The Eternals discussion thread. Open spoilers in OP

Cafe Society
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61

And you’d be wrong.

I stated “comrade-in-arms and lover actually are largely mutually exclusive” [emphasis added].

I didn’t state they were entirely and absolutely mutually exclusive, or that romantic relationships never occurred between members of a military unit, or that there never any exceptions, ever, in the entire history of warfare.

Your counterpoint was considered exceptional at the time, and is remembered today precisely because it was a quirky exception. Also, critically, note that the unit was supposedly composed of couples who were specifically recruited as couples - the relationships existed before they enlisted, they didn’t develop during their service together. Also, and not incidentally, the “couples” were an erastês and an erômenos. That relationship doesn’t exactly match up to our modern conception of a romantic relationship - nowadays, we’d consider it inherently exploitative and abusive.

And, again, this is a sidetrack. It’s far from impossible that Gilgamesh and Thena were romantically and sexually intimate. But I personally don’t think that was indicated by what we saw on-screen, and I personally think that it would be less interesting than the relationship that I think we actually did see.

62

Agreed, but that such exceptions exist (and the Band is just the obvious one) moves it out of the realm of “deep rooted” and “law of nature” and more into the realm of “uncommon”.

Was it? While not the norm, it wasn’t just the one group.

This is a goalpost-moving point.

…and millennia-old Space Gods would stick to our modern conception of what constitutes romance because … ?

Agreed, but I wasn’t going to let the idea that lovers can’t also be fighters as some “law of nature” go uncontested.

63

You’re badly misreading what I actually wrote and actively misrepresenting it. And this is wrong thread and the wrong forum to debate these issues, anyway. I’m not to engage on this any further.

64

Just watched Eternals on Disney+. Good but not great. The Celestials being basically planet eaters means that I guess I’m out of a job. Need to call my agent.

65

I watched it last night. I’d call it workmanlike, with some flaws - way too much time spent on interpersonal relationships of characters that we just met, and don’t care about. And frankly GOG2 did the “Celestial wants to reproduce by wiping out all life on a planet(s), and his son/creations are forced to turn against him.” plot much better.
And I really hope they don’t retcon Thanos’s plan as being secretly to save intelligent life from the Celestials inside them - he’s far more interesting as is.

66

What a piece of crap. I actually fell asleep during it. I didn’t care about a single character, except maybe the woman who was in humans.

67

I read one review that said “it’s like watching Avengers Endgame without any of the other episodes that led up to it” and that’s about right from my perspective. We were supposed to care about people who hadn’t earned it, and in fact some of whom seemed like sullen jerks.

I also have no sympathy for immortals who have lived for ten thousand years finally facing death. Get over yourselves.

68

Finally got a chance to see it. I loved it! I like how they carried the theme of Love throughout the movie. The different Eternals embodied different kinds of love. Sersi with compassionate love. Ikaris with lustful love. Kingo with narcissistic love. Sprite with unrequited love. Phastos with familial love. Makkari and Druig with platonic love. Gilgamesh and Thena with sibling love. Ajak with maternal love. The interactions among them was the best part of the movie.

That said, the whole Deviant subplot was a waste of time. The Deviants should have stayed dumb monsters. Their evolution added unnecessary complication to the movie.

Maybe they could have made a multi-episode series to cover the origins and Deviant story arc. Two or three (depending on length) episodes per time period? That’d’ve given them more time to explore their relationships while fighting Deviants, cumulating in Deviants seemingly eliminated. Then have the movie cover their revival and the Emergence.

But overall, I like that this movie and Shang-Chi are more focused on the heroes’ relationships, rather than simply power-up and fight.

69

They did try something like that with the Inhumans and that went over with a dull thud.

Another thing that bugged me during the movie was that the Eternals, and Phastos primarily, are responsible for all the tech developments on Earth. Dr. Erkstine’s super soldier serum, Stark’s Iron Man suit, going to the moon, iPhones, and everything else humans supposedly developed all came thanks to the Eternals. This robs humans of our agency.

70

Oh, that’s a good observation! Totally passed me by, and yes, it does cast the film in a different light. I wonder how this holds up with respect to the rest of it. Of course, in the end, with Eros, love itself enters into the picture…

71

Just caught this on Disney+ and I’m a bit conflicted about it. On one hand I love a lot of the things they did with this movie, like not being a clear cut good or bad side, or one guy just going “I agree with the bad guy but not enough to kill you guys, so bye”. On the other hand most of the movie was just kinda boring? most of the characters were not given anything to do or any reason to care about them. It’s not even a question of running time, GOTG had tons of new characters and by the end of it I could tell you what every one of them was about. This movie had a lot of great ideas not executed terribly well and it left me with very little excitement for the inevitable sequel.

72

The problem with this is that they have to give you a reason to care about the characters before you care about their relationships.

73

Finally got around to watching it tonight. I think this one was a case of having seen so many negative reviews that I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying it, and the runtime felt shorter than it actually was.

Another perhaps-reason I liked it is that I’ve grown a little tired of the Marvel engine - the MCU movies mostly all feel like each other to me now, just pour the actors into the hopper and crank the handle, drop in a dash of pathos, some witty banter of a certain tone, and presto! MCU.

This one did feel different, even the banter, and yet it did have ties to the rest of Marvel. So all that worked for me.

Jon Snow and Robb Stark sharing the stage was fun. I also loved seeing Don Lee, the burly dude from “Train to Busan”, being the burly dude from Train to Busan again.

74

I watched it last night. I thought it was just OK. It’s hard to introduce so many characters at once, especially if they aren’t iconic (or at least well known to the casual audience.) Parts of it felt more like a DC movie to me (not a good thing…) Maybe because I kept associating Thena with Wonder Woman.

75

I felt that too, even in the comic book. Most Jack Kirby solo efforts do. The humor, whimsy, and fun that sets Marvel apart from DC mostly comes down to the involvement of Stan Lee.

76

Lots of good comments here! Awesome!

I thought it was meh when I watched it and the more I think of it, overall it gets worse, but some scenes get better. So, for me, the GotG movies have been the weakest of the MCU movies. Fun, sure, but sore thumbs in the overall movie story. In our rewatch of the MCU last year, they stood out as the worst for me. Instead of giving us this rich background of all of these space faring cultures and races, the movies are used to introduce terms or people that will be important later. I didn’t really care if Ronin destroyed the planet or not in the first movie because other than a vague sense of being “us” that planet was bland. However, GotG2 showed that Ego put his seed on earth. How was that compatible with Tiamut? How did Ego not sense it and either pick someplace else or destroy it? How did Ego not sense the Eternals, and vice versa, and interact?

I think this is the problem that the movies will always have in that if you have an eight, ten, fifteen year plan, you haven’t cast everyone, don’t have all of the stories done, even if you have ideas of how you will eventually link them, and then you have to shoehorn in throw away lines why the Eternals didn’t do more during any crisis but do intervene in earlier periods when it’s regional at best. This movie felt like that. They should have worked in scenes from the other movies to show what they were doing during that time and help us understand.

Actually, I’m all over the place with thoughts and I apologize, I’m over the flashback as a trope and it’s overused and trite now. There is NO reason this movie couldn’t have had ONE flashback, the one to show Ikaris and Ajak talking and what happened. Everything else could have been linear and would have worked better that way, imo.

Salma Hayak and Angelina Jolie were wasted in this movie. I don’t know why they got them because the characters they played offered little. As others have said, there were too many for even a long movie. This would have been better as a ten part Disney+ show.

In a movie called the Eternals, I expect the movie to be about, well, the Eternals. Not the history of the earth as seen by the Eternals in their quest to stave off boredom. Besides having a mostly linear story, this needed to show us a lot more. Instead of the history of earth, we needed to see the history of the Eternals. We needed to see them birth several celestials, including the one that is causing Thena’s issues. What is happening to her may be strange to them but we, as the viewer, should know and understand what is happening. It would help us sympathize or not with the character. Then, we need to understand why it is that after serving the Celestials for millions of years, Ajak stops this time. It seemed to happen because it needed to happen. (idea on that later)

Really, this sets me off on a rant of things that don’t make sense to me. The Eternals should be recreated, or created, for every mission instead of memory wiped and sent out into the field again. That’s exactly why they would rebel! They got emotions, either to the mortals or to each other which would interfere in their mission. Created new every time would stop that from happening.

Why does only Ajak know the true purpose of the mission? If the Eternal are created, why not be created to want to bring about the Celestials, a la Ikarus, and not be able to get attached to the mortals. Heck, as someone else said, why not just have Phastos increase their food production, and Druig force them to mate until there were enough? Again, this could come down to not explaining what the critical mass of sentience was, or why they could or could not interfere. Again, a good conversation could have been why is it that even when robots, er, Eternals, are created to do their masters bidding, even they need to be lied to because they will realize killing billions of lives for one celestial maybe isn’t worth the price. Otherwise, why lie to them?

I agree that advancing the deviant only to kill him made no sense. Cool scene! Loved that she didn’t lose but one of those overall story things that doesn’t fit for me.

What is the deviant’s purpose? Best I can find is to help bring about sentient life. How? How did they do that? Conflict? Then why have Eternals? Why not program deviants to push life to become sentient and keep advancing and then shut down when it’s just a matter of reaching some critical mass?

I think a big philosophical discussion was missed. By skipping over and not knowing if half of the Eternals were blipped, although I agree they weren’t, wouldn’t that be a great conversation? What is sentient life? It shows us that maybe the Eternals aren’t sentient? What does that mean? If they are, why not make a planet of Eternals to birth a celestial? What is it about the life that is used to birth a celestial? Does the life there influence the celestial? That would have been a great realization for Ajak to have and explain that where she thought she was alive/sentient, she’s not and now is regretful for what she did do to such life.

Are the races in GotG races that also threw off/defeated their celestial or are they not worthy to birth one?

I also didn’t take it that Gigamesh and Thena were romantically involved, fwiw.

Okay, this is already too long. Certainly, this made me think, but it mostly made me think how it could have been so much better than it was. It was bland, good action, but felt like it was just introducing things for later, same as the GotG movies. I also think that Arishem == Galactus and this is the reimagining of how he “eats” planets.

Thanks for the discussion! Take care!

77

Ego didn’t target Earth specifically - he planted seeds on every inhabited planet he could find, with the goal of personally replacing all life in the galaxy. How he planned to deal with the existing Celestials isn’t clear, but there’s no reason to think he’d particularly care if he killed a nascent one - he might even view that as a bonus.

As for how Ego and the Eternals didn’t “sense” each other, the easy answer there is that’s simply not a power either side possesses. The Eternals were specifically created to hunt Deviants, and they were caught completely by surprise when the ones frozen in ice thawed out. If they don’t have a “sense Deviants” ability, they probably don’t have a “sense Celestial” ability either, particularly if the Celestial in question is actively trying to be incognito.

The Deviants were intended to prune life forms from target planets that would prevent more advanced, sentient life forms from evolving, but they malfunctioned, and started preying on the lifeforms (including early humans) that they were supposed to be preparing the world for. Presumably, they were indeed programmed to “shut down” at the appropriate time, but that didn’t work for some reason.

Probably neither - I don’t think every inhabited planet holds a growing Celestial. Most are just normal planets.

Very unlikely. Arishem is a separate character in the comics, famous for showing up at inhabited planet and giving them a literal “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to determine whether they’re worthy of continuing to exist or not. It would be an odd move for Marvel to replace a relatively high name recognition character like Galactus with the much more obscure Arishem, particularly given that Arishem doesn’t fix any of the stuff about Galactus that allegedly makes him a hard sell in a live action franchise. He’s still a giant space person with a goofy hat and a deeply weird “cosmic” origin story.

78

Thanks for the reply.

Now stop giving me answers! :smiley:

Ego, as a Celestial, would assumably know of other Celestials. And would assumably have an idea of how they were made. Maybe not in the beginning but eventually? I’m not saying there is a weekly Celestials meeting where they all meet and plan things but power at that level has to notice power at a similar level.

Sure, they didn’t have that power. Yes, okay. Or… (I liked Shang Chi more than Eternals.) Well, but… the Eternals are said to have infinite cosmic energy. Ego couldn’t sense that?

If that was said about Deviants I missed it.

Well, isn’t Galactus part of the IP of FF and the MCU doesn’t have the rights to it/him at this time? That’s why I was thinking Arishem is doing a stand in for Galactus. Maybe not in name but in function?

Thanks for the reply!

79

Sure, he may have known about other Celestials, I’m just saying, he probably didn’t care that there was an immature Celestial hiding in the Earth, or even viewed the opportunity to kill another Celestial as a bonus. He wasn’t part of the other Celestials grand cosmic scheme, he was a rogue agent following his own genocidal agenda.

That was resolved a couple years ago, when Disney bought out Fox’s movie and television libraries. The same deal also got them back the rights to the X-Men. I think Spider-Man and Hulk are the only characters left who aren’t wholly controlled by Marvel Studios now. Maybe Sub-Mariner.

80

Hey now. It’s not a hat. It’s an awesome Cosmic Helmet.