The Eternals - A Boring, Unfocussed Disaster

oh no no no no oh oh come on did you really expect this one to be a [ __ ] hits honestly it's tough to think of an mcu movie with less to recommend it than the eternals the latest disastrous outing in a phase four that stumbled out of the gate with black widow and fell at the first hurdle with shang qi neither film managing to make back its budget in theaters which brings us to the eternals a movie about a bunch of characters nobody's ever heard of starring a bunch of actors nobody cares about written by a bunch of people with [ __ ] all accomplishments or qualifications and directed by someone with a grand total of three films to her name not exactly a formula for success the trailers looked about as much fun as a two-week self-catering holiday in afghanistan and holy [ __ ] even the professional shills movie critics turned against it i guess there's only so much cognitive dissonance they can handle in their tiny minds anyway i'm not here to talk about them i'm here to give you a fair no [ __ ] assessment of this movie so here it is the eternals is a [ __ ] film a jumbled unfocused incoherent overblown mess of a screenplay that tries to juggle too many characters too many half-baked ideas and too many world-shattering events lacking the strong direction needed to bring such an epic story to life it's tonally logically and ethically bonkers veering wildly between heavy drama and goofy humor and constantly ignoring its own rules and principles it was an absolute chore to get through and honestly left me questioning what the [ __ ] is going on behind the scenes at marvel anyway i guess a plot summary of some kind is needed so as tatiana says on a saturday night let's get this [ __ ] over with the eternals are a group of immortal alien warriors that were sent to earth thousands of years ago by the celestials to protect humanity from the deviants a race of generic alien monster things that prey on intelligent life lucky they never landed in scotland there would be [ __ ] all for them to protect anyway with the deviants eventually defeated the eternals become kind of guardians to the human race guiding our development and encouraging cultural and technological progress through the centuries why didn't they intervene when ultron tried to destroy the world or thanos wiped out half the universe you ask well apparently they're only allowed to take action when the deviants are involved oh yeah i think i can smell shite but don't worry we'll come back to that one later dear viewer believe that the group eventually fragments over time and by the present day they've dispersed to the far corners of the worlds but a spate of deviant attacks forces them to join together once again to combat the new threats unfortunately they discovered that their leader ajak was killed by the deviants leaving second in command cersei to take control of the group wait a minute cersei that's when she discovers their true purpose here on earth to facilitate the birth of a new celestial that's been growing inside the core of the planet for thousands of years a celestial needs intelligent life to power its growth which is why the deviants were created in the first place their job was to kill the most dangerous predators on earth allowing humanity to flourish but when the deviants rebelled against their masters the eternals were sent in to clean up the mess with extreme prejudice are we the baddies the upshot of all this pish is that the eternals are basically cosmic farmers growing their crops of humans for the celestial to feed on and now it's harvest time naturally this is bad news for the human race so the eternals are plunged into a race against time to prevent the birth of the new celestial and save the entire planets but as it turns out one of their number may be working against them if i had to describe the eternals in one word i guess my word would be [ __ ] unfocused like a hyperactive kid let loose in a candy store it's a movie that wants to try a hundred different things all at the same time but lacks the maturity and common sense needed to properly focus on any of them there's romance rivalries friendships secrets betrayals moral dilemmas epic historical events world-changing conflicts humor camaraderie emotional trauma it's far too much to try to cram into one movie and the result is the interesting possibilities are barely touched upon like sprites an eternal that's been trapped in the body of a young girl for thousands of years cursed with having adult sensibilities and desires but lacking the physical ability to experience them why exactly would you create an eternal like this don't know or athena whose mind is slowly fragmenting under the weight of repressed memories but eventually just decides nah it'll be fine or the revelation that the deviants are just pawns in a much bigger game and their only real crime is wanting to live once they've served their purpose or the moral dilemma of preventing the birth of a new celestial which is ultimately needed to create new stars and perpetuate life in the universe or the question of removing free will from humanity resulting in a peaceful but enslaved population or the dangers of giving humanity access to technology that can be turned into weapons all of these intriguing ideas are hinted at but never really resolved because there just isn't enough time to do anything with them and it all adds up to the impression that this movie desperately wants to say big important things but lacks the intelligence and maturity to actually do it and just like so much of phase 4 the film's internal morality is completely [ __ ] up to facilitate the demands of the story like the eternals are apparently prevented from interfering in the fate of humanity which is a sloppy way of explaining why they didn't get involved in end game i guess none of them got wiped out by the snap either wow that was lucky but then at the same time they're shown introducing revolutionary new technology throughout human history preventing conflicts and generally steering humanity onto a more peaceful and prosperous path how exactly is that okay but they're not allowed to stop a mad robot from dropping an asteroid on earth that would wipe out all life on the planets at the very least that would surely compromise their mission to grow the world's population and facilitate the birth of the celestial well that's definitely shite ah maybe kang planned it this way or something the emotional tone of this film is utterly ridiculous one minute the gang are mourning the loss of a friend they've known for thousands of years or dealing with the extinction of all life on the planet and the next they're laughing and joking with each other it's impossible to take a single thing that happens in this film seriously which is a bit of a problem because it really wants you to take it seriously now let's talk about diversity and representation yeah this movie's got it anyway moving on joking aside though while having a diverse cast is certainly no bad thing it's also not a magical shield you can use to protect your shitty movie from criticism the real problem with the cast here isn't its diversity it's the sheer [ __ ] size of it back when i reviewed the trailer i predicted that a movie trying to introduce no fewer than 10 eternals plus antagonists and supporting characters was going to have a pretty hard time balancing them out and giving them meaningful arcs and well i was exactly [ __ ] right imagine my shock half the cast here could probably be dropped from this movie and it would have resulted in a much tighter script that could actually focus on something instead of constantly flitting between characters relationships and past events in a desperate effort to do the work of five different movies all at once and it doesn't exactly help that nobody really brought their a-game to this one richard madden sleepwalks his way through a role that demands absolutely nothing from him icarus is presented as a kind of tragic anti-hero neither fully good nor bad but driven by a different world view from the others but it's tough to care much about him when he's not particularly interested as a hero or threatening as a villain angelina jolie and salma hayek are the veterans of the cast they're both talented actors which is pretty disappointing because the film does [ __ ] all with them hayek's on screen for a grand total of five minutes and doesn't really seem to understand what's happening around her while jo lee delivers a disinterested performance as athena she was quite the action star back in the day but now she's 46 years old and she looks frail and tired and bored with the material she's been given but probably the worst offender here is gemma chan as cersei the theoretical protagonist of the movie a film like this demands a strong compelling central character played by a competent actor but cersei is neither of those things she's an absolute nothing burger that doesn't get nearly enough screen time or character development and it doesn't help that chan displays all the charisma and screen presence of a soggy loaf of bread i had no idea who this woman was or what drove her and pretty soon i didn't [ __ ] care anyway all of these problems are capped off with lifeless apathetic direction from chloe zou who proves once again that taking an inexperienced art house director with a handful of low-budget films to their name and expecting them to direct a 200 million dollar superhero movie is a bit like taking an amateur yachtsman and asking him to command a [ __ ] aircraft carrier the scope and scale of the eternals is clearly way beyond zau's ability to control and most of the time it just seems to drift aimlessly from one uninspired set piece to the next without an ounce of energy or imagination to propel it along the action bounces from one corner of the planet to another as they try to reconnect with other eternals but honestly it just feels like an excuse to work in some nice landscape shots there's no real sense of time or place to any of it and absolutely no urgency the [ __ ] planet's about to get destroyed and these arseholes are just mooching around having leisurely dinners and talking about their feelings who the [ __ ] approved this movie the end result of this depressing combination of unfocused script bloated cast lackluster performances half-baked ideas and weak direction is a stale meandering formulaic and crushingly dull movie that doesn't seem to know why it exists or what it wants to do and to be honest i'm at a loss to explain it either it's further proof that the mcu is pretty much a spent forced creatively drifting without a sense of purpose or direction and lurching from one disastrous movie to another it's been a fun scene years but the fun's very much over now and maybe it's time to move on to something more entertaining like [ __ ] brake fluids anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 1,729,811

Keywords: angelina jolie, salma hayek, chloe zhau, MCU, feminism, feminist, richard madden, thena, ajak, ikaris, review, funny

Id: oGyVuRhak38

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AgentTimex]

I wasn't a big fan of it either. All of the characters just came from out of nowhere. I also find it hard to buy that no geologist on Earth would know about a tremendous humanoid figure lying dormant inside of it.