Eternals is getting mixed reviews, but I’m reasonably confident that comedian Kumail Nanjiani will be one of the movie’s biggest highlights as Kingo, the immortal superhero with the finger guns. Thanks to this new clip from the movie, in which Sersi, Ikaris, and Sprite visit the Bollywood star on the set of his newest film, we have a bit more evidence to back this up.
Case in point: Kingo isn’t just making a movie, he’s making a movie about his Eternal brother Ikaris.
There’s a lot to like about this clip, the first and foremost being Nanjiani’s amazing eyebrow work in the dance scene he’s filming. Second, I’ll put Kingo calling his 7,000-year-old colleagues as his “friends from college.” Admittedly, the fact that Kingo the movie star is introduced as being kind of douchey and self-important is not a little clichéd, but it seems like Kingo is able to set that immediately aside as soon as he learns that the Deviants are back and need to be stopped. My real question is, what is Kingo’s Ikaris movie actually about? Is it about the lone life of his brother? Is it the Greek myth of Icarus, which Ikaris the Eternal clearly inspired in the world of the MCU? What moment is the dance sequence Kingo is filming supposed to represent? At least we know Nanjiani enjoyed filming it, and presumably Kingo did as well, according to the actor’s Twitter: “As someone who grew up watching Bollywood movies, I loved filming this sequence. (My dance partner here is the amazing @NikkitaChadha.) Movie opens this week! Aaaaargh!”
As an aside, we all remember the world freaking out when Kumail Nanjiani released that photo of his transformed, superhot superhero bod back in December of 2019. But did you know the comedian got too jacked? In an interview with the Toronto Sun, Eternals producer Nate Moore said, “We were like, ‘Hey, Kumail, don’t worry about it. This isn’t a movie where you have to work out a ton. But he wanted to do it … at some point I had to call him and say, ‘Kumail, I think you got too big.’ (Kingo) is a movie star, not a body-builder.”
This is kind of ironic given that 1) Nanjiani is also a major movie star courtesy of Eternals, but also because 2) the trio of Chrises — Evans, Hemsworth, and Pratt — all had to get super-jacked to become Marvel movie stars. At any rate, Eternals, which feels like it was announced 7,000 years ago, will finally be premiering this Thursday, on November 4.