Some Eternals became disgusted by humanity's endless, cyclical penchant for destruction, others admired our resourcefulness. So for much of human history, they've attempted to go underground, and contented themselves to watch as we puny humans descend into war and greed and hatred and not curbing our dogs or re-racking our dumbbells, etc. Thousands of years ago, when the Deviants were finally destroyed, the Eternals expected to be summoned home.

(It's better if you don't question things at this early stage just roll with it for now.) do look kind of goofy, it has to be said.)ДЄt first, the Eternals walked among humans, imparting their wisdom and offering protection via the unique abilities divided among them, including laser-eyes, super-speed, energy-fists, magic swords, mind-control, finger-rays, illusion, matter-transformation, healing, and uh. They are tasked with protecting Earth - but only from one very specific enemy, a race of giant dogs/small dragons called Deviants, whose flesh is composed of greyish ropes that give them the look of cornhusk dolls from Hell. The Eternals are a group of ten immortals who were sent to Earth 7,000 years ago by an immense, all-powerful being - a Celestial, in Marvel parlance - called Arishem. Not true here! The story of Eternals exists alongside the history (the pre-history, technically) and events of the previous MCU films.

Marvel movies depend too much on backstory laid out in too many previous films for audiences to keep track of, if they hope to understand what the hell is going on In the context of the MCU, then, Eternals is weird. Yes, there are big fight scenes - many, in fact - but they're dealt with like the lima beans you have to finish to get to the dessert Zhao truly cares about: Talking, feeling, and - especially - talking about feelings. No, it sputters, stalls and jerks forward. The plot, such as it is, doesn't churn ahead like an engine that has been tooled, lubricated and filed down for four-quadrant success. Zhao's penchant for abstraction and nuance manifests in a host of ways: The lines the film draws between its heroes and villains shift in ways that are, in the MCU at least, novel and intriguing. The film utterly lacks the familiar superhero-movie feeling of plot threads neatly tying themselves up, of Chekhov's gun finally discharging, of moments foreshadowed in the opening minutes landing at the climax with the satisfying whump of a car door closing. Marvel movies are formulaic, anodyne, made-by-committeeД®ternals doesn't follow the usual formula - or at least, the narrative formula it does follow is one of those weird, abstract, unsolvable equations. And as a result, the film pushes back against the usual complaints offered up by those who harbor a performative disdain for Marvel's cinematic output. You'd be forgiven for assuming that Zhao's directorial presence would get buried, caught up in the gears of the MCU machine and ground into the same uniformly fine powder that gets baked into every Marvel movie.ДЄnd it does get ground up, to a certain extent. What some critics and audiences are manifesting now, as they find themselves wading clavicle-deep through whatever particular numbered MCU Phase we find ourselves in, is something softer and sadder - a weariness bred by familiarity.ДЄnd given all of that, Marvel still said, 'Great, got it, good, let's hand her a plot choked in 7,000 years of backstory and a CGI budget Michael Bay would chew his own leg off for. It's not a backlash, really, because backlash suggests a reflexive reaction driven by a sudden, overwhelming need to reject, to force out, to detoxify. That's just simple statistics: Superhero films have become our cultural furniture they're the steady, unceasing hiss of universal background radiation none of us can escape.ДЄnd today, with the debut of every new film and television show, more and more prospective audience members find themselves aching to escape, to rid themselves forever of these children's characters and their microweave pajamas and their hypertrophic musculature and their too-tidy, infantilizing morality tales. If you didn't, you assuredly know someone who did. Maybe you muttered something unkind under your breath as well. You perhaps read the above and rolled your eyes. Ikaris (Richard Madden) and Sersi (Gemma Chan) in Eternals.Д®ternals is the latest film belonging to that great, teeming, not-so-riotous achievement in cross-platform multi-vertical corporate synergy/narrative cat-herding known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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