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The climactic events of 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” ended the storyline for two of its most popular characters, Chris Evans’ Captain America and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, leaving audiences wondering what direction Phase 4 of the second highest-grossing film franchise of all time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) would take them in.

Following many delays throughout the pandemic, the first step for the new era of Marvel arrived on streaming services, with three Marvel projects debuting on Disney+ in the beginning of 2021. The three shows — “WandaVision,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and “Loki” — and two movies — “Black Widow” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” — were all very entertaining and did help push the narrative of the story, but they were not the mass-productions that MCU fans were used to.

Then, on Nov. 5, perhaps the most ambitious MCU project to-date, “Eternals,” was released, creating an enigma for the future of the MCU.

Directed by Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao and starring a collection of 10 Hollywood stars — including Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie and Kumail Nanjiani — “Eternals” follows a group of immortal superheroes who were sent to Earth to fight off an alien race known as the Deviants, as well as to help humanity advance over many centuries. In the movie, Zhao tells a nonlinear story, with key events taking place in modern-day London, as well as flashbacks to Mesopotamia in 5000 B.C. and the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521.

As the story progresses, the Eternals learn their true purpose on Earth and face an ideological split as a result. After a typical Marvel third-act fight sequence, the film concludes with some of the Eternals traveling through space and others electing to stay on Earth. Three weeks after its general release, “Eternals” has grossed just over $368.5 million worldwide with a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes.

While the film is entertaining and well-directed by Zhao, it might have been too ambitious to be received well critically. Attempting to introduce 10 brand-new characters into the MCU while providing little backstory for any of them this far down the road is a very difficult task, even for an Academy Award-winning director.

Having to provide sufficient backstory for each of the 10 Eternals and allow the audience to form an emotional connection with each of the characters forced Zhao and the writers of the film to rush certain major plot details and made the ending of the film feel very rushed and forced.

One of the biggest themes in the film is the idea of immortality and how it makes it difficult for these powerful beings to live for thousands of years without true human connection. This would have been a much deeper concept to explore if the audience got more backstory on each of the Eternals and how each of them have attempted to live normal lives over the course of their existence.

The character development that was missing from this film was replaced with the cliche MCU dry humor and unnecessary references from past MCU events and pop culture, such as YouTube, Superman and IKEA. These humorous moments work much better in MCU projects where audiences understand which characters are meant to be sarcastic, but they fall flat in “Eternals,” when we don’t know who is supposed to be serious and who is supposed to be sarcastic.

Future MCU projects like “Ms. Marvel” and “Moon Knight” will rely on introducing audiences to lesser-known leading characters and storylines in a similar way to what “Eternals” tried to do. It will be important for these projects to focus on character development above any other part of the story. This will make it much easier for audiences to form real connections with these lesser-known characters, as they have with Rocket Raccoon and the Winter Soldier.

The MCU has been able to dominate Hollywood for the last 13 years largely because of the incredible performances it has gotten from its actors to create beloved characters. In order for the franchise to move forward, the writers must continue to focus on character development and not worry too much about writing extremely complicated plots for the characters to solve.

Published on November 29, 2021 at 9:52 pm