Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.
The Landmark: Eternals
Though Spider-Man: No Way Home may have gotten the most buzz amid last year’s entries in the Hollywood superhero genre, we would like to again salute Marvel’s blockbuster factory for actually upping the game for once, and including some beautiful queerness in one of its movies.
Eternals arrived with high expectations given the announcement that the tech wizard Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) would, indeed, be Marvel’s first on-screen, identifiable queer hero. It also had a boost from director Chloe Zhao, who had just nabbed a Best Director Oscar for her work on Nomadland just a few months before.
Eternals follows a group of immortal aliens assigned to defend Earth from alien monsters by an even bigger alien. The group watches the centuries tick by, growing ever closer to humanity. Cut to the present day when said monsters reemerge out of stasis, and the Eternals must reunite to save the world.
If the premise sounds simple, the character dynamics are not. Eternals boasts a big ensemble cast of characters, each played by a compelling actor. Though Gemma Chan and Richard Madden play the ostensible lead characters, each member of the Eternals cast gets a moment to shine. That holds especially true for Henry, burdened with the duties of playing the studio’s first gay hero, and adding to its still-modest list of black heroes as well. In short, Henry delivers the goods, playing his role with a powerful intensity every moment he appears on screen. Zhao also affords him a good deal of range in his scenes, allowing him to play moments of comedy, guilt, and domestic bliss opposite on-screen husband Haaz Sleiman. Tyree’s charisma points to a promising career ahead; though Marvel reportedly has no plans for Eternals 2, we hope Phastos turns up again in some future superhero brawl.
Beyond its blow for representation, Eternals features Zhao’s signature breathtaking visuals. Nobody photographs landscapes or sunsets like this woman, and its telling that in a movie this full of special effects, simple shots of the light hitting Chan’s face or Madden standing in a desert rank as the most memorable. The rest of the cast–which also includes Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, and Barry Keoghan–also gives compelling performances. At 156 minutes, Eternals feels a bit, well, eternal, and the inclusion of an elaborate mythology and special effects climax feels more perfunctory than necessary.
Still, given Brian Tyree Henry’s performance, and the place Eternals holds in superhero movie history, we recommend giving it a look. Zhao’s visuals and a committed cast make the movie fun. What a shame it had to go and ruin it all with the CGI mayhem.
Streams on Disney+.
Note: This article contains portions of previous articles posted on Queerty.
SamB
An absolutely terrible movie all around.
Cam
@SamB, you are a troll here to ALWAyS attack LGBTQ representation, Attack people who come out, Attack the victims of bigotry, and defend right wing hate groups and bigots who attack us.
Your trying to troll the movie means I’ll probably watch it again tonight.
Kangol2
The film was meh, though nice to look at. Brian Tyree Henry and Haz Sleiman gave fine performances. Why not spin off a streaming/TV series for Phastos and his husband? Henry’s already engaged with Atlanta, for which he’s delivered an iconic performance as Paper Boi Miles, but since that show’s most recent season is done film, why not hook him and Haz Sleiman with a series of their own?
curiobi
I think that would be awesome!
WillParkinson
Save the MCU? Films making billions, and you’re saying they need saving? Would that we could all be saved like that.
CatholicXXX
Why couldn’t they pick a hot guy to play the gay one?
Or even better, a closeted gay one like Richard madden
Cam
What a shock, one of the trolls other screenames wants to replace the Black actor with someone White.
Your trolling is boring, sad and old.
Cam
The thing I think is weird that so many directors seem to be doing now really started with the final Game of Thrones season.
Because the cameras now are better at filming i the dark, directors seem to think that every scene needs to be dark. With Eternals, they would be in a room and yet it would be dark as night. When the Game of Thrones director got criticized he said that people should be watching the TV at home with the lights out for the full experience. The problem is, if other people are in the room or you need to have the lights on for something else it almost looks like a blank screen.
I get that it’s a new toy for directors, but enough, when they are inside, in a house, during the daytime there is no reason to film it at the same light level as if it was the middle of the night.
JScott
I hardily could agree more. To shoot movies in darkness, knowing it will quickly go to streaming is annoying not artistic.