Review: I cannot wait to recommend Marvel’s Eternals… on Disney Plus

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  Eternals, assemble! (l-r) Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Thena (Angelina Jolie), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Ajak (Salma Hayek), Sersi (Gemma Chan), Sprite (Lia McHugh), and Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). [credit: YouTube/Marvel Studios ]

For much of Marvel’s Eternals‘ 2 hour 37 minute runtime, I found my consciousness floating out of my body, through the lobby doors of the theater, and into an alternate reality version of my home. There, I saw myself gripped by weekly installments of my new favorite TV series, itself based on Marvel’s Eternals.

This dream series felt like a more Lost-ified version of the old TV show Heroes, where mythological icons contended with a mix of global stakes and emotional bonds, then had to unite with both purpose and superpowers over a complicated span of thousands of years. Each episode focused on one or two of the lead characters—and juxtaposed those stars’ current-day relationships with beautifully rendered, historically accurate callbacks to their adventures in other epochs.

I was so disengaged and disappointed by the new Marvel film adaptation—premiering exclusively in theaters on Friday, November 5—that my mind wandered into a different kind of “what if” than Marvel Studios likely intended. To its credit, Eternals regularly snapped me out of that daydream. I would still recommend it as an intriguing addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.