Marvel’s little-loved movie Eternals was good, actually

Captain America: Brave New World finally addresses the giant Celestial in the room (or at least, emerging from the Indian Ocean), turning the climactic events of 2021’s Eternals into a central story point. That’s finally given me a chance to reveal my hottest Marvel Cinematic Universe take: I liked Eternals. 

Listen, it’s not my favorite MCU movie by any means, but I enjoyed it! I definitely don’t think it deserves to be on the bottom of most MCU Movies, Ranked lists. (And hey, that’s another thing Captain America: Brave New World gave me — a movie to slot lower in that ranking.) Personally, I think it’s one of the more enjoyable MCU movies to come out since Avengers: Endgame. 

In case you decided to skip Eternals for whatever reason, here’s the quick summary: A group of seven superpowered alien individuals have lived on Earth for thousands of years at the order of their godlike alien boss. Their job: exterminating invasive entities known as Deviants. After supposedly finishing their mission, they’re supposed to be summoned back to their homeworld, but that doesn’t happen. Five hundred years later, they still haven’t received their next directive, and they’ve gone their separate ways. Then a Deviant attacks, and they must come together to figure out what’s going on. 

Oh, also, they all share names with and have powers similar to existing mythological figures. The group’s strong leader, Ajak (Salma Hayek), seems to be Ajax, hero of the Trojan War; inventor Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) was likely Greek god of the forge Hephaestus. The takeaway is that humanity’s legends are actually about these powerful beings. 

That whole concept was already fascinating to me: What if the great heroes of myth and legend were actually superpowered aliens? Not the “Oh yeah, all Norse mythology can be explained by aliens” way the original Thor movie established, but the more interesting idea that humanity is shaped by the stories we pass down through generations. Sure, that inherently puts a wrench in the ever-wobbly theology behind the MCU, but then again, what doesn’t?  

But what really makes me dig my heels in about loving Eternals is the characters. 

Director Chloé Zhao presents a huge buy-in: You have to care a lot about a cast of characters that’s completely new to the MCU, including their thousands of years of history together and how they feel about each other in the modern world. But that’s exactly what I had been craving (and hell, still am!) from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: characters who actually give two shits about each other. 

Maybe my attachment to leads Gemma Chan (whom I’ve admired since her Doctor Who and Sherlock days) and Richard Madden (still the dreamiest Disney live-action prince, IMO!) made me willing to take that huge buy-in. Before the movie even started, I was probably more invested than most of the audience. Being fond of the actors certainly made the transition to caring about their characters easier to me. 

Eternals has some of the most interesting relationship dynamics in the entire MCU. So many Marvel team dynamics can be summed up as “Everyone in this movie is a quippy co-worker from the same office.” Yes, there are exceptions (looking at you, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Black Panther), but for the most part, the connections between characters are superficial or stated instead of shown on screen. 

But Eternals has so many layered, different relationships, and Zhao takes the time to dig into them. There’s loyal, steadfast Gilgamesh (Don Lee), who has dutifully and patiently taken care of Thena (Angelina Jolie), a formerly formidable warrior succumbing slowly to a psychological condition. Brooding, jaded Druig (Barry Keoghan) has lost all faith in humanity — but he lights up the moment he sees sunny Makkari (Lauren Ridloff). And sure, Sersi (Chan) and Ikaris (Madden) have a famously stiff sex scene, but the sequence where he can’t bring himself to kill her, and instead starts crying and crumples to his knees in front of her? That’s one of the most romantic and emotional moments a MCU leading man has ever had. 

Lest you think I am only here for the romance (a fair assumption, considering everything about me), I also really dug the general team dynamics. This is a group of people who spent thousands of years together, coming back after a long time apart. They’ve gone their separate ways, and they have very different feelings about Earth. But even though they clash, there’s still a deep undercurrent of caring about each other. 

Yeah, OK, a lot of that is made clear through clunky flashbacks, and every time they reunite with a new group member, we need to hear it again. But at least it’s shown on the screen instead of just hand-waved. 

Where were these superpowered individuals during Thanos’ attack? I fundamentally, deeply do not care. I care about the thousands of years they were together before that, how that shaped their relationships and their view of humanity, which in turn shapes how they deal with the current threat and the information they find that basically undermines their whole existence. I love stories about characters who were made or raised for one thing, only to discover who they are on their own — and I especially love it when it’s a bunch of characters dealing with those similar circumstances in different ways, who might not understand why their peers act the way they do, but still deeply love them. 

Eternals is a messy movie. Zhao did her best to combine lofty ideas about humanity and morality with MCU action and plot machinations. There’s a lot of exposition, and a lot of time spent on characters getting from one place to the next. And like I said, Zhao asks us to care a lot about new MCU characters after investing in so many others for a decade-plus of movies in this franchise. But that’s exactly what makes the movie so good to me. Instead of using characters like Lego bricks, only important for the way they stack together to build up to the Next Big Plot Thing, Eternals asks us to care about the story we’re actually watching, and the people involved. 

Eternals is available to stream on Disney Plus.