Angelina Jolie looks chic while Richard Madden is styled in a sleek suit as they join Eternals co-stars for photoshoot in Rome - after film was branded 'disappointing' in early reviews

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Published on Wednesday, 30 November -0001 00:00

Written by Daily mail

           Angelina Jolie and Richard Madden led the Eternals cast members during a dramatic night photoshoot for the film in Rome on Monday.The Oscar-winning actress, 46, wowed in a gorgeous black gown with a teardrop cut-out as she chatted with her cast mates and crew members during the glitzy shoot at the Imperial Fora.Her tresses were styled sleek and straight and she sported a radiant palette of make-up.Bodyguard star Richard, 35, looked suave in a tailored black suit as he was styled ahead of the photoshoot.The star was seen putting on an animated display as his hair was coiffed and make-up applied.Gemma Chan, 38, brought further glamour as she donned an icy white frilled gown, which exhibited her toned arms and trim waist.The beauty wore her raven locks in a chic updo and sported smoky eyeshadow for the shoot.Last minute alterations were seen being made to Gemma's gown ahead of the shoot, with cast members seen posing up a storm.Kit Harington also looked suave in a black suit as he larked around with crew members before his individual shots.The cast are hot on the promo trail of the film, which sees the Eternals, an immortal alien race, come out of hiding for thousands of years to protect Earth from their evil counterparts, the Deviants.The photoshoot comes as Eternals was branded 'disappointing' and 'ultimately unmemorable' by critics in first reviews of the hotly anticipated MCU blockbuster. The superhero flick, directed by Oscar-winning Nomadland star Chloe Zhao, was lambasted by critics over its 'miserably undernourished' script, deluge of underdeveloped characters and 'overloaded' storyline.  Critics were torn as the 'refreshingly diverse' cast of characters resulted in a group of 'navel-gazing superheroes' that signalled 'two steps forwards for representation but three steps backwards for dramatic ingenuity.'The cast includes MCU's first deaf superhero (Lauren Ridloff as Makkari) and its first openly gay superhero (Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos) who shares the franchise's first onscreen same-sex kiss with Haaz Sleiman, who plays his husband.The Times critic Kevin Maher gave the film two stars and took aim at the 157-minute flick's script and its 'strange self-sabotaging energy.'He wrote: 'It is the characters, however, who represent the biggest shift away from the swaggering, mostly white, mostly male, mostly straight, mostly neurotypical and mostly hearing ensembles (think Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, etc) that have defined the Marvel brand thus far.' Adding the 'reinvented heroes work' he continued: 'But they are also, to paraphrase Pirandello, ten characters in search of a script. Because the one they have now, co-written by Chloé Zhao, the director (Nomadland), is derivative, messy and miserably undernourished.'Eternals is two steps forwards for representation but three steps backwards for dramatic ingenuity. Variety critic Owen Gleiberman  branded the film a 'disappointment' over lacking the 'raw and real' signature quality Zhao has brought to her other films.  He wrote: 'Yet as I approached Eternals, the question I was most curious about was whether Zhao, who in Nomadland and The Rider defined her filmmaking style in a unique poetic way, would carry any remnants of that mode over to the blockbuster universe... Eternals has none of that. It's clear that that's something of a disappointment.He added the film feels 'very standard' in comparison to 'top-tier' team superhero films (the first Guardians of the Galaxy, Zack Snyder's Justice League, and 'Avengers: Infinity War) and that the film 'never transcends its conventionality'
          He did however laud the diversity of the cast, writing: 'Four of the Eternals are white, three are Asian, two are Black, and one is Latina. One is gay, one is deaf, and one is an androgynous tween who never grows up. Any troll who surveys this lively medley of backgrounds and temperaments only to gripe that the movie is too 'woke' might have lodged the same complaint about Star Trek 55 years ago.'   The Guardian critic Steve Rose scored the film two stars once again and likened it to a 'sophisticated PowerPoint presentation' due to its comprehensive mythological storyline.  He wrote: 'There is also an epic mythology to get our heads around: even before a line of dialogue is spoken, three dense paragraphs of text explain how our 10 Eternals came to earth to protect it from the predatory Deviants (sort of skinless, sinewy beasts with prehensile tentacles) at the behest of Arishem, 'the Prime Celestial'. 'If you're lost already, bad luck: there's plenty more to come, which demands some planet-sized chunks of exposition. At times if feels like you are watching a very sophisticated PowerPoint presentation.'Adding the film was a 'gigantic exercise in un-realism', he praised Kumail Nanjiani's turn as Eternal-turned-Bollywood movie star Kingo, but said Angelina Jolie's Thena was 'unconvincing' portraying a personality disorder.He wrote:  That's the problem: there's just too much going on: it's all headed towards yet another 'race against time to stop the really bad thing happening' climax. It's not exactly boring – there's always something new to behold – but nor it is particularly exciting, and it lacks the breezy wit of Marvel's best movies.' The Telegraph critic Robbie Collin again gave Eternals two stars, writing: 'The answer is the problem with Eternals in miniature: it's constantly engaged in a kind of grit-toothed authenticity theatre, going out of its way to show you it's doing all the things proper cinema does, even though none of them bring any discernible benefit whatsoever to the film at hand. 'The more muted tone rules out Marvel's fast and flippant house style: instead, Eternals opts for solemnity peppered with wackiness, which occasionally gives it the feel of a Japanese anime series.' He added that Jolie's character was 'like a parody', and wrote: 'Perhaps the hope was that Marvel's 26th film might rattle the franchise out of its comfort zone. But the franchise is nothing but comfort zone, which renders its latest entry an instant white elephant.' Empire critic John Nugent gave Eternals three stars, as it was 'unable to escape the clichés of superhero storytelling' but praised Zhao's 'assured and ambitious' MCU debut.He wrote:  'There's a fascinating tension in Eternals between the unstoppable force of the Marvel project and the immovable object of Zhao's artistic sensibilities. In many ways, this looks and feels nothing like any Chloé Zhao film we've seen before.'And yet in many ways, this film looks and feels nothing like any previous Marvel film. There are, for example, at least a couple of firsts: a genuine sex scene, and an onscreen gay kiss — unheard of in the normally rather chaste MCU. S .'More frequently, though, it seems to fall into familiar traps about saving the world and learning to work together as a team; when a giant, CGI-heavy battle begins to thwart another potential apocalypse, you start to feel a formula being leaned on.'BBC Culture critic Nicholas Barber also gave 'ultimately unmemorable' Eternals three stars, and said 'it could be the most disappointing MCU film yet.'   He wrote: 'Suffice it to say that the Eternals score highly in terms of gender, ethnic and sexual diversity, but lowly in terms of being memorable. They're a sketchily drawn and fundamentally drab bunch, so it can be tricky to remember which one is friendly with which. 'By rights, their super-soap opera should have had its own 20-part series on Disney+. In a film, the plot is so over-populated that one Eternal even announces, shortly before the climactic battle, that he doesn't want to be involved, and walks out, leaving us to wonder why exactly we've spent the last hour hanging out with him. Eternals is adapted from a series of far-out 1970s comics by the great Jack Kirby, and traces remain of his visionary design, but Zhao and her three co-writers have weighed it down with lots of rudimentary dialogue.' Evening Standard critic Charlotte O'Sullivan praised the film and gave it an impressive four stars, heaping praise on the cast, bar Gemma Chan's 'wooden' turn as Sersi.She wrote: 'We're used to top-notch bickering from Marvel but the self-aware, sibling-like rivalry here seems extra divine because it allows ideas explored in Nomadland to be revisited. Maybe we don't need a 'true home' in our lives. Or a 'boss'.'The whole cast are fabulous, with one exception. Chan's a bit wooden. As far as the script's concerned, she's the chosen one. But I wish Zhao hadn't chosen her. 'Anyway, the fights, especially in the film's last third, are astounding, beautifully paced and crammed with detail. ' Eternals will be released in U.S. and UK theatres on November 5, 2021.

 source : Daily mail