Originally published at: Marvel's "Eternals" seems to have a lot of fighting | Boing Boing
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I think of the last batch of Marvel movies to come out this one is the one i’m least excited about. I hope it turns out to be good but my expectations for it aren’t very high
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Too violent for me.
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Eternals, ho hum. Wake me when they make the Celestials
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I think the amount of backstory they try to pack into these movies makes the first introduction of characters in their own film dreary.
That’s what I said before Guardians of the Galaxy came out: no one knows these characters, no one cares about them, even comic book fans don’t care about them…and it became the next biggest thing to the Avengers.
As long as they make it funny, it will succeed, seems to be the formula. Making The Eternals funny is a pretty funny concept in itself, but they’re already featuring jokes in the trailer so I imagine they’ll follow through.
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I wonder if it will break with the formula and have a very long and surprisingly dull CG battle in the third act?
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What KingGhidorah said. The Guardians of the Galaxy were on absolutely no one’s short list for the next big breakout group from the MCU; I was honestly baffled when the movie was announced. (I expected Nova to be the MCU’s first big superhero/space opera hybrid, but, even though the Nova Corps (and Glenn Close as Nova Prime, the title that comics Nova inherited) have been in GotG, no Nova yet.) But the writing, direction, and casting were all basically perfect. On the other hand, Fox managed to mess up three Fantastic Four movies in a row, and run the X-Men franchise into the ground.
So, who knows? I’ve got high hopes for this one.
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“Marvel’s “Eternals” seems to have a lot of fighting“
When you’re immortal, there’s a lot of time to nurture grudges.
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Plenty of time to get over it, too. 
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The upside of using lesser-known characters is that the filmmakers get more freedom to play with the IP without blowback from fans.
For example, hardly anyone seemed to mind that Jarvis was changed from an off-brand Alfred Pennyworth to a sentient AI or that Star Lord’s costume looks absolutely nothing like his original comic book design.
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Fighting? In a superhero movie? What a novel concept… 
I think the other thing that helped GotG besides being hilarious was that it didn’t really spend a whole lot of time delving into the history of all of its characters. There’s no extended flashback of Rocket getting made in a lab, or how he met Groot, or anything to really “justify” the sibling tensions between Gamora and Nebula. Peter’s the only one we get any real backstory on, and even that is basically just “his mom died and then he got abducted by space pirates”. We just sort of get thrown into this crazy world, and have to sort of catch on as it goes about who Ronan is and what the Nova Corps does and so on. It trusts the audience to like the characters without having to spin whole yarns about them before they even hit the screen.
(Admittedly, Ronan’s whole Deal is still a bit fuzzy to me; of all the Marvel villains he felt like the one who was least fleshed out. I think he got elided over for the most part so that they could give Thanos more of an introduction before Infinity War.)
Anyway, if Eternals can capture the same sort of “just go with it” attitude that GotG did, it’ll be interesting. I have no experience with any of these characters, nor did I with GotG, so whether it can make me feel invested in them without ruining the pacing of the whole film by over-establishing them will be the real test.
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From the comment "There was something on one of the streaming services, with Charlize Theron that seems a lot like this movie. " it feels to me like you’re implying The Eternals is a copy of The Old Guard.
The Eternals first appeared in Marvel Comics back in the 1970’s, so if anything it’s the other way around.
I am a sucker for some good, weird exposition. And Neil Gaiman nailed it with the super weird origin of earth. along with his signature depressed adult side-stories like the Sandman.
I agree. And I say that as some one pretty fond of the Eternals.
It doesn’t look nearly weird enough. This one of the most bonkers and inconsistent ends of Marvel continuity. And it’s just looks like pouty aliens gonna save us from the monsters.
Yeah i’d love it if it had more of a space opera vibe, but Marvel generally likes to play things safe. With Eternals it just looks painfully generic
Let’s talk about this short trailer. We cut to Eternals fighting monsters about 5-6 times. But half of those, if you’re actually looking carefully, come from 1 scene of the film. And obviously this particular so-fast-you-barely-register-it trailer was cut to feature the “action” element.
I really think we just have a population of enthusiastic Marvel critics on the site who look for any opportunity to knock on the franchise. Basing your bad review on this snippet of footage is silly. 
I dunno how safe it was to make a talking raccoon a major character, or rejigger Thor into the sort of thing where late career Jeff Goldbloom fits perfectly. Or to take the recently established good guy authority figures who formed the main link between the various movies, turn them into bad guys. Then have Captain America blow them up.
They play it pretty formulaic. But a lot of this only looks safe in hindsight because it made a billion dollars.
Which is the sort of the thing here. I dunno that space opera is the term for it. But Eternals is full late period Kirby. It’s all inscrutable cosmic gods and disturbing implications.
I’m not seeing any of that in any of the marketing push. Where are my 1000 foot robots torturing monkeys and passing judgement on the city of New York?
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“This is a lot of people I just don’t care about.”
I felt the same way.
