Dr. DVD

I re-watched this last night with a group viewing online and my opinion is that it wasn't as bad as I initially thought, but it's still pretty bad comparatively speaking. The movie didn't seem to know what it wanted to be, and it was evident there was a lot of auteur director (Zhao) vs. Disney exec stuff in terms of story structure and plot. Also, the Deviants looked way too much like Transfomer movie effects rejects.

Troy Stiffler

I really like the mythology and sympathetic characters more than the action. Lots of good concepts. I liked it as much as most of the MCU.

I think it lacked the car chases and explosions that we are used to in the MCU. The MCU largely became the consolidation of good action set pieces in modern movies.

fujishig

I think something I was surprised by was that I thought my kids would be bored with all the exposition, but my eldest especially loved all the history and backstory and there was enough fighting for my son. Though now I'm thinking part of my enjoyment of this is that I had way lowered expectations of it given what seemed like the general consensus.

Finisher

This somewhat transcended the comic genre and actually broached serious subjects. "Lacked car chases and explosions." As if we haven't gotten enough of that. United Nations casting made no logical sense but the actors created sympathetic, distinct personalities and were fine. Basically this was different enough from the standard comic movie to keep me interested. Also the nature of the Eternals - going from Gods to mere pawns - was tragic and seeing some die elevated this. Eternals were basically robotic/ai clones meant to stabilize order with the deviants? Deviants felt like the weak link but I justified it as them not being organic and real but again just creations of Arishem.

GoldenJCJ

To me, Druig’s struggle with allowing humans to be humans or stepping in to create harmony was the most interesting part of the movie. I would have loved for them to explore Druig’s internal conflict a little more.

E Unit

Finally saw it, so much potential with the stories and characters. I knew zip about Eternals, and really, still know zip now. It’s a beautiful looking movie and seeing that much Gemma Chan was really nice. But the pace was so damn slow, then the info rush halfway through didn’t help. Uneven movie to say the least, but as much as I liked the cast, they didn’t have much to work with. I hope they’re all better used in the MCU.

Jason

Finally saw this over the weekend thanks to the weather being so bad.

Actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm a sucker for cosmic Marvel to begin with, and let out a little girl squeal when the Celestial showed up in the history lesson in GoTG. Not super crazy about the Evangelion style redesign but thought the big (literally!) bad was pretty badass overall.

Yes, the reveal was predictable, yes, there were a lot of cliches, but I thought the whole thing worked. I didn't even have problems with the length or pacing.

One thing I was hoping one of them would ask is, since they've apparently done this thousands to fimes and have their minds wiped after each emergence, do they suffer the same moral crisis and lose confidence in each other every time? Or was Earth just a special case?

Runaway

I think Earth was the first time. As I understood normaly Salma Hayek's character doesn't tell anyone about the Emergence, because she had trust in Arishem, so when she doesn't tell anyone about the Emergence the others can't have a moral crisis, since they are just wiped out with the rest of the planet, not knowing a new celestial is born.

spainlinx0

That's actually what annoyed me the most about this. I am so fucking tired of the cliche in stuff that "earth is soooo special! The people are so special! They have changed us!"

Marvel isn't exactly a small universe and we have seen plenty of other beings who are "like people on earth." It makes no sense that this is the first time or that earth and earthlings are so different than other planets.

Finisher

I think it's equally or more "our existence is a lie; we're fucking pawns; we have no free will; our memories will be wiped." Remember the big deal they made about Thena getting memory wiped.

fujishig

I think it's happened before, hence Thena's disastrous flashbacks and memories of being in a panic with everything dying (and maybe even why she's so ready to fight her fellow Eternals). It's also why Ajax doesn't tell anyone except the most loyal of her group, and even he's conflicted, though only because he knows how it affects the other Eternals and not so much out of love for humans or anything. The main difference this time is Ajax being affected and revealing the plot to all the other bleeding hearts early, so I guess in that way Earth and ironically the snap and fallout of it was what made a big difference.

Having said that, again, if you think about it too hard it still makes no sense why the Celestials wouldn't get involved with the situation with Thanos (which affected the birth of Celestials and their role as caretakers of life) and why they would say only defend against Deviants. If there were something else that threatened to wipe out the human race, just let it and let that Celestial in the planet die or sit dormant for longer?

Kurt D

Trying a second time and I'm liking it less. It's like 5 mild 1/2-hour episodes of a CW series about god-like superheroes, and each episode ends with them posing in a line smiling at the camera. Druig is terribly unlikeable, he reminds me of the villain in the Mr. Mercedes show more than anything else. 2/5

story

I was at Target tonight and there are tons of peg warmer Eternals action figures of every character. I mean, sure, the Jurassic Park pegwarmer is John Hammond and the retro Batman pegwarmer is Robin but wow, there were tons of pretty much all of them, as far as I could tell.

To be fair, the figures are huge and way too expensive, like most action figures these days, anyway.

TomOpus

I've never been into current toys so I had to look up peg warmer figures.

tanman

Fitting how this is the only MCU movie I didn't catch in the theaters.

This was pretty bad. Bottom three in the MCU IMHO at this moment. Right above Hulk and Thor 2. It's one of those situations where the sum of the parts didn't equal up to the individual parts. I love the representation. The diverse cast was great. I especially loved Lauren Ridloff and don't think she gets talked about enough for this film (pun not intended). One of the few bright stars in TWD. Angelina Jolie was badass and looked the part. But why couldn't she contribute more than a glorified cameo? I think Arnold had more lines in the Terminator. The direction was good, the cast was great it was an interesting plot and different than anything we've seen in the MCU so far. It just didn't add up. Even though the cast was great they didn't really have a chance to shine. There wasn't much of a connection to any of them. The design of the movie was all over the place. I agree with whoever said that the deviants felt like Bayverse transformer rejects. Even the more interesting plot of the alpha evolving lead absolutely nowhere. The design of their powers was all over the place. Angelina Jolie's looked great as did the overall geometric design of the cosmic powers. But literal finger guns? Really?? And the suits themselves looked way to power rangersy. Loved the Valet guy. He was pretty funny throughout.

I think it just completely failed to connect to audiences.

fujishig

The visual designs aren't the best suited for superhero toys and they, like Shang Chi before them, released way early for the movie. Plus they were all in one "wave" instead of what they usually do mixing and matching cinematic figures with comic book figures, so all of them pegwarmed hard.

cultshock

To be honest, I would have been shocked if they sold well. Action figures based on this film almost define "pegwarmer".

ddrknghtrtns

This is where it all falls apart. They (The Eternals), couldn't be a least bit bothered by the fact that Thanos had the most powerful objects in all galaxies attached to his power glove and was almost going to succeed in wiping out every lifeform and rebooting creation again?
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tanman

It's a throwaway line. Obviously the real world logistics come in to play and the Eternals didn't exist before Endgame. There's no real in universe explanation that could cover the real world realities of production. So we're supposed to just take it at face value. At least they did address it though.

Josh-da-man

The Celestials were introduced prior to Infinity War in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

For whatever reason, all of the cosmic beings of the MCU (Celestials, and Galactus, Eternity, Living Tribunal, In-Betweener, Beyonder, and whoever else they introduce in upcoming projects) were content to sit that one out.

tanman

GoldenJCJ

I don’t recall, and don’t really want to watch this movie again to find out, but is there a reason they couldn’t have Captain Marvel-ed this and just set it before the events of Avengers: IW and Endgame?

majorjoe23

My guess is if it took place before IW/Endgame, then there would have been no reason for them not to be involved in trying to stop Thanos in those films.

Runaway

They could have, but wouldn't be the problem of them not interfering be even bigger. Now they could say our job was killing the Deviants, that's finished so we are done. Now you want them to say, they killed a celestial to safe earth, but did nothing against Thanos? Makes even less sense to me.
In the end it's the same problem of most comic books and movies. Why did no one help Thor when Malekith wanted to turn the universe into eternal darkness, which sounds even worse than Thanos's plans?

tanman

In addition to all that they're trying to establish the MCU post EG. They pretty much have to rebuild the MCU and take it new directions and the Eternals was going to be a major engine to that. I really wonder how their plans will change considering it's poor reception.