Film Review

Eternals (2021)

The saga of the Eternals, a race of immortal beings who lived on Earth and shaped its history and civilisations.

Marvel’s recent output has been mixed, and who knows if their Disney+ shows are even penetrating the consciousness of casual filmgoers who don’t want another streamer adding to their monthly expenses. Eternals arrives with a familiar business model, in the sense Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) has been plucked from the indie world to mastermind another $200M movie where her vision will either flourish or wilt under the constraints of what the 26th movie in an interconnected universe needs to achieve.

It seems that Zhao was given more creative control than is typical with Marvel, even being allowed to rewrite the original screenplay by Ryan and Kaz Firpo — with contributions from Patrick Burleigh. The Firpo brothers are themselves up-and-coming writers and documentarians, with a number of other scripts in development, so the creative bedrock of Eternals is nicely skewed towards finding fresh talent and developing new voices.