Eternals First Footage Breakdown: Everything Revealed

Here's everything revealed by the first footage from Marvel's Eternals. The coronavirus pandemic has affected every aspect of life, and Hollywood was no exception. Both film production and release schedules were adversely affected. Now, though, the MCU is back in action. Black Widow will release at cinemas and on Disney+ on July 9, 2921, followed by no less than three more MCU movies by the end of the year.

Marvel prefer to launch one new franchise every year, and 2021 will see a group called the Eternals make their big-screen debut. The Eternals have never numbered among the most important comic book brands, although they're currently undergoing a fantastic relaunch courtesy of writer Kieron Gillen and artist Esad Ribic. What's more, Marvel has avoided promoting Eternals until now, wary of launching a marketing strategy when it could immediately be disrupted by the pandemic. All that's finally changed, with the release of an MCU sizzle reel promoting Eternals alongside the rest of 2021's MCU content.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has always loved the movies, and the focus of the sizzle reel is on selling viewers on the experience of watching films at the cinema; as such, while there are clips from Eternals, they're carefully chosen to stress the significance of human connection. That makes sense, but it does mean some of the expected grandeur is not yet on show. Still, let's examine what Marvel has revealed.

The first clip from Eternals shows Gemma Chan's Sersi on horseback. Kevin Feige recently indicated Sersi will be the lead character; "If there was a lead in this ensemble," he observed, "it is Sersi, it is Gemma Chan." In the comics, Sersi is one of the most important members of the Eternals, an evolutionary offshoot of humanity who appear to have been re-envisioned as ancient aliens within the MCU. Sersi is unique among her brethren in that, where most Eternals remain distant from humanity, she has always been fascinated by the mortal world and has frequently sought human lovers. Her most notable relationship is with Dane Whitman, aka the Black Knight, who will be played by Kit Harington in Eternals.

The glimpse of Gemma Chan's Sersi is accompanied by a first line of dialogue from Eternals, "If you love something, you fight for it." In the context of the sizzle reel, this frankly sounds like Kevin Feige's declaration that he will fight to help the film industry recover; but in the film, it sounds like Sersi's rallying cry to get the Eternals to stand in the defense of humanity.

There's a brief shot of what appears to be some sort of ceremony, blurred and indistinct and bereft of context. Given Eternals could span millions of years, this could be a present day scene or a flashback to the ancient past. It's difficult to tell who the characters in the center are; given their sizes, one may be Lia McHugh's Sprite, a character who's been gender-swapped from the comics; Sprite is an Eternal trapped in the form of a child, who frequently became angered at being permanently treated like a kid by humans.