It seems that since the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Kevin Feigy has never taken a bigger risk than in 2021. Never before has he had so many opportunities to misstep. The series on Disney+ might not have taken off, but it did. “Black Widow” was obviously shelved and missed inertia after “The Final”, but still raised some money and showed itself on streaming. In the end, Shan-Chi was so risky that even Disney head Bob Chapek scrapped it before release. But no – the Asian superhero managed to win both box office and audience love. Feigy’s team seemed invulnerable… And then “Forevermore” rumbled.
48% on Rotten Tomatoes! Forty-eight! Even ‘Thor’, the MCU’s acknowledged underdog, had 18% more. And just eight per cent separates Forever from Whedon’s Justice League. No, that doesn’t mean the film is exactly that bad: you shouldn’t unconditionally believe the aggregators – not now or ever again. But it does mean that, for the first time, Marvel have lost the support of the vast majority of reviewers. For the first time in 13 years, the studio has released something truly controversial and controversial.
So, the universe in which the events of all the Marvel movies unfold was not created by natural physical processes or a bearded old man in white, but by the mighty cosmogods known as the Celestials. It was they who forged the stars and assembled the galaxies from the energy of creation. It was their will that intelligent life appeared on Earth and other planets. But creation is not perfect: now and again the natural course of evolution is interfered with mindless predators, called deviants. To bring things back to normal, the Celestials employ their faithful servants, the Eternals, ageless humanoids endowed with superpowers. Their mission is to wipe out the deviants and keep an eye on the inhabitants of the planets while steering clear of internal conflicts.
Seven thousand years ago a band of such defenders arrived on Earth and successfully cleansed it of monsters. Centuries have passed. The exploits of the alien heroes have become myths, and they themselves have scattered. Some try to get lost among mortals and lead an ordinary life, while others prefer to get away from civilization. But now, in our own time, the seemingly extinct deviants have suddenly appeared, and their return promises great misfortune. So, once again, it’s time to assemble a team.
Reviews often compare The Eternal to Zack Snyder’s Justice League (the sheer scale and pathos) and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (the lush landscapes, the leisurely pace, the minimalist costume and ship design), but structurally the film is, oddly enough, closer to The Guardians. There’s the long-defunct superhero team, the mysterious murder that serves as a foreshadowing of the coming apocalypse, and the flashbacks scattered throughout the timeline. There are a couple of other commonalities, but they’re spoiler alert.
Except that Chloe Zhao is no Alan Moore or Zack Snyder. She’s an Oscar-winning director of festival dramas where people dig into themselves against the backdrop of stunningly filmed nature. And at its core, Eternal is just such a movie… But only when it doesn’t have to be a Marvel blockbuster. Ang Lee’s Hulk had a similar identity crisis, where the green giant comic book movie fought a Greek tragedy and ended up losing to both. Zhao’s superhero epic doesn’t complement the chamber drama, but overpowers it. In addition, the film is bursting with an abundance of ideas, concepts and themes. There’s the theory of paleocontact, the origin of myths, the secret sides of history, the tragedy of a long man, the exorbitant price of the higher good… Oh, and then there’s a central conflict and ten (!) characters that are unfamiliar to the audience. And all in all it takes two and a half hours.
Paradoxically, it is the heroes who do it best. Almost every one of them was, if not revealed, at least imagined, and their characters are more memorable than their abilities. Some of them even got full-fledged arcs. For example, Sprite is the local equivalent of Claudia from Interview with the Vampire, that is, a grown woman trapped forever in the body of a teenage girl. She tries to suppress unfulfilled desires within herself, but she can’t, and has suffered for more than the first century. And Fin’s stern warriorrior of the whole film struggles with a kind of superhero dementia: centuries of memories tear her mind to shreds, causing her to lose control of herself and become a danger to those around her. Then there is the neurotic genius Fastos, who is disillusioned with humanity but loves man, and the sarcastic misanthrope Druig, whose views balance on the edge of extremism, and the smugly funny Kingo, and the good-natured Gilgamesh, and…
Ten is still too much. The team-building alone takes up three-quarters of the running time, making the plot effectively stall. Like Josh Trank’s bloody Fantastic Four, the film begins, begins, begins and ends. Also, because of such an abundance of characters, they are revealed to a minimum, albeit quite vividly. The same goes for the formal protagonist, Searcy. The kind and sensitive girl is simply lost against the motley background of her tribesmen. One could, of course, say that all the Eternals are protagonists in one way or another. But, as you know, “all” is also “nobody”. And making a film without a protagonist is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, task.
It’s equally difficult to make a superhero movie without a supervillain. The deviants are just brainless monsters with a rather boring design. You could replace them with the Chitauri from the first Avengers, or the minions of Thanos from the latest – hardly anyone would notice the switch. Yes, there is one particularly strong evolving deviant among them, who eventually acquires Bill Skarsgard’s voice and facial features (what a waste of a talented actor), but he does not reach the rank of a worthy antagonist. “Forevermore” tries to do without the usual megalomaniac, trying on the traits of a disaster film where the conventional enemy is some force of nature devoid of motive. And the final confrontation is not a battle between good and evil but an attempt to reconcile warring ideologies in the face of common danger. Relevant, dramatic, mature… and yet boring to the teeth. Apparently, a worthy replacement for Thanos is still a long way off.
Conclusion
In general, there is a keen desire on Marvel Studios’ part to make a “real” movie. The kind that would make all highbrow critics cringe and Martin Scorsese take back his hurtful words. An instant classic, a pop-culture pillar, no less. The abundance of stars in the most inclusive cast in comic book movie history, Ramin Jawadi’s pathos-laden soundtrack, the scale of events that would make even Doctor Strange swoon, and, of course, the choice of director all point to this. Yes, Chloe Zhao was assigned to the project long before she won her Oscar, but even then she was a trendy festival creator. So potentially a new Nolan or Villeneuve is just the thing. Well, after winning the gold statuette Zhao became the main star of the whole enterprise. Only it’s clear that their new favourite Feigy and company didn’t fully trust her. Or maybe she herself, as is often the case, got confused on the set and was afraid to press her vision, instead obediently making edits from studio bosses. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is the same: Forever is woven of contradictions. It’s both a drama with plenty of colourful characters but hastily spun action, and an unacceptably slow superhero blockbuster overloaded with chatter – the point of view depends on viewer preference. For some, Eternals, according to the ratings on Tomatoes, will be the worst thing Marvel has dared to release on the big screens, while for others it will be an ambitious, stunningly beautiful, albeit flawed, film.