Marvel-ous Subtlety
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The Lore Dump.
tl;dr: Eternals are on a holy war to wipe out mutants because their new leader is a moron being played by someone else. Potential parallels exist with said new leader attempting populist campaigning to secure his new rule so make of that what you want.
Background info is as follows:
Group of randoms that work together which includes:
Captain America [modified by science]
Iron-Man [wears a tech super suit]
Thor [alien King/God with powers] which wraps up the characters people actually like and care about
Captain Marvel [yes, that Captain Marvel unfortunately - gained powers through science and stuff]
Echo/Phoenix [a deaf girl some might recognise from the Hawkeye tv show, barely - has the powers of the Phoenix for some reason that was up until recently a mutant exclusive thing]
Ghost Rider [one of them anyway]
Black Panther [what happens when you combine Captain America, Iron-Man, and Thor into one person than add a twist of black supremacist who is King of an ethnostate]
Starbrand [someone with lots of power that will take far too long to properly explain]
Nighthawk [the Squadron Supreme version of Batman but black and racist. No really, he only helps black people because his parents died at the hands of a racist so obviously the smart thing is to... only help other black people?]
Blade might also be in there, I don't actually read the Avengers comics because as the lineup suggests the comic is filled with trash and woke stupidity.
Somewhat reflecting the recent movie because the comic retconned a lot of characters to match that including gender and race swapping characters that had existed for decades. Explained away as "they're old enough they have appeared in many forms so Ajak and Makkari are now women because reasons. Also Makkari is deaf also for reasons."
There are 100 Eternals. That is a rule. They were taken from baseline proto-humans and made into Eternals by the Celestials a million or so years ago. They made 100 Eternals that never age [and don't seem to reproduce much if at all because the only documented case where that did happen resulted in Thanos so future babies were banned], and 100 Deviants that do age but can reproduce.
The planet is a giant machine that the Eternals are charged with protecting along with keeping the Deviants in check so they don't undergo "excess Deviation" and turn insane then murder everything [an intentional design flaw of sorts], as well as causing no harm to any Celestial present. These "3 Principles" govern everything an Eternal can and cannot do and has caused various problems throughout their history due to wiggle room some of the more psychopathic Eternals figured out.
The machine can Reactivate any Eternal that dies due to Celestial science but comes at the cost of the final "resurrection" component being that of a human life somewhere on the planet [might also take life from a Deviant because they can reproduce so number in the hundreds of thousands]. This piece of info is why the Eternals in point 4 left because they see humans are part of the machine to be protected.
The "main" Eternals groups which are far more heroic than some. These are the ones the comics have mostly followed such as Ikaris, Sersi, Ajak, Makkari, Sprite, and most of the film lineup minus Gilgamesh and Druig.
Druig and most of the other 100 Eternals not with those mentioned in point 3 are far less ethically concerned that their own lives are brought back at the cost of a single human considering just how many humans now exist. Gilgamesh is part of neither group and does his own thing along with 3 or 4 others like making his own treehouse with blackjack and hookers.
Due to some really fucking stupid decisions by the Eternals they recently elected Thanos to be their leader. Yes, they elected Thanos. He didn't murder anyone then take over, a majority of the Eternals were taking a vote on who should lead them and after Thanos was snuck in by Druig the majority picked Thanos. Then he murdered some of them. Some he murdered several times like his parents because the machine would just bring them back after.
Because Eternals are always brought back, at the cost of a human life, this means they are always present in some form or another so any that go rogue have to be dealt with otherwise. The solution to this is a prison called "Exclusion" and notably contains Thanos' parents A'Lars and Sui-San, because their offspring was that dangerous, Thanos' grandfather Uranos because he suggested/attempted omnicide, Uranos' brother Kronos because he became one with time and the universe which was classified as "auto deification", and a handful of others. Sprite was originally in Exclusion at the start of the 2021 Eternals run because Sprite almost ended the world in the previous run. Should be pointed out that despite Kronos "ascending" he was still brought back and then imprisoned so there are "two" copies of him, one in Exclusion, one merged with the universe.
The psychopathic Eternals comment refers to Uranos. He argued that the best way to "Protect the Celestials" was to imprison them forever. That the best way to "Prevent Excess Deviation" was to wipe out every last Deviant. That the best way to "Protect the machine" was to turn it into a space faring vessel and then conquer all known space and wipe out every other lifeform to remove all existing and possible threats. He was barely stopped and despite being psychically interrogated for a prolonged period of time maintained control over both his own mind and the arsenal of Celestial weapons he had access to. This included a fail safe he claimed could destroy the planet that was tied to him via a deadman switch so execution was not an option. He would spend the next half a million years in
gay baby jaila cell because nothing else could be done with him. Arguably he wasn't wrong in his logic, he just didn't know all the details about Eternals, Deviants, and humans which is more a fault of the Celestrials who created him.Recently reformed by both Professor X and Magneto working together for once in the last few years to have their own ethnostate island that is itself a mutant. They offered total amnesty to every mutant regardless of past deeds which attracted Apocalypse, Mr Sinister, Sabertooth, Exodus and the Acolytes, the Marauders [who caused the Morlock Massacre], and others. Only a handful of mutants did not answer this for their own reasons.
Due to several mutants working in tandem to create "mutant circuits" there are several things propping up the new mutant nation of Krakoa [also the name of the mutant island, a retcon from past appearances], which include a special metal that is serving as a new galactic credit since the existing one crashed hard, as well as 3 special plants that help humans in various ways. The mutants will sell these plants to any nation that recognises the sovereignty of Krakoa and most nations do so bar Wakanda [and its vassals] because it has its own tech, the UK [because anti-mutant groups are controlling things behind the scenes, Russia [because Russia bad as per modern news], and a few others.
There is a mutant circuit which can bring back the dead. This means every mutant that has ever died in any X-Men or Marvel comic can be brought back.
The Morlock Massacre? Undone.
The Genosha Genocide of 16 million mutants by Wild Sentinels? Undone.
Even the original Thunderbird is back despite dying back in the 1960s or so due to an upgrade the system was later given by The Scarlet Witch who was up until that point viewed as worse than the Devil because of her actions depowering so many mutants on M-Day.
Humanity recently found out about mutant Resurrection and as expected threw a giant bitch fit about it because "the mutants are keeping immortality from normies" which is half correct as the system in place that permits this only records mutant data. To add in the rest of humanity would require so many additional resources it would likely bankrupt the galaxy several times over. Also historically humans have either done nothing for mutants or actively hunted them down to extinction by producing anti-mutant tech such as the Sentinels. So some mutants really don't give a fuck about the humans that then whine about how the mutants are keeping their toys to themselves.
The mutants terraformed and then colonised Mars using various mutant circuits. Magneto brought an iron asteroid from the Kuiper belt on the edge of the Solar System to Mars, crashed it into the planet, Vulcan then merged the extra-Martian metal into the core to increase the density and permit a function atmosphere again, then some other mutants helped add in an ecosystem, weather, and breathable atmosphere. Humans were pissed at this despite existing attempts to land on Mars being pitiful, going nowhere, and likely being decades if not centuries away. This causes more whining about mutants doing things humans can't however should be noted took places chronologically a year before the revelation of Mutant Resurrection being a thing.
Because of the recent scale in power that mutants now wield a lot of individuals that used to work with different groups have joined forces to form Orchis. This includes members from SHIELD, HAMMER, Hydra, AIM, and some others. Their singular goal is to prevent mutant supremacy any way possible, which isn't the most surprising decision considering some of the mutants that ended up moving to Krakoa like Apocalypse and Magneto.
Which brings us to recent events and the rest of this post.
I haven't read anything Eternals or even seen the movie, but their lore sounds pretty retarded.
You're not wrong but part of that is due to a lot of retcons happening over the years. Reactivation wasn't a thing for a long time despite it being retconned to have always existed. The purpose of the Eternals has changed numerous times too from planetary protectors to experiment control factors with the importance of the Celestials original creation of the Eternals and Deviants being swapped around a few times.
Another problem with them is that the movie just doesn't really match up at all with the comics, regardless of what retcons are and are not used.
The movies have some vague similarities in terms of the characters but a lot of it is very different. The movies have 10 Eternals, while the comics have 100. Even the 10 in the movie all needed enough time to be introduced and explained while the comics not only still haven't named all 100 they only named some of the significant ones to AXE in the the issue the OP pic is from so it's still an ongoing process there.
Comics Eternals are there to prevent a pot from boiling over that the Celestials left on the hob a million years ago. This is a retcon, however.
Film Eternals are a defense mechanism to ensure an Emergence event occurs which births a new Celestial from a planet. This not only destroys the planet but obviously kills everything living on it which is the main point of conflict in the movie that only really arises in the Third Act. Prior to that the First Act establishes the Eternals as existing to destroy Deviants, Deviants themselves made to wipe out apex predators so lots of life can spread on a planet until the Emergence event is triggered by enough life being present, while the Second Act attempts to solve the murder of one of the Eternals.
It's a significantly divergent story from the comics that beyond the characters involved it's a totally different story. Every other MCU project has at least been more or less on point with the characters except from both Captain Marvel and Ms Marvel of all things. Captain Marvel in the comics is half human/Kree hybrid that should be closer to an Inhuman than an Infinity Stone powered/sort of makeshift Inhuman plank of wood while Ms. Marvel is an Inhuman in the comics yet the MCU appear to be making her a mutant. Everyone else pretty much still follows their comics origin except Scarlet Witch but then she too has had like 4 different origins in the comic by this point due to retcons.