(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Eternals)
Doug (vo): It's the worst Marvel movie ever...I guess? I suppose Iron Man 2, Thor 2, and Captain Marvel just aren't a thing anymore? Well, okay, when this movie came out, it was absolutely destroyed by critics, and that led to a lot of bad press going in, "Oh, my God! This is the lowest-rated Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes. What's gonna happen?" And the answer was, not much. I mean, people that saw this movie either kind of liked it okay or didn't like it that much, but nobody was really that passionate about it. Truth be told, I think the most passionate critical response I've seen is my own, which is...I kind of love this movie for how bad it is. But honestly, I think I'm the only one to have that opinion.
Story[]
Doug (vo): Thousands of years ago, these alien life forms known as the Eternals are sent to Earth to protect it from these other alien, demon, dog, alien thingies, more CG Marvel bad guys who look like shit. They're instructed not to interfere with Earth's history unless it has anything to do with these demon, dogshit, CGI things, which they still do interfere with quite a bit. I mean, there's a lot of inventions they're giving them, and sometimes, they're like, "No, no, that's too advanced. Scale it back." I'd definitely call that interfering. But in present day, the evil aliens come back, and the Eternals have to figure out why. Cutting back and forth between present day and the course of history, we see how this quote/unquote "family" change over the years, grow a strong bond, and, of course, question when it's right to interfere and when it's right not to.
Review[]
Doug (vo): Okay, so let me talk about the good stuff about this movie, 'cause there actually is quite a bit. The ideas in this film are great. There's a lot of good questions being brought up about what it means to be a god, but let a civilization grow, and when do you interfere, when do you not. To blend in, they all have to look a little different. For example, one is like this little kid, and she has to stay a little kid forever, and over thousands and thousands of years, she gets tired of that. When they see humanity do awful things to themselves, they don't get in the way, and, yeah, sometimes, the things they break down over, I kind of say, "Well, wait, you've witnessed the history of humanity. This is what finally broke you?" Like one character breaks down seeing the Atom Bomb, like, "Oh, no, I never should've trusted them", and, yes, that's a biggie, don't get me wrong, but if you watch the history of humanity and what they build and why they build it, this shouldn't be that big a shock. Like, a lot more people have died and have been tortured. Do you history, bro? Okay, anyway...there's one guy who becomes a Bollywood actor, and the way he gets around never aging is that he keeps saying it's his father or his grandfather, and, yeah, the looks just seem to pass on through the genes and stuff. That's kind of clever.
(While various clips continue to show, a good chunk of them focus on the characters)
Doug (vo): I like that this is a Marvel film that's taking itself more seriously. It's going slower, there's a lot of conversations, and the acting is definitely more serious than other Marvel films, and I got to give them credit for that, they're really trying to give a more mature movie. This is one of those movies where you could show five minutes from any part, and you wouldn't be able to figure out what's wrong with it. It looks totally fine. But when you realize that five minutes is all the movie is, then the problems start to make themselves very clear, to a point where, like I said, I think it's kind of comedic. Everyone has that same monotone way of talking that you hear in something like the Matrix films or sometimes Christopher Nolan. There's so many speeches, so much cutting around, and everybody just looks so serious, and they take the time to really let the moment sink in, like, "Wow, that was a big thing that happened", but every single one of these characters is boring and the same. With the exception of the Bollywood actor, who sometimes gets a laugh, but, yeah, he gets a little annoying after a while, too, and this other guy who's looking to start a family, and, yeah, I think it's just because he's the only one that's not talking with that monotone, everyone else is completely the same. The comparison I always make is that it's like an X-Men movie if all the characters were Cyclops.
(Footage focusing on the characters continues to be shown, with the addition of several screenshots)
Doug (vo): But, wait. Didn't I say this is one of those "so bad, it's good" movies? Like, how can you watch five minutes and be okay with it, and that's the entire movie, so it should all be okay? Well, I know this is gonna sound strange, but it's a subtle kind of bad. When you really question why these characters do what they do, how they do it, and the fact that they never change their expressions over all these years, it starts to become really funny. There's one character that makes fun of somebody, and so, she changes him into a baby, giving him, like, the bonnet and bib and all that stuff, and he, completely with a straight face, looks down at himself and says, "Oh. I'm a baby." It is so flat and awkward, it's amazing. The opening shot is these cave people, and they see, like, a monster heading towards them, and the father just turns to the blank-faced son and says totally calmly, "Run." And the monster just eats him like a shark eating Samuel L. Jackson. It is hilarious. Even the different ways these actors act bland is kind of fun. Seeing them all discuss what a strong bond they have yet showing it in no emotional way, I'm sorry, really cracks me up. But like I said, I feel like I'm the only one. There were so many scenes in this movie where they would just cut from thousands of years ago to present day with almost no rhyme or reason, and I would just start laughing, and I was the only one in the theater doing that. I just couldn't help it. There was such a sense of self-righteous importance that was so not hitting the emotional mark, all I could do was laugh.
(As various clips continue to show, we are shown clips from the 2021 Warner Bros. film, Dune)
Doug (vo): With that said, I will say, I observed kind of an interesting reaction to this film. From what I could gather, I didn't find a lot of people who hated this movie or loved this movie. Like I said, they either just liked it okay or just missed the mark a little bit for them. What got me thinking about this is that the first part of Dune was released this year, too, and that was another film where a lot of people are just sort of very blank-faced, talk to each other, and there's a lot of conversations, and, yes, the visuals were nice and the music was nice, but there wasn't a ton of action. And people really got into it. Now even though I liked that film a lot more than this, it does strangely get me excited that maybe people are opening up more to this, sort of that Game of Thrones crowd that doesn't really have a Game of Thrones to watch on TV right now, so maybe they're watching it at the movies. If that's the case, I'm weirdly excited to see where more big-budget films are going to go.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): While, yes, I do see The Eternals as a bad movie, it does have a lot of promise. Maybe we could see more movies of big characters having big conversations about big ideas. And, yeah, I still like a lot of action, but if you don't have much conflict or interest behind it, it doesn't matter, which is ultimately the problem with this movie. But if a lot of people are like, "Yeah, I like the ideas, and I want to see more stuff like this", I am weirdly kind of excited. I wouldn't mind seeing Marvel or, really, any kind of big-budget movie go more in this direction, just...you know, give us some people to like. You're usually pretty good at that, Marvel. But again, I can't act like I didn't enjoy this film, I just don't think it's on the level they were intending. When one of these demon turds kills one character that I couldn't care at all about, but then suddenly forms a human face and says, "I understand now. My mission is clear.", even though this thing has never talked before, this just cracks me up. It is just the right amount of weird, and it expects you to follow along perfectly, like, "No, no. We know when to let these moments sit and when to just rush into the next one." And they clearly don't, they have it 100% backwards. But like I said, I think I'm in a minority on this. I think the people who don't like it just see it as very dull, and the people who do like it see it as good enough. I see it as one of the first subtle bad movies, the same where you see a subtle good performance, like some people don't see what's so great about it, but you're like, "No, no. Really pay attention to it, look at the little details and the little touches." It's the same thing here, just...bad. So, yeah, I don't really know if that's much of a review in terms of letting you know if you should see it or not. I guess I would say give it a chance, if, for any other reason, just to hear kind of the interesting ideas and get a conversation going. It is a fun movie to talk about. But I guess the one thing we can all agree on is that, if this is the new Marvel direction, it's definitely missing that key epicness.
(A scene showing Sersi looking up at the Celestial named Arishem is shown)