Feige and company already pulled it off once with B and C listers Iron Man, Captain America and Thor.
All of those guys have had past cartoons and are more popular than people gave them credit for. I'm a huge comic fan and I can't remember ever reading a comic about Eternals. But I stand by what I said. Eternals will be Marvel's first bomb. You heard it here first people! Book it!
Fair points all around. Here's my take:
Factors in favour of Eternals success:
1) the power of MCU brand. The MCU has become the McDonalds of blockbuster movies, it's not particularly deep or challenging but its filling and reasonably tasty. It's formulaic (until recently) but it's a formula that works. People will go see MCU movies, even so so ones, such that unless Marvel has at least 3 successively bad movies the brand will be strong enough to get bums in seats.
A corollary to this is that people seem to believe that anything MCU has to be good. If you turn on your brain and ever liked Loki as a character, then you know the Loki show is ****ing garbage. Yet there are heaps of people lining up to praise it.
2) Benefit of the doubt factor: some people may be willing to give it a chance, because Marvel has been able to elevate B and C list characters in the past.
Factors against Eternals success:
1) Creative team - the MCU leapt forward on the backs of John Favreau, Joss Whedon, The Russo Brothers and James Gunn, guys with talent and more experience than Chloe Zhao ( and an understanding of the fan base) Is the creative team behind Eternals capable of doing the same as the guys who came before ?
They managed to completley contradict themselves in the trailer ( which is an emerging theme in current MCU writing) so I'm not hopeful.
2) Benefit of the doubt vs lack of recognition:
For every person who thinks " The Eternals ? Who ? Oh well I'll give it a shot" someone else will think " Eternals ? Who cares ?"
3) Marketing/trailers: Guardians had a great marketing campaign that portrayed it as a fun, irreverent action packed sci-fi film with cool 70s pop tunes - which is exactly what it was.
Eternals' marketing so far portrayed it as.....well lots of standing around in cosplay. Not inspiring.
4) Breakout Star: Chris Pratt had been around for a while, but this film exposed him to a massive audience who realised that he's one of the most charismatic stars working today. His performance carried a lot of the film, ably backed up by some vocal performances by big names, Zoe Saldana ( who was in everything) and Bautista's brawny WWE charm.
Does anybody in Eternals have that kind of charm and prescence ? I dont even recognise most of them. Can Kit Harrington ( probably the most current star ) carry this when he's a face in the crowd of a large cast of characters?
5) Profit and Loss: Eternals is going to be a big budget film. It is going to need to make a ton of money to break even. Guardians was a big critical success, but not as financially rewarding as films like Avengers for its budget. Without a big earner like an Avengers film to help, Eternals will really have to take in the cash ( probably $800m, against its $200m budget) to be a financial success. These films need to more than double their budgets at least to break even.
On this note Captain Marvel was protected by its placement between two highly anticipated MCU films, to which it had some story links, which almost guaranteed people would go to see it. What other connected films has Eternals got to support it ?
Conclusion:
Ultimately I'll be surprised if Eternals is a complete bomb, but given how poorly Black Widow is performing with a well established and popular character, I think it will struggle to break even.
And I'm just saying I wanted to see an alternate version of Thanos since Kang will have a 100 different variants.
