5 Life Lessons from the Movie Eternals
What’s the point of telling a story if it doesn’t teach us anything?
Despite not having as high rating as the hype after the first week of the premiere, Eternals does hint a few morals of the story that I have taken away from.
You don’t need to have seen the movie to understand these lessons, but be warned, spoiler alert.
1. It’s all about survival
The main story of Eternals involves a group of immortal beings with superpowers, who have secretly lived on Earth for thousands of years, reuniting to battle the evil monsters, the Deviants.
Later in the storyline, we found out that both Eternals and the Deviants were created by the same creator, the Celestial Arishem.
Arishem first created the Deviants and sent them across the planet to follow his order but it backfired when the Deviants started evolving and getting out of control. In order to clean up his mess, he later then created the Eternals and sent them around the universe to extinguish the Deviants. And the Eternals thought they did.
Fast forward to the present day, we found out in the movie that there is still a group of Deviants left, led by its leader Kro who can now heal himself.
This brings the Eternals a new threat that they never expected. They later found out that Kro got his healing power from one of the their group members, and a leader, Ajak who is now dead. Kro, then managed to kill and absorb powers from another one of the Eternals, Gilagamesh (which was heart-breaking because he was only trying to save the other Eternal, Thena — portrayed by Angelina Jolie). Kro, then, has evolved even further, from a four-leg monster to a massive human-like being with two legs, two big arms, a face, and oh, he can now talk and understand things like other Eternals.
What has this taught us? That we need to be constantly evolving because if we are not growing, we are dying.
Like Kro, he killed two of the Eternals so he and his species could live and evolve, making him a bigger threat.
The Eternals were able to kill the Deviants easily 7,000 years ago but they did not evolve and grow. They, like most of us, fell into comfort, lived an easy life and stopped pushing themselves further.
As Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”
We can be the strongest today but if we stop learning, growing and evolving, we won’t survive the future.
2. Sometimes your protection ends up doing more harms
“Why didn’t you guys help fight Thanos, or any wars and other terrible things throughout the history?” said Dane Whitman, played by our favourite Kit Harington.
“We were instructed not to interfere…” said Sersi, one of the Eternals.
And sometimes, that’s the best thing we can do.
When we care about and love someone, we want to protect them from any harms or dangers. We don’t want to see them fail. But that’s how they learn.
Think of a parent who protects and do everything for their child. Despite the good intentions, what kind of adult that child would grow to be? They wouldn’t have overcome any pains or adversities, making them weak and prone to minor problems.
Storms make trees take deeper roots. Without regularly exposure to strong wind, the tree will easily break when the storm comes.
It’s hard to see our loved ones in pain and we always wish we could do more but that might be what needs to happen for them to grow.
Children and human are resilient. If we protect them from dangers, we may end up harming them ourselves. And as mentioned in the first point, if we don’t evolve, we won’t survive.
3.People don’t do wrong intentionally
In the movie, we label who the villains are from their intentions.
- The Celestial Arisham wants to destroy earth and everyone on it.
- The Deviants want to kill humans and the Eternals.
- Ikaris betrayed his family and become the ‘villain’
- Thena wants to kill Kro to get a revenge
- Druig left the group so he can start controlling humans as he wishes
- Sprite stabbed Sersi in the back
But if we dig deeper and try to understand the motivation behind these evil acts:
The Celestials — Earth must be destroyed so more lives can be created.
The Deviants — I need to protect my species. I need to kill them or they will kill me. I’m the strongest and I shall survive.
Ikaris — I believed Arisham that earth needs to be destroyed so that billions more lives can be borned. I was created for a mission and I’m standing by it.
Thena — I need to get justice for my friend by revenge.
Druig — I love these humans and it hurts me to see them killing each other.
Sprite — I love Ikaris and what I do for love must be right
Deep down, no one does wrong things knowingly, they only do so because they thought it was the right thing.
The solution to conflict is not violence but empathy.
4. We own nothing in this world
From the movie trailer, we also found out that the world is ending. In the movie, we found out that this is because the Celestial, the creator, has planted a seed onto the planets across the universe, aiming that one day, the life force will provide enough energy for the emergence (birth) of another celestial can begin.
That reminds us that, in fact, we really don’t own anything in this world. Not our house, not our loved ones or not even our own lives. Everything is given a chance to exist in this world and it can be taken away at any moment.
As sad as it sounds, it also reminds us to be grateful for what we get to have in this world up until this moment. We need to replace attachment with gratitude. When we grow to attach something, it hurts us when we cling to it and eventually will have to let it go because nothing in this world lasts forever.
Marcus Aurelius, the Philosopher King, reminded himself every night when he kissed his children that they were mortal beings and that they won’t live forever.
We can live a peaceful life by just being grateful for what was given to us in our lifetime. We may have lost someone along the way whom we wish we had spent more time with, but at least we got to spend some time with them instead of none at all.
When we realise this hard fact, it gives us a perspective to live every day and treat everyone as if it was our last day. So when the time comes, we have done everything we could and leave this world peacefully.
5. We always have the right to choose
When Sersi found out that Arishem wanted to destroy and kill everyone on earth that she grew to fell in love with, she made a choice to go against him.
That reminds us that no one can make us do anything. Everything can be taken away from us but one thing that can’t be, is our will to choose. We’ve just gotta accept the consequences.
So the big take aways are
- Keep growing and evolving, otherwise, you might find yourself at the bottom of the survival chain
- Sometimes, to protect someone is to prevent them from growing
- Seek to understand before judging
- Replace attachment with gratitude
- No one can take away our right to choose
If you’ve seen the movie, what else did you learn from it?
