Like most people in the world, we were pretty excited about Eternals. The novelty of getting back in the theater post-pandemic for a big Marvel movie has not worn off. But leading up to its release, early reviews were kinda bombing it for what we figured was no reason. So we went into this expecting it to be fine and for the general “woke”-ness of it to not play into it at all.

Well, we were half right. The overall diversity of the cast was great and really had no bearing on the story whatsoever. It was fun to see Lauren Ridloff playing a deaf hero, and great to see a proper gay kiss in a Marvel movie. It was too bad then that almost everything else in Eternals was such a huge mess. There’s too much going on and also not enough. Too many characters, not enough relationship. Just a lot of wiggly creatures that they have to fight for some convoluted reason. We followed the story of how the Eternals were placed on Earth to protect humans from the deviants. And we understood that deviants were placed here to protect humans from other creatures. None of it really coalesced into anything that felt properly meaningful though.

Overall we decided to “like” Eternals. The main reason we landed here was simply that when we walked out we knew we’d be excited to see any of these characters again. The bones were there, particularly with Kumail and Barry’s characters, Kingo and Druig. But we don’t spend enough time getting to know them as friends and it truly feels like the actors didn’t either. We hope to see the Eternals again, just not like this.

What did you think of Eternals? Turns out this is more divisive than we expected so we want to hear your takes. Let us know over on Twitter or in the Youtube comments! We’re well on our way to 2,000 subs so if you’re not following over there, head on over and usually you’ll catch episodes releasing earlier than they do on the podcast feeds (like this one). For now though, live for seven thousand years, fly into the sun because you’re a baby, and settle in for today’s kinda downer episode of So…I’m Watching This Show!

ETERNALS SHOWNOTES!