The Eternals (2 Stars)

The bubble has burst. Marvel Studios began to create films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) slowly and cautiously in 2008 with "Iron Man". I emphasise the word slowly. Characters were introduced one at a time in subsequent films, leading up to the first Avengers film, when we finally saw them all together. Even after that new characters were only added slowly, characters such as Captain Marvel and Black Panther.

The box office successes showed Marvel that they have a cash cow. Endless millions of dollars were to be earned from churning out film after film. Two MCU films a year became three, and the quality was still maintained. Then four, and boom... the bubble has burst.

"The Eternals" falls flat on its face. It's not just the poor screenplay and the lacklustre directing. The whole concept is faulty. The idea is that ten beings called Eternals arrived on Earth in 5000 BC to eliminate a race of predators called the Deviants. After a series of battles over the centuries the Deviants were seemingly wiped out. The Eternals thought they could leave Earth, but their leaders, the Celestials, instructed them to remain on Earth, disguised as normal humans, never interfering in human affairs. They remained together as a group until 1450, after which they split up and settled in different parts of the world.

In the present day, presumably 2021, the Deviants return after centuries of hiding, so the Eternals regroup to fight them.

The film's biggest fault is the lack of character development. The ten Eternals are sprung on us, and we know very little about their motivation. After walking out of the cinema I couldn't even remember all ten of their names. The number of characters is too large. Instead of ten there should only have been five, or better still four. That would be a manageable number to hold the audience's attention.

Another problem is that the Deviants themselves are too inhuman. They're just big monsters that the audience can't relate to. Look at the other masterful MCU villains, like Loki and Thanos. We get inside their heads. We understand them, even if we don't agree with everything they do. But the Deviants are just a force of nature.

In fact, we can't relate to the Eternals either. When some of them are killed we don't shed a tear. On the contrary, I felt relieved that there were fewer characters running around.

The story is poorly told. The flashbacks to former times are so random that I groaned "Another one?" The film is poorly paced. After the final battle the film stutters from one quiet scene to another, almost as bad as the final scenes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then something big happens, and we think the action is starting again, but it quickly fizzles out.

And then there's the excessive use of CGI. If you give me more time I can probably think of other faults in this shoddily constructed film. Maybe my two star rating is too high. I want to forget this film was ever made.

The MCU can't get any worse. Can it? I dread the next film.