Alternative Joke Interpretation: Kingo and Druig's argument over Kingo's career. On the one hand, Druig seems to be getting under Kingo's skin by pointing out how his acting career is shallow, causing Kingo to defensively point out that he's tried other stuff too. On the other hand, Druig could be Moving the Goalposts upon learning that Kingo has tried branching out, resorting to asking him how many views he gets or if he's really Doing It for the Art in an attempt to get the last word in.
Angst? What Angst?: Considering how the Eternals have been alive for potentially millions of years, Phastos seems to be over feeling responsible for the Hiroshima bombing and believing that humanity is beyond saving to having his faith renewed by his husband and child in a relatively short period of timenote Okay, it's nearly seventy years, but that's nothing to an Eternal. Not helping is that these two scenes are placed right next to each other.
Ass Pull: The Uni-Mind is explicitly stated to be due to Phastos's technology made after Ikaris left the main group. However, when the time comes to fully use it, he somehow manages to not only know how it works, but also to use it at all, despite not having the same technology himself.
Applicability: The movie has been read as an abortion metaphor as the central conflict is about whether humans should get to choose whether or not they are sacrificed for the sake of Celestial procreation.
Sprite. She is either a complex and tragic character, whose inability to age and unrequited love for Ikaris makes her interesting to watch. Or she's a whiny, immature brat who abandons her team for selfish reasons.
Kingo is seen as either the most entertaining member of the Eternals or an unfunny douchebag whose non-involvement in the third act makes him a pointless character in the film.
Kingo's valet Karun Patel also is a very contentious character. Either he's a genuinely humorous and sweet person whose presence gives a much-needed human perspective for the Eternals as a whole, or he's an annoying, unfunny character who has no story-relevant reason to tag along with the group after Kingo officially joins the group.
Reviewers and a sizeable portion of the audience were disappointed that for all its ambitions, the movie fell short with its uneven script that among other issues has to introduce too many characters and concepts. Other viewers loved the movie for its grandiose scale and visuals, and also claim that those who disliked had problems with accepting things out of the usual MCU formula (including characters from minorities).
Chloe Zhao’s direction is quite divisive. Some find her grandiose cinematography and introspective style to be quite refreshing to see in the MCU and simply beautiful to look at. Others, especially those unfamiliar with Zhao’s work or who weren’t fans of her previous work, found it to be boring and meandering. A third group likes and/or appreciates Zhao’s directing style feels that she feels out of place in the MCU’s in-house style or believe she’s too inexperienced to be directing a superhero movie.
Critical Dissonance: The movie has the worst critical reviews of any MCU movie and is the first movie in the series to not be certified fresh at 48% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences were much more receptive with a 78% audience rating.
Dane Whitman wound up being well received due being a charismatic Nice Guy in addition to being an Understanding Boyfriend to Sersi. Also helps that he's played by the ever popular Kit Harington. Several viewers have expressed excitement over the character's hinted future after his small role here.
Karun also has fans for being a humorous and likable Audience Surrogate, in addition to his strong chemistry with Kingo. Helps that despite being the Plucky Comic Relief, he knows when to read the room and back off when things get serious.
While officially part of the main cast, Makkari was by far the most Out of Focus of the Eternals, and didn't even appear outside of flashbacks until the third act. Despite this, she is a fan favorite for her lovable chemistry with Druig, awesome and effective fighting style that she even used to do an impressive No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the Big Bad, comes across as an adorable person outside of battle, and is considered all around great representation for the MCU films' first disabled superhero.
Druig is also pretty far down the list of Eternals in terms of screen time, in addition to movie promos and comicbook canon implying he would be a traitor/villain, but he too is a fan favorite, largely due to his chemistry with Makkari and some great Deadpan Snarker moments.
Epileptic Trees: A half-humorous theory for why Ikaris and Bucky look so memetically similar is that Bucky is Ikaris's distant descendant.
Fandom Rivalry: With Dune. Both movies are sci-fi fantasy Epic Movies with complex worlds and long runtimes, and released at similar times. Due to the close releases, many Dune fans were afraid Eternals would help to make the 2021 Dune a box-office bomb, meaning no second part onward. Villeneuve also criticized superhero movies for "turning people into zombies" and former MCU actor Josh Brolin commented that he preferred the practical sets of Dune over the MCU's CGI. This combined with "Marvel fatigue" led to a Flame War between Dune and Eternals fans. On the other hand, Chloé Zhao praised Dune as she was shown the movie before the release personally by Villeneuve and even stated that it was an inspiration for Eternals. In return, Villeneuve also commended Zhao and her filmmaking style, expressing hope that it would bring something new to the MCU.
Franchise Original Sin: Many detractors of the film like to note how Chloé Zhao was a poor choice as a director for this film due to her indie roots clashing heavily with the MCU's method of filmmaking. Marvel picking lesser-known indie directors to helm their projects has actually been a thing since the very beginning, with creators such as Jon Favreau, The Russo Brothers, and Ryan Coogler in particular having only relatively minor claims to fame before being tapped to direct some of the MCU's biggest hits. That said, Zhao's background as a filmmaker differs greatly from other directors, in that her indie work is very low-stakes with minimal characters and action, meaning her sudden foray into a comic-book movie felt very jarring and different from her previous work.
There's also a good deal of overlap with fans of Zack Snyder's Justice League due in large part to how both Chloé Zhao and Zack Snyder regard the characters they were adapting to the big screen with a mythological feel, as well as much of Zhao's cinematography taking visual cues from Snyder and Zhao even saying Man of Steel was a big influence on the film, particularly its portrayal of Ikaris. The Superman and BatmanShout-Outs also helped.
Genius Bonus: The film acknowledges the mythological origins of a few Eternals:
Makkari's speedster ability refers to Mercury being the god of speed. Her having taken things and kept them in the Eternals' ship is also a reference to Mercury being the god of thieves.
Thena wears a golden suit and generally wields spears in combat. Athena is associated with the color gold and one of her symbols is the spear.
Phastos creates mechanical devices, and his namesake Hephaestus is the god of artisans (blacksmiths, metalworks, engineers).
Historically, The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving work of literature, as well as Gilgamesh himself being the prototypical Übermensch due to his Semi-Divine nature.
At Babylon, Gilgamesh fights a Deviant in the form of a bull. Gilgamesh's myth has him and Enkidu fight the Bull of Heaven.
Sprite is named after the sprite, an ancient European water spirit that possesses great artistic talent. Sprite has on an aqua suit and displays great storytelling skills.
Dane Whitman asks if Sersi can turn him into a giraffe. Circe was a sorceress who turned people into animals.
Ikaris flying into the sun as a form of suicide is a tribute to the legend of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun on artificial wings and damaged them, causing him to suffer a fatal fall.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While it did fairly well domestically, it did far better internationally, with its worldwide box office preventing it from being able to be called a flop.
Hard-to-Adapt Work: One of the likely reasons why the film has received such an iffy critical response. Though the Eternals have never been a major focus of Marvel, with only a handful of short-lived, loosely connected series to their name, there is a lot of lore behind them dating back all the way to the Jack Kirby days. This can make it difficult for new readers (or even seasoned readers) to understand their story, and is likely why Marvel has so rarely promoted or pushed for them. As many reviews have noted, the film feels overstuffed, and a lot of that can be pointed to this issue. There's also the fact that the sheer power level of the group combined with their Remember the New Guy? treatment within the MCU leads to Superman Stays Out of Gotham issues; making them a difficult group to integrate into an already established connected universe. (Again, this is likely why, in the comics, they've often been relegated to self-contained content and rarely interact with the larger universe.)
Disney refused to cut the scenes of Phastos with his husband, which was seen as a step forward in LGBT representation. Then, in March 2022, Disney remained neutral for Florida's "Don't say gay" bill. While the company has publicly changed its views after an extremely vocal backlash from fans, the fact that they made no move to oppose it on their own makes their efforts to keep Ben and Jack in the film ring hollow.
One of the stingers in the movie has Blade asking Dane if he's ready for his heirloom sword. However, with reports pouring in about the numerous delays regarding getting his own solo movie off the ground, to the point where Mahershala Ali allegedly was ready to quit altogether, that question should be redirected to Blade himself.
Harish Patel delivers enjoyably comedic work throughout the film, but he really gets to impress in the tearjerking scene where he bids the Eternals goodbye, convinced he and his planet will be destroyed.
Kumail Nanjiani is primarily known for comedy, yet he delivers a pretty solid performance as Kingo, who, while the most comedic Eternal, is able to keep up with them in action with a lot of believability, and in fact has one of the more "action hero" styles of combat, enough you'd have thought playing gun-toting action heroes was his standard. He also gets to show his dramatic chops when Kingo is presented with tough personal conflicts (be it choosing to leave his filming or joining the fight, or later when the Eternals become split between stopping or aiding the Emergence), displaying a lot of range with his emotions.
There was never any doubt prior to Richard Madden or his talents, but for the first majority of the film he plays Ikaris with heavy Dull Surprise that borders on being uncharacteristically wooden, which ends up working well in his favour when The Reveal happens and we learn that Ikaris killed Ajak because she refused to change her mind about preventing the Emergence, and from then on, his ability to showcase Ikaris' mix of conflicting emotion, self-loathing, and inner turmoil become heartbreaking.
I Knew It!: After Harry Styles spent months denying rumors that he was joining the MCU, he shows up as Eros/Starfox in the mid-credits scene.
Inferred Holocaust: Even though the complete Emergence was halted, Tiamut's partial awakening should have caused massive earthquakes and tidal waves all across the world but the news reports in the denouement focus only on Tiamut's presence and nothing on the effects it had on the world around it.
Just Here for Godzilla: Arishem is usually often put as the main reason why people decided to watch the movie. His overarching prescence and his possible meaning for the MCU's future in storytelling, as well as his Visual Effects of Awesome everytime he appears, he's usually the most memorable part of the film.
Like You Would Really Do It: The film has Earth, and everyone on it, at stake with the Celestial Tiamut's birth threatening the entire planet with destruction if it's not stopped. However, considering Loki shows that both Earth and humanity are still around in 2050, which takes place after this film's events, and that more films and shows were set to be released, the Eternals saving the planet ends up feeling more like a Foregone Conclusion. Made even worse by being set literally the week after Avengers: Endgame, with both WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier taking place 3 weeks and 6 months after Endgame, respectively.
Arishem is the leader of the Celestials, a race of ancient, god-like beings responsible for generating cosmic forces and shepherding the spread of life throughout the universe. Taking it upon himself to ensure the continuation of this all-important cycle, Arishem seeds new Celestials within planets so they may feed off the energy generated by intelligent life. Using the World Forge, Arishem personally constructed the monstrous Deviants and the synthetic Eternals, the former to hunt predators that may endanger sapient life and the latter to cull the Deviants' omnicidal hunger. With an army of loyal, near-immortal beings at his command to oversee countless growing Celestials throughout the universe, the Prime Celestial wipes the Eternals' minds after the "emergence" is complete and sends them to repeat the cycle on other worlds, using their old memories to study the malfunctioning Deviants. Although the Eternals of Earth destroy Tiamut to save the planet from its apocalyptic birth, Arishem declares his intention to spare humanity if shown that they're worthy, vowing to return for judgement.
The Deviant Kro was trapped under the ice for centuries, escaping the Eternals' purge. Thawed out on the eve of Tiamut's emergence, Kro kills Ajak and absorbs her healing power, using it to enhance his fellow Deviants before setting out to confront their former hunters. Kro manages to kill Gilgamesh and achieve true sapience, learning of the Deviants' true purpose as mere failed experiments and vowing to avenge his fallen brethren. Adapting to his newfound powers with ease, the lone Deviant mimics Gilgamesh's voice to put the maddening Thena into a trance, coming within seconds of slaying his third Eternal within a single week.
Memetic Badass: Kingo became this among the ironic fandom surrounding the movie, including pretending that he was a real person who died as well as the most important Eternal.
Amazed Kevin FeigeExplanationWhile doing a press junket for this film, Feige gave much praise to Chloé Zhao's willingness to film scenes on-location rather than at Marvel's studios in Atlanta. This caused many fans online to joke about Feige being awestruck at things such as real-life grass, waterfalls, or sunsets due to shooting a majority of their scenes behind green screen.
CaptainRogersExplanationSam Wilson fans praising the trailer for saying that Captain Rogers is gone, but not Captain America.
Is that Bucky Barnes in Eternals?ExplanationIkaris is played by Richard Madden, who happens to look very similar to Bucky's actor Sebastian Stan. When the trailer first released, a lot of confused viewers genuinely thought Bucky was appearing in the film, but even after it got cleared up, people continued to jokingly mistake Ikaris for Bucky and make all kinds of humorous theories based off of that.
Similarly, some fan have made the same jokes about Gilgamesh and Wong due to the apparent resemblance Don Lee has to Benedict Wong.
Gemma Chan changed her mind about Earth.ExplanationChan is among the few actors cast in more than one role in the MCU, and previously played Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel (2019) where she calls Earth a "shithole", while here she says "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
Of course a Stark wants to lead the Avengers.ExplanationIkaris jokingly suggests that he should lead the Avengers. His actor, Richard Madden, played boy king Robb Stark in Game of Thrones. It should also be pointed out that A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin is an avowed comics fan and littered the series with references, with House Stark an explicit Shout-Out to Iron Man.
Robb Stark and Jon Snow are in love with Cersei.ExplanationAnother Game of Thrones joke made by viewers of the show facetiously expressing difficulty coping with this Casting Gag. "Cersei", spelled differently but pronounced the same, was a primary character on Game of Thrones.
"Why didn't you guys help fight Thanos?"ExplanationThis line from the second trailer gained a lot of traction, with fans creating countless excuses to answer Dane's question.
Thanos is (part-)Deviant. You have no excuse.ExplanationThanos from the comics has his iconic size and skin colour due to a Deviant mutation and the appearance of Eros implies that this aspect is unchanged from his movie counterpart. If wiping out half of the universe wouldn't let the Eternals act, some joked that this Loophole Abuse could have let them fight Thanos instead as it technically counts as part of their duty.
Kro, being a genetically-enhanced life-form who absorbs other beings to evolve into a more humanoid form, inevitably got plenty of comparisons to Cell from Dragon Ball Z.
Ikaris is Marvel's version of Homelander.Explanation (spoilers) Some noted that Ikaris looks very similar to Homelander from The Boys (2019). Since he wears a blue outfit with a similar hairstyle and flies while shooting lasers from his eyes. This became hilarious in hindsight after the reveal that Ikaris was The Heavy for the film's Big Bad.
Treating Kingo as an Inherently Funny Word, along with the names of several other Eternals.
"My father's name is also Kingo."ExplanationHideo Kojima's review of the movie prompted a lot of delighted reactions from the participants in the above meme, though the coincidence isn't that great since Kingo is in fact an authentic Japanese name, and the original comic character was inspired by Japanese culture.
Phastos nuked Japan.ExplanationOne of the early reviews for the film pointed out that the shot of the mushroom cloud seen in the trailer is tied to a scene where Phastos feels responsible and guilty for giving humans enough knowledge to make the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A number of people expressed disbelief that this scene was real. This led to misinformation that Phastos dropped the bomb himself, while outrage also spread over the optics of Marvel making its first openly gay hero the cause of a massive historical tragedy, or for using the tragedy in question as a part of someone's character arc in the first place. It even led to Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) director James Gunn clarifying details about Marvel's relationship with the U.S. military after a prominent Twitter personality alleged the scene and the film were Backed by the Pentagon. This moment led to snowclones from other users claiming that the Eternals were responsible for other real-life tragedies, while the "Be Gay, Do War Crimes" joke saw a bit of a resurgence.
Why isn't anyone talking about the massive statue in the ocean?ExplanationThe Eternals managed to stop Tiamut's Emergence, with Sersei getting a huge power boost and petrifying the birthing Celestial, but Tiamut's head and one of its hands still managed to rise out of the ocean. However, no one in any MCU work set after this film addresses the new giant statue rising above the sea after record natural disasters. Even if civilians have seen a lot of weird stuff, that would at least warrant some coverage, leading to this question. However, a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the second episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law would finally address Tiamut's existence.
Mis-blamed: An early review severely misrepresented the scene where Phastos regrets helping human technology evolve due to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, giving the impression that the film presented him as being personally responsible for the bombings, which naturally led to a ton of outrage over the first gay hero in an MCU movie being presented that way. In the movie proper, Phastos is distraught at their use, but he doesn't claim personal responsibility for those attacks.
Narm: The final battle is full of moments that are less dramatic than was probably intended:
Kro's arrival earns many a laugh due to how goofy he looks.
Druig taking Sprite out of the fight by hitting her in the head with a rock. This has earned a few chuckles from audiences due to how abrupt it is and immediately following an emotional monologue from Sprite.
Sersi running has also gained laughs from the audience as every time we cut to her in the final battle she is still just running towards the volcano with nothing else happening to her.
After Tiamut is killed, Ikaris decides to commit suicide by flying at super-speed directly into the sun. It's insanely over-the-top and comes straight out of nowhere.
No Yay: Kingo revealing that Sprite — played by Lia McHugh, who was 14 during filming — is in love with Ikaris (played by 30-something actor Richard Madden). While Sprite is 7,000 years old as the other Eternals are, some viewers were still uncomfortable with it.
Some have claimed the idea of a Celestial egg being buried inside the Earth was inspired by Steven Universe, apparently unaware that plot point dates back to the Earth X miniseries from the late 1990s.
Many have praised the film for including the first openly gay superhero in the MCU. This is only true for the films. Runaways did it first, they had Nico and Karolina, and their romance had a high plot focus. They kissed on-scene and even did so in the trailer for the series.
One that isn't even visible, but Marvel fans were ecstatic to hear the voice of the Daywalker himself in the second Stinger.
As divisive as it may be, Harry Styles's brief appearance as Eros is certainly quite memorable.
One True Pairing: Druig and Makkari became the film's most popular and beloved ship in the fandom, with fans praising their natural onscreen chemistry (especially considering their screen time together wasn't that much overall). Chloe Zhao herself shared one fan's artwork of the pairing tagged specifically with their Portmanteau Couple Name. It helps that both were also very well-liked characters, even among people who disliked the film.
Presumed Flop: Its comparatively poor reviews have led to some assumptions that it also flopped at the box-office. While the film's gross of $400m is definitely on the lower end of things by the MCU's standards, and a bit less than the preceding and lower-budgeted Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings earned, it was just about enough to cover this film's $200m budget, even before any home media release came into play. The only real failing of the film (and Shang Chi) was that it wasn't able to earn enough money to overcome the loss made by Black Widow (2021), which did prove an outright Box Office Bomb.note (Even then, only after both the cost of the advertising campaign for its originally-planned 2020 release and a lawsuit by Scarlett Johansson against Disney were weighted against its budget)
Some people were a little turned off at the casting of Harry Styles as Eros/Starfox in the film's first Stinger. This is in part due to how bizarre the idea of One Direction’s former frontman being the biological brother of Thanos is, but also due to the Fridge Horror around him playing a character who is notorious in the comics for using his powers to have sexual escapades with women on many occasions, essentially committing an empathic version of date rape (and which was the subject of a She-Hulk storyline).
Many Indian fans also raised their eyebrows at Kumail Nanjiani's portrayal of Kingo, as the character's modern day cover is a Bollywood actor, while Nanjiani himself is of Pakistani descent. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when Farhan Akhtar, an actual Bollywood star from India, played Waleed, a Pakistani character, in Ms. Marvel (2022).
The MCU's track record for LGBT representation has been notoriously spotty, with Thor: Ragnarok infamously removing the confirmation that Valkyrie is bisexual to get past foreign censors, and Loki only giving a brief allusion to the title character's genderfluidity (and then seemingly backtracking by having a female Loki portrayed as very unusual) and bisexuality. Here, we're introduced to the unambiguously gay Phastos, whose family also fleshes out his character overall. Disney also claimed that they wouldn't cut or alter the scene of Phastos kissing his husband goodbye for foreign audiences, despite resulting in the studio losing money and the film being banned in several countries. While Disney is set to release a cut of the film that edits out all the intimate scenes in the film (including the straight ones), it's not all that different from what most Western studios do to show their movies in the Middle East, rather than singling out the gay couple.
This also serves as a saving throw for Disney as a whole regarding their handling of LGBT characters, as many viewers have criticized the company in the past for hyping them up, only to have their sexuality only briefly shown or mentioned in throwaway lines. Here, we see an actual married gay couple (with an adopted son), right down to the aforementioned kiss scene, satisfying fans who desired to see Disney delve further into LGBT representation.
Speaking of intimacy, the MCU has also been criticized for how utterly sexless the main heroes are, with only a handful of main characters even being implied to have had sex before. Not only do we explicitly see Ikaris and Sersi make love, but several characters are shown or implied to be romantically involved.
The film has been praised from breaking from the MCU's typical filmmaking trends, having a more unique visual style and not overly relying on CG locations and set pieces, instead shooting far more on location. A welcome change of course for many who criticized the prior MCU movies for mostly looking and feeling the same on a technical level.
Signature Scene: The absolutely enormous Arishem appearing before Earth in all his terrifying glory.
So Okay, It's Average: While Eternals is MCU's first film to get a "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the negative reviews are mostly in the middle range as opposed to the low range. A number of reviews for the movie indicate that the film is just unremarkable as opposed to being truly good or bad, with some harshness in those reviews expressing disappointment with Chloé Zhao that her first blockbuster was a far more pedestrian effort than some of her nigh-universally-acclaimed projects.
Special Effect Failure: Pip the Troll in the mid-credits scene is jarringly cartoony after the amazing CGI in the rest of the film.
Spiritual Adaptation: Fans of Dragon Ball Z have noted that Kro is the closest thing to a live-action adaptation of Cell — an artificial lifeform that started out as a monstrous creature that becomes more human-like after absorbing the energy of other beings.
The MCU Eternal's plot have striking similarities to Asura's Wrath.
Both featuring a gigantic warm coloured mineral-like skinned cosmic being as a creator archetype god (Ruby skinned Arishem and Gold skinned Chakravartin).
Among his creations are a species of technic-coloured non-sapient predators that resemble Earth Animals and eat humans (the Green coloured Deviants vs the Red coloured Gohma)
A team of cosmically powered immortal aliens make it their responsibility to protect humanity whilst having a mythology motif (The Eternals with a mostly Greek and Iraqi/Mesoptamian motif and the Daevas/Demigods with a mostly Indian/Hinduism and Japanese/Shintoism motif) bonus points for both species of immortals having a cybernetic like aspect.
The Immortals are splintered with roughly 3 of them disagreeing with the majority over the fate of Humanity.
Another gigantic being exists! This one emerges out of the ocean and is named after a dragon/serpent like deity from Asian Myths (Tiamut named after the Iraqi/West Asian Goddess Tiamat and Vlitra named after the Indian/South Asian Danava Vritra)
Strangled by the Red String: Some have criticized the relationship between Ikaris and Sersi as suffering from this. The film quickly establishes them as being a couple, with marketing even emphasizing their love scene as Disney Marvel's first. But the problem is that the movie juggles multiple characters and multiple themes, which leaves their romance comparatively Out of Focus and lacking proper buildup. What's worse, is that critics also pointed out a lack of chemistry between Richard Madden and Gemma Chan, especially in comparison to other actors and their character relationships (such as Lauren Ridlof (Makkari) and Barry Keoghan (Druig), Angelina Jolie (Thena) and Don Lee (Gilgamesh), or even Chan (Sersi) and Kit Harington (Dane Whitman)), making their romance seem forced. This is especially problematic considering that it's Ikaris's love for Sersi that prompts him to make a Heel–Face Turn, and the characters' aforementioned lack of chemistry makes Ikaris's turn less convincing or believable.
Generally speaking, the film has received complaints about a lack of Character Development. The large cast of main characters is actually pretty decently fleshed out, but in trying to give a good amount of focus to each of them, it doesn't allow any of them to really evolve too much throughout the story. And some of the changes that they do get to make such as Sersi taking leadership or Druig letting go of his faction and joining his old team aren't really expanded on all that much. The sheer size of the cast also doesn't help, as each one just adds too much to a film already struggling under its own weight, without having room to develop any significantly.
Despite being the leader when the team first arrived on Earth, Ajak has very little to do besides appearing in a few scenes and being set up by Ikaris for death.
Makkari is by far the most Out of Focus member of the team, only appearing in the present timeline by the third act, and even then she still gets less focus than the others. Especially disappointing given she's the MCU's first deaf superhero (and is also half black and Mexican) and when she actually does get to have the limelight, she proves to be an enjoyable presence.
After Druig is set up as the key to saving the day, his role in the climax is essentially taken over by Sersi. While it's understandable to hand over this responsibility to the protagonist, it, unfortunately, leaves Druig with little to do during all of this after all the buildup about him being an instrumental player.
After being involved for most of the film up to that point, Kingo sits out the climax in its entirety. His exiting scene seems to be setting him up to pull off a Changed My Mind, Kid moment, but it is instead a compromise reaction to a crisis of faith vs. family, and he stays absent from the climax.
Kro actually displays a pretty understandable and sympathetic reason for wanting to kill the Eternals, but it only gets brought up the one time and after that he's given nothing else in the way of depth or development. The fact that he absorbs the powers of two Eternals seems to set up the possibility of him joining the Uni-Mind and helping the Eternals (which would fit with his motive of taking revenge against the Celestials), but he instead just tries to interfere in their own spat and then gets chopped into bits by Thena before that could happen.
Dane Whitman has very little to do here, not yet having the alias of Black Knight and remaining separate from the plot once Sersi goes on her way, with only one of the stingers showing him to be set up for an expanded role in the future.
A complaint brought up by several reviewers is that, while the film has big ideas and themes that are interesting on their own, the movie tries to cram them all into the one narrative given with loads of characters, not allowing any single potential plot element to be given the focus needed to develop properly. It's a common belief that a Disney+ series would have allowed for more breathing room.
The controversial usage of Hiroshima is brought up to introduce the idea that Phastos, having been responsible for giving humanity many of its greater inventions, introduced the concept of nuclear power to humans and became dismayed when they weaponized it, to the point of giving up on humanity and their mission of protecting it. Come the next scene in the present day, he's moved on completely. Aside from attracting controversy before the film's release, some viewers were disappointed that the idea wasn't expanded upon.
The Eternals having lived on Earth for thousands of years. The scenes in the past are used to provide exposition or establish the characters (and, admittedly, most of them doing it successfully), but the actual plot and character development all takes part in the present.
Uncertain Audience: Some reviewers have noted that the movie tonally clashes and suffers in its pacing because it's trying to be slower and more pensive than most other Marvel movies, while still playing most of the traditional Marvel tropes (snarky comedic dialogue, big CGI fights) completely straight. Richard Newby of The Hollywood Reportersuggested that the divisive nature of Jack Kirby's work on The Eternals and the film's tone, which is similar to equally divisive works Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, lead to the odd feeling and harsher reviews.
When it was announced that the Eternals would be getting their own standalone movie, many fans were quite surprised, largely due to how the Eternals were rather obscure. Likewise, most fans thought that the Eternals' lore was seen as too esoteric to adapt in a cinematic format.
On a meta-level, many fans were equally surprised when Gemma Chan, who had previously played in Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel, would later play Sersi in this movie.
Equally unexpected, the addition of the Black Knight to the main cast, him being a Sword and Sorcery-themed character in a story about Ancient Astronauts — though it should be noted he and Sersi have a history in the comics, so it's perhaps not as surprising on that level.
Related to Dane, despite working on a team with him, Blade's Voice-Only Cameo in the second stinger took many people by surprise.
Despite his connection to Thanos, few people expected to see Eros in the first stinger, and even fewer people expected him to bring Pip the Troll with him.
Vanilla Protagonist: A common criticism is that the personalities and Character Development of the main leads aren't really fleshed out due to the film's lack of breathing room. Sersi is particularly hit hard with this trope, with viewers not knowing much of her personality other than her love for humanity, something that most of the other Eternals share as well which makes her stand out less. Ironic, considering her comic counterpart is among the most fleshed-out of the Eternals.
Due to the inclusion of Phastos, the first official gay superhero in an MCU film. It helps that his sexuality is treated as completely normal and unremarkable.
The inclusion of the MCU's first official deaf superhero Makkari, who's as completely equal and competent as the other Eternals. All the others add sign language to their dialogue without question when she's in the conversation.
Many South Asian fans were pleased to finally see a South Asian actor like Kumail Nanjiani as a superhero in a Marvel film. More so many British Asian dancers who were involved in the Bollywood scene turned up in large groups just for Kingo's scenes.
Thena's status as The Ophelia (and its Go Mad from the Revelation origins) and the death of her longtime friend and guardian Gilgamesh can cast her in this light.
Druig as well; out of all the Eternals, his power can contribute the most to ending and preventing human conflict, yet he is forced to hold back for the sake of accelerating their development. This ultimately creates a rift between him and his kind that lasts for hundreds of years, during which he's forced to see the conflict he could prevent escalate to become more violent and bloody than ever.
WTH, Costuming Department?: Sprite's costume is actually a pretty decent design, but it becomes unintentionally silly when you realize it has the same color scheme as the soda which she shares a name with.
, that question should be redirected to Blade himself.
