The saga of the Eternals, a race of immortal beings who lived on Earth and shaped its history and civilizations.
Chloé Zhao pandered to the award circuit expectations with her overrated, sanctimonious indie “Nomadland,” and now she panders to the lowest common denominator with the mega-budget Marvel outing “Eternals.” What a colossal misfire this is. What a horrible way to waste hundreds of millions of dollars. What an offense to our collective intelligence. From its overstuffed plot to the perfunctory performances and eye-scorching special effects, it’s as if Zhao (who, in addition to being the director, is credited TWICE as the screenwriter) and her crew sought only to tick every box on the Marvel Movie Checklist, as opposed to even attempting to deviate from the norm.
What the hell is going on in this plot? Apparently, way before Jesus roamed the Earth, there were the Eternals — a group of immortal superheroes, told by a God-like Celestial to watch over but not to interfere with human affairs, unless the mutant-lizard-like Deviants were involved. Alas, interfere our heroes did, although rather selectively: they sure saved that little girl in Macedonia but conveniently couldn’t do anything about Thanos and his murdering half of the human population (Zhao and Co address it, poorly, in the film). Now, a force from deep within Earth’s core is about to awaken, and our heroes reunite, after thousands of years of lying dormant, to fight it.
The film fails spectacularly on so many levels. For one, the Eternals somehow come off as puny and discombobulated. They never cohere as a team, and individually fare even worse. Their powers are vague and/or redundant; the Avengers could wipe the floor with the Eternals (not just physically, but verbally). New leader Sersi (a sleepy Gemma Chan) can alter matter, like glass into wood. Ikaris (a scowling Richard Madden) shoots lasers out of his eyes, like a second-rate Cyclops. Bollywood star Kingo (a wise-cracking Kumail Nanjiani) shoots, um, fiery stuff out of his fingers. The forever-young Sprite (an angsty Lia McHugh) can disappear and make things, um, appear. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) is fast. The gay Phastos (I only describe him as such because he possesses no other defining characteristics) is, like, super strong. So is Gilgamesh (Ma Dong-seok), who sports glowing cuffs when he gets into rage mode. Perhaps the most annoying of all is Druig (the normally-reliable Barry Keoghan, borderline-unbearable here), who can manipulate people’s minds.
And then there is Thena (Angelina Jolie), not to be confused with Athena, and ex-leader Ajak (Salma Hayek). Jolie is experiencing the nadir of her cinematic career. After the disastrous “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” she manages to appear even more wooden (plastic?) and befuddled, murmuring her lines with the fervor of a dying sloth. Salma Hayek, on the other hand, comes away relatively unscathed, exhibiting a semblance of actual emotion. She forms the gently-beating heart of this otherwise soulless enterprise.
Little attention seems to have been paid to plot coherence; even less so to pacing (which is somnambulant) and the visuals (cinematographer Ben Davis is on autopilot here, having shot a few Marvel flicks before). Few shots stand out as creative, few thematic elements stand out as genre-defying. Sure, the cast is commendably diverse, but unlike, say, the focus on a primarily Asian cast and smooth integration of Asian mythology in the recent “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” here all the inclusion feels obligatory, yet another checkpoint on the aforementioned list; a bit more fleshing-out would’ve gone a long way.
Studios thrusting talented indie directors into $200M+ productions is a gamble that sometimes pays off. Mostly, the results are generic, the directors nominally there, the studio spoon-feeding us what we apparently want — more of the same, but more bloated, bigger, louder. I wish I could say I expected more from Zhao, but sadly, I went in expecting the worst. The worst is what I got.
In Theaters Friday, November 5th
