Eternals spoilers to follow.
One thing I did love, though, was the depiction of the Ikaris character played by Richard Madden, one of two Game of Thrones cast members who appear in the movie. (That's along with Kit Harrington, who has a puzzlingly small role but should have a bigger one in future installments -- if those installments ever transpire, which seems unlikely given this film's critical and commercial failure.)
The main reason I liked it, though, was that it reminded me of The Boys.
I'd say Ikaris was a clear clone of Homelander except that Eternals predates The Boys by 30 years in their respective comic book forms, so if anything it's probably the other way around.
Both are handsome white men who are essentially Superman clones, in that they are the most powerful of their respective organizations/groups of assembled superheroes, and shoot lasers out of their eyes. In a rare acknowledgement of DC in a Marvel movie, a young person even calls Ikaris Superman in this movie -- the idea being that these Eternals have been around on earth for so long (7,000 years), they have served as real-world inspiration for cultural icons like Superman.
Superman has rarely been represented as a fascist on film -- although some of Zack Snyder's depictions have gotten close, and I guess there was that time Christopher Reeve's Superman turned evil and laid waste to a bar by flicking peanut shells at all its glass surfaces. But the fascist undercurrent in the character has always been present, and The Boys and now Eternals have drawn it out explicitly.
Homelander is, simply put, the best thing about The Boys, but it's not just the character itself. I'm not sure where they dug up Antony Starr, because I'd never seen the guy before -- only just now learning from Wikipedia that he's a Kiwi, and that he appeared in the dumb 2004 comedy Without a Paddle. (So, I guess technically I have seen him before.) But Starr has a presence that's so unsettling and so skin-crawling that I think he might be the scariest TV character since Gus Fring. I shriek in joyous agony when he gets that look on his face that suggests he's barely suppressing the instinct to tear someone to bits -- or more likely, to melt their face with his laser eyes. And of course he only suppresses that instinct half the time.
As a character in a movie at least some young people will see, Ikaris cannot be nearly the deranged maniac that Homelander is, nor is Madden as fundamentally charismatic as Starr. But the same supercilious expressions are there, and most notably, the same lethal beams of light coming from his eyes. There's something about these lasers coming from the eyes of these characters, rather than their hands, that makes them even more chilling. It's like, they can obliterate you without even having to lift a finger in your direction. Merely fixing their malevolent gaze on you is enough. It's the closest a superhero comes to telepathic annihilation.
And there's something about that that goes hand in hand with fascism. The mere strength of the power of the belief is enough to eradicate everything in its path.
Of course, again because it is a Marvel movie, Ikaris can't go full villain. We have to see many moments in the end that showcase his humanity -- even though he's not a human -- such as tears, his love for Sersi (another Game of Thrones connection!), and flashbacks to/memories of times where he was magnanimous, gentle and sentimental. He may fly into the sun at the end -- at least I believe that's what he is supposed to have done -- but he'd be back in hypothetical future Eternals films, probably, and would be fully redeemed by then.
No matter how many seasons The Boys runs, there's no redemption in store for Homelander. He's evil through and through, and that's the way we like him.
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