'Eternals' A Review

Eternals is a superhero movie, the latest in the MCU saga. A race of aliens known as Celestials are the creators of the universe, their efforts to foster life are opposed by Deviants, the Celestials enlist Eternals(a group of superpowered humanoids) to fight the Deviants on planets where life has not sufficiently developed to do it. Earth has been protected by a group of ten Eternals since 5000 BC. This is their story!

A mostly impeccable cast is squandered mainly because it is simply too big. Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie are all given little to nothing to do and given virtually no screen time in which to not do it. You have a wide dearth of talent there with varying strengths- comedic, action, drama- but none are given a chance to exert any of their not inconsiderable talent. The movie is stuffed with so much overly complicated and unnecessary plot and exposition it allows no character to differentiate themselves in anyway. They look different and have individual names and powers thankfully because that's the only way to tell who is who. The two defacto leads Gemma Chan and Richard Madden come across as flat and uncompelling, as result of performance, script, or direction it's hard to tell. Regardless it all kind of categorically doesn't work.

Director/co-writer Chloé Zhao has here a virtually impossible task, not only because of the number of characters that have to be introduced and the amount of story the bloated run time has to cover but, presumably, having to do so under the gaze and restriction of the MCU brass. The result is simply too many characters, too much plot, not enough time. Eternals is easily two or three movies worth of content and because of that, it's not unwatchable it simply has no depth as far as character and emotion and not much of a pay off as far as thrill.

Meandering and mostly toothless despite the considerable talent behind it.

Currently in theaters coming soon to Disney+ and VOD.

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