Eternals Review: Chloé Zhao's Marvel Film Is Beautifully Made, but It Lacks Her Personality to Be Marvelous

Many elements bind the superheroes in Chloé Zhao's "Eternals," starting with the interlocking rings and shafts and bolts of golden light that erupt from their very being. The piping that lines their clothes and the shape-shifting weaponry they create to confront the Deviants are made of light, cosmic energy they share (gnashing, fast-break monsters that resemble dinosaurs with everything but their sinew and bone stripped away). The filigreed network of light that floats and darts through the air serves many purposes, and it's the most visible manifestation of Chloé Zhao's artistry — her way of taking the massive machinery of a $200 million comic-book franchise film and turning it into something elegant and aesthetic, with visual effects that dance before your eyes.

The Eternals, who have spent 7,000 years defending life on Earth, are depicted in the film as an organically cohesive army of noble warrior spirits. Unlike the X-Men, who have clearly defined powers (this one catches fire, that one has metal claws, and the other makes the best chocolate soufflé you've ever had), the Eternals, while each has unique abilities, all share super-strength, flight, and teleportation abilities, and the ability to shoot rays of golden light (there it is again) from their eyes.

Their spirit of free-flowing, all-for-one unity extends to the characters' diversity, which the film portrays with a casual boldness that makes them a winning template of a more dynamically inclusive superhero universe. There are four white Eternals, three Asian Eternals, two Black Eternals, and one Latina Eternal. One is a gay tween, the other is deaf, and the third is an androgynous tween who will never grow up. Any troll who looks at this colorful jumble of personalities and temperaments and complains that the film is too "woke" could have made the same complaint about "Star Trek" 55 years ago.

Zhao is far from the first director to make the transition from meticulously created medium-budget independent cinema to the corporate stratosphere of directing a superhero film. It's worth noting that she's one of the first women — and the first Asian — to do so. However, when I approached “Eternals,” the question I was most interested in was whether Zhao, who developed her filmmaking style in a particular lyrical way in “Nomadland” and “The Rider,” would take any remains of her mode over to the blockbuster realm. Her earlier films are raw and real enough to feel like staged documentaries, but they are pieced together with a captivating pointillistic exactitude, image by image.

"Eternals" doesn't have any of that. Zhao clearly chose to abandon her extremely emotive and distinctive aesthetic in favor of the straight-up didactic conventions of Marvel filmmaking when she signed on for this project. That's a letdown, to say the least. Zhao's sensibility is present, to some extent, in the characters' casual humanity, in the flow of quips, conflict, and emotion (at times romantic), in the beauty of the effects, and in the deceptively smooth manner Zhao scales up her logistical skills. She's a superb craftswoman, and "Eternals" is a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying film, despite its excessive length (157 minutes? really?).

Nonetheless, the film has a fairly typical feel to it. It belongs to the team superhero movie genre, which has spawned more than 20 films between the Avengers and the X-Men, the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Justice League, the Suicide Squad, and the Fantastic Four. They have their own set of cliches, such as camaraderie and backbiting, falling apart, and reuniting. Zhao works within such cliches, giving them depth and drama while also surprising the viewer with huge turns.

The Eternals have seen much of human history, and the film continues flashing back to significant moments (in Mesopotamia, Babylon, Hiroshima). They appear whenever the Deviants do, slaughtering the monsters so that the human species can continue, and occasionally nudge the evolution of civilization onward despite the fact that they aren't intended to. (They will seduce a group of fighters into laying down their arms by introducing the plough.)

Each Eternal has a home in the modern world, yet they're similar to vampires in that they're ageless impersonators of normalcy (though as we learn, they can die). Sirse, portrayed by Gemma Chan with a three-dimensional command, is our heroine, a London museum curator who has had a centuries-long love affair with the dashing Ikaris (Richard Madden) — albeit that relationship has ended, and she's now involved with the merely human Dane (Kit Harington). Kingo is a wisecracking Bollywood star, played by the acerbic Kumail Nanjiani as the most amusingly off-kilter superhero since Deadpool. Gilgamesh (Don Lee) is an affable strongman living in seclusion in the Australian outback, while Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), a suburban dad in Chicago with a husband and an adorable son, is a scene-stealing quarrelsome magnetism.

Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), a deaf speed dasher, and Thena (Angelina Jolie), a tough warrior who has succumbed to "Mahd Wy'ry" (pronounced "mad weariness") — that is, she is cracking up as a result of having accumulated too many memories — are among the other Eternals. (The only remedy, which she refuses, is for your mind to be wiped clean.)

When summoned, the Eternals are a force to be reckoned with when it comes to dealing with Deviants. But there's a kink in the cosmic sphere: Ajak (Salma Hayek), the knowledgeable and seemingly beneficent leader of the Eternals, has been keeping a secret — and when we find out what it is, it lifts the drama to a moral plane of interest. Ajak communicates with a Celestial, one of the majestic beings who keep the cosmos running; he's depicted as a kind of iron behemoth in the sky and has disclosed the true purpose of the Eternals to her. It is not as it appears. Is he, like Thanos, a malevolent power or a good god? Perhaps both. Speaking of which, how does the plot of this film relate to the "Avengers" franchise? Discuss if you want to get yourself a case of Mahd Wy'ry.

Earth has been serving as a large seed pod for the hatching of a new Celestial, and if the Eternals are to support that objective, it will mean...darkness. Will they be able to band together to defend their new home? Though the last battle conjures characteristics of grandeur, the tension will not kill you. The first "Guardians of the Galaxy," "Zack Snyder's Justice League," and "Avengers: Infinity War" are the three top-tier team superhero movies in my opinion. "Eternals" is a smooth and occasionally bedazzling amusement that I'd put on the next tier because it never goes above its conventions and makes you go "Damn!" Perhaps next time, Zhao can up the ante on the heroic vibes by incorporating a dash of nomad reality.