It's enjoyable to see what another longtime comic book fan/reader thinks of the movies, even when I disagree almost completely. I'd rank them utterly differently, but that's what makes it fun!
Thanks for the great alternative list! This phase of the MCU has been fairly uneven overall, so I'm not surprised there's a fair amount of varied opinion.
I gave "Eternals" a soft pass (as I do to almost all of these) when I saw it initially. Recently, I put it on to someone who was actually a virgin to the whole MCU thing, and I myself made it twenty minutes in before conceding, "Okay, that dialogue is awful, all of it." All due respect to Chloe Zhao, as I thought "Nomadland" was brilliant, but "Eternals" was the only movie in existence where I thought the Zack Snyder version would be better.
I was also very excited for "The Eternals" after "Nomadland", and thought it was going to be like a whole "secret history of the MCU" and maybe setup Namor and Atlantis. But nope - just a bunch of Justice League analogs fighting a giant alien while speechifying at each other.
I thought it was really interesting to have a movie about theology within the MCU, and some of it was pretty surprising from a storytelling perspective. But I guess MCU consistency means that all effects have to be glowy yellow circles, and everyone has to quip their way through end-of-the-world stakes. And I gotta be honest -- all their outfits looked like the least-comfortable thing you'd want to wear.
Kirby did a ton of interesting things with Old Testament allusions in the original books that I was also hoping to see more of in the Eternals. Silver Age Marvel Comics is some of the best popular art ever produced. It's such an incredible marriage of form and function - and guys like Kirby and Ditko and Romita and Steranko were trying to top each other's work each month.
The MCU has some great variations - but the books from the 1960s and early 1970s all just crackle with vibrancy and innovation
It's enjoyable to see what another longtime comic book fan/reader thinks of the movies, even when I disagree almost completely. I'd rank them utterly differently, but that's what makes it fun!
1 Fantastic Four: First Steps
2 Spider-Man: Far From Home
3 Eternals
4 Spider-Man: No Way Home
5 Deadpool and Wolverine
6 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
7 Thunderbolts
8 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
9 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
10 The Marvels
11 Captain America: Brave New World
12 Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
13 Black Widow
14 Thor: Love and Thunder
15 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Thanks for the great alternative list! This phase of the MCU has been fairly uneven overall, so I'm not surprised there's a fair amount of varied opinion.
I gave "Eternals" a soft pass (as I do to almost all of these) when I saw it initially. Recently, I put it on to someone who was actually a virgin to the whole MCU thing, and I myself made it twenty minutes in before conceding, "Okay, that dialogue is awful, all of it." All due respect to Chloe Zhao, as I thought "Nomadland" was brilliant, but "Eternals" was the only movie in existence where I thought the Zack Snyder version would be better.
Fromtheyardtothearthouse.substack.com
I was also very excited for "The Eternals" after "Nomadland", and thought it was going to be like a whole "secret history of the MCU" and maybe setup Namor and Atlantis. But nope - just a bunch of Justice League analogs fighting a giant alien while speechifying at each other.
I thought it was really interesting to have a movie about theology within the MCU, and some of it was pretty surprising from a storytelling perspective. But I guess MCU consistency means that all effects have to be glowy yellow circles, and everyone has to quip their way through end-of-the-world stakes. And I gotta be honest -- all their outfits looked like the least-comfortable thing you'd want to wear.
Fromtheyardtothearthouse.substack.com
Kirby did a ton of interesting things with Old Testament allusions in the original books that I was also hoping to see more of in the Eternals. Silver Age Marvel Comics is some of the best popular art ever produced. It's such an incredible marriage of form and function - and guys like Kirby and Ditko and Romita and Steranko were trying to top each other's work each month.
The MCU has some great variations - but the books from the 1960s and early 1970s all just crackle with vibrancy and innovation