The Eternals
The big deal about THE ETERNALS is that it's the first Marvel movie with a gay super-hero in it, one who is married, with a husband and son.
I really wanted to like it. I tried to like it. I couldn't.
(Light spoilers follow.)
The Eternals are a group of immortal super-beings, each with their own power--matter transmutation, super-speed, mind control, illusion, flight and strength, and so on. They were sent to Earth by another being, a Celestial, to stop monsters called Deviants from wiping out the human race.
The movie itself is unfortunately and deeply flawed. Like I said, I really wanted to like it, and I tried, but nothing really worked. At the beginning, we're dropped into an action sequence in the stone age. A Deviant kills a man in front of his son, and the boy doesn't even react. In fact, when the Deviants wipe out a big chunk of the village, no one really seems to mind much. The boy, who should have been frightened and traumatized, expressionlessly accepts the gift of a knife from one of the Eternals instead.
This set the tone for the rest of the movie.
The Eternals are outside humanity, supposed to be apart from it. And most of them are hard-bitten and even uncaring. Ikarus, the male lead, spends most of the movie stony-faced and rigid. He's in love with Sersi, but he never seems to take joy out of that. He doesn't seem to get joy out of anything, really. Sersi seems to feel the same way--their relationship is a burden, not a support, and she puts up with it because she feels she should, rather than out of any real romantic attraction. Sprite, the mischief-maker, also rarely cracks a smile, and uses her illusions for workaday heroics. We never see her get any =fun= out of her powers. Kingo, a blaster hero, seems to be the only one who likes what he's doing, but even he turns overly serious halfway through the show. The actors decided that immortality has hardened the characters and made them either less than or more than human. An interesting choice, but it means the characters feel remote, and I couldn't connect with them.
There was an attempt to humanize Sersi by giving her a human boyfriend, but it actually makes the problem worse. The boyfriend--whose name I'm forgetting--takes the news of Sersi's true identity with sarcastic resignation, the world-weary sigh of someone who's already seen super-heroes stop world-wrecking events. His low-key acceptance is, perhaps, different, but it's ultimately off-putting. He was a chance to inject some humanity in the show, and that chance was thrown away.
Director Chloe Zhao also seems to have little idea of how to pace a story. Just when the movie gets some momentum going and the tension builds nicely, she stops the story dead for long, long minutes so the characters can emote at each other. I found myself checking my watch, never a good sign. The time-hopping structure of the story (starting in the distant past, jumping back to the present, popping into the past again) makes this worse. It's hard to keep track of what's going on, and we have to put the present storyline on hold every time we're plopped back into the past again. It's another momentum-killing device.
And then we come to Phastos, the much-heralded First Gay Movie Super-Hero. He falls flat.
This isn't the fault of Henry Tyree, the actor who plays him. Tyree does a great job. It's the script and the director who fail the character. First, make no mistake, Phastos is a minor character. He's absent from most of the movie, in fact. After the first few scenes, the Eternals basically split up and scatter around the world. Later, Ikarus and Sersi travel around the world, trying to reunite them so they can fight a new threat. This could have been done quickly, much in the way Paul Neuman picks up grifters in THE STING. Instead, Zhao slowly, frustratingly takes. Her. Time. We have a long, long, LONG scene partway through the gathering process in which the characters gathered so far share a meal.
Guess who isn't there yet?
At LONG last, the characters get off their asses and look for Phastos. They find him in a suburb with, to the surprise of his fellow Eternals, a husband named Ben and their young son. We have a set of family-oriented scenes here that, I think, are meant to normalize a same-sex relationship, but the relationship itself is dry. Everything is too matter-of-fact. Like Sersi's boyfriend, Ben doesn't seem much affected by the revelation of Phastos's true identity, and when he learns Phastos needs to leave them to go fight evil, Ben sends him off with a smile and a quick, dry kiss of the sort you give your husband when he's going away for a two-day conference. There was no attempt whatsoever to show romance or, heaven forbid, passion. (And I have to point out that Sersi and Ikarus, our straight couple, get an extensive and passionate lovemaking scene.)
Later, after the Great Big Battle, the Eternals come back together, but do we get a scene in which Phastos is reunited with his husband and son? Do we see Ben and Phastos fling themselves into an embrace with thank-god-you're-okay-I-love-you-so-much? Do we seen Phastos's son leap into his arms shrieking "Daddy!"?
No, we don't. Instead, we blip to a farmhouse. Phastos is in a living room eating pizza. Ben is nowhere to be seen, and their son is in the kitchen, talking to another Eternal. Later, Ben pops in to deliver one line, and Phastos decides to rush into the kitchen, but not to talk to his son, whom he deliberately pushes aside, but to talk to his team-mate.
It drains all emotion from the scene.
This is doubly problematic in a movie that stutters and stammers because the plot gets interrupted for emotional emoting for emo emotions. Zhao is willing to sacrifice pacing so her straight people can emote at each other, but she won't do the same for her gay folk.
A few audience members did shout and clap during the kiss. I just shrugged. It could have been--should have been--much better.
It's abundantly clear Disney/Marvel is testing the waters. They decided we could have a gay man, but he couldn't be =too= gay. We could have a same-sex marriage, but it has to be completely, blandly domestic. We could have two men who are married, but they have to keep romance and passion off-screen. It has to be bland and boring in order to exist at all.
I'm glad we have a gay super-hero in the Marvel movies. I'm hoping it leads to more of them. I suppose it's inevitable that the first one is botched. But I'm tired of feeling that way.
I wanted THE ETERNALS to be an awesome movie, with an interesting, fast-paced story with a prominent and heart-felt gay relationship. I got something entirely, and disappointingly, different.
comments
I really wanted to like it. I tried to like it. I couldn't.
(Light spoilers follow.)
The Eternals are a group of immortal super-beings, each with their own power--matter transmutation, super-speed, mind control, illusion, flight and strength, and so on. They were sent to Earth by another being, a Celestial, to stop monsters called Deviants from wiping out the human race.
The movie itself is unfortunately and deeply flawed. Like I said, I really wanted to like it, and I tried, but nothing really worked. At the beginning, we're dropped into an action sequence in the stone age. A Deviant kills a man in front of his son, and the boy doesn't even react. In fact, when the Deviants wipe out a big chunk of the village, no one really seems to mind much. The boy, who should have been frightened and traumatized, expressionlessly accepts the gift of a knife from one of the Eternals instead.
This set the tone for the rest of the movie.
The Eternals are outside humanity, supposed to be apart from it. And most of them are hard-bitten and even uncaring. Ikarus, the male lead, spends most of the movie stony-faced and rigid. He's in love with Sersi, but he never seems to take joy out of that. He doesn't seem to get joy out of anything, really. Sersi seems to feel the same way--their relationship is a burden, not a support, and she puts up with it because she feels she should, rather than out of any real romantic attraction. Sprite, the mischief-maker, also rarely cracks a smile, and uses her illusions for workaday heroics. We never see her get any =fun= out of her powers. Kingo, a blaster hero, seems to be the only one who likes what he's doing, but even he turns overly serious halfway through the show. The actors decided that immortality has hardened the characters and made them either less than or more than human. An interesting choice, but it means the characters feel remote, and I couldn't connect with them.
There was an attempt to humanize Sersi by giving her a human boyfriend, but it actually makes the problem worse. The boyfriend--whose name I'm forgetting--takes the news of Sersi's true identity with sarcastic resignation, the world-weary sigh of someone who's already seen super-heroes stop world-wrecking events. His low-key acceptance is, perhaps, different, but it's ultimately off-putting. He was a chance to inject some humanity in the show, and that chance was thrown away.
Director Chloe Zhao also seems to have little idea of how to pace a story. Just when the movie gets some momentum going and the tension builds nicely, she stops the story dead for long, long minutes so the characters can emote at each other. I found myself checking my watch, never a good sign. The time-hopping structure of the story (starting in the distant past, jumping back to the present, popping into the past again) makes this worse. It's hard to keep track of what's going on, and we have to put the present storyline on hold every time we're plopped back into the past again. It's another momentum-killing device.
And then we come to Phastos, the much-heralded First Gay Movie Super-Hero. He falls flat.
This isn't the fault of Henry Tyree, the actor who plays him. Tyree does a great job. It's the script and the director who fail the character. First, make no mistake, Phastos is a minor character. He's absent from most of the movie, in fact. After the first few scenes, the Eternals basically split up and scatter around the world. Later, Ikarus and Sersi travel around the world, trying to reunite them so they can fight a new threat. This could have been done quickly, much in the way Paul Neuman picks up grifters in THE STING. Instead, Zhao slowly, frustratingly takes. Her. Time. We have a long, long, LONG scene partway through the gathering process in which the characters gathered so far share a meal.
Guess who isn't there yet?
At LONG last, the characters get off their asses and look for Phastos. They find him in a suburb with, to the surprise of his fellow Eternals, a husband named Ben and their young son. We have a set of family-oriented scenes here that, I think, are meant to normalize a same-sex relationship, but the relationship itself is dry. Everything is too matter-of-fact. Like Sersi's boyfriend, Ben doesn't seem much affected by the revelation of Phastos's true identity, and when he learns Phastos needs to leave them to go fight evil, Ben sends him off with a smile and a quick, dry kiss of the sort you give your husband when he's going away for a two-day conference. There was no attempt whatsoever to show romance or, heaven forbid, passion. (And I have to point out that Sersi and Ikarus, our straight couple, get an extensive and passionate lovemaking scene.)
Later, after the Great Big Battle, the Eternals come back together, but do we get a scene in which Phastos is reunited with his husband and son? Do we see Ben and Phastos fling themselves into an embrace with thank-god-you're-okay-I-love-you-so-much? Do we seen Phastos's son leap into his arms shrieking "Daddy!"?
No, we don't. Instead, we blip to a farmhouse. Phastos is in a living room eating pizza. Ben is nowhere to be seen, and their son is in the kitchen, talking to another Eternal. Later, Ben pops in to deliver one line, and Phastos decides to rush into the kitchen, but not to talk to his son, whom he deliberately pushes aside, but to talk to his team-mate.
It drains all emotion from the scene.
This is doubly problematic in a movie that stutters and stammers because the plot gets interrupted for emotional emoting for emo emotions. Zhao is willing to sacrifice pacing so her straight people can emote at each other, but she won't do the same for her gay folk.
A few audience members did shout and clap during the kiss. I just shrugged. It could have been--should have been--much better.
It's abundantly clear Disney/Marvel is testing the waters. They decided we could have a gay man, but he couldn't be =too= gay. We could have a same-sex marriage, but it has to be completely, blandly domestic. We could have two men who are married, but they have to keep romance and passion off-screen. It has to be bland and boring in order to exist at all.
I'm glad we have a gay super-hero in the Marvel movies. I'm hoping it leads to more of them. I suppose it's inevitable that the first one is botched. But I'm tired of feeling that way.
I wanted THE ETERNALS to be an awesome movie, with an interesting, fast-paced story with a prominent and heart-felt gay relationship. I got something entirely, and disappointingly, different.
comments
No comments have been added yet.
