Eternals (2021)

If Dune was big, Eternals is a lot. It’s a lot of characters, a lot of exposition, and – for many in the audience – a lot of time on Wikipedia afterward. While the film is biting off so very much more than it can chew, director Chloé Zhao goes for broke in ambition, so while the film isn’t failing, it is (appropriately enough) stumbling in the way of so much of the later work of its original creator, Jack Kirby.

Ten Eternals have been living on earth for the last 7,000 years, gently nudging the evolution of society and sparing humanity from the monstrous Deviants. After being apart for 500 years, Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), and Sprite (Lia McHugh) discover that the Deviants are reconvening when one of the Eternals is killed. The trio sets off to reassemble their team before the Deviants can strike again.

Eternals has earned the dubious distinction of being the first entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to receive a “Rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes – whatever that’s worth. I went into the film knowing it was largely divisive, but having heard Zhao talk glowingly about drawing inspiration from Man of Steel, I was willing to give Eternals the benefit of the doubt. Yet the moment that I realized Eternals was in trouble was the moment that I realized that the film would indeed have ten main characters, two underbaked and disparate villains, and a whole host of forward-reaching Marvel Universe teases that are nigh indecipherable within the context of the film. If you’re deep into the comics, you’ll be able to sort out a few of these references, but I myself had to rely on the excited whispers of the guy a few rows back to unpack one cameo – and I literally have a Ph.D. in this stuff.

Perhaps Eternals would have been better suited as a television show, giving six to eight hours of space for these characters and the fascinating flashbacks that fill in many of the blanks. Indeed, the movie is structured like a few of the better episodes of Lost, giving us deep layered mythology to help introduce and explain characters that are about to become very significant. For example, we see the Eternals part ways with Druig (Barry Keoghan) in the 1500s shortly before the other Eternals reunite with him in the present day; throughout, the film weaves in the complicated romantic history between Sersi and Ikaris. Any one of these Eternals could have been a fine pivot point for the story, or perhaps Zhao might have gone with an audience surrogate like Dane Whitman (Kit Harington) appears to be before he disappears altogether from the film. Instead, Zhao selects for herself the unenviable role of juggler, keeping a dozen plates spinning at once.

 

To be fair, Eternals is never quite boring, save for the beginning of the third act (which, after Shang-Chi, is beginning to become a pattern for the MCU’s fourth Phase). It is sweepingly ambitious, spanning from the birth of the universe until today. And like the original Kirby comics, it seems to hold the greater Marvel Universe at bay; outside of passing references to Thanos, Doctor Strange, and the fallen heroes of Endgame, Eternals restricts its greater MCU ties to a pair of post-credits scenes. One can imagine how the Eternals fit into the larger picture (which is going more cosmic than I think most of us had predicted), but overall it’d be just as easy to consider Eternals as a one-off errant venture in speculative sci-fi. One wonders what the film’s critical (mis)fortunes might have to do with the future of the Eternals themselves.

 

Yet as the credits rolled – after a finale which might as well have been a post-credits scene all its own – I couldn’t help but think of Jack Kirby, and not only because he (finally) gets a solo on-screen credit. Any comics fan would rightly feel a thrill in seeing “Based on the MARVEL COMICS by JACK KIRBY,” but I was thinking more particularly of the way Kirby ended his comics – or rather did not end them, as the case more often ended up being. Kirby was fairly driven off Fantastic Four, and his “Fourth World Saga” at DC was ignominiously cancelled, resurrected, and edited until its conclusion lost its weight. Likewise, it was a small miracle that Kirby was allowed twenty issues of The Eternals, which combined pulp conspiracy theories with high cosmic melodrama until the audience either lost patience or lost the plot. Put another way, Kirby – especially in his later years – tended to have ambitions which far exceeded his sales figures. For a comics reader like me, Kirby’s million-ideas-an-issue attitude is invigorating and fascinating, but I can understand why Joe Popcorn might reject it when Zhao takes the same approach for two hours and thirty-some minutes. It’s a lot to take in, and Kirby’s style can leave one feeling a bit like the unfortunate Irina Spalko from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, whose mind (spoilers) fairly combusts under the strain of learning too much at once.

 

Like Kirby, Zhao is grasping for so much at once, and you can’t help but feel she should have been given more space to do it. As with Kirby’s work, you wish it would keep going and going until it makes sense, but then again that’s part of the charm. There’s something fundamentally ineffable about a movie with ten protagonists from the planet Olympia, in service to an unknowable Celestial god with goals and obligations beyond human comprehension. When you try to cram something like that into a mere cinematic franchise, something’s bound to give. For some moviegoers, it’s their own tolerance for the strange, and Eternals is such a concentrated dose that even I had problems accessing it. I left the theater scratching my head, and that doesn’t happen often, especially when I’ve read the source material. 

Eternals is rated PG-13 for “fantasy violence and action, some language and brief sexuality.” Directed by Chloé Zhao. Written by Chloé Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo. Based on the Marvel Comics by Jack Kirby. Starring Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie.

Cinderella (2015)

With Maleficent (mercifully) behind us and a live-action Beauty and the Beast yet to come, we’re in the midst of a live-action reinvention over at the House of Mouse.  While I do have some reservation regarding the overall necessity of the move, I do think that Cinderella acquits itself better than Maleficent thanks to its narrative fidelity and its frankly stunning production value.

In what is essentially a remake of the 1950 animated Disney film, Lily James stars as Cinderella, left after her father’s passing in the care of her evil stepmother Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett).  After a chance encounter with her Prince Charming (Richard Madden), Cinderella makes every effort to go to the ball, with a little magical assist from her Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter).

The most striking thing about Cinderella is, surprisingly, the clothing.  I cannot recall ever being as impressed with costume design as I was with Sandy Powell’s work on this film.  (Fun fact:  she’s also the costume designer for my all-time favorite film, The Departed.)  Perhaps some credit is due to the cinematography, but the colors in the film really pop in a way that dominates my overall impression of the film – Cinderella looks spectacular.  The dresses of Lady Tremaine and her daughters very plainly communicate their interior ugliness, doing so with a flair that Powell has described as nineteenth century by way of the 1940s.  Cinderella’s dresses, too, are incredibly vibrant, matching well the Prince’s royal finery.

The film overall has a very polished look which I credit to the very pristine direction of Kenneth Branagh, who does fairy tales with the same elegance he brings to Shakespeare and superheroes.  There are a few nods to both – from Hamlet, both Derek Jacobi and fencing, and from Thor, Stellan Skarsgard – but more importantly, Branagh brings his trademark earnestness to Cinderella.  It’s honestly a little jarring to go from the delightfully revisionist Into the Woods, in which Cinderella’s indecisiveness clashed with Prince Charming’s insincerity, to a film which wholly believes in the happily-ever-after genre tropes.

Despite the well-crafted nature of the film and the strong performances all around, there is still the lingering question of whether there is a need for another treatment of Cinderella which doesn’t really distinguish itself too strongly from the versions that preceded it.  This is, of course, the question asked of every remake at one time or another, and my chief complaint about Maleficent was, you’ll recall, that its contributions to the revisionist project were so uneven that the best scene was the one that took the fewest liberties, so clearly there’s a threshold of acceptable innovation/transgression.  Cinderella succeeds, I think, on the grounds that it steers a very straight course through the familiar elements of the plot in an even and engaging way, but as content as I felt during the end credits there was still the sensation that I hadn’t actually seen anything new.

Now, to be fair, Cinderella goes 180-degrees from Into the Woods by making the Prince more, not less, compelling; where Sondheim’s Prince “was raised to be charming, not sincere,” Cinderella gives us a prince bristling at his royal obligations, more interested in marrying for love than for obligation (subtext that I don’t recall being quite so present in the animated film).  It also recognizes that Cate Blanchett is phenomenally gifted, so Lady Tremaine’s wickedness is played up as well as explored near the end of the film as she monologues about her motivations.

Ultimately, then, I’m in an unusual place with Cinderella.  The creative team responsible have created something that amounts to a very good cover band version of a classic with a few neat solos in the middle there, but there’s a curmudgeonly bit of me that wants to cling to the original because the new isn’t different enough.  Then again, I think of all the children in the theater with me that afternoon, and I realize that for them this film likely is the definitive Cinderella, and I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.  Maybe the better metaphor is that of translation, the act of going from one language (animation) to another (live-action), and it is on those grounds that Branagh’s Cinderella succeeds.

Cinderella is rated PG for “mild thematic elements.”  I suppose that’s due to the passing of Cinderella’s parents and the verbal abuse she endures at the hands of her wicked stepmother, but this is very nearly G-rated material.

Bonus review!  Cinderella is preceded by a seven-minute short, Frozen Fever – a sequel to (you guessed it), Disney’s wildly profitable Frozen from two Christmases ago.  The short finds Elsa (Idina Menzel) prepping the kingdom for the birthday of her sister Anna (Kristen Bell).  Only two things stand in the way – the snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) is trying to eat the cake, and Elsa has a head cold.  The cynic in me thinks that Frozen Fever is a long advertisement for plush toys of the snow-babies created whenever Elsa sneezes, but aren’t they cute?  By nature of being so short, Frozen Fever isn’t long on substance, but it does continue the film’s emphasis on the sisters’ relationship over a romantic one between Anna and Kristoff in a way that is more refreshing than treacle.  The main song “Making Today a Perfect Day” is about as catchy as “For the First Time in Forever” from the main film, though it won’t, I predict, have the staying power of “Let It Go” (either in eternity or in your head).  All told, I’m a bigger fan of Disney’s original shorts like Paperman and Feast, though Frozen Fever is as pleasant as the “Toy Story Toons” we’d been getting for a while there, a fun pit stop with some familiar faces.