Marvels “Eternals” Review: An Action-Packed, Cosmic Team-Up That Doesn’t Deserve the Hate

Please be aware, if it wasn’t obvious enough, this review does contain spoilers. If you don’t want the movie to be spoiled we would advise you to exit from the website/article.

Eternals was a group of cosmic beings from inside the Marvel Comics that I did not know anything about, so going into this was a whole new experience. I went in with a blank slate which I believe helped me enjoy the movie more than I should have and got introduced to some amazing characters along the way.

Eternals have been on Earth for 7000 years and haven’t been involved in any of the previous movies’ battles including Thanos so that was one thing I went looking for answers to in this movie.

Overview

As previously mentioned, I went into this movie knowing nothing other than the Eternals were cosmic beings and that they are insanely powerful, as we got teased within trailers and TV spots. I think this was one of the reasons why I was so captured by these new characters that are debuting within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I will admit that leading up to this movie’s release my interest and hype died…completely. It wasn’t anything to do with the cast of characters, it was more so that they took what felt like forever to begin the marketing for this movie. It was only in the last couple of months where my interest began to return for this movie, while I wasn’t 100% interested in it a couple of months ago, I was just a couple of weeks ago.

With an entire 2 week period where I began to see reviews that absolutely trashed this movie to pieces my interest began to grow then the ratings for this movie began to decline, rapidly. This is one of the major factors which pulled my interest back to the movie, I couldn’t wait to see this movie for myself to see if the reviews and ratings were correct.

Oh, boy were they wrong. While this is nowhere close to being the strongest and most liked Marvel movie by any means, I do think it is better than a handful of older and some new (Black Widow) movies. The movie absolutely surprised me with a number of things.

One of these things was the visuals. The visuals used in this movie were absolutely stunning. Especially the visuals were Angelina Jolie’s character Thena. The visuals on her powers were surprisingly very fantastic. Thena is an elite warrior who can create any weapon with cosmic energy.

Another thing that captured my surprise was the Deviants. While they were like a gunmetal color they were done incredibly well and were fierce throughout the entire movie. I wanted more of the Deviants every time I saw one appear on the screen.

Story

I will admit, I’m not a big fan of the story itself. The story focused on the Celestials sending a group (Eternals) to Earth to “protect” it from the Deviants. Over the course of the time they are on Earth protecting it from the Deviants, the Eternals are not allowed to interfere in any human conflict to stop it. They kill the last Deviant in 1500 and spend 500 years mainly separated from each other while waiting to be returned home.

This is the main story, a lot more action and story happens after this. We get to see the story in the present day where we see the Eternals live their lives as normally as they can until they are forced to reassemble and fight the Deviants once again. However, the Eternals do have to come together to fight Ikaris.

Characters

The characters in this movie all grabbed enough screen time to really show off the characters which each actor portraying the character did absolutely fantastic with a few standout characters like Gemma Chan as Sersi, Richard Madden as Ikaris (my favorite character), Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo and Angelina Jolie as Thena.

While those that are mentioned above are my favorite characters in the movie, I do have to speak about the rest of the cast of Eternals, mainly Barry Keoghan as Druig. Druig throughout the movie made me hate him, I hated him from the beginning BUT this character is a surprising one. His character development throughout the movie right until the end is amazing and one of the best-developed characters in the movie.

Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos is another surprising one. His character is an Eternal who is an intelligent weapons and technology inventor. Throughout the movie, he is shown to create weapons and help humankind develop, until the second world war when the Hiroshima bomb is dropped and he feels like it’s his fault because he allowed this. Another standout character and the first superhero to be depicted as gay in an MCU film.

Salma Hayek as Ajak was a character who served her purpose in the movie, although I would have liked to see her do more action scenes and be a more hands-on Eternal, I feel like there was much more they could have done with this character. Salma Hayek was great though.

Another character that was in the movie which I felt was very underused until the post-credits scene was Kit Harington’s “Dane Whitman”. Throughout the marketing and stuff like that, it was always mentioned that he was Black Knight and to see him not even suit up was absolutely disappointing.

Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, the first deaf superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the power of super-speed, I have to say, I absolutely loved the CGI for her powers, they felt and looked so much better than Quicksilver’s back in Age of Ultron.

you can read all the cast here.

Hype

The hype. I feel that the hype around this movie was great for the people who were looking forward to the movie for the longest time. However, I feel like I’m one of the few whose hype died leading up to the release of this movie. As someone who didn’t know anything about these characters, I feel like my hype grew for them throughout this movie.

I also feel like the negative reviews and the bad rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a factor that has killed some people’s hype for this movie as well which is such a bad thing because a big portion of the reviews is false reviews.

5 Favorite Moments

5. The opening scene. The Eternals arrive on Earth and instantly make themselves known to humankind by killing a couple of Deviants that are attacking the humans. Seeing all of the Deviants showcase their powers was absolutely brilliant.

4. The scene where they go to recruit Phastos to fight the Deviants that have returned. The house scene was absolutely hilarious with Phastos, Sersi, and Ikaris. Ikaris is asking Phastos if he is using his powers, Ikaris tests him by using his laser eyes to shoot a door which doesn’t affect it and he punches a table thinking it’s vibranium table but it’s just from IKEA.

3. When Phastos tells Makkari to run to find the Emergence this whole scene of her running around the world was brilliant and absolutely 100% surprised me with just how great the visuals on her powers were. The super-speed was literally perfection in this movie.

2. The entire fight scene with the Eternals and Ikaris at the end. This was such a great fight, the ruthlessness that Ikaris showed in this fight was absolutely amazing. He was so dedicated to serving his cause that he was willing to kill the Eternals just to allow the Emergence to happen.

1. The scene where Ikaris shows Ajak that the Deviants have returned when she peaks over the cliff edge he pushes her down, sending her to her death by getting killed by the Deviants so that they can allow the new Celestial to be born. This was the scene where I said to myself “Holy S**t, Ikaris is brutally amazing”.

Dislikes

One of my major dislikes was the use of Kit Harington’s character. I would have loved to see him suit up as Black Knight. I love that it’s setting up his future and the tease of a certain “daywalker” I just would have loved to see Kit’s character fight alongside the Eternals.

I hated the fact it didn’t even take much for the character of Sprite to turn sides and side with Ikaris, Sersi lived with Sprite for years, saved her from the Deviant in the beginning and yet Sprite turned her back within a second. I absolutely hated that decision.

Recommend?

Absolutely. I think that the hate this movie is receiving is uncalled for. This movie was really action-packed, it was visually stunning, and the characters were all amazing. The Celestial designs were so detailed, they were huge, menacing, and didn’t care for anything.

Verdict

Overall a really solid cosmic action-packed debut. The Eternals delivered a really fun movie. Not the greatest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie but by far not the worst movie in the franchise. Each main character delivered epic scenes, great fight scenes, and the actors portrayed their characters really well. I will be watching this movie again as soon as possible for the characters alone.

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Rating 9/10

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Eternals is available in cinemas worldwide. Visit your local cinema’s website for further details on how to book tickets.