Steve Rogers should count. It wasn’t long for us, as the movie went from him crashing to him waking up, but the world waited 70ish years while he was on ice.
Thanos and his minions as well made a comeback, if only briefly. Even Black Panther was thought to be dead by his people for half the movie.
I meant, died in one movie and came back in another one (or a series).
I just saw this movie, and it’s possibly one of my favorite Marvel movies, probably to a large extent because “MCU” elements were almost entirely absent. (Aside for an occasional mention of, say, the Avengers or Thanos).
I wasn’t going to watch this in the theater, but I ended up wanting to watch something, and this was the only movie that I was even a little bit interested in that was playing yesterday, so I went for it. I’m so glad I did.
Some observations:
I was hardly ever bored during this movie. It was presenting ideas and concepts that haven’t been done to death in the last couple of decades of superhero movies.
I did get a bit bored during the final battle, as I always do. Please, movie PTBs! Stop making fight scenes so damn long! (On the other hand, perfect time to go to the restroom.) However, this one wasn’t as ungodlyly neverending (eternal?) as the one in Black Widow. (To name one that is in my recent memory.)
I was interested in pretty much all the characters. Each one seemed a fresh take on a superhero trope. But they didn’t get much screen time. This might have been much better as a miniseries, maybe one that ignored the MCU continuity entirely. Also, I think a bit more could have been made of the fact that the Eternals and the Deviants (at least some of each) ended up with the same goals. Maybe enemies become allies? The lack of time to develop the characters is possibly the biggest flaw.
Wow, some real moral/ethical choices to make, and not all of our characters made the same choices. It’s not entirely clear here what “good” is. Kingo sat the final battle out completely! I don’t feel like I’ve seen this kind of thing happening recently.
I’ll have to say, the cast was pretty damn good. Kingo’s valet Karun possibly the surprise favorite. I’m glad I went in without know about that particular plot line.
Actors get to use their own accents! I love it when not everyone has to pretend to be generic Americans (with a handful of generic Brits): Barry Keoghan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Harish Patel, Salma Hayek, Don Lee,
Hated both the mid-credit teasers.
Loved the connections of the characters to mythological figures: Circe, Icarus, Athena, Ajax, Hephaestus, Gilgamesh. Still trying to figure out exactly what connections Kingo, Sprite, and Makkari have. I have always loved classical mythology. Druig? Druid?
I found the new cosmology quite interesting, I mean, at least for the length of a movie, and I generally liked the flashback scenes.
In some ways it kind of felt like a re-imaged Justice League. I kind of liked that.
I think I agree, especially because the ending is a setup for a sequel anyway.
I was good with Ikaris’s resolution too.
By the way, I was happy to see a superhero movie that took love, romance, and relationships somewhat seriously, to the extent that it affected the final battle. And also, happy to see sex in a superhero movie (tastefully done, of course), and also, Sprite complaining (somewhat obliquely) that she couldn’t have sex because she was permanently a kid. The fact that in her first scene she was flirting with a guy in a bar made it clear that she was longing for it.
Also, the clear attraction between Druig and Makkaris, Phastos having a spouse and child, and the dedication of Gilgamesh to Thena–in my mind they were definitely sexually intimate.
Sprite is a sprite, a kind of faerie. There’s an implication that she’s the Sprite, and directly inspired (or maybe even co-wrote) The Tempest and A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream.
Makkari is Mercury (geddit?), although in the movie they gender-flipped the character and gave her a non-European appearance. In the comics, pretty much all of the early Eternals were gods and heroes of myth and legend with slightly altered/mispelled names (Makkari = Mercury, Thena = Athena, Ajak = Ajax, Ikaris = Icarus, etc.).
Kingo and Druig, as far as I know, don’t have any particular mythological connections. Jack Kirby (who created the Eternals) loved him some Space Gods, but as later writers added new Eternals characters, they often did so without trying to tie them to any particular mythical figure. Since all of those mythological figures also exist in the Marvel Universe as the actual gods and heroes, it’s always been more than a bit weird that there are a secret race of Space Gods that just happen to have very similar names, appearances, and abilities to them, and later writers have often downplayed or ignored those connections.
I think Kingo is the god of bingo. (At least that’s what I think of whenever I read the name.)
I got the impression that Druig and Makkari had a para-romantic but non-sexual relationship. And in my mind, Gilgamesh and Thena were definitely not sexually intimate - they’re brothers-in-arms, not lovers. I think their relationship is a lot less interesting if Gilgamesh is just protecting his woman, as against dedicating centuries to care for a wounded comrade. Until and unless that’s contradicted in the inevitable sequel, that’s definitely my headcanon, anyway.
I thought Eternals was over-stuffed and none of the characters had time or room for proper development, but I did like that they had what appeared to me to be a diverse set of relationships, which didn’t all fit neatly into a standard Hollywood template. I’ll be disappointed if we wind up with everyone just pairing off in traditional romantic relationships.
Upon further review…
Something about “Kingo” was niggling at me - like it was on the tip of my tongue, and it just clicked. Kingo = Kingu (or Qingu), a Babylonian demon-god, the son and/or consort of Tiamat, and the general of the demon armies. Which doesn’t match his portrayal in the comics or the movie at all, but that’s the mythological connection.
I thought Druig was a later addition to the Eternals by a later writer, but apparently he was also a Kirby creation. He doesn’t seem to have any specific mythological parallel that I can find, though. In the comics, he was a manipulative, conniving semi-villain, and in Kirby’s version just had the generic suite of Eternal powers (virtual immortality, strength, resiliance, manipulation of matter and energy, advanced intellect), and only later got telepathic abilities. Druig = druid seems plausible; it might just have sounded like a cool name to Kirby, but since pretty much all of his other Eternals have meaningful names, it seems likely Kirby meant Druig to refer to something.
I don’t think these need be mutually exclusive. Achilles and Patroclus, for example, have been seen as both brothers in arms and also romantic/sexual partners. I don’t see that one diminishes the other.
These are a handful of being who live for thousands of years. It makes sense to me if they eventually or occasionally pair up. In my mind these pairings need not be “traditional” in that they all be permanent, monogamous, heterosexual pairs. I would think that for most of them, relationships would have gone through a lot of phases. In that sense, Gilgamesh and Thena might have been unique among them in lasting so long.
If Gilgamesh has a sexual relationship with Thena, she becomes “his woman”? I certainly don’t think in those terms, that loving someone sexually (even for thousands of years) becomes an act of ownership.
Fine, let me rephrase. If Gilgamesh is just protecting…honestly, I don’t know how to phrase this in the English langauge without the same construction. If I say “his girlfriend” or “his lover” or “his romantic partner”, which is of course what I meant, do those use of those terms also become an act of ownership?
If Gilgamesh is just protecting the woman with whom he is involved in a romantic and sexual relationship (I think that’s an awkward circumlocution, but am I at least avoiding asserting an act of ownership?), I personally think think that is a lot less interesting as a relationship than if he has spent centuries caring for a wounded comrade.
It’s not a question of one “diminishing” the other, but having served in the military myself, in my personal experience, comrade-in-arms and lover actually are largely mutually exclusive. They’re different kinds of relationships. I thought of the female Soldiers I served with as sisters, not potential romantic partners (and from what I’ve read of studies of battlefield psychology, that’s extremely common, and a big reason why mixed gender units wound up not being the threat to good order and discipline that a lot of opponents thought that they would be).
Sure, that makes sense for 5,000 year old beings. But I don’t think that’s what we see. Ikaris and Sersei got together romantically in ancient Babylon (I think c. 2000 BCE?), and broke up a century before the present day, so they were apparently together for about 4,000 years. So they’d be the ones with the uniquely long-term romantic/sexual relationship.
Other than Gilgamesh stepping forward to defend Thena and taking her under his care, and the fact that he was still caring for her 500 years later, I don’t recall anything in the movie establishing anything about their relationship in particular. Again, it’s just my impression and my personal headcanon, but they really seemed to me like comrades-in-arms, not lovers, and I think that’s a much more interesting dynamic.
We see Druig and Makkari hanging out togehter in ancient Babylon, then no particular interactions until they’re reunited in the ship in the present day, and they share a look, and then an embrace and touching forheads, but they don’t really hug, much less kiss. They might just be close friends - even in American culture, which is a lot less touchy-feely than many other cultures, I’ve seen that kind of embrace shared by platonic friends. I got the impression there was more there than simple friendship, but, again, it’s just my personal headcanon that they had a non-sexual but para-romantic relationship, which, again, I personally find more interesting as one of a variety of relationships we see among the characters.
Sprite is in love with Ikaris but frustrated that she’s stuck in a child’s body, on the cusp of womanhood but forever denied it. I don’t remember any indication in the movie that she’s ever been in love with anyone else, or that her relationships with the others went through any sort of phases. She does seem to have a closer friendship with Sersei and Kingo than with the others; Sersei seemed to me like a older sister that was kind of oblivious to the nuances of her emotions, while Kingo seemed kind of like an older brother or maybe an uncle, who actually paid close attention to what she did and said, and what she didn’t do or say. He was in some ways more distant from Sprite than Sersei was, but in other ways he saw her a lot more clearly than any of the others.
Phaistos didn’t seem to me to have any particular relationship with any of the others (beyond looking to Ajak as their leader), much less have had any different phases of relationships. But in the present day, he wound up settling down in a thoroughly traditional, monogamous, long-term (persumably lifelong for his husband) relationship with a mortal man, with whom he adopted a child. That’s very different than the relationships even Sersei and Ikaris had. And, again, I liked that as one of a variety of relationships.
If, as you suggest, they all spent their 5,000 years hooking up and splitting off and getting back together again…like I said, I personally don’t think that would be nearly as interesting as the diversity of relationships I think we actually saw on screen.
But, of course, again, that’s all my personal interpretation, and my personal headcanon. In the sequel, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if all of their interrelationships wind up being completely different than my headcanon of them.
Agreed, less would have been more. I didn’t really care about most of the Eternals at the end.
Your personal experience is tied up with a lot of cultural history, social pressures, legal and administrative regulations, and personal history that aren’t laws of nature or anything like that.
Indeed, I would expect that a lot of what a dozen nearly immortal beings go through—and definitely their relationships with each other—would definitely be outside the experience of any individual one of us.
Besides which, there is clearly recorded history as well as fiction of counter-examples—fellow soldiers who did also cross over into other kinds of relationships.
Sure, that’s all fair enough. I just don’t see any evidence in the movie itself for the relationships you’re interpolating onto the characters. But maybe I’m wrong.
Although I will quibble a bit with the “aren’t laws of nature or anything like that” bit. I don’t think my personal experiences are laws of nature, of course, but from both my personal experience and my reading of military history and studies of battlefield psychology, I think there really is something pretty deeply rooted in human social psychology that leads to members of a military unit thinking of each other as close family and triggering incest taboos. It’s not exactly the same, of course, and I don’t think those taboos are nearly as strong in a military unit as they are in an actual family, and of course those taboos get broken in families, as well. I never meant to contend that romantic relationships can’t or don’t form under those circumstances, just that I think there really is a distinction between the typical comrades-in-arms relationship between fellow warriors, even heterosexuals of opposite gender, and the kind of romantic, sexually intimate relationship you’re reading to into Gilgamesh and Thena’s interactions.
ETA: This is also a largely irrelevant side-track. My original point wasn’t at all that Gilgamesh and Thena being comrades-in-arms necessarily precluded them from also being lovers, just that my personal impression of what we saw of them on-screen is that they were devoted comrades-in-arms, but that I didn’t see any indications on-screen that they had a romantic/sexual relationship, and I personally think that’s a more interesting dynamic.
Again, sure, it happens. It is of course far from impossible that the fictional characters of Gilgamesh and Thena formed a romantic and sexually intimate relationship off-screen. I personally didn’t read that into what we actually saw on the screen, and if that’s what the film-makers intended, I’d personally be disappointed, because I personally think having the wider variety of interpersonal relationships I interpolated into the movie is a lot more interesting (and, yes, realistic, and aware of the diversity of real-world human relationships, which extend far beyond traditional romantic/sexual partnerships).
I saw the movie last night and read the credits. Patton Oswald certainly is credited. I hadn’t realized that it was high voice.
I finally saw this last night (It’s on Disney+ now) and thought it was kind of meh for the reasons already mentioned above. It was fine and I enjoyed it but it wasn’t the best of the MCU. Funnily enough, I thought the introduction of Starfox and Black Knight were the most intriguing parts of the movie though I didn’t know who the voice was when Dane was looking at the Ebony Blade (Google results say that it’s Blade). I also thought Pip looked off, I enjoyed that Oswalt was voicing him but the CGI just didn’t look very good compared to what came before like Rocket Raccoon and Howard the Duck. I know MCU wants to get more cosmic and I like the idea of the Celestials and all, so I’m interested in seeing what comes next there and I am definitely looking forward to seeing more of Black Knight and Blade for sure.
I watched it yesterday and also thought Pip looked weird. The character’s face didn’t seem very 3D, but more like the features were painted flat on the surface of sphere. I went on a trip into the uncanny valley while he was talking, totally distracting me from really listening to what he was saying, or realizing he was voiced by Patton Oswalt.
The choice of depicting the Deviants as pretty much all being unnatural non-sentient animals seemed odd, but maybe Disney didn’t want the “good guys” blowing the heads off things that looked more like people.
I also just saw it in two pieces between yesterday and today and didn’t care for it that much. If I had to put my finger on what made it feel “off”, I’d say it’s the dialogue, there’s no humorous touches or bantering that makes you smile. The romance between Ikaris and Sersi felt totally inauthentic. The first scene that actually had me feeling anything was when Phastos spoke of how his husband and son made him believe in humanity’s goodness again. That was over an hour into the movie.
I also thought that there should have been a little more sympathy for, perhaps even cooperation with, the human-like Deviant after the big reveal of the nature of the Deviants and the Eternals’ mission, especially after he speaks to them. Instead, Thena just carves him up as if he’s a standard villain, and not a fellow pawn/victim of Arishem.
Finally, that Pip the Troll appearance at the end was definitely a bit off, his first few lines did not seem to be audio-coordinated with his lip movements.
One minor comics homage that I note is that when Ikaris recruits Sersi after the Deviant attack in London, Sersi suggests that Dane Whitman call his uncle. In the comics, Dane’s uncle is the criminal Black Knight, whose death drove Dane to take on the name heroically.
It wouldn’t be without a (to me, at least, very interesting) historical counterpart. Since they kicked Sparta’s ass, I’d say they’re clearly not mutually exclusive at all.