Marvel’s The Eternals was set to be a big moneymaker for the studio. Yet with the constant flood of negative reviews and word of mouth the film may not do as well as originally projected. What caused such a sudden turn? Well I sat down at my local theater to see for myself and oh boy do I have things to say. 

WARNING THIS REVIEW DOES CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS, SO EITHER SKIP TO THE FINAL RATING OR PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PRECAUTION

So the film is about 10 beings known as “Eternals” sent to earth as protectors and guardians of humanity. Their biggest goal is to destroy creatures known as Deviants, and until then they must remain on earth. Well 7000 years have passed since their arrival and they still haven’t been summoned home. But when a Deviant resurfaces after they thought they destroyed them all a mystery unfolds on a cosmic level.

So this film is VERY exposition heavy. Constantly going back in time to previous scenes for context when someone present day references something. They also really like to talk a lot. They talk about their relationships with humans, their relationships with each other, asking why they are there, why do they protect humanity, why they must not intervene in humanity’s evolution etc. We are also constantly going from place to place to find each Eternal since they all separated hundreds of years prior. We have drama about character relationships like a love triangle between Sersi, Ikaris and Sprite, why Thena has memory problems, why Druig went his own way etc. We also have a small appearance from Dane Whitman AKA The Black Knight and he didn’t really add anything. Neither did the post-credit scene where Eros/Starfox showed up.

The movie is so bloated with characters talking and going from one dull location to the next that you feel like your caught in a trance of boredom and your ind shuts off. The film is nearly 3 hours long and only about 1/5th of the film has any major action in it. Multiples times I checked my watch asking how long it was. Even at the theater I was in a couple times people got up and left and never came back. I love the movies, I love going to the theater, but this film is not one of those worth seeing on the big screen. They should rename this film “Pulling Teeth: The Movie”.

I’ll try to be fair and say the costume designs and some fo their technology and powers were interesting. But beyond that I don’t know too much about most of them. I know about Sersi and Sprite because we spend a lot of time with them. But everyone else not so much. We just go from member to member and add them back to the group while trying to save the world. If there is one thing that made me laugh at it’s when they made references to Batman and Superman. I laugh because that implies that DC exists in the Marvel Universe. 

The overall rating is a 4/10. A below average “action film” when there wasn’t much action, just a bunch of talking. This film didn’t feel like it belonged in Marvel at all. It felt like some weird sci-fi film trying to be the next big science fiction epic. There most likely will never be a sequel. If you are a fan of the comic characters this film is based on you will NOT enjoy it. Also deciding to take pre-existing characters and race/gender swap team made little sense. Wait for Spider-Man: No Way Home for the next big Marvel film to hit theaters.