by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $17.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kit Harington, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Keoghan
Intro:
… an uncommonly grand and poignant take on superheroes.
There’s a general rule of thumb among comics fans when it comes to the differences between Marvel and DC. Marvel tends to be (comparatively) more grounded and focus on ordinary people put into extraordinary circumstances that shows their inner hero, whereas DC is more grandiose and highlights characters that are intended as paragons for humanity. The flaw to relate to vs. the ideal to aspire to.
Not that either company has a monopoly on either approach, but as a broad overview, it can help explain how each approaches the idea of the superhero. It could also help explain why Eternals, the latest MCU release, feels so different from pretty much every other MCU release.
The film itself seems to be conscious of the different pool it’s tapping from, right down to openly comparing one of its main characters to one of DC’s biggest names (and for the more geek-out inclined, there’s other analogues to be found among the main cast). But rather than feeling like Marvel is trying to take from the competitor’s plate, it makes sense as far as how the original Eternals came into being, with writer/artist Jack Kirby using a lot of the same building blocks that went into his New-Gods-starring Fourth World DC epic.
It helps that director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) matches Kirby’s brand of cosmic-scale mythos-building, along with being able to humanise and contemporise the ethereal a la the works of Neil Gaiman, his own run on Eternals included. There’s also the same multicultural approach to real-world mythology as Gaiman’s oeuvre, pulling from Greek, Norse, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian pantheons to bolster its own take on the divine superhero.
As the audience follows the titular oddball family of superpowered beings (whose on-screen chemistry certainly sells that they’ve known each other for millennia), the story shows the Eternals and the Deviants as part of a mythic cycle of destruction and creation; interstellar cogs in a much larger machination. The way it delves into the notion of the superhero as shepherd of mankind – the force pushing forward its evolution – occasionally reaches Marvelman levels of poignancy in questioning how far they should take their role. And whether humanity is worth helping persevere in the first place.
To put things more simply, if any of the above sounds like the pretentious ramblings of an olfactory excretion junkie, chances are this film won’t do much for you (ditto for those already bored of superhero yarns). But for those who appreciate these stories as more than just power fantasies, Eternals serves as an uncommonly grand and poignant take on superheroes.
