Marvel’s ‘Eternals’ Loses The Definite Article

Ending months of back and forth for copyeditors across the globe, Marvel Studios made the decision Thursday to call its forthcoming film simply Eternals.
Depending on when and where you read news about the film — including here at Comicon — the title varied between Eternals and The Eternals as, to a certain extent, the wording is interchangeable except for marketing purposes. The occasional Marvel Comic title revolving around the Jack Kirby-created demigods is typically The Eternals, but it is clear from the following Eternals News Twitter account post what the preferred nomenclature will be.

We got an slightly updated logo for ETERNALS. pic.twitter.com/UjgLHLJrHv

— ℝℕ (@Eternalsnews) August 27, 2020

The use of the definite article has flip-flopped in Marvel’s own marketing messaging since it finally admitted to the project a few years back, although most of the title treatments we’ve seen lacked “the.” We’re going to assuming the final decision was made for stronger packaging on ancillary products like action figures and t-shirts. Or, to slightly misquote the famous line from The Social Network, someone thought dropping “the” was cleaner.
The film stars Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani and Angelina Jolie as members of a race of proto-humans engineered by the cosmic Celestials with the intent of installing them as the world’s first super-powered protectors. Originally slated for release this November, the film moved to February 12th, 2021 as part of Marvel and Disney’s continued attempts to manage the shut down of movie theaters during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.