Eternals

Seven thousand years ago, a group of super-powered begins known as "Eternals" arrived on Earth to safeguard the planet from mutated creatures called Deviants. Five centuries ago they defeated the last Deviant and split up, living undercover as humans until such time that they are recalled for their next mission by their masters, the Celestials. However, the return of the Deviants and the death of one of their number spurts the Eternals to reunite and face down a new threat.

The Eternals began life as a Marvel Comics team, created in 1976 by Jack Kirby after his defection to DC Comics in 1970 to work on the New Gods comics line. Unceremoniously cancelled by DC, Kirby brought the idea back to Marvel and reworked it (to avoid getting sued), where it was more successful. Though not quite a Marvel mainstay, the Eternals have resurfaced intermittently through the years, crossing over with other Marvel properties and characters.

The news that Marvel Studios was developing a movie based on the team was a surprise, given it was a relatively obscure group of characters and integrating the high-powered, celestial team with the more grounded characters elsewhere in the MCU was going to be challenging. However, the MCU's unexpected success in making characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy work gave the studio greater confidence in proceeding with the project, even tapping the much-feted Chloe Zhao to direct and co-write (Zhao won an Oscar for her previous movie, Nomadland, whilst working on Eternals).

The result is an ambitious movie. Most MCU films introduce one or at most two or three major new characters to the MCU at any one time. Eternals introduces a mind-boggling ten at once. Although the film does have some previous work to rest on - the Celestials were introduced in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy - it doe have a lot of its own worldbuilding to bring into the mix. It also has to establish each Celestial's major power and ability, as well as their motivation and characterisation. This it achieves through flashbacks to different periods in Earth's history, showing where the Eternals were present and how events changed them and their characters.

Eternals also makes a very bold decision: to drop most of the MCU's snarky, pop-reference-laden humour. Not completely, of course, there are still some jokes and a few quips and a bit of family banter, but the humour is toned down here from the MCU norm, which will be a relief to those tired of the humour undercutting the seriousness of the action. However, it is also a problem in that leaves Eternals as the most serious - and occasionally dour - Marvel movie since Thor: The Dark World.

Fortunately the film mostly overcomes that. The runtime is dangerously close to creaky at well over two and a half hours, but there's so many stories, characters and ideas on display here that the pacing generally doesn't flag. If anything, it could be argued that Eternals needed to be longer, say a six or eight-hour mini-series on Disney+ which could introduce the characters and add a lot more weight to their backgrounds. As it stands, the film feels like a truncated Greatest Hits of a band you've only just encountered which leaves a lot of great work on the cutting room floor.

The cast is stacked and for the most part excellent, particularly Richard Madden as Ikaris, Lia McHugh as Sprite, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, Salma Hayek as Ajak and Angelina Jolie as Thena. Lauren Ridloff (Makkari) is great but gets disappointingly little to do, whilst Kit Harington shows up solely to set up his role in a completely different project (likely the upcoming Blade reboot). Gemma Chan is fine as Sersi but feels like she needed some better writing, as she ends up being arguably the least-defined Eternal (power and character-wise) despite being our viewpoint character for most of the movie. In fact, the connections to the rest of the MCU - the Eternals defend why they didn't intervene in any of the previous incidents where Earth was threatened, and Kingo laments not being able to reconnect with old buddy Thor - feel very incongruous, to the point where this may have worked better as a completely stand-alone film.

Eternals does do something interesting and relatively original though, namely in that all the characters that matter are in the actual main team. The enemies are monsters rather than some nefarious, offscreen villain and the tension and drama comes from divisions within the team as they debate strategy. A late-film plot twist is effective in splitting the group apart and setting us up for a Civil War-style internal dispute, which is a bold move given we've only just met these characters. In fact, it feels like Eternals' plot might have been better saved for the sequel, with this first film instead focusing on meeting the characters in a more relaxed way as they fight a more generic threat. However, you can't fault the ambition here. Eternals seems to know that audiences are in danger of getting bored with the traditional Marvel formula and tries to spruce it up with a greater focus on internal dissent and a more well-balanced conflict between people whose powers, abilities and weaknesses (even the bad guys get those) are established beforehand.

The result is an interesting movie which isn't altogether successful. Eternals (****) has a great cast, a strong central plot, some genuinely impressive vfx sequences (increasingly hard these days) and surprisingly good pacing, despite its length. However, it also biting off more than it can chew narratively, not all the characters are as well-developed as others, the links with the MCU feel contrived and the film's lack of humour leaves it feeling a bit heavy on occasion (and the fewer moments of humour now feel incongruous). The things it does well, it does very well though, and it's definitely an MCU movie that at least feels like it's trying to do something fresh.

Eternals is now available globally on Disney+.