FINALLY saw ETERNALS last night. Now that my oldest is 90 mins up the freeway in college, there have been some movies that I've "put off" seeing immediately and then seeing with them when they're home for a weekend. While I would rather see movies _now_ (ie as soon as possible), I do enjoy seeing these types of movies with the whole fam so we can enjoy talking about 'em, speculating on the future, etc.
I won't go too crazy with a full-on review at this point; there are hundreds of those all over the web where you can hear about plot and whatnot. I will say that this is the Jack Kirbyest of MCU films, and I REALLY loved seeing so much that felt like full-on Kirby galactic nutty in ETERNALS: a film that's so dense with story and character set-up that the film's runtime is longer than most MCU films. I'll also give props to director Chloe Zhao for filling this film with lots of characters. She and her writing team (and including Zhao there are four credited screen writers, not including King Kirby) had in incredibly difficult job of establishing The Eternals/Celestials/Deviants history - a difficult task when our hero team consists of more than half a dozen brand new to the MCU characters. We get to delve into cosmic territory that legit makes GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY feel like a mainstream movie (that, again, includes a talking Raccoon and a sentient tree as main characters).
But Zhao and her team keep the film centered on family and humanity. It was so wonderful to see a film that has so much empathy and optimism for the human race: even deeper than the standard "hero places the burden of saving the world on themselves" trope. In this time of uber division in our society, it was wonderful to see a film that's all about the love and care The Eternals have for the human race: massive, violent flaws and all.
Of course the film has incredibly solid special effects, as we once again delve into CGI bad guys. This film felt like it had a lot less action than most other MCU films (something I'm acutely more aware of nowadays when I take my ADHD, emphasis on the Hyperactive, 7 year old to the theater) and instead focused on character development. This wasn't a surprise to me, given Zhao's previous character-driven work. But it was nice to see that emphasis in a world of cosmic immortals with immense super powers. That characters are all fun enough, and I walked away from a nearly 2.5 hour movie wishing I could've spent more time with some of our heroes. I really wanted to spend more time with Kingo, Phastos, and Makkari, even though they clearly were not the focus of the movie. I don't see that as a negative, but more of a positive: a good sign that these are entertaining characters and the movie did its job getting me to engage with them.
I like how this film seems like it set out to be "different" from the standard MCU or DCEU films. I get that may turn some folks off, but the beauty of this business is they only have to wait another month before they get the more standard Spider-Man sequel in theaters. My kids liked ETERNALS (my oldest seemed to LOVE it, while my 7 year old liked the action stuff and squirmed like crazy throughout a lot of the talking), but I get how the slower pacing, due to the dense material, could be looked at as a negative. This is a very different type of team-up, and I look forward to more adventures with The Eternals (and I kinda would LOVE to see fake Bollywood trailers of Kingo's).