@DerHesse I was very aware several times in the show that this was a Disney show and couldn't get into those deeper waters.

Netflix Kingpin worked because he could be so malevolently evil. Daredevil could be bloodied and beaten. etc.

Here I felt I was watching "No kill rule" television.

 

Maybe it's because the rose-tinted glasses are off, but it's something that has become increasingly flagrant and lazy in Disney shows and even in the movies.

Proxima Midnight punches Wanda with a sword in the same hand. Why?

All these Disney shows feel like generic bubbly boy band pop songs. Here and there some catchy beats, but utterly meaningless, without depth and done without a shred of effort.

 

They gotta find a balance between that imo and the weightiness of the netflix shows.

Like I liked Daredevil and S1 of JJ, but there were definitely parts that were huge slogs.

 

They already had found a balance in my opinion.

Just to name a few examples.

The very first Iron Man, the ambush on Tony where all the soldiers get killed, Yinsen sacrificing himself, etc.

The first Avenger movie when we thought Loki killed Coulson, Loki gleefully killing the german guy to get access to the special stuff for the portal.

Frigga getting murdered, because Loki told the Dark Elf the right direction.

The librarian in Doctor Strange getting beheaded.

There usually had been enough room to remind the audience of the stakes, that people are not invincible, that actions have consequences, without sacrificing the overall upbeat tone of the franchise.

 

Well... Eternals kinda sucked. The plot was shit, the humor was uncharacteristically off, and the actors had virtually no chemistry.

I'm putting it at the very bottom of my Marvel movie totem pole.

The only even remotely interesting aspect was the post credit tease of Kit Harrington as Black Knight and some exploration of Marvel's Arthurian stuff, perhaps coming in the Doctor Strange or the Blade reboot.

 

Finally got around to watching Eternals and I'll admit, I'm a little puzzled by it.

On the one hand, it's a pretty rare bird in modern marvel movies; a standalone. This much, at least, I appreciate. I do feel they tried to do a lot with this movie, though. Too much, really. It was seriously weighed down by all the Celestial stuff, and despite its lengthy runtime it really struggled to let a lot of the features of the plot actually breathe.

But there were so many little nuggets in there. Shining moments of potential that never really got to see the sun.

I'll be honest, I really liked the Eternals themselves. Their detachment from humanity was actually a breath of fresh air, so much so that Sersi being the primary pov character was actually a bit of a disappointment. These are immortals of unfathomable power; they should feel strange and inhuman. I liked the way they each dealt with the suffering and bloodshed of human history in different ways, and how every one was conflicted on the climax for different reasons which all made sense for them. I even appreciated the flubbed Marvel-humour. Once again, it made them feel out of step with humanity. I very much doubt it was intentional, but it lent the film a tone which set it apart from standard Marvel fare.

There was an element of blue and orange morality going on, especially in the treatment of Druig, for example. These are beings so ancient and powerful that treating humans as anything more than wayward pets, or children liable to shit their own pants at the drop of a hat just seems obvious to them. Even Sersi doesn't seem to mind it much. They certainly don't regard it as the kind of horrifying invasion that I think a right-thinking human would. Despite that, the movie still makes Druig's power unsettling in the extreme by really emphasising the unnaturalness of it suggesting to me that the moviemakers were aware of just how scary the power is.

The relationship between Thena and Gilgamesh was something which I wish we got to see more of, and even Kingo showed an impressive level of empathy for his fellows despite seeming to be a self-absorbed clown.

The actual plot was... well it was there, I guess. Some of the time, anyway. Giant bullshit disaster, thwarted by extra bullshit handwave power. Honestly, it was kinda meh to me, but then it was never the focus. The focus was on the eternals themselves.

Spoiler: Thoughts on Cults

Something that jumps out at me after sleeping on it was that the movie didn't really care all that much about the big-ol world busting robot. That was the motivating force behind the plot, yes, but what the movie was actually about was a family coming to terms with the fact that they're in a cult, and trying to move past it in light of the knowledge that all they thought they knew was a lie.

Even after living among humans for millennia, even coming to love them, they had real difficulty with the idea of trying to do something about it. Even knowing that their loved ones would die, they were hesitant, on the basis that their benevolent space god told them it was necessary. The cult gave them a purpose, and it was something all of them struggled to contend with. Despite knowing that it could not be right to kill billions, the fundamental thought structures they all had completely centred on their faith in Arishem. When your faith in Arishem is the anchor of your being, and yet your reason tells you that what he is commanding is wrong, how do you deal with it?

Some of them retreated from that reason. Ikaros chose ignorance so that he would not have to experience the pain of being pulled in two directions by faith, and reason, and then at the end could not live with failing so absolutely in his faith. His suicide was a bit of a filmic flop, but I can see where they wanted to go there. Sprite too, chose to shut herself off from having to choose, by surrendering that choice to someone she loved.

For the rest of them, though, it was still not easy. It was only by coming together as a family, and finding a new purpose, a new faith, to replace the old one, that they were able to finally throw off the shackles of their former master. They cast off their faith in Arishem and replaced it with a faith in their loved ones.

I don't even think this was necessarily accidental. The inclusion of Druig, and his weird cargo cult-like village, and the intentional depiction of just how worrying and creepy the loss of individuality is is surely meant to be an echo of the Eternals themselves. From the moment they appear, they are wooden and emotionless, only gaining humanity over time. Surely that has to be an intentional parallel?

Ultimately, this was a movie that had an ambition to be more than just a popcorn blockbuster. The film-makers bit off more than they could chew, though, and were left with far too much stuff that needed to be included, which really knackered the pacing. A lot of the more important character or emotional beats were flubbed, or merely handled extremely clumsily, but I at least appreciated the effort.

 

Marvel definitely has a comfort zone. I've seen some call it a formula, though that feels like too strict a word for me (if it was all that strict, the MCU would've died five years ago), but there's some accuracy there, and it's definitely at least a comfort zone. We've seen parts of Black Widow and Shang Chi that were willing to step outside it for a bit, but there was still an awful lot of conventional MCU in those movies. There's like 25 billion dollars backing up conventional MCU of course, so it's not like that's a bad thing, but I've definitely been feeling the limits of it recently. The themes and focuses the films have. The things they tend to avoid. The things they generally only pay lip service to. And a general faith (not unfounded) that when necessary they can rely on charm and good popcorn instincts to paper over a film's flaws.

Eternals didn't give half a shit about the MCU's comfort zone.

Wasn't a flawless film by any means. Detachment is hard to pull off. There was definitely some competing instincts at play. If I had to guess, it feels like the plan was to have the film be about the Eternals' relationship with humanity - which it still is - but ultimately wound up with a film that focuses most on their relationship to each other. There's at least one vestigial plotline in there that died in post but still has its corpse dragged through the film. It bit off a lot in its themes, castload, and exposition, and didn't manage to chew down all of it.

Overall it is a film that is very willing to toss around some very compelling ideas, but ultimately struggles to explore most of them. And that's the rub ain't it? The thing that so many stories - be they film, television, novels, or fan fiction - forget. It's not enough to have a compelling idea or twist or dynamic. It's about how you explore it, and what you have to say about it.

But it is a film that tried to be more than just another MCU movie. It may not have been as great as it wanted to be, but it was by far the most interesting thing that Marvel has put out thus far. And if that's what Marvel wants to do in the future - be more interesting - then I'm fucking in.

 

I understand that a movie like Eternals has an appeal for those wanting something different from Marvel, but the film has a fundamental problem which it itself summarizes neatly when Jon Snow asks his girlfriend: "Why didn't you help us against Thanos?"

And really, this is not even the first time I've had this feeling about the MCU. The problem is that of scale--why am I supposed to give a shit about Black Widow fighting some Russian fatman when the planet is threatened by the impending birth of a god that will obliterate Earth into space dust?

Then again, how do the Infinity Stones stack up against the Celestials? The What If series shows that Ultron with all six Stones became aware of the multiverse and tried to take over. Had he succeeded, would he be "above" or "below" the Celestials on the ladder of cosmic superbeing hierarchy? What about the Time Variance Authority and Kang the Conqueror? It seems each movie/show decides on a case-by-case basis whether I'm supposed to acknowledge the wider MCU or ignore it. Maybe this is all a-ok for comic book fans who are used to this kind of weirdness, but to me it's just jumbled up incoherence.

Just how impactful was the Infinity War? Is Iron Man's sacrifice considered a local event, or is his name known across the universe because he destroyed Thanos? Or maybe it's Banner who's becoming mythologized because he performed the Blip? And I assume all this was nothing to a being like the What If!Ultron, who pacified many universes in his unending quest to replace all life with metal.

If What If!Ultron came to blows with Arishem, would Arishem get punked? Or would he squish Ultron like a bug? What about Carol Danvers? What the hell is up with her? She's certainly one of the most powerful Avengers, perhaps the most powerful. Where does someone like her fit in? What about half-Celestial Peter Quill? Could he go toe-to-toe with Arishem under the right circumstances? I don't know what and who I'm supposed to care about if I can't picture the scale of the conflict and the threat. Not to even mention the wizards and their multiverse-breaking magic. So, is Strange on par with a 6-Stone Ultron? If Arishem decides he doesn't like the Earth after all, why can't Strange just trap the fucker in a pocket universe, considering that the Celestials' own superbots can turn them into rocks if they try sufficiently hard?

Honestly, it's all too interconnected now, I think. I would honestly prefer a reboot, even a soft reboot, of the franchise with a new scale of conflict and threat established. The Infinity Saga was about Thanos, now make the Celestial Saga where Tony Stark simply doesn't rate, Thor barely warrants a mention and nothing more than that. Leave Earth-based stories behind. Why am I supposed to give a shit about the Tracksuit Mafia when a big red omnigod could arrive tomorrow and plonk Earth out of existence? It's jarring.

As for Eternals as a movie, it tried to do to much at once and imo didn't really succeed. Introducing a whole new crew of characters, establishing relationships between them, tie-ins to the MCU, the mission, the secret, the stakes, the resolution, the sequel bait... The only redeeming quality is that it's different from other MCU stuff, so if you were tremendously bored with the "MCU formula", this might hook you. That's not too say there was nothing good in there. The action was cool, because yes, the effects were really nice, but none of the actors had enough interesting material to work with to make me care about anyone. Batman v Superman was widely mocked for trying to introduce too many new characters at once, squeezing too much into one movie. Eternals is Batman v Superman, except kinda better by the grace of not being directed by Zack Snyder.

 

New Moon Knight trailer dropped.

 

Seems like they're leaning into Moon Knight's mental issues to make something like Legion, which also had exploration of psychosis as a pretty big thing.

 

Interesting trailer. Ties in to the discussion about how Marvel's over-arching tone means that they find it difficult to approach certain kinds of content. If they're really wanting to pursue the seemingly darker tone, and explore things like mental instability in a non-whiplash heavy way, they're really going to have to try to rein in their desire for comfortable quippy dialogue.

And if they do that it will be interesting to see if their audience is willing to follow them.

 

In my youth, I was a gigantic Moon Knight fan and followed his two main series, Moon Knight & Fist of Khonshu, before he went off to Marvel Knights. This... is not following any of the storylines of the comics... with the sole exception of Marc Specter having different identities (personalities). I don't know how I feel about that.

The regular Marvel cast just had some updated changes to get more with the times and debuff them to more realistic powers... for the most part. This is developing a new hero who has a disorder and slapping on the title of Moon Knight's for name recognition. Not that I'm totally against it if they stay relatively close to the theme and style of the comics like they did with the others. Him utterly beating the shit out of someone (at the end of the trailer) was one of them. Still... hopefully there will be another trailer where they don't concentrate so much on his inability to know he has a problem. It wasn't such a big issue in the original story... just another aspect to his character instead of the driving theme of the plot.

 

The vibe I got from the this trailer is that they want to have an MCU Batman with a serious take, but... I dunno, it just seems goofy, from the name to the costume. And yes, I know the name "Batman" is goofy when you really think about it, but live action Batman has been played straight and serious for decades so we don't think of the name as goofy-sounding. Moon Knight on the other hand has no such association in the minds of the movie/show watching audience and has a lot of work to do if it wants to be taken seriously.

 

"What if... Tyler Durden never met Marla Singer, and instead became a superhero"

 

Moon Knigh has his own Marla though, Marlene Alraune, so it's more like what if Tyler became a superhero.

I could be wrong since it's not a comics I read, but wasn't there at least one series few years back that was all about Marc staying in a hospital convinced he wasn't a superhero? And Bendis series too focused a lot on his problems.

 

If it was just a few years back, then it's quite possible. I haven't followed the titles since the very beginning of Marvel Knights. I just did a quick look at the Bendis 2018 series. Looks like Marc's brain has taken a vacation into lala land with half a dozen superhero personalities? I'm surprised this was actually a thing.

Nope, sorry. Not interested.

Hopefully, they don't go down that road. Though I would like to see him hunting Dracula down for the money he owes him. That would be amusing.

 

Moon Knight gets his Mr. Knight suit.

I wasn't sure if they will do it in this season or leave it for the next.

 

What do they mean by "dark", exactly. Or "brutal"? Brutal like the Netflix Marvel shows or brutal like the wildebeest stampede in The Lion King 1994? MCU violence is incredibly tame.

 

Comic Moon Knight beat the living shit out of everyone that crosses him… brutally. I assume that’s what they’re referring too. Lots of violence