Eternals: Marvel's Newest Heroes
Marvel began 'Phase Four' of its movie series with the introduction of Eternals. The film is based off Marvel's comic book series and introduces a new group of superheroes. Directed by Chloe Zhao, the movie brings about a much more emotional side of Marvel that you often don’t see.
Photo from CNBC
Eternals is about a group of super humanoids who were sent to Earth to stop the deviants. For 7000 years, the Eternals remained on Earth in secret to help stop another upbringing of Deviants. After 7000 years, the deviants return and have seemed to evolve causing much larger problems for the world and the Eternals are brought back out of the shadows to help stop an even worse problem from occurring. The movie spans for over two and a half hours and in my opinion is well worth the watch.
The cast includes: Thena (Angelina Jolie,) is the warrior of the group in the story, she became the God of War based off the Greek god Athena. Ajak is the Head Eternal play by Salma Hayek. She is the key character in the movie because she is the leader of the Eternals and is the Eternals link to their creators. Ikaris (Richard Madden) is the the ‘Iron Man’ or ‘Superman’ of the movie. He is the most powerful of them all and is often referred to as the leader of the group. Sersi, (Gemma Chan) is the main character and follows her throughout the movie. She is the underdog hero in the movie and is always overlooked by the others. Other characters include: Druig (Barry Keoghan), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), and Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). The characters show a lot of resemblance to the Justice League or the Avengers and can be seen throughout the show.
For Marvel fans, Eternals offers a lot of the great things that comes from any Marvel movie and makes a lot of fans happy. Myself, being a huge Marvel fan, enjoyed the movie a lot and found that it is important to have knowledge of what happened in previous Marvel movies to bring it all together. In order for one to understand and appreciate the movie, they have to know what has happened in the previous Marvel movies. For example, the Avengers were a huge part of the franchise and brought together all the individual movies from before and connected it all.
The scenery in the movie was outstanding. It is hands down some of the most beautiful places I have ever seen Marvel use and film to perfection. Zhao uses these locations and really brings them to life and shows truly how beautiful the Earth is. Using beautiful landscapes like Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, which are two beautiful islands in the Atlantic Ocean, shows their attention to detail and the true importance of a setting in a movie and how it affects the scene. They also used cities like London and other places like Spain and England.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie was given a rating of 47%. An all-time low for any Marvel movie in its 13-year career. This had given Marvel Studios its first “rotten” score. As of now, the movie has netted $300 million in worldwide box office revenue. In my opinion, this rating is wrong. From beginning to end, the movie brought light to a whole new side of Marvel we have never seen before which is the emotional and spiritual side. It is really exciting to see something new out of this series that is seen as heroic. The movie opened many new opportunities for Marvel in the future and opened us up to a whole new cast of characters. Overall, I would give the movie a 4/5. It lacked a few crucial points in character development but, I enjoyed every moment and can’t wait to see what Marvel does to grow these characters in the future. The movie can be watched in theaters and will be streaming on Disney Plus as soon as December 20 of this year.