Eternals review

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Mr. X
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Spoiler
Note the guy is a bit chatty so 1.5x playspeed would be a good idea.
Wondersarah
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I actually got to see the movie way back in February. And I thought that the movie was trash. It’s super slow and I feel we never get the chance to really care for any of the characters. I could explain more in detail if you like but it will have spoilers.
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Wondersarah wrote:
2 years ago
I actually got to see the movie way back in February. And I thought that the movie was trash. It’s super slow and I feel we never get the chance to really care for any of the characters. I could explain more in detail if you like but it will have spoilers.
The reviews are generally negative too.

How about any peril elements? There is a Thena scene in the trailer with some bondage and maybe hypno or some trance. Is she KO'd beforehand? Or any other KOs/peril for her or the other heroines?
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From I remember there were few scenes with Athena in peril. There is one scene where she is attacked by the main deviant. Ajax is also defeated by the deviants about 2/3 into the film. This was the first marvel movie that put me to sleep. It’s funny because they asked for our opinions of the film and I was surprised at how many people just shook their head and agreed with everything they talked about. I spoke up and gave them my opinion that it was a very messy plot that did little to convince me to care for the heroes.
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Wondersarah wrote:
2 years ago
Spoiler
From I remember there were few scenes with Athena in peril. There is one scene where she is attacked by the main deviant. Ajax is also defeated by the deviants about 2/3 into the film. This was the first marvel movie that put me to sleep. It’s funny because they asked for our opinions of the film and I was surprised at how many people just shook their head and agreed with everything they talked about. I spoke up and gave them my opinion that it was a very messy plot that did little to convince me to care for the heroes.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. So no KO's, just more general peril? I will check it out this Thursday for sure. Thanks again.
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I don’t want to spoil too much but there is a little more than just peril
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Wondersarah wrote:
2 years ago
I don’t want to spoil too much but there is a little more than just peril
Gotcha, thanks!
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Spoiler
There is a good punch KO of Thena by Gilgamesh, when she first manifests a mental condition that causes her to mindlessly attack her comrades. After a good short fight, he uses his power-punch to knock her out. A couple of good shots of her out and a wake up.
There are a couple more very brief KOs of Sersi and Makkari later on, and a bit of tentacle entrapment of Thena and Ajak by the Deviant leader Kro.
Thena loses her mind a few times due to her condition, so it is like she is under a type of agressive mind control. Angelina Jolie did a great job of showing a fierce warrior being surprisingly vulnerable.
So, just saw Eternals, and it was actually better than I thought, given the many negative reviews. I rather enjoyed it, as at least it was a break from the standard Marvel formula. I recommend it on the big screen - beautiful visuals... couple of peril spoilers above...
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Mr. X
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Saw this today
Spoiler
Way too long.
Boring in a lot of spots. You could go to the bathroom and not miss anything.
Kind of an interesting twist but it still doesn't make sense in a lot of way.
Fighting is mediocre. Since I don't know any of these characters I didn't care.
Angelina Jolie looks old and tired and has less than a center role in this. Its a Circe movie.
CGI seems more 10 years ago.
A LOT of standing in a group and posing... lots of posing. Looked like the cover of a Christian rock album.

In all I wasn't disappointed by the movie just bored with it. Easily could have removed 30 minutes.
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The mid-end credit scene had some pretty cool implications some people might have missed.
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The Eternal that shows up at the end is Eros and in the comics he has a history of "pleasure stimulation" powers. Both the female characters in the scene "felt" something was coming right before he arrived while the male character didn't which seems to hinting at the power.
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I have not seen it, but even business websites are speculating The Eternals hurting the Marvel brand
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Finally was able to access this! Not a total waste of time, but I wouldn't recommend they make a sequel, either.
Chan, Jolie and Hayek looked great in their outfits, and as noted above, there were some peril situations.

They overdid it with the heavy-handed bias with regards to the battle of Tenochtitlan, which actually lasted 93 days.

The language nerd in me enjoying hearing multiple sentences spoken in Akkadian during the scenes which took place in Babylon. The name "Babylon" (bab-ilu) actually means "gate of god" so I was excited to hear Gilgamesh reference the actual famous gate of Babylon, telling people to go through it to safety: "ana libbi babbi" (more properly translated as 'to the heart of the gate').
Last edited by shevek 2 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
Bert

That's right folks, Shevek knows every detail of human history and speaks and reads Akkadian. No small feat, since the language has been extinct for over 2,000 years and is written in cuneiform. I'm especially thankful for the exact translation of Gilgamesh's line about the gate, as the movie would suffer tremendously if people were unaware of that fact.
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Akkadian is similar to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, with which I'm familiar and can read the letters. Never bothered to memorize Akkadian cuneiform (it's a syllabary, so that's a considerable chore), but I already knew "bab" was "door"/"gate" (it's the same word in Arabic) which perked my ears when Gilgamesh said it (since I was following along with the subtitles) and figured out the rest: "to the heart of the gate".

https://www.britannica.com/place/Bab-ilu

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/libbum

https://theconversation.com/the-eternal ... ian-172009

Sorry you're not fascinated by linguistic Easter Eggs, like The Engineer speaking Proto-Indo-European in "Prometheus", or the Wakandans using the Tifinagh alphabet as one-for-one substitution with English words in "Black Panther" while actually speaking Xhosa. But I am, and apparently so are the movie producers, or they wouldn't put them in.

You'll live.

[And my point about Tenochtitlan is that sanctimonious Druig had three months to stop it if he'd wanted to, and dozens of years before that to stop the Flower Wars where thousands of captives were sacrificed in the temples, etc. So, for Druig to signify in 1521 with the anachronistic term 'genocide', which wasn't coined until 1944 to refer to both Armenia and the ongoing Holocaust, is a deliberate insertion on the director's part. Perhaps the most subtle allusion that Zhao could make to current year China, given that Eternals was banned there. Notice also that none of the throwback history scenes took place in China....]
Damselbinder

shevek wrote:
2 years ago
Akkadian is similar to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, with which I'm familiar and can read the letters. Never bothered to memorize Akkadian cuneiform (it's a syllabary, so that's a considerable chore), but I already knew "bab" was "door"/"gate" (it's the same word in Arabic) which perked my ears when Gilgamesh said it (since I was following along with the subtitles) and figured out the rest: "to the heart of the gate".

https://www.britannica.com/place/Bab-ilu

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/libbum

https://theconversation.com/the-eternal ... ian-172009

Sorry you're not fascinated by linguistic Easter Eggs, like The Engineer speaking Proto-Indo-European in "Prometheus", or the Wakandans using the Tifinagh alphabet as one-for-one substitution with English words in "Black Panther" while actually speaking Xhosa. But I am, and apparently so are the movie producers, or they wouldn't put them in.

You'll live.

[And my point about Tenochtitlan is that sanctimonious Druig had three months to stop it if he'd wanted to, and dozens of years before that to stop the Flower Wars where thousands of captives were sacrificed in the temples, etc. So, for Druig to signify in 1521 with the anachronistic term 'genocide', which wasn't coined until 1944 to refer to both Armenia and the ongoing Holocaust, is a deliberate insertion on the director's part. Perhaps the most subtle allusion that Zhao could make to current year China, given that Eternals was banned there. Notice also that none of the throwback history scenes took place in China....]
"Anachronistic". Christ.

Were they speaking accurate, Shakespearean English in the scene set in 1521? No? Then everything about their language would be anachronistic. Aren't they space aliens? Surely they're not actually speaking English at all. Why can't an alien have a word in an alien language that can be roughly translated to the modern English word 'genocide'? What a petulant complaint.
Bert

Oh look, an entire article about the Akkadian language found in Eternals. The professor who provided the spoken translations the actors used mentions that there are about 100 people in the world with significant knowledge of Akkadian. Apparently shevek is one of them. And maybe...maybe...shevek has already read this piece I've linked to?

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-hi ... ls-0016058
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Shakeshift
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Thank you Bert by the way for exposing Shevek's little piece of psuedo-intelligence regarding the Akkadian language. It doesn't surprise me that he poses as a psuedo-intellectual at all.
Last edited by Shakeshift 2 years ago, edited 2 times in total.
Damselbinder

Whoa, whoa whoa. WAY too personal. That is absolutely not allowed.

He deleted his post so I deleted your quote of it as well, db.
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Understood.
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shevek
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Bert wrote:
2 years ago
Oh look, an entire article about the Akkadian language found in Eternals. The professor who provided the spoken translations the actors used mentions that there are about 100 people in the world with significant knowledge of Akkadian. Apparently shevek is one of them. And maybe...maybe...shevek has already read this piece I've linked to?

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-hi ... ls-0016058
No, I didn't read any article about it before I posted. All I did was get excited that they used Akkadian in Eternals. For me, it was one of the highlights of the film. And I have books on Akkadian so I was indeed familiar with a handful of words. Did you even read the article you linked to? The professor published a book called "Teach Yourself Complete Babylonian"!

No idea whatsoever why it's necessary to launch an ad hominem attack against me as a 'pseudo-intellectual' just for mentioning it.
You really seem to have some issues.

Damselbinder: the 'petulant complaint' is not just a criticism of the word itself, but the way it was inserted to convey the director's specific historical bias. The aliens might have had a word for 'genocide' in their language even though their job across the universe was to exterminate *Deviants*, not ethnic groups. But Zhao picked Tenochtitlan and the word for a reason.
Damselbinder

shevek wrote:
2 years ago
Bert wrote:
2 years ago
Oh look, an entire article about the Akkadian language found in Eternals. The professor who provided the spoken translations the actors used mentions that there are about 100 people in the world with significant knowledge of Akkadian. Apparently shevek is one of them. And maybe...maybe...shevek has already read this piece I've linked to?

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-hi ... ls-0016058
No, I didn't read any article about it before I posted. All I did was get excited that they used Akkadian in Eternals. For me, it was one of the highlights of the film. And I have books on Akkadian so I was indeed familiar with a handful of words. Did you even read the article you linked to? The professor published a book called "Teach Yourself Complete Babylonian"!

No idea whatsoever why it's necessary to launch an ad hominem attack against me as a 'pseudo-intellectual' just for mentioning it.
You really seem to have some issues.

Damselbinder: the 'petulant complaint' is not just a criticism of the word itself, but the way it was inserted to convey the director's specific historical bias. The aliens might have had a word for 'genocide' in their language even though their job across the universe was to exterminate *Deviants*, not ethnic groups. But Zhao picked Tenochtitlan and the word for a reason.
If you really think it's that controversial to describe the wiping out of an entire civilisation a 'genocide' in conversational English, then alright. And yes I know Cortez and his South American allies didn't literally kill every single Aztec, and I know the Aztecs did plenty of bad shit - that's why Cortez HAD so many South American allies - but they slaughtered women and children in the streets, and the civilisation collapsed because of it, and because of smallpox. Maybe there is an argument under like... the conditions of what we'd call genocide in international law that it was the wrong word. But in the context of a movie?

Pick your battles, man.
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Damselbinder wrote:
2 years ago
If you really think it's that controversial to describe the wiping out of an entire civilisation a 'genocide' in conversational English, then alright. And yes I know Cortez and his South American allies didn't literally kill every single Aztec, and I know the Aztecs did plenty of bad shit - that's why Cortez HAD so many South American allies - but they slaughtered women and children in the streets, and the civilisation collapsed because of it, and because of smallpox. Maybe there is an argument under like... the conditions of what we'd call genocide in international law that it was the wrong word. But in the context of a movie?

Pick your battles, man.
Sure, I understand your point. I don't think it's "controversial", as I said I think the term is just out of place because the concept of it wasn't fleshed out and established by 1521.

To me, it's telling how Zhao herself "picked the battle". But you're totally welcome to disagree.
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I do agree if Druig was so high and mighty he could have just stopped all war, ww2, nazis etc. In fact he could have fast tracked the human race to the goal of higher development. As is he kept an entire village mentally imprisoned like sheep.
Bert

shevek wrote:
2 years ago
The name "Babylon" (bab-ilu) actually means "gate of god" so I was excited to hear Gilgamesh reference the actual famous gate of Babylon, telling people to go through it to safety: "ana libbi babbi" (more properly translated as 'to the heart of the gate').
You should definitely pass along your properly translated version to the guy who wrote the dialog for the movie. As one of the ten leading scholars of Akkadian in the world, I'm certain he'll be anxious to publish a correction and apologize to Marvel and moviegoers.

And sorry, but where exactly did I use the term 'pseudo-intellectual'?
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shevek
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Bert wrote:
2 years ago
shevek wrote:
2 years ago
The name "Babylon" (bab-ilu) actually means "gate of god" so I was excited to hear Gilgamesh reference the actual famous gate of Babylon, telling people to go through it to safety: "ana libbi babbi" (more properly translated as 'to the heart of the gate').
You should definitely pass along your properly translated version to the guy who wrote the dialog for the movie. As one of the ten leading scholars of Akkadian in the world, I'm certain he'll be anxious to publish a correction and apologize to Marvel and moviegoers.

And sorry, but where exactly did I use the term 'pseudo-intellectual'?
My other critic used that term. I was responding to the both of you in one go, to save posting time.

Here is a fun fact about the professor gentleman who did the Akkadian translation for Eternals, drawn directly from the article in 'Ancient Origins' which you linked: His entire expertise on the Akkadian language is based on NINE tablets which his academic institution (Trinity College in Dublin) happens to have in their collection. There are literally thousands of tablets written in Akkadian (many in dual-language mode with Sumerian) but apparently he hasn't seen those others? That's what the article says. Maybe it's wrong, but the article also says that Eternals would gross "$1 billion", and it only made $402.1 million. So, not everything you see in an article about an academic subject is necessarily accurate, now is it?

Anyway, back to your specific comment: the professor and I are *both* correct on that translation because it's idiomatic. "Ana libbi babbi" *idiomatically* means 'through the gate', but in a literal translation sense, it really means, 'to the heart of the gate.' "Libbi" means "the heart of", which is the "construct" form used in pretty much all Semitic languages.

Have a pleasant evening!
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The above pseudo-intellectual's pretend expertize activism is pretty lame.

Clearly the Akkadian word for 'pseudo-intellectual' is 'shevek.' 100 points to Bert and Shakeshift. Altho to speakers of Akkadian back in the day, a more accurate translation would be 'poo-poo-head.'

In Akkadian cuneiform: :shit: :shit: :crazy:
shevek wrote:
2 years ago
*Could* have taught him German. *Did* teach him German. What's the difference?
So the guy who doesn't know the difference between the meanings of words 'could' and 'did' is hoping beyond hope that people will now believe he knows Akkadian words. He barely knows English!
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Bert

My other critic used that term. I was responding to the both of you in one go, to save posting time.
There is absolutely no indication of that. You quoted my post and then attributed a comment to me that I didn't write. That's a fairly serious breach. When you addressed DB's issue in the same post you were explicit about it. Don't put words in my mouth that I didn't say.
Here is a fun fact about the professor gentleman who did the Akkadian translation for Eternals, drawn directly from the article in 'Ancient Origins' which you linked: His entire expertise on the Akkadian language is based on NINE tablets which his academic institution (Trinity College in Dublin) happens to have in their collection.
The article clearly states that his knowledge comes "primarily from his study of nine cuneiform tablets" at his college. Academics have a thing about using primary sources. Characteristically, you leapt from "primarily" to "entirely" in what you described as a fun fact, the intent being to call into question the bona fides one of the ten leading scholars in the study of Akkadian in the world, and by extension buff your own cred.
There are literally thousands of tablets written in Akkadian (many in dual-language mode with Sumerian) but apparently he hasn't seen those others? That's what the article says. Maybe it's wrong, but the article also says that Eternals would gross "$1 billion", and it only made $402.1 million.
Another misquote. The article said the movie "could" gross one billion, not "would".
So, not everything you see in an article about an academic subject is necessarily accurate, now is it?
Not always, but in this case it is you who are providing false information, not the article.

So in one post you managed to justify attributing words to me that I never said, unfairly attack the academic who provided Eternals with Akkadian translations in order to elevate your own supposed expertise and mis-characterize a prediction on the movie's gross as a statement of fact. None of this is looking very good, shevek.


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Mr. X
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Wow you guys all must be so damned bored to argue about this.
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Their justification for not appearing until now was lame. It made me dislike them all.
I hope the movie and its characters are simply never mentioned in the MCU again.
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Wow you guys know so much about ancient languages, but experts say that actually, English is the hardest language. For me, it's the easiest.
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