The Zombie Flop That Won't Die
Just when Kevin Feige thought it was safe to go back into the office, the ghost of Marvel's biggest embarrassment has returned to haunt the halls of Disney. We are talking about Eternals, the 2021 snooze-fest that was supposed to change the cinematic universe forever but instead nearly bored it to death. In a twist that has industry insiders scratching their heads, this box office bomb has inexplicably clawed its way back onto the charts, appearing as one of the most-watched movies on Apple TV as of January 10.
Make no mistake: nobody at Marvel is popping champagne over this resurgence. Eternals represents the beginning of the end for the studio's golden era, a "meditative" disaster that alienated fans and tanked critically. Seeing it resurface nearly five years after its release feels less like a victory lap and more like a cruel reminder of the studio's massive identity crisis. Are people hate-watching it? Did they lose a bet? Or is the current state of the MCU so dire that fans are revisiting the wreckage to see where it all went wrong?
The film, directed by Chloé Zhao, was sweeping under the rug by executives who desperately wanted to pretend it never happened. It was the black sheep of Phase 4, a sprawling mess of "philosophical" dialogue and colorless visuals that wasted an A-list cast. Yet, here we are in 2026, and Eternals is sitting on the leader board right next to Predator: Badlands. It is the zombie franchise that refuses to stay buried, and its sudden popularity is reopening old wounds about Marvel's spectacular fall from grace.
A $236 Million Art-House Mistake
Let's look at the numbers, because they are absolutely brutal. Marvel dumped a reported $236 million into producing this film, not including the tens of millions spent on marketing to convince us that a group of immortal robots standing around on cliffs was exciting. The result? A global box office take of $402 million. In Hollywood math, once you factor in the theater cuts and global distribution, that is barely breaking even, if not a total loss.
Compare that to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which came out the same year. Shang-Chi had a smaller budget of $200 million, a lead actor (Simu Liu) who was virtually unknown to the general public, and yet it smoked Eternals with $432 million worldwide and glowing reviews. It is humiliating for a movie starring Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek to get outperformed by a kung-fu movie with zero established movie stars. It proved that audiences didn't care about star power; they wanted a good movie. Eternals was not that movie.
The studio tried to spin the narrative back in 2021, claiming the pandemic was to blame for the soft numbers. They asked for forgiveness, saying theaters were still "regaining their footing." But that excuse has expired. We now know that Eternals wasn't a victim of COVID; it was a victim of its own pretension. It set a "new standard" for Marvel: expensive, aimless, and critically panned.
Wasting A-List Talent on a D-List Script
The casting sheet for this movie reads like a vanity project gone wrong. You have Angelina Jolie, arguably one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, wandering around in a CGI suit looking bored. You have Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Kit Harington, Kumail Nanjiani, and Barry Keoghan. This was supposed to be the Avengers 2.0. Instead, it was a chemistry-free zone where talented actors went to die.
"It was painful to watch," one insider whispered to us back when the film premiered. "You have all this charisma on screen and they are forced to deliver lines that sound like they were written by a philosophy professor who has never read a comic book."
The film's sudden reappearance on the charts has reignited the conversation about how badly Marvel fumbled this bag. They had the cast. They had the budget. They had the hype. And they delivered a product that currently sits at a humiliating 47% on Rotten Tomatoes. That is the second-worst score in the history of the MCU, saving itself from last place only because Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania managed to be even worse. That is not company you want to keep.
Chloe Zhao vs. The Fanbase
The blame game for this disaster usually lands squarely on the shoulders of director Chloé Zhao. Fresh off her Oscar win for Nomadland, Zhao was given the keys to the kingdom to make something "different." Well, she certainly did that. She made a superhero movie where nobody acts like a superhero.
Fans were expecting the high-energy, colorful, quippy fun of James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy. Instead, they got sunsets, sand dunes, and lengthy exposition dumps about Celestials. The disconnect was violent. Audiences walked out of theaters confused and bored. The "vibrant" energy of Shang-Chi highlighted just how dull Eternals really was.
Now, Zhao has seemingly moved on, with her new film Hamnet generating Oscar buzz this year. She is back in her lane, making serious dramas for serious people. But for Marvel fans, her name is forever attached to the moment the MCU stopped being fun. The fact that people are streaming Eternals now feels like a forensic investigation—viewers trying to understand how a director so talented could make a blockbuster so bad.
The 'Doomsday' Desperation
This resurrection of Eternals comes at the worst possible time for Marvel. The studio is currently trying to dig itself out of a massive hole. Last year, they released three films, and all of them underperformed commercially. The "Marvel Machine" is broken. The consistency is gone. Since Endgame, they have only managed to scrape together a few bona fide hits like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Guardians Vol. 3.
Everything—and we mean everything—is riding on the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday basket. Executives are sweating bullets. They are bringing back big guns, they are pivoting hard, and they are praying that audiences have short memories. But when movies like Eternals pop back up on the charts, it reminds everyone that the track record lately has been garbage.
"Things seem a little uncertain this time," our source notes. That is the understatement of the century. In previous years, a flop could be laughed off. Now? A flop is an existential threat. If Doomsday doesn't shatter records, heads are going to roll at the top of the Mouse House.
Fan Reactions: The Internet Roasts It Again
You would think time heals all wounds, but the internet never forgets. As Eternals climbed the Apple TV charts, social media lit up with fresh takes on the old disaster. And let's just say, the reviews haven't improved with age.
"I tried to rewatch Eternals last night to see if I was too harsh on it. I fell asleep 20 minutes in. It is actually worse than I remembered."
"Why is this trending? Are we being punished? Who is doing this to themselves?"
"Angelina Jolie deserves financial compensation for having this on her IMDB page."
"Marvel really thought they did something here. It is just grey sludge for 2.5 hours."
Is There a Sequel Nightmare Brewing?
The scariest part of this story isn't the past; it's the future. With Eternals showing signs of life on streaming, is there a chance—however slim—that Disney might interpret this as interest? Could they be delusional enough to greenlight a sequel or bring these characters back for Doomsday?
We saw Harry Styles in that post-credits scene, teasing a future that never came. Marvel has been suspiciously quiet about the future of these characters, leaving them in limbo. But in Hollywood, money talks. If the streaming numbers are high enough, some executive looking at a spreadsheet might think, "Hey, maybe we should give them another shot."
God help us all. The MCU is struggling to stay afloat, and the last thing it needs is an anchor like the Eternals dragging it back down. For now, we can only hope this streaming spike is a fluke, a momentary lapse in judgment by the American public. Because if the Eternals return to the big screen, it might just be the final nail in the coffin for the superhero fatigue that is already killing the genre.
Stay tuned, because if Marvel announces Eternals 2, you will hear the screams of agony all the way from Burbank.
