Right now, Marvel’s Eternals has a less than stellar rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I think that’s because people expected more of this movie then they should have. Now, if you’re like me and knew very little and wanted to go in just on vibes? Well, then you’ll have a grand old time! The Chloé Zhao epic that brings the Celestials and Eternals into the world of Marvel has a lot of information to go through in its nearly three-hour runtime, but don’t let that worry you.
Going into the movie, I knew of their names, a little about each of the characters, and that’s it—mainly because the Eternals weren’t really on my Marvel radar, and I also, for once, wanted to go into a new Marvel world knowing as little as possible. And boy oh boy was heading into this movie “vibes only” the right move for me.
Eternals tells the story of Sersei, Ajak, Ikaris, Druig, Makkari, Sprite, Kingo, Phastos, Thena, and Gilgamesh, who are beings created by Arishem to help stop the Deviants taking over earth. They were instructed to keep out of human conflict other than when Deviants are present, which explains why they didn’t help in the Avengers’ affairs before.
I don’t want to spoil anything, so I will leave plot details out of this. But going into Eternals with barebones knowledge ended up being an advantage. That’s not to say that if you’re a super-fan of Sersei, Ikaris, Ajak, or the rest of the family that you’ll hate it. It’s just my experience with the movie.
The thing is: There’s just so much to unpack and no other way of telling this story than overloading us with history. The Eternals are thousands of years old, so they have seen. Their movie spans centuries of time, and so it hops around a lot, showing these characters learning and growing throughout centuries, and changing for the better or worse.
Taking a look at Druig, he is a character who has to watch humanity continually suffer and fight knowing he could do something about it with his power of mind control. That weighs heavily on a person, which informs his character arc. But even he has a journey from an eternal being to someone in the modern world who wears a leather jacket, and honestly, his entire deal was one of my favorite parts of this movie.
So, if you don’t know anything about the world of the Eternals from the comics, I say that’s okay! The movie does an incredible job explaining their history and who these characters are, and I could even do with more time with some of them. But I also think this movie works even if you do know about them.
If you go in for the vibes only and embrace the world that Chloé Zhao is creating, you’re going to have a fun time with my dysfunctional Eternals family.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
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