The short answer is no, but the long answer is, this movie was either a major hit or a major miss for Marvel fans and audience members alike.

 Marvel’s newest release, Eternals, was released in theaters on November 5th, 2021. The premise of the movie was “ A race of immortal beings with superhuman powers who have secretly lived on Earth for a thousand years, reuniting to battle the evil deviants. “ Many Marvel fans were hyped for the upcoming movie because phase 3 of the Marvel timeline has just ended, leaving fans very curious about what’s going to happen next. According to critics and rotten tomatoes, however, there was an average of 56.5% between the two scores before the movie’s initial release. The Week news article also reported that “ The new Eternals movie has just received the lowest rotten tomato score of all MCU movies. Beating Marvel’s 2013 release, Thor: The Dark World, with its 66% rotten tomato score. “  This statement was also reported days before the movie was officially released, leaving some fans on edge. This may have also affected the initial expectations of some audience members.

My initial thoughts after watching Marvel’s Eternals was that it was neither a good nor bad movie, giving it a solid 6.5 out of 10. However, one may argue that this score could be rounded up to a 7 out of 10 due to Marvel’s notorious post-credits scenes, well-diversified casting choices, and amazing visual effects. In my opinion, even though this movie was amazing visually, the movie plot-wise was just not strong enough to help support the movie structurally. This ultimately weighed down the full potential I think this movie could’ve brought to the Marvel universe. 

After the release of Eternals, as said previously, the reviews became very evident that this movie was both a hit and a miss within audiences. Before the release weekend, the rotten tomato scores were 56%, and Metacritic scores were 57%, dropping down to a whopping 48% in rotten tomato scores, and a 53% in Metacritic scores after the movie’s initial release. However, 79% of Google users liked the movie, audience members gave the movie a 6.9/10 on IMDb, and the audience score was an 80%. This movie was also able to top the box office with its earnings of $71 million on its opening night, in addition, this was the 4th highest opening since the pandemic hit theaters. A good portion of movie reviews by audience members stated that “ This movie was over hated “, which leaves the question of, was this a good or bad movie? I, myself cannot answer that question, but I can hypothesize as to why this movie may not have “stuck” to all audience members as it should have. 

One recurring statement reviewers mentioned was that this movie was very different from any of Marvel’s previous movies. Some even mentioned how they didn’t understand why the rotten tomato scores were so low. On the contrary, other audience members mentioned how the pacing of the movie wasn’t the best and quoted “ The concept of Eternals is a lot more interesting than the execution”. 

After watching the movie, both stances are completely valid. This leads me to my main point, I can neither confirm nor deny if this movie was good or bad, but most likely it fits more into the mediocrity category. This movie can be summed up as a missed opportunity that wanted to take a different direction to Marvel movies. Eternals had a lot of potentials but just missed the mark on becoming a part of Marvels’ huge catalog of amazing movies. Either way, one can only hope that future Marvel movies will be able to hit that mark and bring something new to the MCU.