Hacker Cinema
Eternals
2021 · Film · 156 min
Directed by Chloé Zhao
Science FictionActionAdventure
The Eternals are a team of ancient aliens who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years. When an unexpected tragedy forces them out of the shadows, they are forced to reunite against mankind’s most ancient enemy, the Deviants.
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14 comments on Hacker News
They released multiple trailers hinting to come back of older characters and yet it bombed. It wasn't just the plot in this case but the characters didn't have neither the star power behind nor the coherence that characters like iron man and captain america had.
Marvel movies kept upping the stakes with every movie reaching the point where it makes no sense why other superheroes don't join in to help. For example where were the avengers during the events of The Eternals?
I really like the Marvel stuff but they have two problems that are well known at this point:
Quality and volume.
Some of their recent efforts, like Loki season two and (apparently) The Marvels are quite good.
The problem is we already got burned by a number of poor entries like Thor: Love and Thunder and The Eternals (I mean, wow). It seems rare I hear about a good movie these days, even when they make one, but the bad ones get mentioned a lot. Or the ones that people just dislike for whatever ideological reason like She-hulk: Attorney at Law.
Much like with Star Wars they put things out so fast that it feels like you’re always trying to keep up. Even if DC and others didn’t keep trying to make superhero movies they would have oversaturated the market alone.
Combine those and it can feel like you’re always trying to keep up with a bunch of bad stuff in hopes of finding the rare good one. It’s exhausting.
And all of that is just Marvel stuff. But they’re also up against great TV, great video games, and everything else going on in the world. Trends away from wanting to go to movie theaters.
They drove the audience away with too much cash grabbing. Pure and simple.
I 100% reject the nonsense “go woke go broke” arguments, everything that’s going on can be explained without that perfectly, and there is no actual evidence to back it up.
> is critic-career suicide to give negative ratings to any girl-power movie, no matter how bad or artistically bankrupt
Oh come on, this is exactly what I’m talking about. No critic worth their salt is afraid to criticize a movie if it’s bad or mediocre.
I remember just recently the “woke” Marvel Eternals getting plenty of sniffy reviews because it was a boring endevour. Ditto for the Ghost Busters remake, Disney live actions etc.
The only thing is that the critics write actual reviews, they don’t just say “I hate the new Little Mermaid because they made Ariel black” like all the anti-woke mouthbreathers on the internet.
I suspect it has something to do with Feige pushing out the Russo brothers who seemed to make most of the better MCU films (Captain America 2, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers Infinity War and End Game). After that Feige started putting out movies like the Eternals that were terrible. Nearly all of the tv shows are bad... they lost any quality control. Only Loki and Guardians of the Galaxy have been as good as the films that came out prior to End Game.
I think you need to read the articles and not just the headlines.
Eternals, Shang-Chi, and Black Widow were all profitable movies. They were flops for Marvel considering that the majority of its movies are huge blockbusters that come close to or surpass the $1b mark, but any other studio would have loved to have a "flop" like Shang-Chi. And considering that all 3 came out during the pandemic when movie attendance was severely depressed around the world, $400m is an amazing number. (For comparison, Godzilla vs Kong made approximately the same box office as these 3 films, had the same sized budget including marketing...and is considered a huge success.)
This explains what happens when you factor INFLATION in. https://screenrant.com/ant-man-wasp-quantumania-box-office-m...
I don't understand what you're trying to say with this reference? At any rate, The Incredible Hulk predates the Disney acquisition of Marvel (TIH was released by Universal) and is the last Marvel film not to make a profit at the box office.
Sorry, I'm not too much of a reader myself. I also am not constantly thinking in terms of flagging content as "Zoroastrian or not" so its hard to recall in this moment.
I'd say in terms of short stories read "The Last Question - Asimov" its very helpful to my understanding of Zoroastrianism.
I also struggle to suggest anything. Most of these things would be very much my interpretations of the art in too nuanced a way to evoke the same connections for others. e.g. I found the most recent Marvel's Eternals film to have a lot of Zoroastrian reflections within them (like around God's creation of and struggle against the Devil). In Eternals (spoiler alert) is it better to sacrifice the Earth to create a net-positive Reverse Entropy Machine or better to keep the Earth? It is a serious struggle to weigh those outcomes and try to know which outcome is "more Zoroastrian" and "aligned with God vs the Devil".
My dad actually wrote a book about "Zarathustra in a Space Age" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980264627). I hesitate to share, I haven't read this book - yet - I suppose I'm a not so great son. I also hesitate to share because as I understand it there are a lot of "hot takes" - my grandma who is more orthodox would disagree some of these ideas are Zoroastrian.
Hopefully Disney will cut the political sermon from the next movies. I've just watched "Eternals" and couldn't believe it's a Disney movie.
I mean, it wasn't a top-5 Marvel film, but it was fine. In the absence of the high points this series has given us, we wouldn't be complaining at all.
Well, I mean, SOME people would, because SOME people get upset whenever a woman gets out of what they see as her lane, but the rest of us wouldn't.
(My top 5, today: Black Panther; Ragnarok; Winter Soldier; Iron Man; Endgame. But the only ones I'd rate below a B are Thor 2, Iron Man 2 & 3, and Eternals.)
>Even the talented people—you could take Dune, made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take No Time to Die, directed by…Gary?”
Cary Fukunaga.
Cary Fukunaga—extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they're going to justify their budget. And that's the good films, and the talented filmmakers.
It is interesting but when I watch Denis Villeneuve last films I really ignore all this genre thing because I'm so at awe of his execution. Similarly, when I first watched Tarkovsky's Solaris I quickly lost track of the plot but was drawn to the uniquely crafted cinematography and hypnotized by the deliberate manipulation of pace; at the end I was watching a movie by itself instead of contrasting it with my reading experience beforehand. The same could be said about the seamless implementation of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" into the Vietnam setting of "Apocalypse Now"
[Arrival has imho a very noticeable weak plot, it is only when you read the short story "Story of your Life" that it fits nicely in. Nevertheless once you ignore that apparent flaw, it is a wonderful shot movie.]
The "marvelisation" has gone so absurd that here you are in 2019 after dozens of franchises watching "Joker" (in parallel with another Joker version at the backdrop of Ledgers last peformance) which subversively utilized the marketing ploy into tricking the audience watching a deeply disburting indie-film about the chasms of our society depicted in a masterfully balanced unstable character drawing by an actor using nearly his whole skill set.
Cervantes as a prisoner of his time quite successfully played with the readers expectations of "chivalry romance" (a popular franchise back then) to express himself artistically in a new way we now call a "novel". You laugh and cry at the same time when reading through the book, a comedy, tragedy, persiflage, psychoanlysis, slap-stick ... it really is a mess. Embrassing the mess is not something you can persuade "rational thinking" types in the movie industry making the decisions, so you trick 'em. Unfortunately nowadays you have to do a lot of lip-service. I don't know about Chloé Zhao but "The Rider" and "Nomadland" were great movies, I wonder what "Eternals" meant to her aside the recognition of entrusting her with a 200$ million budget.
> the audience usually knows who’s going to win
I just watched The Eternals, and spoiler: they’re not all eternal. It added an excellent real sense of risk to the film.
I have no opinion on the latter, there haven't been any movies except Bond that are in theaters and I'd like to see. You could have just referred to more specific instances of CCP censorship with regard to previous Marvel releases, because I don't follow it and it just comes across as fear-baiting rather than having substance. With respect to those things like Eternals not being released in China, and Hollywood probably wanting to court their audience, afaik it was not released there and I also don't think it looks very good, so I wouldn't necessarily attribute it to censorship because obviously it didn't work to get into that market. Every superhero oriented movie I've seen, or seen a trailer for, looks awful, but unfortunately they often do sell quite well in the North American market and make up disproportionately large amount of released movies over the last decade.
In summary, the movies I've seen that suck tend to just suck. Usually it's because they're way too long, or they don't tell a story very well, or the plot is just rehashed and contrived. James Bond was great, 1917 etc, but others just seem uninspired. To make a case that censorship is the reason, I think you'd need be annoyed with specific aspects of a production, rather than the entire thing.
I think there's an issue on the internet of people wanting to discuss somewhat contentious issues that are assumed to be followed by everyone, like CCP stuff or immigration or trans issues or whatever, but most people just don't care or aren't in that bubble, so it tend to come across as a bit sus unless you can tie it in together and make a reasonable case for it.
Not surprising to me as I was only seriously considering seeing Shang Chi, the Eternals and Spider Man in theaters. And only because they would be great on the big screen. It’s not worth the potential risk of COVID, but really chilling on the couch with whatever drink and food I want and snuggling with the kids can’t be beat. I may go into the theater for some type of experience again (last movie I saw was Avengers Endgame and it was worth it). I guess the pandemic just helped put the nail in the coffin for my movie going experience.
I mean, China just banned ALL non-state-run news in China.
https://twitter.com/AngelicaOung/status/1446696323370000384?s=20
They also banned all non-state-run media from platforming any foreign media.
If you look at all of the restrictions imposed over the past few weeks, sometimes at the 11th hour, capriciously, on gaming, on english tutoring, etc I would not be hanging my company's future or profits on Mainland China.
You're either going to be forced to do things you don't want to do to appease them, and be subject to capricious punishment (e.g. banning Eternals because Chloe Zhao once said something milky milquetoast and indirectly critical of the CCP years ago, and by she happens to direct the film), or you're going to find the government working against you anyway as far as trying intervening to assist domestic competition.
Decoupling is really just common sense at this point until the current trend Xi's taking the country in hits its zenith and the pendulum swings the other way towards a more Deng-like faction. But right now, things seem headed towards an ominous course.
Modern actors aren't as willing to sacrifice their health for muscle as their historical counterparts, especially because the lean look is preferred over the muscle-bound appearance of yesteryear. Thus, (with rare exceptions, like Christian Bale between The Machinist and Batman Begins), what you see on screen today is hard-earned through hours a day in the gym, a very regimented diet, and hydration timing.
Generally, to get to the level of single-digits body fat you see on screen, you're looking at 3-6 months of clean eating (or more, depending on the actor's physique when they land the role), meaning among other things, no alcohol, no sweets, and lots of eggs or chicken meals. Someone being paid a few million dollars can afford to pay a nutritionist to custom-design a diet to meet specific appearance goals, a and they have a huge incentive to stick with that diet. For example, Chris Pratt had to give up beer, pizza, and all dietary pleasures for six months to go from being the fat guy on Parks and Rec to the main hero of Guardians of the Galaxy.
On top of the diet, the actor is spending hours on near-daily exercise for several months. Chris Hemsworth eschews cardio for pure muscle-building, but Paul Rudd and Kumail Nujani each spent a year preparing for their Marvel roles, using a blend of cardio and full-body workouts (as, in contrast to Thor, Ant Man and Kingo have lean physiques but neither actor was particularly athletic when cast), while Pratt spent nearly 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, for over 6 months on cardio activities to cut weight for the first Guardians movie (as he already had the muscle for the character underneath his excess bulk and just needed to reveal them).
But the real trick to the "cut" look on screen is dehydration; actors don't drink for several hours before shirtless scenes, which makes them appear thinner and more defined. (In several interviews, Kumail Nujani talks about nearly passing out after several filming several shirtless scenes for The Eternals, which required him to limit water consumption for nearly 12 hours before shooting.) This is something you can actually try yourself at home: take a before pic, spend a few hours on a long cardio activity like running or biking, and then take an after pic before you rehydrate. You will appear thinner and your muscles (if they were visible beforehand) will appear more well-defined, even though they aren't any bigger.