Ty Watches "The Eternals"
/Last Friday for date night my wife picked "Eternals". It was finally streaming, we both wanted to watch it, we are both Marvel fans and we figured if we started it early enough, we could watch it all in one sitting. We started it at 6:30pm our time, sent the kids downstairs and we were able to finish it in one sitting.
As I have been saying since 2022 started, I am being more hopeful this year, but man did I not like this movie much at all. It definitely had some solid parts. There was stuff that made me laugh. My son had to explain a few things, and when he did, I liked some of what I was seeing. I thoroughly enjoyed, spoiler alert, the mid credits scene with Harry Styles. I thought Kumail, the deaf lady and Brian Tyree Henry did a very good job in their roles. And it was visually beautiful. But this movie was boring. Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek are barely in it. And Jolie's character had this cool glitch, but it was seemingly resolved with no real reason. I like the idea of giving no names, or up and coming names a shot, but when you throw Jolie and Hayek on posters, I was under the notion that they would be in the movie much more.
This movie did not feel like a Marvel movie. My wife and I almost simultaneously said it felt like a DC movie. Marvel movies are bright and fun and funny, even when they are bad. DC movies, even when they are good, are dour, sad affairs. That was what "Eternals" felt like to me. It was almost exclusively at night. And when it wasn't, the fight scenes were in the woods or in the clouds. Even the final battle was surrounded by erupting volcanoes which obscured a lot of my viewing experience. The villain was weird. There were absurd guitar riffs that seemed out of place. All of that stuff, the darkness and the crummy 80's esque hair metal music was so akin to what DC does. I mentioned a few times to my wife that this was more boring than "Thor 2", which is saying something when talking about Marvel movies.
What made me most annoyed, not even annoyed just kind of bummed out, the actors, minus the three I mentioned did not do great with the source material. The leading actors, Sersi and Ikaris, were way to melodramatic for these roles. I get they are supposed to be gods, but they were far too doom and gloom. They never seemed to have fun. Jon Snow, I do not know the actors names, sorry, was also barely in the movie, and he just seemed stuffed in for future "Eternals" movies. Everyone else treated the movie like it was a hard drama. I wanted so badly to have more Kumail in the movie because he was the only one that felt like he knew he was in a Marvel movie. He and Tyree Henry as well. They both had a good time with their roles. But not everyone else. And while I really enjoy Chloe Zao, "Nomadland" is amazing, she just does not seem to be a superhero movie director. And that is fine. She just took the material way, way, way too seriously. Superhero movies, for me, need to be like "Thor 3" or "Black Panther". Those movies are simply having a good time, with some little elements of drama. "Eternals" just took itself way too seriously and it made for a convoluted and dull movie. It simply wasn't for me.
Maybe I am not smart enough or I do not get what they were trying to do, but I did not like "Eternals". Oh well, maybe the second one will be more fun. I will be sitting here being hopeful.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.
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