What Is The Eternals Plot Based On?
The Eternals were always going to be a tough nut to crack, cinematically speaking. They’re compelling enough characters once you dig in, but on the surface, they make the weirdest Inhumans look like the normal X-Men and the weirdest X-Men look like the cast of “Friends.”
That’s part of why Joe Quesada tasked Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr. with breathing new, more relatable life into the characters back in the mid-2000s. The project came about after Gaiman’s success with “1602,” and aimed to “take a Marvel property that wasn’t active and turn it into something that we can utilize for a long time.”
The result was “Eternals,” a seven-part miniseries that reworked the mythology of Jack Kirby’s race of immortals, wiping enough of their memories to warrant reintroductions and warm, welcoming exposition.
As with lots of rebooted comics from the last few years, the story took the pre-built foundations of the universe and constructed a more screen-ready version of events for new readers — and, optimistically, studio executives — to latch onto.
From what we’ve seen in this first teaser trailer, “Eternals” the movie seems to have “Eternals” the miniseries in its DNA. The biggest hint comes from the ominous shots of Sprite, who spends the comic series on a reality-warping rage bender after millennia spent trapped in the body of a child finally catch up with the little hellraiser.
Sprite’s crusade to reshape existence, and particularly her tendency to play hide-and-seek with people’s memories, would go a long way towards explaining why nobody in the MCU has noticed the Eternals until now.
