76: Eternals (2021)

[00:00:00] Hmm? Ah!

[00:00:02] Hmm...

[00:00:04] So you're saying we're basically fancy robots and our past memories are stored somewhere...in space.

[00:00:14] And Aerosim made the deviants.

[00:00:18] I'm sorry, Theodore. You tried to warn us.

[00:00:22] The last time Aerosim reset your memories, something must have gone wrong.

[00:00:26] What do you mean?

[00:00:28] Well, that's what Madweary is, isn't it?

[00:00:31] All this time, Thenia was remembering all the other planets we were sent to and everyone dying during the emergence.

[00:00:37] I thought we were heroes. Turns out we are the bad guys.

[00:00:41] We're not the bad guys, okay?

[00:00:43] We've helped the Celestials expand life across the universe. That's not what bad guys do. That's what good guys do.

[00:00:50] Every time innocent lives have been sacrificed for the greater good, it turns out to be a mistake.

[00:00:56] We have to stop the emergence.

[00:00:58] Cersei, we have no right to stop the birth of a Celestial.

[00:01:02] There has to be a way Tiamit can emerge without destroying the Earth.

[00:01:05] We just have to delay it until we figure out how.

[00:01:09] Could Druid control its mind? Maybe put it to sleep?

[00:01:14] Put it to sleep? Are you serious?

[00:01:17] Gilgamesh asked Druid to put me to sleep once.

[00:01:20] So I could take a vacation to Fiji, you know?

[00:01:23] We're talking about a Celestial.

[00:01:25] We have to try. We're not going to let everyone on Earth die, right?

[00:01:29] Right.

[00:01:32] I'm human. I'm a little biased.

[00:01:36] The world is ending. Take the ship and go home.

[00:01:40] And do what? Watch TV?

[00:01:43] When I could be with the Earth's original superheroes as they try to save the world?

[00:01:50] Fine. If you want to, stay.

[00:01:54] Thank you very much.

[00:01:56] Gilgamesh, could you please get rid of the saliva beer?

[00:02:01] I thought you liked it, man.

[00:02:03] We need to go. No.

[00:02:05] To find the others.

[00:02:07] Once we're all together, we'll decide what to do about the imagines.

[00:02:11] Hello everybody, welcome to the Marvel TV cast. I'm Penny.

[00:02:19] I'm Rinaldi.

[00:02:20] And I'm Karen.

[00:02:22] Though we usually talk about series on this podcast today,

[00:02:26] we'll be discussing the 2021 film Eternals directed by Chloe Zhao.

[00:02:31] The film is based on characters created by Jack Kirby and was written by Chloe Zhao, Patrick Berlay,

[00:02:40] Ryan Furpo and Kaz Furpo.

[00:02:43] Eternals was met with decent but not blockbuster ticket sales and mixed reviews.

[00:02:47] It's opening weekend in the US and Canada grossed $71 million and the film eventually grossed over $400 million worldwide

[00:02:55] against a budget of around $200 million.

[00:02:57] To put those numbers in context, in 2018 Black Panther grossed over $200 million opening weekend

[00:03:04] and eventually grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.

[00:03:08] In 2023 the Marvels opened with $46 million and World Ride Gross is $206 million.

[00:03:16] Critical reviews were really mixed with many praising Chloe Zhao's aesthetics and the ambitious scope.

[00:03:24] In fact, the use of the word ambitious was in almost every article and review that I looked at.

[00:03:31] But they also called the film messy, long and vacant.

[00:03:35] Today it has a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes Tomato Meter based on 413 reviews and an audience score of 77%.

[00:03:46] And we have a few excerpts from some of the reviews here.

[00:03:51] So Kylie Chung for salon.com, she says in many ways what it means to be human is the central question that drives Eternals.

[00:04:03] But the movies dizzying star power and twisty backstories render it too clunky and overstuffed to concisely answer that central question.

[00:04:14] So John Wenzel for the Denver Post says it was, it's gorgeous and vacant.

[00:04:19] The Eternals is the most numbing entry in Marvel's 13 year old MCU franchise even as it struggles to be its weirdest and most philosophical.

[00:04:29] Sarah Michelle Fedders for moviefreak.com said Eternals shoots for the stars and if the finished feature isn't quite out of this world, it's still close enough to getting there that my interest in seeing where these characters go next is exceedingly high.

[00:04:44] Michael Blackman for Buzzfeed News said Eternals is far from perfect but it pushes the MCU into promising new territory.

[00:04:54] It feels like an amalgam of what Marvel does best, splendidly chaotic fight scenes dazzling special effects and stories that speak to who we are as human beings.

[00:05:06] Wait really? Marvel normally does that? Anyway, that's what Michael Blackman says.

[00:05:15] So Glenn Weldon for NPR says the film pushes back against the usual complaints offered up by those who harbor a performative disdain for Marvel's cinematic output.

[00:05:27] I included that one because I really like the phrase performative disdain.

[00:05:32] Yeah, that's pretty funny.

[00:05:35] Yeah, I listened to Glenn Weldon on pop culture happy hour so that's cool.

[00:05:39] Yeah.

[00:05:40] Peter Travers for ABC News said a Marvel epic that values personal connections over spectacle.

[00:05:45] Sorry, adrenaline junkies, but that's what Oscar winning indie director Chloe Jowell brings to her first blockbuster.

[00:05:51] The result is uneven but memorably inclusive and unique.

[00:05:56] Well now that we know what all of these so-called professionals thought of the film, what did you two think overall?

[00:06:05] So I know that this film has a lot of issues and we can argue the technical parts of that but I love this film.

[00:06:12] It moved me several times and in multiple ways in its exploration of humanity and the human condition.

[00:06:20] I think it's a real love letter to humanity and to the natural world.

[00:06:25] And I love how it dissects myths and legends and how they're made.

[00:06:31] And I've even lived some of these themes about self-determinism and challenging something that I've always subscribed to.

[00:06:39] So it really resonated for me and I also love the cast, the visuals, how bold it is to swing for the fences, how ambitious it is.

[00:06:49] Instead of playing it safe by Marvel standards.

[00:06:52] I'm also like a Chloe Jowell stan, not necessarily of her movies or her works but her approach to filmmaking.

[00:07:00] And yeah, I really like this film and we'll get into that later.

[00:07:07] Renaldi, how about you?

[00:07:09] Man, I enjoy this film and I feel like the only time I place this film in a negative context

[00:07:21] is if I'm ranking it against my top five Marvel films.

[00:07:29] Yeah.

[00:07:31] But outside of that context, it's a film that I love going back to because it's different and it examines characters in a different way

[00:07:46] and it also kind of explores the idea of heroism and places it in a unique context.

[00:07:57] And the way the film is constructed is just, it's a really beautiful look at humanity so that it's like, oh, well this is what they're...

[00:08:09] This is what heroes are trying to save.

[00:08:11] It feels like it's not a stock or a two dimensional look at that topic but it's a more three dimensional look at like, well this is why a hero would idealistically save humanity

[00:08:27] because this is what humanity looks like to them.

[00:08:31] And it's just a different kind of fresh look at just that topic and also just a different fresh look at just an action adventure story.

[00:08:50] So yeah, I feel like Karen had a better way to putting it.

[00:08:58] No, no, no.

[00:09:00] I'm curious to hear what you say.

[00:09:02] We're here for the diversity of ideas.

[00:09:04] We're all about different perspectives.

[00:09:07] This movie is so different.

[00:09:09] It's hard to summarize it into, I feel like summarizing it into a one minute kind of summary.

[00:09:18] Does it deserve a service?

[00:09:19] Yeah, it does.

[00:09:21] Yeah, and to what you were saying about going back to watching it, I feel like it rewards repeat watches.

[00:09:27] Like you pick up on a lot of the motivations of each character.

[00:09:31] And yeah, I totally agree with you.

[00:09:36] I have 50 pages of notes.

[00:09:38] So there's no way to really...

[00:09:41] And I feel like I'm still not even plumbing enough.

[00:09:46] Every time I watch this film, I get new things out of it and I notice new things.

[00:09:53] It's aesthetically amazing.

[00:09:55] That is one thing that all the reviews were pretty consistent about was praising the beauty of the film.

[00:10:03] But I love that it's so different from other MCU films.

[00:10:09] I love the scope of it, the way that it's celestial and the way that that's expressed visually with all of these many images where there's like a teeny tiny person in a scene with like a giant planet or a sky or the sun that really contrasts like how tiny any individual is.

[00:10:32] I really enjoy that.

[00:10:34] I also get a different kind of joy out of a movie that has imperfections or like cracks around the edges where you can see some of the filmmaking decisions a little more clearly.

[00:10:48] Because I was a film student and I have always loved the how was it made.

[00:10:54] And I've always wanted to see the behind the scenes and what's the movie magic that went into this, that when you can see some of the like flaws or less successful choices,

[00:11:04] it gives me as an audience member this invitation to think about why those decisions were made and what decision I might have made if I were in the director's place.

[00:11:15] It's a completely different kind of entertainment and I don't think it's for everyone the entertainment of like how would I have fixed these problems with the film, but I happen to love that.

[00:11:26] So films that have imperfections and flaws are sort of like a, it's like a special kind of joy for me.

[00:11:35] Yeah, I love the production behind the scenes stuff too.

[00:11:39] I'm tired of that.

[00:11:40] It was refreshing because it felt like it was trying to not.

[00:11:49] It felt fearless.

[00:11:52] And I feel like by that point in Marvel Universe filmmaking history, it felt like because end game came out and made two and a half billion dollars it was like okay now we can kind of

[00:12:08] just do what it's like now we can just think outside the box now like we're not take some we got our money we got our money so and it made it

[00:12:21] just a joy to just watch a film and appreciate a film like as a film like that's what I like about a turner I can appreciate it as it.

[00:12:32] I can appreciate it like any other film in terms of like where directors really trying to express her artistic vision in in how the characters kind of evolve and that's that's yeah that's the best that's

[00:12:49] like the one sentence if I could put into a sentence.

[00:12:53] It would be like wow I could see I can see how these characters are evolving through the directors are Chloe's vision and that's what's cool about film for me.

[00:13:05] Yeah, I agree.

[00:13:07] Well let's get into the main, you know, meat of the discussion. Karen I have a feeling you might have some information about Chloe Zhao and her filmmaking techniques that you want to share maybe we should start there.

[00:13:20] Sure if I don't know if you hear the peacocks in my neighborhood sorry about that.

[00:13:25] Is that what it sounds like kittens over the internet but yeah, it's like giant screaming cats.

[00:13:33] I don't have peacocks wandering around outside and.

[00:13:39] Yeah, I do have a point about Chloe Zhao and I do have a point about the whole world building and the technical parts of the film.

[00:13:48] But before we stray too far away from the context I kind of want to expand or like elaborate even more about the context of the film right. Yeah let's go there.

[00:14:02] I compared it to Black Panther but Black Panther came out in 2018 and it was like this huge cultural event that celebrated the black community, maybe yeah and.

[00:14:17] Because it came before Disney Plus was a reliable streaming service and Disney Plus came out in November 2019. So during 2021 when Eternals came out maybe people could think like oh I'm just going to wait for that to get on a streaming

[00:14:36] channel and watch it there. Plus this was during COVID still we were just businesses were just opening up again. I think I had just gone back to in person work. So there, I'm sure there are folks who are still wary to go back to the theaters.

[00:14:54] And yeah, MCU this was phase four of the MCU and Bob Chapec took over for Bob Iger and I came back again but Chapec wanted to make TV shows.

[00:15:07] So that kind of saturated the entire universe and the interest was waning and Marvel at that time because Avengers Endgame wrapped up and I feel like there was Marvel Marvel fatigue after that or like superhero fatigue.

[00:15:21] Maybe. I'm trying to. Yeah, there were some people.

[00:15:26] Oh, no, I was just gonna say there were some people that were like now I gotta care about these new people.

[00:15:35] Yeah, I just can I mourn black women were like who didn't like Eternals like can I mourn black widow and then the men were like can I mourn Iron Man they just died now I gotta care about these new people.

[00:15:47] Right.

[00:15:49] Yes, it's hard for people to. Yeah, move on from that.

[00:15:53] And also I would say that Chloe's reputation having just one best picture and best director for Nomad land gave a lot of people expectations.

[00:16:03] And I think it divided not only the fans because it was such a different style to the Marvel machine, but it also divided film critics because you know she's this award winning artsy indie director and some people might have thought that a Marvel project was beneath her.

[00:16:24] Yeah, or sell out.

[00:16:26] Or she's a sell out or something. And then the last point I'll say is that a renal deal already kind of talked about this but Nate Moore, who's the producer on this film, even before endgame finished he said what we really want to do with phase four is evolve and branch out

[00:16:44] from the Avengers and explore different characters, genres, different approaches to storytelling and increase the cinematic language of the MCU. So, you know they're bringing new kinds of characters like Shang Chi, and the marbles and Miss Marvel and Eternals.

[00:17:03] So, some people got on board that and some people didn't.

[00:17:07] Oh, I will also say the rotten tomatoes is a faulty system because it's a binary take. It's a binary it's it's one rotten tomato workers interpretation of a film critics review.

[00:17:21] Meaning the film critic could say nuanced themes about the film in his or her article, but if there's like one negative sentence sometimes rotten tomatoes will shuffle that as rotten, or categorize that as you know, fresh or rotten either way it's very black and white.

[00:17:37] So, yeah.

[00:17:38] It's true. I've actually did some research on this because I'm not gonna say what this movie is because I would take this conversation down a very different path.

[00:17:50] But there was this other superhero film and I looked at all the reviews that work at Categorize was rotten. And half of them, the reviewer was just frustrated with the film not saying the film was bad but it the algorithm or either the algorithm or the employee.

[00:18:11] But whatever rotten tomatoes, whoever, whether it's a mechanical thing or a person, it took the frustrated review and just automatically put it as rotten.

[00:18:24] So someone's watching a movie and they're like, oh, like there's some good stuff here. But this bad stuff in is frustrating because it's holding the movie back.

[00:18:34] It's like automatically the same thing as saying man this movie is terrible. I stopped watching halfway through.

[00:18:42] Yeah, that is problematic. I don't tend to go to rotten tomatoes when I'm deciding what to watch because I choose what to watch based on who's involved with it and things like that like who's the writer who's the director is this a story

[00:19:03] I think is important or interesting in some way. But I do like to look at it afterward and sort of get just the vibe of what people are saying.

[00:19:14] I think it's a good place to get just a general sense, but I don't take it as gospel.

[00:19:25] It's a good vibe check meteor.

[00:19:29] Yeah, like if it's if something has a really high score that's meaningful. When it has a mid level score, it means that there might be something interesting going on that most people don't see, or it just means it's a middling movie you have to do more

[00:19:46] investigation at that point right the one area that everybody does seem to agree about about this film is the aesthetics.

[00:19:54] You know the visuals, the cinematography is praised by almost everyone. The music by Ramine, Joati who is the Grammy winning conductor for like Game of Thrones and a bunch of other things like that the score is epic and grandiose and thrilling and

[00:20:11] romantic and all those things. I love the needle drops that they have I love time by Pink Floyd I think is like such an epic gigantic song that really set the tone in those early scenes.

[00:20:26] The action designer Eve Stewart had a lot of time in the making of special that Marvel put together and had a lot to say about the philosophical approach they took to how the film was designed and the look of things like the the costumes

[00:20:42] of all the metallic circles and triangles and these sort of sacred shapes and images. I thought all of that was just gorgeous and came together in a way that added to the story in a beautiful way.

[00:21:02] I personally really appreciated the costumes that, although they were form fitting and attractive were not overtly sexualized, especially for the women. There wasn't a ton of cleavage or anything the women were wearing flat or mostly flat shoes and and they could actually move around in their

[00:21:22] costumes. The costumes themselves were incredibly intricately designed I hope that at some point they're in a museum and I can see them up close because in the making of special in the what is it called Marvel assembled, they got up close to what the fabrics looked like and they were like different stones and

[00:21:43] they were like a very interesting organic stone they were so beautiful with those like gold symbols in them I loved it so much.

[00:21:49] I want to say they are in a museum somewhere.

[00:21:52] I bet they are I should have said that.

[00:21:55] I think they're in the the Smithsonian or one of the DC museums, but I'm not sure.

[00:22:01] Oh really?

[00:22:02] Yeah.

[00:22:03] Yeah.

[00:22:04] My favorite, favorite shots in the film are the first one is when they arrive in Iraq and and the all the archaeologists like, you know, Druig makes them get up and drive away and then they slowly deep cloak out of the, you know, out of being invisible by

[00:22:22] the way they're walking up towards where the Domo is I just love that moment I think it's beautiful scene. Everything that happens in the northern frozen tundra when Icarus and Ajax go and he shows her the deviance that is all just absolutely gorgeous.

[00:22:38] And I can't get enough of it.

[00:22:40] And the final scene between Cersei and Dane where they're walking through that park on top of that hill, and the opening shot of them is like from really far away and their teeny tiny people in this big park on this hill and love that.

[00:22:54] Everything about the Bollywood scene. Oh my God, like that dance number is amazing.

[00:23:00] That's highlight one of the highlights for me.

[00:23:03] The shot of Icarus when he flies into the sun and he's so teeny teeny tiny against the giant son, I think really powerful. And my most favorite scene in the whole film is probably a scene that most other people don't like but the entire scene where

[00:23:19] Erisham is explaining the whole system to Cersei. And the expression of vastness that I get from it, like, I'm going to sound like a stoner for a minute here you guys. It like it blows my mind when he's like, yeah, millions of years ago, I started creating the system where

[00:23:39] I was born from a planet and then they create more universes and then they create more universes. And then he shows like and then I had to create the Eternals and there's this like infinite number of Eternals bodies that he shows to Cersei, you know, there's just their outlines.

[00:23:53] And at that moment my brain does the math of like, if each eternal lives forever, and they do their work for several thousand years per planet and it's been millions of years and they've been doing this on all this many Eternals on all these planets for this many

[00:24:12] millions of years. Like, how many universes are there and how big is the universe and it like, it like makes my brain short circuit I have like a little like like electrical out like blackout in my head when I think about the size of the universe that is implied by Erisham's explanation.

[00:24:31] It also makes you wonder like who among the characters we know now in the MCU are actually Eternals, like same with the scroll thing. Yeah, which ones are scrolls which ones are Eternals.

[00:24:42] Yeah, yeah, it's entirely possible that lots of them are. And I hope that I hope that we get to find out more of that because it's, I find it infinitely interesting. The idea.

[00:24:55] I tried doing research and I got super confused.

[00:25:00] And this is probably one of the few times I wish I could go in a time machine and grew up a Marvel fan instead of a DC fan because I feel like if I grew up a Marvel fan I would know who is who and what, like I could like predict what they were going to do.

[00:25:16] And if they were to continue this concept in the MCU, because like trying to figure it out just from research was confusing or like who's an eternal who's a deviant.

[00:25:26] Like, like apparently the mutants are involved in this system, at least in the comic books like their descendants of this system.

[00:25:34] Okay, that has this with my head interesting.

[00:25:36] Yeah, but if you asked me to explain it, I don't know we need Kirk Kirk needs to explain it but yeah.

[00:25:45] Basically, what you ditto that's what I'm trying to say like ditto petty.

[00:25:49] It's mind blowing right?

[00:25:50] Yeah.

[00:25:51] What were some of your favorite scenes and and sort of aesthetic choices.

[00:25:57] I have like a yeah I have a whole point about like the production and set design to I love all the wide shots in this movie.

[00:26:06] I've especially love all the long takes and the, the wonders they call them like a one shot where the camera doesn't break so that you know there's no quick cuts.

[00:26:18] When there there's there are action scenes it's all like letting you see everything within the frame that's one of Chloe's hallmarks signature styles is to actually let the

[00:26:33] she has the camera kind of like go around the actor and follow the actor instead of the actor following the camera so that it's more naturalistic blocking kind of thing.

[00:26:44] And one of my I love the whole sequence in the Amazon forest like that whole fight sequence was really cool.

[00:26:52] There's like deep depth of field you can see King goes projectiles like shooting like far into the distance.

[00:27:01] I also love that scene at the end that you're talking about with Dane and Cersei walking on the hill.

[00:27:09] Yeah, just like a lot of wide shots, a lot of shooting at Golden Arrow, of course, and the last shot of when Cersei makes sprite human.

[00:27:22] That was actually there are no CGI edits to that.

[00:27:26] I'm sure they like tweak the coloring a little bit, but Chloe said they had 30 minutes to shoot that scene.

[00:27:31] They all got one take to do their part and so because they wanted to catch the sunset right though they were losing the light.

[00:27:38] Yeah, yeah, they were losing the lights.

[00:27:40] So but they did it all, you know, all practical sets for that portion and most of this was shot in practical sets.

[00:27:48] And, and there's a point to that it's to ground you into the movie because the movies wants to argue that this planet is worth saving.

[00:27:58] So Chloe wants to show you the beauty of the world and let's you see all the landscape and everything.

[00:28:05] Yes, none of this was on a soundstage very little of it.

[00:28:11] Yeah, very little is on the soundstage, but I'm sure they had like blue screens.

[00:28:15] Like maybe maybe the Domo was a soundstage.

[00:28:18] Yeah, I mean they got the Domo was but all of the outdoor scenes, especially the big fight scenes like the one when they first arrived to earth that was shot on location the the beach where they're fighting with Icarus when Tiamat is about to rise that was shot on location.

[00:28:35] The Amazon stuff was shot on location and that's why you're able to have that deep depth of field that Karen just mentioned and, and have the camera move around in a way that's a little bit spontaneous following the action, because there's no like oh you can't go more than two degrees

[00:28:51] over because then you'll show that it's not, you know, you'll show the outside of the soundstage or like that's beyond the green screen like right.

[00:28:58] It allows her to have a little bit of a more fluid camera and, and for the action scenes to look more real because you get to see. Yeah.

[00:29:08] Act like the movements complete themselves instead of what you were saying before like all the quick cuts you usually get with a lot of action it that hides some of the action.

[00:29:19] Rinaldi seems like his mind is blown. Yeah, I'm so used to it that's what it is like I'm so conditioned to I feel like I feel like I've been lied to by Kevin Feige he's Aeroship he's he's Aeroship.

[00:29:32] Yeah, there is no soundstage.

[00:29:35] Well, usually Marvel films are like super bright and they have like a weird gray color palette like but like, yep, this ones you can this film since Chloe shoots.

[00:29:48] With natural light for most of the frames, you can actually see the deep dark blacks and like actual colors like actual palette.

[00:30:00] So it's more real like I remember watching end game and Eternals the third act has a lot of issues. We can talk about that later but end game like the whole final battle I kind of was taken out of it because it was like so much CGI.

[00:30:16] Yeah, so yeah.

[00:30:18] And also, like a lot of the MCU movies that was they all sort of eventually descend into a slug fest. Right. Yeah. And where it's about like strong fists or strong like laser blasts or whatever and its power versus power.

[00:30:37] And I loved the variety of fighting techniques that we saw in in this film. I guess I'm sort of tangenting off of what where Karen was going but I really value being able to see that there's not only one way to approach a problem.

[00:30:58] And that they actually sit around and talk about different ways that they might approach a problem. I also really valued instead of being like, I know what we'll do. We'll hit him really hard.

[00:31:06] Like which seems to be adventures do every single time is like there's punching or laser blasts which one do we want to use like.

[00:31:16] I think the for me I think the scenes where I guess kind of what you guys saying the movement. Like that's that's the thing that I like about it was the movement and that's why I'm like just, I don't know, like I feel, I feel like a kid that got a Christmas present.

[00:31:40] I'm like, wow, like real movement, like no quick cuts like like it wasn't even like the fighting. It was just how they were moving. It was how the camera was moving like when even when like trying to think of a scene, like even when King was running in the forest and Amazon and he was firing his projectiles like.

[00:32:08] And then he's like looking around at where the deviant could be coming from and it's like in the trees and you like see the trees you it feels like you're in that forest and you are.

[00:32:21] Yeah, and then he's like Sprite to track it and then Sprite's like trying her best to distract it and it's like it's such a simple scene but it like I felt I felt like I was I felt a little bit of the tension because it was like not the slugfest that you were talking about that can crop up in MCU like it felt like.

[00:32:46] It felt like they were fighting a wild animal like that's what it felt like yeah.

[00:32:51] It was the Revenant that particular scene when because Sprite doesn't use her illusion powers in that moment to distract the deviant she like jumps it with a knife and then it's like shaking her around and I just kept thinking of the Revenant when Leonardo DiCaprio's character just gets mauled by a bear.

[00:33:09] It was yeah directly lifted from the Revenant I think.

[00:33:13] What is happening?

[00:33:14] She's not shy about saying that it was from the Revenant.

[00:33:17] Oh, that's cool.

[00:33:18] Well when it's intentional that makes me really happy.

[00:33:23] Yeah, I have two points to just piggyback off of what you both said if that's okay.

[00:33:28] Yeah go for it.

[00:33:30] Yeah, well you're saying about the camera work it's I think it's because Chloe is coming from a documentary kind of background her indie films are very much like documentary even though they're fictional but her camera movements are more free flowing.

[00:33:49] She likes to use wide angle lenses as we talked about before so that people can see the worlds that engulf our characters because the environment plays such an important part in influencing the characters and vice versa how the characters influence their environment around them, especially for this film.

[00:34:07] Eternals is all about humanity surviving and at what cost you know.

[00:34:15] And she let's see.

[00:34:20] Yeah, she came from art house so it's slower paced Marvel movie and what you guys were saying about like the fighting style.

[00:34:29] I think I linked a video to penny maybe about how this film is so different and it feels so different and the resolution to the issue is so different and unique because it's coming from the female gaze not from a male gaze whereas usually it's this pugilistic

[00:34:49] masculine energy of punching and kicking like you guys said, literally the MCU started with two rich white guys who were arms dealers fighting for dominance. Yeah, and Tony Stark and I forgot the villains name the Jeff Bridges character over over dia but over dia something yeah and there's

[00:35:09] literally a guy in Avengers called war machine. Yeah, Don Cheetos character there's literally a superhero whose superpower is to rage.

[00:35:20] He's rage personified and his catchphrase is Hulk smash. Yeah.

[00:35:26] And I know that there are deeper themes there that is not just about fighting because Hulk explores like ideas of Jekyll and hide and identity but Eternals is really different because they treat their like you were saying penny their superheroes don't have to wear these like super sleek and sexy leather uniforms

[00:35:45] like Natasha Romanoff does. And her dialogue is fully centered around the male Avengers. The Eternals don't have to signal that their badass is like Natasha Romanoff does by crouching down and flipping their hair around that's all very male gazey.

[00:36:00] The eternal strength and the reason that they fight is because they've, they love one another. And they're having disagreements with one another even though they love one another so that's where the conflict comes in.

[00:36:14] And the fight isn't won by a big punch it's won by an exchange of glances between two characters who love each other. So, yeah, that's what makes this film like pretty unique to me.

[00:36:29] I agree. I love that. I mean there was plenty of action fighting in those final scenes right. Icarus versus Thena, pretty classic action stuff. Even the Faustos versus Icarus like it was cool the way he like tied him to the beach and stuff but there was a lot of like throwing things at each other.

[00:36:52] But then those final moments there was like Sprite versus Cersei and that all came down to a relationship and Sprite just needing to be understood on a certain level.

[00:37:04] And then of course Druig knocking her out we'll get into Druig later. But the Cersei Icarus scene really was about love and remorse and

[00:37:17] and her resolution, yes it kills the celestial but it's a peaceful resolution in a way of turning just turning it to stone. It's not exploding. It's not violent. It's

[00:37:32] transformative in a really interesting way. And it's also about unifying all of the eternals together and having their energy become one. It's a collaborative solution that doesn't have one person really as the star at the end because it took all of them to accomplish the goal.

[00:37:57] Well I feel weird contributing to this particular point as a male.

[00:38:02] No, that's what you're protecting.

[00:38:04] Yeah.

[00:38:08] I mean I mean I even really attracted Black Widow anyway but no I think it's a good point in terms of like it is more about them as a family.

[00:38:21] Like I know the Avengers themselves talk about family but then some of those kind of points that you guys brought up kind of disrupt that.

[00:38:31] It's like what is family about crouching really low and we see your butt and then you flip in your hair. That's not really family.

[00:38:40] Unless it's some other kind of family and some part of the United States that you know that kind of family.

[00:38:50] But no in terms of like the eternals it was like that was that unimined thing it symbolized family and the way it was shot it was like again it was like this kind of beautiful thing because it like led to the

[00:39:12] celestial turning the stone and it was like this beautiful looking statue which is like it was different.

[00:39:20] I like that how it like oh the villain isn't is dead but it's it's like dead art.

[00:39:26] It's like it is kind of like art.

[00:39:29] Cersei is an artist like there's that great scene when they have the fight in London and there's that bus that's flying toward them and she could turn it to water.

[00:39:38] She could turn it to dust.

[00:39:40] She turns it to rose petals.

[00:39:42] It's so beautiful.

[00:39:44] I was confused were there any people in that bus like empty bus.

[00:39:50] Okay good.

[00:39:52] I was like did she just kill all those people were there people again.

[00:39:57] Well you're talking about Cersei Cersei is one of the coolest MCU characters for me because her powers are literally tactility for humanity like.

[00:40:08] She isn't physically strong but she's an artist like you said Penny and we and she never once explicitly says I love humanity but we can infer that because everything she turns she turns into something organic something living something beautiful like she doesn't turn things into tennis balls she turns them into flower petals or birds or water dry places for plants it's it's about yeah fostering life.

[00:40:38] Aiding yeah exactly it's about aiding life and sustainability of the planet so she has a real love for humans and I think that's such a it's such a cool power to have.

[00:40:52] She's also very gentle just her demeanor the way she moves in the world the way she touches people and she has all this power her ability is pretty staggering right like that's a lot of power.

[00:41:08] She moves through the world in a very light and gentle way when she's not in the middle of a fight and it's it's very feminine and at no point did it feel to me like that femininity and that gentleness diminished from her status as basically a goddess.

[00:41:27] Right it was just you don't have to only be there's not one way that strength looks a strength can be gentle and hers is and I really appreciated that.

[00:41:38] She was way too modest in that that little documentary that King goes trying to film.

[00:41:44] Oh yeah she could not talk herself up at all.

[00:41:47] She's like yeah I just turned rock into a water and then I turn water into rock is just like alright cut like.

[00:41:55] Well that's another way that I identified with her it's not just because she's an Asian female like me it's because she doubts herself at the beginning of the movie like she stammer she doesn't know what she can contribute to the team.

[00:42:08] She's one of the five non warriors on the team.

[00:42:13] So she doesn't think that she really you know has strength but by the end of the film we see that she evolves and to the most powerful person who can put a God to sleep so or God or you know kill Tia men so.

[00:42:30] That's one way because yeah she has this full arc that from doubting herself that's why like she's always late to everything as well.

[00:42:40] Yeah.

[00:42:41] Yeah, she's a late boomer late to everything like she was late to meet you know to do that class at the beginning and oh yeah that's true I think yeah we're supposed to take from that that she's like a little bit not all together.

[00:42:57] Like her life is disorganized and you know and the way she dresses in the beginning you know she's like slouchy and a little messy and like I mean they can't make her look too messy it's Jama Chan.

[00:43:09] She's I was going to say she's so beautiful but they they sort of tried to make her look at least a little bit sloppy with the like slouchy beanie and everything and being late and she's wearing like khaki and stuff.

[00:43:23] By the end of the film and she's in that like gorgeous green wool coat that's very sharp and she looks much more self possessed in that final scene with Dane but at the beginning she's unsure of herself.

[00:43:37] I was going to say maybe that's why a carousel in love with her because it's like staring at the sun she's like so otherworldly beautiful.

[00:43:43] She really is she's so beautiful it's ridiculous.

[00:43:48] So is that why that's really why Sprite stabbed her it's because she was played by Jama Chan.

[00:43:54] Just played by different actresses.

[00:43:57] That was actually not even like in the script they she really just stabbed her and they were like alright let's just work this into the movie.

[00:44:06] I don't think so.

[00:44:08] They signaled they signaled the dagger early on when they're in Cersei's apartment like right when when Icarus arrives so they show Sprite looking at the dagger for a quick few seconds.

[00:44:24] I caught that the second time I watched it but the first time I watched this movie.

[00:44:29] I felt like Kinga Kinga was scolding me he's like you didn't see it Rinaldi like Sprite loves Icarus.

[00:44:36] I was like I didn't know that.

[00:44:39] Then the second time I watched the movie I started noticing all the little cues.

[00:44:47] All the dynamics.

[00:44:48] Yeah all the little cues from her but the first time I was so clueless.

[00:44:53] I love the comparison to Peter Pan and Tinkerbell and and the way that Tinkerbell could never be with Peter and was so sad all the time and and took it out on Wendy at one point.

[00:45:09] And you know Wendy Cersei and and Sprite both loves Cersei and is incredibly jealous of Cersei and it's a complicated relationship between two female characters.

[00:45:22] That is only I think partially about Icarus.

[00:45:26] I think yeah that that Sprite envies all of the things that Cersei is not just that she's able to be with Icarus and that Icarus loves her but also that she is an adult and that she is so feminine and beautiful right.

[00:45:45] Sprite has this kind of androgynous appearance that by comparison to Cersei.

[00:45:51] Yeah I know if I would if I was standing next to Gemma Chan I would feel like a ogre and you know she looks she feels short and boyish and and unattractive and and sad all the time even though she really deeply loves Cersei it's it's pretty tragic.

[00:46:10] Yeah but I love that there's a complicated female friendship at the center of the movie that the primary important relationship between Cersei and Icarus isn't really the point of the movie at all his love for her and the fact that their romance fell apart is is just one relationship that's important to the film.

[00:46:31] And I think that's a step forward in the world for women in superhero movies for their story not to be like save the world get the guy and that's like their entire reason for existence.

[00:46:45] Yeah.

[00:46:46] Yeah.

[00:46:47] When I first watched the film I don't didn't really care for Sprite at all but as I was writing my notes I felt like I wrote the most about Sprite which was interesting to me because she's the avatar for unrealized potential and aging means more experience and access to our society right because we can only you know experience certain things at different goal posts or whatever.

[00:47:17] Usually that's according to age.

[00:47:19] So if you stay static.

[00:47:21] How do you know if you've really touched all that life has offered you.

[00:47:25] And so I'm whenever she asks can go why did Erish and make me this way it kind of it.

[00:47:34] It makes me sad it moves me a lot because I've wondered that about my life sometimes whenever I feel inert in my life.

[00:47:45] Like because of different health parameters I found myself like questioning that too.

[00:47:51] And I think it's pretty profound that she chooses to be human at the end, because she knows full well that she's so susceptible to illness and she's vulnerable in so many ways and she'll eventually die.

[00:48:05] But yeah that's it's kind of like the walking dead the trade off for making the trade off is to like actually live.

[00:48:14] A life and an experience life and to know what it feels like to fall in love like she says and have a family to know that she's lived in the end.

[00:48:23] Sorry that was kind of tortured I don't know if I explained that correctly.

[00:48:27] I get where you're coming from I find that incredibly moving and self aware that she yeah that she knows full well that mortality is is going to be fleeting.

[00:48:43] Right that her life is going to be short after living for you know thousands millions of years that she her human life is is what like what are we looking at maybe 80 more years and she makes that choice.

[00:48:58] Yeah.

[00:49:01] Very quickly and in the moment I love that Cersei understood exactly what sprite was going through enough to make the offer.

[00:49:10] Right after they had that confrontation and then you know Cersei went off to deal with Tiamat that that she had so much compassion and love in her heart for sprite that she even though Sprite it just stabbed her right.

[00:49:25] She was like I can give you your heart's desire.

[00:49:28] If you want it.

[00:49:29] It's, it's a moving moment.

[00:49:31] It's another moment where I just love Cersei for being so empathetic.

[00:49:39] Yeah.

[00:49:40] Yeah, which is which is why she was chosen instead of Icarus which I wondered if that was I put in my notes is that a meta commentary about the construction of superhero stories like like Icarus checks all the typical boxes so therefore he should be the

[00:50:01] leader and then is it like a dual meta commentary on Captain America in Marvel along with Superman and DC as the chosen ones.

[00:50:15] Yeah, and also just white men in general right the way that Icarus feels like he should be the person who makes decisions like he even he plotted against Ajax because he thought he knew better than her what

[00:50:30] was going to happen and he was like I expected that you were going to go back on it.

[00:50:35] And so he had this whole thing where she dies and sets up this everything that's going to happen.

[00:50:40] And he's so sure of his own rightness, even when they're in Babylon and they've defeated the deviants and Ajax says you know, go out live your lives he's like shouldn't we stay together.

[00:50:51] And she has to say to him like remember your place like you're not a leader of this group.

[00:50:57] And so the leadership is up for grabs a little bit with Ajax, both Sprite and Kango are like it should be Icarus he's the strongest.

[00:51:06] He should be our leader and I'm like that's not how you should choose a leader like Ajax chose Cersei because she knew that Cersei had love for humanity and wanted that to guide the decision making.

[00:51:18] But there's a lot of people who would just turn around and default to Icarus being like well yeah he's so powerful he should be in charge like since when is power mean good decision making like those aren't necessarily the same thing.

[00:51:31] Even Kengo defaulted in he was kind of the more thoughtful, the most thoughtful character in this movie in my opinion.

[00:51:39] Even he was just like well what do you what is Icarus think it was like they even you you're the one that figured out Sprite.

[00:51:46] You're the one questioning your I mean, yeah, made a whole movie trilogy about him.

[00:51:54] Yeah, always call some boss and he has like this little brother big brother kind of like wanting to always impress the older brother kind of thing.

[00:52:04] Yeah. Yeah, I it was funny how in the trailer for the movie.

[00:52:10] They played the whole breakfast table scene where it's like well now that Captain America and Iron Man are gone like who's going to lead the Avengers you and then it like.

[00:52:22] Yeah, they like them all laugh.

[00:52:24] Yeah, because they but that's not how it happened in the movie they like re edited that whole scene to fit the trailer where it's just kind of lighthearted family time.

[00:52:35] But then when you actually watch a movie there's like tension like that plays tension because Icarus feels a little bit slighted when the questions brought up and he's like trying to justify himself as the leader whereas like in the trailer it was more just.

[00:52:54] Everybody just kind of laughing and joking around and Icarus kind of playing going along with it so it's just weird how it like how they're two different versions of that conversation about who like who would lead the Avengers like if since these two guys are gone.

[00:53:11] Yeah, well I could.

[00:53:14] Yeah.

[00:53:15] Yeah, that well I could isn't in the trailer it's only in the movie and then like in the movie just adds to him trying to, like you were saying like prove that he's right.

[00:53:25] Yeah, the self righteousness.

[00:53:27] Yeah.

[00:53:28] Yeah.

[00:53:33] One of my like favorite scenes is in the Amazon when they, when they go to Druig and they you know unload this horrible truth upon him and Druig has a reaction that I find very relatable right where he's like hey you just told me a whole bunch of really heavy stuff can you give me a minute to like think it through.

[00:53:55] Right and then he's he, he earlier in when they're in the Aztec temple and he's you know he's complaining about loyalty and obedience he says you know we're not any different from those soldiers down there the ones who are committing genocide.

[00:54:11] We're just pawns to they're just pawns to their leaders like we are blinded by loyalty.

[00:54:17] I think it's a really important theme and that they explore for the rest of the movie which is like what are the bounds of loyalty.

[00:54:26] And at what point do you question your orders like when, when does a soldier have the right to question orders when does the soldier have the compulsion to question their orders to go against their orders.

[00:54:41] I mean, the basic premise of a military only works if soldiers follow orders otherwise you have just violence and chaos.

[00:54:49] Yeah, yeah, but at the same time, we are all moral people who have to own our own actions and it's a very complicated issue and I like that the different eternals come down on all sort of slightly different sides of the issue of loyalty and is loyalty

[00:55:10] to each other more important than loyalty to heirship is obedience more important or free will and thinking for yourself.

[00:55:18] You know, is the is the lives of the humans weighed against the life of a celestial like is it who has more value and who are we to decide who has more value.

[00:55:31] I think it's a question that can be explored forever and will never get old.

[00:55:37] I'm currently watching and obsessed with shogun on FX and Hulu and there is a whole subplot about vassals to this main Lord Tornaga struggling with when to be obedient and when to go against his orders.

[00:55:56] And I can't get enough of this story. And so when I was rewatching the Eternals to get ready for this, I was like, Oh, it's like shogun and I got like all excited and thinking about like when you go against orders when do you not I know personally I

[00:56:12] could never could have joined the military even though I come from a military family because I'm just I have like oppositional defiance disorder when people tell me what to do I automatically want to do a different thing.

[00:56:23] I could never be obedient but loyal. I feel like I am all the time and it's interesting when those things go together and when those things don't go together.

[00:56:34] And you know, Kingo had this decision that he made where he was like, I'm not going to help you and team it but I'm not going to fight against my family so he chose family loyalty over Aresham loyalty but also opted out.

[00:56:52] It's just a really interesting choice and can you imagine what it was like for him being like not at the scene of that battle but knowing it was happening.

[00:57:03] Yeah, it would. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure emotionally he was scared or worried but I think I think he was still settled in his choice because he said he believes in Aresham's design.

[00:57:21] He just doesn't believe in his methods because yeah, I think in his mind he realized well in order to actively contribute to this design I would have to kill my family because that's what Icarus is doing and I don't want to do that.

[00:57:35] But I still believe in this plan. So it's a very nuanced position or maybe not nuanced but it's like in between the two.

[00:57:47] It's complicated. Yeah, yeah. Which is what makes the movie more sophisticated than most other MCU movies like the positions that the characters take are not black and white positions.

[00:58:00] Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people hated the movie because Kingo just eat it out and stood out of the battle but how many of us, maybe I'll just speak for myself like if there's conflict going on between family members like I don't want to get in the middle of it sometimes

[00:58:19] like it's all just stayed to the side or on the sidelines and not to make anything political but like how many people like refuse to vote for either part of either of the major parties and they just choose not to vote.

[00:58:32] You know, so they sit out because they don't believe in in the methods or the system.

[00:58:39] And I'm surprised that people thought that Kingo's decision was sudden because he was the first one to push back when Cersei first told everybody about Aerosha's system and design.

[00:58:54] Like he was like, we're just fancy robots and we can't kill billions of other lives you know.

[00:59:02] We shouldn't be the one to decide that so it made sense for him to kind of not be in the final battle even though it would have been fun but he knew that his, his power set couldn't go up against Icarus anyway.

[00:59:17] And he had always idolized Icarus so yeah, I think he was still processing the betrayal.

[00:59:24] Yeah.

[00:59:25] He made the only decision he could.

[00:59:27] He was fine with the plan if it was to delay the emergence.

[00:59:34] Yeah.

[00:59:35] But I'm trying to remember when it turned into, oh they're just going to stop it.

[00:59:40] I think but but when that became clear, I can't remember exactly when that became clear but once it became clear that it was about stopping it.

[00:59:48] That's when he kind of put his foot down right yeah killing it.

[00:59:52] Yeah.

[00:59:53] Yeah.

[00:59:54] He just wanted to put it to sleep.

[00:59:56] Yeah.

[00:59:57] And yeah, it's cool that you mentioned the loyalty part.

[01:00:01] I have a whole point about like free will versus a prescribed purpose.

[01:00:06] And it's cool that you're talking about Druid because he, he wants peace and a utopia, but like he himself is kind of like a microcosm of Eresham's design because he's robbing people of their free will as well in his little village that he sets up.

[01:00:26] Like he thinks he's protecting them.

[01:00:29] But he's very authoritarian.

[01:00:30] They have no real free will.

[01:00:32] Yeah, right exactly.

[01:00:33] He's controlling them.

[01:00:35] So how come no one called him out on his hypocrisy?

[01:00:39] That was weird like like like Cersei kind of showed him a little compassion said you know just kind of I understand how you're how you're feeling but you need to let them go like which is kind of what she does best but no one really is.

[01:00:56] Like he said like not even Icarus was smart enough to be like, okay you're criticizing Eresham but you're just basically doing what Eresham's doing.

[01:01:05] Yeah, like you're forcing even loyalty these people have no choice because you're controlling their minds.

[01:01:11] I think the only reason he gets away with it is because it's a relatively small amount of people.

[01:01:16] I see.

[01:01:17] You know it's it's kind of like 80 people.

[01:01:20] I think that you know he created this bubble where he could live his utopian life and have this perfect piece but the only reason the other returnals don't give him such a hard time about it is because it's it is pretty small.

[01:01:35] Yeah, another theory I had.

[01:01:38] Because I wrote in my notes was these are the descendants of the people that they witnessed get attacked when they split up so it was more like.

[01:01:48] He genuinely cared for these specific people because he didn't want to use his power on the world itself.

[01:01:56] Right even told her see that so.

[01:01:59] So I guess I guess that's kind of why they kind of let it's like because it's like oh you, you really were upset that these specific the specific group of people were getting killed.

[01:02:10] And he's like a God to them I mean he's been in that forest for like 500 years protecting this small tribe of people.

[01:02:20] Yeah.

[01:02:22] Can I can a segue into one of my points because you're saying that he's like a God to them.

[01:02:29] Yeah.

[01:02:30] So it's really long and it's kind of convoluted I'll try to be articulate bear with me.

[01:02:37] I didn't know a lot to get through. I didn't, I, yeah, I didn't like fully understand it myself until this morning kind of.

[01:02:46] So there's motifs. This film is all about storytelling itself. It's all about how myths are made which is called mythopia.

[01:02:57] It involves superheroes and gods and with the motifs of storytelling that's why Karun is using all these cameras like one after another after sprite smashes them.

[01:03:09] He pulls out another one, you know he's making a documentary.

[01:03:13] And then there are King goes Bollywood star so there's storytelling that way. Sprite is uses her illusions to teach the Babylonians about the epic of Gilgamesh and Chloe is saying that there's no difference between superheroes and gods.

[01:03:35] So maybe the superheroes and gods exist on the same cultural plane, and the Eternals are a bridge between superheroes and gods she's using the movie to make the point that the Eternals live the human existence so they're functionally human.

[01:03:51] But stories, legends and myths are built around them, like the legend of Icarus like Druid being a God to the village people, like the epic of Gilgamesh.

[01:04:03] Another way to say this is that there's a set of beliefs, a culture of loyalty adherence and adoration built around these superheroes to make them just like gods. So to make them a kind of religion right.

[01:04:19] So in this way Chloe is showing that religion itself is kind of like a man made construct, because religion comes through storytelling as well. If we get down to the origins of these legends, even biblical stories and legends, we see that they're kind of like embellished stories to explain the unknown.

[01:04:40] We can explain them by science or we can attribute magic to it. Or before the empiricism came about like scientific stuff, the Greco Roman in the Greco Roman times.

[01:04:53] They thought it was divine intervention. So there are some stories and facts or ideas that we take for granted that we take as givens, because they've been so present in our lives. It's kind of like breathing or it's like fish not knowing what water is.

[01:05:12] And certain ideas and stories are so global and the present that we never thought to question their origins or their agendas, or the fact that they're man made constructs kind of like money or laws or government.

[01:05:26] Right. There's simply ideas that we've chosen to agree upon as a society to get society to function. Am I going too fast or does it make sense?

[01:05:37] No, I'm following this. This is cool.

[01:05:39] Okay, so yeah, even in our modern world, we use the language of religion for celebrities, right? We have American Idol. We worship certain celebrities like Harry Styles, which is a fun thing at the end.

[01:05:56] We build cultures around Walking Dead and we build cultures around Disney and Marvel, right? These are names that we've integrated into our everyday language.

[01:06:08] And it's all because these ideas wouldn't gain a foothold if we didn't embellish them into narratives. Like, would you rather listen to a dry news report with just facts and figures or would you rather receive ideas through a narrative, a fictional story that, you know, can give more color and texture to the ideas so that they have more permanence

[01:06:35] and they also permeate our culture more effectively because, you know.

[01:06:40] Well, we're hardwired to remember narratives more than facts. It's just part of the human condition. And so the reason that like the Christian Bible is written as a series of stories is to teach rules and explanations to people in a form that they can absorb and remember.

[01:07:05] Yeah, exactly.

[01:07:07] That fits if it's Sprite's function.

[01:07:13] Yeah, that's why she was made.

[01:07:17] Well, yeah, it all started all of this examination of storytelling is Chloe's way of defending humanity and defending humanism. She's saying that humans are functionally the same as the Eternals, which are functionally the same as gods because humans can also do wonders and astonishing things like Tony Stark can make a synthetic being as well like vision, you know.

[01:07:43] So does that make him a god? Peter Parker literally stands in the same line as Thor, even though Peter Parker is just a teenager from Brooklyn. But he stands in the same line as Thor because he's elevated to a god like status because of what he can do.

[01:07:59] Yeah, so they're seeing so the Eternals themselves are seeing that that opening that Ereshim's brief to them that his directive is kind of like a story that he's told them.

[01:08:14] And he, Ereshim has told the Eternals what their purpose is for.

[01:08:20] But we see that the Eternals and the deviants both deviate from this purpose because they found their own kind of meaning in the beauty of their relationships to each other and the beauty in the planet, in human love, loyalty, sacrifice.

[01:08:37] And the universe is natural order is really based on love and goodness and freedom.

[01:08:45] Instead of like rigid rules, because those rules when dismantled really come from humble origins. Yeah, I think it's Chloe just peeling back the layers of legends and myths to show that they have these human man made origins.

[01:09:02] So she's questioning religion kind of.

[01:09:07] I mean, I it's it's one of the aspects of the movie that I really love is, you know, and it's really highlighted in the closing credits where they show all these images from like ancient cultures and identify that how the Eternals showed up in different places and their existence was interpreted at the time as to be gods or angels or, you know, super beings of some kind and

[01:09:34] incorporated into these myths and they sort of come down over time so we recognize these names right, Athena, like right Athena the goddess of war it's like, oh, that's where that came from like she must have been an ancient Greece and like somebody saw her and they made stories about her

[01:09:52] like, oh that's so interesting and I have also heard from people who said, Oh, so this movie is just one big ancient aliens fan fiction. And aliens made all the important technological advances in humanity and humankind didn't do anything and I'm like, I don't think that's what it was.

[01:10:13] They just took from Thor and just expanded upon it or made it broader. Yeah, like an alien came to earth and people interpreted them as gods because of how much power they had. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:10:28] And because they had a purpose too, right? Like if nine super beings showed up and they were like we're on a mission you're even more gonna think that they're some kind of divine being because they're like saving lives and they have a whole purpose to it.

[01:10:45] Yeah. Yeah, but Chloe said that their mission, their missionaries to aid humanity they are not necessarily warriors even though they do fight but it's more gentle it's to enable humans to live and invent stuff for themselves.

[01:11:09] Yeah.

[01:11:11] I mean we could talk about this movie for hours and hours and hours because you've just reminded me that there's a whole technology and when is advancement good and when is advancement bad and you can't really have technological advancement without, you know the negative side effects and you know the

[01:11:30] realization that war leads to advancements in medicine and life saving and the relationship between violence and life is really interesting and the film just sort of touches on it and it could be like a whole other film.

[01:11:48] Like I could follow Fastis's character in an entire film about how he felt about the hit you know the bomb at Hiroshima and his journey after that. Like I find that fascinating.

[01:12:04] Yeah.

[01:12:05] This movie is just, there's a lot, there's a reason why people call it ambitious. There's so many important big themes that are going on and that's just one of them.

[01:12:13] Historically when they broke apart that's when rapid technological development happened. So like that's when you had, you know, advances in communication that were rapid you know we went from like, like developments in postal service to where it was like super efficient and then the telegraph.

[01:12:40] The printing press. I mean, yeah, I think the printing press was around by the time they were still together though.

[01:12:51] But but yeah, your point still stands like yeah there was stuff developing. Yeah, when they're when we saw that final scene of them together.

[01:13:02] Well, yeah I think Jack Kirby was inspired by Eric Von Daniken's chariot of the gods, which like a lot of science fiction people at writers at that time were, you know, positing did aliens come and influence human development right.

[01:13:25] Yeah.

[01:13:26] Yeah. So, yeah he trying to think he created the Eternals comics in 1976 for 19 issues and let me see. Sorry.

[01:13:47] Yeah, it came up at the same time as Eric Von Daniken's chariot of the gods and that started a whole culture of pseudoscience and science fiction.

[01:13:57] That like earlier eras of man didn't possess the capacity to accomplish the wonders that they did. So alien intervention had to come through and build like there's all these theories about stone hedge or the great period, Mids of Giza or the Aztec temples.

[01:14:14] So, these sci fi writers kind of did revisionist history with with aliens about that. And, and yeah that's kind of what Eternals is about.

[01:14:26] But Chloe kind of takes it further to see how the world influence and affected the Eternals in return.

[01:14:35] And yeah, turns out Von Daniken was also very counterculture and a lot of people didn't like what he had to say.

[01:14:44] That's interesting. I'm not familiar with that film. I'm going to have to look it up because it sounds really interesting.

[01:14:50] Yeah, it inspired H. R. Geiger who directed the alien films, alien and aliens.

[01:14:58] Well designed them. Yeah.

[01:15:00] Designed, yeah.

[01:15:02] Rather famous. The H. R. Geiger work is really fascinating artwork. It's, it's this amazing technology and organic together that is also combined with horror and truly beautiful stuff.

[01:15:19] Yeah, tangent. That's a big tangent.

[01:15:24] Some of the other really big themes that, that the movie touches on but we don't get to fully explore are the fact that change and evolution makes a creature human and lack of change and being static is what the Eternals were built to be.

[01:15:45] But they somehow are changed by humanity anyway, that memories are taken away from them and the role of memory in free will when they don't have all of their memories that Arisham stores them in you know the world forge.

[01:16:01] They have zero free will because they don't.

[01:16:04] They've been so deceived. They have this completely constructed identity that was given to them by Arisham that isn't based on anything real there's not even a planet Olympia that they're from right there like their, they have no free will because they have no self knowledge that is true up until the end of the movie.

[01:16:22] There's the, there is no greater duty than to protect one's family theme.

[01:16:28] The sursy says whenever people sacrifice lives of innocent people for the greater good it doesn't work out. That's touched on if you love something you protect it different leadership styles all of these different themes are sort of touched on and, and any one of them could be a really

[01:16:47] interesting thing to explore. And you know the film is two and a half hours long and that's all it could get to. But

[01:16:58] I think that might be some of the reason that people felt like it was overfall because there were all these ideas brought up that then we didn't get to follow.

[01:17:08] Yeah, exactly.

[01:17:10] You see most of the evolution with sursy and whereas Icarus is really inert he hasn't integrated himself into human society he didn't, he doesn't even like play around with the phone didn't know what filters are you know.

[01:17:24] So we can see him at one end of the spectrum and sursy is that the other in terms of like evolution and staying inert. Yeah.

[01:17:34] It's interesting that way.

[01:17:36] Yeah, some of you brings up a lot of ideas I guess the first thing is.

[01:17:46] I don't know this is good. I don't want to get into negatives but

[01:17:51] No, it's okay go for it.

[01:17:53] I feel like Icarus is, is he like, obviously this film doesn't necessarily have an antagonist in the traditional sense like this film is trying to break patterns, which I like. Yeah.

[01:18:08] But technically, technically Icarus is our antagonist. Yeah, because he is wholly devoted to Aeroship.

[01:18:18] And he doesn't want to follow Aeroship's directive anymore. So, so technically he's killed Ajak. And he killed Ajak. Yeah. And you know deceived the rest of the team.

[01:18:30] I feel kind of bad because I thought that scene was really cool because I was like, oh snap this is a plot twist like I guess in a way I felt like Patel like I'm just like oh this is so cool like I didn't.

[01:18:43] I feel kind of bad that I didn't really feel sad for Ajak. I just got. Oh, this is cool. We didn't know her well enough to be emotionally attached to her the way that I think they wanted us to be attached to her a little more.

[01:18:57] We just didn't have enough time with her and so when she when she dies it's mostly just a cool scene. I agree with you.

[01:19:04] But I didn't feel intellectually sad about it. Like I didn't feel like man this is intellectually speaking very sad because they cared about her. I didn't even get to that point.

[01:19:14] Yeah, and well we'd already seen them mourn her death by the time we see her death. Oh yeah, that's right. So it's a little it's a little out of time. And at that point the shock is not that she dies.

[01:19:25] The shock there is that is that Icarus killed her and that's up the whole lie.

[01:19:33] And that's where I where we get to my point because I already knew he was going on the path of being an antagonist.

[01:19:40] So even though the moment was cool, it didn't really add to the story because I already knew he was going down a dark path anyway.

[01:19:51] And then his plan as the antagonist was just stall.

[01:19:56] Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a very good plan.

[01:19:59] Which maybe that's why he and Cersei got married because didn't one of the other characters say Cersei. No, sorry, it was fastos who procrastinates.

[01:20:10] So then it's like wait if y'all have that in common why you all disagree.

[01:20:16] They all both were procrastinators.

[01:20:19] Why fastos just does not like Icarus.

[01:20:24] Right, he's like I've been wanting to clip your wings for a long time. It's like why? Why what happened? Like I know why you're mad at him now but what like.

[01:20:33] I remember like on my old podcast Marvelous Friends like this is off of the recording we did for this movie or review just off recording.

[01:20:43] I was like, oh maybe it's because it's a racial thing.

[01:20:46] Oh, and then everyone started everyone started laughing.

[01:20:49] And then one of the people one of my friends was like well, maybe I don't know like they did and we started like speculating along that those lines but I don't like they both were committed to the mission like fastos was like actually overzealous it was like whoa the humans are not ready for a steam engine like

[01:21:12] I don't know it's just like.

[01:21:14] Yeah, I don't know why they have bad blood in the past whereas like Druig also like clearly didn't care for Icarus but you could just from his personality that made sense.

[01:21:25] That made more sense.

[01:21:28] Yeah, that made more sense.

[01:21:30] Yeah, but ultimately yeah it just felt a little flat like it just felt like man he

[01:21:37] he's not there's something missing in his in his role as this central

[01:21:42] I feel like there's a

[01:21:44] between them missing or something like maybe there's a cut scene where we see some bad blood in the past. I don't know.

[01:21:50] Yeah, I

[01:21:52] yeah, I'm sure there is I don't think I mean that's more of a small gripe I guess my bigger gripe is him being the central antagonist of the plot.

[01:22:03] And it's like it's almost feels like the stories broader implications are

[01:22:10] overtaking the mechanics of the plot because there's still a plot going on it's like okay we need a antagonist or some kind of challenge and

[01:22:22] he's perpetuating that challenge but it's like

[01:22:27] it's just not really adding up and then him just flying into the sun even though I thought that was funny.

[01:22:35] That felt it just it just it felt to me like he he was

[01:22:45] illustration of religious

[01:22:49] like fanaticism or yes that that word and blind obedience. Yeah, yeah.

[01:22:56] But again it doesn't help the plot that's the problem like it's a great illustration of that idea but it doesn't help the plot and I think that's kind of my biggest

[01:23:07] issue with this movie.

[01:23:09] Of all the characters I thought Icarus was also the least three dimensional.

[01:23:15] You get so much personality out of all the other Eternals right there. They're all so interesting and so lived in and Icarus is like

[01:23:28] Stoic. Why can't he be more like

[01:23:34] let me think think think think think think

[01:23:38] like hella

[01:23:40] like and I know people didn't really like I know some people didn't like hella but hella was so devoted to her father's original design that she was passionate about it. She was expressive.

[01:23:52] He was like but the hella takes joy in violence and death

[01:23:59] and I I don't think Icarus could have been that dark. That's not his point. He doesn't see it as violence and death. All the humans being destroyed by the birth of Tia Met he sees as just like a natural part of the universe in the way that the universe works as opposed to a choice that

[01:24:19] Erisham is making right. He sees it as like the natural order.

[01:24:23] But he's he keeps saying that he's loyal to Erisham and his directive and these people are trying to disrupt that. So hella was right loyal to Odin's original directive which was to conquer the nine rounds

[01:24:44] like conquer everything and then presumably obviously this isn't shown but Frigga probably told him maybe that's not a good idea. Yeah. And then and so and then and then unfortunately Frigga is dead so we don't

[01:25:00] this is just a theory of mind but I assume that's what happened and now hella's back and she sees Thor as her own sibling as an obstacle to this original directive. So I'm not literally saying he should be exactly like hella I'm just saying

[01:25:17] it's I see the parallels you're drawing because it is like a sibling a sibling fight over how to obey their father and is the larger purpose of you know promoting life more important than the purpose of

[01:25:33] of the original plan. Yeah. And and being defiant enough of their you know father figure in order to change the plan and go against the plan is not something that is in Icarus's nature. He seems completely unchanged by the experience of being around humans

[01:25:52] and and in fact sort of confused by them all the scenes where he's falling in love with Cersei. He's just like watching her be with humans and being sort of amazed by her ability to connect with them. It doesn't seem like he's actually connecting either

[01:26:07] with her or them. It's more like he worships her as like a static and all he ever says to her is that she's beautiful like it's a very shallow romance. I feel like that's

[01:26:22] I feel like that's the only time he feels something is with her. Yeah. Like other than he doesn't. So I think that attract it. That's that's it's it's something that compels him. And I think that's that is interesting. I don't think it helps the plot. I think it adds to the story but

[01:26:42] but it hurts the plot. I just don't care about the plot. I'm so much more interested in the characters and and the relationships. The plot to me is just like the structure that they hang all the interesting stuff on.

[01:26:56] Well, maybe that's fair.

[01:27:00] Now I was just going to say maybe that's where we're like I'm King go in your Cersei like we're disagreeing. But ultimately we want to we we respect one another. Yeah. Yeah. Well the plot. Yeah, the I was going to say the plot resolves just because Cersei is Icarus is only conduit to

[01:27:19] the humans. So when he remembers like

[01:27:26] when Cersei says it's beautiful isn't it to Icarus about planet Earth like beautiful is the only word of the humans language that Icarus taught himself to say to get closer to Cersei.

[01:27:37] So when he remembers that at the end and it's Cersei that he has to face at the end. It makes his reversal kind of makes sense at the end because you know he's going up against obviously someone who loves and to like just to not to defend Icarus but

[01:27:56] I feel like he's so stoic and yeah he is pretty boring but he's supposed to be the traditional idea of what a superhero should be. He's the Uberman she knows Superman. You guys mentioned that earlier.

[01:28:09] And if I put myself in his shoes like he's had to hold on to this lie for like thousands of years now. So when he can finally speak freely to Ajax she also goes like nope never mind like sorry you had to keep that secret for like 6000 years but

[01:28:26] sacrifice from my one thing that made you happy. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing the one human emotion that he could experience was love and yeah he had to sacrifice that so

[01:28:40] he's dedicated to seeing it through because it's a little bit like the sunk cost fallacy right. He's already dedicated hundreds or thousands of years to this this mission in a way that sacrificed his own happiness and he has to believe in the mission or else that was for nothing.

[01:29:01] Oh I see that makes sense. Yeah and he has loyalty to Erisham but he also has a loyalty to Cersei so I think if it was any other person that's why he says at the end I'm sorry it's Ajax chose you at the end because he didn't the only person who can make Icarus turn around is Cersei

[01:29:22] because he's he she's his only access to the human world and to saving humanity so and if it was any other eternal he would probably have blasted them. And that's why he destroys himself in the end because he can't live with the cognitive dissonance of what he chose at the end which was to not stop her

[01:29:47] and right that it goes against all of the all of the things he's told himself he believes for thousands of years and and the pain of those two things contradicting each other was too much for him and he just decided to end it it's tragic because

[01:30:06] they would have accepted him back into the family yeah

[01:30:11] so he's more inspected Javer than a traditional power

[01:30:17] I didn't want to be the one to bring up Les Mis again

[01:30:23] but it is totally Les Mis because Les Mis is about do you follow the the letter of the law or do you follow the spirit of the law right?

[01:30:33] do you follow like this rigid directive or do you believe in the Old Testament or Jesus command like love one another you know so

[01:30:47] and Les Mis is about to love another person is to see the face of God so you know if there's manifestations of love is that the same thing as following the law

[01:31:00] you're just not doing it literally I got a little too excited about Les Mis

[01:31:06] there's also another there's also another reference I wanted to make Craven's Last Hunt it's a Spider-Man comic book storyline

[01:31:15] where Craven the Hunter wants to finally prove the Spider-Man that he's the superior to him so he successfully like hunts him down and has him like you know his life at stake

[01:31:34] and then lets him go and then kills himself and before he does that he says you know I finally bested you you know and there's nothing there's nothing more for me to do like I've already achieved my goal

[01:31:49] so it's that yeah so it's kind of the same like you know what do you do when when you don't have your purpose anymore because this whole purpose was to hunt down Spider-Man because he was the most dangerous prey that he could hunt

[01:32:06] and as soon as he accomplished that goal he was like okay well now what

[01:32:10] there's nothing less to live for

[01:32:12] hey we're gonna take a little break and there'll be some ads from our sponsors and we'll be back in a second

[01:32:20] hey we're back

[01:32:22] Karen is going to dazzle us with some transcendentalism concepts

[01:32:28] yeah I at the beginning of the film Dane Whitman

[01:32:31] Kit Kit Harrington's character he quotes Walt Whitman's song of the universe and he says in this broad earth of ours amid the measureless grossness and the slag

[01:32:42] enclosed and safe within the central heart nestles the seed perfection

[01:32:47] and it's interesting that you know the film quotes that because transcendentalism is all about self determination and respecting nature

[01:32:57] so we see all this within the film and

[01:33:02] transcendentalists don't believe that or believe that God and spirituality don't just belong to one individual or religion it can be experienced through life and nature itself

[01:33:14] and that within each of us there's a capacity for the divine so that's where the nestles the seed perfection comes from

[01:33:21] and that all humanity is connected

[01:33:25] so we see all these elements within the characters and within like all the other themes of the film

[01:33:33] it's all about finding your own path being sensitive and attuned to your instincts

[01:33:39] and Ajak literally tells them to shed their prescribed purpose

[01:33:43] and go out and live a life of yourselves not as soldiers not with the purpose you're given find your own purpose

[01:33:48] and when we see each other again I want you to tell me what you found so it embodies all of these transcendentalist ideas

[01:33:57] yeah throughout the film

[01:34:00] okay so Chloe Zhao famously pitched William Blake's auguries of innocence to Kevin Feige to land the job for this film to direct the film

[01:34:13] and she says the poem is all about the grand and the intimate at the same time

[01:34:22] right we have this film discussing the cosmos and yet it's also about these intimate relationships between all the characters which Rinaldi will talk about more later

[01:34:34] but it's all about the duality of life

[01:34:36] you can see endless cosmic beauty in the smallest of things

[01:34:41] which is what Cersei is arguing for that the celestial see in the humans

[01:34:47] because two celestials humans are like ants right and so yeah basically Cersei is kind of arguing that like every life matters

[01:34:59] what's the thing from Wogging Dead all life is precious

[01:35:02] yep all life is precious

[01:35:04] people are a resource

[01:35:07] oh wait no that's a different thing

[01:35:09] nah that's the...

[01:35:13] so yeah and the poem goes to see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower hold infinity in the palm of your hand an eternity in an hour

[01:35:24] so it's basically like yeah like what I said already you can see God in the smallest of things divinity in the smallest of things

[01:35:32] so why isn't humanity worth saving against the billions of lives out there that the celestials want to generate from destroying earth

[01:35:44] I love that because you can see it in the visual language that she creates with all of these shots that I talked about earlier where she loves to contrast

[01:35:55] the teeniness of a single person against the vastness of this cosmos that we are a part of

[01:36:04] and yet they are in a tension with each other the small and the gigantic have a relationship despite the differences in their sizes

[01:36:15] and that is very related to the Blake poem

[01:36:18] yeah Chloe does that for like all her films

[01:36:22] and she puts South Dakota in all her films because South Dakota is where she first really experienced the wilderness of nature

[01:36:32] and how uncontrolled like she had to surrender to the volatility of nature

[01:36:40] and think that oh you know humans were actually a small part of this ecosystem

[01:36:46] and so she puts South Dakota in all her films just to like remind herself that like we're supposed to be coexisting with nature instead of depleting all the resources and stuff

[01:36:58] I love that messaging

[01:36:59] that makes it even weirder that we started this whole Marvel journey with Iron Man who's an industrialist

[01:37:07] yeah right

[01:37:09] like a manufacturer

[01:37:11] yeah he's not my favorite Marvel character

[01:37:17] Robert Downey Jr. has so much charm

[01:37:20] that yeah

[01:37:22] whenever I'm in the middle of watching an Iron Man movie I sort of fall in love with him

[01:37:28] and then when I take a step back I'm like oh I hate this character

[01:37:32] like he's all about weapons and power and control

[01:37:36] but then when I'm watching it I'm like oh he's so lovable and deep and

[01:37:41] so charismatic

[01:37:43] yeah it's a stellar performance that I don't know

[01:37:47] but then this movie it just widens the scope dramatically

[01:37:54] yeah

[01:37:56] it does let's talk about the team and the family that they've created

[01:38:01] one of my favorite things about this movie is the diversity

[01:38:05] not just you know like race and gender and sexuality diversity but

[01:38:11] the diversity of powers the diversity of approaches the diversity of personalities

[01:38:18] and approaches to life I

[01:38:22] I really love it sometimes the diversity looks a little bit college brochure like okay let's make sure we have

[01:38:29] one black man we have an Asian man we have an Asian woman we have like there's a little bit of a feeling of that about it but

[01:38:36] when you get to know the characters the fact that they are also different from each other in multiple ways

[01:38:42] makes it a rich diversity for me

[01:38:46] yeah I agree I think this movie I know comedy was like a big criticism about this movie

[01:38:55] I think the comedy is understated I don't think it's bad I think I mean I can understand why people might think it's bad and why they might think it's bad

[01:39:05] I don't think these characters are dull but I think this feels like a like a lived in space with people that

[01:39:18] are familiar with this space and they're inviting you in to participate which is what they did with Patel essentially

[01:39:27] and that's what makes I think that's what made me like some of the humorous moments because it does feel like you're just

[01:39:33] invited over for dinner and you're getting to know these people and their eccentricities and their quirks

[01:39:41] particularly how fast those is so like I don't know OCD about everything like I like the scene at the end where he's like

[01:39:50] oh yeah so your babysitting privileges are revoked and stay away from that guy and he's like pointing at Drew Egg

[01:39:56] and I could tell Jack the young boy was gonna ask why not but he didn't so it's like oh they've had this conversation before

[01:40:06] and then Makari you know signs that you realize he's 10 he's not an idiot like let the boy have fun

[01:40:16] like it was just kind of funny like that fun little sibling banter that's kind of funny yeah it's like family family humor

[01:40:22] yeah they all know but they're so well that they know how to push buttons and they know that they know how to push buttons

[01:40:30] so there's this like meta level of the teasing where you can tell it's like that's a teasing joke that has happened like hundreds of times

[01:40:39] right feels natural yeah it was beautiful I gotta shout out to Brian Tyree Henry I first became aware of him on the show Atlanta

[01:40:50] where he plays paperboy or a rapper and yeah this character and that character are so wildly different from each other

[01:41:00] and yet I love them both so much I am so excited to see what Brian Tyree Henry does next I think he's incredibly talented

[01:41:10] and you know from just watching Atlanta I couldn't tell how much acting he was doing but now that I've seen this the contrast is impressive

[01:41:22] and I'm like oh this guy has chops and he's gonna go far yeah I'm really into him as an actor

[01:41:30] he's Academy nominated for some small film he did with Jennifer Lawrence that came out like last year or two years ago

[01:41:40] so yeah yeah two years ago it was on Apple TV I wanted to watch it but I don't have Apple so

[01:41:46] right same yeah but he's yeah he's brought a lot of the naturalistic humanity to the role yeah

[01:41:56] I'm I was worried he was gonna be typecast with Atlanta how so because I've seen like when I was when Atlanta first came out

[01:42:12] I was curious about like how much acting he was doing like Penny so I watched these like interviews that he did promoting the show

[01:42:19] and he's like totally different than paperboy like in the interviews and he's like like he's done like

[01:42:26] I don't not Broadway but he's done like stage work like theater and all this stuff like he's really into acting like the the signs of acting

[01:42:36] so I was like oh man it would stink if people just put him like they just gave him paperboy roles so I'm so happy that that's not the case

[01:42:46] yeah me too I thought he was an inspired choice I was a fan of Kumail Nanjiani before he was cast in the film

[01:42:56] I followed his stand-up career for a long time I think he's incredibly funny and Kengo clearly has most of the comic relief right

[01:43:05] he's like he's got the dance number he's got his whole his Bollywood career and his legacy of being his own father grandfather

[01:43:15] his own great grandfather that's even funny yeah the whole thing with Karun and you know the documentary and having a valet who thought he was a vampire

[01:43:24] like all that stuff is funny and charming and he's a he's a perfect choice in that role he's got such a handsome face

[01:43:34] and then you add to it the the Marvel body that you know he broke the internet with when he posted that picture

[01:43:41] oh yeah make him look like a real hero it's it's pretty it's pretty spot on casting he's also just a stratospheric star now

[01:43:51] you know he went from being a relatively unknown stand-up comic to being like a star of Silicon Valley and that was a huge hit

[01:44:00] and then now he's a Marvel superhero it's an impressive career he's having yeah

[01:44:06] and it's interesting because he represents like he is integrated into humanity but also he kind of holds humans at

[01:44:16] at a remove from him because he wants to be a movie star or he is a movie star and he wants to be above humans

[01:44:25] but he needs humans to kind of worship him and watch his movies and everything so yeah yeah he he's excited for them to learn that he's an eternal right

[01:44:36] he's like yeah now I'm a superhero and a movie star like there's a lot of ego there so so he's not exactly like Cersei where he actually carries

[01:44:46] for them although I'm sure he cares for the people on his movie set and the people he's worked with but he also sees them as like a utility

[01:44:56] like a function to elevate himself so it's also kind of reasonable that he stepped out from the final battle because yeah he needs humans but not really

[01:45:07] yeah so he's kind of focused on the utility of everything because he's even talking about how like well think about how many built tens of billions of lives that we helped create

[01:45:20] yeah yeah very yeah he's all we're not the bad guys like that's not the narrative that is happening here we are you know it depends on your perspective and and there's a balance to it

[01:45:35] he's not wrong yeah no no yeah yeah Kit Harrington character gets some comic relief he gets to be sort of like the incredulous human who cracks jokes I enjoy that you know the giraffe thing I don't get why would anyone want to be a giraffe

[01:45:52] but the fact that he keeps calling Cersei a wizard is cute it's very Harry Potter right and and you know there is a moment of joy of just seeing Kit Harrington and Richard Madden on screen together sort of sizing each other up like there's every game of Thrones fan is like look they're together again like we all got excited about that

[01:46:15] yeah it's funny and Dan's wearing black and he's the black knight yeah yeah I think Jason posted yeah Jason posted like in Game of Thrones Richard Madden's character says the next time I see you you'll be in black right or something like that

[01:46:34] yeah and he was

[01:46:38] I'm sure Chloe was just teasing the audience

[01:46:42] yeah I mean why not put little things little Easter eggs in like that it makes fans so happy and the fact that they had these two Game of Thrones character actors in a scene together like how could they not have it have a little bit of a moment right like it just it needed to be highlighted

[01:47:04] just briefly they did it exactly the right amount yeah

[01:47:09] I want Andrew Lincoln to be his uncle

[01:47:13] if they oh that would be that would be so great I think that would be my dream casting dream cast oh that'd be so great yeah maybe when we get to news I don't know if there's any movement on the

[01:47:25] the movies with blade and the black knight and moon night and all of those like night characters yeah

[01:47:34] I really am excited about Mahershala Ali as blade I've always liked blade I think he's a really interesting character and Mahershala Ali is like one of the best actors of this generation so to have him in the MCU is exciting

[01:47:49] so happy so happy to have him

[01:47:51] yeah Gilgamesh gets some fun comic relief he is a really lighthearted character who also has a lot of depth to him and I love that we don't have to see a courtship between him and thena that their love is just something that we get to take as a given

[01:48:14] they kind of remind me of Daryl and Carol from the walking dead like their their partners in arms kind of like right it's not that they're bond romance but they are they are partners deeply bonded yeah

[01:48:28] yeah loving towards one or they deeply love one another and want to protect one another but we don't know if it's a romance or not and we don't have to

[01:48:39] yeah no no Gilgamesh is kind of blunt like early season early seasons of walking dead Daryl like he's even like I forgot what comment he made to I think he said are you are you are you old enough to drink to like

[01:48:55] to like spray oh he teases it so

[01:48:58] yeah very nice yeah

[01:49:01] like for teasing her

[01:49:04] um and the spit beer that he gives to Kango is pretty funny that was funny yeah that was funny I enjoyed that a great deal

[01:49:12] um I loved that uh Druig and and McCarrie are clearly vibing they've got a they've got a chemistry going on which apparently was not in the original script and was written in based on the chemistry of the two actors

[01:49:28] but I love that both Fastos and Kingo are like what is this what's happening I don't like this at all it was such a sibling moment that I just felt really rang true and was really cute

[01:49:39] and the two of them are just like giggly and like touch like lightly touching each other and it was such a real feeling of flirtation I loved it

[01:49:50] he said she was beautiful too

[01:49:52] yeah I was like is that the only way that you need to only thing you have to say to close out a romance or is that you're really beautiful because that seems to be the only romantic sentence anyone says in the movie

[01:50:05] yeah it's true

[01:50:06] I feel like McCarrie I wanted to see a lot more of her yeah because she only comes back in the last few acts of the film yeah

[01:50:17] it was such a big group of people that we didn't get enough of all the characters like there's just not enough time for all of them to get the focus that they deserved

[01:50:28] yeah there's this uh go ahead runally

[01:50:31] that's why I said in my original review on Marvelous Friends I said they should have killed Giggle Giggle Mess sooner

[01:50:38] they should have killed Ajax sooner and they should they should have killed Thena but I got voted down I got vetoed by the rest of the group

[01:50:47] um in terms of the Thena part

[01:50:50] they understood my arguments about killing the other two characters sooner to give the other everyone else more time but they were like don't touch Thena

[01:51:00] that's funny

[01:51:02] I think they didn't want to kill Thena or because she represented like mental illness and neurodivergence and like to kill her would be kind of too uh too cynical or too tragic

[01:51:18] um and also like that Thena's whole thing wasn't about her trying to overcome her illness

[01:51:25] she just kind of like went with it even though it was a big inconvenience

[01:51:33] um but she had agency at the end with uh Crowe right the Hadivian so yeah yeah she could still overcome not overcome

[01:51:44] I just said that the point wasn't for her to overcome her illness but she was still like

[01:51:49] to not blame herself

[01:51:51] but it really is she doesn't really need to overcome it anymore she's able to live in peace with it because she knows the reason she's bringing these memories it changes the reality of that for her

[01:52:05] Madwary isn't as disabilitating once she knows why it's happening

[01:52:10] yeah yeah exactly and she was trying to warn everybody else about what was happening so she actually had the truth whereas nobody else could yeah knew about the truth

[01:52:19] so yeah I also think it was more about her making peace with Gilgamesh's death like yeah like I lost my partner and I just need I have to process that and once I process it

[01:52:34] I can live with my neurodivergence

[01:52:37] my head cannon for Makari is that she's faster than the speed of sound so like our sound waves are too big and too slow for her to hear

[01:52:48] so it's not that she's disabled or deficient it's that we humans can't keep up with her or the other returnals can't keep up with her

[01:52:56] I like that

[01:52:57] she's not disabled

[01:53:27] in a way that's not the same as sound and that's why she doesn't hear it's kind of like what you're saying it's just it's like her power is bigger than sound

[01:53:36] yeah although there was an anachronistic moment where she does the the signal for for watch and then like she points to her wrist and so I don't know if that's like they didn't invent wrist watches at that point when they were in Babylon

[01:53:53] but I don't know we'll just say that she invented the wristwatch

[01:53:59] there you go there you go yeah there you go

[01:54:03] so how does this film influence the story lines going on in the rest of the MCU like how do we connect back to I mean they mentioned Thanos but like what are some of the other connections we should look for in the future or think about in the past

[01:54:18] I think some of the history of these characters that we started with is linked to the Eternals so it's nothing like I feel I like how this film is not about the Easter eggs per se like oh this is referencing the second Thor movie or you know it's more broader because

[01:54:41] you know we talked about fastos like his technology accelerated not only like technological development in terms of communication but military applications and then we look at Iron Man

[01:54:53] you know and we look at Hiroshima and Captain America participated in that war and then Kingo you know saying that he knew Thor when he was a child you know because Thor was in Norway with Odin you know in the Middle Ages

[01:55:14] and just even the fact that Earth itself is unique and that was the big theme of the first Avengers film

[01:55:22] it's like Earth is setting itself apart from other planets and therefore like it needs the Avengers but it's clear that for Earth to get to where it is like the Eternals like kind of set it up or teed it up for them to get to that point

[01:55:44] right and Ajax says it's a little tropey but she says you know there's something different about these humans and that's a theme that is carried through in the rest of the MCU where they're always like Earth is special humans are special there's something special here

[01:56:00] I think there's a lot of there's it sets a great foundation for the rest of the MCU because we're talking about evolution in this film which means mutation which could be the X-Men

[01:56:15] they're doing more things in space with the Celestials being a greater threat than Thanos so it sets up the Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor is with the Guardians right now

[01:56:26] also the Fantastic Four yeah the Fantastic Four because there's Celestials in that and there was also Celestials in Guardians of the Galaxy right cause nowhere and Ego, your close dad yeah Ego and I think it sets up Shang-Chi because the

[01:56:43] Eternals bracelets they look like the Ten Rings and also there's a connection there as well I think bracelets yeah yeah and also I think Brian Tyree Henry who plays fastest he has this his own head canon that his own theory that he set up Wakanda because of advanced technology

[01:57:06] oh cool yeah and he's part of that community so there's a lot of ways that this can go and that's why Eternals I think is a pivotal film like it's kind of like Age of Ultron where you don't like it at first but it sets up a lot for the next phases

[01:57:21] it also explains the Wakandan's kind of faith religious faith because that might have been their way of being able to process what fastos was helping them construct so they don't get overwhelmed

[01:57:38] yeah so interesting

[01:57:42] yeah there's a lot of ways that this could go I just hope audiences show up for the next few movies

[01:57:48] yeah that's the thing man it's like I hate when something starts and it can't finish that's my biggest

[01:57:54] yeah it's so frustrating

[01:57:56] yeah

[01:57:57] yeah and I think um Gogo Mesh also knows Odin because he was there when for the battle where Odin took Loki back with him to Asgard so we can go to Loki as well anyway yeah

[01:58:12] in the course of doing some research for this I thought this was really interesting that the film has been subject to several international bands so the first one is that due to Chloe Zhao's outspoken comments about mainland China there's currently no Chinese release date for Eternals as of now

[01:58:33] it hasn't been released in China

[01:58:35] the film was announced to be banned in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman due to the countries wanting to cut out scenes of fastos and his husband which Disney refused to allow

[01:58:45] yay Disney good for you

[01:58:47] it was also banned in Kuwait and Qatar due to the countries being against depicting gods and prophets on film

[01:58:54] and it's an anti-religious film kind of

[01:58:57] yeah

[01:58:58] sort of yeah

[01:58:59] or an anarchist almost

[01:59:00] I mean Erichum literally I wanted to get to this stuff but we don't have time but Erichum literally told on himself he said I made a mistake in my design of the deviance

[01:59:10] that's why I created Eternals so a god admitted that he made a mistake

[01:59:15] I don't think that's cool with some folks in the world

[01:59:18] right who define God as being infallible and so there is no room for a mistake to have ever happened

[01:59:26] yeah

[01:59:27] well that happens in the bible too

[01:59:29] yeah

[01:59:30] that's how Satan rebels against

[01:59:32] yeah

[01:59:35] let's take a little break

[01:59:38] and when we come back we're gonna get a little bit of Marvel news

[01:59:43] and we're back and Rinaldi has gathered up a little bit of news for us

[01:59:49] yes so I have some news on what I believe is the kind of ending of phase five from what I can tell I know the phases are getting a little confusing

[02:00:01] but yeah 2025 is gonna be like a bunch of movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe coming out

[02:00:10] this year of 2024 it's gonna be light just Deadpool and Wolverine

[02:00:16] so one of the films coming out in 2025 is the Thunderbolts

[02:00:21] and that is going to focus on some of the kind of anti hero anti villain characters in the MCU that have popped up post endgame

[02:00:32] and apparently this movie has a new title

[02:00:37] and it's actually a title change that is pretty unique

[02:00:44] so Marvel's Thunderbolts is no longer Marvel's Thunderbolts it's Marvel's Thunderbolts Asterix

[02:00:54] what is that?

[02:00:56] there is an Asterix on the title Thunderbolts that is the change

[02:01:02] interesting

[02:01:04] and I have a quote from Kevin Feige that's on the website gamespot.com

[02:01:12] so there was an event in Vegas where Kevin Feige said that the Asterix will not be discussed until after the release of the film

[02:01:24] oh

[02:01:26] so there's a lot of speculation and apparently most people believe the Asterix could be it's a footnote to the characters

[02:01:37] so like because an Asterix in literature is used as a footnote for a particular subject

[02:01:44] so since the subject is in this case is the characters of the film it's almost like we're gonna learn something new about these characters once we watch the film

[02:01:54] particularly maybe about their alignment

[02:01:58] because it's like you have John Walker from Falcon Winter Soldier you have Yelena Balova from Black Widow

[02:02:06] like you have characters that you don't know where you know kind of like Eternals it's like you know who's good guy who's the bad guy

[02:02:15] so anyway that's essentially what's going on with that film right now no other information yeah

[02:02:24] and then my second news item is about another 2025 film

[02:02:30] Marvel called Captain America Brave New World

[02:02:36] so that's the fourth Captain America film it's gonna be with Sam Wilson as the new Captain America

[02:02:43] and apparently there's going to the focus of the film is going to be on a complicated relationship between Sam Wilson and Thaddeus Ross

[02:02:58] who was an antagonistic figure in the Hulk movie as well as the Black Widow film

[02:03:07] and Harrison Ford is now playing the character so it's almost like a way to redefine the character and at least this is what it says on a comicbook resource.com

[02:03:18] that it's not going to be a black and white relationship it's going to be a very gray relationship

[02:03:26] and Anthony Mackie was saying that's going to make things a lot more challenging for his Captain American character

[02:03:34] than the original one which was more simplistic in terms of you know antagonists that he would have to deal with so yeah.

[02:03:46] Intriguing well I'm looking forward to that

[02:03:49] because a lot of theories were that he was going to turn into Red Hulk because in the comics Thaddeus Ross becomes a Hulk

[02:03:57] so it's like oh so you know it's going to be this plot twist where he's going to become a Hulk and try to kill Sam Wilson

[02:04:04] but apparently the movie he's going to be the president of the United States

[02:04:09] I do not see Harrison Ford agreeing to play any kind of Hulk character

[02:04:16] yeah so I think I'm going to stick with this news and believe them when they say it's going to be a more complicated relationship

[02:04:25] not punch punch stabs ab

[02:04:30] that's much more interesting I'm looking forward to that that's just next year that's not that long from now

[02:04:37] yeah February actually

[02:04:40] in terms of Eternals wasn't there news that Eternals 2 was kind of like put in the back burner

[02:04:47] yeah it's been shelved for now

[02:04:50] yeah like some outlets reported it was canceled but I think it's more true that it's been shelved

[02:04:57] and that and I also heard a rumor that they're going to build a movie around Harry Styles' character Eros

[02:05:04] instead of him getting a solo movie and then the other Eternals just showing up kind of

[02:05:12] but I couldn't find any other corroboration on that so I don't know if it's true or not

[02:05:17] and with Marvel I try to take you know projects I like that get supposedly canceled

[02:05:23] I try to take that news for the big grain of salt because Marvel has also shown us that they'll bring things back

[02:05:29] right like they're bringing back Daredevil like they're going to bring back Punisher so

[02:05:35] something being shelved doesn't mean it's gone forever and I'm not going to lose hope that we get to follow up with these characters

[02:05:42] and see more about them

[02:05:45] yeah I agree I agree I think also too one thing I thought of was would they connect the X-Men to the Eternals

[02:05:53] because in the comics the X-Men are or the mutants are descendants of these two you know Eternals and Deviants

[02:06:02] so that's another thought I had that maybe that might you know supercharge this storyline

[02:06:11] for people that were yeah

[02:06:14] there's so much material and there's so many things and directions that they could go in that

[02:06:20] it's it's almost limitless

[02:06:23] yeah

[02:06:25] thanks Reynaldi for the news we got a little bit of listener feedback on our Facebook page

[02:06:32] I'll read the first one from Wyman Owen who said I turned it off less than halfway through my opinion it was terrible

[02:06:40] Boreland Garbage a movie that should not have been made so I am betting Wyman Owen is not going to listen to our podcast about this

[02:06:49] but I appreciate the feedback because you know this is a movie that's divisive and that's that's interesting to me

[02:06:57] Danielle Dement-Jost says I don't know that I'll have time to rewatch this before Monday so I'm going off memory

[02:07:04] my recollection is that the first hour is a bit slow but I enjoyed it overall

[02:07:09] it's a slower pace movie full of new characters which is why I think people weren't into it

[02:07:14] I was disappointed to hear that Eternals 2 has been scrapped and glad to hear that those reports might have been inaccurate

[02:07:21] I think with the right director the Eternals could be a very good addition to the MCU

[02:07:26] but as it is it's hard to reconcile their story with the rest of the universe

[02:07:30] so I guess I'm on the fence and have been waiting for them to circle back and make it all work together

[02:07:35] still waiting

[02:07:37] Thanks Danielle

[02:07:39] I kind of don't want anybody else but Chloe to do Eternals but yeah they always pass off different characters to different directors

[02:07:50] Yeah

[02:07:51] Rinaldi did you have something?

[02:07:55] Oh I was just going to say I've never seen because you know I'm in the podcastica chat

[02:08:01] Yeah

[02:08:02] And I've never seen why I'm in this you know react this strongly

[02:08:07] Yeah right I was sort of surprised by it but I found it really entertaining just how strong the reaction is

[02:08:14] I mean borderline garbage that's rough

[02:08:17] Everyone's entitled to their opinion

[02:08:19] Exactly

[02:08:20] And that's I respect it when people don't like a movie like you don't have to like everything that's fine

[02:08:25] We don't have to agree that's also fine

[02:08:28] I happen to love this movie but you know

[02:08:31] Alright that is the end of our podcast thank you for joining us

[02:08:50] And while you're there check out the other shows podcastica produces like Still Slaying which is Penny's podcast with Kara

[02:08:59] and of course there's the cast of us that's they're doing the rewatch they just finished the ones who lived the Rick and Michonne spinoff

[02:09:08] Oh welcome to the apocalypse I love welcome to the apocalypse it's a little different from the other podcastica shows because it's a comedy improv

[02:09:17] Story but it's been so fun to listen to

[02:09:21] Yeah Randy is awesome he does everything he does

[02:09:25] Really creative

[02:09:26] Yeah

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[02:09:37] It also makes us feel good so you know help us out

[02:09:42] And until next time

[02:09:45] I'm Rinaldi

[02:09:47] And I'm Karen

[02:09:48] And I'm Penny

[02:09:49] That's right I still have energy from the human mind

[02:10:00] I think I can make you humor

[02:10:04] All the things you said you wanted you can have them

[02:10:07] But your time will be fleeting or you'll die one day

[02:10:10] Are you ready for that?

[02:10:14] I am

[02:10:32] The sudden appearance of an enormous stone figure in the Indian