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Stephen Rodriguez's avatar

I keep using The Eternals as a reference point for other things I watch now. IT was just dissapointing. Having Watched this and James Gunn's The Suicide Squad so close together the thing that really stood out to me is how UN-cinematic the Eternals is. All of the shots are really pretty.. To look at.

I've made the joke that The Eternals is the most expensive Apple TV screensaver ever made because all the vistas and environments look cool and are great photographic shots.

The problem is that it's a movie and it just doesn't feel kinetic.

The biggest scene the exemplifies this is a scene later in the movie were sersi and ikaris are having a convo about what to do next. And it's in this beautiful location and they just keep cutting back and forth. Shot- reverse shot. Like it's a soap opera. I don't think they were both even shown in the frame at the same time, Let the actors act. Let them move around the scene or move the camera around them.

This, to me, is the brilliance of a Gunn, or Waititi. They move the camera, they use the medium of film really well. And while the Eternals was a beautiful film it just felt so static all the time as if nothing was moving because the scenes were so basic. Instead of using camera movement and scene composition to convey character they just let the expository dialogue do it while you got to look at a nice screen saver.

I agree it was just disappointing. Which sadly comes back to the direction. The Eternals is a great movie to have on at a local Target to show how pretty your TV's are. It's a tech demo for beautiful vistas! But sitting through it is a slog.

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