Employ some fictional si-fi cultural appropriation to virtue signal diversity that actually upholds an outdated stereotype and what do you get? A silly movie. Throw in big name celebrities and lots of CGI – but forget HUMOR – the mainstay of other Marvel movies, then what do you get? A silly, boring movie that is entirely (or is that eternally?) too long.
The movie begins as a curious Game of Thrones reunion with Jon Snow and Rob Stark fighting for the affections of a girl named Serci (pronounced like “Cersei”) Their group of Eternals include Druig, a warger who uses his possession powers tricks more than lame Bran Stark ever did. (What was Bran doing when Drogon was slaughtering the inhabitants of King’s Landing?) Even Sprite seemed a bit waifish, despite having a plot line similar to Claudia from Interview with a Vampire. Nevertheless, if the characters in this movie are reminiscent of Game of Thornes the writing certainly isn’t. In Eternals moral ambiguity is a fleeting concern, one tossed aside in favor of self-righteous certitude.
Before the plot we get character introductions, lots of them, doled out a pace that makes me feel that I’m Quicksilver watching the world in slow mo. (Could that be a superpower, extra slow speed? If yes, then the screenwriters exhibit prowess galore!) Diversity is the most obvious of the heroes superpowers. There’s a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, orientations and abilities to be found among team Eternals. But as cute as it is it to imagine that someone like Kingo, an almost godlike creature would be gyrating to the sounds of bhangra on a Bollywood film set – I couldn’t help but cough out the words “Cultural Appropriation!” while eating my popcorn. Afterall, though actor Kumail Nanjiani, is Desi, the character Kingo is neither human, nor from the planet Earth and nor South Asian. None of them are what they seem because they’re ROBOTS! (Or “synthetics” or whatever the correct term is these days) In that light of this fact, I kept wondering why Makari was created as a Deaf robot. It is just because she’s sometimes travelling faster than sound? Or is this because that Arishem the creator, was just down with the need to represent thousands of years before it became trendy. If so, how come he forgot to represent the people with high BMI (that’s a large group, excuse the pun) old folks, quadriplegics, bald people, people with really bad acne, etc., etc. … Worst yet, all jokes aside, the movie was released without closed captioning in the theaters which was a bit of a letdown to real Deaf fans, most of whom won’t be able to watch the movie in a theater.
Eternals seems to embrace all forms of diverse coupledom, such as the match between Phastos and his husband. (Wait… since Phastos is really a robot are they truly a gay couple, or is this just a guy in love with his walking smartphone?) Phastos gets his love but what happened to Gilgamesh? For a considerable amount of this lengthy movie, I was waiting for Thena to plant a wet one Gilgamesh but nothing happened. (I dozed off a bit but my companion assured me no Gilgamesh kissing occurred) American culture has an undeniable history of fetishizing Asian women. A topic hilariously addressed in the “The Chinese Woman” episode of Seinfeld. Unfortunately, there has been the simultaneous desexualization of the Asian man. For more on this phenomenon, I suggest reading the article, “The Desexualization of the Asian American Male” article by CNN writer Andrew Kung. So, what a disappoint it was to see Gemma Chan ogled by both Stark boys (watch out Gemma “winter is coming!”), yet Don Lee, the beefy actor who played Gilgamesh wasn’t allowed to get any play with Angelina Jolie’s Thena. They shared a deep, pure, and long-term love – perfect in every way minus the pootang. (No hoochy coochy! So sad!)
Sprite faces a similar problem, sort of. She pines for the super strong Ikaris who shoots heat/light energy from his eyes. (Seriously DC Comics, couldn’t you patent that shit!)
Ikaris is of course not interested, being a villain of bad judgement and not a pederast. It’s a problem the child vampire Claudia faced in Interview with a Vampire. The key difference being that when Kirsten Dunst played Claudia she was actually 12 years old, whereas Lia McHugh was around 16 at the time Eternals was filmed. It’s a noticeable difference that left me wondering, how come Sprite can’t just enroll in her local high school and scam a date for prom? In “Interview With a Vampire”, Claudia had to kiss Louis in one scene, an event that the actress Dunst described as “weird” but there were no such explicit scenes for Sprite in Eternals. Why not then cast an actress closer to the physical age of the character if this discrepancy between appearance and emotional development plays such an important role in explaining Sprite’s behavior and motivations?
Aside from the drawn-out character introductions, the rest of the movie plays out like a Thanksgiving dinner. The lovely robot family fight and kill each other just like real families do, but in the end, they pull together to do the right thing. They save their lovable Earth from destruction by the birth of a Celestial. The Celestials are organic lifeforms (at least I think they are) who create the stars that give life to the universe. Without their efforts all of everything would fall into cold darkness, but since you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, their emergence leads to the unfortunate destruction of the planet upon which they were born. The Earth being the egg that will have to crack when baby Celestial hatches.
Our robo-heroes come to the realization that they’ve been midwives to this genocide birthing for eons and feel like real A-holes about it. They debate their role in this cosmic cycle of death and birth for a hot minute, before they come to the quick conclusion that it’s gotta stop.
BIG SHOUT OUT to Harish Patel who plays Karun Patel, Kingo’s valet. He adds some direly needed humor with his scene stealing one-liners. During the brief debate about whether the Eternals should stop the Celestial from being born, the normally taciturn Karun blurts out, “We are not going to let every human die, right?” Then adding almost apologetically, “I’m human; I’m a little bit biased.” Adorable!
Karun needn’t worry, baby Celestial is not a soft, plump cutie but a faceless giant as cuddly as a rocky crag. Hence, without hesitation most of team Eternals (at least those we’re expected to root for) vote to rush this baby to the abortion clinic asap! After more unnecessary CGI we finally save the world by preventing the birth of baby Celestial who winds up as an extremely interesting rock formation. (I see a theme park coming.)
Hurray!!! The movie finally ended! The Earth is saved! At least until the Sun dies, which it will one day and the Eternals being good with their Duracell batteries will be around to see it. Oh well, when this happens, they’ll simply move all their lovable humans onto another inhabitable planet. Except that there won’t be any other inhabitable planets, since that Celestial they aborted won’t be around to form any new stars to sustain organic life.
Ooopsie daisy!
