And then looked to be starting to go Hentai-light on Angelina Jolie.
Honestly, the deviants made little sense overall. Oh, I'm just going full spoilers here. I don't think anyone in this thread is going to care or that it will affect anyone's enjoyment. This thread is 90% just talking about wokeness and how crap it is. But heads-up for the one person who cares.
So yeah, the deviants. Near the start it's stated that they went for humans not eternals, and that the eternals just interposed themselves and it was odd that one specifically went after them rather than humans. But if their motivation turns out to be revenge against the eternals, why is this new? So much about them makes no sense.
Especially the part where they're back, and mutated (or whatever) to now be able to absorb the power of Eternals, something they explicitly couldn't do before. The entire "the Deviants are back OMG" plot thread feels like something left over from a much earlier draft of the script that whatever knucklehead was in charge forgot to fully excise. A much better explanation for it would have been "the Deviants never actually returned, Sprite and Ikarus faked the whole thing to cover up Ajak's murder."
I liked Mr. Patel. The videographer who was filming the Bollywood Eternal. Honestly, those two are actually my favourite characters by some margin, though Angelina Jolie is very good with what she's given.
None of the actors sucked except for Robb Stark (some of the time) and Bottled Water (all the time.)
Sprite asks "why did Asheram (sp?) make me like this?" with the implication that she was doomed never to have a relationship with LaserFace because of it. Rather cruelly, I could interpret that as "I'm not very pretty" but the film was obviously intending it to be about her age. Thing is, if she were literally a child that would make sense but she looks around 17. So yeah, you wouldn't date a real life 17yo if you were in your late twenties. At least not in Western culture. But she's hardly unable or unready for adult things. Without trying to do the "but she's really 3,000 years old meme," in the context of a film she is an adult who has a late teenage body. If she and LaserFace were in love, it's not insurmountable.
I think it was more supposed to be that she was trapped in a psychologically immature state that corresponded to her physical one, while being smart enough to understand how much she was missing by being unable to move on from it. Puberty sucks enough for one lifetime, now imagine that being your whole existence.
The Deus Ex Machinae (very literally given what the Eternals turn out to be) is way too much for me. It basically goes:
Sersi: I can only transform non-living things.
Sersi: I just transformed a deviant which is a living thing (no explanation)
Sersi: I can now transform a celestial (little explanation, vague reference to eternals becoming part of a group mind with the celestial at the moment of its birth).
I mean movies these days are prone to "hero suddenly finds ability / strength at last moment due to great emotional need" but this was at whole other level.
It's especially grating since they had a working plan already via George mind-controlling it, which is exactly what his power is. Then Ikarus killed him, and they needed to go with Sersi as plan B- only it turned out he wasn't dead after all, but they give up on that plan anyway because... reasons.
Also, is it me or were the Eternals as a whole pretty weak? Obviously they are physically more robust than humans and don't age but they're pretty lacklustre. Sprite's powers are cool and impressive. Bollywood dude basically has built in guns/bombs. Thena is a skilled swordswoman. LaserFace is up there in that he seems to have the main Superman powers (damage resistant, strength, eye beams) but that's about it. Honestly I struggle to see how a handful of people with mostly low-tier powers could really protect humanity against the deviants that much.
They're much more speciated than a group like the Avengers or the Justice League, who all tend to be all-rounders in terms of abilities. The Eternals are more like an RPG party with dedicated melee, support, mez, etc. I agree that when your job is to protect an entire planet that this team is woefully inadequate for the job, but they were clearly intended to function as a team.
Film should have started with the Bollywood production of the Eternals and done the entire thing through the lens of Kingo (I looked up Bollywood character's name). It starts with the Bollywood production and moves into him telling the story as they go. Could potentially have been a wild way to do a movie.
I would watch the shit out of that movie, though if I had to guess, I'd say that Chloe Zhao was most at home shooting in the high prairie of South Dakota or the Australian Outback. Those were the only times that the movie had any soul that wasn't imparted by the actors.
