Eternals Dazzles in Opening Weekend

For many years, Thor: The Dark World was considered the worst installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, amassing a Tomatometer of 66% among critics on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes. With the arrival of Eternals, however, it has now dethroned Thor: The Dark World as the worst Marvel movie to ever exist in the MCU according to critics. 

Negative reviews began to appear a week prior to the film’s official release, and critics immediately began bashing Marvel’s newest team of superheroes. Critics can be unnecessarily negative at times, so I had to check out this movie for myself upon its release. I saw the movie on Friday, Nov. 5, and Saturday, Nov. 6, to investigate for myself if the movie was as bad as critics made it out to be. 

The movie is two hours and thirty-seven minutes long, which is not unbearable by my standards and almost necessary to tell a story as complex as those of the Eternals. According to Marvel, the official synopsis of the film is as follows: “The Eternals, a race of immortal beings with superhuman powers who have secretly lived on Earth for thousands of years, reunite to battle the evil Deviants.” While watching the movie, this was truly the case, but it was also so much more. 

There are 10 superheroes who make up what is ultimately known as “Eternals,” and although they are not human, they still face much of the same challenges humans face when trying to seamlessly coexist within a large group. While the Eternals functioned as a cohesive group for a long period of time, their individual personalities still persisted and even broke through during inopportune moments, causing chaos at times and irreversible consequences. 

Compared to past MCU team-up films such as Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, Eternals is much like a new iPhone and its predecessors, incredibly similar yet vastly different. Not only does Eternals introduce new cosmic villains and characters, but it also introduces never before seen forms of bonding in the MCU. The film’s director, Chloé Zhao, manages to maintain her signature style and still have the film feel like a Marvel movie. 

“There are many different ways a human can be heroic. I want audiences to see themselves in these heroic moments and feel they can relate,” Zhao said in an interview with Wired. Not only does Zhao use the characters in Eternals in unique ways, but she also features  the most diverse cast in recent history, when it comes to superhero movies, including an openly gay superhero and a deaf superhero. 

Eternals felt like a completely different film compared to its other Marvel predecessors, but it is because of this difference that the movie is not only enjoyable, but an amazing film in its own right.