Eternals (2021)

[Drunk Monk]

fair

I may stoop to that edm fest at sla.

Oh the shame. The shame!

[Greg]

Seen it. I have thoughts. Not a lot of them positive.

[Greg]

They can't all be hits, I guess. I came away from this film puzzled. How could spend all that money on a film and not put in a line item for lights? I guess Director Chloe Zhao really wanted to put her stamp on the look of the film. In an interview, she said she tried to shoot the entire film at golden hour. I think she succeeded in doing that. I lost count of how many times the actors were shot with the sun behind them, their faces mostly lost in shadow while we got to see the sun peeking out from behind them. It could almost be a successful drinking game when you take a shot when the sun appears behind someone's head.

Do you like exposition? This is the film for you, especially if you like pointless exposition. The film starts with a credit scroll telling you the different factions. Okay. That's good. Tell me the players. Then during the course of the first ten minutes, they go through all of that again. And all the actors seemed like they were in different movies, especially Angelina Jolie.

A lot of the sets didn't look very good. A lot of the scenes didn't make sense. There was a funny butler character. He needs his own movie.

I think there might be a good movie in there somewhere but it wasn't brought out in this iteration.

And you have to ask yourself why would an all powerful God, who has been running this scenario for millions of years, make a deaf helper?

[Drunk Monk]

Not reading your reviews for fear of Scapino infection but here's a comment from my daughter:

And yes my thoughts on the mixed reviews for eternals are that most of the reviewers are white men. Eternals is not for them

[Greg]

The real hero of the Eternals.



Once you've seen the movie, we can talk about the Cubs opinion.

[Drunk Monk]

Once you've seen the movie, we can talk about the Cubs opinion.

Says the dude who thinks all anime looks alike.

I don't know when I'll get to this. I still have yet to see WW84.

[Greg]

Is it just white men or was it not made for white women either? TQ was not a fan.

[Drunk Monk]

Fair question. 

I guess it's a matter of how white?

[Greg]

100% Irish is pretty goddamn white. Do I get a pass on disliking the movie for it's construction? The thematic elements didn't bother me.

[Drunk Monk]

100% Irish is pretty goddamn white. 

Fair but I was asking about tQ. 

Do I get a pass on disliking the movie for it's construction? 

It's always about sets with you. Of course, I can't say much because it's always about fight scenes with me. Or dance numbers. Or psychedelic trips...

Pass granted.

[Greg]

Silly rabbit. Construction of the movie itself. How it was shot. How the story unfolds, etc.

Why do I even try?

[Drunk Monk]

Why do I even try?

[Greg]

Truth.

[Drunk Monk]

I was amused but I can see where Greg has issues. It was more entertaining than Black Widow for me (which is surprising because I love ScarJo as Nat) but not nearly as good as Shang Chi. 

It drowns in its inclusive liberal wokeness. Being an inclusive lib woke P.o.C., I did revel in that. It's always refreshing to see that out of Hollywood, although I watch so much foreign cinema that it doesn't have the same impact. At the same time, re: Greg's comment on too much exposition - it almost felt like we needed one more go at it where every character told us their pronoun. It tried not to focus on that, but in doing that, it became the focus. 

I'll commend Zhao for trying to break out of the MCU box, even though she fails to do so. If she were able to break free, this would've been a better film. It's daring to attempt to create a whole new universe when the MCUniverse already has a multiverse, and I was perplexed by the DC and Star Wars references. The Ikaris /Clark Kent comment was really confusing. Which universe were we in again? I don't know anything about these characters, unlike most of the MCU, although granted, I didn't know the Guardians of the Galaxy characters and they were more interesting. It failed to balance its humor and action well, which is critical to the MCU formula. 

I liked Gemma's performance a lot. I liked Kumail too, and I'm not that into him. I'll credit that to Karun (Greg is right about him). I kept wanting Gilgamesh to be Benedict Wong and Druid to be Ezra Miller. Or maybe Ezra should've been the deaf Flash. Kit was annoying but he was annoying in GoT. Don't care for him. Salma and Angelina, those ladies seemed to barely squeeze into their super suits. 

I wanted the Deviants to be more deviant, more lovecraftian. They just looked like typical mythical beasts, only skinless. 

I feel like I got my $6.50 worth of distraction out of it but don't particularly D00M recommend it. I feel I've done my duty to support it as an inclusive lib woke P.o.C. 

It did have sword fights, a Bollywood number, and tentacles. Or maybe they were tendrils. Tentacles have to have sucker cups, right? So tendrils then.

[Greg]

tQ and revisited this over the weekend. It was much better the second time. I think the amount of characters and their backstories through me the first time but now that I knew what was coming it flowed much better. And knowing what was coming, it was fun to see Ikaris talk about the death of Ajak. He looks so squirmy. The show still needed more Kingo.

Chloe Zhao's visual compositions still irk me to no end. I mean how many shots can we do at twilight with our characters backlit? Stop it. DM is right about Ezra Miller and Benedict Wong. Thena really needed more to do.

But again, much better second time through.