Eternal Something

I had high hopes and expectations for Eternals (2021). First, I loved the Kirby series - I don't think I read it much when it first came out, but have since. In fact, I bought my big iPad so I could read that series in Marvel Unlimited. Then there's Chloe Zhao, clearly a talented filmmaker (although we've only seen The Rider. I was very eager to see what she did with the material.

It starts with a text crawl, then we get to meet the Eternals. It's Mesopotamia, something or other B.C. A weird monster comes out of the sea and eats a guy, The monster, who we learn is a deviant, looks like a big dog made out of cables for muscles and no skin. The Eternals show up to fight, each with their own style, but sharing a common ability to conjure glowing golden lines and circles and make them into weapons.

• Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians) is Sersi - she can change things into other things
• Richard Madden is Ikaris - he can fly
• Kumail Nanjani is Kingo - he can project glowing powerballs from his hands
• Angelina Jolie is Thena - her glowing lines become swords and spears
• Another 4-5, I just ran out of steam

We see them do some more fighting through the ages, then it's modern day London. Chan is a museum employee, addicted to her phone like anyone else. She is hanging with her young ward (?) Sprite, Lia McHugh, another Eternal who can project realistic illusions, and her boyfriend Kit Harington, when a deviant attacks. They are not winning like they should, when Ikaris shows up. It seems that him and Chan were a couple, but broke up a few hundred years ago for some reason. She hasn't seen him since. Also, the deviants were supposed to have been wiped out long ago, which is why Chan and McHugh are just hanging out like folks. 

So they head out to find their leader, Ajak, played by Selma Hayek - but not for long, because she is dead. That isn't supposed to happen. 

So they get the band back together. They had been put on early Earth by the Celestial Arishem to control the deviants, and once they were put down, they were just hanging around waiting for a ride back to Olympus. They more or less went their separate ways, and not all of them want to get back together. And what does Arishem think of this?

There's a lot more to the plot summary. This is a long movie, and quite plot dense. I was pleased that, more than a lot of Marvel movies, the plot was quite clear and easy to follow, without being dumbed down. (It's not just that I had read the comics - they were much different.) There were a lot of protagonists, maybe too many, but they were mostly charming and fun to watch. Nanjiani, for example, had become a Bollywood star. He gets a dance number and everything. He has a comic valet, who knows that he's an immortal, who keeps videoing everything (although the other Eternals keep smashing his cameras). Brian Tyree Henry is Phastos, an artificer, who has settled down, married a guy and adopted a kid. Jolie has become madweary - a kind of lethal PTSD, and is hanging out with Don Lee, Gilgamesh, out in New Mexico. Here, Chan gets Arishem to take her call and explain the whole thing to her. 

That takes up the first 1/3 of the movie, maybe. So there's a lot of plot here, but like I say, you can follow it pretty well, unlike some of these movies. And as plots go, it isn't bad. There are a lot of characters, but they are also pretty easy to follow, and also fun to hang out with. I even liked the somewhat corny comic relief. Probably the best is Angelina Jolie as Thena, but she's kind of sidelined. I guess she signed up to do a glorified cameo, and Zhao just kept expanding the plot. Chan as Sersi is probably the least charismatic, which is too bad because she's the POV character. Also, she was almost god-like in Crazy Rich Asians. Here, where she is a god, she plays it as a regular person.

We also get a bit of Zhao beautiful vistas, but not much more than in a lot of movies.

Now, the deviants were not great as villains. The look wasn't bad, but not great. Although (SPOILER) they were gaining intelligence and powers by killing Eternals, they might have been better adversaries if they had intelligence and goals instead of being just mindless killing machines. 

So, was this the greatest Marvel movie yet? No, it was a little disappointing. A fine entry, but not the masterpiece I was hoping for. In this way, it reminds me of the Branagh Thor movies. On paper, having a Shakespearean director work on Thor is perfect. In practice, it was only OK. I think this might have been better than that, but maybe it's just bigger.