Movie Thoughts: Eternals

This will be a short entry.

The MCU is a fucking mess and this movie is fucking weak. I snuck into it. I’m glad I did. This movie does not deserve your money and Marvel doesn’t need your money.

I liked the trailers for Eternals. It looked interesting. It isn’t. It’s just bad. Chloe Zhao is in over her head here. The way the movie is shot means nothing when it’s the same quippy, plot-driven dialogue and stale CGI spectacle imposed over the beautiful vistas. The battles weren’t any different than other Marvel installments, just as formulaic, with people shooting and punching and throwing and slamming and gymnastics-ing and breaking things. No one is ever seriously hurt. Eternals takes its place among other bad marvel movies — Ant Man and the Wasp, Thor: the Dark World. It’s uninspired. It’s badly-written. It’s full of plot holes. It’s not even good on the pizza and sex scale. It’s just a fucking mess.

This movie essentially introduces us to the MCU’s “religion” — their creation story. This is where the MCU seems to be biting off more than they can chew. Every successful franchise gets to a point where they can’t replicate the success anymore, they have to keep adding more and more spectacle and more ‘wow’ until the whole thing implodes on itself. The MCU from 2008 to 2019 will be a feat for the ages. This is the first movie that feels like its truly breaking that streak.

I hated the character of Sprite — bratty cynical teenagers can work but here it just doesn’t. Nanjiani is funny but he’s…