Marvel’s Eternals weaves a (long) fun story

My wife and I went out and saw the latest Marvel’s blockbuster tonight. Eternals is not receiving the rave reviews that this series normally nets, so I had a bit of trepidation going in (I’m a big Marvel fan). While the movie is not perfect by any stretch, I still really enjoyed it.

The Eternals are a group of 10 super beings sent to our planet in 5000 BC, to kill monsters known as deviants. Immortal, they’ve lived among us humans all these centuries, not meddling in our affairs, as their purpose was just to stop those deviants whenever they popped up. The group supposedly killed the last of the deviants in the 1500s, but for some reason, they were not called up by their supreme leader Arishem, a god-like being known as a Celestial. Instead, they were left on Earth, and each went their own way to live over the next 500 years until present day.

Now in the present, the deviants have shown back up, and seem to be exhibiting powers they never have before. To make matters worse, a worldwide earthquake struck the planet, and the Eternals think the two are connected. They begin to seek each other out again, despite some having lost touch for decades or centuries, and try to heal broken relationships to stop a big bad catastrophe from wrecking the planet.

No two ways to say it, this is a long movie. It clocks in at 2 hours 37 minutes, and after about 90 minutes, I was starting to feel it. The Eternals have never been mentioned in a Marvel film before, and they have a ton of backstory to be told to the viewer just to set up where they all sit. And there’s 10 of them! Imagine watching the Avengers without having seen the previous Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, etc… All those movies provided some foundation so you know what is going on and how each character will react to situations. Eternals has to build from the ground up, and with so much exposition to tell, the movie definitely feels clunky at times. But by the end, they do a good job of telling an engaging, entertaining story, and if (when?) there’s a sequel, the base will have been laid, and they can get right to the meat of a new tale. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for these films. ★★★★