Journal: another incomplete paragraph

site/journal/2022/Eternals.md

@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ Here, in fact, is perhaps the greatest failing of the Marvel film franchise: an
 
 On the runtime: the film, despite its length, was rushed in many places. Key arguments—perhaps the most interesting possible point of conflict in the movie!—go by in a blaze, the basic gist of the conflict set out and then left alone in favor of the required Marvel fight scene at the end. Likewise, the plot’s turns are incredibly predictable, and it left the one potentially interesting (if still predictable!) turn *off* the table in favor of Angelina Jolie swinging <abbr>CGI</abbr> weapons through a <abbr>CGI</abbr> bad-guy’s head.
 
-Kingo walks off stage having chosen not to fight any of his friends, and after having laid out the only possible case for the Celestials… and having given his friends no chance to argue it. Right there was one of the two genuinely interesting hooks in the movie—the other being: what might it be like to live with humanity for 7,000 years? The movie, sadly, has time for neither of those hooks, nor the way they might relate. Had it dropped the obnoxiously <abbr>CGI</abbr> Deviants and focused instead on that conflict from the outset, it might have given the final confrontation some of the heft it ultimately lacked. Indeed, it might have given the whole film a gravity the entire 
+Kingo walks off stage having chosen not to fight any of his friends, and after having laid out the only possible case for the Celestials… and having given his friends no chance to argue it. Right there was one of the two genuinely interesting hooks in the movie—the other being: what might it be like to live with humanity for 7,000 years? The movie, sadly, has time for neither of those hooks, nor the way they might relate. Had it dropped the obnoxiously <abbr>CGI</abbr> Deviants and focused instead on that conflict from the outset, it might have given the final confrontation some of the heft it ultimately lacked. Indeed, it might have given the whole film a gravity the entire <abbr title="Marvel Cinematic Universe">MCU</abbr> has lacked. (It turns out: ever-larger catastrophes are not the source of stakes. Moral and personal freight are.)
 
 Instead, in the end ~~Superman~~ Icarus fights most of the surviving Eternals while Gemma Chan’s Cersi turns a giant monster into stone in the middle of the ocean, her own “oh that’s new and different” powers left unexplained (presumably for a future entry), until the “hey, we’re both really hot” dynamic which passes for their love story makes him decide not to kill her and instead to fly into the sun in a remarkable moment of nominative determinism. And after that, big bad Arishem shows up and says, “So you killed a Celestial. Whatever. I may let the humans live if your memories show they measure up to my standards. <span class=smcp>KTHXBAI</span>.” Any seriousness the movie might have had was completely undermined by its last 25 minutes: and no surprises there!