Eternals Scores the MCU’s First-Ever Rotten Rating

Eternals has emerged as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first “rotten” movie, and at the time of this writing sits at 53% on review-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. It was bound to happen eventually, but It’s still a little disappointing that it has. Until now, Marvel’s output has been 25 for 25, with each movie earning the red tomato symbol, and some of which even achieving the coveted “certified fresh” emblem. Eternals though has sadly ended the trend with a big, green splat now sat against its name.

“An ambitious superhero epic that soars as often as it strains, Eternals takes the MCU in intriguing — and occasionally confounding — new directions,” reads the site’s critical consensus. The MCU installment’s rating has been slowing dropping for several days now, and while it has been sat at around 60% for most of the time since its release, the numbers have decreased past the point of fresh, and into the dreaded realm of rotten. Until now, the MCU’s lowest rated outings were Thor: The Dark World at 66% followed by The Incredible Hulk at 67%, but unfortunately, Eternals has emerged as a much more divisive outing than anyone really expected.

Eternals introduces a whole new side to the already vast Marvel Cinematic Universe, picking up following the events of 2019’s comic book blockbuster event, Avengers: Endgame. Enter the Eternals, a species of immortal aliens from a distant planet who arrived on earth thousands of years ago and have been protecting humans since the dawn of time. Created by the Celestials, a race of powerful extra-terrestrial cosmic beings who have secretly lived on Earth for over 7000 years, the Eternals must reunite to protect humanity from their evil counterparts, the Deviants.

Despite the critical bashing, Eternals should be commended for amassing an epic ensemble cast, which includes the likes of Angelina Jolie as the fierce Eternal warrior, Thena, Richard Madden as Ikaris, the tactical leader of the Eternals, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo, an Eternal who can shoot cosmic energy projectiles from his hands, Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, an Eternal with the gift of super-speed, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, who poses super-intelligence, Salma Hayek as Ajak, the leader of the Eternals, and Don Lee as Gilgamesh, the strongest Eternal. The movie will be led by Gemma Chan as Sersi, an empathetic Eternal with a strong connection to humans and the Earth, who can manipulate inanimate matter, with Game of Thrones star Kit Harington starring as Dane Whitman, a human who goes on to become the superhero known as Black Knight.

While there had previously been rumblings of a sequel to Eternals, producer Nate Moore has now tempered expectations for follow-up saying, “It’s not something that is a must-have.” Speaking with the Toronto Sun last week, he added, “Obviously, we have ideas of where we could go, but there isn’t a hard and fast rule where we have to have three of these things and this is the first.”

Of course, Rotten Tomatoes is not the be-all and end-all, and you can soon judge the origin of Eternals for yourself when the Marvel movie is released theatrically in the United States on November 5, as part of Phase Four of the MCU. This comes to us from Rotten Tomatoes.

Topics: Eternals