Review: ‘Eternals’ has a miscast director and a crowded cast in a story about savior-outcasts. It adds up to Marvel fatigue

“Eternals” introduces a slew of Marvel Cinematic Universe firsts. First same-sex kiss. First tender love scene between two hetero superheroes — discreet, brief but enough to remind you how much of the comic book genre is about looking good, alone, instead of quality time in pairs.

Unfortunately, another first: “Eternals” is co-writer and director Chloe Zhao’s first dull movie. After “Songs My Brother Taught Me” (2015), the sublime neo-Western “The Rider” (2017) and her Oscar-winning “Nomadland” (2020), nearly as good as “The Rider,” this movie is more risk-prone than the majority of Marvel titles. Yet it frustrates, even beyond a screenplay full of self-competing interests. And as far as MCU fatigue goes — well, at this point, it goes pretty far.

On the other hand: There’s a series waiting to be built around Lauren Ridloff’s super-speedy cyclone-generator Makkari. Like Ridloff, the Tony Award nominee for “Children of a Lesser God” and a “Walking Dead” alum, this female iteration of the male character introduced in the 1976-78 “Eternals” comic books is deaf. In a packed ensemble, in which even Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek struggle for some real estate, Ridloff emerges as the poetic lifeline. Director Zhao clearly responds to both the performer and the character, taking the extra beats to establish Makkari’s presence in this two-hour, 37-minute paradox: a leisurely scrum.

Life for the Eternals is frustration incarnate. For ages, these specially gifted immortals, created by the Celestials, have borne witness to humankind’s struggle. The rules require them not to interfere with any epoch-defining historical outcomes.

The first third or so of “Eternals” plays like a dreamy update of the old ‘60s TV show “The Time Tunnel,” toggling from 5000 B.C. Mesopotamia to modern-day London and a few other locales. The gang of 10 Eternals includes, among others, Ikaris (Richard Madden), Sersi (Gemma Chan, the nominal female lead, and a pretty good one), Thena (Angelina Jolie) and the tech-support wizard Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). For some droll throwaway jokes, there’s Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), living a very public sort of incognito life as a Bollywood superstar.

The Deviants threaten Earth with the usual extinction, and these four-eyed bear/dog/wolf/extension cord hybrids periodically turn “Eternals” into a monster movie. There’s a great deal more to the plot, and considerable soul-searching about the Eternals’ limitations. From Sprite (Lia McHugh) to Gilgamesh (Don Lee), they all share the feeling they’ve been here before, wherever “here” is. They watch over repeated human endeavors and devastation, without experiencing full participation. (They’re watching a middling Marvel movie, in other words.)

Zhao strives for a franchise universe rangy and oddball enough to encompass Bollywood song and dance and everyday relationship difficulties among various couples. The villain/hero lines blur frequently, as do the crisscrossing subplots. The welter of flashbacks early on eventually gives way to a seriously halfhearted action climax. “Long time on that damn beach” is what I wrote in my notebook. That won’t spoil anything except hopes for a conventional big finish Zhao has no interest in delivering.

She co-wrote this script, with several other writers sharing credit as well. I honestly think the Zhao + Marvel equation was worth a shot. But there’s only so much room in the MCU for sidewinding introspection and meditative sunsets; no matter the director, there’s always the moment, followed by hundreds more, when the digital rivers of blue or orange light has to fly out somebody’s eyes, or fingers, and those are the money shots that feel like loose change in late 2021.

Eight years and many Marvels ago, when “Thor: The Dark World” came out, I wrote: “We don’t go to any of these films, really, for something new. We go because we saw the other ones.” Turning down a Marvel movie, I’m sure, would not be easy, nor necessarily the right decision for one’s career. But I believe this also to be true: Zhao has too much to say as a filmmaker to spend years of her life straining to personalize essentially impersonal heroics.

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‘ETERNALS’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for fantasy violence and action, some language and brief sexuality)

Running time: 2:37

Where to watch: In theaters Friday

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