Eternals review – Marvel’s space god epic offers something different

Epic. This is a word that gets tossed around far too frequently these days, often used to describe everything from a viral Tik Tok star’s morning mocha chocca frappuccino to somebody just falling down badly. With such mundane usage, describing something as “epic” may have lost its shine a bit. But with Eternals (minus the originally prefixed “The” for some reason), Marvel Studios and Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloe Zhao are here to remind us that movies can still be epic in every sense of the word. And I do mean every sense.

As an adjective, epic means “heroic or grand in scale or character” and Eternals is definitely that. Kicking off its story at the literal beginning of time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it then fast forwards to 7000 years ago, when the titular Eternals – a group of superpowered immortals from the faraway planet Olympia – are dispatched to Earth to protect humanity from a race of rapidly evolving space monsters known as Deviants. The film then hops back and forth through time – all the way to a modern-day post-Blip MCU – as the Eternals stand against these Deviants. This was a war they were compelled to keep secret for thousands of years at any cost, not interfering in human affairs, even after the last Deviant was eradicated 500 years ago. At that point the group split up to assimilate into human society (hence why nobody showed up when Thanos came a-knocking).

Along the way, though, their exploits inspired myth and religion thanks to the various unique gifts the Eternals possess on top of their immortality and generally enhanced physical forms: Wise team leader Ajak (Salma Hayek) has the power of healing; Ikaris (Richard Madden) is the Superman-like powerhouse of the group with flight and devastating eye-lasers; empathic Sersi (Gemma Chan), once the millennia-long lover of Ikaris and now in a relationship with charming London Museum worker Dane Whitman (Kit Harrington), is able to transmute matter itself; the fearsome warrior Thena (Angelina Jolie) can summon shapeshifting cosmic weapons; dependable Gilgamesh (Don Lee) possesses monumental strength; charismatic showman Kingo (Kumail Nunjiani) can fire cosmic energy from his hands (yes, pew-pew finger guns); brooding hot-head Druig (Barry Keoghan) can control minds; eternally pre-pubescent Sprite (Lia McHugh) can cast illusions; joyful Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) has stunning speed; and genius technopath Phaistos (Brian Tyree Henry) can materialize any invention he dreams up.

That’s a lot. And I haven’t even mentioned the Celestials, a staple of legendary Eternals creator Jack Kirby’s classic comic offerings. Zhao borrows from Kirby as well as more modern incarnations of the comics, remixing it all together with her own ideas so that even those few hardcore fans actually familiar with these characters (Eternals have not been A-list superheroes for a very long time) will have a new experience here. And alll of it adds up to fit the most common noun definition of the word “epic”, namely “a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures.”

However, one other way to describe an “epic” is as “an exceptionally long and arduous task or activity.” Sitting at 156 minutes, Eternals is second only to Avengers: Endgame in terms of runtime in the entire franchise and will definitely test your bladder. Whether it will also test your patience, will come down to personal preference.

Despite being a film with giant space gods, and superheroes shooting nuclear fire beams out of their eyes to slice up nasty beasties, this is still very much a Chloe Zhao film. Co-writing the script, the filmmaker brings to bear all the same storytelling sensibilities that gave us The Rider and Nomadland, to craft something the likes of which the MCU has never seen.

Besides for just how it’s shot – Zhao filmed only in natural light on location to make the stunning and sweeping vistas look more “real” than any other comic book film of recent memory – this is a $200 million tentpole blockbuster about superhumans that is often more focused on the human rather than super part. Eternals’ more potent moments are typically the emotional beats between this immortal family who have loved, lived with, fought beside, and sometimes avoided each other for millennia. There is an adult maturity here I never thought I thought I would see in a Marvel movie.

For this reason, if you’re somebody who turns up to these affairs for the trademarked MCU rapid-fire motormouth witticisms and bubblegum-coloured CGI spectacle, you may feel that Eternals drags its feet in places. Not that there isn’t spectacle to grab your attention, as Zhao gives us some very solid action beats throughout (Ridloff’s Makkari is her very own highlight reel of awesomeness, while I never got tired of Lee’s Gilgamesh just smashing things). It’s just that this is clearly not Zhao’s priority here. Personally, I appreciated the time to breathe, allowing for an intimacy of character generally eschewed in these types of blockbusters to make space for the next needle-drop moment of snark or explosion.

The delightful Chan sits at the core of that experience, being the Eternal most linked to the people of Earth, and thus most emotionally invested in their plight when Deviants show up again for the first time in centuries. With the mysterious reemergence of this foe comes the return of Übermensch old beau Ikaris (Madden looking like he stepped right off the comic book page, and was born to play a superhero) prompting a love triangle. The third prong here being the down-to-earth human Dane (Harrington, charming the absolute pants off everybody, to the point that it’s criminal he gets so little screen-time).

Specifically mentioning these characters and performances is not to say that the rest of the cast are hard done by though, as Zhao gives us some unexpected family dynamics, textured with a myriad of tiny details that make these characters immediately feel lived in. Keoghan, Jolie, and Henry get some particularly strong dramatic moments, but the entire ensemble brings their A-game.

Where things faltered for me, ironically enough, is when Zhao and co. try to give us a bit more of that familiar Marvel flavour. Thanos name drops, and gags about Avengers, feel randomly dropped in, like entries to be ticked off a list of shared universe requirements. Even the film’s two post-credit scenes, despite being jaw-dropping in terms of the future MCU developments they tease, feel discordant. The comic-book-iness of it all rubs uncomfortably against this completely other movie that Zhao is mostly focused on making – a movie that is emphatically character first in its structure, resulting in a lot of clumsy exposition dumping to set up and reveal Eternals’ very ambitious narrative.

I’m a sucker for ambition though. I would rather a movie take big swings and have a few misses than just give us passable filmmaking-by-committee fare that we’ve seen before. Marvel’s efforts over the years have definitely edged toward the homogenous, but standouts have always emerged when a filmmaker has retained their unique voice while still operating within the structure of the MCU.

This is how we got the likes of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, or Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok. Chloe Zhao is another such singular artist. She’s just a very unexpected choice for this genre, with the result being the most un-Marvel Marvel movie we’ve ever seen. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing will be up to your personal preference for these affairs. I think its epic (even if flawed).