Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asia Weekly
Considering our time, the new Marvel Cinematic Universe feature film “Eternal Clan” released on Regal Thornton Place in Northgate on Thursday night is as realistic as most major movies. The janitor lined up and checked one vaccination card at a time. Popcorn was bought, plus soda (the Icee machine went out of business).
“That guy doesn’t know how to act,” a ticket holder said with a smile, pointing to the huge movie ad that took up half of the wall. Of course, I was busy on the way to my seat, and I couldn’t see who was disrespected. In a movie with about 11 main actors, it is difficult for me to find out this person’s answer anyway.
“Eternal Race” is now shown in local theaters, consolidating the remarkable rise of Chloé Zhao, a director and co-writer who was born in Beijing but has long lived in the United States. Since 2015, her first movie “The Song My Brother Taught Me” has earned less than $150,000 at the box office. But she won the Oscar for Best Director for her third film “Nomad”, becoming the second woman and the first woman of color to win the award.
This new movie is more than two and a half hours long and has a total budget of US$200 million. The epic scale and huge numbers complement each other-a story so complicated that it might be good to read it carefully before you go in. Eternals themselves look like humans, but they are full of magical powers and things that seem to be immortal. They were sent to Earth in 5,000 BC on missions.
They were also told not to get too close to developing humans. Their mission is work, and they must stick to their work. This proved to be much more difficult in practice than in theory, especially when their mission spanned years, decades, hundreds or even thousands of years. When they begin to believe that they have been deceived, they must find each other physically and emotionally to get the truth, although they may kill each other in order to get the truth.
Gemma Chan, who plays Sersi, gets a lot of screen time, and the British Asian actress has done a lot to bring the team together. She was disappointed in love, betrayed by someone she should have trusted, and sometimes others even questioned her. But she pushed herself with unparalleled, quiet dignity.
Other important roles of people of color include Pakistani-American Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo, a selfish eternal transformation of Bollywood legend; Korean-American Li Tang as super strong Gilgamesh; Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, The first gay superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; Indian actor Harish Patel as Karun, Kingo’s long-suffering personal assistant; Mexican-American Salma Hayek as Ajak, the original leader of the organization.
The long run meant that Director Zhao could keep the fighting sequence for 20 minutes, if she wanted to. It also allowed some back and forth reversals as the team worked hard to understand what really happened. Seeing thousands of people growing, learning, failing, struggling, hurting and helping each other, they have honed them in ways that they certainly did not expect. However, they know one thing-this is no longer a simple job.
Finally, some opponents of the movie were hanging out in the bathroom before the movie was released, taking apart what they had just seen. In a universe that assumes that there are intelligent life in the entire universe, they laughed and said, what is so special about the earth? Why does the earth have any special meaning?
I reflected silently, and I couldn’t refute them. No idea of life around, through the stars. But in the universe where we reappeared when the lights were on, as far as we know, we sit alone. We might as well care about it. We might as well invest in the passion of the eternal.
Andrew can be at info@nwasianweekly.com.
