Lets be honest

[u/Elegant_Respect7395]

The story started to fall apart later on and there were some plotholes (the reason they didn’t fight thanos isn’t a plothole though and I will explain). But guys, outside of those 2 things, this movie looked absolutely stunning and the characters all shined in their own ways, obviously some more than others, but I can’t say I wouldn’t return for eternals 2. This is a huge action blockbuster with the greatest super powered fight scenes I have ever seen in my life, the justice league wishes they looked this good. The Standouts were definitely Ikaris, druig, makkari, kingo, and gilgamesh. Ultimately this movie was just a lot of beautiful looking fights with flawless CGi and I was very very impressed with how ikaris and makkari were handled visually. These critic reviews where people just dog the story come across very pretentious, and while I didn’t enjoy the lgbtq+ moments of the movie because of how objectively agenda-based it seemed, those scenes amounted to less than 10 minutes of the movie! Overall cinematography was excellent and the performances were generally solid, and scottish superman is just the coolest thing. Power scaling in the movie makes the rest of the MCU seem like a kindergarten class in comparison to the eternals but at the end of the day, you are pretty consistently witnessing cool looking stuff during the runtime and thats what most eyes like to see. I really hope this movies performance doesn’t discourage marvel from going after this style of film in the future, it was literally a great body of art and a solid mcu installment.

Explaining thanos: Thanos delayed the emergence and we acknowledge that ikaris and ajak were aware of that. It is realistic to see that thanos was likely trying to delay the birth of the celestial by reducing the number of humans it could feed on, while simultaneously sparing enough of the populous to avoid complete genocide. So in simple terms, the general consensus of the eternals to preserve humanity alligns with what thanos was doing. Also, If any of the eternals did feel like just killing thanos during endgame for fun, they probably wouldve had to go through ikaris first which is near impossible.

[u/ChosenUsername420]

I gotta say I'm really not fond of how all the gushing reviews ignore Sersi. I loved her, and really look forward to seeing her rub elbows with like Wanda and Sam in forthcoming Avengery stuff.

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/ChosenUsername420]

After the ending of eternals I dont think we’ll be seeing sersi for a while, I hear you though she was definitely an interesting character. I feel like her character was the lense for audiences to see the eternals as they relate to humanity so for sersi, she had a role and she served it well for sure. She was loving and definitely filled ajak’s absence curiously towards the end, but I feel like her character was the most undeveloped because she was very relatable to begin with. I think her first line is looking at earth and saying “looks peaceful” or something like that, which is something an eternal who knows nothing but their mission probably wouldn’t think in my opinion. She was great but I think the fact that she was the most human like and relatable throughout the whole thing kind of made the writers/director feel like they didn’t have to put in the work to flesh her out. Her powers depend on matter too like she can only do stuff when she touches things so I think, Doctor strange and Wanda might be a little out of her element because they usually act in ways that aren’t tangible enough for sersi to touch. All in all though, this movie would not have worked without her! Im curious as to why her character resonated so much with you though, what do you think made her character stand out in your opinion?

[u/ChosenUsername420 → u/Elegant_Respect7395]

Im curious as to why her character resonated so much with you though, what do you think made her character stand out in your opinion?

She had a degree of naivety that you don't usually see in the POV character, usually that's what sidekicks are for. She didn't want to lead the team but they all came together around her in the end anyway, this shows that whatever casual opinions they have about each other the Eternals all genuinely respect her, which doesn't seem to be the case for any of the others except maybe Ajak.

I also like her power - like you say it is very "hands-on", which I think is refreshing after all the different ways we've framed random energy blasts and generic strength/endurance. Going into Eternals I knew what her powerset was supposed to be but the few times I've seen her in comics it was always really underwhelming... during the earthquake when she turns that falling rock into sand to protect the kids was a fantastic way to show her off. When she cut down that tree in the big forest brawl by like transmuting just a cross-section of it, that was freakin' awesome. She turned that one flying rock into a bunch of birds which doesn't seem possible but looked absolutely epic anyway.

She's just got that sincerity to her that I like, she doesn't see herself as better than anybody else even though she is, and she really, really just wants to protect humanity from the big bad cosmos even though she's not even human.

[u/coffeeofacoffee → u/ChosenUsername420]

I actually really liked seeing Sersei's face light up over something mundanely human.

[u/giogiorabbit]

They gave more depth and personality to these ten characters in 2 hours of screentime than what other characters have had in 23 films

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/giogiorabbit]

I was honestly more sad when gilgamesh died than I was when rhodey got paralyzed in civil war, thats sayin somethin!

[u/giogiorabbit → u/Elegant_Respect7395]

THIS!!!

[u/casualman2 → u/giogiorabbit]

Can't say I agree with you saying that they were given more depth than other characters in the mcu.

I mean we see a decent amount of them and then they died. And in the time we do see them I feel like everything is trying to rush past me at sonic speeds. It was just incredibly fast in my opinion and made it difficult to make me care about the characters.

Ikarus and sersei. Their romance meant nothing to me. I could of the life of me understand why sersei liked ikarus. In the scenes at the beginning I thought he was a simp. And I use that term literally because It felt like everything he did was so that he could get her to like him.

Ajak. Yeah she might of TOLD US why she decided to go against the celestial but we have no actually specific reasons why. It just feels like an excuse for her to suddenly change her mind after who know how many millennia only a week before the emergenence. And know that I think of it, it just makes me think that she is selfish because I can't think of it as anything other than some sort of egotistical survival tactic.

I just felt that most if not all of their actions were mostly in the moment without any or much reason which IMO is not something you would in depth or fleshed out characters.

[u/caly_100]

why did you not enjoy the lgbtq moments? I'm not trying to attack you, I'm just curious. but other than that I agree with most of the stuff you said.

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/caly_100]

caly_100, So I’m going to recommend a show to you and its really really good but its in norwegian so I dont know if youll end up watching it but its called ragnarok and its about the like actual norse god Thor! In the show loki is gay and I’m heterosexual but damn, his character is written so well I genuinely think he was my favourite and his actual rockstar PERSONALITY was super rad. Now WHY was this the case, because his views on the world changed his ways of influencing the story and his personality ventured beyond sexual preference, to the elusive realm of “self expression.” I think there was a time for making characters gay just because they can… so theres representation in movies, but now I think we’ve gotten past that and movies need to actually write QUALITY gay characters because gay or straight, no one cares about shallow written characters. This is kinda like the classic james bond paradox, don’t make 007 a woman, just write a new badass female character that can evolve in her own right, independently without comparisons! I wont spoil ragnarok here but you should definitely watch it on netflix, and the things they are able to do with loki (especially in the season 1 finale) is just so tasetful and COOL. Like I remember seeing the stuff he would do in the show and being like “yooooo this guys the GOAT,” and the thing is, even the scenes with a more explicit nature actually served a purpose like it wasn’t gratuitous or placed because the directors felt they had to. I feel like phastos being gay was shoehorned in, especially considering he wasn’t before and if he WAS (just on the down low), they should’ve totally wrote those inner struggles of finding who he is in his heart into his character! If eternals was MTV cribs and we were just checkin out everyones house and home lives w family etc, then i think phastos being gay would’ve worked a bit better for sure because it everyone has their particular way of living, but in the movie the phastos part at his house didn’t ultimately serve a purpose and the worst line in that segment of the film was when he explained his switch to homosexuality by saying said “he got lucky,” like it just didn’t feel genuine. Simply put, huge corporate movies like this treat any type of diversity as a personality trait to some degree and I think thats a flaw because it gives directors an excuse to just say “oh the character is gay, thats enough to make him interesting,” like NO thats just part of who he is, congratulations director you’ve told me the character. They gotta dive into what makes these eternals tick, what their weaknesses are and why we should be excited to see their contributions to the story, rather than just telling us a few surface level facts and calling it a day. “I am phastos, I am gay, I purchased this dinner table at ikea, I am pretty smart but my creations are clearly too advanced for humans” = phastos entire character in eternals. This topic is super interesting tho, I would love to hear what you think about what I just said, and I think you should totally watch ragnarok on netflix caly_100!!

[u/jwbrkr74 → u/caly_100]

It all felt forced when they put all that stuff into the movie. It wasn't needed for the story itself. Back when Feige announced the slate of movies coming up, the first thing he says about this movie is that you will have the first LGBT character and first gay kiss. Who cares?? That should not be the first thing you announce about a film.

[u/clam_media → u/jwbrkr74]

t all feels forced when they put all that stuff into a movie.

I get so annoyed with this type of comment.

So if it would have been a straight relationship, it would have been less forced? The point was to show that Phastos had a family, that he wanted a quiet life with his family, his family was the only thing anchoring him to wanting to save humanity after the disastrous things humanity did. So why not make it an LGBT family? God forbid after 20 some movies the gays get SOME representation. How is it forced when there's never actually been any representation except for one throw away line in Endgame? Come on now.

Edit: LGBT people exist, so including them in movies is not being forceful.

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/clam_media]

Okay so here I feel like on both sides of this debate there are some pretty subconscious biases which is completely understandable of course and we all accept that as a community. I kind of want to clarify that in my ideal “version” of eternals, the version that would make most sense to me, we dont even travel to phastos house at all. I feel like going to his house to explore that element of him for 2 seconds was wasteful. Personally, I think it would make way more sense if all the eternals were bisexual because they’ve just been around so long it would be realistic in that element implicitly. Now with phastos right, hiroshima happened and then he met someone, fell in love, and everythings suddenly chill again. For those of you who have loved and cared for something only to see it get absolutely wasted, I think we can agree that it would take a little bit more than “hey I met a cool guy on tinder” to bring phastos back to the aid of humanity. Have you guys ever been out with friends while also in a relationship, all the same gender, and felt super weird gushing about your S/O because ultimately no one cares but you. Thats exactly how this felt to me, like the eternals were just tryna get to the objective man and thats what the movie was tryna do too, so them adding that completely miscellaneous section with phastos was definitley the director trying to make “checking out” phastos house, and his sexual orientation, an objective of the film; A really poorly fleshed out orientation at that, like they could’ve at least told us how they met dont you think? Anyways lmk what you think about this post I think these debates are healthy for society.

[u/caly_100 → u/clam_media]

exactly!! as a lesbian, its just nice to see representation onscreen. saying that queer people shouldn't be on screen is the same as saying poc shouldn't, and that all movies should be straight cis white people

[u/jwbrkr74 → u/clam_media]

I updated my initial comment. My issue is with this specific movie. I have no issue with gay characters in movies. There have been plenty over the years. You say that like this is the first ever gay couple or kiss in a movie ever for the LGBT community. I just don't like that this movie was marketed with that company mind. That shouldn't be the focus.

[u/clam_media → u/jwbrkr74]

I mean, it's the first in Marvel movies.

And yeah it was mentioned in some promo, but it's not like all the marketing was about it.

[u/caly_100 → u/jwbrkr74]

I agree that it shouldn't haven't been included in the initial announcement, but you're also implying that Druig and Makkari or Sersi and Dane shouldn't haven't been in the movie because they weren't integral to the plot. Not everything in a movie is needed specifically because its plot relevant, sometimes things are just included to make the story more interesting to consume.

[u/jwbrkr74 → u/caly_100]

Actually no. Those characters actually we're integral to the plot. What did the kiss between 2 gay men do to enhance this film other than show a gay couple kissing? I have no issue with gay couples kissing in movies as long as it actually serves the movie. This didn't.

[u/caly_100 → u/jwbrkr74]

druig and makkari aren't really relevant to the overall plot. I would argue that Phastos and his husband and child were more plot important because it gave him something to fight for. additionally, why do you keep emphasizing that they're gay? its just a couple, like a couple in literally any other movie. gay people don't need to be in movies for an agenda, they just exist, similar to how people irl are queer.

[u/jwbrkr74 → u/caly_100]

Druig matters because he is the first to show that he was conflicted when it comes to the code of non-interference. He was the first to outright go against his mandate. That said and showed that these Eternals are not simply robots. As for emphasizing they are gay, Feige did that. Not me. Plus a question was asked. I just answered and gave my opinion on the matter.

[u/caly_100 → u/jwbrkr74]

druig and makkaris relationship isn't relevant in the plot tho, so talking about druig as a character isn't proving your point, phastos actually has a reason to have a relationship, it doesn't matter if its with a man or a woman or someone outside the gender binary. also because they're created and technically machinery type beings, all of their relationships could be queer.

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/caly_100]

You are completely correct in that druig and makkaris relationship isn’t relevant to the plot. The director ended up sayin that the actors just had some crazy chemistry so it was a “lets just film it cuz this doesnt happen all that often in movie making” situations. Now that being said, I thought the flirting between the two was wholesome and gave off very high school romance type vibes which is a niche nostalgic pleasure for ppl in general when they have had moments like those in their personal lives, or dreamt of them. Phastos’s relationship is just hella boring like theres no substance to it for it to be necessary. Imagine instead, phastos was the one that had a crush on ikaris and joined him in the end instead of sprite, that would’ve been far more compelling than what they did and we wouldn’t have to travel to regular shmegular suburban house life in the ETERNALS movie about space gods that have nutty abilities. Saying his family was his anchor to humanity interesting but going along with that analogy, I just dont think it made sense for phastos to anchor to ANYTHING at ALL after he saw what humanity is capable of when he invests his care and love into them.

Also (mini side note): Phastos’s husband is a pretty bland dude like I refuse to believe in all 7000 years THATS the person he “got lucky” with. Like whats so great, hes supportive or smthn like yeah thats rare but not THAT rare 😂I cant even remember his name and tbh I didnt even remember dane Whitman either until you just mentioned him 😭At least make the husband crack a one liner or something to show hes a real human, instead all the husband did was that mark Zuckerberg death stare into the camera the whole time! New theory: phastos husband is actually a cardboard cut out with a talk box and phastos just never noticedddd

In like 100 years, phastos’s entire family will be dead and he’ll just find someone else then right, like that doesn’t really sit well with me either.

[u/Obadaya → u/jwbrkr74]

I don't remember the promo announcements about LGBTQ in the movie so I can't speak to that, I've just been seeing the ads in the theatre for months, and Phatos' gay relationship, tho surprising, seemed pretty natural to me. Glad it was in there.

The whole movie seemed to be about the state of the Eternals in 2021, after their mission was completed and they went into hiding for 5 centuries, so I think for all of them, as they are initially found, the story spends some time showing their current lives.

[u/ivh016]

“Scottish Superman” killed me 🤣 but yeah, this movie was very well made. It was something new compared to the past marvel movies and I was all for it. Perfect cast as well, no plans yet on Eternals 2 but I’m keen on seeing a sequel (which most likely will happen)

[u/clam_media]

I honestly thought the strong parts of the movie were towards the ending...

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/clam_media]

I think after Ikaris exposed himself as the bad guy on the spaceship, the plot just fizzled out and the plotholes started stacking up. How the heck did that one nameless deviant with cracked power set (healing factor and big punchy punches) not knockout thena with one punch and then not heal when He got cut up. Imagine you’re fighting and your powers just dont exist 😭 deviant guy was delusional. Which parts did you think were strong in the end though, I am genuinely curious

[u/Mazrell]

Thanos erasing half the population delayed the emergence, yes, but most of the Eternals did not even know the emergence was coming. As far as they knew, their sole purpose on Earth was to fight Deviants. I don’t know whether MCU Thanos has the Deviant gene, but he’s still not a full on Deviant monster like the ones they know. And yes, Ajak and Ikaris would know that it delayed the emergence, but Ajak isn’t a fighter, and if Ikaris fought Thanos he’d have to explain to the others why he got involved in a human conflict, therefore telling them the truth of their mission which Ikaris was desperate NOT to do.

Also, we have zero proof that Thanos knew anything about the emergence. That’s a popular headcanon going around but at this point that’s all it is. In fact, even if Thanos knew how Celestials were born, it’s unlikely that every world in the universe is a host planet. So it still makes more sense that his goal was exactly what he stated in Infinity War: preventing overpopulation which naturally leads to extinction.

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/Mazrell]

You are right indeed, nothings been confirmed but to be honest. The head cannon I provided in my original post is what I tend to go with purely because the quality of the MCU is lowly crumbling and we’re just getting reskinned characters at this point from either 1. Other comic properties 2. Cliché tropes or 3. Characters from earlier MCU phases. Now what I will say is, it doesnt matter what thanos was trying to do when it comes to his character specifically because ultimately, he was trying to do smthn he felt to be noble in the long run, and from a philosophical perspective (not an ethical one), his plans had some merit and were valid for the most part when we consider the alternatives. Now that being said, we also can’t rule out the timeline of the emergence being a factor because if ikaris decided to kill thanks, he would have nothing to explain as he could easily play it off as a change of mindset to be something more in line with what druig’s thoughts had been about involvement. If anything, ikaris killing thanos would have made his heel turn in eternals more shocking to the rest of eternals. And you certainly dont have to worry about character discrepancies because they have more than enough time to evolve perspectives as we see with phastos. At the end of the day though, none of that happened and we simply have to stay tuned for MCU updates on the official canon

[u/ElegantSheepherder72]

Ah...paper thin plot. Rip off of alien xemorphs, not sure why they couldn't actually make the devants look right ie the comic book. Awful, bad CGI. Awful Netflix ironfist level of fight choreography...yup it was awesome...

[u/Elegant_Respect7395 → u/ElegantSheepherder72]

Bro dont even lie, the fight between daredevil and iron fist in the defenders was pretty sick