On November 5, 2021, Marvel Studios released its newest movie, Eternals, which opened with a sweeping 71 million dollars and featured many familiar faces such as Angelina Jolie and Richard Madden.  

Eternals was an interesting but slow take on how the universe evolved, leaving fans with mixed reviews. However, it lacked the pull most Marvel’s legendary movies are known for. Although Eternals was based on such a compelling concept and had plenty of opportunities for success, it was hard to follow and slow to develop in terms of its bland fight scenes and cold flashbacks.

Dana Stevens, an esteemed movie critic who works for Slate Magazine, sums it up perfectly.

“[The film] takes place over a vast timespan in locations all over the globe […] yet it has the curiously claustrophobic feel of a Saturday afternoon serial filmed entirely in a windowless studio” Stevens explains. 

The teaser opened dramatically with music that led to an impending feeling of excitement and action; however, during the movie, I felt like they kept waiting for an approaching thrill only for it to never come.

The main characters are the Eternals, immortal beings with superpowers. They serve as the film’s “heroes” as they battle the Deviants and work to keep Earth safe. The Prime Celestial, Arishem, is responsible for creating these heroes to kill the Deviants, an alien race that is also one of the Celestials’ creations. These monstrous deviants serve as an evil counterpart to the Eternals.

Arishem is immortal and powerful on a scale never seen in the Marvel Movies universe, and he is the creator of both the Deviants and Eternals. The primary reason for the existence of both these contradictory races is to ensure the development of the Earth in order for “the Emergence” to begin. Moreover, the Deviants’ are responsible for killing the apex predators, like Dinosaurs, at the beginning of time, but they started changing their behavior as a result of a  programming defect.  These majestic beings were living covertly on Earth for over 7,000 years and were unaware of the real purpose behind their creation (to ensure the development of mankind), until the Emergence took place.

The Emergence is the birth of a new celestial, and this ancient practice destroys the host planet on which the new celestial is born. In other words, a successful Emergence would destroy Earth, and to prevent this, the Eternals started working against Arishem to save Earth.

Additionally, the movie gets points for casting many legendary actors, many of whom play the Eternals themselves.

The Eternals by Tisha Kaur

But even with all these incredible plotlines, Eternals fails to deliver. It was not a bad film, but it lacked the luster and emotion of most Marvel Movies, and certainly didn’t live up to the hype of its promotional materials.

The actors worked hard to convey in every scene of the movie, but their feelings and passions were not truly transmitted across the screen. For example, Ikaris’s betrayal left the audience with a mild distaste for the character instead of the heart-wrenching agony that accompanies other classic Marvel betrayals (looking at you, Sylvie).

Aside from the actual Eternals, one character I’d like to give a shout out to is Kingo’s valet, Karun (played by a legendary Bollywood actor, Harish Patel). He had never seen a Marvel movie before his role, but he won fans’ hearts with the comedy and needed spark he brought to the movie.

 Whatever caused this movie to lack the quality of most Marvel movies shall remain a mystery. It could have been the directing, the current amount of other movies Marvel is producing, or something else. Hopefully Marvel changes its production quality so fans can enjoy the quintessential quality that they have grown to love in past Marvel movies.

Freshman Pranavi Akkinepally expressed her perspective on the newest film.

“I enjoyed the movie, but it just wasn’t as good as I was expecting” said Akkinepally. “I went into it really excited, so maybe I just had high expectations for it, but Marvel just didn’t deliver on this one.”

The dissatisfaction that this movie brought comes as a surprise for many individuals since it was directed by the one and only Chloe Zhao. She is the first woman of color to win an Oscar for the award of Best Director for her 2020 film Nomadland. 

Ultimately, Eternals is not Marvel’s best work, but with its slight humor and intriguing backstory, it is definitely a good choice if you have some extra time on your hands, especially once it becomes available on the Disney+ streaming service in January 2022.