This seems fair to me I don’t always agree with other critics, but no results have made me scratch my head more than the seeming widespread disdain for Eternals from people who make a living thinking about movies. Audiences rate Eternals at 80%, and The Dark World at 75%. In fact, this is one of the times where I believe the Rotten Tomatoes’ “audience score” has done far better justice than the critics. What I’m saying here is that there is no way on Earth or Asgard that Eternals is a worse MCU movie than Thor: The Dark World. Even star Chris Hemsworth publically called The Dark World “Meh,” while Eccleston took that a step further and said of the film, “Just a gun in your mouth.” Hemsworth grew so tired of the constraints of the character that he was unenthusiastic about playing Thor again until Taika Waititi reinvigorated the franchise with his witty, wacky, tongue-in-cheek Ragnarok. There are some well-done and memorable aspects of it, like Thor’s overall aesthetic, Loki’s grief in his prison cell over the loss of his mother Frigga, Loki turning into Captain America, and Loki’s dramatic “death” scene.īut the movie on the whole has long been regarded as one of Marvel’s weakest links, with a plodding mess of a plot and a villain called Malekith the Dark Elf, a role that underused the great Christopher Eccleston to an extent that should be illegal. Now, as a devoted Thor fan, I’m not saying that The Dark World is necessarily the worst Marvel movie ever made. Black Widow was a paint-by-the-numbers retread of everything we’ve seen in the MCU so many times before, and Shang-Chi, while enjoyable and entertaining, told a pretty standard origin story. It is, in fact, the first Marvel movie in recent memory I’d be glad to watch again in theaters. While the movie is long and stuffed to the brim with characters and storylines, I was never bored, and I emerged feeling reinvigorated and excited for Marvel’s future.
The lashing Eternals has received in reviews makes zero sense to me. Even The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton and forgotten by most viewing audiences, pulled in a 67% critical score. Meanwhile, the long-lambasted Thor: The Dark World rates a 66%, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, which I have bleached from my brain, has a 76%. With an average of 47%, Eternals is “rotten,” critically speaking-the first MCU film branded with that tomato splotch. Faced with an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor must embark on his most perilous and personal journey yet, one that will reunite him with Jane Foster and force him to sacrifice everything to save us all.The Chloé Zhao-directed Eternals now has the lowest critics’ ranking for any Marvel Studios movie on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. In the aftermath of Marvel’s Thor and Marvel’s The Avengers, Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos…but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World continues the big-screen adventures of Thor, the Mighty Avenger, as he battles to save Earth and all the Nine Realms from a shadowy enemy that predates the universe itself. Here’s the official synopsis for Thor: The Dark World: