Opinion | Marvel’s ‘Eternals’ suggests a franchise in decline

Benjamin Moscoso, sophomore documentary and broadcast journalism major 

As Marvel Studios continues to heap new stories and characters on top of its already massive cinematic universe, Chloe Zhao’s “Eternals” (2021) seems to indicate the gargantuan film franchise may have passed its prime.

“Eternals” focuses on the group of superheroes from the 1976 comic series of the same name. The film traces their origins to the planet Olympia, where our titular heroes were created alongside the Deviants — the central antagonists of the film — by powerful cosmic beings called the Celestials. 

The main goal of the Eternals is to protect humanity on Earth from the Deviants. However, they must do so without disrupting human affairs in order to allow the species to develop on their own. 

”Eternals” has the most diverse cast of any superhero movie to date, bringing with it such notable additions as the deaf Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) and the openly gay Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). All of the actors come from a wide variety of social and cultural backgrounds, and each and every one of them does a phenomenal job of portraying their characters as they are written. 

However, the writing of “Eternals” is where everything starts going downhill. While I can appreciate the effort Zhao put into this film, “Eternals” seems to fall flat in comparison to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). A lot of the major plot points and writing decisions feel pointless at times and downright stupid at others. 

To start, the film devotes hardly any time to exploring the Eternals’ origins. The audience is simply greeted with a short essay in the beginning of the film explaining where these heroes come from — think the opening crawl of “Star Wars” but significantly lazier.

While we do see these characters develop as the film progresses, a lot of their traits and decisions stem from their roots, making the decision to glaze over this pivotal time in these characters’ lives a puzzling one. 

Another major flaw hurting this film was the explanation of why these heroes didn’t help fight against Thanos. According to Sersi (Gemma Chan), the Eternals never interfered with any of the major events in the MCU, because they didn’t want to have any involvement with human development. While this makes sense in theory, it comes off as extremely lazy in practice. 

Any tension the film's action scenes could have had is robbed by boring displays of deus ex machina; all of the characters are overpowered in their supernatural abilities, making them effectively impervious to harm. Along with all of these flaws, the story doesn’t do itself justice by following the most stereotypical superhero movie format ever, which feels like a step backward when compared to the inventive plots of MCU films such as “Iron Man” (2008) and “Black Panther” (2018).

I usually never like to compare films with their series; I think it’s important to see each film as an individual story, no matter how it ties into any of its predecessors. However, when seeing the direction the MCU is trying to take, “Eternals” just seems like a large bump in the road for the franchise.

While there is a lot to appreciate about this film, such as the excellent computer-generated imagery, fight scenes and cast, it fails to meet the quality of writing that is to be expected of MCU films. While I can appreciate many of the risks Zhao took when directing this film, a lot of those risks don’t get the time to shine they deserve because they are drowned out by this film’s many, many flaws. 

Rating: 6.5/10