Eternity...

 I saw Eternals, the new Marvel film, widely regarded as the worst Marvel film. Is it though? 

Yes, yes it is. 

Look at 'em. Masses of them. Dressed like minor Asgardians.  

The title is apt. This is a very long film, packed to the gills with vast, empty spaces. There is very little fun here, spread out over a lot of boring scenes, peppered with mumbling dullard characters in power ranger outfits. In a sense this is the anti-Guardians of the Galaxy. It's a less well known Marvel property, with a lot of characters you have to get to know really quickly. But Guardians of the Galaxy is FUN. It has a green woman, a giant wrestler who's on the spectrum, an angry, talking rodent, a space ent and an idiot with a walkman. They are rude, they bicker, and their enemies are manageable and sassy. Also, it's spritely - it fairly whips along. The Eternals are lead-booted and ponderous by comparison. This is like Marvel's first DC movie. 

There are about 10 Eternals, each in a terrible costume (they look like high end warriors in a film the Horror Channel would put on in the afternoon, possibly starring Luke Goss as a man who can do martial arts) and they're generic on purpose. The premise here is that the Eternals came to earth from "Olympia" (this proves not to be true) and have been moulding and shaping humanity ever since, so they resemble characters from ancient mythologies (Thena clearly is Athena - though if you didn't get that it's actually mentioned in the film. Phastos, the engineer, is modeled on Hephaestus the Greek God of the forge etc). Sometimes it's bit on the nose: one of them is just called Gilgamesh. Another, tomboyish and forever adolescent, is named "Sprite". Like a sprite. Or a carbonated juice drink. Not sure what Druig - the snide Irish one who looks like Bobby Gillespie - is supposed to be. A druid? Is that it?     

I mean this is a film in which a depressed Eternal named Ikarus, actually FLIES INTO THE SUN.* Like Icarus, you know? 

They are fighting some stringy CGI monsters called Deviants at the behest of giant, powerful entities called Celestials. Celestials, it transpires, created the Deviants by mistake and then created the Eternals to kill them. They also want to destroy planet earth to birth a new Celestial. So, they're sort of the baddies. Some of the Eternals want to save planet earth, but others, company men all the way, want to destroy the earth because the Celestials told them to. So friction, then...

This is a long, dull film. The fight scenes are perfunctory and CGI heavy, and in between them is a lot of beetle-browed, anguished mumbling. I'm a fan of Marvel films, but I can't see me watching this one  again, and I've seen Thor: The Dark World at least twice. I don't have the time for one thing. And I don't want to hang out with these bore-offs again. Movie highlight? Nikkita Chadha from the Wowcher adverts is in it for a couple of minutes. So that's nice. She plays "Bollywood Star", which is great casting. 

Oh, and I'm not bothered about The Black Knight either. Unless, Excalibur is joining the MCU. Though that will annoy me - I want to write that movie. 

*Spoiler.