How Eternals’ Phastos could save the MCU
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.Though Spider-Man: No Way Home may have gotten the most buzz amid last year’s entries in the Hollywood superhero genre, we would like to again salute Marvel’s blockbuster factory for actually upping the game for once, and including some beautiful queerness in one of its movies.Eternals arrived with high expectations given the announcement that the tech wizard Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) would, indeed, be Marvel’s first on-screen, identifiable queer hero.
It also had a boost from director Chloe Zhao, who had just nabbed a Best Director Oscar for her work on Nomadland just a few months before.Eternals follows a group of immortal aliens assigned to defend Earth from alien monsters by an even bigger alien.
The group watches the centuries tick by, growing ever closer to humanity. Cut to the present day when said monsters reemerge out of stasis, and the Eternals must reunite to save the world.If the premise sounds simple, the character dynamics are not.
Eternals boasts a big ensemble cast of characters, each played by a compelling actor. Though Gemma Chan and Richard Madden play the ostensible lead characters, each member of the Eternals cast gets a moment to shine.
