How Marvel's Eternals Succeeds Where Captain America: Civil War Failed

| November viii, 2021 |

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Cast of Marvel's Eternals — *Photo: Curiosity Studios*

This article contains MAJOR ETERNALS spoilers. You can read our spoiler-free review of the MCU picture here.

If you break Marvel's Eternals downward to a barebones premise, the latest MCU film is the story of a family that loves each other merely is torn asunder by ideological differences in spite of that love. It'due south i of the more topical thematic explorations in the MCU pantheon—a central tension Helm America: Civil War promised us, but never fully delivered on.

Eternals isn't virtually Deviants. Information technology'southward non about shepherding humanity through millennia of technological evolution. It'south not even nigh a Celestial partially emerging into the Indian Body of water. OK, it's well-nigh all of those things—but the story at its eye, the one it commits all-time to, is the story of a family unit coming back together in a time of crisis, only to be confronted with how they all have or haven't inverse in that fourth dimension apart.

Does this family even so work? Exercise they even desire to? What is each of its members willing to sacrifice in guild to maintain some semblance of equanimity within the grouping? These are the thematic tensions Eternals grapples with in surprisingly circuitous and unexpected ways, building to a climax that manages to dodge well-nigh of the 3rd-human activity pitfalls that plague most MCU offerings.

Civil War has a similar conceit at its eye. What happens when a family unit—in this instance, the Avengers—is faced with a major conclusion, merely to notice that they autumn on opposite sides of an ideological split up?

In the atomic number 82 up to Civil War , many fans (including this 1) got excited to see the MCU grapple with the complex themes presented in the comics source textile. In the seven-upshot limited series and its loose big-screen adaptation, the U.Due south. government passes a Superhero Registration Act that volition finer place super-powered individuals under official regulation. The superhero community is divided in the storyline that explores the tension betwixt freedom and security, and the film adaptation was poised to pick up the thematic threads left lingering at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier .

However, while Ceremonious State of war presents a like premise, with Captain America and Fe Human being falling on different sides of the political argument, the flick eventually pulls its ideological punches in the third act, dumbing downward the conflict to an interpersonal dispute over Bucky, who killed Tony's parents when he was the Winter Soldier. It works on an emotional level, equally the MCU has spent many films developing these characters and their relationships, but it fails in its main thematic aspirations.

Eternals doesn't have the benefit of many films of graphic symbol development to support its emotional stakes, and audiences are divided on whether the picture show succeeds in making us care virtually these characters and their drama. However, when it comes to its thematic aspirations, Eternals succeeds where Civil War could not, with members of the Eternals family brutally fighting in the film's third deed, driven by their opposing ideological beliefs.

Sersi and Ikaris

On one side, we have Sersi, the Eternal who has always loved humanity. When nosotros first meet her present-day incarnation, she is immersed in human civilization—both past, in her beloved of antiquities, and present, in her passion for instruction kids and in her dear of Dane. She spends her evenings at the pubs, and seems happy in her mundane, human existence.

On the other side of the ideological spectrum is Ikaris, the Eternal who has removed himself from humanity in recent centuries. Unlike Sersi, he has never sought to be amid the people, just rather to stand apart from them. In the present-day narrative, he has spent hundreds of years making peace with the idea that humanity must die so that other life in the universe can develop.

In many ways, Sersi is an outlier within her family unit. Like Ikaris, swain Eternals Ajak, Gilgamesh, and Thena have all maintained a degree of isolation from humanity, fifty-fifty whilst remaining on World. Though Gilgamesh and Thena's distance is spurred by necessity rather than choice (as Thena'southward deteriorating mental status makes her a danger to others), it is never implied that they miss the opportunity to mingle with mortals.

Kingo, Druig, and Makkari

Even Kingo and Druig, who both have a gaggle of human followers—in their Bollywood moving picture-making career and Amazonian cult, respectively—distance themselves from those humans within a bureaucracy. They both seem to revel in their positions of power, and treat those who live in their communities equally underlings rather than friends, family unit, or more broadly as whatever kind of equals.

Kingo is so emotionally discrete from humanity that, when the battle to save Earth or not comes upwardly, he simply opts out. He just doesn't have a strong opinion on its upshot either way, which is such an unexpected superhero delineation and makes sense equally a possible mindset for these god-similar characters who have been brought to Earth as paternalistic stewards with a mission that has always been depicted every bit ending with their departure to an elsewhere home.

Makkari seems to fall somewhere close to Kingo in her connectedness to humanity; she seemingly has just been hanging out on the Eternals' spaceship, waiting to go dwelling. When a fight is forced, she sides with a majority of her family, including Druig, whom she is closest to, but it is not depicted as coming from a love for humanity.

Sprite and Phastos

Sprite and Phastos have more in common with Sersi than they practise with the residue of the coiffure. Phastos has integrated into homo guild fifty-fifty more so than Sersi, marrying a man and fathering a child; he's as well depicted as being devastated at his role in contributing to humanity's hurting and suffering. His motivation in the terminal fight is unnecessarily confused by a dislike of Ikaris, which is not developed over the grade of the movie only rather told to u.s.a. in the third act.

Meanwhile, Sprite badly wishes to be part of the human experience, but is kept away from it past virtue of her childlike appearance. Later in the film'due south run, we are told she is and always has been in love with Ikaris (a character evolution that, similar Phastos' dislike of Ikaris, also feels shoehorned in at the last infinitesimal). Because of this, she sides with his character in the climactic fight for Earth'due south hereafter.

More interestingly, her character motivation here is ironically informed by wanting to be a part of humanity. Bitter that she can never be mortal in the ways she wishes to be, she would rather see humanity destroyed than continue to exist forced to live alongside it yet autonomously.

Arishem's Manipulation

The Eternals' choice is made even more than complicated by the reveal that Arishem (and, by extension, Ajak) has been lying to them for their unabridged lives on Earth. The Eternals are synthetic beings made by Arishem. They have been sent to Earth not to guide humanity to a better society but to grow the population until it is large enough to facilitate the Emergence of a Celestial, which will upshot in Earth's destruction. They find that they take lived many lives doing this verbal mission on countless planets, with their memory erased after each successful Emergence.

The Eternals react to the news of Arishem'southward manipulation and World's impending doom in a variety of ways. Some are shocked and horrified. Others are unsurprised and/or are not particularly bothered. Ikaris is revealed to take known for centuries, a knowledge that has served to isolate himself from both his family and from humanity. While the reactions are informed by the group's interpersonal dynamics, they are mainly driven by each member's human relationship to their original mission.

Ceremonious War drops its ideological framework completely in its 3rd-act throwdown between Tony and Steve, only Eternals recognizes that information technology doesn't have to choose. Information technology all comes down to the ultimate showdown between Sersi and Ikaris.

Sersi believes humanity should not be sacrificed for Tiamut to live, and that they can find another way to ensure Arishem's primary plan. Ikaris, however, believes that Tiamut must emerge at present to ensure future lives elsewhere, and that Earth's destruction is an adequate cost. Surprisingly, the movie doesn't depict Ikaris' perspective as monstrous or objectively wrong, instead leaving space for the viewer (and other members of the ensemble) to wonder if Ikaris has a point. Instead, the film makes its definitive thematic argument in Ikaris' love for Sersi.

Ultimately, Ikaris doesn't want to hurt Sersi more than he wants to follow his personal beliefs. And, ouch, what a tragic and relatable human experience to make your fundamental thematic statement (though 1 dislocated past Ikaris' cold-blooded murder of Ajak).

In the end, Civil State of war wasn't ambitious plenty to try to bring both its interpersonal drama and its ideological framework into its 3rd act. Eternals , on the other hand, goes for information technology, depicting an emotional climax that shows how hard, confusing, and heartbreaking it can be to attempt to negotiate our dear for our family unit with our ideology—and hammering information technology home non in the protagonist'due south climactic determination, but through what is ostensibly the film's villain.

We all be within families, communities, and other interpersonal networks that are inextricable from our ideology, for improve and for worse. Eternals doesn't just recognize that reality; it stakes its entire story on it… different Captain America: Civil State of war .