I have a real soft spot for Eternals. Perhaps the most maligned and misunderstood movie in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) canon, Eternals doesn’t have the funky irreverence of Guardians of the Galaxy, nor does it bring together the box office icons of the first five Avengers movies, but there’s a lot to admire from director Chloé Zhao’s ambitious efforts to give the world yet another band of iconic superheroes to mindlessly idolise.
Rotten Tomatoes neatly catalogued Eternals to be “an ambitious superhero epic that soars as often as it strains”, and that, to my mind at least, remains an apt summation. There’s a feeling of a project that has genuine vision and insight – no surprise given its director’s Oscar-winning credentials – and while one senses the corruptive hand of the committee pulling focus away from that singular vision, you can often glimpse shoots of inspiration peaking through from underneath a rather unwieldy plot, clunky passages of exposition and some tenuous links to the rest of the MCU. In its favour, there are moments of emotional resonance, it often looks sublime and, most importantly, it’s one of the best-sounding Marvel movies ever made.
