewhere for the budget.’

I will say that this Toronto thing in these stills looks a ton better than the ENTERPRISE show’s library used at the start of season 2, a scene that looked completely like a bad cut scene from a CD-ROM video game and memorable (in a bad or badder way) because its appearance was the final straw that broke the camel’s back for me, as I gave up on the whole series while this scene was playing.

And yet the video posted here is geo blocked for Canadians!

TREKMOVIE how about providing/promoting a link that serves Canadians considering the video is about a location in Canada? I know your an American site but yeah just saying.

The video seems to be available outside of the US on the official Star Trek website. I’m not sure why Paramount+ still enforces the geo-blocking on their own Youtube channel since the streaming service has expanded to countries outside North America.

I’ve always enjoyed reading and in the eighth grade I discovered that I could donate one period a week to work in the library as a student aide. By the time I got to twelth grade I was donating 12 periods a week to the library. I even got a job working in a university library when I went to college at a branch campus of the University of Pittsburgh. I became a software engineer but had things turned out just a little bit different I could very easily have been a librarian. I’ve been in Hillman library at the main campus of Pitt and it is quite an impressive location. But the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library blows away any library I’ve ever been in. I am impressed with its external architecture and it’s internal design. The University of Toronto is to be lauded for building this incredible building and repository of knowledge. I’m so glad that they allowed Discovery to be filmed there.

This was a fascinating read. Thank you.

Really enjoyed this, thanks for this essay. Hope the bluray for this season has a feature on the Fisher.

Gorgeous location, put to outstanding use.

In contrast to may who have posted, the library scenes really took me out of the episode. To me at least, the interior was so obviously a 20th C library of the kind that you might find in a University setting, (digitally tweaked to make it look vast), that I found the location a distraction and the weakest part of an otherwise reasonable episode.

I was half-expecting the Merrill Collection.

Still…

I wonder if in the future if attendance will go up just so people can see “That Library from, Star Trek”. Is there any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise of attendance at a public place going up after it has been involved in a TV or, Film Production?

I’d bet more people travelling crosscountry sidestepped to make a pilgrimmage to Devil’s Tower after CLOSE ENCOUNTERS came out.