So this is considered one of the worst of the MCU films and having now seen it, this is definitely true. I was always going to watch it anyway, if not because it’s MCU then because it’s because it was made by Chloé Zhao. It’s undeniable that she made a mess of things here but then it’s hard to see how so sprawling a story with such a huge cast could ever have succeeded. It fails even as an action spectacle as the special effects are really bad at times and it fails as an MCU film as it has so few connections to the shared multiverse that it would have been better off as its own film. By all accounts Zhao actively sought to be a part of this project, but from the results we see here, I don’t believe she really understands comics superheroes.

7,000 years ago, the Eternals were sent by the Celestial Arishem to Earth to exterminate the invasive Deviants. Immortal and superpowered, the Eternals fight the monstrous Deviants for thousands of years and protect humanity, resulting in them being remembered as figures of myth and legend. By 1521 they finish off the last Deviants. Bereft of purpose and divided over whether to continue to protect humanity from themselves or to live apart from them, they disband. In the present day, two of them who are living among humans in London, Sersi and Sprite, are attacked by a particularly powerful Deviant. The most powerful of them Ikaris arrives to drive the Deviant off. The three of them set off to find their leader Ajak only to find her dead. The sphere embedded in her that allows her to communicate with Arishem leaves the corpse and enters Sersi’s body, indicating that she is the designated successor as their leader. She is then able to learn of the Eternals’ true mission: to see to the birth of a new Celestial born from the collected energies of intelligent life on Earth, a process that would destroy the planet.

This is a grand, sweeping epic and you can tell how well thought out it by seeing how hard it tries to preemptively cover possible plot holes. But it is far too big a story to fit within a single film even with an expanded running time. The basic building blocks are sound enough and there is a heady feeling in realizing that the Eternals are the earliest superheroes of the MCU and the inspiration for so many of humanity’s myths. Unfortunately everything goes by so fast that moments that ought to be dramatic are mere blips in a long stream of exposition. The same goes for the stories of the eight Eternals. Their individual character arcs may each be worthy stories but there is just too much to tell and not enough room to breathe. It is simply impossible to make the audience to care about the characters in the small amount of time each has been allocated. As such their victories and losses, tragedies and moments of growth all feel utterly meaningless. The film really wants us to appreciate how long Ikaris and Sersi have been together or how Phastos wants to help humanity advance technologies and is frustrated by how each new technology is turned towards destruction. But just telling us all this doesn’t work. We need to feel it and that needs time that this film simply doesn’t have enough of.

I also wonder if Zhao had as much time to work on this film as she would have liked. The climactic fight scene isn’t too embarrassing but the same cannot be said for the brief scenes of many of the battles they had in the past which look like they belong in a cheaply-shot music video or something. The internal logic of the plot is sound but its connections to the wider MCU are tenuous. Sersi gets rightly called out for why they didn’t participate in the fight against Thanos. But her justification that they were ordered to only fight Deviants is ridiculous when we’re talking about someone who killed half of the universe. For that matter, why aren’t they calling the Avengers for help when they realize that the entire planet is on the brink of destruction? Many of the MCU films are stronger for being part of a shared universe but in the case of Eternals, the connection is actually a handicap. I also perceive that Zhao is kind of bad at comedic timing. The few moments where the characters try to pull of the quips that are sort of the signature of the MCU films fail really badly.

This epic story really needed to be told as some sort of standalone television series. It would have been fascinating to play up the aspect of them being the inspirations for the gods and heroes of mythology. The central conflict would be about whether they are there to passively protect humanity when needed or to actively guide and even lead humanity. It feels to me that this is what Zhao really wanted to do but the superhero action part that was needed to sell this commercially just bored her. What we get is a terrible film that not even dedicated MCU fans should feel obligated to watch. Finally, I note that this film may show the limits of Zhao’s affinity with American culture. It was always sort of weird that she could make incredible films like The Rider and Nomadland, being someone who was born and mostly raised in China. But it’s one thing to be able to empathize with the downtrodden and tap into the universal pain of human suffering. It’s another to understand another culture’s sense of humor or to realize that telling stories about gods necessarily means invoking real-life religions with all of the complex emotions and veneration that entails.