UHD Review A Few Words About A few words about...™ - Eternals -- in 4k UHD (1 Viewer)

[JoshZ]

That’s not a Disney release.

Regardless, I prefer not to make assumptions until someone has the disc in hand to confirm. Thanks.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Regardless, I prefer not to make assumptions until someone has the disc in hand to confirm. Thanks.

Whoever said anything about assumptions. I simply said precedent was on the side of it having shifting ratios. Maybe we’re misreading each other because it feels a little like there’s an argument brewing and I’m trying my best to avoid one.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Are we having a Josh vs. Josh argument brewing.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Are we having a Josh vs. Josh argument brewing.

I don’t remember what started it but I remember a few years ago the other Josh (@joshEH ) got me real good in one - he was running circles around me and I didn’t even realize it until it was too late and all I could do was laugh at myself

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

Are we having a Josh vs. Josh argument brewing.

My money’s on Josh.

 

[jayembee]

Josh v. Josh: Dawn of Confusion

 

[JoshZ]

Whoever said anything about assumptions. I simply said precedent was on the side of it having shifting ratios. Maybe we’re misreading each other because it feels a little like there’s an argument brewing and I’m trying my best to avoid one.

No argument intended. I maintain a running list of movies with variable aspect ratio on another site, and I try not to update it until I find confirmation of the aspect ratio from someone who has the disc in hand. You mentioned that you preordered the 3D disc for Eternals, so you seemed like you'd be in a good position to check it out when it arrives. That's all I meant.

FWIW, I agree with you that I expect the 3D disc here to most likely have VAR, but precedents do sometimes get broken, and I wasn't planning to buy the disc myself.

 

[Lord Dalek]

I don’t understand why this isn’t more widely known - lots of complaints from people in this thread about shifting aspect ratios and yet it seems no one bothers to choose the version that doesn’t feature them.

Because that's the one they advertise on the main menu? I didn't know there was a fixed version until this morning.

 

[joshEH]

I don’t remember what started it but I remember a few years ago the other Josh (@joshEH ) got me real good in one - he was running circles around me and I didn’t even realize it until it was too late and all I could do was laugh at myself

That might've been my Mirror Universe-self!

 

[Richard Kaufman]

Watched "The Eternals" last night. Oy. Vat a mess!
Am I crazy, or is there no logical reason for one of The Eternals to be deaf? They're some sort of hybrid robot--why would The Celestials create a deaf warrior? And if the Eternal was defective (deaf), why was it not destroyed and a robot that was perfect substituted? Because they're not robots in the comics, a deaf Eternal might occur. But they've changed it for the film, so how could it happen? Why would it happen? Someone help me understand what the film makers were doing.

 

[Malcolm R]

Watched "The Eternals" last night. Oy. Vat a mess!
Am I crazy, or is there no logical reason for one of The Eternals to be deaf? They're some sort of hybrid robot--why would The Celestials create a deaf warrior? And if the Eternal was defective (deaf), why was it not destroyed and a robot that was perfect substituted? Because they're not robots in the comics, a deaf Eternal might occur. But they've changed it for the film, so how could it happen? Why would it happen? Someone help me understand what the film makers were doing.

Making changes for the sake of diversity and inclusiveness, it seems. In the comics, the character is a white man whose hearing is just fine.

 

[Richard Kaufman]

Okay for diversity and inclusiveness, but that doesn't answer the logical question--how can a deaf robot exist.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Inclusivity and logic are often mutually exclusive.

 

[sbjork]

In the Kirby run of the comics, Sersi was brazenly sexual, obsessed with men. Druig was wildly different, too. In fact, the onscreen versions of most Marvel characters vary from their comic book counterparts. Thor's alter ego Donald Blake is MIA in the MCU. Never mind what they did with The Mandarin.

People seem to accept all the changes to the characters without batting an eyelash (well, with the possible exception of The Mandarin), but when those changes are related to gender or ethnicity, then suddenly there's grumbling against diversity or inclusiveness. But the fact is, all of these characters have changed drastically over many decades of comics, let alone in being translated to the screen. Their appearances have changed drastically even when a given character stays the same race and gender. Changing characters is built into the DNA of the entire industry. It's how they try to keep things fresh.

God help everyone when Love and Thunder comes out. The Internet might break.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Chloe Zhao set out to make the Ben-Hur of comic book movies and ended up producing Heaven's Gate instead.

You spelled Waterworld wrong.

 

[dpippel]

People seem to accept all the changes to the characters without batting an eyelash (well, with the possible exception of The Mandarin), but when those changes are related to gender or ethnicity, then suddenly there's grumbling against diversity or inclusiveness.

I'm all for diversity and inclusiveness when it doesn't fly in the face of basic logic. That the Celestials would build a superpowered synthetic being that cannot hear simply makes no sense.

 

[jayembee]

It's especially true when comic books are involved, especially when it comes to DC, who at this point, in the comics, reboot their universe every five years. Hawkman is a reincarnated Egyptian, then he's a police officer from another planet, then he's kinda-sorta both? And so on, and so forth.

The best bit is Nick Fury. He was originally a white guy who fought in WW2, and was played by David Hasselhoff(!) in a TV movie in the 90s. A couple of years later, when Marvel came up with their alternate-universe Ultimate line, Fury was now a black man. On top of that, someone came up with the idea of basing his looks on Samuel L. Jackson, who (being a comics fan) gave his permission. So when Marvel Studios decided to include Fury into the MCU, they hired Jackson to play him.

As far as Makkari goes, perhaps she wasn't deaf when she was created, but something happened several years later. The Eternals themselves didn't know they were robots, so why would they think she could be simply "fixed"? And the Celestials wouldn't care, as long as she was getting the work done. Or...maybe, just maybe, the point is that her losing her hearing wasn't seen as a "defect" that required fixing.

For me, the biggest question brought up by the movie is why the Celestials wouldn't want the Eternals to help against Thanos. Sure, they bring up the point that the Eternals' one and only job is to fight the Deviants and not otherwise get involved with humanity and its affairs. But Thanos's snap eliminated half the life in the Universe, which means that any "fetal" Celestial wouldn't be born because there wasn't enough life force to make it happen. It's even possible that one or more were in the process of being born when the Snap happened, which means that they would've been "aborted", like Tiamut was in the film. Unless the Celestials didn't care if these new Celestials didn't get born for another 20K (or whatever) years as they wait for planetary populations to get back up to a necessary level. That's probably an eye blink to them.

 

[dpippel]

For me, the biggest question brought up by the movie is why the Celestials wouldn't want the Eternals to help against Thanos. Sure, they bring up the point that the Eternals' one and only job is to fight the Deviants and not otherwise get involved with humanity and its affairs.

Yet the whole reason they're on Earth is to foster the birth of a Celestial that would destroy the entire planet and everything on it. But really, trying to chase down too much logic in the typical superhero film is a bit of a fool's errand. Perhaps it's because the movie didn't really engage me, but for some reason, the flaws in Eternals stand out more than usual.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Yet the whole reason they're on Earth is to foster the birth of a Celestial that would destroy the entire planet and everything on it. But really, trying to chase down too much logic in the typical superhero film is a bit of a fool's errand. Perhaps it's because the movie didn't really engage me, but for some reason, the flaws in Eternals stand out more than usual.

Most filmmakers don't care about logic, they're more concern about entertaining audiences. Obviously, that tactic didn't work for you with this movie.

 

[sbjork]

...maybe, just maybe, the point is that her losing her hearing wasn't seen as a "defect" that required fixing.

For me, the biggest question brought up by the movie is why the Celestials wouldn't want the Eternals to help against Thanos.

I'm sure that deafness not being a considered a defect was part of it. The origin of both the Eternals and the Deviants is quite different in the movie than it was in the books, especially Kirby's. There, they live apart from mankind in Olympia and Lemuria, but the film makes the point at the beginning that these Eternals were created to live among men. Which is one reason why the diverse races and abilities makes sense in this incarnation.

As far as Thanos goes, there's no reason why either the Eternals or the Celestials world even know what his plans were. The Celestials are godlike, but neither omniscient or omnipresent. By focusing only on the Deviants, they might have missed the threat until it was too late. It's the Avengers who came up with the scheme to fix the Snap, which probably looked irreversible to everyone else.