Eternals
“While race is not overtly addressed in Eternals, neither is the casting colorblind.”
Title: Eternals (2021)
Director: Chloé Zhao 👩🏻🇨🇳🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Chloé Zhao 👩🏻🇨🇳🇺🇸, Patrick Burleigh 👨🏼🇺🇸, Ryan Firpo 👨🏼🇺🇸, and Kaz Firpo 👨🏻🇺🇸
Reviewed by Mimi 👩🏻🇺🇸
—SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 3.75/5
The iconic superheroes that most of us grew up watching on the big and small screens—usually straight, white, and male—have become so ingrained in our minds, it can be difficult to imagine something different. The first wave of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films that began in the aughts adhered completely to that masculine fantasy, featuring in succession: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. Strong, powerful men, but singular in their uniqueness as rugged mavericks and lone wolves.
But like all universes, the MCU inevitably expanded. I say “inevitably” because, try as they might to retell the same story over and over again (see: every reboot since 2002’s Spider-Man), studios also need new stories, new faces, and new points of view in order to keep feeding the content beast. Later films such as Black Panther (2018), Captain Marvel (2019), and most recently Shang-Chi (2021) proved how popular and successful it can be to dip, even just a small toe, outside the expected norm.
While those films still roughly follow the same formula of the typical superhero movie, Eternals offers an unequivocal departure. For this reason alone, it’s perhaps unsurprising that critical reception remains divided.
Originating from a comic book series that debuted in 1976, the Eternals refer to a group of immortal aliens sent to Earth to watch over human civilization. Although kept in the dark about the true purpose of their mission, they’re instructed not to interfere in the affairs of people while protecting them from deadly creatures known as Deviants.
Director Chloé Zhao brings to the ambitious project that same sensibility for gorgeous landscapes and restrained character portraits seen in her previous work Nomadland (2020), for which she won an Academy Award, and The Rider (2018). Eternals, with credit to director of photography Ben Davis, is visually stunning. The CGI used to illustrate various powers appears seamless, beautiful even. The actors have never looked better. (I could stare at Salma Hayek’s perfect bone structure all day.) They’re smartly cast and flawlessly perform their roles as god-like figures who feel conflicted about their responsibilities to humankind.
If the film does suffer, it’s from under an immense weight—not only the galactic scale necessary to the story’s world-building, but also the greater Marvel universe. With stray references to plot points from the MCU’s Avengers saga, Eternals struggles with its obligation to stay connected. Possibly because the installment exists so far removed from its predecessors, it requires far more exposition, meaning the larger-than-life stakes sometimes get lost.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
Sersi, played by British Asian actress Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians), emerges as the story’s protagonist—though you wouldn’t know it from watching the trailers. Part of me wonders if the bait-and-switch inadvertently threw viewers expecting a more traditional Marvel film. Instead of being tokenized, female characters balance the number of male characters within the ten Eternals. When the mother figure of the group Ajak (Hayek) is killed by the Deviants they believed to have been exterminated thousands of years ago, she leaves Sersi to succeed her.
As their newly chosen leader, Sersi must reunite the Eternals, who by this time have spread out across the globe, living separate lives. But not everyone, including Sersi herself, appears confident in her abilities to guide them, especially those who have always regarded Ikaris (Richard Madden) as the most powerful. The revelation that the Eternals were essentially created to allow Earth to incubate a giant entity known as a Celestial, whose Emergence will destroy the planet, further divides the group between those like Ikaris who believe in following orders and those like Sersi who want to save humanity. Both Sersi and her forerunner Ajak lean into maternal archetypes as nurturers and healers, whose instinct is to preserve life, not destroy it.
Sersi and Ikaris’ past romantic relationship (featuring “the MCU’s first sex scene”) and sudden split are gradually revealed over the course of the film. Yet where Sersi ultimately draws strength from is not the love for a male partner, as is the case in DC's Wonder Woman (2017), but in her own conviction of what’s right. Ikaris, in fact, turns out to be the villain and the one who murdered Ajak, proving that being the most physically dominant does not always equate with being the best leader. Upending the trope of a solo (and often male) hero, the Eternals must support each other and cooperate in order to succeed.
Race: 5/5
It only dawned on me partway through watching Eternals that a Chinese woman director had managed to make an American superhero movie with a British Chinese woman as its lead. The film had not been marketed that way at all. Interestingly, the storyline has nothing to do with China (unlike in Shang-Chi) but rather takes a cosmopolitan approach as it zips across geographical space and time from present-day London to ancient Babylon.
Although derivative of Greek mythology, the Eternals, we learn in Zhao’s adaptation, serve as the inspiration behind many deities of various cultures and religions around the globe and throughout history. The choice to cast actors of color as the majority of the Eternals characters seemingly emphasizes that pluralistic vision: Hayek (who is Mexican by way of Lebanese and Spanish descent) as Ajak, Kumail Nanjiani (who is Pakistani American) as Kingo, Brian Tyree Henry (a Black American actor) as Phastos, Lauren Ridloff (Black and Mexican American) as Makkari, and Don Lee (a South Korean American actor who also goes by Ma Dong-seok) as Gilgamesh. While race is not overtly addressed in the film, perhaps because the Eternals are not actually human, neither is the casting colorblind. A role specifically tailored for Nanjiani, for example, Kingo has become a Bollywood megastar that doesn’t age in his post-Eternals life.
In other words, the inclusive representation on screen is deliberate. Screenwriters Ryan and Kaz Firpo, cousins who drafted the initial script, have described how growing up in a diverse environment influenced their writing: “The Bay Area is such a magical melting pot. That diversity really shaped our world view, and it's reflected in 'Eternals.'” Kaz Firpo’s Japanese heritage also informed the decision to depict the devastation of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing in a point to show one of humanity’s “greatest failures.”
In the scene, Phastos expresses horror and guilt that his technology could have led to people committing such an atrocity against one another. While the optics of a Black man shouldering the blame troubled some viewers, that he demonstrates a clear-eyed, moral conscience among the group arguably makes sense, considering he more than any of the other Eternals is first to recognize Ikaris’ false sense of superiority. Later during their battle, Phastos binds Ikaris in a symbolic reversal of how history has tended to play out.
Bonus for Disability: +0.50
Ridloff makes history playing Marvel’s first Deaf superhero. The actress shares the same condition as her character Makkari, who communicates using American Sign Language in the film. In addition to her super speed, Makkari’s heightened senses allow her to pick up vibrations. Without falling into the “disability as a superpower” trope, the character’s inclusion underscores how deafness doesn’t have to be treated as a deficit.
In what could be interpreted as a form of neurodiversity or mental illness, Angelina Jolie’s character Thena lives with what Ajak diagnoses as “mahd wy'ry” (which sounds like “mad weary”), the result of too many memories confusing her sense of reality. She unexpectedly attacks her friends, reinforcing an unfortunate stereotype that cognitively disabled people are dangerous, when in reality they’re more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence. Rather than allow Thena to be “cured” by wiping her memory, however, Gilgamesh volunteers to stay with and care for her, allowing her to have a relatively peaceful if occasionally challenging life. Eventually, it comes to light that Thena’s mind is not actually flawed or weak: She is accessing past memories, which their Celestial creator Arishem (voiced by David Kaye) erased from the other Eternals’ consciousness.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25
Notably, Phastos is the MCU’s first openly gay superhero. His relationship with his husband Ben (Haaz Sleiman) and their young son (Esai Daniel Cross) give tangible weight to Phastos’ dilemma as to whether he wants to help the Eternals. Here, the portrayal of an interracial gay family is normalized, albeit in a framework that’s more about assimilation rather than true acceptance for queerness.
On the other hand, the film misses an opportunity to challenge gender binaries. Despite the androgynous appearance of Sprite (Lia McHugh), who inhabits the body of a child, she is gendered as female. It’s not clear why the Eternals have genders at all since we learn that they are not even evolutionary lifeforms, but rather the invention of Arishem.
Mediaversity Grade: A 4.83/5
Eternals, which boasts the most diverse Marvel cast to date, may not be to everybody’s taste—particularly those who find comfort in tradition. Yet, diversity in filmmaking isn’t only about who you put in front of the camera; it demands risk-taking and unconventional approaches to storytelling. This is how the universe expands.
Like Eternals? Try these other superhero titles with a thoughtful twist.
Watchmen
WandaVision
The Old Guard (2020)