A brief recap - defying expectations, Marvel Studios began slowly with Iron Man, slowly building an interwoven narrative of classic comic characters, expanding in scope and scale over two dozen films until it culminated after ten years with Avengers Endgame, a critical and commercial success that wrapped up a decade's worth of spectacle with sincere emotional heft.
So, what do you do for an encore, Marvel? Got another one in ya?
Eternals might be the movie where we find out, but opinions really differ as to whether they are on the right path. For my money, I think they are.
More and more actors and directors outside the MCU seem to be airing their disappointment with Marvel movies, claiming they are formulaic, they have no soul, they rely too much on CGI, they are "just" entertainment. And while I can perhaps relate to the last two points (particularly with regards to masks - more practical effects here please!) and don't have a problem with movies that are entertaining, for my two cents the MCU has plenty of soul and the stories have included war films, caper films, comedies, science fiction, fantasy and more so I am not at all sure what 'formula' they are referring to.
But here in the embryonic stages of the MCU's Phase 4 and the beginning of their next multi-phase saga, I am grateful that Kevin Feige and his brain trust are daring to try doing things a little bit differently.
In some ways, I suppose they have no choice - despite being created by the legendary Jack Kirby and epitomizing his mythological take on superhumans, The Eternals are even less familiar to the general public than The Guardians of the Galaxy. So how do you establish a lesser-known team, while introducing a huge chronology and intergalactic creation story, and making sure you lay the groundwork for at least as big a story as the Thanos Saga, for an increasingly sophisticated and superhero-weary audience?
Well, for openers, you hire Oscar-winner Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) to direct and write it, giving you something that looks and feels like no other comic movie to date, and certainly no previous MCU entries.
You get an intensely diverse ensemble of actors from a variety of genres - costume pieces, drama, comedy, action - that reflect actual diversity that looks maybe a bit more like your global audience in terms of race, gender, physical ability and sexuality. Nine characters and only one straight white male? Frankly, this movie makes a lot of the right people intensely angry, which may well have played a role in my own enjoyment of it.
You lean into the Kirbyness of the source material - the costumes, the archetypes, the circles in the costumes and how the powers are depicted, but most importantly the scale. You carry the immensity of the spaceship, the incredible span of time the story transpires across, the size and truly alien nature of the ancient Celestials that powers the narrative.
But you also know when to step away from the original comics - Ikaris does not have to be a blond hothead eager to beat up everything he encounters. Sersi does not have to be a sexpot who exalts in her troublemaking. Maybe the character no one trusts in the comics isn't inevitably the one who betrays the others. You keep all the archetypes but change some of the interactions.
It is not all smooth sailing though. I don't expect extraterrestrial immortals to be immensely relatable, but some of the characters' motivations aren't always understandable. There are more than a few moments in the third act where it is not clear which of the many goals the good guys discussed are actually being pursued.
But the central argument that threatens to divide the team in Eternals feels far more natural and relatable than the one presented in Civil War.
Like all Marvel films, there is never too long a wait for the next joke or action sequence, but unlike a lot of them, it doesn't feel like a linear race to find the bad guy and his army and beat them up. For openers, the story is not told in anything remotely like a linear fashion, and for another, the climax is more about an internal struggle than an external one.
I thought the action sequences were thoroughly engaging and the depiction of powers was clear and creative. Aside from a few references, like one about the vacancy in Avengers leadership and the Blip resulting from Thanos's snap, there is not a lot of connective tissue to the current MCU. I am curious as to whether future movies will exist primarily on their own or incorporate other previously established characters or settings. Thankfully, Eternals doesn't require a lot of prior knowledge or injure itself trying to produce Easter eggs either - it works pretty independently, which is good, since the MCU is only about 18 years old (including the Blip), and this film covers about 7000 years of human history and prehistory.
In the end, Eternals is a movie about the many different ways people keep and lose faith, and how that faith can empower people, even immortal ones, to do both great and terrible things. It is not like anything Marvel has done before, and if you know that going in, I believe you have a much better chance of having a good time.
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