Discussion: Eternals Was the Justice League Movie I Always Wanted

Welcome to the first entry in my Discussion series! Please enjoy reading and join ... well, the discussion down in the comments! These posts will be small essays, debates, and analysis of various trends, TV shows, and of course movies. 

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I grew up with Justice League cartoons. There are several out there, one better than the other. You would think that making any into live-action wouldn't be so hard. YOU WOULD THINK THAT. But here we are... 

I have not seen the Zack Snyder movies and I refuse to do so. Just from the trailers and accounts from my friends I can clearly tell that I will not enjoy them. These -very famous- characters are continuously misunderstood by this director and I am tired of it. If you like them, good for you. I will not go into a large rant about it, I have before, just read my review of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) here! So let us move on to the movie that we are about to discuss. I will, however, draw a lot of comparisons with the live-action adaptations of the famous DC comics characters, as the title already suggests.

This is gonna be a thorough argumentation over all the things that this movie did right, so read on and add all the things you think of in the comments, I welcome the discussion! Needless to say, spoilers ahead.

The Eternals was released in 2021, based on the comics by the same name, with the first issue being released in 1976, created by Jack Kirby. It is about a series of heroes known as Homo immortalis, who, along with their enemies, the Deviants, were created by alien Celestials. As far as the premise goes, the movie followed the comics. First thing that is different from its DC counterpart.

The reason for my comparison, is that these Eternal god like creatures have very similar powers to that of the members of the Justice League, and YET we did not need a single movie in advance to introduce any of these characters. With a couple of time jumps and interactions the most important traits of their personalities were revealed to us. The DC version tried to copy the Marvel formula, forgetting altogether that most people have a very deep knowledge of the titular characters of DC comics. After one Superman (Man of Steel (2013)) we jumped to the larger group with a new Batman being cast and the addition of all the greatest villains, with the hope of these heroes working together cohesively without any real depth as to who they are and where they come from. The fans were both expected to know everything while the film tried to adhere to a much larger audience that did not know anything about these characters. You cannot have a film that way... with the Eternals, we have a closer look at a Celestial, but it is not the first time that happened in a Marvel movie, as the seeds were slowly and carefully planted.

The reason, I believe, that Eternals (2021) was not successful is because it did not hold any major twists. Marvel movies by now have a tendencies to reveal something last minute, something that is very logical once you re-watch the story (thus making you want to re-watch it to begin with), but they buried the lead just the same. Eternals was incredibly straightforward, and I ended up guessing the major plot points, and honestly, I did not mind. Marvel is good at twists, but DC isn't. It is not their fault, of course, major audiences WANT to be surprised, they want the story to twist and turn, and they expect the unexpected. In my experience of the DC movies I have seen, these twists come only with the sacrifice of major plot points, leaving holes behind. Holes that grow quite large as the stories progress. Eternals had a lot of foreshadowing, and thus you could perceive where the story was going, however, it was also the device that they used best to let us viewers connect to our main characters. I do not mind that I could guess the ending, I did so with every DC cartoon, but at least no plot points were sacrificed. I am so tired of movies that do not go anywhere... never in my life did I get up after seeing a Marvel movie and felt like it was a waste of time, even when the movies wasn't a 10/10. I wish I felt that way about DC movies...

Let us have a closer look at the characters. I, for one, have loved that the multiple award nominee actors were not the leading characters. They were wonderful additions to the cast, but I'll be honest, more of Angelina Jolie's Thena, or even more Salma Hayek's Ajak would have damaged the power dynamics in this group. I did, immediately fall in love with Gemma Chan's Sersi, and Richard Madden's soldier like Ikaris persona only broke in the third act, and it was a marvelous change of pace. Oh course, Kumail Nanjiani's Kingo stole the show, and I could watch him for hours and hours on end.

Let us talk about the most fantastic thing in this movie: inclusion. Despite being in love with the LGBTQ+ representation with Brian Tyree Henry's Phastos, as he did not feel like a token character, my real love was towards another character. Disney is already trying to include a more variety in its casting and storylines, starting from the Tusken raiders using sing language in The Mandalorian, and then the Hawkeye series also included a deaf and mute mobster, of all characters! Here we have Lauren Ridloff's Makkari who... dear god, was the best live action Flash I have ever seen. I am a HUGE fan of the Flash, he is my favorite DC character of all time. I still watch the CW series with Grant Gustin, although it is less impactful now, and I find, despite his talents, Ezra Miller to be the biggest miscast in television history, so let us disregard that. Of course, the Flash mantel was also worn by the great John Wesley Shipp, who did his best, but knowing what CGI can do today, there was still a long way to go. [I would also like to add that the Flash was voiced by wonderful actors over the years, and I would have liked any of them to try out for the live-action.] But, turning back to the Eternals, the best thing about Lauren Ridloff isn't just that she is deaf, but the fact, that not once in the movie did I ever feel like she was cast to meet a quota. All the other characters used some limited sign language and they interacted with her as if he disability was not there at all. And that is the kind of inclusion we need, the one that normalizes all of the things that make us different. Makkari was the best Eternal, I just loved her, the way she used her powers were breathtaking. When she fought Ikaris I just stared at the screen with my mouth open. It was the best directed fight scene among literal gods that I had the pleasure to see. You know, when they kept casting people who look nothing like the comic book Barry Allen/The Flash, it kept making so mad... although Grant Gustin's version is quite good, here we have a female superhero, who is half Mexican-American, half African-American, and is deaf, who looks absolutely nothing like the Flash and yet I have zero complaints. I am quite certain then, that despite the casting they are just ruining something extra when it comes to the live-action version of this character. But I could watch Makkari for hours on end, she was hands down my favorite part of the movie.

This movie felt like a DC cartoon to me, that is it, at the end of the day. I saw a team of heroes trying their best, fighting their battles, and in the end Batman fought Superm-- I mean the team had to fight Ikaris, because of his strong belief in the mission they were assigned on this planet. If I mentioned it, the DC comic books explain in such great detail the pain of the people in losing someone like Superman, and why, upon his return, he dons his black suit. There is a separate DC cartoon movie about the death of Superman, something I reviewed a few years back, you can read about it here. He is not just a fighter, he is a person. In this film, Ikaris, is a beloved member of the team, he does have his issues with the others, but he is loved and he loves. He betrays the others with pain, and that pain causes him to refuse to face the failure of his mission. He is a person with feelings. There is no question about that. The main reason I hated the new Superman is that there was only one single scene in the live-action movie adaptations in the past 20 years, where he showed actual personal growth and that was at the end of Man of Steel (2013), when he killed Zod, which is the scene most people hated. Ikaris is detached, somewhat, a real soldier, but I never question his humanity, despite him being a god-like creature just like Superman. 

I think, at the end of the day, someone from Marvel looked at the horribly long Snyder cut and thought to themselves "We can do a better movie than this." And they did. They really did. I am very excited to see where the Eternals go from here and I also plan to re-watch it soon to focus in on more details of the characters and their interactions.

One of the best things about this movie is that it did not just showcase the humor that we expect from a Marvel movie, but it did so by relying heavily on popular culture. First of all, you have both Richard Madden and Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones (2011-2019), now fighting over someone called Sersi; you have Kumail Nanjiani's Kingo who is a Bollywood star, and he references the never ending sequels to one character that is typical of many Indian movies; Kingo also calls Lia McHugh Sprite 'Tinker Bell', and if you are an avid fan like me, or just old as f*ck, you might have realized that Sprite has Julia Roberts' haircut from Hook (1991), where she did in fact play Tinker Bell. Finally, and as a best returning gag, many characters actually reference DC characters without the blink of an eye. In this universe Marvel heroes are real and DC characters are alive in the comic book format. I could think of nothing else to prove my point that someone just wanted to make a better Justice League movie. One that has no plot holes, one that has a cohesive team, despite their differences, one that treats their strongest member with respect and also fear, and one that, above all, puts human lives ahead of the objective. These heroes are meant to protect Earth, not have childish rants among themselves...

I invite everyone to see this film. We keep forgetting that the comic is also some 45 years old, because these characters have never been on the big screen, and we all were subjected to so many origin stories at this point, we think that a creative and unique spin on a story is impossible. And you know, it might be. However, there are some wonderful direct to TV Marvel and DC cartoon movies out there that I wouldn't mind seeing in a live action format, even if there are no major plot twists or unique intricacies that would make them stand out from all the others. I just want a good story, and that is what the Eternals was.

Join this discussion in the comments below, let me know how you felt about the movie, and share if you had any of the thoughts that I described above.