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"Eternal Family", the origin story of the huge new ensemble of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has brought a key theme of Marvel-doubts about authority-to an absolute peak. In the process, it raised inevitable questions, not only It's about why this is important, and even what "important" means.

"You can't'see through' things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see through something. The window is best to be transparent, because the street or garden outside the window is not transparent. What if you also see through the garden? Try to "see through" the first principle It's useless. If you see everything through, everything is transparent. But a completely transparent world is an invisible world. To'see through' everything is equivalent to invisible." (CS Lewis, abolish humanity)

Note: This article contains Eternals spoilers.

One of the most enduring raps in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is its villain problem. After more than ten years and about 25 movies featuring dozens of superheroes, MCU has only produced two memorable and enduring villains: Tom Hiddleston (Tom Hiddleston) fickle The emotional nihilist Thanos of Loki and Josh Brolin. Don’t underestimate Michael B. Jordan’s hot killer (Killmonger), maybe there are one or two others in the forgotten mediocrity like Malekith and Taskmaster. Stand out from the rest of your generation-but even the best of the others, so far, are the once-and-for-all bad guys of the week.

The Eternal Race-a comprehensive origin story spanning thousands of years of human history and introducing a record 10 new costumed heroes at one time-adding many new and memorable opponents, mainly known as anomalous Unconscious monster. At least one non-deviant opponent has an official spoiler, but if you keep paying attention, you may find another opponent. He is the pinnacle of the prototype of Marvel movies that runs through from the beginning: the most consistent idea, if not their only idea, at the center of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This archetype can be broadly called "person" or "power of existence." Always a strong, patriarchal authority figure, like Obadiah Stein, Nick Fury or Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford’s role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier), this A person is usually the protagonist's biological father, like Howard Stark or T'Chaka, the father of the Panthers. Sometimes, Dad is a real higher power and a quasi-sacred existence, such as Odin of the Immortal Palace, Igo of the Celestial God (Father of Star Jue), or Immortal Wenwu (Father of Shangzhi). In The Eternals, The Man is still more noble-this has inevitable existence and dramatic consequences.

In terms of his level of sympathy or compromise, "Incarnation of a Man" varies from one MCU movie to another. However, this person always has destructive secrets, distorts his true intentions, and cannot be trusted, at least not completely. Even though The Man himself is more compassionate, the institution, legacy, plan or field he represents is fundamentally damaged or corrupted.

"We can only say that greater interests rarely exceed my own interests," Howard Stark himself finally admitted to Tony in a painful, time-curved last encounter. Howard left a legacy of war profits to his son, and the way he dispatched his unethical colleague Anton Wenke-he helped invent Stark Industries' greatest nonviolent achievement-the arc reactor-was ruthless at best , And had serious consequences for the sons of the two men, especially the liberal arts. Tony's surrogate father, Obadiah Stane, took this tainted legacy to a new level, selling weapons to terrorists.

Nick Fury's cover-up of SHIELD's super weapon program may be based on humanitarian motives, but SHIELD itself was secretly corrupted and was infiltrated and subverted by Hydra, a secret terrorist organization linked to the Nazis. Odin and Tchaka are largely portrayed as benevolent rulers, but their regime conceals the unrecognized crimes of their leaders: Odin’s genocide and brutal conquest; T’Chaka conceals The killing of his radical brother N'Jobu and the abandonment of N'Jobu's youngest son, a future slayer. (Faced with the suffering and turmoil in Africa, Wakanda’s historic isolationism is a further stain on its legacy.)

These are storytelling choices with ethical and thematic potential. The theme of the Winter Soldier's "Who Watches the Watchers?"—irresponsible government agencies have accumulated too much power in the lives of citizens—aroused real-world political worries, such as the excessive behavior of the Patriot Act. The revelation of Asgard’s shameful establishment has resonated widely in our time, and civil and church authorities are held responsible for their participation in the so-called genocide against Native Americans. (I think Thor: Ragnarok’s storytelling is morally empty, but not because of its anti-colonial atmosphere.)

The potential moral weight of these stories depends on the reality that the misconduct of those in power, those in power, and even people like gods can be judged by higher standards. All fathers have obligations to their children. Business owners are bound by law; even the king cannot override international law. Odin clearly admits that the Asgardians are "not gods" in Thor: The Dark World. Xingjue's dying mother declared that his father was an "angel composed of pure light", but the god smiled and accepted the name of "little g—at least when I was humbled".

In Eternals, we learn more about creatures called Celestials. The opening title directly quoted Genesis 1. Starting from "In the beginning...", before the "dawn of creation", this Marvel creation myth continued, "God descends." "The Supreme God", we will call it Allison, "brings light to the universe." In his other worlds and works, Allison created the earth and human beings. Then, after the initial unexplainable appearance of the anomaly, described as "an unnatural predator", Arisham created the eternal race-the first superhero-to "restoring order".

In this seemingly dualistic myth, Alisson is very like God, and the eternal and the anomaly are like angels and demons-except that the anomaly is not the fallen eternal, and obviously appears out of thin air. The eternal is Alisson’s coping plan. (Comic legend Jack Kirby, who created the gods and immortals, he is a Jew, the name Alisson vaguely implies Hashim, this may not be a coincidence, Hashim is the Hebrew word for God In a roundabout way, it literally means "name." In other words, the "Judge Arison" in Kirby's comics is far from the original creator of Arison in the movie. More obviously, the Jewish prayer is called "Shema." , From Hebrew, meaning "listen" or "listen", in the name of another deity, the listener Ashma.)

We are told that the Eternals follow Allison's will with unwavering conviction-of course, this is another way of saying that in the end, this conviction will at least be shaken if it is not crushed. This happens when you trust The Man.

When the risk is so high, questioning The Man also means questioning Grand Design-a theme previously seen on the small screen of the Disney series Loki. Loki assumes that the integrity of time and space is monitored and supervised by a bureaucratic organization called Time Variance Authority or TVA. TVA agents believe that they are protecting the "sacred timeline," a quasi-religious trust established by people who are considered gods and known as the guardians of time. 

All of this was eventually revealed as a lie: the time guardian is just a puppet robot, and no timeline is more "sacred" than other timelines. The mastermind behind the lie, a mortal named he left behind, is just a survivor of the time war between alternate realities, and has begun to trim different timelines to maintain time peace. (At the end of the final episode, the survivor was killed, triggering an explosive time fork and possibly threatening a new time war.)

As understood by the Eternal Race, the grand plan requires them to fight the anomalies and allow humanity to flourish-or participate in war, conquest, and genocide; the Eternal Race, like the Federation with the highest order in Star Trek, Do not interfere with the affairs of primitive creatures. This is a rule, like Captain Kirk, from reaching Mesopotamia around 5,000 BC to the rise of the Babylonian Empire to Cortez’s massacre of the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan , The immortal did not fully abide by this rule. 

Finally, Arishem’s dark secrets are revealed: First, it turns out that anomalous are also created by gods, whose purpose is to help the development of intelligent life by eliminating dangerous predators-but when they themselves become out of control predators , Eternals was created as damage control. It turns out that Eternals are not living organisms, but machines with false memories, which are periodically reset for each new task.

But the biggest turning point is that the gods are not interested in altruism in intelligent life itself. They create and nurture inhabited worlds like the earth as...a means of nurturing new celestial bodies. Such a planet is essentially a huge egg, with an embryonic celestial body at its core-it is the collective vitality of an intelligent species like us that hatches it. Therefore, when the intelligent population of a world reaches a certain level, an apocalyptic incubation event will occur, and the broken and dead world will be left behind. Of course, now is the time.

At least for a moment, support this conceited absurd, original Malthusian resonance. (This is a film proposing that global warming comes from the core of the earth due to the acceleration of celestial life; this is not a film with a coherent view of the environment.) Instead, consider how the eternal family (or most of them) respond to these revelations: Realizing that their entire worldview is a lie and that the human beings they care about and admire are doomed to fail, they considered a bold plan to suspend the incubating gods in order to save the earth and mankind. (Similarly, the issue of celestial abortion in order to save all lives on Mother Earth is the same-and, although we enclose things, heroes and same-sex kisses in same-sex relationships. There are more basic issues.)

The moral meaning of the mystery of the eternal race is considered from multiple angles. On the one hand, just as each hatched chicken means more eggs, more celestial bodies mean more earth-like worlds-so if the earth is saved, how many possible inhabited worlds will never exist. ? No one asks why we should care about such a world. Once they become enough, they are destined to be killed.

More fundamentally, the business of incubating new celestial bodies is the purpose of the creation of the entire system—earth, humans, and eternal stars—and what its purpose is to do. Eternals are machines specifically designed to fight anomalies. The earth and life on earth is a more complex machine. This includes humans, who were shaped by their creators, not in his image or out of love, but as consumables for planetary hatcheries. 

Who can call this system wrong or unjust, whether it is human or eternal? According to what standard? "How can the shaped say to the one who shaped it:'Why did you make me like this?'" (Romans 9:20). Decades of science fiction let us assume that an entity, even a self-aware machine like "Star Trek: The Next Generation of Data," must be considered to have moral dignity and personal value. But this assumes that personality itself has dignity and value-Allison clearly disagrees with this assumption. What rights can we have that he must recognize? What law or value system binds him?

"I respect your grand design," Ajak (Salma Hayek), the leader of the Eternal Race, said boldly to Arisham, then added that "there is something special about this planet." However, Allison warned her not to attach to humans. Later Circe (Gemma Chen) commented that if I remember correctly, the instant reversal of Thanos' genocide (Avengers: Endgame) proved the special nature of the earth. Who decides that this "speciality" is important? Finally, Alisham appeared to announce that he would evaluate the behavior of his rebellious eternal race by judging whether humans are worth living. What standards apply?

Arishem may not be a classical theistic God, but Eternals implicitly tends to think that Arishem is the reality behind Abraham's concept of God. (Who brought light into the universe "in the beginning"?) After all, immortals include heroes considered to be the basis of gods and heroes in ancient myths: Gilgamesh (played by Don Lee), whose eponymous name is Gil The hero of the game Mesopotamian epic; Sina (Angelina Jolie), Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war; Circe or Circe; Icaris or Icarus (Richard Madden) ;Wait (the strange thing is that the embryonic celestial body is called Tiamut, although if there is an explanation of how the ancient Babylonians named their primitive sea goddess Tiamat, I would have missed it.) 

Reinforce the notion that Alisson is the god of the Bible, and the image that accompanies the ending title combines the eternal race with other legendary and religious figures, including the Archangel St. Michael. This crude deconstruction of the Christian faith is an amazing starting point for Marvel, which has so far been careful to demythologize its own traditions to avoid religious complications. (For example, Doctor Strange interprets witchcraft as a technique similar to computer programming.) DC’s Wonder Woman suggests that Zeus (not the god of Abraham) created humans in his image. This move made me feel cautious The Marvel approach is significantly different. This kind of caution is not obvious in "The Eternal Clan".

CS Lewis quoted an old joke about a man in The Abolition of Man. He learned that a new stove can cut his fuel cost by half, and concluded that with two such stoves, he can completely Heating his house without fuel. Some things can be left halfway, but not the whole. There are many things to criticize in "Eternal Race"—some things I might praise, in another story in another universe—but I’m not sure that any story in this universe may provide any kind of or Another way to care about things.

Warning bystanders: comic book action violence; suicide; war scenes; a brief, non-specific sex scene; depictions of same-sex kissing and same-sex "marriage"; limited profanity, curse, and vulgar language. Older teenagers and above.

Deacon Steven D. Greydanus Deacon Steven D. Greydanus is a film critic of the National Catholic Registry, creator of Decent Films, permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Newark, and a member of the New York Film Critics Association. For 10 years, he co-hosted the Gabriel Award-winning cable TV show "Reel Faith" for New Gospel Television. Steven has a degree in media arts and religious studies, and has contributed several articles to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, including "Church and Film" and biographies of some filmmakers. He also wrote articles about movies for the "Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy." He holds a bachelor's degree in media arts from the New York School of Visual Arts, a master's degree in religious studies from St. Charles Borromeo Theological Seminary in Overbrook, Pennsylvania, and a master's degree in Theology from the Immaculate Conception School of South Orange Seton Hall University, New Jersey. Steven’s articles for The Register have been recognized by the Catholic Press Association awards several times, winning first place in 2017 and 2016, and second place in 2019 and 2015. Steven and his wife Susanna have seven children.

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