I’m still so confused about The Eternals! The full-length trailer was released on Monday and while it answers some questions, I feel like the story is possibly based on several episodes of Ancient Aliens! The premise behind so many episodes of Ancient Aliens is that humanoid aliens came to earth in the early days of humanity and they taught early humans how to live better, like with math, science, plumbing, irrigation and architecture. Does that not look like the plot of The Eternals?
So the Eternals never interfered during world wars and global famines and genocides. They never interfered when the Avengers were doing their sh-t for years. But now, suddenly, they’re interfering. For reasons! From what we can see of the characters, they look pretty cool. Gemma Chan is seriously one of the most beautiful women in the world and being able to see her on the same Marvel team with Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek is going to be pretty special. Did you catch a glimpse of Jon Snow/Kit Harington as well? He plays Black Knight, hm. Of course there’s Richard Madden (Ikaris), Kumail Nanjiani (Kingo), Brian Tyree Henry (Phastos) and Ma Dong-seok (Gilgamesh??!)
So… yeah, Marvel will get my money on this one. I’m a sucker for Marvel’s Ancient Aliens.
the eternals while all the avengers was getting they shit rocked by thanos pic.twitter.com/2SFdfWRu5o
— ً (@cartixolsen) May 24, 2021
the eternals watching the avengers fail to stop their cousin from killing half the universe pic.twitter.com/YbsliPCkU9
— alyssa (@theironwidow) May 24, 2021
Photos courtesy of Marvel.
This might be the first movie I go back to a theatre for.
Just thinking the same thing as I was scrolling through the post! A good Marvel movie around thanksgiving would be perfect.
That and whatever Tom Cruise is doing
You have me confused with someone else.
I’m all for the new phase, bored of avengers etc, I want more space weirdness! Also, ange does not suit that wig 🙁
That wig is bad.
Yes and yes! Not sure who did that to her or why, it’s a shame.
I really hope I can see this at the cinema.
Yikes on the wig.
The wigs are always bad on her – why?
The wig thing with her is the biggest mystery. Is it her hair guy that is incompetent? It would explain why they are so bad on all her movies. How is the director looking at the daily rushes not addressing this right away?
I didn’t see Kit in the trailer, but i’ll have to watch it again. I am laughing at those tweets though. What happened “now” that the Eternals are going to get involved, but Thanos etc wasn’t enough for them to get involved?
It looks really good, the cast looks amazing.
MTE about the Eternals not getting involved…like, Thanos wiped out half of all life in the universe (which technically could have meant that some of them were affected, no?) but that still wasn’t enough?
The cast does look amazing but I’m still on the fence about this, maybe I’ll be more into it if they drop a second trailer later on and I can get a clearer idea of what it’s about.
To be fair, all that stuff happened rather suddenly. They may not have had time to mobilize.
I like the tweets more than the trailer!
Hahahaha yes!
Soooo the whole ancient alien interference trope, though interesting, is pretty white supremacist (like, ancient non-white cultures couldn’t have built incredible civilizations themselves?) so I’m super interested in how this will be handled! Just because they reference it doesn’t mean they can’t expertly subvert it or change its meaning.
So yeah, I’ll have to watch because of Angelina and I also love a good music trailer
I had the same thoughts re: civilisation. I hope it’s in the form of the Eternals assisted, not that they built these structures with magic or whatever. I’m still excited for it though because my favourite part of the MCU is all the outer space stuff. Earth-bound heroes are great but I want to explore the entire universe. And yes to Angelina. Honestly, the entire cast is good-looking.
Sounds like you haven’t seen Ancient Aliens! Aliens are assumed to have interfered in lots of places! They are the answer to pretty much any mystery LOL The underlying assumption is that the greatest minds of our time were given the gift of knowledge by the aliens. Da Vinci? Aliens. Nikola Tesla? Aliens. Alchemy in France? Aliens. DNA in Scotland? Aliens. Founding fathers of the US? Aliens.
No, I haven’t seen Ancient Aliens, since as I mentioned above it’s a trope that’s much older than any specific tv show. Glad the one you mentioned subverts it by making all human invention/ progress an alien interference (though that’s still pretty boring to me).
White people devaluing non-white civilizations with alien theories long predates Ancient Aliens. And we all know that if they go this route, it will be black and brown civilizations that will be most downgraded since they were far more impressive in early history. Marvel had better not drag Wakanda into this nonsense although I can’t see Ryan Coogler letting them anywhere near with that colonial trash.
I have fun watching that show and throwing archaeology back at it. I read up on a lot of ancient cultures out of pure fascination. It really is insulting how those guys on Ancient Aliens refuse to give humanity anywhere on the planet credit for being smart and figuring out problems. Not that there isn’t a lot of spiritual mystery at the heart of human existence and that we can look forward to official government reports about UFOs, but please, give our ancient ancestors credit for having some smarts.
I’ve never heard of it being applied exclusively to non-white civilizations, but my interest in ancient alien intervention admittedly doesn’t extend beyond the show 🙂
I’m not faulting your interest! 🙂 if you want to read up:
https://www.google.de/amp/s/decider.com/2020/06/16/ancient-aliens-racist-i-said-it/amp/
(Just took today’s first google result. There is much more research that exists on this)
“The problem is that the basic concept of Ancient Aliens is, well, rather racist. The implicit suggestion that ancient cultures, often non-white ones, would be incapable of advanced art, science, or architecture is problematic, to say the least. It’s a blindspot perpetuating the insidious idea that non-white, non-modern, and even non-Christian peoples were intrinsically dumb, when we have ample evidence to the contrary.
historians and archaeologists actually have a long-rooted habit of refusing to believe that non-white civilizations could have been sophisticated in their own right. The PBS docu-series Africa’s Great Civilizations broaches this head on. In Episode 3, host Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. introduces the magnificent city of Ife. When white archaeologists uncovered some of the spectacular sculptures Ife was known for, they decided that the exquisite masks or busts had to be connected to the mythic city of Atlantis. Atlantis, like “ancient aliens,” is often the lazy codeword some scholars turn to when they don’t want to wrap their heads around a non-white, non-Christian culture accomplishing greatness.”
Yeah, there is sadly a racist angle in every discipline. I guess I didn’t appreciate it in the context of the show because it seems to place the aliens in every major civilization, and 90% of antiquity pre-dated Christianity. I agree with the overall critique that it’s ridiculous to think that the ancients were too stupid to come up with math and technology in 3000 years, yet we were somehow able to make major leaps and gains in just 300 years. Like, of course there were no aliens, and the technology was just a result of human innovation. We are currently just too stupid to understand it yet. We need God and aliens to make us feel less stupid lol
Thank you for mentioning this because it really annoys me when people talk about how fun or cute the concept of Ancient Aliens is because it’s steeped in racism and White supremacy.
Im pretty confident in saying that ive never watched a marvel movie. The trailer looks pretty cool tho. Do you need to watch all the other movies before watching this one?
Probably not. Although there are themes that run through every MCU film and links to other story lines in the others, most of the original franchise films stand on their own to introduce a set of characters. There don’t appear to be any overlapping characters in this one like there were in other MCU films. They do reference Iron Man and Steve Rogers in this trailer but they’re not in the film.
Haha I treat Marvel like a buffet. I just pick and choose what seems interesting and if it interests me further, based on reviews, then I’ll watch some more.
The thing about Marvel is that a lot of it relies very heavily on traditional story structures, movie tropes, cgi eye candy, the usual action movie editing and camera shots to direct the audience’s focus. There are very few movies where I would say the dialog is essential (and I know this because sometimes I watch the movies in French, which I do not speak, to see how much I can guess re character development and plot).
I’m slightly interested in this based on the previews of cinematography and the potential of what Chloe Zhao could bring to the table. As for “why interference now?” I think climate change. The long shot of the ocean at the beginning of the trailer, the initial images of water and plants, the image of the volcano erupting, “why does the sun keep on shining.” They don’t interfere with humans, but the trailer seems to imply that they saved a (presumably) barren planet and its inhabitants from turning into Mars.
Not a big Marvel fan, I probably won’t see this until it’s on streaming. Gemma is gorgeous though. She really has a great movie star presence onscreen.
This is the first marvel movie where I really don’t know anything about the characters so I’m excited to go in basically blind in terms of expectations.
The movie seems like it’ll be beautiful visually.
Same, and I’ve read Marvel comics for a long time, lol.
Am looking forward to this, but looking forward even more to the Ms. Marvel series. Can’t wait for that gem of a comic to make it to the screen and to see what everyone here thinks of Kamala Khan.
I’m looking forward to seeing the movie even though I’m not a Marvel fan.
Also, I still cannot believe that Gemma Chan was married to Jack Whitehall.
Gemma was never married to Jack. They broke up because he didn’t want to have kids. It’s difficult to believe that she wanted to have kids with him though
It’s difficult to believe Jack Whitehall is straight to start with. You learn something new everyday.
Excited for this! So far Phase Four of Marvel projects is looking fantastic and different from the previous movies and I think it’s for the best.
So is Gemma Chan a different character then she was in Captain Marvel? Wasn’t she a bad guy in that one?
She’s a different character.
She’s a different character. Her character had so much makeup/CGI in Captain Marvel that no one will recognize her here.
I will watch this and be entertained! Woohoo. Love Gemma and Angelina.
I do love the little thing at the end too – I’m glad the Marvel humour will remain
Space!Marvel is my favorite – I love Thor and Guardians and look forward to the more out-there stories. That said, there’s something that seems distinctly different and less warm about Phase 4 Marvel movies. Maybe I just need to get used to new characters, I don’t know, but both this and Shang Chi’s trailer lack *something* that most Marvel movies possess. I hope I’m wrong.
Actually, that was the same feeling I had about Guardians of the Galaxy, because I knew nothing about any of it, but it turned out to be a wonderful, delightful surprise. I’m giving this a chance.
I love superhero films. I love Angelina, Kumail, Salma, and Barry, so I’m definitely here for this movie. I’m laughing at the Tweets where Richard Madden as Ikaris wants to be the new leader of the Avengers and there’s a pic of Angelina’s Thena giving him the “bitch please” look. LOL 😂.
This is Chloe Zhao’s vision and I am really curious to see what she does with this material. It does not play like the other highly polished supercharged Marvel films. The look and feel of it is definitely Nomadland-ish. So like a space Western? I was disappointed in how Patty Jenkins handled WW2 — WW being my favorite superhero. That was just awful. But I also want to watch this film to support Asian women directors ☺️.
I don’t know…. I found this trailer pretty underwhelming.
I’ll probably watch it once it’s on streaming or on a plane. The premise looks interesting but I haven’t enjoyed watching movies in a theater in a long time.
Trailer was so incredibly uninspiring but I’m obviously going to watch it because Angelina and Gemma. Also ready for Lauren Ridloff to shine
Drive in worthy!
I only watched the first two Iron Man films then abandoned the Marvel world. I couldn’t even watch WandaVision because it was over my head. I’m excited for this new story because I get in at the ground level. Plus, I love the cast. I might be tempted to sit in a theater to watch this – but would definitely pay to watch in the comfort of my home.
Gemma getting top billing! Get it!
As I was reading about this the other day, I thought, “Cool…cool…cool…ugh, Kit Harrington?!”
Personally, I find Harrington’s screen presence to fit with something Stephen Colbert said about a terminally boring primary candidate way back in the days of The Colbert Report: “He is made of manila envelopes.”
I was all in with the previous Marvel movies but I haven’t been interested since the last phase ended. I have Falcon and Winter Solider on my To Watch List and I’m still not 100% interested in making the shift to watch it. I don’t know why but this just isn’t making me excited.
This plot looks ridiculous, I am here for Richard and Angie’s look is cool. That’s all I have.
Watching in it 🔥🔥
The two Stark boys are back I see. I’m confused on what this movie is about. I’m sure it will end up being a blockbuster.
Ooooooh! Looking forward to this!
I’m looking forward to Phase 4! Black Widow, Shang Chi, Eternals…
It’s the same song Brittany Murphy’s (RIP) character plays when taking her own life, at the prodding of Angelina’s character, in Girl, Interrupted!
Maybe you already know this, but you are right it’s Ancient Aliens. The original creator of the Eternals, Jack Kirby, was a fan of and inspired by Dänikens “Chariot of the Gods?”, which Ancient Aliens is partially based on. (He did not believe in the theories, though.)