Wait, What is Eternals About?

Eternals [2021]

Film

It wasn't too long ago that I first saw the teaser for Eternals and thought to myself, "whoa, I have no clue who any of these people are."

And by that I mean the Eternals themselves, not the absurdly stacked cast playing them. Which brings me to my next point (jumping around a little bit), how could this movie be that bad when your cast consists of:

• Angelina Jolie
• Gemma Chan
• Kumail Nanjiani
• Barry Keoghan
• Bryan Tyree Henry
• Richard Madden
• Kit Harington
• Salma Hayek
• Ma Dong-seok
• Bill Skarsgård

Seriously, how could this flop????????

For starters, Eternals boasts one of the more laughable plots in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A story that attempts to be rather complex and unexpected but results in something derivative and bland. Before I go further, I'll just throw one of these here:

Spoilers Aplenty

Here's a picture of a kitten too to make sure you didn't accidentally scroll too far.

Ok, so the whole backbone of Eternals is they've been on Earth for centuries and were explicitly told not to interfere with human affairs (wars and shit) by Arishem, the giant Celestial that is their boss essentially. Their original goal is to stop the Deviants from killing people because you know, life is precious or something, but it's chill if people kill people, or Thanos wipes out half of all life. We then find out the real goal is to allow the human population to grow to a certain point such that the Celestial zygote in the center of the Earth can feast on enough human consciousness to emerge from the planet and become a fully grown Celestial.

Let's recap on this here so called "plot": Step 1: Save humans from Deviants Step 2: Let humans kill humans for centuries Step 3: Let Thanos wipe out half of all life Step 4: Let Celestial destroy Earth

Makes sense, right??

But by Arishem's own plan, they should've stepped in to stop Thanos and all of the human conflict in order to have the human population grow so Tiamut (the inner Earth Celestial baby) could emerge???

You can understand the immense amount of confusion I had while watching this film. Not to mention, there are a couple of side story elements that really befuddled me and took away from my viewing experience.

Eternals [2021]

One of which is the Deviants themselves, specifically Kro (voiced by Bill Skarsgård) who has the ability to absorb the powers of the Eternals and continue to sort of evolve. Now Kro has this weird moment where he understands that the Deviants and the Eternals are all just puppets of Arishem and follow his orders blindly (also knowing the emergence of Tiamut will certainly kill him and all Deviants on Earth). In order to stop the emergence and save himself and his Deviant friends, Kro teams up with the Eternals and they all save Earth together!!

Just kidding, Kro still tries to kill the Eternals and absorb their powers while they're trying to stop the emergence -- which is absolutely bonkers since we're supposed to believe he's a smarter Deviant?

Next weird plot point is all the bizarre love triangles that make no sense and contribute nothing to the plot. Sersi (Gemma Chan) loves Dane Whitman (Kit Harington) but dated Ikaris (Richard Madden) for some centuries and even got married, but Sprite (Lia McHugh) is in love with Ikaris but he doesn't know it, Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) loves everyone because they're a family and lastly Druig (Barry Keoghan) and Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) have a romance that I'm inclined to believe was included for nothing but jokes. First off, Whitman was only included in this movie to spin the Marvel wheels and get him ready for the next superhero launch -- he's supposed to be the Black Knight as given in the post credit scene. He's in the movie for maybe 5 minutes, and it is the purest form of what everyone hates most about the MCU: nonsensical character introductions for the purpose of expanding the franchise, NOT to make a good movie. Second, the love rhombus between Sersi, Whitman, Ikaris, and Sprite is outrageous in the sense that we have all of these flashbacks for centuries with these Eternals and never once find out about Sprite's love for Ikaris until Kingo just happens to know it? Also, Ikaris loves Sersi just slightly less than Arishem and is willing to obliterate everyone but realizes he's become some sort of monster and flies into the sun?

I mean, I get his name is Ikaris and the whole flying too close to the sun thing but come one. It was bad.

I'm realizing now how much I've complained about this movie and how much I've picked it apart, so here are some things I enjoyed about Eternals.

The MCU had its first sex scene! How exciting, especially when Steven Soderbergh is out here clamoring for more fucking

Also, the diversity of characters is astounding and amazing to see on screen, especially in the scenes where they're all together! I had mentioned earlier about the impact of representation on screen with CODA and Lauran Ridloff

Lastly, I felt as though there were a few strong performances that carried the film, primarily from Bryan Tyree Henry (who is always on point), Kumail Nanjiani and his assistant Karun (Harish Patel who btw was my favorite character), and of course I have no bad words for Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie who are perfect people or as close as you can get.

All things considered, this was one of the MCU's worst entries and unfortunately not even Harry Styles in a post credit scene could save it. This film is in the bowels of the MCU directory, right next to Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Froth

Sometimes when you have a massive baby Celestial ripping through the crust of the Earth you're gonna experience some distress in your magnetic fields. Am I right or am I right??

This bit of Jimmy Neutron brain blast brought me to indulge in some excellent beer provided by the good people at Fort George brewing in Oregon, where they produce a beer called Magnetic Fields. Appropriate I know right?

Magnetic Fields is a seasonal release IPA that changes from year to year with some tweaks here and there and this year it stars a cast of Juice yeast, and Azacca, Citra and Strata dry-hopping. Weighing in at a solid 7.2% ABV it is sure to make watching Eternals a little more bearable. What you get from Magnetic Fields is a great juicy IPA full of pineapple and citrus smells and flavors (some nectarines to be specific). The taste profile is quite pleasent and is very refreshing. Hopefully by the time it comes back next year Earth won't be impregnated with a giant space baby and I can enjoy my beer in peace.