As of right now, I am officially all caught up with all of every film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A good while back, I promised myself I would play catch up with each and every Marvel movie before Avengers: Doomsday came out. This is why I watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings more than a year ago. I thought I actually had a couple of more films to see but it turns out I was wrong. There was just one more Marvel Cinematic Universe films I haven’t seen after Shang-Chi. That movie was Eternals.

Now, you would think it would be a breeze to watch the Eternals. After all, it’s available on Disney+, right? Well, it is but there’s a catch. The only subtitles available for it, at least on Disney+ Philippines, is Arabic and Hebrew. No, I’m not kidding; those are the only two subtitle options available for Eternals here in the Philippines! Of course, I could’ve just watched it with no subtitles but I just want the convenience of being able to read what they’re saying, especially since I don’t have a fancy sound system at home. So, after a while, more than a year actually, I finally found a way to go see Eternals with proper English subtitles. Yes, I had to go sailing on the high seas and fly the Jolly Rogers flag to do this. But I had to. You made me do this, Disney!

Before I do talk about Eternals and my thoughts on the film, I going to do something very uncharacteristic of myself and make this a SPOILER FREE review. Yeah, I normally do not have any qualms of giving away plot details on a movie that’s several years old. But I do know the movie didn’t exactly make a killing at the box office. So there’s a decent chunk of you out there who haven’t seen it yet. So, yeah. I’ll be making this a SPOILER FREE review.

Anyway, Eternals follow the titular faction who are actually a bunch of aliens who were sent to Earth eons ago to protect humanity from creatures known as Deviants. After centuries of fighting, the Eternals finally eliminate the last of the Deviants on the planet and now they are just waiting for the signal to be called home. But, because of disagreements on how whether or not to interfere in human affairs, they split up. In present time, the Deviants have someone returned and the Eternals have to reform to stop them. However, it does appear that the Eternals have more than one purpose than just to keep Earth safe and they might not like their other intended use. Yeah, I’m keeping the synopsis pretty vague as this is a SPOILER FREE review. Don’t worry, though. The twist itself isn’t all that mindblowing and, in fact, it’s pretty easy to figure out.

Now, it’s not like I had high hopes for Eternals. I mean, I have seen the critical consensus of the film. But even that didn’t prevent me from getting bored out of my mind at times! The movie has a runtime of 156-minutes and it feels so much longer than that! There’s a lot of downtime and incredibly slow scenes that don’t really add anything. It comes off as if it tries to be overly artistic and it just doesn’t work! Because of this, there were more than a few times when I would go look at how much longer the film would be and be surprised at how much time was remaining! If I were to borrow a turn of phrase, it just feels like it just insists upon itself.

The acting is… fine. I can’t really say anyone stands out or are terrible. The problem here is two-fold. One, none of the characters are really given anything to sort of define themselves and, two, the chemistry between all of the actors, and I mean all of the actors, is non-existent. When it comes to the first issue, all of the Eternals’ personalities never really get to shine. A part of me actually believes the lack of characterization in everyone’s performances is intentional because, since they are aliens, they should behave a little weird… but I’m not sure if this is the case. The closest to having some kind of character trait is Kumail Najiani‘s Kingo but that’s only because he’s the comedy relief.

However, my bigger issue is generally with the chemistry between the cast. As the Eternals are supposed to be one big giant family, you should feel the closeness but I just don’t. There’s supposed to be this big romance between Sersi and Ikaris (played by Gemma Chan and Richard Madden, respectively) but it just looks fake. This is actually a big issue as this is supposed to be one of the central cruxes of the film. But the two just don’t make it work so any emotional payoff this relationship is supposed to happen simply falls flat on its face.

The action scenes are also not anything to write home about. It’s not like they’re terrible in any way. I actually did like a lot of the CGI and the designs for the Deviants with the exception for the main Deviant creature found at the end of the film. But nothing really feels exciting. It certainly doesn’t help that some of the powers the Eternals have are not incredibly well-defined. Are they all supposed to have super-strength and durability? Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It all rather inconsistent.

I really didn’t enjoy watching Marvel’s Eternals. This was an annoyingly slow film that’s just too long for its own good. Couple that with some really bland performances, crappy chemistry between the actors and only halfway decent action scenes, and you have probably the worst movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yes, it’s worse than Thor: The Dark World and The Incredible Hulk. And it turns out even Marvel and Disney are saying I didn’t have to watch this film before Avengers: Doomsday! What a glorious waste of time this was.

Have you seen Eternals? Were you able to get some enjoyment out of watching it? Let me know in the comments section below!