A few weeks after aPhase 4 teasergave us our first glimpse of Chloe Zhao’sEternals，预告片的预告片已到来，向我们展示了整个人类历史上的永恒行动。史前悬崖的开场镜头很可爱，崩溃的波浪与人们刮擦的人的简单性形成鲜明对比的是100％的Chloe Zhao，但我必须承认，至少这个预告片，至少有很多漫威的房子，显示的样式。那个平坦的照明！为什么！仍然！我永远不会理解。我们早就接受了所有奇迹的事物并存，我不会也不会理解对房屋风格的持续坚持，尤其是因为照明非常无聊。赵证明她可以在绿色的田野上奔波，尽管Marvel的美感变得平坦，但史前的悬崖侧看起来如此宏伟。
与Marve一直如此l teasers and trailers, we are given no f-cking context for what is happening, which in the case of the Eternals, feels a little left of the mark, since they’re one of Marvel’s weirder groups. Guardians of the Galaxy was an easier sell, since they could be parsed as “Avengers in space”, but the closest shorthand we have for the Eternals is “like gods, but not”. We definitely get a sense of theirAncient Alienshistory with humanity—yes, the in the world of the MCU, theAncient Aliensguys are right, UGH—as they arrive and begin helping those hardscrabble cliff people build civilization. We get a little glimpse of some of the Eternals in action, including speedster Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), inventor Phastos (Bryan Tyree Henry), warrior Thena (Angelina Jolie), their leader Ajak (Salma Hayek), and Sersi (Gemma Chan) helping to grow plants. We also get a quick cut of eternally young Sprite (gender-swapped for the movie and played by Lia McHugh) singing on a jet plane, scowling Druig (Barry Keoghan), and Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) dancing in a Bollywood movie. GIVE ME ALL OF THAT, PLEASE.
But we see nothing of the Eternals foe, the Deviants—except for a suggestion that the Deviants caused the destruction of Pompeii, maybe?—nor do we see Richard Madden’s Ikaris in action. We do see Ikaris and Sersi renewing their vows over the years, at least until we also see Sersi having a moment with hapless human Dane Whitman (Kit Harington). We know those twohave a connectionthanks to set photos, so I am SUPER curious to see what the Ikaris-Sersi-Dane plot looks like. Robb Stark and Jon Snow are reunited and into the same woman! The song in the teaser is Skeeter Davis’s rendition of “The End of the World”, which plays just as well for an alien invasion as it does a ten thousand year love story finally coming to an end. Marvel hires directors like Zhao less for the action stuff and more for the human storytelling stuff, so I am here to see what she does with these three characters.
My favorite part of the teaser is my favorite part of any Marvel movie: the hangout. Seeing the Eternals gathered around a table, giving Ikaris a hard time for saying he could lead the Avengers is the vibe I want. Natasha Romanoff spent a lot of time calling the Avengers a family, but they never really felt like one. They came across, at best, as friendly co-workers. Hopefully, the Eternals can more effectively capture that “family” feeling, which is exactly the kind of humanist storytelling Chloe Zhao brings to the table. I am very interested to see how much of Zhao’s sensibility really pushes through the Marvel house style. The most successful filmmakers on that front have been James Gunn and Taika Waititi, who, not for nothing, have made the best Marvel movies. Can Chloe Zhao meet, or even exceed, their standards? I see no reason why not, unless the Marvel house style gets too much in her way.
