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.
The cinematic flare, the beautiful environments, all the sunset and landscape shots are truly beautiful and I agree that they would be great as Windows screensavers.
I really had high expectations and that may have been my downfall because beyond the cinematics, I wanted the story to be good and you're absolutely right that the pretty visuals did absolutely nothing for progressing that plot. I would say that the dialogue wasn't interesting either, where only that character could have said this one line. Each character was there to push the exposition out of their mouths and it didn't have personality in it.
I like what you said about camera movement! There is definitely a lot of fine camera movement when they have action sequences and fight scenes, but those visceral, emotional moments where the characters are talking heads are boring and don't have much flair. The CGI is brilliant but to the effect of "this feels unnecessary, like they're showing off all the cool things they can do" and it didn't positively (or negatively) affect the characters and the plot.
Even scenes where the characters had emotional moments (Phastos saying goodbye to his family, people revealing that Ajak was killed) it felt forced. I didn't care for them at all and at first I thought it was just the dialogue, but I 100% believe it was also the static camera imbuing nothing into the scene.
It felt like they shot all of the intense character dialogue moments on very small sets. It gave me a Prequels vibe where they can't move around too much during talky scenes because it would be really hard. Doesn't help that I saw this not Long after James Gunn's suicide Squad. That mans camera work even during dialogue scenes is to smooth. There is always movement and the movement adds to and evokes emotion out of the scene being shot.
The dialogue in Eternals did feel character-less, where they could have substituted any character for the lines and it would've worked in a sense. I haven't seen Gunn's SS (just the 2016 one oof) but I'll definitely have to check it out one of these days since it comes so highly recommended!
I was thinking maybe, for Eternals, they wanted it to be that awkward and dimensionless. That's not even a joke, I mean as in these people centuries old. Thena was definitely feeling the ravages of time in her own mind, but conversations feel stilted once you have them a thousand and one times and though they know each other, they realize they don't REALLY know each other so it's a friend-become-strangers kind of scenario. I know that's a stretch, but I'd like to think that with everything they do, maybe these horrid interactions were also intentional.
I completely agree. I do wonder how these meetings go cus the pitch is just the beginning, but how does it get written from there? Do they have a writer's room to contribute or is it all just some checklist an exec provides to a screenwriter?
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.
The cinematic flare, the beautiful environments, all the sunset and landscape shots are truly beautiful and I agree that they would be great as Windows screensavers.
I really had high expectations and that may have been my downfall because beyond the cinematics, I wanted the story to be good and you're absolutely right that the pretty visuals did absolutely nothing for progressing that plot. I would say that the dialogue wasn't interesting either, where only that character could have said this one line. Each character was there to push the exposition out of their mouths and it didn't have personality in it.
I like what you said about camera movement! There is definitely a lot of fine camera movement when they have action sequences and fight scenes, but those visceral, emotional moments where the characters are talking heads are boring and don't have much flair. The CGI is brilliant but to the effect of "this feels unnecessary, like they're showing off all the cool things they can do" and it didn't positively (or negatively) affect the characters and the plot.
Even scenes where the characters had emotional moments (Phastos saying goodbye to his family, people revealing that Ajak was killed) it felt forced. I didn't care for them at all and at first I thought it was just the dialogue, but I 100% believe it was also the static camera imbuing nothing into the scene.
It felt like they shot all of the intense character dialogue moments on very small sets. It gave me a Prequels vibe where they can't move around too much during talky scenes because it would be really hard. Doesn't help that I saw this not Long after James Gunn's suicide Squad. That mans camera work even during dialogue scenes is to smooth. There is always movement and the movement adds to and evokes emotion out of the scene being shot.
The dialogue in Eternals did feel character-less, where they could have substituted any character for the lines and it would've worked in a sense. I haven't seen Gunn's SS (just the 2016 one oof) but I'll definitely have to check it out one of these days since it comes so highly recommended!
I was thinking maybe, for Eternals, they wanted it to be that awkward and dimensionless. That's not even a joke, I mean as in these people centuries old. Thena was definitely feeling the ravages of time in her own mind, but conversations feel stilted once you have them a thousand and one times and though they know each other, they realize they don't REALLY know each other so it's a friend-become-strangers kind of scenario. I know that's a stretch, but I'd like to think that with everything they do, maybe these horrid interactions were also intentional.
Yeah I've seen where people are like "well they're not really humans." Ok. That doesn't make them that interesting. Even if it's a design choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIdzUpAswe0 this is actually a pretty funny sum up of a lot of the issues with the eternals.
LMAOOOO
"It seems like this would be a good series"
"This is a movie"
"I said what I said"
I completely agree. I do wonder how these meetings go cus the pitch is just the beginning, but how does it get written from there? Do they have a writer's room to contribute or is it all just some checklist an exec provides to a screenwriter?