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Author Topic: Eternals  (Read 20933 times)
eldaec
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Reply #35 on: August 20, 2021, 09:56:43 AM

I don't necessarily mind exposition in the film. In the trailer though it worries me a little.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2021, 12:04:40 AM by eldaec »

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HaemishM
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Reply #36 on: August 20, 2021, 07:34:25 PM

There is something bugging me about the footage for this that keeps making me think 'inhumans TV show' rather than 'avengers follow up movie'.

Well, in the comics, the Eternals have always felt like "Jack Kirby takes another swing at Inhumans" so that tracks.  why so serious?

Khaldun
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Reply #37 on: August 21, 2021, 08:23:28 AM

I always thought it was more like "Jack Kirby takes another crack at the New Gods with some Erich von Daniken garbage admixed into it".
Rendakor
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Reply #38 on: August 22, 2021, 08:46:36 AM

They needed at least a little exposition for those of us who have never heard of the Eternals, Deviants, etc.

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SurfD
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Reply #39 on: August 22, 2021, 12:48:46 PM

They needed at least a little exposition for those of us who have never heard of the Eternals, Deviants, etc.
What, like an entire movie perhaps?   awesome, for real

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Khaldun
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Reply #40 on: August 22, 2021, 02:43:55 PM

Yeah, I mean, if the trailer can explain everything about the Celestials, Deviants and Eternals in two minutes, it's not gonna be much of a movie.
eldaec
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Reply #41 on: August 23, 2021, 07:39:35 AM

They needed at least a little exposition for those of us who have never heard of the Eternals, Deviants, etc.

They did not need 'hey why didn't you fight Thanos?'.

Esp not in a trailer.

If you want bad irrelevant exposition about an entirely different film in your movie, OK I guess just keep it to a minimum. But if it is the most enticing dialog you could find for a trailer, then it doesn't bode well.

Also, I knew nothing about the Eternals prior to these trailers, but guessed 100% for what I needed to know from the name 'Eternals'.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2021, 07:43:23 AM by eldaec »

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Rendakor
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Reply #42 on: August 23, 2021, 08:13:23 AM

It was the most common complaint I heard about Captain Marvel: why didn't she just show up and solo Villain X in Movie Y? This addressed that, which I did not mind.

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Trippy
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Reply #43 on: August 23, 2021, 08:44:31 AM

For Captain Marvel they addressed this indirectly in Endgame on the call with Black Widow where Captain Marvel said she was busy helping other people in the galaxy deal with the Snap. The same would apply to the years beforehand (from the 90s onwards) -- she was busy dealing stuff away from Earth. And you could ask the same thing about Thor as you can Captain Marvel. Thor even had the Bifrost to teleport him instantly to Earth so he could've shown up whenever if he was in any of the other Realms so he has even less of an excuse.
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Reply #44 on: August 23, 2021, 10:54:13 AM

sweet

can i bring up iron man not wrapping up winter soldier in 5 minutes again
Khaldun
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Reply #45 on: August 23, 2021, 10:58:00 AM

It's a basic problem in superhero universes period. Superman and Batman aren't totally pals these days but honestly any time Batman's really up against it--some douche motherfucker has blown open Arkham Asylum for the fiftieth time or the Joker is threatening to gas downtown Gotham etc, he should just ring up Superman for a quick thirty-second clean-up rescue visit. (There's a fun episode of the animated series that basically riffs off of this idea.) In Marvel comics, most of the time a world-ending thing is happening, it always turns out that the Avengers are off-planet or the Fantastic Four is in the Negative Zone or Doctor Strange is taking a shit in his Toilet of Mystic Horror. (That's kind of why the issue of FF where everybody shows up to fight Galactus was so fun--for once everybody was actually around.) The MCU has hit a point of sufficient density of superhero population that they're going to have to have those little cinematic footnotes too in most of their movies.
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Reply #46 on: August 23, 2021, 11:12:27 AM

It's a basic problem in superhero universes period. Superman and Batman aren't totally pals these days but honestly any time Batman's really up against it--some douche motherfucker has blown open Arkham Asylum for the fiftieth time or the Joker is threatening to gas downtown Gotham etc, he should just ring up Superman for a quick thirty-second clean-up rescue visit. (There's a fun episode of the animated series that basically riffs off of this idea.) In Marvel comics, most of the time a world-ending thing is happening, it always turns out that the Avengers are off-planet or the Fantastic Four is in the Negative Zone or Doctor Strange is taking a shit in his Toilet of Mystic Horror. (That's kind of why the issue of FF where everybody shows up to fight Galactus was so fun--for once everybody was actually around.) The MCU has hit a point of sufficient density of superhero population that they're going to have to have those little cinematic footnotes too in most of their movies.

99% of the time I'm on board with this

but i bring up winter soldier because new york is in one of the fuckin shots, focused on stark tower

in the mcu, it's uniquely annoying to me, moreso than Captain Marvel being AWOL
Velorath
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Reply #47 on: August 23, 2021, 11:33:51 AM

sweet

can i bring up iron man not wrapping up winter soldier in 5 minutes again

You can bring it up, and I'll bring up again all the ways IM3 showed that wouldn't happen.
Soulflame
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Reply #48 on: August 23, 2021, 11:54:44 AM

That particular dialog worked for me because it led directly to "who the hell is giving you orders" which then led naturally to the glimpse of the Celestial giant red robot bad guy(?).  Probably.
Draegan
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Reply #49 on: August 24, 2021, 07:50:10 AM

I thoughtbthe kine worked well.
Sky
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Reply #50 on: October 03, 2021, 11:49:03 AM

schild
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Reply #51 on: October 04, 2021, 07:47:10 PM

i fear this might be the worst marvel movie with really out of place comedy

i hope i'm completely wrong
eldaec
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Reply #52 on: October 25, 2021, 02:15:26 PM

So, shit reviews then.

I'm not sure even the dodgy MCU films have received properly bad reviews.

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Rendakor
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Reply #53 on: October 25, 2021, 04:11:28 PM

It's a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes; where are you seeing bad reviews?

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Trippy
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Reply #54 on: October 25, 2021, 05:24:52 PM

Metacritic has it at 58 at the moment: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/eternals/critic-reviews
Khaldun
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Reply #55 on: October 26, 2021, 05:53:36 PM

Guardian review was medium-hostile.
Velorath
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Reply #56 on: November 06, 2021, 09:19:51 PM

This is certainly a mess on pretty much any sort of narrative level. All the world-building stuff they have to cram in here, in addition to trying distill around 7000 years of these characters' histories with each other down into a 2.5 hour movie doesn't leave them a lot of room to tell an actual good storyline, even without getting into the fairly bad CG stuff like the Deviants.

That said there were characters and moments I did enjoy here and it didn't feel quite as much of a slog to get through as Thor: Dark World, or as superfluous as Black Widow. You can squint and kinda at least see the ambition of what they were trying for here (and there's absolutely a lot they're going to be building on from this). As a Disney+ show I think this could have actually worked (if they couldn't have gotten Hayek or Jolie for a series that would have only been a plus in this case).

Edit: Just to add, I really liked Brian Tyree Henry and Ma Dong-seok. Lia McHugh did a pretty good job as Sprite which is one of the more challenging roles. Kumail Nanjiani is Kumail Nanjiani. He delivers what you'd expect, but doesn't elevate the movie at all, largely just due to his role. Richard Madden is likewise exactly what you'd expect based on his previous work. Barry Keoghan wasn't working for me at first but he gets better as the movie goes on. Lauren Ridloff as Makkari doesn't get a lot to do but she's fairly solid at least. Gemma Chan is a little vanilla as Sersi.
« Last Edit: November 06, 2021, 09:30:42 PM by Velorath »
TheWalrus
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Reply #57 on: November 07, 2021, 09:57:11 PM

I know nothing about Eternals. Is this something they should have tried individual or paired character movies for as introduction, with ye olde team uppe movie to cap it off? There's a fuckton of hero in the trailers.

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Velorath
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Reply #58 on: November 07, 2021, 10:42:51 PM

I know nothing about Eternals. Is this something they should have tried individual or paired character movies for as introduction, with ye olde team uppe movie to cap it off? There's a fuckton of hero in the trailers.

I think a Disney+ show would have worked better than setting it up with individual movies. There's a lot of characters, but they have a shared background and history so it's not like they started off separately and came together as a team over the years.
TheWalrus
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Reply #59 on: November 08, 2021, 08:42:50 AM

Ah, ok. Thanks!

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Velorath
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Reply #60 on: November 08, 2021, 09:26:44 AM

No problem.

I guess to back it up a little, for people who aren't familiar with the characters (and there are a number of tweaks to the Eternals here even for people who know their comic book counterparts) Eternals get sent to planets by their Space God (one of the Celestials) which are being threated by the Deviants, which here are largely mindless creatures. If you've seen the trailers, whenever they're fighting a big CGI creature, it's a Deviant. This group of Eternals arrived on Earth together around 5,000 BC and are to remain until the Celestials tell them their mission is complete.

That's the basic setup at the start of the movie (there's opening text that explains some of it). There are flashbacks to a number of different time periods that expand on who these characters are and their relationship with each other, and through the course of the movie they also find that there's more to their origins and mission than they're aware.

So the movie has to set up the characters of the 10 Eternals, how they've changed across 7000 years, some information on the Celestials, and the conflict with the Deviants over the period of a 2.5 hour movie. They actually do a somewhat decent job juggling the characters all things considered, but I think had they done it as a 6-8 episode show there was a lot they could have expanded on. One of the bigger problems to me is that they couldn't come up with anything interesting to do with the Deviants. They're largely mindless as mentioned, and the CGI isn't particularly great. They're functionally a plot device and it's not particularly interesting the first time the Eternals fight one, let alone the 6th or 7th time. A series would have also allowed them to do a bit more setup with how they interact with their space god, and so they could explore a little more of how each character feels about what is essentially their religion. Only one Eternal in a group is assigned to have the device that allows them to communicate directly with the Celestial so there's an interesting dynamic there.

Basically there's a lot of big ideas but in trying to cram all of it in they have trouble telling an actual story.
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Reply #61 on: November 08, 2021, 09:50:18 AM

Only one Eternal in a group is assigned to have the device that allows them to communicate directly with the Celestial so there's an interesting dynamic there.

Not being at all familiar with the source material, this is how I picture that dynamic:


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TheWalrus
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Reply #62 on: November 08, 2021, 12:26:44 PM

Spacepope would need a funny hat to communicate properly.

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Khaldun
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Reply #63 on: November 08, 2021, 05:23:52 PM

Neil Gaiman's attempted reboot of the Eternals sort of followed that structure until it just kind of fell apart--the Eternals for whatever reason have lost their memories and integrated into human life as per their individual nature; Ikaris and Makkari have to reawaken each of them one per issue and in a few cases that's actually kind of dangerous, and it's to face a new kind of Deviant threat that has something-something to do with the Celestials. (The Deviants back in the Kirby original are basically just disposable monster goons with a couple of exceptions, and that's never changed much except in Gaiman's reboot.)

In the comics, slowly over time, the Celestials themselves became responsible for the mutant gene--nobody had that idea when they were first integrated into the MU, it just kind of congealed into the mythology in bits and pieces.

Raguel
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Reply #64 on: November 09, 2021, 01:39:11 PM

In the comics, slowly over time, the Celestials themselves became responsible for the mutant gene--nobody had that idea when they were first integrated into the MU, it just kind of congealed into the mythology in bits and pieces.


LOL why has this been my head canon for decades if I never read Gaiman's reboot? Maybe my memory is just bad (I don't think I've read many Eternals books or comics featuring them).
Khaldun
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Reply #65 on: November 09, 2021, 02:58:02 PM

Oh, that part of the canon preceded Gaiman's reboot, and it's been a *really soft* canon thing--most of the work of suggesting it came in the back sections of late issues of What If? where they did in-universe explanations of stuff like "how are the Eternals and the guys on Titan who eventually led to Thanos related," etc. What surprises me about the Eternals film is that it seems like they're going to lean in to that stuff now, when I would have left it the fuck alone if I were them.
eldaec
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Reply #66 on: November 12, 2021, 12:59:51 PM

I know nothing about Eternals. Is this something they should have tried individual or paired character movies for as introduction, with ye olde team uppe movie to cap it off? There's a fuckton of hero in the trailers.

I think a Disney+ show would have worked better than setting it up with individual movies. There's a lot of characters, but they have a shared background and history so it's not like they started off separately and came together as a team over the years.

Looking at the slate of MCU shows disney+ is promoting today it occurred to me that every single one of them is a better idea for a film than Eternals.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
schild
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Reply #67 on: November 12, 2021, 09:46:25 PM

I know nothing about Eternals. Is this something they should have tried individual or paired character movies for as introduction, with ye olde team uppe movie to cap it off? There's a fuckton of hero in the trailers.

I think a Disney+ show would have worked better than setting it up with individual movies. There's a lot of characters, but they have a shared background and history so it's not like they started off separately and came together as a team over the years.

Looking at the slate of MCU shows disney+ is promoting today it occurred to me that every single one of them is a better idea for a film than Eternals.

hawkeye would be utterly miserable for a film

it's barely worth a tv show

(eternals was a TERRIBLE idea tho, yeah)
MediumHigh
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Reply #68 on: November 16, 2021, 07:45:48 AM

Oh wow this was really meh. I wanted to say really bad but that would require me to genuinely dislike everything in the movie, which wasn't the case.  I like the lore behind the celestials, I liked that the 7000 year old alien superman who chose the celestial and the infinity of the universe over our mudball, I like the guy who became a bollywood guy as a way to pass the time....but that's about it. 70% of the movie is actors being told to act "normal", which is boring because by making them "average people" you remove anything special about them being "7000 year old aliens".

It just didn't work, too many characters feels kinda of a lazy take, I think its too much nothing going nowhere very slowly. Like too much characters making relatively immature choices, too many attempts to play on big emotions that fall flat the following scene, prime example; a characters so done with humanity that he meets someone a few years before the plot happens and lives in the suburbs. Also said character needs a pep talk to even decide join the plot to not end the world his child and husband are standing on...

I find it more irritating that people give this crap a pass. Shangi Chi maybe objectively one of the worst movies in marvels long stretch of making movies but at least it has something to distract less discerning audiences.... this has nothing. And while it isn't nearly as bad as Shang Chi or Thor 2 or Iron Man 2, it is far more intellectually insulting.

Save for Black Widow, a lot of these movies makes me want to apologize to Captain Marvel.
Velorath
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Reply #69 on: November 16, 2021, 09:22:08 PM

Just incase anybody wants to reassess their desire to watch this, you know if MediumHigh hates it, it must have at least some redeeming qualities.
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