On the first anniversary of the premiere of the MCU movie Eternals, fans are re-rating the movie and debating whether it was a good or bad movie.
On the first birthday of the Eternals premiere, fans are re-evaluating the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film and are debating its quality on social media. Marking the 26th film in the MCU, Eternals features an A-list cast including Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Barry Keoghan, Kumail Nanjiani and Salma Hayek. The film follows a race known as The Eternals, immortal beings who have lived secretly on Earth for thousands of years after being sent there to defeat The Deviants. When the Deviants were defeated, the Eternals broke up and lived hidden among the humans. However, when the Deviants return, The Eternals must come out of hiding and unite to fight them again.
Eternals was a fairly historic film in terms of representation and inclusivity. It featured Marvel’s first openly gay superhero, Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), and the first deaf superhero, Makkari (Lauren Ridloff). In addition to these milestones, it had the most diverse cast of any Marvel movie. However, Eternals received mixed reviews upon release and is the lowest Marvel project on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 47%. The plot, long running time, and poor character development have been criticized, leading some to consider sternly: Eternals the worst Marvel movie.
Eternals started trending on Twitter as fans re-rated the film in light of its 1st anniversary. The revaluations turned into a debate as fans disagreed on the quality of the film. Some posts were made in honor of the anniversary as fans of the movie called it “Eternal Day” and gave them praise of the film. However, other posts were confused about where the love came from when the film was slammed on release. Surprisingly, the majority of posts seemed to support the idea that: Eternals was judged too harshly when it was released and that a significant portion of the fans loved it. Check out some Tweets below:
Was Eternals really that bad?
The outpouring of love for Eternals on its birthday begs the question of whether it’s a bit harsh to label it as a bad movie. The problem is that many rate the film in comparison to the other films of the MCU. However, few MCU movies have missed their mark, and many have been undeniably positively received. Therefore, when? Eternals broke that mold by having a few flaws and not being received unequivocally positively, it may have made the movie worse than it was. The best way to describe Eternals is that it wasn’t a success, but it wasn’t a terrible movie either.
Eternals struggled with not developing the characters properly. The large cast was partly to blame for this problem, and it was a huge shame because the actors had such potential. Also, the film’s positives—its representation, depth of source material, and beautiful cinematography—were diminished by the overarching end-of-the-world screenplay that just didn’t fit. Needless to say it had some pros and cons, and could have been better. However, that also applies to many films. Its flaws were enough to keep it from being a great movie, but not enough to make it completely devoid of fun. So no Eternals really isn’t that bad, it’s just a movie whose flaws have been blown out of proportion due to the high expectations of its MCU predecessors.
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