John Ridley Boldly Proclaims His Scrapped Marvel TV Show Was 'Eternals But Good'
John Ridley Boldly Proclaims His Scrapped Marvel TV Show Was 'Eternals But Good'
We've seen what mid-2010s ABC Marvel looked like, John. You are promising a lot here!
It's funny ... for me The Eternals for me was the moment I knew the MCU was dead to me ... because unlike everyone else ... I liked it.
At the time, looking on all of the comic and MCU fans criticising it, I couldn't help but notice that there was a kinda lack of appreciation of the film as a film and that most criticism came from some relatively undefined (or unspoken) expectation of epicness and big-arc tie-in momentum. And at the time, I personally predicted that the MCU was going to "fail" because its fans didn't quite know what they wanted except for some massive hype dopamine hit to cheer along to in the cinema.
Which is great, except that the MCU had clearly bottomed out with its ability to do that in Infinity War (clearly better than Endgame IMO) and was trying to spread its wings and create films and characters with different vibes and energies ... all within the same universe. I was there for it and rather enjoyed Eternals. Many said it wasn't an MCU film ... and I was like yea ... that's why I enjoyed it. It seemed pretty clear to me that the MCU and its fans were in a mutually dependent downward spiral. And if you look at what's come out since then, it sure looks like that's come to pass.
If MCU fans (and producers) had understood that you gotta enjoy different palettes and vibes to enrich the universe and make the big moments hit hard ... the MCU could have been an rather interesting film phenomenon by leveraging comic's ability/tradition to fuse sci-fi and fantasy at multiple scales. Instead, what we've gotten since Inifinity War is a fusion that's taken all the worse parts, IMO.
I didn't hate Eternals, but I had some complaints. Mainly, I think it needed to be a series. Not enough time was given to each of the characters to grow and breathe. They're trying to set these characters up as critical to the future of the Cosmic Universe, AND explain why they haven't interfered before now, AND explain why they are going to suddenly abandon all of their foundational beliefs to save the Earth, AND introduce an ancient evil that nobody's noticed until now, AND one has a severely traumatic past, another is deeply in love with the traumatized one, another is a benign mind control cult leader, another wants to be human, another lives a life of fame, another is an empath dating the Black Knight, and I haven't even mentioned the first deaf and first gay superheroes in the MCU.
It was overly ambitious, and should have been a series. Honestly, I think they scrapped the series because they didn't want to draw comparisons to Inhumans.
Thank you. The hate for The Eternals has always seemed overblown to me. I like the characters, and the story and premise are interesting - and by that I mean the good kind of “interesting”, not the version of “interesting” that you use as an adjective when you’re trying not to hurt someone’s feelings.
I’ve watched it several times. It’s not flawless, or my favorite Marvel film, but it’s certainly better than average. It’s a nice change of pace, and for me, a welcome addition to the MCU.
Something that saddened me was that there wasn't anyone geeking about the (sometimes subtle) hints they gave about how myths were inspired or seeded by the eternals.
My favourite, which is definitely a bit niche, is the fight Gilgamesh has in Babylon with the horned deviant outside of the city ... which is a direct reference to the actual myth of Gilgamesh who fights a celestial half-bull half human creature outside of the city walls. The film doesn't stress this at all ... it's just there ... and instead of getting geeky about things other than the comics (maybe this is also part of the comics I'm not sure), that side of things was just kinda ignored..
I completely agree with everything you said.
Interesting! I suspect it's one of those things that's a reasonably good divider or litmus test.
Like there are two kinds of MCU fans ... those that hated Eternals and those who liked or appreciated it.
And, not to be snobby or anything ... but maybe finding a way to make both types of fans happy was the key, and instead the MCU has probably tried to listen a bit too much to the haters.
This is the best analysis I’ve seen on this and couldn’t agree more. I also felt the same after The Last Jedi. I left the theater extremely happy that they were trying something different only to go online and see that so many people hated it. And the Star Wars fandom has only degraded from there. “Mutually dependent downward spiral” is a great way to put it.
I was pleased with it as well but despite trying to avoid spoilers I had heard the casino scene was a good time for piss break. I took it and that may have influenced my view.
It was never going to be a good trilogy with the lack of cohesion Disney allowed but it was interesting at the time. I haven't watched it since release though.
Nice addition. I have the same feelings about last Jedi. And look what happened to that trilogy once they tried to appease the fans!
It's a metaphor for abortion and how important it is sometimes. That's my read.
I don't know is, that a lame take on the movie? It wasn't an amazing movie, but it had a very interesting message I thought.
That's a low ass bar
And what else would he say anyway? Hey that show i wanted to do but couldn't would've been so ass you wouldn't believe it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“It was a television version of The Eternals… but good,” Ridley recently told the Comic Book Club podcast of his planned ABC series.
“There was the version that [Marvel] ended up doing,” Ridley went on to add, referring to Chloé Zhao’s 2021 movie.
His body of work speaks to his talent, just as it did for Chloe Zhao ahead of her movie version.
But they all knew their scopes, even when they did lean more into the fantastical, they worked for the medium and scale they were telling their stories in, and played with that freedom even as their cinematic siblings kept giving them the cold shoulder.
This is, however, to knock the Marvel TV we were getting at the time (or a couple years later at least) that honestly is more closer to what Eternals would’ve had to do on ABC: Inhumans.
There is forever a chance, even though we’ll never see it, that an Eternals TV show could’ve been the “But Good” version.
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Dang. That sounds awesome.