THE FILMS OF 2021: THE ETERNALS

The Eternals.

This sees a bunch of super-heroes, originally created by Jack Kirby, battling a planet-endangering threat of such epic proportions as to beggar belief, and boy I thought Dr Gnu has problems.

It turns out that ten insanely powerful Eternals are an immortal bunch of guardians sent to Earth 7000 years ago to protect mankind from another group of intergalactic villainy called the Deviants. The Eternals hunt down and kill them with glee until all of them are dead. However in the present, the Deviants return and start targeting the Eternals for some reason which becomes apparent over the long running time of the movie until the 3rd act and a gigantic showdown that leaves you reeling with questions.

The Eternals from planet Olympia are lead by Salma Hayek are the product of a group of beings known as the Celestials who are as old as the universe.

Anyway, over the past 7K years, the Eternals, very much like ABBA have fallen in and out of love with each other, gotten married to each other, before turning their back on each other. Now it's time to get the band back together for one last reunion tour. And so Serei, played by Gemma Chan sets out to find them all to stop whatever it is that's going on. We get to see the whole back story of the Eternals time on Earth as well as what they've all be doing in the intervening seven thousand years.

This looks good, it's big, it's epic but it's also a case of WTF. I found I just did not care about any of it. The threat is too big, the superheroes are just so otherworldly that I couldn't care less about them. Each has a power, some range from plain stupid (shooting marble shaped balls of energy out of their finger tips) to hyper speed to, basically superman, oh and they're all immortal until the point when they have to die to propel the plot. The powers are ill-defined and vary depending on what's required. The repetitive fights see the Eternals battle the four-legged Deviants who get stronger each time they kill an Eternal and so you can play the game of guessing who's going to die next, or why, or you can just sit there and watch it all, unengaged and uninvolved, like I was. However, my son, really enjoyed it and dismissed my whinging as that of an old man.

Didn't hate it, it's far better than Venon, the final 'big boss' showdown was unique and it does have some good moments.

But I wish for those glory days when the villain's arch plan was to sink California and clean up on real estate.

7/10

P.S.

Cos this sort of thing matters. There are TWO closing credit stings, one after the first batch and the other right at the very, very end. One of them is going to make a lot of people very angry, I'm guessing.