Eternals: 10 Biggest Changes From The Comics

The most shocking departures from page to screen.

Eternals angelina jolie
Marvel

The Eternals has hit the big screen in the kind of divisive fashion Disney hasn't seen since The Last Jedi.

Besides hoping Feige's response to this will be cooler headed than Lucasfilm's, it has left comic writers like me at something of a disadvantage. Because now I have to explain to you the lore of The Eternals that the movie either never got around to or intentionally changed.

And that, friends, is a herculean task.

The Eternals are the result of Jack Kirby still being on his ancient aliens kick that gave birth to the New Gods while he worked at DC. And like the New Gods, The Eternals ricocheted right the hell off of Marvel's readership harder than a bouncy ball shot at a brick wall from a cannon.

But that hasn't stopped Marvel and writers like Jason Aaron and Neil Gaiman from trying to make them work, since The Eternals were used to explain EVERYTHING about the Marvel universe and why it is the way it is.

As you can imagine, there's a lot that was lost in translation when Chloe Zhao took up the film. Here are the biggest elements that were left out.

10. There Are Way More Eternals Than We Meet In The Film

Eternals angelina jolie
Marvel Studios

Bottom of the list because the sequels may reveal this, but as far as we know in the first film, the Eternals that we meet in the film are the only kinds out there, with other Eternals in the universe being copies of each of them.

But in the comics, The Eternals are an entire civilization with dozens more named characters introduced throughout the various runs over the decades. Now, granted, we meet all the most important Eternals in the film proper, but the comics have been hammering away at their lore pretty much since their inception, adding new characters, updating the Eternals civilization, and just all kinds of kooky stuff that the sequels will either include with insane abandon or ignore in favor of keeping things streamlined.

Maybe we'll meet the other Eternals in the inevitable sequels, maybe not, but if Starfox can make it into one of these movies, I don't see why Uranos can't show up too.

Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?