Eternal Blandness

A medium ain't always happy, as viewers of 2021's Eternals discovered. I wish I could at least applaud the film for taking the MCU in a more artistically innovative direction, but it really only does that when viewed through the lens of producers who only think about money. Maybe they said, "Okay, we're doing well, let's throw the dice now on that weird crap that makes a pile of money about 5% of the time." Unfortunately, imitating Stanley Kubrick and Denis Villeneuve isn't truly indulging in their method. Those guys are great because they're not trying to make a kind of movie, they're trying to use the form to express a human feeling. So this film directed by the apparently dull as dishwater Chloe Zhao, while ostensibly trying to make a cocktail of half art, half MCU formula, actually just mixes two formulas while she brings no life to the table herself.

The story, based on comics from Jack Kirby, is about immortal beings who secretly live on Earth to defend it against multicoloured space wolves called Deviants. The Eternals look human and they wear generic, boring costumes, but we have to take the film's word for it they're spectacular.

Regardless of how well the film did, it's going to be part of the MCU going forward because the Eternals, as a species, are a big part of MCU cosmic, which we see in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor movies. But unlike those movies, there's very little fun, passion, or variety in Eternals, a movie about pretty people standing around, politely acknowledging that they dislike the suffering of humanity.

The only character in the film who's allowed to have any fun is Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani). This Eternal decides to become a Bollywood star and he's therefore given a big dance sequence. It's hard to imagine a director worse suited for filming such a thing than Chloe Zhao. Whatever you might think of Bollywood, the dance sequences in even the worst Bollywood movies have enough energy to power a city. All this film's sequence seems to say is, "Isn't it funny how people dance in Indian films?"

Otherwise, Kingo's comedy isn't that interesting, either, especially not his video documentary of the Eternals which never distinguishes itself from the bits it imitates, notably the one from Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek are the biggest names in the film and both of them feel totally disengaged. It's hard to tell, I guess, since all the actors were evidently directed to project tepidity, but Jolie and Hayek both seem like their minds were 500 miles away from the film set.

The Eternals massive ship has an exterior clearly meant to invoke the monolith from 2001 while the interiors have a minimalist style reminiscent of Villeneuve or Ridley Scott. I frankly feel the minimalism is overdone in Villeneuve's films (though I haven't seen Dune yet). Here, it only finds another way of reflecting Zhao's lack of creativity.

The really annoying thing about it is that, going forward, I'm afraid the suits are going to say, "We tried being artsy with Eternals and look what happened! Better stick to the formula."

Eternals is available on Disney+.