How many Eternals promos have we seen at this point? It feels like dozens, and if it’s not, then it’s got to be close. Nobody is in any danger of forgetting that there’s a Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster coming to theaters on November 5th, even if the more cynical among us might think it has something to do with reviews that are fairly poor by the standards of the franchise.
Only Thor: The Dark World, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 have lower Rotten Tomatoes scores than Eternals at the moment, so a huge opening weekend could be as good as it gets, should word of mouth prove to be weaker than what Kevin Feige and his team have become accustomed to.
Even though the millennia-spanning epic doesn’t feature any overt crossovers from major MCU names, plenty of TV spots and teasers have featured glimpses or references to the events of Avengers: Endgame, while the latest clip finds Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo name-dropping Spider-Man and Thor, pointing out that they’d be no match for Angelina Jolie’s Thena.
It’s an interesting way of cross-promoting an origin story that doesn’t actually involve any of the names being mentioned, but Eternals was always guaranteed to be a success given that it’s part of the most lucrative brand in cinema, so they drop in a reference to Dum Dum Dugan if they like and it doesn’t really matter.