Eternals

About

Eternals is a 2021 Marvel film directed by Chloé Zhao. The film tracks 10 Eternals who are immortal beings sent to Earth to protect humanity from the villainous Deviants. Online, the film proved divisive prior to its release, with some expressing fatigue at the Marvel Cinematic Universe and others excited about the film's diverse cast. The film was released on November 5th, 2021, to middling reviews.

History

Production for Eternals started in July 2019.^[1] Announced cast members included Kumail Nanjiani (who became notably muscular for the film), Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden and Salma Hayek. The film was initially slated for a November 2020 release but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On May 24th, 2021, the first trailer for the film was released, generating immense hype on social media, as well as memes.

The film was screened for critics on October 18th and released through the United States on November 5th.

Reception

The film received middling reviews upon release, netting a Rotten Tomatoes score of 49,^[2] the lowest score for an MCU film to date. It netted a score of 53 on Metacritic,^[3] also the lowest for an MCU movie at the time. Critics tended to agree that the film was too long, repetitive and suffered from having too many characters to develop.^[4][5]

Online Presence

Online, the film proved divisive among Marvel fans and Marvel critics even before its release, leading to several instances where discourse about the film trended on Twitter. One such example occurred on October 19th, 2021, when Variety critic Matt Donnelly, after seeing a screener, tweeted that Harry Styles appeared in a post-credits scene as Eros, brother of Thanos. This led one Marvel fan to suggest that tweeting spoilers should warrant a $1 million fine, while others argued that casting news does not count as a spoiler.

On October 26th, some Twitter users interpreted a quote from the New York Post^[6] review of the film to mean the film implies Phastos, Marvel's first gay superhero, was responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The quote reads:

There’s also Phastos, a magical inventor of new technologies played by Brian Tyree Henry, who boasts one of the time-jumping movie’s most confounding moments. The screen reads “Hiroshima 1945” while Henry stands amid the wreckage and yells, “What have I done?!”

This led many to poke fun at Marvel's issues with LGBTQ+ representation. However, the moment described in the film is Phastos expressing remorse for giving humanity the technology to develop a weapon of mass destruction. He did not drop the actual bomb on Hiroshima.

Personality Quiz Parodies

Eternals Personality Quiz Parodies refers to a series of posts that poke fun at a promotional tweet thread questionnaire posted by Marvel's Eternals that would tell people which character in Eternals they are most like. Twitter users parodied the quiz by posting pictures of several characters in Eternals along with one, humorous addition.

Search Interest

External References