I knew nothing about the Eternals before heading into this film and for me, when it comes to Marvel movies, that is a rare thing. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who any of these characters were, in fact, I didn’t even know who most of these actors were aside from the obvious few however none of this detracted from my enjoyment of the film as a whole.
Does Eternals have issues? Yeah, more than a few actually with pacing being the main one. The film feels like it drags a little in places and the structure of the film moving constantly between present day and flashbacks scenes that seemed somewhat disjointed. Strangely, this felt like it should have been the second film with these characters as it did feel like they needed to cram in too much exposition and setup for too many characters and that ended up in a film that is longer than Avengers: Infinity War.
The other issue I had with the film is that some of the best moments feel like they’ve been lifted straight from other films such as Transformers: The Last Knight, Mortal Kombat and Watchmen to name just a couple. The filmmakers may attribute these kind of connections as being either homages or even just coincidence but when if you’ve seen those films as well as this one, you’ll realise quickly what I mean.
However, with the above points made I did actually quite enjoy the film. The present day story was actually way more enjoyable that any of the flashback stuff and there is a twist in here that I didn’t see coming. Granted, it was predictable there would be a twist, but I didn’t expect it to be the one that we ended up getting and it felt kind of refreshing but again I think that may go back to knowing nothing about any of these characters and if that’s the case, I really wish I didn’t read so many comic books about Spider-Man.
People have been saying that Eternals is one of the worst, if not the worst film so far in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I’d have to disagree. There are films out there such as Iron Man 2 or Captain Marvel that I enjoyed way less than this but I will admit that is very middle of the road in terms of quality although when you’re being compared to some of the highest grossing films of all time, is that really a surprise?
Stupidly though, my favourite part of Eternals? Richard Madden kicking about space, fighting aliens and being a general badass while rocking his Scottish accent. Thumbs up for that one Marvel.
by Edward Laing
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