Marvel Finally Made a Sex Scene in ‘Eternals.’ It’s So Bad You’ll Wish They Hadn’t.
 |
| 📷 Marvel Studios |
I really wish they did not.
The scene itself ends almost as soon as it begins, so a "detailed" description would be hard to come by.
Let’s try it this way: have you ever seen a 6-year-old put a Ken doll on top of a Barbie doll and then kind of look at her because she does not really know what happens next? This is basically what we are working on here.
It's not just that the scene is uncomfortable, though it certainly is. Or that it's comically short and without any real passion. It's not even that Richard Madden and Gemma Chan, whose characters are supposed to have been in love for 5,000 years, share about as much chemistry as a gynecologist and their patient on a Pap test through the film. . (But seriously, how do two people get so hot producing such a cold, clinical atmosphere as soon as they touch each other ?!)
At the risk of sounding like one of Marvel's monsters who will likely complain about the sex scene on Reddit for entirely different reasons, it was the pointlessness of this moment that made its viewing so numbing.
He seemed to exist only to get people to stop making fun of Marvel for never doing those scenes in the first place, which might explain why everything in the moment, from bored expressions on the actors' faces to dull cinematography and lifeless, it landed like a deep sigh muttering, "Well, there you go."
The talk surrounding Marvel's apparent allergy to intimacy has been around almost as long as the MCU, as have conversations about the films' general lack of diversity and apprehension about portraying openly gay characters on screen.
Eternals seems determined to correct these mistakes and follow through on Phase Two's promise to improve Phase 1 limits (you know, now that the series has already made billions for its creators). If only the movie had something to say.
Eternals revolves around a group of quasi-immortal beings who disguise themselves as humans on Earth while essentially serving as the galaxy's most hideous nannies.
They are there to make sure things run smoothly, but not to protect humanity from itself, a goal that makes no sense even to this insignificant human brain, but that these millennial beings take. never bother to question.
However, when the group finally achieves their true purpose on Earth, they are left with big questions about what to do next.
At the center of it all is apparently an exploration of humanity - its nobility and its monstrosity. This is where the aforementioned plasticine sex scene comes in.
The lack of intimacy between Chan's Sersi and the Ikaris alongside Richard Madden's Superman highlights a deeper issue within the Eternals and Marvel canon in general.
There are actually three romances in Eternals. Brian Tyree Henry's Phastos is one-half of the MCU's first same-sex couple, and Lauren Ridloff and Barry Keoghan's Makkari and Druig share an ongoing flirtation throughout the film.
However, like Sersi and Ikaris' alleged love story, none of these relationships seem credible - in part because the film itself seems so uninterested in them, beyond any implications it may have for the plot.
Calling the MCU a plot-oriented machine seems shaky at this point - like pointing out that a lot of Star Wars takes place in space.
That these films tend to lack emotional depth, with a few exceptions, is not necessarily a problem in itself; many genre films root them in other corners of the storytelling. But it seems a little strange that a movie that claims to mean anything about humanity seems so indifferent to a crucial human experience.
Perhaps it's fussy to wonder why, at the possible end of the world, is Brian Tyree Henry's character kissing his tongueless lover, or why, despite the actual chemistry that Ridloff and Keoghan's characters share, their relationship? Seems to get the least attention from the script.
And director Chloé Zhao. Like the film's clumsy attempts to cut its way through human history, these relationships unfold through a broad narrative that erases any possibility of texture and nuance, qualities that distinguish the work. Zhao's previous in the indie world.
The Marvel brand is tackling "big issues" through the superhero metaphor, a strategy its fans frequently invoke whenever another bad-faith discussion about Martin Scorsese ensues.
WandaVision is about pain, Black Widow is about trauma, and so on. But the metaphor can only express so much, and at times Marvel's abstraction can seem like an escape: Are the Eternals, a group of superhuman beings whose conversations revolve around whether humanity is worth saving or not, truly the best vehicle. for a nuanced comment. about humanity itself? These "people" apparently can't even have sex properly!
If Eternals feels especially empty, perhaps it is because it reveals how much the "big themes" of this cinematic universe are mere appearances.
The ideas these movies claim to explore increasingly feel like packaging for the real product: an endless plot machine designed, above all, to sell movie tickets and Disney + subscriptions as long as people keep paying.
