Full transparency – I am not a big superhero movie fan, but I attended a screening of “Eternals”, for you, dear reader. For reference, I liked “Iron Man,” “Spiderman,” “Black Widow,” and even some “Avengers” films, but it’s the many sequels and crossover movies that hold no interest for me.

At least “Eternals” isn’t a sequel, though it certainly feels like one with all the references to other “Avengers” characters and plots. That said, the film is a true spectacle of all Marvel has to offer in the way of A-list actors, action sequences, colorful costumes and pithy one-liners. It’s everything the average superhero fan is craving, plus a little more, compliments of thoughtful director Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland,” “Songs My Brother Taught Me”). That is also perhaps the very influence that simultaneously made it a bit more tolerable for me but also less likeable for the typical audience.

Much of the plot of “Eternals” is laid out in text scrolling across the screen and conversations between characters that sound more like history lessons than dialogue. This plot device is usually an indicator that the film is either too complicated or too long to present in a more traditional visual way.

Put simply though, immortal beings coincidentally named Sersi, Gilgamesh, Druig, Sprite, Thena and Ikaris from the planet Olympia, were sent to Earth thousands of years ago to assist but not hinder the natural development of human beings on our planet and protect us from seemingly unstoppable beasts call Deviants (shade to anything considered different being labeled as evil). This film begins long after the Deviants have been vanquished and the Eternals are roaming the Earth awaiting their next mission and that’s when things get complicated…if not entirely implausible.

Once the Eternals have accomplished their mission, they start questioning their effectiveness in a world so full of both beauty and ugliness. They split up to learn to understand and enjoy the world they helped create, but in present day, the Deviants inexplicably return and they must get the band back together to figure out more than one mystery and of course, save mankind once again. The rest is a convoluted story about the origin of the Eternals and the Deviants themselves, as kind of two halves of one whole, broken apart like fallen angels from even more celestial beings they worship and obey.

Overall, “Eternals” feels most like “Avengers: End Game,” the rare superhero movie that made audiences think, feel and even cry. However, in the case of “End Game,” the audience had been brought along through many previous films where they had already ingested plenty of action, comedy and pure entertainment to allow for this evolution of hearts and minds in viewers.

“Eternals” attempts to cram all of that growth into a single film, though overlong itself at 2:37. There are just too many new superheroes with famous faces for a single movie, including not one, but two “Game of Thrones” brothers (Kit Harrington and Richard Madden), a “Walking Dead” actress (Lauren Ridloff) and “Maleficent” herself (Angelina Jolie).

Gemma Chan (“Let Them All Talk,” “Crazy Rich Asians”) as Sersi does give one of the best performances in a superhero movie I’ve ever seen, again upping the ante on the audience to engage in more than a simple night of revelry and consider a higher caliber, nuanced performance as well as that character’s complicated motivations. In addition, the casual inclusion of a cast and characters diverse in gender, race, ability and sexual orientation is a giant leap forward in this comic book world. Unfortunately, amidst the continuous barrage of bad CGI cuts, all I could think about was the empty warehouses and gigantic green screens this otherwise uninspired group of actors were forced to make the best of.

The Eternals are all fiercely motivated by saving humans, but unlike in the much more compelling “Wonder Woman,” we don’t see the humans enough to even act like they deserve it. In a story purportedly about saving mankind because of how wonderfully flawed we are, there are almost no actual human characters.

The focus is completely on the superheroes themselves, even down to their own incestuous love stories and the ensuing clanking of too form-fitting metallic suits. I’m tired of audiences navel gazing at these films that just stroke our egos and tell us how special and unique humans are, flaws and all, not because I disagree, but because it’s 2+ hours spent justifying our bad acts. What started with noble intentions in “Star Trek” back in the 1960s as a directive to accept ourselves and be proud even as we strive to be better, and continued in movies like “Transformers” where alien invaders actually go to war over preserving our species, has become just another excuse for actual bad human behavior in more recent years.

On the flip side, “Eternals” does posit that good guys can be bad guys from another perspective. Superheroes aren’t all one or the other themselves and can be full of doubt and regret as well. The biggest lesson we learn in “Eternals” is that even superheroes are doomed to repeat history if they forget the past, formerly seen as a very human shortcoming. Luckily for you – my superhero movie loving reader – there will inevitably be sequels to “Eternals” and its superheroes will likely show up in other Marvel Universe movies as well. The gods the Eternals answer to will be back to judge them and us for our collective sins.

Simonie Wilson, whose love of movies began as a child in the ’70s going to drive-ins with her family, has been a resident of the Northland for more than a decade. She is a board member of the Kansas City Film Critics Circle and a Women Film Critics Circle member. She can be reached online at www.facebook.com/RedVineReviewer.