Before she was recruited to craft the next product in the corporate assembly line that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, indie filmmaker Chloé Zhao was fostering a creative voice of unique majesty. I distinctly remember the poetically understated opening minutes of her last effort Nomadland, which won Best Picture at last year’s Academy Awards and also garnered her a Best Director statue that cemented her status as one of our most monumental filmmakers. In that scene, a widow named Fern, exquisitely played by Frances McDormand, presses the jacket of her deceased husband against her frigid nostrils, the warm aroma of a cold, fading memory evoking a bittersweet internal desolation.
Zhao is a craftswoman of grippingly singular ethos, rendering an incredibly delicate swirl of naturalism and humanism. Her three previous microbudget features, all of which were absolved from the financial obligations of a studio conglomerate, were like gentle yet penetrative caresses to the soul, so it’s quite disheartening to witness her foray into superhero cinema Eternals, a millennia-spanning cosmic epic, squarely skim the surface, castrated by the limitations of the blockbuster genre.
It seems like the renowned filmmaker was recruited to revolutionize Marvel’s progressively uninspired formula, but her very presence only underlines the rigidity of it, beginning with its hefty narrative that’s spread thin over quite literally the sheer fabric of the universe; the Avengers’ notable altercations with Thanos seem like kiddy pool scuffles in the comparatively oceanic scale of this film’s divine beings and deities grappling with the repercussions of space and time itself. At a cumbersome 157 minutes, the film buckles under its own weight with a cluttered structure and mythology, with Zhao unfortunately unable to exalt the strained proceedings.
In the beginning, there was Kevin Feige, avid comics connoisseur who leveraged his small producer status and chipper passion to one of the most bountifully successful franchises in film history, but before that fateful ascension, there was a towering godly Celestial named Arishem, who spawned the Eternals, a set of superpowered immortals to protect humankind from the savage, animalistic Deviants.
Instructed not to interfere, this plucky group – Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Druig (Barry Keoghan), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Ajak (Salama Hayek) and Thena (Angelina Jolie) – becomes a makeshift family as passive protectors and observers to humanity’s strife, sewn together by a uniquely shared trauma that’s surprisingly earthbound considering their origins.
This incredible cast toils within a convoluted narrative that attempts to straddle two storylines, one in the present and the other in flashbacks to contextualize the current. As the film’s lead, Chan particularly embodies the pensive elegance of Zhao’s stylings quite deftly, and the entire makeup of the team is distinctly more diverse than Marvel’s previous efforts, reflecting a wider range of races, ages, abilities and sexualities that are righteous pillars of the Earth. Zhao clearly yearns to weave in more meditative touchstones in this expanse, but Marvel begets streamlined efficiency in a fashion that especially inhibits indie artistry.
Half a century after disbanding and diverging, the group gradually reunites to prevent the Emergence, the grandly astral Arishem obliterating and reclaiming Earth for his own nefarious purposes. Most of the group fervently believes in humanity and vies to preserve it, an ambitious conceit to explore our complicated triumphs and sorrows embedded in individuals who are also cursed with divinity.
If anyone is going to transform this dense material into a nuanced rumination on the turmoil and love that reverberates throughout eons for a clan of synthesized humans, it’s the esteemed woman who finessed Frances McDormand roaming around a post-capitalism midwestern America into quintessential elegiac cinema. Eternals is ultimately, though, pantomime for actual arthouse fare, permeated with a gilded hollowness similar to the gold CGI fixtures that emanate from the titular team.
The baseline elements for a classic formula overhaul are present, if a bit intermittent, thus the embellished mimicry. Eternals is approximately the third Marvel movie not to look like glossy concrete and is stemmed from more mature aesthetic sensibilities. Zhao imbues the film with her signature tender beauty, now adjusted to a more stately grandeur for the gargantuan scope of this film (it turns out that using real locations does make a difference), and she injects the character dynamics with an underpinned intimacy and sincerity instead of Marvel’s standard irreverence.
There are even multiple sprawling romances that are more sensual than the wholesome boy-girl pageantry of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, namely between Sersi and Ikaris. It’s just a shame that all of these resounding advancements are squandered when, for example, there are painstakingly exhaustive exposition dumps or a blandly lit neighborhood home exterior scene that could be plucked out of Avengers 16, coming to you in 2047!
The underlying issue is its tonal and structural incongruence; the poetic has historically never cohered with the prosaic. Zhao thrives on methodically forging melancholy in any given moment’s immediacy, but this genre dictates that she adheres to broader trappings, deflating the narrative of any real stakes. She develops character in a subtly languid way, all through evocative imagery, while Marvel does so substantially more heavy-handedly and literally. Eternals is polarized within this duality.
That’s why the story often plays as unintentionally erratic. Zhao is nobly attempting to empathize with these epic figures using her rugged methods, but she’s fundamentally stifled, robbing the film of any weight. Countless integral character beats are unveiled late into the movie, and they feel contrived when their understated developments were woefully undermined, or even rendered completely nonexistent in some cases. A scene depicting a distraught Phastos in the fallout of Hiroshima is notably gratuitous for these reasons, an oblivious glibness.
“When you love something, you protect it,” Thena postulates in one of the film’s more poignant moments, but this sentiment also ironically encapsulates the shortcomings of Eternals. The initial innovative veneer of Marvel’s latest outing is quite refreshing, but the film devolves into the same generic theatrics that seldom hold lasting resonance. Marvel has earned a place in the cinematic canon, if only by perseverance, happy flukes, bouts of artifice and some enduring gems, and Feige seems intent on crystallizing that, even if it means botching the lyricism of quantifiably the best director he has worked with thus far. Perhaps Chloé Zhao should wade back into the Midwest, where she can recount compassionate, transcendent tales of humanity completely unfettered. Nomadland was a masterpiece for the ages, but Eternals is just another cog in a trend.
Grade: C+
Eternals is now available in theaters.
Photo Credit / Disney
