“Eternals,” the 26th theatrical entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), is Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao’s (“Nomadland,” 2021) fourth film—and her first big-budget studio-backed affair. Boasting a stacked cast that includes the likes of Angelina Jolie (“Those Who Wish Me Dead,” 2021), Brian Tyree Henry (“Widows,” 2018), Barry Keoghan (“The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” 2017), Don Lee (“Busanhaeng;” Eng.: “Train to Busan,” 2016), Kumail Nanjiani (“The Big Sick,” 2017), Richard Madden (“1917,” 2019), and Salma Hayek (“Frida,” 2002), the film chronicles the story of beings from the outer world sent to Earth to eradicate monsters. Fractured by human cruelty and diverging ideologies, the team is forced to band together again after Iron Man’s successful reversal of The Blip, bringing back those monsters they helped vanquish 7000 years ago.

“The Blink of an Eye”—Academy Award-nominated film editor Walter Murch’s (“Apocalypse Now,” 1979) book on the craft of editing—lists six criteria in order of priority, known widely by the “Rule of Six,” satisfying all of which would make his ideal cut of a movie. For the uninitiated, prioritizing the story over everything else would be second nature. Spoiler alert: they’d be wrong because emotion is the criterion that trumps story—which comes second on this list. According to Murch, “[it] is the thing that [an editor] should try to preserve at all costs.” Watching “Eternals,” it becomes evident that Zhao, the film’s co-writers, and its co-editors wanted emotion to drive the story from its first frame to its last.

It is also the first film in more than a decade of the MCU’s run to look—and, more importantly, feel—like a film, not a glorified theatrical TV episode. It’s gorgeously shot through and through, with cinematographer Ben Davis in top form from the first scene to the last. Davis has been behind the camera for five MCU films, but it’s only the second since Doctor Strange, where he plays to his strengths as a visual stylist. His work is complemented beautifully by colorist Jill Bogdanowicz (Joker, 2019), who adds tone and visual pop, giving the film a singular visual identity. The studio’s prior movies mostly had the overall look of an ungraded clip straight out of a cinema camera for almost a decade, making her involvement in the process much more critical.

Zhao’s choice of shooting as much of “Eternals“ as possible on location makes it more immersive. Taking cues from Terrence Malick’s “Voyage of Time” (2016) and “The Tree of Life” (2011), along with the quiet moments—both solitary and interpersonal—of Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” (2013), a lot of the visual style of this film begs you to look inward and feel what the characters on-screen feel. As the film opens, Sersi (Gemma Chan; “Crazy Rich Asians,” 2018) looks toward Earth as their spaceship nears the planet and looks to Ikaris (Madden), exclaiming, “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Formatted for IMAX screens, the galactic scope of this rather understated scene wants you to feel what Sersi vocalizes and—depending on your tastes—actually succeeds. 

The feeling of awe can take a film only so far if it’s not supported by a consistently compelling emotional arc to its story and characters. Fortunately, “Eternals” never lets go of its emotional core—and Zhao makes sure of it, taking you through the characters’ existential journeys. Some look at the world with empathy and wonder, some with longing, and some with grief, cynicism, and distrust. A surprising aspect in the film involves the warrior Thena (Jolie), who at a point in the narrative is afflicted by a mental illness known within the universe as the Mahd W’yry—when you’ve lived to remember so much that your memory begins to fracture, rendering you “mad” and “weary.” A lot of it might be set up (from its source, apparently) to mirror dementia, but a lot of how Thena deals with it also speaks so much to those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  

In a crucial moment that ends up being a turning point for the film’s characters, Ajak (Hayek) offers to wipe Thena’s memory—serving a dual purpose of wiping the slate clean and making her less of a risk to the team. The latter vehemently disagrees, insisting she wants to remember everything. There’s an interesting parallel to how we deal with trauma here—as attractive as it sounds, forgetting our trauma comes at the cost of losing our own identity. As shown much later in Thena’s life, the only way to heal is to process the source of our triggers healthily and outgrow them. Sure, it’s not something that you can eradicate from your life completely, but with time, you can get out of the rabbit hole quicker, relatively unscathed, and often. 

“Eternals” is filled with similar—excellently written and framed—moments throughout its runtime that help balance out the larger-than-life spectacle that most films within the MCU are known for. On the one hand, you’ll find a display of gentle, healthy intimacy between Ikaris and Sersi and the way Druig (Keoghan) and Makkari (Lauren Ridloff; “Sound of Metal,” 2019) simply look at each other. On the other, there is an earnestness in the emotional connection Phastos (Henry) shares with his partner Ben. Combine this immersion with an excellent handle on personal choice and consequence, and you’ve got a narrative in which the eponymous celestial beings—superpowers and all—feel more human than anything within the cinematic universe prior. Every Eternal in the team feels like they’re part of a family; they’re often not on the same level, but none of them are about to let that get in the middle of how much they love and care for each other. 

(Strangely, the only other team-up movie I’ve seen where the heroes have empathy and respect for one another was the Snyder Cut of “Justice League” (2017), released earlier this year as “Zack Snyder’s Justice League“).

Where the film falls short is when it re-establishes Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani; The Big Sick, 2017) via an awful “Bollywood musical” bit, set to composer Ramin Djawadi’s “Nach Mere Hero” (Eng.: “Dance, My Hero”). The intent is clear—the whole subplot mostly feels like a healthy satire on the generally nepotistic and gendered nature of popular Indian cinema. If only it didn’t make the meta-characters bop to songs that sound like the Pussycat Dolls decided to appropriate Indian music by downloading some sample packs titled “World Music” and throwing it all in there, we’d be better off. Thankfully, the director and writers make up for it by casting a powerhouse Indian stage and film actor, Harish Patel, as Kingo’s valet. Patel isn’t just an incredible talent, but a meme for starring in one of the country’s most influential awful films, “Gunda” (Eng.: “Goon,” 1998)—think “The Room” (2003), but if it was a crime drama. His short but incredible monologue—completely in Hindi—in the final act is played not for laughs but in earnest, as an understated bit that is emotionally gut-wrenching enough to make anyone weep. 

That aside, “Eternals” is a sweeping, mythology-heavy superhero epic and the only one since Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” (2011) to feel like its own movie within the MCU. Combining larger-than-life awe with the vulnerable humanity of its principal characters, the movie dares to take restraint and go against its tropes, where more than 90 percent of the last 25 films before it was fine just replaying them. More importantly, it’s the only film in the MCU in almost a decade that will stand the test of time, both in replay value and in exploring its themes. It’s a superhero movie made by a filmmaker who loves the craft and deserves to be seen on IMAX.

A previously edited version of this review was written in collaboration with—and first published in—The Black Cape Magazine.