Director Report Card: Chloe Zhao (2021)

4. Eternals

When the rumors started to circulate a few years back, that Marvel Studios were pursuing a film adaptation of the Eternals, a lot of people reacted with one question: “What the fuck are the Eternals?” A group of characters created by Jack Kirby upon returning to Marvel in 1970, the team has never been especially popular or beloved. In fact, many see it as a watered-down version of the New Gods mythos Kirby created at DC Comics. Nevertheless, the unstoppable studio went full steam ahead with the project. Once Chloe Zhao, who was only a hotly coveted up-and-comer at the time and not yet an Academy Award winner, became attached, "Eternals" became more intriguing. What was it about this particular team that attracted someone from the art house set to make the leap to mega-budget, superhero filmmaking? Now that the film has been out about a month, this is a question people are still trying to answer. 

5000 years ago, the Celestials — god-like cosmic entities with the ability to create life — would make a team of ten immortal, superpowered individuals and send them to Earth. These Eternals had one mission: To protect humanity from a race of destructive monsters known as Deviants. The last Deviant was exterminated in the 1500s and the team has gone their separate ways since then. In England, Eternals Sersi and Sprite are attacked by a new Deviant. They are protected by Ikaris, the most powerful Eternal. The decision is made to reassemble the team, especially once it's discovered that Ajak — the Eternal with a direct line to the Celestial Arishem — has been murdered. Ikaris and Sersi travel the globe to find their old teammates again, while continuing to struggle against the Deviants and their centuries of regrets. Soon, secrets and alliances are revealed. 

On a narrative level, "Eternals" takes the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a cosmic level that hasn't previously been seen. The film depicts nothing less than the origins of the entire universe and tracks 7000 years of human history. The towering Celestials created galaxies and seed them with life, providing this superhero universe with its own creation myth. A story of this scope certainly provides more than a few eye-popping visuals. Such as Sersi being summoned before the massive face of the planet sized Arishem. Or the winding, bio-mechanical interiors of an elaborate "World Engine." Even the sight of the Eternals' triangular ship, the Domo, is a little weirder and more far-out than what we've come to expect from the MCU. 

Yet "Eternals" has a serious issue: I don't give a shit about the Eternals. I don't just mean the comic books the characters appeared in or the legacies they hold as Marvel heroes. In the film, the Eternals are godly entities that are apart from, and above, humanity. They are millions of years old and operate on behalf of cosmic entities beyond human comprehension. The movie tells us over and over again that the Eternals, Sersi especially, love humanity. That they've come to value and adore the human animal over their 7000 year stay on the planet. The movie tells us this but doesn't really show it. Instead, the film devotes much of its runtime to these god-like titans bickering among themselves, about their purposes and goals. It feels a bit, at times, like you are watching a grand, intergalactic soap opera that never takes its time to make us actually care about its larger-than-life mythic heroes.

"Eternals" pays lip service to how much its heroes love the human race and wish to protect them from annihilation. Yet the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. The Celestials designed the titular team only to exterminate Deviants. This precluded them from intervening in all the wars and genocides that have happened over Earthly history, for some reason. Arishem doesn't seem to give a shit about them doing other stuff on Earth or interacting with humans on a personal level but the script reiterates this rule over and over again. It's an awkward attempt to justify why the Marvel universe is just now finding out about these immortal beings, why they did nothing to stop Thanos or any of the other planet-threatening villains in past movies. 

Yet even this writing is not as awkward as the movie's attempts to portray this conflict. That involves the heroes mostly standing back and arguing amongst themselves while the Spaniards raze Tenochtitlan and massacre its residents. This is not a good way to depict how your heroes love humanity! Even this moment is not the film's clumsiest attempt to fuse superhero shenanigans with historical atrocities. That comes when the bombing of Hiroshima is depicted as making Phastos, the Eternals' genius engineer and inventor, abandon his cause. Depicting the real world annihilation of 70,000 people only in the context of how it makes a comic book character feel is insensitive, to say the least. Ya know, maybe a story of superpowered action figures is not the place to address such heavy topics. 

The film's inability to actually convince us that the Eternals love people as much as they claim they do is not the only example of telling and not showing here. From the moment they met, Sersi and Ikaris felt attracted to each other. In the shadows of Babylon, they finally admit their love for each other. They have a symbolic wedding of sorts and even consummate their union, in what is the MCU's first actual sex scene. And yet we never see how much these two supposedly care about each other. Their eons-spanning love is limited to a few terse conversations. This is not the only love story the movie belly flops on either. Later, we learn another Eternal has an unrequited crush on Ikaris. We are informed of this totally through dialogue. When it starts to affect the story, it is the movie's most unnatural moment, the characters clumsily bending along with what the narrative tells them to do.

"Eternals" is so concerned with the overwrought, but strangely lifeless, interpersonal affairs of these immortal assholes that it barely functions as satisfying superhero spectacle. Take a look at the Eternals' century spanning rivalry with the Deviants. Within the realm of underwhelming Marvel movie villains, these guys have to rank among the least interesting. They are big CGI monsters that rampage and attack but have no individuality. Eventually, one of the Deviants evolves into a more humanoid form and is given voice by Bill Skarsgard. (Though I don't know why Marvel got a well-known actor for a role anyone could have played.) This is a too-little, too-late attempt to make us care about this conflict. That's right before the movie itself admits the Deviants are only a plot device to bring the Eternals to Earth. Even after that reveal, the film continues to prolong this subplot, when more important things are happening at the exact same time. 

"Eternals" proves most interesting when it abandons the world-shaking conflicts all together. The story is most compelling when it asks the question of "what do you do when you've been alive for 10,000 years?" The super-strong Gilgamesh, when robbed of monsters to punch, becomes a gourmet chef. He also sees after Thena, who has developed superhero Alzheimer's. Laser-blasting Kingo becomes a Bollywood movie star, pretending to be his own child every generation and creating an acting lineage that begins in the silent era and extends into the modern day. Druig starts a commune in the Amazon, Ajak retires to a ranch in the mid-west, Phastos falls in love and raises a son, and Sersi teaches history. The idea of immortals walking among us, trying to add meaning to their endless lives, is the film's most intriguing element. (And one doubtlessly beholden to "Highlander," which Zhao pays homage to with a similar opening scroll.) 

One can't help but imagine a low-key version of "Eternals" focused entirely on that idea. I bet that would be a pretty good Chloe Zhao movie. Any time an indie darling like Zhao makes the leap to big budget superhero movies like this, you always wonder how much of their individual style will survive the studio scrutiny. If nothing else, Zhao's visual trademarks put in token appearances. There's plenty of shots of sunrises breaking over sweeping landscapes, the actors frequently posing in front of them. There's even a strange beauty to some of the shots, like a Deviant being twisted into a tree-like structure. You don't see much of Zhao in the action sequences, which attempt to marry the gritty intimacy of her earlier films with CGI mayhem. The result just feels weirdly framed and oddly unexciting.

"Eternals" did present an interesting opportunity. Much like "Guardians of the Galaxy," the comic book Eternals are a group of characters with few die hard fans and zero preconceived notions in the public's consciousness. The movie can bend genders, ethnicities, and orientation and nobody would care. Even a pretty big nerd like me knew little about them, beyond the alien Eternals inspiring the legendary heroes of Earthly legend. (Which was another manifestation of Jack Kirby's lifelong fascination with mythology.) I wish the movie did more with that. We get a few mentions of how the Eternals' antics over the years inspired ancient stories. Otherwise, the movie is more preoccupied with slotting its characters into easily understood superhero archetypes. Ikaris has abilities similar to Superman. Mikkari is a Flash-like speedster. Druig can control minds, Ajak can heal wounds, Phastos is a master inventor, and Sprite can cast illusions. Only Sersi's ability to change the molecular properties of matter is especially novel. Some of the powers, like Thena generating her own weapons, feels specialized to the point of being impractical. 

When you have a group of characters defined more by their superpowers than their personalities, it's really up to the cast to make them memorable. This approach yields mixed results. Newly swole Kumail Nanjiana largely steals the show as Kingo, being this largely humorless movie's main source of comic relief. Nanjiana's way with a zinger makes a running gag, about Kingo making a documentary about his immortal friends, into a highlight of the film. Bryan Tyree Henry also adds some humanity to the nerdy and sometimes neurotic Phastos. "Train to Busan's" Ma Dong-Seok gets a couple of bright moments as Gilgamesh and Angelina Jolie acquaints herself well when Thena is swinging a sword or acting traumatized. 

Yet not every cast member shines. Gemma Chan, making her second appearance in the MCU, does her best to make Sersi the heart and soul of the movie. She's often swallowed by the story's cosmic melodrama. This is also true of Barry Keoghan as Druig, who shows some spark when he's not saddled with weighty dialogue about cosmic matters. If nothing else, he has good chemistry with Laura Ridloff as Makkari. Salma Hayek's Ajak also does little beside deliver exposition, giving the star few chances to shine. I really wanted to like Lia McHugh as Sprite but the script builds the character's entire emotional arc into a two scenes, leaving the clearly talent McHugh little to work with. And then there's Richard Madden as Ikaris, a man who has the superheroics build but not an ounce of screen presence to back it up. 

Ultimately, so much of "Eternals" feels miscalculated. It asks us to be invested in a group of characters few people are familiar with while keeping most of them emotionally distant from us. For Zhao, a filmmaker so good at getting naturalistic performances out of non-actors, whose work is so motivated by an empathetic drive to tell people's stories, it's strange that she isn't able to find much humanity or pathos in these cosmic beings. The result has led to a mixed reaction among audiences and box office grossed that are probably below Marvel's expectations. Which makes the cliffhanger ending and dense post-credit teasers — both of which expect us to get excited about stuff we barely understand — seem overly optimistic. Where "Eternals" will end up residing, both within the trajectory of Zhao's career and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, remains to be seen. Yet it's still among the studio's least satisfying works, a film that covers an ocean of history but never finds much heart there. [Grade: C]