Why Eternals should have been a TV show

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has entered its fourth phase, and despite the pandemic, Marvel flicks such as Black Widow and Shang-chi managed to make sweet cash for Disney while delivering good stories focused on character development. Finally we got Spiderman: No Way Home, closing the year with a whopping 1Billion. Ahh feels nice to hit that 1 Billion mark again.

Then we also got something new with the 'Eternals'. A yet another rag-tag group of superheroes that are there to save the day since the dawn of humans, but only if deviants are involved. Deviants? you may ask. Then you haven't seen the movie yet, so go watch it and then come back here and you get to listen to my rant.

Eternals did poorly at the box office and has one of the lowest ratings in the MCU. Why? What happened? Chloe Zhao directed it. She won an Academy Award earlier that year. That's promising right? So here are three reasons why I think it didn't sit well with the audience.

1. No time for character development

Remember 'The Avengers" way back in 2012? The original group, yes. Iron man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk. Each got their own films before and we had an idea of who each of them were before going into that big blockbuster. It was entertaining to watch Tony and Steve clash as their ideologies differ and it was also fun to watch the Hulk go against the god of thunder to see who the mightiest avenger was.

The Eternals are a group of characters that no one has ever heard of, unless if you have been reading comics a lot more than I do. We are made to watch all of them for the first time in one movie that didn't even clock 2 and a half hours. It's hard to really feel the pain Thena goes through, Sprite's decision to team up with Ikaris felt forced, and can someone please explain Phastos to me? How can humans evolve on their own if Phastos have been giving them technology or the ideas of inventions. It appears that humans, on their own are not able to evolve if it weren't for the eternals. Phastos vows that he won't help humans or be involved with them anymore after the Hiroshima disaster and yet he has a family later. He mentions that things worked out differently than expected but that is telling and not showing.

2. The absurdly long period of time

This is the most important reason why Eternals should have embraced the medium of television. In the movie we jump back and forth between different time periods and we witness the eternals face off against the deviants. These battles were visually enticing but forgettable. There were no stakes for these encounters. It would have been great to have several episodes allocated to each time period and we witness how the eternals slowly aid in the evolution of humans.

3. Deviants

Ahhh yes. A great story can be measured by the resolve of an inspiring hero but also by the determination of a well structured villain. Eternals suffered from the latter. The deviants are supposed to evolve but they are pretty much the same bizarre cgi monsters throughout time except for the one deviant who absorbed Gilgamesh to transform into an anthropomorphic being. There was potential for that character but Thena sliced that off like slicing butter. Fans love villains and their motivations. The deviants just wreak havoc with barely a state of mind and little to no evolution.

Eternals had a lot of potential but unfortunately fans were more interested in seeing all the Spider-men together than wasting their time on more new characters that they are going to forget until the next one comes out. The birth of the celestials, Arishem the Judge, the eternals and the deviants somehow feel like far less superior than the stakes Thanos raised.