# Eternals (Spoilers)



## Stalker0 (Nov 9, 2021)

Just saw Eternals and wanted to put out my thoughts in a spoiler friendly area.

So currently the Rotten Tomatoes Audience score is about 80%, and that's how I generally feel about the movie. All of the pieces felt great, but somehow when put together it felt like something was missing. Something was just a little....off, and its hard to exactly put my finger on it. Yet I want to applaud Marvel for this movie, because I feel like its going out of the comfort zone. Its an attempt to combine more traditional Marvel fare with a grander more artistic piece, and I think its mostly works....and I definitely want to see more of that from the Marvel machine.

Graphically its stunning. They truly make the Eternal powers look otherworldly and alien. Their costumes are gorgeous. The ancient world sets are beautiful. Thena's weaponry is just seamless. The celestial does seem truly cosmic and impossibly grand of scale.

So we get a true twist in this movie, and I do give Marvel some credit....apparently their seemingly nonstop rollout of trailers just kept distracting us from what they were truly going for in this movie, and so the twist was a good one. But at the same time, it also comes very abruptly and pretty early, it feels like we have barely stepped on the carpet before its pulled from under us. Yet I also appreciate that when the common critique in a marvel movie is the "faceless horde", we are given a conflict that is both impossibly grand in scale and yet.... very human. I also appreciated that the Eternals did not just side one way or another with the whole "should we birth an eternal and let humanity die". There was division, there was conflict.... to beings that had lived for 7k years (technically much much much longer if you get into their pasts lives), there is still the capability of real big picture thinking....and to some of them we are talking about killing billions to create trillions across the universe, and that conflict was shown in the various divisions. That said, once the ball got rolling, pretty much everyone picked a side and just went with it (especially Kingo who was ready to walk away from the whole thing, but then just came back once it was time for the shakedown).

The Indian Valet was in some ways the star of the show, and I think its no coincidence that is basically the embodiment of humanity's best qualities. He's loyal, brave, kind, humble, always prepared (seriously how many cameras does he have)..... he really does feel like the prism of humanity the Eternals channel when they choose humans over an Eternal.

Now does the plot truly "work"..... eh it does and it doesn't. On the one hand, the fact that the Eternals were told not to interfere in human conflicts makes a lot more sense, because in many ways "they don't care". But I mean on the other wouldn't it be more efficient to just have Druig get everyone to bang like bunnies and have a million kids.....or have Phaistos start developing super medicine to keep everyone healthy and populating as much as possible. Or hell.....have Eternals going around and collecting the Infinity stones, that seems a great way to just birth Celestials (especially when several of them have been on Earth for centuries). Then you have Guardians 2.....so Ego (a celestial) put a seed on Earth....where there is already another Eternal? So did Ego know.....did Arishan?.... while I can respect the Eternals not getting involved in a lot of things, did they not do anything when Ego was just hanging around on Earth? How about when Ultron was going to launch an asteroid and muck up their beautiful little birthing bed? Funny enough while it makes perfect sense they didn't interefere with Thanos (at the end of the day that's just a minor setback on galactic timescales).....but the actual single world ending threats should have been an immediate Eternal response....because now you are killing a celestial.

Also if we want to dig in deep.....why would Arishan make different types of celestials in the first place? The whole point was to create unchanging beings capable of killing deviants....why not just send like 5 Ikaris' (super powerful and incredible loyal) and just take care of business? there is no reason given why each celestial is so distinct and unique in form and powers. Or if you are going that route, why wouldn't you tell them the real mission right at the beginning so they don't form attachments. And if they object....then you take that model offline and replace them with a new one....you don't leave a possible traitorous model on mission and just "hope" they don't find out the master plan. The problem is when you are dealing with plots of this scope....the cracks really do start to form.

Ultimately I think my issue with the plot at the fundamental level is.....for such grand of scale at the end of the day it felt like very little changed in the grand scheme. Earth has a big new marble mountain....cool. The Celestial is going to judge earth one day in the future....eh what else is new we have a world ending event every other week at this point. Maybe they will do something where the death of the celestial has some real consequences (perhaps in like the next Captain Marvel where we seen some galactic consequences)....but for now it just felt like another day at the Marvel office.

And lastly there is always the "eternal issue" (hehe) of why aren't "XYZ" people involved? Now most of our current hero pool I could respect are just not people that the Eternals would call up. There is however one good exception.... Dr Strange. Especially when there was a time when they needed a "lot of juice" to power up Druig......seems the Sorceror Supreme would at least get a mention. But frankly I think Marvel has just decided that once you go down the lampshade route, forever will it dominate your destiny. I mean you could literally just add 30 minutes to every movie explaining why XY and Z hero isn't involved..and I think Marvel has just decided to let that go. That said, I think its high time we got some "rules" on the magic side. Wizard magic right now just seems ridiculously, incredibly powerful....like anything is on the table.... and so every problem is starting to feel like a "why not just bring in the wizards".


One thing that I feel very strange saying considering the star studded cast.....the acting feels "wooden" at times. When they were like "oh its because Sprite is in love with Icaris" I was like.....um, she is? Like there was 0 moments of chemistry there.....none. Even Angelina suffered from it at least at the beginning, and it got a little better over time. It was so noticeable to me that I wondered if it was an intentional direction....aka make them feel more "robotic" in some ways. And of course, the movie is both long and not long enough. With so many characters, it feels like we just scratch the surface. I respected it for some of the characters that were basically backdrop (I loved Gilgamish but he was a background character and they treated him like one, which I can work with)..... I think it was Druig that I felt it the most. Druig seemed both this important character with a lot of incredibly interesting history, but he also got very little characterization.

So yeah, a lot to say.... I'm not fully sure how I feel about this movie. Compared to a Shang Chi that I left the theater going "that was great!", this movie did not hit that mark. But I think a few years from now I might think about this movie when many of the others have faded to grey. Time will tell.


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## Argyle King (Nov 9, 2021)

Thinking more...

Overall, I enjoyed it.

I think it's a pretty good sci-fi film. It does a good job of fitting a lot of information into the length of a single film. 

2 negatives stood out to me:
1) It appears to follow a trend set by newer movies and shows (such as Captain Marvel and Loki) to downplay the importance of characters and setting elements established in previous films. 
2) It also seems to follow the trend of being less consistent with established in-setting rules set by previous films.

Is it weird that I find MCU Celestials more interesting than the Eternals?

Likewise, I was intrigued by the evolving Deviant.


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## Older Beholder (Nov 9, 2021)

Stalker0 said:


> So yeah, a lot to say.... I'm not fully sure how I feel about this movie. Compared to a Shang Chi that I left the theater going "that was great!", this movie did not hit that mark. But I think a few years from now I might think about this movie when many of the others have faded to grey. Time will tell.




Thanks for starting the thread, I was interested to hear what other people think.
I agree with you that Shang Chi was a more enjoyable / fun movie experience, but I already find myself thinking more about Eternals, and I'm keen to see it again.


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## Mirtek (Nov 9, 2021)

My main issues with the film

A) Enemies 



Spoiler



what was the point of that one deviant developing sentience, reasoning and speech when he never reasoned or really spoke with the eternals? Completely uncessary plot point



B) Scale - Size 



Spoiler



The emerging Tiamat was way too small. No friggin way it would have been planet sized. From it's head and hand it wasn't even Mt. Everest sized. Beside ruining a lot of peoples day due to causing tsunamis, it's emergence would should barely effect earth as a planet



C) Scale - Time 



Spoiler



They've been doing this for millions of yeas? Sorry, but that's way too short. How many friggin celestials do they need if one needs to be born every couple (even if that means hundred of millions) years? By their job descriptions it should be billions instead of millions


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## Randomthoughts (Nov 9, 2021)

I really enjoyed the movie. Not my top (that's Infinity War, Endgame and Winter Soldier, for me) so 4/5 stars. First, the cinematography was just gorgeous. I found acting to be good enough, especially conveying a sense of (often dysfunctional) family dynamics. I'm also intrigued enough to see it again, mainly for the world building elements. I sense this movie lays the foundation for a lot to come in Phase 4.


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## RangerWickett (Nov 10, 2021)

Stalker0 said:


> Something was just a little....off, and its hard to exactly put my finger on it.



For me, it's that the main character doesn't make a choice at the end that she couldn't make at the beginning. 

In their intro movies, Iron Man, Thor, Spidey, Doctor Strange, and Black Panther each get humbled, which gives them perspective. Captain Marvel realizes she's been gas-lit and doesn't have to prove anything to the people she once was subservient to. The Guardians of the Galaxy realize their petty selfishness is going to get a lot of innocent people hurt, and they decide to give a naughty word for a change.

(Captain America is basically the perfect human in his first movie, but in his second movie he gets disillusioned about working for the powers that be.)

But about the only thing about Sersi that changes in Eternals is her knowledge of the situation, and her ability to use her powers. She doesn't undergo that much of a change, right? Her morals stay the same.

I think to fix that, you could maybe have Sersi be the one interacting with the smart deviant?


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## Stalker0 (Nov 10, 2021)

RangerWickett said:


> But about the only thing about Sersi that changes in Eternals is her knowledge of the situation, and her ability to use her powers. She doesn't undergo that much of a change, right? Her morals stay the same.



I agree, though the movie actually hones in on that as a positive. In fact in Thena's little "Captain America speech" to Cersei.... she notes that the reason Cersei was chosen was because her love of humanity has never wavered....it is in fact her unchanging quality that made her the right one to lead them. We could argue that Cersei's journey was very similar to Captain America in his first movie. Ultimately her unwavering faith in humanity inspired and changed others, and the story was not about her changing....but finally getting the spotlight and showing the world what they could really do.

The movie instead focuses on the change in the secondary characters. Phaestos goes from hating humanity to having a family, Spryte lets jealously corrupt her to the point where she stabs her "best friend" in the back. Thena has to relearn who she is. Druig struggles with the nature of his powers, and his ability to "save humans....by removing their humanity". And of course Ikaris....the most loyal to the mission of them all..... ultimately fails his mission for love. So there was a lot of change....just not in the main character.


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## Stalker0 (Nov 10, 2021)

A thing I think is interesting in the movie. This is the first time we have gotten some implicit confirmation that humanity is "special" in some galactic way.

I mean the fact that Earth has housed so many heroes, wizards, powerful XYZ, and of course an infinity stone hanging out on the planet was already a pretty big clue, but now its called out. Ajak, who has served on who knows how many thousands of worlds over millions of years.....effectively said "I was willing to blow up all of the rest....but something about humanity is special and worth preserving"

Now you could just chalk that up to homocentric bias and giving the audience a feel good (yeah go humanity!)..... but I also think it helps frame the MCU's metaplot. If humans are no better than any other race out there.....it is awfully strange that we have these super powerful humans all the time, and super wizards, and that multiple infinity stones found their way to our planet. I mean the chance of that by coincidence is just astronomically low.

BUT.... if humanity is special and "just better than all the rest", than that helps a lot of other things in the MCU that keeps happening to Earth make a lot more sense.


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## Morrus (Nov 10, 2021)

Stalker0 said:


> BUT.... if humanity is special and "just better than all the rest"



It'd be nice if we stopped thinking about how some people are simply better than other people.


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## Tonguez (Nov 11, 2021)

Saw it and liked it, the mythology was fun (battle of Gilgamesh and Enkidu and Peter Pan reference made me grin) and would have been fun to see more adventures in history - but alas time constraints.

I really liked that it didnt feel like an Avengers movie and the story brought that soap opera sensibility and actual deaths.. Changing the origin of the Eternals and Deviants was an unexpected but imho great change that adds to the tragic nature of the group.

There were too many characters to really get attached though, and would have loved to have seen more of Kro (the deviant leader) and an insight into his psychology. He came across as similar to Ultron but ultimately with less screentime


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## DrunkonDuty (Nov 26, 2021)

Caught up with the movie last weekend.

I enjoyed it. (I admit that I have enjoyed almost everything Marvel so maybe that ain't saying much.)

I liked the dysfunctional family dynamic. The competing themes of family and duty were handled well and tied into/moved the plot nicely. 

Loved the look of it. I especially loved CGI Babylon, I mean really loved it... Just gave me little chills although I can't put a finger on exactly why.

I don't think the acting was "wooden." I think it was a very definite directorial choice, to give the character's a sense of otherness, yes, but also of guardedness. Most of them went their separate ways centuries ago and were pretty tired of one another's company even then. So, now that they're getting the band back together, everyone is feeling very wary. Druig, for instance, has some very strong differences of opinion with the rest. We don't see him begin to relax until he's back in the same room as Makkari. And it's not a big surprise that Ikaris is very guarded and even traumatised. We see it even with Sersi and Dane at the very start of the movie. She is super guarded around him. Dane, to contrast this, is super open about everything. (Almost everything.)

The Deviants were a red herring, both for the audience and the characters. Which is a nice parallel, gives me a smile.

Over in the Eternals Trailer thread it was mentioned that Arishem's version of events is open to being debunked later. I suspect we'll get some very different points of view later as Phase 4 develops. I mean, I certainly hope we'll discover that "the Celestials create energy by something... blah blah" is just Arishem blowing smoke. Arishem's unreliability is suggested by Starfox  in the post-credit sequence, so let's hope that particular bit of "lore" gets written out/retconned. Also, Arishem tells Sersi that the Eternals are robots who can't evolve... yet she later discovers she is capable of growth and augmenting her powers, which seems to contradict this.

Anyhoo, must dash.


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## ART! (Dec 7, 2021)

Finally saw it this weekend - and _loved it_.



Stalker0 said:


> I want to applaud Marvel for this movie, because I feel like its going out of the comfort zone. Its an attempt to combine more traditional Marvel fare with a grander more artistic piece, and I think its mostly works....and I definitely want to see more of that from the Marvel machine.



100%


Stalker0 said:


> The Indian Valet was in some ways the star of the show, and I think its no coincidence that is basically the embodiment of humanity's best qualities. He's loyal, brave, kind, humble, always prepared (seriously how many cameras does he have)..... he really does feel like the prism of humanity the Eternals channel when they choose humans over an Eternal.



Agreed, although I wish we had another couple examples of that. Sersi has Dane, but he's barely in the movie.


Stalker0 said:


> Also if we want to dig in deep.....why would Arishan make different types of celestials in the first place? The whole point was to create unchanging beings capable of killing deviants....why not just send like 5 Ikaris' (super powerful and incredible loyal) and just take care of business? there is no reason given why each celestial is so distinct and unique in form and powers. Or if you are going that route, why wouldn't you tell them the real mission right at the beginning so they don't form attachments. And if they object....then you take that model offline and replace them with a new one....you don't leave a possible traitorous model on mission and just "hope" they don't find out the master plan. The problem is when you are dealing with plots of this scope....the cracks really do start to form.



I wouldn't be surprised if Arishem is always experimenting with new models and designs for his Eternals because things are always going wrong - from his perspective; Eternals always go astray in one way or another, and Arishem hasn't learned his lesson yet. 

There are gaps in the Eternals' understanding of the Celestials and their doings, and i hope that gets followed up on in future MCU offerings.


The Lizard Wizard said:


> Shang Chi was a more enjoyable / fun movie experience, but I already find myself thinking more about Eternals, and I'm keen to see it again.



Same. It's really sticking with me. 

Part of what got me thinking about things was going over it with my wife and daughter after we saw it. They didn't like some things, and having read some of the comics and read a few things about the movie I was able to explain a few things, but some stuff was more conceptual and tonal. The notion that (some? all?) planets (only ones capable of supporting life?) are created by Celestials and have a sleeping Celestial in them is...a lot to swallow. 

That and the fact that the Eternals were involved in human history and affected it in significant ways, and how Phastos lamented nudging technology - there's something a little patronizing about their attitude, and it begs the kind of questions any "ancient astronaut" stuff does: do we need them to explain human advancements and survival? This movie says we do/did?


Tonguez said:


> Saw it and liked it, the mythology was fun (battle of Gilgamesh and Enkidu and Peter Pan reference made me grin) and would have been fun to see more adventures in history - but alas time constraints.
> 
> I really liked that it didnt feel like an Avengers movie and the story brought that soap opera sensibility and actual deaths.. Changing the origin of the Eternals and Deviants was an unexpected but imho great change that adds to the tragic nature of the group.



I didn't quite catch that Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight - how was it protrayed? Sprite was telling the story, right?

"Tragic nature of the group" hits the nail on the head, I think. This movie is as much a tragedy as one is likely to get in a "super hero movie". It's a very sad movie in a lot of ways, and I got teary-eyed multiple times.


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## Older Beholder (Jan 12, 2022)

Just a mention that Eternals is on Disney+ now, for anyone interested.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 12, 2022)

Just watched it and it was all great, except one thing that did not make sense, except for story advancement. These seeds that grow into new Celestials are shown being inserted into the cores of the planets, so by the time the Celestial has grown enough to actually emerge to the surface, it should have done irreversible damage to the core and mantle and so on to the surface. In other words, the way is sounds is that if a Celestial has reached the point that it is visible, then the planet should already be doomed.

Oh, and I loved the Death Star in the closing credits illustrations.   lol

The second end credits scene teasing Dane becoming the Black Knight was cool too. And who was the man that mysterious voice belonged to?


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## Older Beholder (Jan 12, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> The second end credits scene teasing Dane becoming the Black Knight was cool too. And who was the man that mysterious voice belonged to?




I read that it's Mahershala Ali as Blade.
Originally I thought it might be The Watcher.


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## WayneLigon (Jan 13, 2022)

That was one of the longest five hours of my life. At least twice I was thinking 'OK, things should start moving into the last act any mi-- there's forty more minutes left?!' 

Too bad this is the version of The Eternals we're now stuck with for who knows how long.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 14, 2022)

WayneLigon said:


> That was one of the longest five hours of my life. At least twice I was thinking 'OK, things should start moving into the last act any mi-- there's forty more minutes left?!'
> 
> Too bad this is the version of The Eternals we're now stuck with for who knows how long.




I am guessing you are just exaggerating or being sarcastic, but the run-time is 2 hours, 36 minutes, and when I watched it yesterday, it was over quicker than I expected.


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## Ryujin (Jan 14, 2022)

Unfortunately, this movie left me wanting. The visuals were good, if not great. The choice of cast was very good. It was, however, more a collection of moments that worked individually than a cohesive story, to me. Perhaps what I was missing, was that the Eternals are supposed to be the font from which all modern human superheroes essentially spring? They aren't supposed to be alien robots, in the old lore I remember, but rather humans who were evolved and empowered by the Celestials. Changing their origin and purpose that much left me cold.

Then again it's a property that was screwed over from its very inception. They didn't get a full run in the comics, then were later used as a spice to flavour other ongoing properties.

I think that the best part of the movie was quite likely the post credits scene to prepare us for Black Knight.


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## Dire Bare (Jan 14, 2022)

ART! said:


> That and the fact that the Eternals were involved in human history and affected it in significant ways, and how Phastos lamented nudging technology - there's something a little patronizing about their attitude, and it begs the kind of questions any "ancient astronaut" stuff does: do we need them to explain human advancements and survival? This movie says we do/did?



This bothered me as well. I was trained as an anthropologist in college, and learned to absolutely LOATHE the "ancient astronauts" pseudoscience theories that have important societal advancements (especially of brown people) be the result of alien intervention rather than human ingenuity.

I don't like it any better as a trope in my fiction. Still, overall enjoyed the film.


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## Dire Bare (Jan 14, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Just saw Eternals and wanted to put out my thoughts in a spoiler friendly area.
> 
> So currently the Rotten Tomatoes Audience score is about 80%, and that's how I generally feel about the movie. All of the pieces felt great, but somehow when put together it felt like something was missing. Something was just a little....off, and its hard to exactly put my finger on it. Yet I want to applaud Marvel for this movie, because I feel like its going out of the comfort zone. Its an attempt to combine more traditional Marvel fare with a grander more artistic piece, and I think its mostly works....and I definitely want to see more of that from the Marvel machine.
> 
> ...



Thanks for starting the thread . . . I've been avoiding it until the film released on Disney+!!!

I agree with a lot of your thoughts here . . . and disagree with some others. Overall, I also enjoyed the film. I don't mean to diminish your opinion of the film, but some of your critiques on story choices bug me . . .

Why are the Eternals tasked with not interfering with human conflict? Because . . . genre. This is, at its heart, a four-color story that has always been a part of the larger Marvel comic-book universe. If the Eternals could more directly intervene . . . this would be an alternate universe story. Human history has to remain identifiable to the viewers. Worrying about supposedly more logical choices misses the point of the storytelling, in my view. You do point out some in-universe contradictions or goofs, but to me they aren't glaring and don't bother me, even if technically correct.

Why didn't the Eternals give Dr. Strange, or some other MCU hero a call for some backup? This is, for me, the same answer as above. Genre. This story is set within the larger MCU, but isn't a Dr. Strange story, or an Avengers story . . . its an Eternals story. Its the same reason Spiderman doesn't call up his friends in each of his movies. We of course get crossovers from time to time, but they are rare enough to be special and fun (so much that we have a word for them, "crossovers") or serve to introduce a B or C-list character that couldn't front their own movie. If the MCU were the real world, Spiderman would definitely be calling up his Avengers buddies on a constant basis, but . . . .

_EDIT: Quick add here . . . the comic-book universe the Eternals spring from is wildly bloated and complicated not just with individual characters, but also various superhuman groups. The MCU long ago reached this point as well, and the Eternals adds to it. We have mutants, inhumans, eternals, magicians, mystical martial-artists, aliens, gods, super-serum soldiers . . . . in this story, the Eternals make some jokes about the various Avengers, but otherwise doesn't deal with all of these complicating power-groups, because to do so would be too limiting to the storytelling. To try and "logically" work all of these groups together into a coherent narrative just can't be done. It CAN be done in superhero storytelling, but not within the MCU (or DC universe, for that matter)._

Why do the Eternals all have a different power-set, and not all be Ikaris powerful? Again, genre. The Eternals are a superhero team and each member has to be distinguishable from the others, they all need their own "hook". And the "team" trope is a mismatched group of folks whose skillsets all compliment each others, so that they HAVE to work as a team to succeed. This adaptation took this further with our team having not only a diversity of magical skills, but a very purposeful diversity of ethnicity, dialect, gender, orientation, and even age . . . both to cater to modern tastes but also to further lean into the "mismatched team" trope.

Why did Arishem keep the true purpose of the Eternals secret from . . . most of them? He wanted servants who would be motivated to help and defend the people of the planets they were tasked to. So, the lie that they were helping "lift" these species into utopia. The question for me is, why did Arishem tell some of his Eternals the truth? Why did Ajak need to know the truth in order to do her job? Why not keep them all ignorant until the last minute when the new celestial rips itself out of the planet? They all get mind-wiped at the end anyway.

Again, not trying to diminish your own thoughts and opinions, just wanted to provide a counter.


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## Stalker0 (Jan 14, 2022)

Dire Bare said:


> Because . . . genre.



My counter to your counter is that the MCU is no longer set up as a series of self contained movies. Each movie sets up a piece and continues the grander "MCU".

When a film noir movie occurs, it operates under the rules of film noir....which is fine. But all of these movies operate in the same scope, with a "quasi realistic earth". Aka some measure of logic is meant to be applied.

In one film we establish that a group of super heroes will unite to face a large threat. Then in the next movie, against a threat that is equal or even greater than the previous one, no one makes a phone call. In a series of individual movies that are intended to be completely stand alone, I can respect that.... but not in an MCU where other characters are literally referenced by name. These people know the other people exist, heck are often colleagues with them. So the idea that these relatively smart people wouldn't make the very logical and smart call to bring in some big players when the world is about to blow up.... that just really strains credibility.

The same thing with the celestials. Its established that the celestials have a plan that can be comprehended, at the end of the day its a pretty simple plot.... grow a new celestial by absorbing all the people on a planet. So the celestial seems to act in a reasonably logical way. So again this makes the extremely illogical decisions just that much more obvious. If they had gone with "the celestials are just inscrutible in their logic and ways"....ok, that works for me, I can respect that ungodly powerful and utterly alien beings wouldn't have any thought process like my own.

Now again I can strain my disbelief, but the movie keeps hammering it in. For example, I could think "okay they are machines, but they kind of grow in their own unique and special ways which is why they are all different, like a baller fractal pattern". Except then the movie tells me "we built the eternals to have no deviation and be just exactly what we want"... which tosses my rationalizations out the window. The movie on the one hand tells me Eternals are cookie cutter....but then gives me a diverse and unique cast because......because?


Now the Eternals is certainly not the only MCU movie that has this problem, and plenty of nonMCU movies have this issue as well. But ultimately for me in part its the enjoyment factor. When I am super engrossed in a movie, I ignore the nitpicks. When I'm sitting in my chair kind of bored....nitpicks is all I can think about. For example the new Spiderman has plenty of actual issues when you dig into it....but I don't care, it was fun, thoughtful, emotional, and a great ride....so I ignored those things and moved on. Eternals for me just moved a bit too slowly.


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## Ryujin (Jan 14, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> My counter to your counter is that the MCU is no longer set up as a series of self contained movies. Each movie sets up a piece and continues the grander "MCU".
> 
> When a film noir movie occurs, it operates under the rules of film noir....which is fine. But all of these movies operate in the same scope, with a "quasi realistic earth". Aka some measure of logic is meant to be applied.
> 
> ...



If the origin of the Eternals as forcefully evolved and empowered early humans had been kept intact, instead of this change for.... reasons?, then the differing powers of the individual characters would have been far less of an issue, I suspect.


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## Stalker0 (Jan 14, 2022)

Ryujin said:


> If the origin of the Eternals as forcefully evolved and empowered early humans had been kept intact, instead of this change for.... reasons?, then the differing powers of the individual characters would have been far less of an issue, I suspect.



Completely agree.


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## John R Davis (Jan 14, 2022)

It was OK. Bit confusing but some bright moments.

End credit should have been Captain Britain related!!


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## Ryujin (Jan 14, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Completely agree.



A friend, who is a huge film buff, declared that "Eternals" is by far the worst Justice League movie. He didn't know about Kirby's short foray into the DC world with "The New Gods" until I told him.


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## MarkB (Jan 16, 2022)

My main problem was that basically Arishem and Tiamut came across as discount Galactus, with the Eternals filling in for both the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four. And it seems really weird for Marvel to be doing a discount Galactus story.


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## GreyLord (Jan 17, 2022)

Well, some of my thoughts.

Does this mean that Thanos...was the good guy?

If we take it that his "brother" we see at the end of the movie credits is an eternal...would that mean Thanos was ALSO an "eternal"

If Thanos was an eternal and discovered this plot to destroy entire civilizations by having celestials destroy them in their births, than it would be logical if he could reduce the population sizes...he could at least delay, if not deny, the birth of the celestials and the destruction of civilizations.

Of course, it wasn't that brilliant (as many pointed out, it just delays the inevitable)...BUT, he figures this out and figures that in order to REALLY succeed he actually has to wipe everything out and start anew (endgame)...with that in mind (though it is in theory worse than what the Celestials do) he might be able to break the pattern by destroying the Celestials outright and creating a universe with intelligent life where no Celestial pattern is around.

Thus, if we view it in that odd way...it could mean that Thanos was actually...right...in a little bit of a way???

Thanos was the good guy???

PS:  On the movie itself...I found it kind of boring.  I'm not sure why, I just found my mind constantly wandering and me wanting to do other things than watch the movie.


----------



## Janx (Jan 17, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> For me, it's that the main character doesn't make a choice at the end that she couldn't make at the beginning.
> 
> In their intro movies, Iron Man, Thor, Spidey, Doctor Strange, and Black Panther each get humbled, which gives them perspective. Captain Marvel realizes she's been gas-lit and doesn't have to prove anything to the people she once was subservient to. The Guardians of the Galaxy realize their petty selfishness is going to get a lot of innocent people hurt, and they decide to give a naughty word for a change.
> 
> ...



You're right, but.

It turns out not all stories have to have that. (somebody elsewhen asked and I looked it up).  Captain Kirk of nuTrek being used as an example.  He thought he was right and it turns out he was right.  Everybody else had to change, to accept his rightness.

Just an example.

It's also possible you've misdiagnosed her arc.  She went from not being the leader, powerful, or significant (literally the example she gave of her powers made it sound so lame).  Even when anointed by Ajak as the NewBoss, she didn't accept it and others questioned it.  For an enlightened bunch, I puzzled over why Kingo and Sprite clung to Might makes Right doctrine to support Icaris as leader.  Granted, they were biased.


----------



## Janx (Jan 17, 2022)

MarkB said:


> My main problem was that basically Arishem and Tiamut came across as discount Galactus, with the Eternals filling in for both the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four. And it seems really weird for Marvel to be doing a discount Galactus story.



I was gonna say this felt like a Galactus thing, especially when Arishem showed up at the end....

Overall, the move was OK.  I liked the diverse cast. I wish Kingo hadn't not just quit and left, but came back (somebody said he returned, I didn't see it).  I liked him the best, so this heel turn sucked.

The valet was awesome, and I would hope his footage would be released, and thus explain the whole thing to Earth.

I am not keen on massive defacements of the planet.  Like Chairface carving his name on the moon, it just looks silly.

I assume Dane is going to become Captain Brittain or something?  Guessing that's excalibur and he's a descendant of Arthur.

The whole Eros, brother of Thanos just sounded stupid. I'm sure it's from the comics, but stupid sounding stuff sounds stupid. An aborted character intro and a stupid one is not what we need in these clip scenes.  Give us bits that hint at the next actual problem. Like Thanos grumbling in his chair or Yelena finding out who killed her sister.


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## Umbran (Jan 17, 2022)

Janx said:


> For an enlightened bunch, I puzzled over why Kingo and Sprite clung to Might makes Right doctrine to support Icaris as leader.




_Thousands of years_ where their highest priority was fighting might have had something to do with it.  We can add to that how he seems to have been Ajak's right hand for most of that time, such that the assumption would have been that he'd take command.  Choosing Sersi was a surprise, and there was no explanation, making it harder to accept.


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## Umbran (Jan 17, 2022)

Janx said:


> I assume Dane is going to become Captain Brittain or something?  Guessing that's excalibur and he's a descendant of Arthur.




If you want to know...


Spoiler: Dane Whitman...



In the film, they specifically note Thena playing around with Excalibur on the Eternal's ship, so Dane doesn't have that.  

In the comics, Dane Whitman is the descendant of the Black Knight, and wields the Ebony Blade.  The Ebony Blade is powerful, but cursed, which is why Dane has such a struggle over picking it up in the post-credits scene





Janx said:


> The whole Eros, brother of Thanos just sounded stupid.




Eros/Starfox is stupid.  Not just in the movie, but in the comics, he's an overconfident jackass with emotion control powers that are kind of non-consensual.  Really problematic stuff.

However, there's a note in his introduction that is... extremely interesting.

Starfox arrives with Pip, and introduces himself as the brother of Thanos (which is consistent with the comics).  He also addresses the people on the ship as "my fellow Eternals" or words to that effect.

And there, we have to stop for a second.  Thanos claims to be a Titan.  Unless there's adoption involved, that means Eros is also a Titan.  That implies that the Titans _are Eternals_, but not under Arishem's rule.  Interesting that Arishem would not stop one of his own creations from eliminating half the population he needs to birth new Celestials, isn't it?

Mind you, we know that Arishem can and will lie.  And I find his claim that Celestials are responsible for star formation to be... extremely unsatisfying.  I would rather take it that Arishem is lying like a rug.



Spoiler: Speculation...



The comics origins are that the Celestials created both Deviants and Eternals - that part is fine.  But in the comics, neither group is under the control of the Celestials.  I suspect that Marvel is aiming for this as well - Arishem has some Eternals on various planets, but they have this tendency of breaking away when confronted with the truth.  The memory erasure is more likely about maintaining them as servants than about "relieving the burden of memory".


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## MarkB (Jan 17, 2022)

Janx said:


> I assume Dane is going to become Captain Brittain or something?  Guessing that's excalibur and he's a descendant of Arthur.



Well, we know it's not Excalibur, because the Eternals had Excalibur stowed on their ship.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 17, 2022)

My main issue with the movie is that it basically all the Eternals kinda felt like they were sketches of characters more than actual characters. Basically all the "characters development" happens through montage (usually action montage) and "conflict" flashbacks that are consistently focused on "the grand scheme of things".

We're meant to believe Sersi and Ikaris have loved each other for millenia, but it's not even clear at any point what they even like about the other. Hell it's barely apparent they even know anything about each other beyond how dreamy the borh are. Their entire "romance" as shown is just a series of historical cuddlings.

It's especially problematic because Sersi and Ikaris are on screen basically the entire runtime and they don't seem to *do* anything more than service the plot and bring the viewer to the more interesting characters (Seriously, we could have used a bunch more Gilgamesh, Phaistos, Druig, and Makkari).

I think the reason is that there is too much time setting up and resolving "threats". And the threats frankly aren't that interesting, and, pretty early on, we get to know too much about them through zero effort on the part of our protagonists. We're just...told..about one big celestial baby and some number of undermanaged exterminators..ok. Do either of these threats have an agenda or a motive? Not really, they just kinda exist so our characters can fight them or talk about them.

And, what's more, the stakes aren't that high for the team since they'll all reset anyway. It's just all the "love" the good guys have for humanity despite very little evidence of relationships with humans. Sersi has one pretty new boyfriend and zero friends. Boyfriend is on screen less than 10 minutes. Phaistos has a husband and young child..on screen less than 5 minutes. Druig has some cultists/slaves. Makkari is just hanging on the spaceship. Theena and Gil are hiding out in the desert. Sprite has one dude they hit on in a bar. Ajak is just kind of on a farm somewhere. And then there is Kingo...Kingo has a valet, his valet has lots of screen time, he's very charismatic. He's with Kingo for decades, easily the most significant representative for humanity in the entire film. And Kingo's like "F that guy. I trust Broody McBrooderson over here. What we really need a new featureless giant god."

It was still an entertaining movie along the way with a few nice action pieces. It just all felt a little toothless.

Edit: it's weird to kind of end up ranting about a movie you enjoyed. C'est la vie?


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## Janx (Jan 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> _Thousands of years_ where their highest priority was fighting might have had something to do with it.  We can add to that how he seems to have been Ajak's right hand for most of that time, such that the assumption would have been that he'd take command.  Choosing Sersi was a surprise, and there was no explanation, making it harder to accept.



yes, but they also had since the 1600s of not fighting and coming to other conclusions.

Nobody'd been in command for that long.

it can go either way, but I found "he's the strongest" as the crappiest argument and sign of defective thinking for choosing a leader. period.


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## Umbran (Jan 17, 2022)

Janx said:


> yes, but they also had since the 1600s of not fighting and coming to other conclusions.




They arrive 7000 years ago, and them spend only 400 years or so not on a wartime footing.  So, like 6% of their time.  And that 6% is spent essentially _leaderless_ - the arrangement really implies that leaders are for times of fighting.  So, that non-fighting time is not spent thinking about leadership.

And, when they need a leader again, it is in a time of fighting, at first blush against the old enemy.  Falling back into old thought patterns seems perfectly natural there.



Janx said:


> ...I found "he's the strongest" as the crappiest argument and sign of defective thinking for choosing a leader. period.




Don't get me wrong - I agree that it is a crappy argument.  However, it is also a _natural and understandable_ argument to make (at least for human psychology, which is largely what we see in the Eternals).


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## MarkB (Jan 17, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> My main issue with the movie is that it basically all the Eternals kinda felt like they were sketches of characters more than actual characters. Basically all the "characters development" happens through montage (usually action montage) and "conflict" flashbacks that are consistently focused on "the grand scheme of things".
> 
> We're meant to believe Sersi and Ikaris have loved each other for millenia, but it's not even clear at any point what they even like about the other. Hell it's barely apparent they even know anything about each other beyond how dreamy the borh are. Their entire "romance" as shown is just a series of historical cuddlings.
> 
> ...



The characters didn't feel very original. They actually lampshade how like Superman Ikarus is, and most of the rest are existing supers with the serial numbers filed off. And the way their powers manifest is just Doctor Strange magic only a little tidier.

It all felt rather obvious. I didn't specifically think of the whole Celestial-egg thing, but I was expecting it to turn out that the Celestials had made the Deviants ever since the opening exposition.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 17, 2022)

MarkB said:


> My main problem was that basically Arishem and Tiamut came across as discount Galactus, with the Eternals filling in for both the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four. And it seems really weird for Marvel to be doing a discount Galactus story.




Galactus is more powerful than any single Celestial, so it fits.


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## Ryujin (Jan 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> They arrive 7000 years ago, and them spend only 400 years or so not on a wartime footing.  So, like 6% of their time.  And that 6% is spent essentially _leaderless_ - the arrangement really implies that leaders are for times of fighting.  So, that non-fighting time is not spent thinking about leadership.
> 
> And, when they need a leader again, it is in a time of fighting, at first blush against the old enemy.  Falling back into old thought patterns seems perfectly natural there.
> 
> ...



Now I would buy that argument, if the original leader wasn't the party's healer.


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## Umbran (Jan 17, 2022)

Ryujin said:


> Now I would buy that argument, if the original leader wasn't the party's healer.




That was a _fait accompli_ they didn't need to consider.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 17, 2022)

MarkB said:


> The characters didn't feel very original. They actually lampshade how like Superman Ikarus is, and most of the rest are existing supers with the serial numbers filed off. And the way their powers manifest is just Doctor Strange magic only a little tidier.
> 
> It all felt rather obvious. I didn't specifically think of the whole Celestial-egg thing, but I was expecting it to turn out that the Celestials had made the Deviants ever since the opening exposition.



It's interesting. I didn't mind the power similarity so much. What I did mind was that they pretty consistently seemed to only be as powerful as was necessary to move the plot. And the range of individual power levels for that purpose was too great. Ikaris, Gil and Theena can all solo the deviants until it's inconvenient for them to be that powerful.

Edit: and we're meant to think that this group that is struggling to take on 1-3 deviants midway through the movie is the same group that killed alllll of the deviants as of 400 years ago.

I do think though, that, if you know you're superheroes powers are similar to another's, then your priority should be on showing the person behind the powers, and they mostly didn't.


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## Ryujin (Jan 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> That was a _fait accompli_ they didn't need to consider.



I disagree. If the argument is that 94% of their remembered lives have been in combat, with only 6% being in relative peacetime, then the type of leader that they are familiar with from that 94% has a great deal of bearing on how they would move forward.


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## billd91 (Jan 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> And there, we have to stop for a second.  Thanos claims to be a Titan.  Unless there's adoption involved, that means Eros is also a Titan.  That implies that the Titans _are Eternals_, but not under Arishem's rule.  Interesting that Arishem would not stop one of his own creations from eliminating half the population he needs to birth new Celestials, isn't it?



And in the comics, Thanos *is *the son of an Eternal (though with Deviant Syndrome) and the Titans were a colony of Eternals.


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## FitzTheRuke (Jan 17, 2022)

I liked it more than I expected to. I don't feel that the characters were interesting enough. (I mean, my favorite characters after watching it were Gilgamesh and Kingo's Valet - I don't think that should be the takeaway). Also, their powers were both weirdly unique-to-them and yet all the same, making them shockingly forgettable/interchangeable for such a diverse cast.

But it was a lot more watchable than I expected after all the negativity I've heard.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 17, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> Edit: and we're meant to think that this group that is struggling to take on 1-3 deviants midway through the movie is the same group that killed alllll of the deviants as of 400 years ago.




It was five Deviants total in the main jungle fight. Also, look at how out of shape professional athletes can get with just a year or two away from their sport. Now think about these Eternals not having to fight anything for over 400 years. They may not have been physically out of shape because their synthetic bodies don't do that, but their mental skills and fighting skills and teamwork skills turned to mush in that time. And also, when they finally get back together to deal with the thawed out Deviants, they have to do it without the one who was their leader for 7000 years. And with a traitor trying to screw them over.


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## Tonguez (Jan 17, 2022)

MarkB said:


> My main problem was that basically Arishem and Tiamut came across as discount Galactus, with the Eternals filling in for both the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four. And it seems really weird for Marvel to be doing a discount Galactus story.



To be fair the Celestials are discount Galactus, nobody would dispute that 

Theyre both super cosmic beings from before their respective big bangs, but Galactus is the Devourer of Worlds whereas Arishem mere judges them. As to why Marvel did it, I suspect it was because Inhumans was a flop and the Celestials had already been seeded


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## Umbran (Jan 17, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> To be fair the Celestials are discount Galactus, nobody would dispute that




I would.  But I don't think it a valuable exercise to do so here.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 17, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> It was five Deviants total in the main jungle fight. Also, look at how out of shape professional athletes can get with just a year or two away from their sport. Now think about these Eternals not having to fight anything for over 400 years. They may not have been physically out of shape because their synthetic bodies don't do that, but their mental skills and fighting skills and teamwork skills turned to mush in that time. And also, when they finally get back together to deal with the thawed out Deviants, they have to do it without the one who was their leader for 7000 years. And with a traitor trying to screw them over.



That is an explanation, sure. But it's not well supported by the movie. Based on the movie they walked off their spaceship at apparently peak fighting capability despite "never" fighting these deviants before. Which do you think is worse, coming back to fight something you've fought for thousands of years, or fighting something for the first time? 

In fairness though, the overall scope and extent of the fighting they had to do over those thousands of years wasn't ever really established. Was it a few deviants a week, a decade, a millennium? It may be that the Eternals are less a crack team of hardened warriors and more like reservists in the national guard, called up for emergencies and some occasional training exercises but otherwise doing something else with their time.

Ultimately, it was one of those things where I kept asking myself, even during the movie,  "How powerful are these characters supposed to be?" 

TBH, I still don't know the answer, so the best I can come up with is "as arbitrarily strong or weak as the plot requires them to be."


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 17, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> TBH, I still don't know the answer, so the best I can come up with is "as arbitrarily strong or weak as the plot requires them to be."




So basically like nearly every other superhero/villain ever?


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## Janx (Jan 17, 2022)

Ryujin said:


> Now I would buy that argument, if the original leader wasn't the party's healer.



that and they had 400 years to contemplate.

What kind of shallow person doesn't reconsider their philosophies given 400 years of downtime?

Phaistos did.  Heck, why isn't he in charge?


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## the Jester (Jan 17, 2022)

billd91 said:


> And in the comics, Thanos *is *the son of an Eternal (though with Deviant Syndrome) and the Titans were a colony of Eternals.



Should we tell him about the Skrulls?


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 17, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> So basically like nearly every other superhero/villain ever?



Sure..ish. The level of arbitrariness for superhero power level is a gradient.

It goes from "Power level doesn't change much and/or such changes are well justified...to...Power levels fluctuate significantly with little or no explanation"

In this movie, it felt to me like the latter.

Ikaris has deadly eyebeams..except sometimes they aren't that deadly. Some of the characters seem like they're noncombatants.. except that they shrug off deadly eyebeams, or solo the "strongest" member of the team. A characters gets stabbed and we're meant to think that means anything, except that it doesn't seem to, yet Mr. Shrugsoffeyebeams hits Stabbyperson in the head with a rock and Stabbyperson is out of the fight. 

No explanation, no justification, no red or yellow kryptonite or anything. Just a "yeah that all happened. Trust us this really is coherent. We promise."


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## Ryujin (Jan 17, 2022)

Janx said:


> that and they had 400 years to contemplate.
> 
> What kind of shallow person doesn't reconsider their philosophies given 400 years of downtime?
> 
> Phaistos did.  Heck, why isn't he in charge?



People who live a million years? "The older we get, the more we become ourselves." - Alan Andrews

No one ever puts the tech in charge. It's always the guy who doesn't understand tech, who becomes the manager.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 17, 2022)

Ryujin said:


> People who live a million years? "The older we get, the more we become ourselves." - Alan Andrews
> 
> No one ever puts the tech in charge. It's always the guy who doesn't understand tech, who becomes the manager.



Gotta have those people skills


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## Maxperson (Jan 17, 2022)

MarkB said:


> My main problem was that basically Arishem and Tiamut came across as discount Galactus, with the Eternals filling in for both the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four. And it seems really weird for Marvel to be doing a discount Galactus story.



I was talking to a friend today that ran a comic book store up until last year.  He was telling me that this story was from the comics and that Galactus's real purpose was as a natural predator who went around consuming worlds with baby Celestials in them in order to cull the herd.


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## MarkB (Jan 17, 2022)

Maxperson said:


> I was talking to a friend today that ran a comic book store up until last year.  He was telling me that this story was from the comics and that Galactus's real purpose was as a natural predator who went around consuming worlds with baby Celestials in them in order to cull the herd.



There's always a bigger fish.


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## Tonguez (Jan 17, 2022)

Maxperson said:


> I was talking to a friend today that ran a comic book store up until last year.  He was telling me that this story was from the comics and that Galactus's real purpose was as a natural predator who went around consuming worlds with baby Celestials in them in order to cull the herd.



That was the Earth X storyline


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## Older Beholder (Jan 17, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> Edit: and we're meant to think that this group that is struggling to take on 1-3 deviants midway through the movie is the same group that killed alllll of the deviants as of 400 years ago.




The fight in the forest involves a deviant that had begun evolving 



Spoiler: spoiler



after it had already killed an Eternal.



I loved that fight in the forest, the way the grey dawn light slowly comes in over the course of the battle. The use of real locations and natural light really added to the film for me.

Also, the way Druig's villagers all fire in unison in that scene was really creepy.


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## Khelon Testudo (Jan 18, 2022)

It was an enjoyable movie. 

But it also had no real reason to be there, and no-one going forward is likely to complain if there are no sequels. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that one of the Marvel big-wigs had an obsession with getting these folk to screen hell or high water. But he was the only one, so there was no consensus to enable a build-up, like Avengers had. 

Letting us get to know each Avenger in their own movie first before putting the team together really seems how to do it. And people who skip that step miss out on the engagement needed to let the audience accept such a strange group of characters. This was missing with both Eternals, and Justice League. Although Snyder's Cut almost achieved the same goal, but by spending a lot of movie time setting up the characters. 

More movie time than a modern cinema release will tolerate.


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## Janx (Jan 18, 2022)

Khelon Testudo said:


> It was an enjoyable movie.
> 
> But it also had no real reason to be there, and no-one going forward is likely to complain if there are no sequels. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that one of the Marvel big-wigs had an obsession with getting these folk to screen hell or high water. But he was the only one, so there was no consensus to enable a build-up, like Avengers had.
> 
> ...



perhaps a counter to that is Guardians of the Galaxy.  Which made a bunch of Marvel Nobodies work well.

A key difference is the smaller cast.  How many eternals were there?

Probably another thing that bugs me with Marvel is how many completely different secret species they keep tucking away on earth.  Eternals. Inhumans. Mutants. what else.  Stick to one concept so we don't have to get into continuous "and why didn't THEY help with Thanos?"  Marvel does a good job with individual characters and making them fit when they bring them in.


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## Dire Bare (Jan 18, 2022)

Janx said:


> Probably another thing that bugs me with Marvel is how many completely different secret species they keep tucking away on earth.  Eternals. Inhumans. Mutants. what else.  Stick to one concept so we don't have to get into continuous "and why didn't THEY help with Thanos?"  Marvel does a good job with individual characters and making them fit when they bring them in.



It's the source material and ultimately, the genre. As long as you take it movie by movie, and don't overthink the numerous different "species" of supers, it's all good.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 18, 2022)

Janx said:


> perhaps a counter to that is Guardians of the Galaxy.  Which made a bunch of Marvel Nobodies work well.
> 
> A key difference is the smaller cast.  How many eternals were there?
> 
> Probably another thing that bugs me with Marvel is how many completely different secret species they keep tucking away on earth.  Eternals. Inhumans. Mutants. what else.  Stick to one concept so we don't have to get into continuous "and why didn't THEY help with Thanos?"  Marvel does a good job with individual characters and making them fit when they bring them in.



It's not that far off in terms of team size, 7 or 8 by Guardians 2 vs. I think 9-10 for Eternals.

What works for Guardians is that all the characters have goals and interests. Things they are sensitive to, ways of solving problems, etc. and a lot of the first movie is spent discovering those things on screen. 

This is vs Eternals, where the approach was "these characters have history and personality...off screen but we're just going to rely on little bits of actor charisma to convey that during the movie instead of sharing that history and personality with the audience". And that's not even considering that half the team was functionally absent for almost half the movie. 

It sort of makes you feel like the movie is a season finale for a show you didn't watch.


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## MarkB (Jan 18, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> It's not that far off in terms of team size, 7 or 8 by Guardians 2 vs. I think 9-10 for Eternals.
> 
> What works for Guardians is that all the characters have goals and interests. Things they are sensitive to, ways of solving problems, etc. and a lot of the first movie is spent discovering those things on screen.
> 
> ...



It's also unusual in a Marvel movie in resorting to an exposition scene at the start. It felt like most of that could easily have been covered through conversation or flashbacks in the course of the movie.


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## Tonguez (Jan 18, 2022)

Janx said:


> perhaps a counter to that is Guardians of the Galaxy.  Which made a bunch of Marvel Nobodies work well.
> 
> A key difference is the smaller cast.  How many eternals were there?
> 
> Probably another thing that bugs me with Marvel is how many completely different secret species they keep tucking away on earth.  Eternals. Inhumans. Mutants. what else.  Stick to one concept so we don't have to get into continuous "and why didn't THEY help with Thanos?"  Marvel does a good job with individual characters and making them fit when they bring them in.



there were 8 Guardians characters (including Yondu and Nebula) as opposed to 9 Eternals (10 with Dane Whitman snow, but I discounting him as just a cameo). It would be interesting to know what the sweet spot is for balancing multiple characters well within a single movie.

As to the MCU species, the MCU doesnt have Mutants yet and imho the only reason Eternals have been dropped in is because Inhumans flopped (and I suspect will never been seen again). So far the MCU has Aliens, Tech-heroes, Super Soldier Mutates (including Spiderman) and Wizards. We are apparently getting Werewolves and Vampires soon too.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 18, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> 9 Eternals (10 with Dane Whitman snow, but I discounting him as just a cameo).




No, there were 10 without him. 3 died, 1 became human, 3 were kidnapped by Arishem, and 3 left on the Domo to look for other Eternals.


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## bennet (Jan 19, 2022)

Eternals was the first Marvel movie that I walked out incredibly disappointed and annoyed, given that I am a big Marvel fan and loved every other Marvel movie.

1) They cancelled the IMAX showing, so I bought regular theatre and didn't realize it was 3d (never would have watched it in 3d).
2) So those dawn scenes, with dark 3rd glasses?  I could not see naughty word, I felt like I was watching a straight to video 80s flick.
3) After twenty mins or something Salma Hayek died.  Im like wtf? I'm supposed to feel sad for her?  She died so early and it felt out of left wing.
4) The romance between Ikaris and Sersi felt completely fake, and then he just upped and left for no reason revealed until much later, wut?
5) Story jumped from location to location and felt like any location was real.
6) Why is both Jon Snow and Robb Stark in the same movie, it is too soon.
7) Fight CGI monsters is meh.
8) Deviants are not just monsters?  They have some growing personality and arc?  Their leader is going to kill Thena?  Nah just kidding, they are throw away scraps, easy escape while bound.
9) I was incensed, enraged, pissed that they took my fav actress of all time, Angelina Jolie and turned her into a doddering old woman with few lines.  
10) Deviants suck, pretty sure past year 1000 earth can handle them.
11) Thanos (deviant syndrome) is going to wipe 1/2 the universe but Arishem is going to "not interfere" despite it ruining his birth plan.
12) Celestial comes out of the sea, instead of being earth sized as suggested, he is barely bigger than a storm giant.

Sure some scenes were pretty, but at the end of the day, a movie is a story, and their story was naughty word.


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## MarkB (Jan 19, 2022)

bennet said:


> 12) Celestial comes out of the sea, instead of being earth sized as suggested, he is barely bigger than a storm giant.



To be fair, he hadn't yet got round to eating the entire world's population. That's got to pack on some pounds.


----------



## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 19, 2022)

MarkB said:


> To be fair, he hadn't yet got round to eating the entire world's population. That's got to pack on some pounds.




Eh, I mentioned that whole point in an earlier comment as the one thing that really threw me off the movie. The Celestial seed is implanted in the core of a planet. Even at just the size they showed for Tiamut, there would be massive damage done to the planet by the time it was at the surface. Not just an earthquake or two and some localized volcanic activity. Why is the ocean not rushing into the hole caused by the emergence and the resulting cooling of the core that would cause?

Also, Celestials are now evil because they are planet rapers. I don't think Gaia accepted that seed willingly.


----------



## Gradine (Jan 19, 2022)

Finally got around to seeing this!




...woof...


----------



## Tonguez (Jan 20, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Eh, I mentioned that whole point in an earlier comment as the one thing that really threw me off the movie. The Celestial seed is implanted in the core of a planet. Even at just the size they showed for Tiamut, there would be massive damage done to the planet by the time it was at the surface. Not just an earthquake or two and some localized volcanic activity. Why is the ocean not rushing into the hole caused by the emergence and the resulting cooling of the core that would cause?
> 
> Also, Celestials are now evil because they are planet rapers. I don't think Gaia accepted that seed willingly.



yeah its pretty much agreed that Celestials are villains, however notions of good and evil are rather meaningless to them - they think of humans as lifestock not people.

but yeah now knowing that the energy from the Tonga eruption was felt from NZ to Japan and Alaska, it does seem that the emergence of Tiamut should have been far more devestating


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 20, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Eh, I mentioned that whole point in an earlier comment as the one thing that really threw me off the movie. The Celestial seed is implanted in the core of a planet. Even at just the size they showed for Tiamut, there would be massive damage done to the planet by the time it was at the surface. Not just an earthquake or two and some localized volcanic activity. Why is the ocean not rushing into the hole caused by the emergence and the resulting cooling of the core that would cause?



There would be no hole to the core.  The liquid portions of the core would fill back in, and the magma in the mantle would do the same.  The hole would go down to the mantle and no further, and that's if there wasn't any collapse of the tunnel, which is unlikely.  The tunnel likely collapsed at several points in the crust alone.


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## Stalker0 (Jan 20, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> yeah its pretty much agreed that Celestials are villains, however notions of good and evil are rather meaningless to them - they think of humans as lifestock not people.
> 
> but yeah now knowing that the energy from the Tonga eruption was felt from NZ to Japan and Alaska, it does seem that the emergence of Tiamut should have been far more devestating



Assuming the celestials were telling the truth, life is dependent on their existence. Just as humans must consume other life to survive, the celestials must consume life, and in doing so, allows new life to come into being.

it is the circle of life, not good or evil…but ultimately necessary.


----------



## Zardnaar (Jan 20, 2022)

Just watched it on Disney+ as the price was right. 

 Better than anticipated. Some moral pondering about the circle of life. Kinda agree with the baddies though one planets fate is irrelevant on a galactic scale. Had a few plot holes and Tiamat was to small.


----------



## MarkB (Jan 20, 2022)

Ultimately, Tiamut's size is a necessary compromise. It was as large as it could be without (a) losing any sense of scale from the characters' perspectives, and (b) much of the world having to already be devastated by the time any of it emerged into view.

The alternative is something like the ludicrousness of the second Independence Day movie, where the whole planet should be uninhabitable by the time the alien mega-ship settles into place.


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## Bolares (Jan 20, 2022)

The critics are the best promotional tool for this movie at this point. Saw it on disney+ with very low expectations, and liked it enough


----------



## Staffan (Jan 23, 2022)

MarkB said:


> To be fair, he hadn't yet got round to eating the entire world's population. That's got to pack on some pounds.



I didn't figure that the Baby Celestial would literally eat the planet's population. More that:


They need ambient sapient life to grow, and
When the chicken hatches, it's not a good time for things living on the egg shell.


----------



## Blue (Jan 23, 2022)

Khelon Testudo said:


> It was an enjoyable movie.
> 
> But it also had no real reason to be there, and no-one going forward is likely to complain if there are no sequels. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that one of the Marvel big-wigs had an obsession with getting these folk to screen hell or high water. But he was the only one, so there was no consensus to enable a build-up, like Avengers had.



You think it's a one-off that doesn't tie into anything?  I would take the other side of that bet - I think it's one of the first movies of Phase 4 for a reason.  I think it was likely more important as set-up than for the movie itself.


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## MarkB (Jan 23, 2022)

Blue said:


> You think it's a one-off that doesn't tie into anything?  I would take the other side of that bet - I think it's one of the first movies of Phase 4 for a reason.  I think it was likely more important as set-up than for the movie itself.



What does it set up, though? It brings in the Celestials, but they seem to be very much something the Eternals would tackle in a sequel, not something that would spill over into other parts of the franchise. Thanos's prettier, more annoying brother? They could've crowbarred him into the mid-credits scene of any of half-a-dozen other movies. Circe's boyfriend and the Sword in the Box? Likewise.


----------



## bennet (Jan 23, 2022)

Blue said:


> You think it's a one-off that doesn't tie into anything?  I would take the other side of that bet - I think it's one of the first movies of Phase 4 for a reason.  I think it was likely more important as set-up than for the movie itself.



I think it was a tie in, but realizing how eternally boring the characters are, how crap their origin story is, how disappointing a CGI celestial is for a villain... they will scrap eternals.  Oh and Thanos brother looks like a idiot character, someone from Thors second movie.


----------



## Richards (Jan 24, 2022)

The fact that Pip the Troll was accompanying Starfox leads me to believe if anything that was a tie-in to _Guardians of the Galaxy 3_, given that Pip hung around with Adam Warlock in the comics and that Adam will be featured in GotG3.

Johnathan


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## Blue (Jan 24, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> there were 8 Guardians characters (including Yondu and Nebula) as opposed to 9 Eternals (10 with Dane Whitman snow, but I discounting him as just a cameo). It would be interesting to know what the sweet spot is for balancing multiple characters well within a single movie.



As a counterpoint, that wasn't the character introduction rate.

Yondu was a side character in GG1, It was really just 5 - Starlord, Rocket, Groot, Drax and Gamora.  So the second one introduced more.


----------



## Staffan (Jan 24, 2022)

Blue said:


> As a counterpoint, that wasn't the character introduction rate.
> 
> Yondu was a side character in GG1, It was really just 5 - Starlord, Rocket, Groot, Drax and Gamora.  So the second one introduced more.



It's really only Starlord and Gamora that gets any real amount of backstory beyond 2-3 sentences too. They get personality beats ("Nothing goes over my head."), but not much backstory.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2022)

MarkB said:


> What does it set up, though? It brings in the Celestials, but they seem to be very much something the Eternals would tackle in a sequel, not something that would spill over into other parts of the franchise. Thanos's prettier, more annoying brother? They could've crowbarred him into the mid-credits scene of any of half-a-dozen other movies. Circe's boyfriend and the Sword in the Box? Likewise.



Sorry, asking someone not in the know about what the full plot lines are for Phase 4 does not in any way disprove that it can be tied in.  Marvel Studios has an excellent reputation for building movies on top of movies - they have even been accused sometimes of compromising movies in order to set up later ones.  To take the position that one of the early movies in Phase 4 will not tie into anything else just because you don't have the knowledge of how it will is short sighted as it's against their establish behaviors - you are mistaking your lack of knowledge for their intent of no knowledge.

Shang-Chi also is likely setting things up for later in Marvel - that doesn't mean we know how it all ties in yet.  Not everything is as obvious as No Way Home's use of the multiverse when we know another title as "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness".


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2022)

Staffan said:


> It's really only Starlord and Gamora that gets any real amount of backstory beyond 2-3 sentences too. They get personality beats ("Nothing goes over my head."), but not much backstory.



Backstory is just one facet.  We had a thorough introduction to Rocket, Groot and Dax in the first movie, such that we had great feel for their personalities and what they will do.  They were familiar tgo us, enough so that we could enjoy the character development in GG1 and then later in GG2.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2022)

bennet said:


> I think it was a tie in, but realizing how eternally boring the characters are, how crap their origin story is, how disappointing a CGI celestial is for a villain... they will scrap eternals.  Oh and Thanos brother looks like a idiot character, someone from Thors second movie.



Eros/Starfox is an idiot in the comics - that's a faithful translation.

This is a bet I would take as well - that they will write out any plans they have for Eternal because "they realize how eternally boring their characters are and how crap their origin story is".


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## Blue (Jan 24, 2022)

Found a bit about the voice in the post-credits scene.

_Eternals_ takes place around the same time as _The Falcon and the Winter Soldier_ and _Spider-Man: Far From Home_ (2019), six to eight months after _Avengers: Endgame_ in 2024. The mid-credits scene features Harry Styles as Thanos' brother Eros / Starfox and Patton Oswalt as Pip the Troll, while Mahershala Ali has an uncredited cameo as the voice of Blade in the post-credits scene, before starring in the film _Blade_..

I know this is a spoiler thread, but this is a spoiler for another movie, so I'll be careful with it.


----------



## wicked cool (Jan 24, 2022)

This movie was not very good 

the good 
Cast- great cast. Some of my favorites didn’t make it

the bad
Tiamat-why did Icarus want to make it more powerful when his endgame was destruction
Sprite-robot and then human? Why
Black knight-if you don’t know then the audience is clueless 
The big red guy-he can stop them at any point?

one guy gets pushed into volcano and yet not scratched when his power is mind control 

jolies character-makes a sword/shield as her power but she’s unstable the whole time? until she’s not

the director set rules and then breaks them.is Tiamat absorbing powers and memories plus changing its followers . Tiamat reminded me of the no name monsters in the latest Godzilla remake.
Icarus can wipe the floor with the rest but needs to feed Tiamat. Even his friend is like why 
Thanos  brother cameo-really that his brother.

this was a step below Superman vs zod from a few years ago . That had way more suspense and heart.

this movie has zero emotion. Compared to last spiderman it’s night and day

the best character was the guy filming it


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## Gradine (Jan 24, 2022)

Robb Stark flying his dumb  straight into the sun was hilarious though


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## bennet (Jan 24, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Robb Stark flying his dumb  straight into the sun was hilarious though



Don't even get me started.  Ima kill you all cause I'm a good corporate man one second, next second I have feelings like we made out 1000 years ago, and I loves you, me kill myself now (fulfilling a dumb made up story).

I think the end of an era of good movies is over now.  The extreme liberal left all clapped for this movie because of the diverse cast and spread rumours that anyone who didn't like it is racist.  They didn't even care that the plot, script, was all naughty word.  RIP.  Hopefully Kevin learned the star wars lesson that the writers need to be familiar with the universe and fans of the genre, you can't just pluck any old director to write it.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 24, 2022)

bennet said:


> The extreme liberal left all clapped for this movie because of the diverse cast and spread rumours that anyone who didn't like it is racist.



*Mod Note:*

To clarify: Keep it up with the political BS , and the moderation staff will escalate from threadbanning you to temporarily banning you from the site.  If _that_ doesn’t impact your behavior, you’ll be permanently banned.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jan 24, 2022)

Umbran said:


> _Thousands of years_ where their highest priority was fighting might have had something to do with it.  We can add to that how he seems to have been Ajak's right hand for most of that time, such that the assumption would have been that he'd take command.  Choosing Sersi was a surprise, and there was no explanation, making it harder to accept.



The flashy jock or the quiet kid who sits at the back of the class - who are people going to follow?


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## Paul Farquhar (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> Tiamat-why did Icarus want to make it more powerful when his endgame was destruction



He was doing his job and following orders. He didn't want to make it more powerful, just prevent it being murdered.


wicked cool said:


> Sprite-robot and then human? Why



Because robots can't grow up.


wicked cool said:


> Black knight-if you don’t know then the audience is clueless



It's obviously something cool and mythic. Magic swords come with a lot of symbolism, you don't need to read comics to know that.


wicked cool said:


> The big red guy-he can stop them at any point?



He is busy running the universe. That's why he made himself minions.


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## wicked cool (Jan 24, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Robb Stark flying his dumb  straight into the sun was hilarious though



Icarus. I think they even hinted at it earlier in the movie.


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## wicked cool (Jan 24, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> He was doing his job and following orders. He didn't want to make it more powerful, just prevent it being murdered.
> 
> Because robots can't grow up.
> 
> ...



but he knew once 1 died that it was changing. He even says its more powerful

shes a robot and can become human? The power explanations are really poor here. The fight under water she turns one of the monsters into a tree sculpture? If she can turn sprite into a human she cant fix jolies character or bring back the dead characters

As sprite says why am i a child. Sprite then tries to murder her and yet all is forgiven

Jolie is basically wonderwoman without a personality. Arnold as the terminator in T2 has more life  

This movie is a fast and furious type franchise in the making. Bad overall plot with a good budget for blowing things up. 

Im starting to see why some of the great directors were upset that this is where hollywood is heading. We got this and Matrix 4 instead of a good fellas type movie etc. 

Id love to do a poll. Your stuck on an island and you can only have so many movies. Would anyone choose this over  the new spiderman movie . these new star wars movies over the old.  best action movie of the last 5 years?


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## Paul Farquhar (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> but he knew once 1 died that it was changing. He even says its more powerful



The was the deviant, not Taimut. Where you awake in this movie?


wicked cool said:


> shes a robot and can become human? The power explanations are really poor here.



Sprite can't. Sprite is an illusionist. Sirsi is the transmuter, she was able to polymorph Sprite into a human once she had gained a few levels.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> This movie was not very good
> 
> the good
> Cast- great cast. Some of my favorites didn’t make it
> ...



Not sure if you are saying Tiamut's or Ikaris (correct spellings) had the endgame of destruction, but neither wanted that.  Ikaris wanted the Celestial to be born, which would create stars that would eventually host trillions of sentients. That the population of Earth was to die was part of the circle of life, not in any way an endgame.  They weren't doing it _for the destruction_ as you are putting forth.



wicked cool said:


> Sprite-robot and then human? Why



Well explained that Sprite had for 7000 years been in a child's body, and treated as such.  From the first scene with her where we see her illusionarily mimicking an adult woman, to the discussions on this.  Including that she had been pining for Ikaris for seven millennia and he hadn't noticed, thinking her a child.  Not really sure how that got missed, it was a point of discussion several times.



wicked cool said:


> Black knight-if you don’t know then the audience is clueless



Yes, the MCU regularly puts teasers in their credits scenes you need to know.  Like the first time we saw Thanos on this throne.  Well established.



wicked cool said:


> jolies character-makes a sword/shield as her power but she’s unstable the whole time? until she’s not



Characters develop in stories.  Thena pulled herself together to kill the Deviant who had killed Gilgamesh, her beloved (platonic or romantic) of millennia.



wicked cool said:


> Icarus can wipe the floor with the rest but needs to feed Tiamat. Even his friend is like why



Again, a plot point that was covered multiple times.  Tiamut needed a critical number of intelligent minds in order to be born.



wicked cool said:


> Thanos  brother cameo-really that his brother.



Yes, really, from the comics, that's his brother.  Eros/Starfox is a bit of an idiot in the comics, it's a good representation of him.

Basically, all of this was explained in the movie.  I completely understand how not comprehending these things would make the movie less enjoyable, not too sure where you got some of the ideas though like the endgame was destruction.  If you watch the movie again but paying attention it should be a better movie.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> Icarus. I think they even hinted at it earlier in the movie.



I think some ancient Greek might have predicted it a couple of thousand years earlier...

Or he deliberately set out to make the myth come true.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jan 24, 2022)

Blue said:


> If you watch the movie again but paying attention it should be a better movie.



It's not a brilliant movie, but it's slightly better if you watch it with your phone off.


----------



## Staffan (Jan 24, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> I think some ancient Greek might have predicted it a couple of thousand years earlier...



No, that was Sprite.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jan 24, 2022)

Staffan said:


> No, that was Sprite.



True, ancient Greek Sprite. Given that she doesn't seem to have precognition, one has to assume Ikaris deliberately tried to make it true.


----------



## wicked cool (Jan 24, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> The was the deviant, not Taimut. Where you awake in this movie?
> 
> Sprite can't. Sprite is an illusionist. Sirsi is the transmuter, she was able to polymorph Sprite into a human once she had gained a few levels.



barely awake as it wasnt that good of a movie Sirsi as a transmuter was just silly . Why didnt she just turn her into an adult


Sprite has lived for thousands of years but still is a teenager.

you have a god (maybe on the same power level as Kurt russells character in Guardians) and yet the god being allows one of it own kind to die. this god being creates these super robots and cant control at 1 point animal deviants

My apologies for getting tiamat and the unamed intelligent deviant . the deviant who begins to become more human as the movie comes along 

my opinion is it isnt as good as Man of Steel or movies of  this genre (New spiderman, the boys, invincible etc). At no point when an eternal dies am i invested in their fate. the best character is the camera guy as he shows emotion and with 1 secne as was worried he would die . Kit Harrington is a poor character until after the credits . He is less involved in the movie as say Darcy Lewis in Thor

IS there a single character in this movie that has more charisma than any of the avenger characters (maybe Kingo or Phastos?)


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 24, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> The flashy jock or the quiet kid who sits at the back of the class - who are people going to follow?



That logic only follows when you don't actually know the flashy jock and the quiet kid well enough to make a reasoned decision.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> you have a god (maybe on the same power level as Kurt Russell's character in Guardians)




Yes, his character, Ego the Living Planet, is/was also a Celestial, and as powerful as Arishem. And Arishem is not the most powerful of the Celestials, from the lists I have looked at, so even he may have a boss, and orders from that boss on what he can and cannot do. I am sure we will find out more in Eternals 2. Assuming these events do not connect into GotG 3 or maybe The Marvels, instead of a direct sequel.


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## BrokenTwin (Jan 24, 2022)

I'm conflicted, because I know it's only because of the MCU that Eternals ever got made, but I think Eternals would have been a lot better if it didn't have to be an MCU movie.

Even though it made no sense given what he'd survived just going through, Druig knocking Sprite out with a rock was unexpectedly hilarious.


----------



## Ryujin (Jan 24, 2022)

BrokenTwin said:


> I'm conflicted, because I know it's only because of the MCU that Eternals ever got made, but I think Eternals would have been a lot better if it didn't have to be an MCU movie.
> 
> Even though it made no sense given what he'd survived just going through, Druig knocking Sprite out with a rock was unexpectedly hilarious.



< Insert "I'm so keeping that rock" scene from JourneyQuest . GIF >


----------



## Gradine (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> Icarus. I think they even hinted at it earlier in the movie.


----------



## MarkB (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> shes a robot and can become human? The power explanations are really poor here. The fight under water she turns one of the monsters into a tree sculpture? If she can turn sprite into a human she cant fix jolies character or bring back the dead characters



They're not robots, they're living beings. They were just constructed instead of born. So it's not turning a robot into a human, it's making tweaks to the biology of a creature that's already close to human.

Sersi specifically says that she has just enough energy left from the power-combo that occurred during the Emergence to make those changes. They're beyond the normal range of her powers.


----------



## Gammadoodler (Jan 24, 2022)

BrokenTwin said:


> I'm conflicted, because I know it's only because of the MCU that Eternals ever got made, but I think Eternals would have been a lot better if it didn't have to be an MCU movie.
> 
> Even though it made no sense given what he'd survived just going through, Druig knocking Sprite out with a rock was unexpectedly hilarious.



Agreed-ish. I'm ok with it being in the MCU. But it would have been better as a show than as a movie. Deviants are the excuse you use for them being on Earth, but better stories would have come out of what they did while they were here. 

You can still have all the plot twists it took them hours to develop in the movie, but by then it's paying things off a setup rather than just trying to make a reason, any reason, for these characters to do anything interesting.


----------



## BrokenTwin (Jan 24, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> Agreed-ish. I'm ok with it being in the MCU. But it would have been better as a show than as a movie. Deviants are the excuse you use for them being on Earth, but better stories would have come out of what they did while they were here.
> 
> You can still have all the plot twists it took them hours to develop in the movie, but by then it's paying things off a setup rather than just trying to make a reason, any reason, for these characters to do anything interesting.



Yeah, I also had the feeling that the plot as presented would have worked a lot better as a mini-series. Druig's village and his philosophy could have easily been an entire episode. Phastos's disillusionment with humanity changing after meeting his husband and adopting their son. With more time we could have formed a greater connection with Gilgamesh before he was killed. Hell, Ikaris's conflict between his loyalty to the mission and his love of Sersi. Because yeah, in a mini-series format, his conflict should be clear to the audience a lot earlier so it doesn't feel like an out of left field motivation. Hell, I'd have that reveal (to the audience) in the first or second episode.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> shes a robot and can become human? The power explanations are really poor here. The fight under water she turns one of the monsters into a tree sculpture? If she can turn sprite into a human she cant fix jolies character or bring back the dead characters



You mentioned you were half awake while watching, and the recurring theme through your complaints is that things don't make sense to you while multiple other posters here seemed to have no problem getting these details from the same movie.

Will you consider that the common denominator is you, that all of these points were accessible in the movie and for whatever reason you just didn't pick up on them?


----------



## wicked cool (Jan 24, 2022)

Blue said:


> You mentioned you were half awake while watching, and the recurring theme through your complaints is that things don't make sense to you while multiple other posters here seemed to have no problem getting these details from the same movie.
> 
> Will you consider that the common denominator is you, that all of these points were accessible in the movie and for whatever reason you just didn't pick up on them?



point taken

like i said i didnt find it that interesting compared to similiar movies. i went into the movie totally blind to their lore . There still no standout performance for the cast, the villians are basic, certain characters really have no role in the movie, you are given no real reason to care for any of them. it seems to be a trend in recent Disney produced marvel movies (spiderman is not a disney movie?). Is there even a wow moment to the movie?


----------



## Staffan (Jan 24, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> barely awake as it wasnt that good of a movie Sirsi as a transmuter was just silly . Why didnt she just turn her into an adult



Because she wants Sprite to *grow up*, not just be an adult. There's a whole process thing.



wicked cool said:


> you have a god (maybe on the same power level as Kurt russells character in Guardians) and yet the god being allows one of it own kind to die. this god being creates these super robots and cant control at 1 point animal deviants




The plot actually reminds me of the cosmic side of World of Warcraft lore.

In the Warcraft universe, there are a number of cosmic forces: Light, Disorder, Death, Void, Order, and Life. Titans are planetary-scale cosmic beings of Order, and are born from planetary world souls (only a very small number of planets have these). Azeroth, the planet on which most of the game takes place, is host to one of these world souls, one that has the potential to be much more powerful than the rest of the Titan pantheon. However, when the Titans first discovered Azeroth, the planet had been infested with creatures of Void, called Old Gods, which were in the process of corrupting the nascent world soul, which would be Bad.

So the Titans' first reaction was of course "Nope", and one of them reached down to destroy one of the Old Gods. This succeeded (sort of – there were still remnants around that caused problems), but in the process the planet was gravely damaged which of course was not good for the world soul. So the Titans instead moved to plan B, which was to build a whole bunch of smaller constructs imbued with some of their power, who then went on to actually defeat the Old Gods and their minions and imprison them. These constructs were not simple automatons, but had wills and minds of their own (it wouldn't do to have the titans micro-manage them, after all).

The parallels to Eternals should be obvious. Arishem can't realistically deal with the problems of nascent Celestials himself, both because he has other things to do, and because it is hard for him to act on that level. So he builds Eternals to deal with the problem, and he makes them autonomous and sapient because they are more useful without him micromanaging them – he's got stellar nurseries to run, after all. This means they have wills and personalities of their own, which normally isn't a problem, and since he resets them after each run it usually works fine.


----------



## Gammadoodler (Jan 25, 2022)

Staffan said:


> Because she wants Sprite to *grow up*, not just be an adult. There's a whole process thing.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It makes you wonder..what is Arishem doing with all that time on his hands? Like what is a celestial workday? We know what Ego's day looked like, and it sure doesn't seem like something the universe could do without. 

Maybe Arishem is more productive. Like when he isn't mind wiping Eternals, he's filling out TPS reports or something.


----------



## Tonguez (Jan 25, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> It makes you wonder..what is Arishem doing with all that time on his hands? Like what is a celestial workday? We know what Ego's day looked like, and it sure doesn't seem like something the universe could do without.
> 
> Maybe Arishem is more productive. Like when he isn't mind wiping Eternals, he's filling out TPS reports or something.




the Celestials have something to do with directing the branching of multiverses and experimenting to see how things develop once changes are made. The universe is a petri dish and they are the participant-observer

they also have quite a few wars to deal with from their rebelious experimental subjects


----------



## pukunui (Jan 25, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> the Celestials have something to do with directing the branching of multiverses and experimenting to see how things develop once changes are made. The universe is a petri dish and they are the participant-observer



I'm guessing they weren't fans of the TVA either then ...


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## MarkB (Jan 25, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> It makes you wonder..what is Arishem doing with all that time on his hands? Like what is a celestial workday? We know what Ego's day looked like, and it sure doesn't seem like something the universe could do without.
> 
> Maybe Arishem is more productive. Like when he isn't mind wiping Eternals, he's filling out TPS reports or something.



Building new stars and developing new Eternals and Deviants are long-term projects, but they probably still provide plenty to do each day.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 25, 2022)

MarkB said:


> Building new stars and developing new Eternals and Deviants are long-term projects, but they probably still provide plenty to do each day.



I guess it must if you can't put it down long enough to prevent billions of years of work being flushed down the toilet.

Or maybe Arishem just missed a memo. Either way, I think its a safe bet their boss is gonna need them to come in on Saturdays for a while.


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## Ryujin (Jan 25, 2022)

MarkB said:


> Building new stars and developing new Eternals and Deviants are long-term projects, but they probably still provide plenty to do each day.



I had a vague memory, so did a quick search. In the comics there are a total of 35 known Celestials. That's 35 beings to shepherd all of the inhabited worlds that they monitor. Even being near omnipotent and near omniscient, that's a lot to keep straight. They might only deal with a particular world every few million years.


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## wicked cool (Jan 25, 2022)

How do they matchup vs Thanos?  Does the infinity gauntlet not work on them? Yes i heard them mention that they didnt interfere but could it have worked on them? they didnt seem concerned 

Was the Domo one of the weakest starships seen on tv? in the comics does their ship have defenses?


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## MarkB (Jan 25, 2022)

Ryujin said:


> I had a vague memory, so did a quick search. In the comics there are a total of 35 known Celestials. That's 35 beings to shepherd all of the inhabited worlds that they monitor. Even being near omnipotent and near omniscient, that's a lot to keep straight. They might only deal with a particular world every few million years.



Given that Ego's whole mass-worlds-conversion scheme (which would presumably have absorbed any embryonic Celestials within those worlds, including Earth) passed them by, and he's a Celestial too, they're certainly rather short of omniscient.


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## Ryujin (Jan 25, 2022)

MarkB said:


> Given that Ego's whole mass-worlds-conversion scheme (which would presumably have absorbed any embryonic Celestials within those worlds, including Earth) passed them by, and he's a Celestial too, they're certainly rather short of omniscient.



_Near_ omniscience.

Unless Ego didn't care and/or Celestials are capable of hiding things from each other. Ego's name isn't ironic.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 25, 2022)

Ryujin said:


> _Near_ omniscience.
> 
> Unless Ego didn't care and/or Celestials are capable of hiding things from each other. Ego's name isn't ironic.



Or the other Celestials are kinda lazy, and can't be bothered.


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## MarkB (Jan 25, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> Or the other Celestials are kinda lazy, and can't be bothered.



Then again, maybe I'm giving Ego too much credit. Maybe he didn't really know too much about the other Celestials, and actually planets made of blue Ego-goo would be even more nutritious to their embryonic Celestial occupants than planets covered in pesky humanoids.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 25, 2022)

MarkB said:


> Then again, maybe I'm giving Ego too much credit. Maybe he didn't really know too much about the other Celestials, and actually planets made of blue Ego-goo would be even more nutritious to their embryonic Celestial occupants than planets covered in pesky humanoids.



Also possible. In fact, that's an even better result for them. No more babysitting for those worlds.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 25, 2022)

I watched Eternals recently. Okay movie, I'd say. Some very interesting ideas. 

I agree with some others that I don't like the "ancient astronauts" aspect much, and the whole spiela bout Celestials birthing stars... well, science in the MCU is often naughty word, but this was probably the worst. 

But seeing Eternals and then a few days later seeing images from the vulcano in tonga was... strange.


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## Blue (Jan 25, 2022)

MarkB said:


> Then again, maybe I'm giving Ego too much credit. Maybe he didn't really know too much about the other Celestials,



It was established in GoG2 that Ego was all alone.  He had never met another Celestial.


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## pukunui (Jan 25, 2022)

Blue said:


> It was established in GoG2 that Ego was all alone.  He had never met another Celestial.



I've seen some conjecture that Ego was lying about being a Celestial since he isn't a big armored cyborg thing. I wonder, though, if maybe he was one of the original Celestials like Arishem, only he somehow never progressed beyond developing a brain, and that's why he hasn't got the body armor. His method of planting a seed of himself inother planets is like a twisted version of the normal Celestial birthing method after all.


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## BrokenTwin (Jan 25, 2022)

Assuming Ego is a Celestial in the Eternals sense and him being one isn't just quietly ignored/retconned, he might be the equivalent of a premature birth. Whatever world he was being born from may have been lost/abandoned/destroyed.

But heck, it's possible that he's just something completely unrelated that didn't know what he was, heard tales about Celestials, and went "yeah, that sounds like me!"


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## Ryujin (Jan 26, 2022)

BrokenTwin said:


> Assuming Ego is a Celestial in the Eternals sense and him being one isn't just quietly ignored/retconned, he might be the equivalent of a premature birth. Whatever world he was being born from may have been lost/abandoned/destroyed.
> 
> But heck, it's possible that he's just something completely unrelated that didn't know what he was, heard tales about Celestials, and went "yeah, that sounds like me!"



IIRC he wasn't a Celestial in the comics, but the MCU is doing some funky stuff with origins. Originally I think he was an alien scientist who evolved (?) somehow. It's been more than a while since I read the original stuff. 

If I was to try and fit him into the MCU based on the information that it has presented then I would say thay he's a Celestial who is more about extending his own domain, rather than creating progeny. That would explain the difference in his methods.


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## MarkB (Jan 26, 2022)

pukunui said:


> I've seen some conjecture that Ego was lying about being a Celestial since he isn't a big armored cyborg thing. I wonder, though, if maybe he was one of the original Celestials like Arishem, only he somehow never progressed beyond developing a brain, and that's why he hasn't got the body armor. His method of planting a seed of himself inother planets is like a twisted version of the normal Celestial birthing method after all.



My guess would be that Ego is what happens when a Celestial embryo doesn't get properly implanted inside a planet. Maybe he was lost in transit somehow, and the other Celestials assumed he'd died.


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## pukunui (Jan 26, 2022)

MarkB said:


> My guess would be that Ego is what happens when a Celestial embryo doesn't get properly implanted inside a planet. Maybe he was lost in transit somehow, and the other Celestials assumed he'd died.



Yep, or maybe he was an early experiment to see if Celestials could be created _without_ needing to be implanted in a planet first.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jan 26, 2022)

Here is a side note for future MCU/Fantastic Four stuff. It seems in the comics that Galactus was actually afraid of Tiamut, and now the MCU version of Tiamut is dead. If that is used at all in the MCU, maybe they just shift this fear to be about a different Celestial or maybe Galactus will have no fear if/when he does show up. But also considering in the comics that Arishem and Tiamut were rivals, having Tiamut just being born now throws all that out the window. And wow, did they decide to upsize the Celestials a lot for the MCU. According to the comics history of the Celestials, there are at least three that are buried on Earth. I know almost nothing of them from the comic books, so this was a crazy read:









						Celestials
					

Celestials are powerful cosmic beings created by the First Firmament. The Celestials rebelled against their creator and Aspirant counterparts in a war that shattered the first universe into the first multiverse. The Celestials are involved in the creation of new universes, including that of the...




					marvel.fandom.com


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## MarkB (Jan 26, 2022)

One other possibility regarding how different Ego is from the other Celestials is that maybe the term "Celestial" is more of a general classification of beings that operate at a certain cosmic scale. There could be as many types of Celestial as there are species of mammal.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jan 26, 2022)

Hypothesis: Ego was deliberately targeting the other celestials. All the worlds where he planted his seeds contained embryonic celestials, the purpose of the seeds was to absorb their power. All the "I'm so lonely" stuff was nothing but a sob story to try and get Peter onside. In which case he would have taken steps to make certain his activities where concealed from any other celestials.

Maybe Ego tinkered with the deviants in order to create a distraction.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 26, 2022)

MarkB said:


> One other possibility regarding how different Ego is from the other Celestials is that maybe the term "Celestial" is more of a general classification of beings that operate at a certain cosmic scale. There could be as many types of Celestial as there are species of mammal.



So basically like the creatures rolling marbles at the end of the first Men in Black movie.


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## MarkB (Jan 26, 2022)

Gammadoodler said:


> So basically like the creatures rolling marbles at the end of the first Men in Black movie.



I feel like those were maybe an order of magnitude or two larger-scale than the Marvel celestials we've seen so far.


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## Gammadoodler (Jan 26, 2022)

MarkB said:


> I feel like those were maybe an order of magnitude or two larger-scale than the Marvel celestials we've seen so far.



Fair, though I'd submit that they do operate ar a certain cosmic scale.


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## Ryujin (Jan 26, 2022)

It could also well be that Celestials appear at whatever size they feel the need to.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jan 27, 2022)

Ryujin said:


> It could also well be that Celestials appear at whatever size they feel the need to.



So, you are saying Arishem is overcompensating for something?


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## Ryujin (Jan 27, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> So, you are saying Arishem is overcompensating for something?



You only need to be 12 feet tall to intimidate a human. Eternals? Moon-sized.


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## Mezuka (Feb 6, 2022)

My wife and I are with the critics on this one. While we liked the backstory, the movie was boring for us. We could not relate to any of the characters and the acting was wooden. A good thing we saw it on Disney+ for 'free' instead of paying full price.


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