The Eternaut is Netflix content #19384AJR.829-2918.2. Nothing separates The Eternaut from the other shows on Netflix as one doom-scrolls through titles. Its thumbnail is a man wearing a gas mask. And what’s an “eternaut” anyway?
My best guess was The Eternaut was about a man trying to survive in a world destroyed by gastrointestinal emissions from members of the body positivity movement. Yet, desperation drew me to start streaming it while in the throes of a toothache that would have made Dr. Szell feel sympathy.
Wonder of wonders, The Eternaut was watchable. Let’s take a totally spoiler-free look at this Netflix show.
The Comic
The Eternaut didn’t appear out of the ether. It has a history. The Netflix series is based on an Argentine comic book that came out during the tail end of the golden age: 1957-1959. It was written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López. Of the story’s origin, Oesterheld said:
“The Eternaut started as a short story, just 70 panels. Then it turned into a long story, an adaptation of sorts of the topic of Robinson Crusoe. I was captivated by the idea of a family that is suddenly alone in the world, surrounded by death and by an unknown and unreachable enemy. I thought of myself, of my family, isolated in our chalet, and started asking questions.”
Oesterheld rebooted The Eternaut in 1969. The storyline expanded, with additional books periodically released up until 2003. A quest to get The Eternaut adapted to film or television followed. The process took about twenty years, but The Eternaut finally ended up on Netflix.
The Show
Bruno Stagnaro wrote and directed The Eternaut. Writing the story took two years. Filming lasted 148 days and included 35 locations and 25 stages created through virtual production. Large areas of Buenos Aires were scanned and translated into an Unreal Engine virtual reality system to be projected onto a screen on set.
Throw in another eighteen months of post-production, and The Eternaut ends up with a grasp that mostly matches its reach when it comes to visuals. The series does not strive for crazy effects, however. It mostly concerns itself with creating an atmosphere of desolation, with occasional bursts of flair.
The cast of The Eternaut is mostly Argentine. Ricardo Darin headlines the series as an aged father whose main goal is to keep his family safe. Darin is joined by a stable of other salt-of-the-earth performers who play characters that behave in mostly believable ways. Few of them will likely be recognizable to western viewers. That works our well. None of the performers carry any baggage from previous roles into the proceedings.
What also stands out with The Eternaut is how normal everyone looks. The cast is not a group of twenty-somethings with a skin-care regimen and a GNC rewards card. The core group of characters are old guys in their sixties. If such a group did show up in an American production, lots of jokes about age would follow. Got to keep those quips flowing for the Marvel audience.
That does not happen in The Eternaut, however. The group is depicted as regular guys living their lives in basic ways until circumstances become extraordinary. Even then, none of them make a point to be heroes. Motivation is more about problem-solving and avoiding bad decisions.
The Pros
With these types of movies, viewers are conditioned to soon expect the cannibal rapists to show up as the message that “humans are the real monsters” is broadcast with all the subtlety of a hammer on a big toe.
As an aside, one has to wonder about the feasibility of the cannibal-rapist survival strategy in a real-world apocalypse. For example, in the Midwest, USA, survivors would likely organize at a church level and then link up in cooperation post-apocalypse. They would all have guns and no due process. Cannibal rapists would likely find themselves getting lit up in short order.
But, where was I? Oh yeah, The Eternaut flirts with going in the “humans are the real monsters” direction, but only momentarily. This is refreshing. There is nothing wrong with going the pessimistic route, in and of itself. That trope has simply been done to death in seemingly every post-apocalyptic movie. Other choices do exist, and The Eternaut takes the road less traveled in that department…so far.
The other problem that exists with this type of story is that the tale is most interesting when the characters are in a process of discovery and seeking — as in finding out what happened and trying to get to safety. Such stories usually become about how the group implodes from within once those goals are met. The Eternaut does an adequate job of avoiding this. Plus, it keeps the plates spinning with a couple plot reinventions along the way.
The Cons
Not everything is sunshine and roses with The Eternaut, however. A couple warts reveal themselves. The show is a bit too deliberately paced. The series is only six episodes long, but it probably could have delivered the same story in five episodes, maybe even four if each episode hit 60 minutes exactly.
Thankfully, The Eternaut does not bog down with ten-minute Mike Flanagan-style monologues. It mostly maintains a good pace. The main problem is that it simply repeats things that don’t need much revisiting.
The other problem is that no one seems to like self-contained stories anymore. Everything needs to have franchise potential. One disappointing aspect of The Eternaut is that it all ends up being set-up for a second season. Call me crazy, but I want to watch something with a beginning, a middle and an end. I don’t want to watch a beginning and be told to come back in a couple years for the denouement.
Nevertheless, I probably will come back for a second season of The Eternaut. It created an intriguing mash-up: a post-apocalyptic story mashed up with 1950s B-movies.
So, it’s not The Eter-not for me, it’s The Eter-why not?
