• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Marvel’s “Eternals” Reviews Are In; if you like Thor : The Dark World then you’ll love this!

I'm not sure how well a speedster could actually hear. They would get a roar of wind and everything would go nuts from the doppler effect. If they run faster than the speed of sound would they be able to hear anything of value?

But still, is there an in universe reason why they made a broken eternal? Would the celestials have made one that was blind, lacking limbs, or susceptible to cancer? Not seen the film.
I've seen in some promotional materials claim that she blew out her eardrums running around at hypersonic speeds. The movie didn't seem to touch on it all.
 

jason10mm

Member
I've seen in some promotional materials claim that she blew out her eardrums running around at hypersonic speeds. The movie didn't seem to touch on it all.
So her bones, muscles, eyes, and skin are fine, but the tympanic membranes were the weak spot?

Seems legit.....
 
No offense to the actor playing him, but why does Druig have such a punchable face?

Did Arishem be like "I created a deaf girl so maybe I should create an Eternal with a face only Bill Maher's mom could love."
 
Last edited:
Saw this again...yup...still not even close to being the worst movie of the MCU and the last act is better than plenty super hero movies out there, in or out of the MCU.
I mean I shit on the MCU while I still admit there's still a handful of good films (specifically Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1, Infinity War) and even I didn't think The Eternals was as bad as some made it out to be.

Funny enough, I liked it better than Shang-Chi which imo was more of a drag than Eternals.

It could be my bias of liking the ancient astronaut theme or whatever, but I enjoyed it to an extent.

Some of the banter really annoyed me and the SFX were surprisingly bad for such a big budget film. The post credits scene with Starfox was really lame too.

That said, I actually wouldn't mind a sequel especially since they set it up for one.
 

Amiga

Member
You are forgetting the immutable law of comics (and their film spin offs).

You are only as powerful as the script says you are.

If they want the Eternals to decimate 15 full power celestials with ease, they will. If they want all the Eternals to struggle to defeat Dr. Doom's left pinky finger, there it is.

Good fiction set rules of the world and stick to them. comics just don't care. MCU started by setting following the rules but they stopped caring recently.
 

iorek21

Member
Watched it in the weekend, it is a different film considering the rest of the MCU, it feels almost like an indie/ Oscar bait film, to be honest.

Didn't feel the characters at all, I thought they were pretty lame, the plot was interesting, but it can't carry a whole movie without any really good character.

It's a mid-tier MCU film.
 

Blade2.0

Member
Watched about 25 minutes of this last night.
Complete shit.

Maybe starting from minute 26 it becomes a great movie...my loss i guess.
It never gets great but it isn't terrible like the reviews make it out to be. It's firmly "eh" territory. But the celestial lore is really awesome to me and something happens at the end of the film with one celestial that looks really fucking sweet on screen
 
It never gets great but it isn't terrible like the reviews make it out to be. It's firmly "eh" territory. But the celestial lore is really awesome to me and something happens at the end of the film with one celestial that looks really fucking sweet on screen
That scene pretty much backs up my theory that Galactus will be a major villain in this phase and they'll probably make his origin as a Celestial. That whole scene with Arishem in the clouds over the Earth was VERY Galactus-y.
 
Better than expected, but expectations were hammered quite low before viewing.

I kind of wanted to see Ikaris getting a pic of his temporal aura, but any Eternal will do.
 
Arishem looked as big as the whole planet while this other celestial coming out of earth is not bigger than a country.

Also that guy that could control minds, he could make it so that everyone on earth loves eachother and starts fucking so the population would grow like they wanted.
 
Last edited:

Alx

Member
Arishem looked as big as the whole planet while this other celestial coming out of earth is not bigger than a country.
It's a baby Celestial, maybe they grow up later. :p
Also how could he be larger than the planet if he was growing inside it ? Maybe Arishem hatched from a larger planet.
 

NahaNago

Member
Arishem looked as big as the whole planet while this other celestial coming out of earth is not bigger than a country.
He seemed really small to me as well. They did some tricks near the end with his death to make him look bigger than he was by lowering the clouds to be near the bottom of his hand and seeing outerspace when they zoomed out to see the top half of his body. I'm going to have rewatch the whole birth scene on disney plus to get a better idea of how big he actually is. I still don't understand how his birth was going to destroy the world when he was already born in the movie. It wasn't like he was in the middle of the earth. He was lying down in the ocean.
 

green_focus

Member
Arishem looked as big as the whole planet while this other celestial coming out of earth is not bigger than a country.

Also that guy that could control minds, he could make it so that everyone on earth loves eachother and starts fucking so the population would grow like they wanted.
And wouldn't Arishem getting close to the Earth affect gravity in some way?
 
Saw this over the long weekend on Disney+ and agree with all that it is a horrible movie. Many of the plot points make no sense. Why create Deviants and have Eternals kill them? Just send Eternals directly to go oversee and help civilization grow (directly or indirectly).
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Its weird that marvel will release movies like the eternal that dont follow any of the lessons marvel has learnt on how to not make a super hero movie.
 

Moneal

Member
Saw this over the long weekend on Disney+ and agree with all that it is a horrible movie. Many of the plot points make no sense. Why create Deviants and have Eternals kill them? Just send Eternals directly to go oversee and help civilization grow (directly or indirectly).
This is explained. The deviants were created to get rid of predators so intelligent life could evolve in the first place. They initially didn't attack intelligent life forms. They evolved and began killing everything. That is why eternals we're created. It seems to be more efficient to use both over just sending in eternals.
 

Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
So her bones, muscles, eyes, and skin are fine, but the tympanic membranes were the weak spot?

Seems legit.....
Dude its a comic book movie for kids where there is a literal god of thunder, a guy who turns into a big green monster when he gets pissy, and magic jewels that can rearrange reality at a whim. You are really gonna throw a hissy over some anatomical anomalies?



Come on lol
 
This is explained. The deviants were created to get rid of predators so intelligent life could evolve in the first place. They initially didn't attack intelligent life forms. They evolved and began killing everything. That is why eternals we're created. It seems to be more efficient to use both over just sending in eternals.

So stop creating and sending deviants. Just send eternals and they will take care of the predators. Its like Arishem is intentionally creating a new problem while solving another. Also just program the eternals with knowledge of what the actual mission is rather than keep most in the dark. They are all artificial life forms anyway.
 

sol_bad

Member
So stop creating and sending deviants. Just send eternals and they will take care of the predators. Its like Arishem is intentionally creating a new problem while solving another. Also just program the eternals with knowledge of what the actual mission is rather than keep most in the dark. They are all artificial life forms anyway.

Maybe Earth is one of the first planets where Arishem tried using Deviants, realised it failed and has since stopped using them? Who cares, it's the back bone of the story and not the focal point of the actual plot.
 
I thought about it and I agree with people saying it's not the abomination some are making it out to be.

I actually kind of enjoyed it.

The movie did feel really long though but I actually liked Eternals more than many Marvel movies.

I definitely enjoyed it more than Captain Marvel, Iron Man 2 and 3, Shang-Chi, Black Panther, Ant-Man (I liked the 2nd a little better but only because Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer) and the first two Spider-man movies.

I'd probably rate Eternals as the top 8 or something MCU movie.

If they got rid of the dumb banter that annoys me so much in the MCU as well as greatly improved the SFX, I'd probably even like it more.

Wouldn't mind if they did a sequel but that is unlikely because it got panned.

I want more movies about ancient astronauts now. I think Eternals is a good example of such a movie and hopefully it will make more people aware of the subject, especially going forward when one day we'll hopefully find evidence of space-faring civilizations that influenced humanity and/or even were responsible for our evolution.
 
Last edited:
Regarding the above post, I wanted to reiterate that while many are (correctly) saying that it is pushing a woke agenda, it's also pushing for the theory of panspermia and related theories often proposed by researchers like Von Daniken and Zechariah Sitchin.

I'd recommend if you enjoyed The Eternals, the Greg Bear Halo novels or Assassin's Creed, the latter of which was very heavily inspired by Zechariah Sitchin, to check out these two authors.
 
Last edited:

jason10mm

Member
Dude its a comic book movie for kids where there is a literal god of thunder, a guy who turns into a big green monster when he gets pissy, and magic jewels that can rearrange reality at a whim. You are really gonna throw a hissy over some anatomical anomalies?
Man, you just DO NOT grasp the concept of internal consistency, do you? You throw this same argument up in every thread folks point out crsppy writing. Just because there are space gods and super powers doesn't absolve the writers from logic and common sense. If they want to bend over backwards to put in a deaf
robot
that lost her hearing because she ran too fast when we see her primary fighting tactic IS TO RAM THINGS AT FULL SPEED and their leader CAN HEAL then it's just dumb ass writing. Hell, there are scenes where she is signing but no one is even looking at her because her disability is so irrelevant to the plot they didn't even bother to frame it correctly.

I demand better. You should too. Stop settling for infantile writing and grow up.
 
You are forgetting the immutable law of comics (and their film spin offs).

You are only as powerful as the script says you are.

If they want the Eternals to decimate 15 full power celestials with ease, they will. If they want all the Eternals to struggle to defeat Dr. Doom's left pinky finger, there it is.

Basically the strongest person up to the end of infinity war is Ebony Maw, and they gave him the dumbest death to quickly remove him from the story.

If thanos gave him the timestone in end game, he could of killed most of the avengers with ease in a few mins
 
Last edited:

sol_bad

Member
Regarding the above post, I wanted to reiterate that while many are (correctly) saying that it is pushing a woke agenda, it's also pushing for the theory of panspermia and related theories often proposed by researchers like Von Daniken and Zechariah Sitchin.

I'd recommend if you enjoyed The Eternals, the Greg Bear Halo novels or Assassin's Creed, the latter of which was very heavily inspired by Zechariah Sitchin, to check out these two authors.

I still don't understand what it's woke agenda is.

Man, you just DO NOT grasp the concept of internal consistency, do you? You throw this same argument up in every thread folks point out crsppy writing. Just because there are space gods and super powers doesn't absolve the writers from logic and common sense. If they want to bend over backwards to put in a deaf
robot
that lost her hearing because she ran too fast when we see her primary fighting tactic IS TO RAM THINGS AT FULL SPEED and their leader CAN HEAL then it's just dumb ass writing. Hell, there are scenes where she is signing but no one is even looking at her because her disability is so irrelevant to the plot they didn't even bother to frame it correctly.

I demand better. You should too. Stop settling for infantile writing and grow up.

What's the point of having a kid
robot
?
And why does her being deaf have to be relevant to the story? She is just a character in the story, doesn't matter if she is deaf or not. Whenever someone's disability, sexual orientation or skin colour are brought up in a comic/show/movie, there always has to be some kind of logic behind it or it has to tie in and be relevant to the story. No one ever asks what the relevancy is of a straight white character within media, it's only when it's "out of the ordinary".
 
Last edited:

DeafTourette

Older than air but younger than the foundations of the earth
I still don't understand what it's woke agenda is.



What's the point of having a kid
robot
?
And why does her being deaf have to be relevant to the story? She is just a character in the story, doesn't matter if she is deaf or not. Whenever someone's disability, sexual orientation or skin colour are brought up in a comic/show/movie, there always has to be some kind of logic behind it or it has to tie in and be relevant to the story. No one ever asks what the relevancy is of a straight white character within media, it's only when it's "out of the ordinary".

Right! She's JUST a character. Her deafness isn't even a detriment to the team... She's one of their heavy hitters...

But yeah ... If you're black, Pakistani, Asian or whatever... Also if you're any different from a straight white male, it's the woke agenda.
 

jason10mm

Member
The kid makes no sense either. (though for most of human history a teen girl like that would be prime mate material and would probably have a kid or 2 already). Maybe the celestials knew Hollywood pedos were the deviants to worry about :p

I've only seen the first part but quite frankly, the ENTIRE THING makes no sense unless there are additional reveals after the halfway point. 7 thousand years ago if the Eternals came to earth to "raise up civilization" or whatever the fuck then you'd think they would have all been made to resemble the dominant civ at the time which I guess might have been a Mediterranean/middle Eastern one or perhaps China? They didn't seem to lean into ancient civ stuff at all so atlanteans, wakandans or whatever weren't a thing back then I guess. They name drop Thor implying they knew other advanced civs were meddling with earth's develoent but it's hard to say how they would have treated that.

The entire premise that the Eternals give humans advanced tech and fight deviants (whose job was done after they killed off dinosaurs 60 million years earlier, killed off short nosed bears? Killed off the megalodon? Whatever the fuck) but otherwise let humans kill each other wholly nilly is also dumb given the power set they were equipped with. So an alien invasion (or three) , a robot dropping a world ending rock, another alien eliminating half the sentient species, are all beneath them but a few Princess Mononoke rip off monsters are the main threat?

Was the Thena/Gilgamesh relationship from the original comics? Because otherwise the scriptwriter TOTALLY ripped off Steven Erikson's Malazan books with the Icarium and Mappo relationship.
 

jason10mm

Member
Right! She's JUST a character. Her deafness isn't even a detriment to the team... She's one of their heavy hitters...

But yeah ... If you're black, Pakistani, Asian or whatever... Also if you're any different from a straight white male, it's the woke agenda.
Because her injury makes no sense withing the context of the story. If the Eternals accumulate damage over time it MIGHT make sense, but why was she defective from the get go or allowed to remain injured if they have a healer on the team? It would be like having a paraplegic that another team member had to carry around all day. What is the value add? I could understand it if there were deviants with sonic attacks that she was resistant to so she was a fall back defense but AFAICT a deaf/mute was nothing but a liability. I can't think of a single real world combat team that has a deaf/mute member beyond social reasons.
 

DeafTourette

Older than air but younger than the foundations of the earth
Because her injury makes no sense withing the context of the story. If the Eternals accumulate damage over time it MIGHT make sense, but why was she defective from the get go or allowed to remain injured if they have a healer on the team? It would be like having a paraplegic that another team member had to carry around all day. What is the value add? I could understand it if there were deviants with sonic attacks that she was resistant to so she was a fall back defense but AFAICT a deaf/mute was nothing but a liability. I can't think of a single real world combat team that has a deaf/mute member beyond social reasons.

She was built by Arishem that way. It wasn't an injury. They have a freaking "CHILD Eternal ... Yet she isn't a liability?

And they aren't a human combat team... If you paid attention, you'd see she can feel even the smallest vibrations... Even speech. Plus, all the other Eternals know her sign language... No one was clueless about what she was saying nor was SHE clueless about them...

And if you also truly paid attention... How did they exactly work like a combat team? No one, from what we saw, was giving specific orders. Everyone basically just fought on their own. They had no long range communications ... So you can't compare THEM to, say, SEALs or SWAT.
 

Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
Man, you just DO NOT grasp the concept of internal consistency, do you? You throw this same argument up in every thread folks point out crsppy writing. Just because there are space gods and super powers doesn't absolve the writers from logic and common sense. If they want to bend over backwards to put in a deaf
robot
that lost her hearing because she ran too fast when we see her primary fighting tactic IS TO RAM THINGS AT FULL SPEED and their leader CAN HEAL then it's just dumb ass writing. Hell, there are scenes where she is signing but no one is even looking at her because her disability is so irrelevant to the plot they didn't even bother to frame it correctly.

I demand better. You should too. Stop settling for infantile writing and grow up.
Nah I'll just enjoy my Marvel movies I think. The day I start getting mad at stuff like that is the day I know I need to stop going to the theater.
 

jason10mm

Member
She was built by Arishem that way. It wasn't an injury. They have a freaking "CHILD Eternal ... Yet she isn't a liability?

And they aren't a human combat team... If you paid attention, you'd see she can feel even the smallest vibrations... Even speech. Plus, all the other Eternals know her sign language... No one was clueless about what she was saying nor was SHE clueless about them...

And if you also truly paid attention... How did they exactly work like a combat team? No one, from what we saw, was giving specific orders. Everyone basically just fought on their own. They had no long range communications ... So you can't compare THEM to, say, SEALs or SWAT.
"What is our job oh great sky God?"

"To fight the deviants for all eternity!"

"Oh, so no combat, awesome!"

Come in, they are clearly a combat focused team with the "civilization nurturing" aspect a distant second goal that only became a priority once they thought the last deviant was dead.

And if deaf lady is deaf the way Daredevil is blind (ie the 'handicap is actually my superpower' trope) then A she is really just mute, not deaf, why can't she speak? and WHY NOT? B. Why the fuck are other folks signing back at her? It's like someone imitating your accent just when they speak to you, and C. Where is this "she ruptured her eardrums" nonsense coming from then?
 

Billbofet

Member
I couldn't care less, but it's virtue signaling when a character doesn't align with the internal logic of the movie they are in.
I get why it's not a big deal, but I also get why it would bother some people. Of all genres, comic book movies currently get the most scrutiny based on the source material, etc.
It's just lazy writing and self-fellating, but it's also a really boring movie which I think is a much bigger problem.
 

DeafTourette

Older than air but younger than the foundations of the earth
"What is our job oh great sky God?"

"To fight the deviants for all eternity!"

"Oh, so no combat, awesome!"

Come in, they are clearly a combat focused team with the "civilization nurturing" aspect a distant second goal that only became a priority once they thought the last deviant was dead.

And if deaf lady is deaf the way Daredevil is blind (ie the 'handicap is actually my superpower' trope) then A she is really just mute, not deaf, why can't she speak? and WHY NOT? B. Why the fuck are other folks signing back at her? It's like someone imitating your accent just when they speak to you, and C. Where is this "she ruptured her eardrums" nonsense coming from then?

You see my username? It's there for a reason...

Anyway, speech is something you have to HEAR, not feel, to really learn. Sure, some deafies learn to speak but only after A LOT of work with qualified professionals. Since all the Eternals know sign language, why should she learn to speak? Especially since she wasn't being taught by a trained professional?

Also... They were a team but not, and you passed over this in my post, like SEALs or SWAT. They aren't in formation or anything like that. They go on their own fights and SOMETIMES team up to take one of the Deviants down.

The way Eternals and SWAT fight are inherently different.
 
Last edited:

jason10mm

Member
You see my username? It's there for a reason...

Anyway, speech is something you have to HEAR, not feel, to really learn. Sure, some deafies learn to speak but only after A LOT of work with qualified professionals. Since all the Eternals know sign language, why should she learn to speak? Especially since she wasn't being taught by a trained professional?

Also... They were a team but not, and you passed over this in my post, like SEALs or SWAT. They aren't in formation or anything like that. They go on their own fights and SOMETIMES team up to take one of the Deviants down.

The way Eternals and SWAT fight are inherently different.
Doesn't have to be SWAT or SEALs , there are virtually no deaf ems, firefighters, soldiers of any kind. It is just a bizarre condition to build into one of your people for no discernable purpose. It would be like if Gilgamesh had no arms and had to do elaborate kicks for his power. Sure, it kinda works when you control the choreography but what is the point?
 

sol_bad

Member
Doesn't have to be SWAT or SEALs , there are virtually no deaf ems, firefighters, soldiers of any kind. It is just a bizarre condition to build into one of your people for no discernable purpose. It would be like if Gilgamesh had no arms and had to do elaborate kicks for his power. Sure, it kinda works when you control the choreography but what is the point?

Discernable purpose?
So being a God like figure with a "disability" wouldn't be inspiring to the common people that also have disabilities?
 

DeafTourette

Older than air but younger than the foundations of the earth
Doesn't have to be SWAT or SEALs , there are virtually no deaf ems, firefighters, soldiers of any kind. It is just a bizarre condition to build into one of your people for no discernable purpose. It would be like if Gilgamesh had no arms and had to do elaborate kicks for his power. Sure, it kinda works when you control the choreography but what is the point?

There are deaf EMS and firefighters.
 

jason10mm

Member
Discernable purpose?
So being a God like figure with a "disability" wouldn't be inspiring to the common people that also have disabilities?
No. Godlike beings are, well, godlike. The very word inspires images of physical perfection.

Regardless, the film has been made and she is in it. You liked it, I didn't. Enjoy the series, I doubt I will watch a sequel.

Azathoth is the only exception.
 

DeafTourette

Older than air but younger than the foundations of the earth
This is the explanation by director Chloe Zhao for Thanos and Starfox
Vw5Q5cy.jpg
 

Alx

Member
Doesn't have to be SWAT or SEALs , there are virtually no deaf ems, firefighters, soldiers of any kind. It is just a bizarre condition to build into one of your people for no discernable purpose. It would be like if Gilgamesh had no arms and had to do elaborate kicks for his power. Sure, it kinda works when you control the choreography but what is the point?
Maybe there's no point. Think of when you're using your character editor in a video game, and decide to create one with scars, or purple hair, or short legs and pointless wings, just because it looks cool or funny. That's probably what Celestials do when they create Eternals, they're just playing the Sims :p (same goes for "why do they use Deviants ?", hey why not, it's fun to unleash them and watch the fights !)
 

jason10mm

Member
Maybe there's no point. Think of when you're using your character editor in a video game, and decide to create one with scars, or purple hair, or short legs and pointless wings, just because it looks cool or funny. That's probably what Celestials do when they create Eternals, they're just playing the Sims :p (same goes for "why do they use Deviants ?", hey why not, it's fun to unleash them and watch the fights !)
Fair enough. The idea that they made her deaf/mute, but "not really" because she has extrasensory abilities that render the condition functionally irrelevant and basically just gives her a quirky "accent" for character dressing is a valid one and is how Marvel has been using disabled characters so far.

From a story writing perspective it is a TERRIBLE and LAZY move though. Beings created by near omnipotent godlike beings for a specific and vital purpose, gifted with all manner of superpowers, have no in-universe reason for this disability. It should INFURIATE you that they just casually throw deafness in there as if it were a trait like red hair and then immediately trivialize it by having the character undergo no struggle, overcome no obstacles, and be able to sign effortlessly to the point where she can make comments WITH NO ONE LOOKING AT HER and the other folks just read the subtitles and carry on. There was no point in the making of this film (at least what I've seen so far) where they really considered how a deaf/mute would really interact with the other Eternals and the humans around her, no underlying reason for her condition (like all of the Eternals were slowly degrading and had to deal with and overcome new limitations), and no narrative payoff for it like in an appropriately constructed story. It is the very definition of pandering.

We can pick apart the entire concept of sending monsters to clear out apex predators as well, since in virtually ALL CASES the apex predators are actually the smartest animals of their ecosystem. What role did the deviants play on earth? Did they ever mention it? If the intent was that the deviants clear out things like dinosaurs (or at least the large carnivorous ones) to allow for the rise of a "smart" being, what evolutionary pressure then drives that smart being to evolve and become smarter? Harsh and ever-changing environments are the KEY to developing intelligence. Obviously for a kids film I wouldn't necessarily expect these concepts to translate directly, but come on, that plot was so paper thin a weak sneeze blows right through it. We should demand more from our MCU by now, they have clearly established the concept and honed the formula to the point where we should insist on good scripts as well as decent CGI, snappy dialogue, and lots of battles.
 
Top Bottom