Although not all of the Marvel movies in order have been critically acclaimed, most of them have at least earned more positive reception than negative. That can’t be said, however, for Eternals, which was met with a wave of mixed reviews upon opening in late 2021 (CinemaBlend’s Eternals review has a 3 out of 5 stars score). It now ranks at 47% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s also one of the lowest-grossing MCU movies. Kumail Nanjiani, who played Kingo in Eternals, reflected on the movie’s “really, really bad” reviews and how he became “too aware” of the negative press surrounding the production.
Nanjiani stopped by Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum to talk about his career and personality with the podcast’s title host, and halfway through the conversation, the actor mentioned how he was disappointed by the “response” to Eternals. This prompted Rosenbaum to ask how this affected Nanjiani and if he took the Marvel movie’s negative reviews to heart, and even inquired if he blamed himself for how it turned out. Nanjiani started off by saying:
I knew it wasn’t me. I think there were a lot of things that went into it. I love that movie, I’m very proud of that movie, I’m proud of everyone’s work in it and I’m proud of my work in it. And I’ve seen that movie bunch of times because it’s my kind of movie, and a lot of stuff I’m in I’ve never watched. It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed, and so they lifted the embargo really early, and they also put it in some fancy movie festivals, and they sent us on a big global tour promoting the movie right as the embargo was lifted. And so we had to travel the world… they thought we’d be going on a waves of raves, and it wasn’t true. The reviews were really bad.
To be fair, it’s not as though Eternals earned overwhelmingly bad reception along the lines of something like 2015’s Fantastic Four. It rests nicely in mixed territory, but again, for a theatrical MCU installment, it’s certainly among the outliers. Up until that point, the most negatively-reviewed movies in the franchise were The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World, which both rank at 67% on Rotten Tomatoes. And to be give Eternals some credit, it’s now no longer the worst-reviewed Marvel movie, as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania holds that distinction with a 46% Tomatometer.
Still, hearing so many people criticize Eternals bothered Kumail Nanjiani, particularly because this was happening in the middle of him and the rest of the cast doing the press tour. Eventually the negative reviews started to affect his mental health, with the actor continuing:
I was too aware of it. I was reading every review, I was checking too much because this thing had become too much in my head. This was also right after the pandemic, so we’re coming out after this crazy thing, and I’m like, ‘Ok, this is going to be the coming-out party, I worked so hard for this.’.. Everything’s heightened. I think that there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much. I think not very much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie.
Nanjiani added that his experience with Eternals led to him going into counseling, as he has “trauma” from the experience. In fact, he also mentioned that he and his wife Emily Gordon recently had dinner with another actor from the movie, and they commiserated over how “tough” enduring the critical backlash was for them and their other costars. If there was one positive aspect to all this though, it was Nanjiani realizing he couldn’t be so “results-based” with his work.
Although Eternals’ ending and the end-credits scenes laid groundwork for more adventures starring these cosmic protagonists to return to the MCU, Eternals 2 doesn’t appear to be happening, nor has there been mention of the characters appearing in any upcoming Marvel movies or upcoming Marvel TV shows. If either of those things change, we’ll let you know, but until then, remember that Eternals can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription.
