Cosmic Marvel: “Eternals”
Chloé Zhao “Eternals” adaptation is a case study in what the MCU does to individualistic directors. This is not going to be a slam on either Marvel or Zhao, but it’s time to really evaluate the dynamics between the corporate vision and the individual auteur’s. I’ll dip into this more as we go on, but I need to start off by saying that I completely disagree with Alex Dowd at the A.V. Club and his claim that Zhao’s work is just another boilerplate Marvel movie. Far from it; there is a tremendous amount of love in this film, there are actually moments when characters and the actors portraying them are actually given space to breathe, and I disagree strongly that it’s just as formulaically “quippy” as other films in the MCU. However, it’s just these strengths that point to the weaknesses in the film and while I personally don’t find them completely debilitating, those weaknesses are distracting and keep a film that could have been one of the best MCU offerings from being just reall...