The Eternals - marvel is trying it again this time less humor and hit music and more unnecessary love triangles

[X Pac Heat]

I hope this shit flops so hard

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Salma Hayek has always been enjoyable.

she ain't in it for long tho

 

[Sex Cannon Lupa]

Salma Hayek was hot in the 90s. Why she's suddenly popping up in big movies is a shock to me. She's okay looking, but her accent has actually gotten worse and she can't act for shit. Now she's in superhero movies and playing Italians in Ridley Scott nonsense. Isn't she married to a billionaire too?

 

[Kramer on the phone]

I saw a news blurb about this premiering?

I don't watch TV, but holy shit I haven't seen ANY advertising about Eternals to the point that I forgot about it entirely. I haven't seen billboard ads, print ad's, online ads...

Is it just the fact I don't watch TV?

i think so; you'd be surprised how different the ecosystems of tv vs internet is. most redditors that whined about "not even seeing ads for X" would drive me up the wall because our family didn't have DVR so every commercial break i'd see an ad for X. I personally hate terriers and i'd genocide that dog breed specifically if i could because i got so annoyed at those FX ads.

Also, there's apparently like three sex scenes where an Asian chick gets railed by white dudes. Did Chloe Zhao mean anything by that, do you think?

she's a literal westaboo what do you think? her entire pre-blockbuster career was her shooting films about cowboys and rodeos, she still wears a stupid cowboy hat sometimes. we're lucky there aren't any good asian woman superheros, or else its just be 3 hours of that.

Also sex scenes in a marvel film? thats as weird as when my 8th grade civics teacher said her favorite hobby was reading romance novels.

lol no

The Eternals were largely Kirby's attempt to recreate the New Gods in Marvel but all of his best ideas were already used there. As a result, the Eternals were largely boring and never fit into anything. Every attempt to integrate them into the larger Marvel universe always fell flat but they kept trying because they are Kirby creations, that's about all they've got from a comics standpoint.

As for why they keep pushing them, that's due to how boring and generic they are. It's a group where you could, in theory, change everything about them and no one would give a shit because no one cared about the originals in the first place. However, you still have to put out something good to hook people and that doesn't appear to be the case with this film. I feel like if you wanted to actually take an honest stab at making The Eternals something in the MCU, you would have to establish them much earlier. The film still probably wouldn't have done too well but at least then you could have them be a more natural part of the universe and incorporate them into Thanos's story.

to be fair you could say the same thing about GOTG. Although the 1970s/80s vibe and soundtrack really set it apart. plus introducing the whole space aspect of the MCU to people, its probably why Ragnorak basically apes a lot of its aesthetic

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PLnvfua1sko
I’m still surprised that Angelina Jolie is in this. She’s changed so much from her Tomb Raider days.

she's a single mom with 6 kids from 4 different dads, and its time to start paying for college. plus she's not action movie fit like she was 20 years ago. she's been forced into the old lady roles the past decade. Plus her films have been well known shit for a long time. if you were born when Tomb Raider was released you'd be in college

 

[Gar For Archer]

i think so; you'd be surprised how different the ecosystems of tv vs internet is. most redditors that whined about "not even seeing ads for X" would drive me up the wall because our family didn't have DVR so every commercial break i'd see an ad for X. I personally hate terriers and i'd genocide that dog breed specifically if i could because i got so annoyed at those FX ads.

she's a literal westaboo what do you think? her entire pre-blockbuster career was her shooting films about cowboys and rodeos, she still wears a stupid cowboy hat sometimes. we're lucky there aren't any good asian woman superheros, or else its just be 3 hours of that.

Also sex scenes in a marvel film? thats as weird as when my 8th grade civics teacher said her favorite hobby was reading romance novels.

to be fair you could say the same thing about GOTG. Although the 1970s/80s vibe and soundtrack really set it apart. plus introducing the whole space aspect of the MCU to people, its probably why Ragnorak basically apes a lot of its aesthetic

she's a single mom with 6 kids from 4 different dads, and its time to start paying for college. plus she's not action movie fit like she was 20 years ago. she's been forced into the old lady roles the past decade. Plus her films have been well known shit for a long time. if you were born when Tomb Raider was released you'd be in college

Guardians of the Galaxy had a lot of things going for it. The concept was simple (heist movie in space with a gritty yet colorful aesthetic), the members of the main cast are immediately and easily distinguishable, and it can be enjoyed on its own without having watched any of the other movies, since the macguffin could be replaced with any arbitrary super powerful artifact and the story would stay the same.

While, on a surface level, this movie hits some of the same bullet points (introducing a new set of characters, dealing with cosmic-level bullshit, marketed as being “different” from the rest of the MCU), in reality it couldn’t be more different.

I’m going to focus specifically on the characters, and use that to show why despite both movies needing to introduce a large cast of new characters, GOTG worked where this movie won’t (and I can say that without having watched or ever planning on watching this movie).

So, GOTG’s main cast has five characters. This might sound like a lot for a 2 hour movie, but a five-man band is actually super fucking common and totally manageable, especially because GOTG sticks closely to certain archetypes, allowing us to “get” a character without them being fully developed. Starlord is The Hero, hot-headed and fun-loving but ultimately good at heart. Gamora is The Chick, the strong and sassy love interest. Drax is The Big Guy, the simple-minded yet kind-hearted muscle of the team. And Rocket and Groot are the Comic Relief Duo - one big and one small, cracking jokes with each other like a reverse R2D2 and C3PO. These archetypes are immediately apparent through their character designs and silhouettes - if you showed the character sheets to someone who had never heard of the MCU, they would likely give you a reasonably accurate description of what they think these characters are like.
Of course, beyond these basic character archetypes, each of them gets little bits of extra development to make them feel more human and relatable. Starlord has his mom who died of cancer, Gamora has her wacky family situation with Thanos and Nebula, Drax has his dead wife and kids, and Rocket was the victim of inhumane scientific experimentation (Groot... is groot). These aren’t the deepest backstories in the world, but I think they’re effective in making us feel for the characters in the limited runtime they have. This is able to be done because the heavy lifting of the character development is done by the character design and each character’s introductory scene. Everything after that either reinforces these through character interactions, or adds more nuance and depth to the characters beyond their archetype.

Now, let’s take a look at the Eternals. First off, you’re working with a significantly larger main cast. This already is a red flag, because that’s a lot to work with. Then you run into the next issue: despite the “diversity” of the cast, all these characters fucking look the same. The character/costume design is legit complete dogshit, because they’re all wearing the same fugly Dr Who reject costumes in dark, muted colors. This tells me they are, as a group, pretentious space people (which is certainly the intent), but says NOTHING about them as individuals. The only thing you can really go off of is their builds, in which you can infer that the short one will likely either be naive and innocent or a complete devil child, and the fat Asian guy will likely be the muscle of the group. The ugly uniforms they wear make it impossible to immediately pin an archetype onto anyone and let us go in with some preconceived notion about these characters that can be built upon and challenged. Instead, they have the impossible task of trying to hook us on all of these characters from scratch.

Tl;dr, GOTG’s character and costume designs are incredibly effective in telling us a lot about the characters in very few interactions by appealing to commonly-used archetypes, shortcutting a lot of basic character development. Eternals’ character design is complete dogshit and tells us nothing about the characters except that they’re snooty space gods, so they’re going to have to work a lot harder to make them “click” with the audience.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

@Gar For Archer i agree, still its Gunn's own writing and dialogue that got us there, it could have easily been made much shittier (forcing a whole war arc or including the other half of the GOTG, etc) i know i was a nay sayer before the first trailer, but it was so great at explaining everything you said it made me and others want to watch it. meanwhile these trailers while certainly making the eternals seem otherworldly, don't really compel the way the GOTG did.

Also does anyone know who harry styles is playing? i have a uneasy feeling its adam warlock, especially because Harry doesn't seem like much of an actor. He hasn't had much of a hit music career going solo either.

 

[Gar For Archer]

@Gar For Archer i agree, still its Gunn's own writing and dialogue that got us there, it could have easily been made much shittier (forcing a whole war arc or including the other half of the GOTG, etc) i know i was a nay sayer before the first trailer, but it was so great at explaining everything you said it made me and others want to watch it. meanwhile these trailers while certainly making the eternals seem otherworldly, don't really compel the way the GOTG did.

Also does anyone know who harry styles is playing? i have a uneasy feeling its adam warlock, especially because Harry doesn't seem like much of an actor. He hasn't had much of a hit music career going solo either.

Oh yeah I absolutely agree. My point is that the character design in GOTG lets you get a decent feel for these characters even just in the trailers, and makes you interested in learning more about them. Even if the execution had been shit, it still would’ve been a solid hook.

And yeah, that hook is completely lacking in Eternals. I’m sure there’s some version of a movie featuring this set of characters that would’ve worked. This just ain’t it.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

And yeah, that hook is completely lacking in Eternals. I’m sure there’s some version of a movie featuring this set of characters that would’ve worked. This just ain’t it.

even what you said about the characters, i mean the oceans films make those big ensembles work, just basically heavily define their roles and not be afraid to throw most of these characters to the wayside. half the cast only had bit parts, and were mainly there to say one or two funny lines during big scenes and do bit roles throughout the film. Bernie mac had more lines in your average bernie mac show than he did in all three ocean's films combined.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Tl;dr, GOTG’s character and costume designs are incredibly effective in telling us a lot about the characters in very few interactions by appealing to commonly-used archetypes, shortcutting a lot of basic character development. Eternals’ character design is complete dogshit and tells us nothing about the characters except that they’re snooty space gods, so they’re going to have to work a lot harder to make them “click” with the audience.

GOTG was also fun

 

[Dom Cruise]

I hope this shit flops so hard

I look at the massive amount of DIVERSITY in the cast and just laugh, so artificial, so uninteresting, this is the peak of modern Hollywood's obsession with DIVERSITY and hopefully it flops hard indeed.

 

[Gar For Archer]

even what you said about the characters, i mean the oceans films make those big ensembles work, just basically heavily define their roles and not be afraid to throw most of these characters to the wayside. half the cast only had bit parts, and were mainly there to say one or two funny lines during big scenes and do bit roles throughout the film. Bernie mac had more lines in your average bernie mac show than he did in all three ocean's films combined.

Yep, going with a large ensemble cast basically requires you to go all-in on character archetypes. A big part of which can be handled by the character design.

Better costumes that are more representative of these characters roles and personalities in the movie (assuming they have any to begin with) is step 1 in salvaging this…

GOTG was also fun

….this is step 2: writing a premise that isn’t boring-sounding dogshit. The leaked plot is dumb and uninteresting, and the normie Reddit reaction of “…well at least it looked pretty” is telling. Love it or hate it, one of the reasons that the MCU has been so successful is that its plots are straightforward and easy to follow.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

A big part of which can be handled by the character design.

I somehow think that Hollywood has forgotten they are a visual medium and that they can tell people things through how a character looks.

 

[LolRaccoon]

@Gar For Archer

Also does anyone know who harry styles is playing? i have a uneasy feeling its adam warlock, especially because Harry doesn't seem like much of an actor. He hasn't had much of a hit music career going solo either.

He's playing Eros, AKA Starfox, the brother of Thanos.

Will Poulter will be playing Adam Warlock in Guardians 3. Really weird casting choice, but I kinda trust Gunn here.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

This looks like a warm shit on a hkt day.

 

[totallyrandomusername]

Is Zhao secretly b-b-based? She's anti-CCP and the Asian superheroine's power is the ability to get white dick. Too bad everything else looks like shit. I'd totally see it to own the libs otherwise.

I can see the heads of the woke just exploding. "What's her power?" "The ability to get dicked down by white guys" *BOOM*

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I can see the heads of the woke just exploding. "What's her power?" "The ability to get dicked down by white guys" *BOOM*

Given how many Woke psychos are fat Femcels, "The ability to get dicked" is probably enough much less by WHUTE men.

 

[The Token Ethnic]

Chloé Zhao made a comment about not wanting the film to get its gay content cut out: “I don’t know all the details but I do believe discussions were had and there’s a big desire from Marvel and myself — we talked about this — to not change the cut of the movie. Fingers crossed.”

Chloé Zhao Talks Eternals Sex, Hopes Gay Scenes Aren’t Censored | Ind…

archived 24 Oct 2021 15:33:24 UTC

archive.ph

I'm sure they're going to trim the movie for the overseas market that demand certain changes. China doesn't give a shit about Zhao or this movie after her comments. They still haven't released Shang Chi over there, despite Tony Leung being a brand new character and totally not Fu Manchu. So much for trying to kowtow to them by changing The Ancient One in 'Doctor Strange' five years ago.

 

[Gar For Archer]

Chloé Zhao made a comment about not wanting the film to get its gay content cut out: “I don’t know all the details but I do believe discussions were had and there’s a big desire from Marvel and myself — we talked about this — to not change the cut of the movie. Fingers crossed.”

Chloé Zhao Talks Eternals Sex, Hopes Gay Scenes Aren’t Censored | Ind…

archived 24 Oct 2021 15:33:24 UTC

archive.ph

I'm sure they're going to trim the movie for the overseas market that demand certain changes. China doesn't give a shit about Zhao or this movie after her comments. They still haven't released Shang Chi over there, despite Tony Leung being a brand new character and totally not Fu Manchu. So much for trying to kowtow to them by changing The Ancient One in 'Doctor Strange' five years ago.

Well.. if your movie never gets shown in China, she’s right that they don’t need to make a special cut for it.

 

[The Token Ethnic]

Well.. if your movie never gets shown in China, she’s right that they don’t need to make a special cut for it.

That's quite true, but that brief Star Wars kiss between two women was cut out for Singapore and Dubai. I'm sure they're not interested in a PG-13 sex scene of black guy and an Arab.

 

[OttoWest]

Looks to be the worst reviewed MCU since Thor Dark World. The Grauniad called it a glorified PowerPoint presentation.