Marvel StudiosCongratulations! Statistically speaking, you or someone you know will appear in Avengers: Doomsday, which features over 30 superheroes and a wide supporting cast. But despite finding time for Namora, Love, and Casey (yes, don’t worry, Casey will be there), don’t expect to see Gemma Chan, Kit Harington, Mahershala Ali, Harry Styles, or anyone else who had a larger role teased by Eternals and its two bonus scenes.Eternals wasn’t the first MCU movie to underwhelm, but it was the first to flat-out bomb. Whether you were walking out of a showing five years ago today or, more likely, reading about its struggles online, you couldn’t help but get the sense that maybe, just maybe, Marvel wasn’t 100% sure what it was doing anymore. Unfortunately, that feeling hasn’t gone away.On the surface, it looked like Eternals stuck to a winning formula. Pick a comic book line only the nerds know about. Grab a director who’d just made a splash with a critically-acclaimed drama. Tell them the MCU’s larger goals, then set them loose and schedule some time to roll around in the big pile of money they’ll make. It worked with Ryan Coogler, who made Fruitvale Station (and the relatively cheap Creed) before getting the nod on Black Panther. It worked with Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, whose resume revolved around Sugar and Mississippi Grind before they were handed Captain Marvel. So why didn’t it work with Eternals and Chloé Zhao, who’d just won Best Director with Nomadland?For starters, the suits delved too greedily and too deep into Marvel canon. At the risk of being reductive, Black Panther is a Black man who’s good at kicking the crap out of bad guys, and Captain Marvel is a woman who’s good at kicking the crap out of bad guys. While not without emotional depth, their movies mostly revolved around kicking the crap out of bad guys.The Eternals, meanwhile, are 10 immortal aliens sent to Earth in 5000 BC by the godlike Arishem the Celestial to guide humanity’s development and protect our budding civilizations from monstrous Deviants. After millennia of work, the Eternals defeat the Deviants and split up to live mundane lives while unsure how to relate to their mortal charges. Then, when Deviants suddenly return, they learn a horrible truth: Earth must be destroyed so a new Celestial can be born.Meet the huge, moody cast. | Marvel StudiosThat’s a lot of actors and ideas to keep track of, and there’s a lot of existential angst to sit through before the bad guys are forcibly separated from their crap. Marvel’s grander cosmic side can be a blast, but themes of duty, loyalty, immortality, and the value of humanity are heady stuff, at least compared to movies that could revel in the simple joy of putting underserved demographics front and center. And in a franchise that had primed fans to always keep one eye on the future, no one seemed entirely sure what Eternals was for.The third film to debut after Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home wrapped up a generational run of epic superhero movies, Eternals, Black Widow, and Shang-Chi were retroactively declared part of the so-called Multiverse Saga despite none of them featuring the multiverse. Their only apparent commonality, in fact, was the sense that Marvel happened to have the projects sitting around and wanted them over with.It all felt like the MCU, in going through a post-Endgame crisis, got bloated, weird, and a little experimental, before financial reality forced it to snap out of its midlife funk. Zhao isn’t blameless here — there are moments where Eternals’ name seems to refer to its runtime — but you can’t say that she didn’t do what Marvel asked of her. From its somber tone and moody lighting to the mere fact that sex is acknowledged, Eternals is easily the MCU’s most distinct film. What other Marvel director not only cited Terrence Malick as an influence, but had critics agree that the influence was visible?Eternals’ self-serious sweeping scale made it tough to sell as a popcorn movie. | Marvel StudiosUltimately, Eternals was a little too out there for audiences, yet not quite risky enough for many reviewers, making it the first MCU movie to struggle both financially and critically. That the Eternals could actually disagree on their directive and kill each other off added the drama that was missing from Civil War, but that’s probably what doomed it, too; without decades of pop culture osmosis from sources like TV and gaming, it was hard to care about the fate of characters with names like Sprite, Ajak, and Phastos.Zhao bounced back — her latest, the Best Picture-nominated Hamnet, won an Oscar and two Golden Globes — but the jury is still out on Marvel. It’s still helping directors like Nia DaCosta and Julius Onah make the indie-to-blockbuster jump, but it feels like Marvel is offering its mercenary hands less leeway yet fewer clear directives. DaCosta’s The Marvels was an amusing mess, while Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, the first MCU film to belatedly acknowledge Eternals’ strange aftermath, was just a slog. Both felt like everyone involved was trying to make a quick buck in between projects they actually cared about.Beyond a What If scenario, Marvel seems to have abandoned Eternals; that fans once thought the post-credits Blade tease would actually lead to something makes it feel far older than its five years. In a way, though, it’s more interesting to watch today than it was in 2021. It’s not “homework” for Doomsday, and you don’t have to worry about where all its snipped threads might lead. It’s merely, for good and ill, the most intriguing superhero movie Marvel ever made.Eternals is streaming on Disney+.