The Eternals have been asleep, living ordinary lives among the mortals. Hidden in plain sight. Then Deviant monsters break into the mortal universe and begin destroying and ravaging it. The Eternals have to gather themselves together to push back on the advances of these dangerous animals.
Well, this film certainly lasted an eternity, with a running time of nearly 2 hours 40 minutes. If this had been a fast paced adventure film, lots of set piece action sequences, niftily moving the story on, that may have been OK. However, this movie unnecessarily luxuriates in itself, and has the speed of a snail. Its as if it was made by an art house director who wanted to make this reflective statement about the immense burdens of being an immortal super hero.
Which is where Oscar winner for Nomadland, Chloe Zhaoe comes in. Not, you would imagine, your first, nor ideal choice for a director of a potential Marvel franchise. Maybe they were thinking she'd be another Ang Lee. Pace is an issue, but script development is weak too. The narrative of these Eternals fighting the advance of 'The Deviants' needed much more work tightening it up. There are some witty self deprecating humour in the super hero character of the Indian Bollywood star Kingo. If that had been developed across all characters, perhaps this film would have been less turgidly pofaced and worthy.
On the plus side there are some beautiful bits of CGI. It has a great cast, but all are sorely under used. If Marvel has these characters in mind for some magnificent story arc, then they urgently need to rethink and relaunch this. Or better still, just forget about it altogether.
CARROT REVIEW - 2/8
No comments:
Post a Comment