Breathtaking ‘Eternals’ Trailer Teases New ‘Avengers’ Leader — Or Does It?

After more than a decade of Marvel movies being dominated by everyone wondering what’s next for the Avengers, the next big MCU movie seems to make all of that into a joke. “Now that Captain Rogers and Iron Man are gone, who will lead the Avengers?”

The question is asked at the tail-end of the new, beautiful trailer for The Eternals, and when Ikaris (Richard Madden) responds, “I could do it,” the assembled Eternals — immortal beings who are watching over humanity — all laugh dismissively. The message is clear. These folks, the titular Eternals, are way more powerful and perhaps, more influential than any of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

The new trailer for Eternals (watch below) is beautiful, breathtaking, and, above all, uplifting. Teasing a kind of mashup between Guardians of the Galaxy, and bigger, mind-blowing science-fiction epic like Arrival or 2001, the vibe of Eternals is to seemingly take the action-packed world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to more ponderous and humanistic heights. Could the feel-good philosophical nature of the trailer actually represent a new direction for the MCU? Could this film, directed by recent Oscar-winner Chloe Zhao, be a kind of soft-reboot, at least in tone?

The Marvel movies are the biggest on the planet. But, they’re also somewhat dense and unapproachable if you feel behind on the countless hours of twenty-plus films, and various TV series. And yet, The Eternals feels super-approachable even for someone who has no idea what’s going on. Fingers crossed that this film is a subtle reset button for Marvel, a movie that feels big and important, but doesn’t require us to have a flowchart or crib notes to figure out.

Eternals hits theaters in November 2021.