I can also describe Anaheim California as a "pretty good" city, but that doesn't mean I'd like to live there. Likewise a movie can be pretty good but still not be without its faults. And the Eternals does, indeed, have some faults. That said, I consider the reaction of the public at large to this movie to be overtly overstated, summarized as in effect an over-reaction. This necessitates a response couched in awareness of context and externalities, and requires an element primarily of simplicity beyond all this prevarication. It is within those bonds that my following analysis is embedded, and that allows me with confidence to generalize the below.
Y'all need to calm down.
No, Eternals isn't perfect. But the simple fact of the matter is that in terms of being a PG-13 Marvel action-blockbuster (the only terms most of the fandom cares about, I assure you), it's perfectly fine. Flawed in some ways, but in others nearly flawless. For me personally it falls somewhere in the middle of the MCU as a whole, but still in the upper half.
Should we talk about the flaws for a bit? Let's do that. I'll speak on these generally, so as to avoid any spoilers, in case you're still making up your mind about whether you want to see the movie and you want to know what's likely to grate if you do, like sandpaper on bare skin. To be fair to the film, all of the sandpapers I'm about to mention are very high grit and rather smooth compared to most superhero movies, and if you've got pretty good callouses built up toward movies of this genre, they may not bother you at all.
That's a weird analogy, now that I look at it, made somehow even worse by the fact that it's actually pretty good.
So, issues. The first one is pacing. The movie is paced slower than most action films. And that's not to say there's no action, because there is plenty, and it's quite good. And it's also not to say that they needed to cut stuff out, because this movie has a whack-ton of characters in it and everything that's in there needs to be there if you're going to have a prayer of understanding these characters. But simply because the cast is so large the movie does feel slower than something like Thor Ragnarok, and I can understand why some audience members wouldn't like that too much.
The second issue is with story structure. See, this is one of those "cosmic superhero" MCU movies, so the settings and storytelling are more in line with stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor than Iron Man or The Winter Soldier. And because we're dealing in timescales of thousands of years in regards to our character's development, there are flashbacks. In the case of Eternals, there are a lot of flashbacks. I understand why they're there, and they all do a pretty good job of characterizing the people the movie is about in ways that help the audience understand, but they can be a little jarring. I'm not sure how you fix that, and I can't think of another way to tell the story that would be better. But it's worth knowing to expect those flashbacks before you start watching.
Those are the main issues, really. There were some performances that weren't amazing, but they were still perfectly fine. There were some moments where the CGI wasn't perfect, but it was still leagues better than most movies generally speaking. And setting aside those couple of sticking points, the rest of the movie is pretty excellent. The fight choreography is amazing, and we finally have a speedster in the MCU that feels as cool as the Flash or the X-Men version of Quicksilver. The script is pretty well written and for the most part the performances from the various actors were absolutely spot on. The standout for me was actually Angelina Jolie, whom I had genuinely forgotten could act given the last thing I saw her in was a re-watch of the original Tomb Raider movie a few years back. But she was really good in this, and I really want to see more of her character.
The location scouting and set dressing was also good, and the antagonist, while at first seeming rather generic, actually ended up being pretty amazing from a visual and character design perspective at least. The various powers of the Eternals themselves were very interesting, and the movie functioned well within the existing MCU while still feeling fresh. We haven't really had an ensemble film in the MCU with an entirely new cast of characters for a while, and the formula was a nice change of pace. The breadth of individual character experiences and traits was great for representation purposes as well as, just, you know... being interesting to watch. Over all, the movie was largely very good and I want to watch more movies about these people.
So there you have it. I consider the issues with this film to not be dealbreakers, and honestly if you expect them going in I don't think they'll negatively affect your viewing experience that much at all. I have seen a lot of other criticisms outside of what I called out above, but the majority of those boil down to some form of bigotry, and I don't see how any of them are valid to someone with a correctly functioning world-view.
But you know, feel free to comment and let me know if you had any complaints that aren't bigotry or related to pacing. I'm always open to being proven wrong.
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