The last three Marvel Studios films have all been solo acts. Spider-Man: Far From Home, Black Widow, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings all center on one central protagonist. The last Marvel Studios film featuring a team of superheroes was Avengers: Endgame. It was the highest-grossing movie of all time. The bar is now sky-high for Marvel ‘team up’ films.
The next Marvel Studios film coming out will be Eternals. It will be under a lot of pressure to perform at the box office, and will take center stage for a fanbase that has not experienced a dud of a movie in quite some time. It also features characters that have not appeared in any Marvel Studios film to date. Marvel has primed audiences by releasing a new Eternals comic book series, but the last series ended way back in 2007.
Though audiences do not exactly know why, the Eternals sidelined themselves during Thanos’s invasion of Earth. Therefore, they suffered no casualties and are going to be fresh for whatever new threat they will be facing. They have also existed for, and been a unit, for thousands of years. So there should ideally be great chemistry among the team, both in combat and in comradery.
Although there might be a lot of pressure for Eternals to perform, pressure is also known to create diamonds. There is reason to believe that Eternals could be the most groundbreaking Marvel Studios film to date. The Eternals are exceptionally powerful beings, even for a universe as vast as the MCU. Makkari has the power of super-speed. Gilgamesh is obscenely strong. Druig can manipulate the minds of others like clay. Kingo can create cosmic energy projections. These four make up less than half of the Eternals, and are unto themselves at Avengers-level strengths. Whatever enemy they are up against will have to be equally formidable if the film is to achieve the level of tension audiences have come to expect.
The cast of Eternals is star-studded. It features Angelina Jolie, Kumail Nanjiani, Richard Madden, and many other actors who are worthy of recognition. Perhaps not since X-Men, which came out over two decades ago, have we seen such star-power at the cinematic entry-point to a superhero team. The cast is also very diverse with stars of many nationalities and heritages, which ought to help the film perform well both within and outside of the U.S. market.
Marvel’s arsenal of superheroes has been becoming more diverse both onscreen and in comic books. Eternals is no different in this respect, but specifically, it will feature characters who are ethnically diverse and are wide-ranging in age. This is both the right move and the smart move; if the house of ideas wants to widen its already burgeoning tent, it has to reach audiences that perhaps have not had representation on screen before. For example, Eternals features the first deaf superhero and the first openly gay superhero of any MCU film. Inclusivity is the direction Hollywood at large is being forced to go in, and frankly, this is how it should be.
The Avengers are scattered to the wind and the cosmos, and some of them did not survive the Thanos onslaught. The X-Men are not yet in this universe, nor are the Inhumans. The Guardians of the Galaxy are somewhere off in the heavens with Thor. Therefore, Eternals will be charged with helping direct where the MCU goes from here.
The MCU has a lot of unanswered questions about The Eternals going into the film. Why did they stay absent when Thanos invaded Earth not once, but twice against the Avengers? Why didn’t they intervene when Loki and Ultron nearly destroyed the planet? Most of all, why have they been dormant for so long, and what stirs them into action now? The film ought to answer these questions or more by the end of the first act, if not soon thereafter. To be the proverbial fly-on-the-wall in the writer’s room would have been a comic book nerd's dream.
Lastly, there is an entity that the Eternals are re-introducing which Marvel comic book fans are familiar with: The Celestials. They are cosmic beings that first took part in comic book series in The Eternals circa 1976. While they were in Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the Eternals will bring them into what is likely an Earth-bound story. The Celestials have loads of lore to explore, and hopefully, Eternals brings some of it to light.
Eternals is a movie that comes to the fold with high expectations, a star-studded cast, diversity in droves, and fresh stories that mainstream movie-goers have not come across yet. Time will shortly tell if the movie lives up to Marvel fans' and critics' expectations.
Eternals debuts in theaters on November 5th, 2021.