Angelina Jolie is supported by children at UK gala screening of Eternals

Angelia Jolie cut a glamorous figure as she lead the stars attending the Eternals premiere at the BFI IMAX Waterloo in London on Wednesday.

The 46-year-old actress was joined by her children Shiloh (15, Zahara (16), Vivienne (13, Maddox (20, and Knox 13), with her son Pax (17, her only child not present).

The film star, Thena, looked stunning in a black blazer, which she paired it with a flowing skirt.  

Family: Angelina Jolie was joined by her children, Shiloh, Zahara, Vivienne, Maddox, and Knox at the London premiere of Eternals at the BFI IMAX Waterloo on Wednesday

The Oscar-winning actress’s outfit featured a pleated detail, and she completed it with a wristwatch. 

Angelina looked absolutely stunning as she let her brunette hair down her shoulders and posed for the camera.

Angelina was very much in demand at the screening, as she stopped by to take pictures with the fans who lined the carpet. 

The actress was clearly happy and in good spirits, as she was seen laughing with her children while they posed for photographs.  

Brood – Angelina’s 17-year old son Pax was not present at the screening

Kumail Nanjiani (who plays Kingo) attended the premiere with Emily V. Gordon. They looked stunning on the red carpet. 

The comedian wore a teal jacket and matching trousers. He also wore dark brown boots. 

Barry Keoghan, who plays Druig in this film, was joined by Shona Guerin, his long-term girlfriend. 

The actor wore a dark brown suit and matching heels, while his partner wore an all-over multi-coloured minidress with a tassel detail.  

Eternals is a Marvel film set in 2021 that focuses on the fictional race called humanoids of the same names as the American comic books. 

Couple: Kumail Nanjiani, another Eternals star, attended his premiere alongside Emily V Gordon

Loved-up: Barry Keoghan and Shona Guerin were joined by their long-term girlfriend.

The film features the Eternals (an immortal alien race) emerging from hiding after thousands of years to defend Earth from their evil counterparts the Deviants.

The movie, which premiered in Los Angeles this month, stars Angelina playing the role of elite warrior Thena and Gemma portraying the character Sersi. 

The cast includes MCU’s first superhero for the deaf (Lauren Ridloff portrays Makkari) as well as its first gay superhero (Brian Tyree Henry portrays Phastos), who shares the franchise’s very first onscreen same-sex date with Haaz, who plays his wife.

In ELLE’s 2021 Women In Hollywood issue, Angelina – who is an advocate for refugees – discusses her upcoming movie and praises The Eternals’ director, Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao for her choice of casting.

Angelina explained that actresses are often strong women or have one sister. It’s rare to have a family where you can get to know and appreciate all the strengths of each woman. 

She continued to praise her co-stars: “Gemma has grace and elegance and the manner she walks through this world. Salma’s motherhood, power, and Lauren’s intelligence and connection. Everyone came as they were.

 Commanding the screen: Angelina stars opposite the likes of Chan, Madden, and Hayek in the upcoming superhero flick 

“Maybe there’s a reason that the characters aren’t so far off?” [from ourselves]. I think there is something we don’t know about our director’s secret because, if you look at her films and see how she casts real people into their roles, it shapes her films.

In the issue, she says that she believed the movie was going to be a grandmother-type role when she first heard about it.

“I never imagined I would become one of the Eternals. It doesn’t happen. It’s never happened to my like that before without a fight, and I was like, “I can do it, please hire me!” I was shocked when she told me that I was one of them. Me in my fifties I’m going as a Marvel superhero? She said that sometimes, as a woman of color and with age, you feel so overlooked.

She commended Zao for “having balls” and praised the director for recognizing her in the industry.

Ridloff, Makkari’s character, is deaf just like her. She was also the first deaf superhero from the Marvel universe. Chan praises Marvel for its diversity in its movies.

Eternals was released in early reviews and has been called ‘disappointing” and ‘ultimately unbememorable’.

Oh dear: Eternals was criticized in its first reviews by critics. Angelina Jolie played Thena in the film.

Critics were critical of the film’s’miserably undernourished script, overdeveloped characters, and overloaded storyline.  

Critics were divided as the’refreshingly varied’ cast of characters led to a group of “navel-gazing super heroes” that signalled a ‘two-step forwards for representation, but three steps backwards in dramatic ingenuity. 

The Times critic Kevin Maher gave the film two stars and took aim at the 157-minute flick’s script and its ‘strange self-sabotaging energy.’

He wrote: “It is characters, however. They represent the greatest shift away form the swaggering. They are mostly white, usually male, mostly neurotypical, and mostly hearing ensembles. (think Iron Man. Captain America. Thor.

He added the’reinvented hero work’ and said: ‘But they also, to paraphrase Pirandello are ten characters in search for a script. Because the one they have now, co-written by Chloé Zhao, the director (Nomadland), is derivative, messy and miserably undernourished.

‘Eternals’ represents two steps forwards, but three steps backwards in terms of dramatic ingenuity. 

Variety critic Owen Gleiberman  branded the film a ‘disappointment’ over lacking the ‘raw and real’ signature quality Zhao has brought to her other films. 

Not good: Critics criticized the film for its’miserably neglected’ script, overdeveloped characters, and ‘overloaded’ storyline. (pictured left, Don Lee portraying Gilgamesh and Kumail Nanjiani portraying Kingo – and Lauren Midloff portraying Makkari).

He wrote, ‘Yet when I approached Eternals the question that I was most curious was whether Zhao, who in Nomadland was able to define her filmmaking style in an unique poetic way, would carry that style over to blockbuster cinema… Eternals has none. It’s obvious that that’s a disappointment.

He stated that the film feels very standard in comparison to other ‘top-tier” team superhero films (the Guardians of the Galaxy, Zack Snyder’s Justice League and ‘Avengers: Infinity War), and that the film never transcends its traditionality’. 

He did however praise the diversity of cast members, writing: “Four Eternals are white. Three are Asian. Two are Black. One is Latina. One is gay and one is deaf. The other is an androgynous tween who never grew up. 

“Any troll who looks at this diverse group of personalities and complains that the movie is too woken-up might have made the same complaint about Star Trek 55 Years ago. 

Steve Rose, a Guardian critic, gave it two stars. He compared the film to a PowerPoint presentation due to its extensive mythological storyline.  

He wrote, “There is also an epic mythology to get our heads about: Even before a single dialogue is spoken, three dense paragraphs explain how the 10 Eternals came to Earth to protect it against the predatory Deviants (sorts of skinless, sinewy creatures with prehensile tentacles), at the behest Arishem, ‘the Primordial’. 

‘If you feel lost already, bad fortune: there are plenty more to come which demands some planet-sized chunks. It can sometimes feel like you are looking at a PowerPoint presentation. 

Adding the film was a ‘gigantic exercise in un-realism’, he praised Kumail Nanjiani’s turn as Eternal-turned-Bollywood movie star Kingo, but said Angelina Jolie’s Thena was ‘unconvincing’ portraying a personality disorder.

He wrote:  That’s the problem: there’s just too much going on: it’s all headed towards yet another ‘race against time to stop the really bad thing happening’ climax. It’s not exactly boring – there’s always something new to behold – but nor it is particularly exciting, and it lacks the breezy wit of Marvel’s best movies.’ 

Robbie Collin, a Telegraph critic, gave Eternals another two stars. He wrote: ‘The problem with Eternals is that it’s always engaged in a type of grit-toothed authenticity theater, going out of it’s way to show you that it’s doing all of the things proper cinema does, even if none of them are of any discernible benefit to the film. 

“The muted tone of Marvel’s house style rules out Marvel’s flashy and flippant style. Instead, Eternals chooses solemnity mixed with wackiness, which sometimes gives it the feel a Japanese anime series.

He said that Jolie’s character was “like a parody” and wrote that the hope was that Marvel’s 26th film would shake the franchise out its comfort zone. The franchise is a comfort zone, and its latest entry is an instant white elephant. 

Empire critic John Nugent gave Eternals three stars, as it was ‘unable to escape the clichés of superhero storytelling’ but praised Zhao’s ‘assured and ambitious’ MCU debut.

He wrote, “There’s a fascinating tension between the unstoppable power of the Marvel Project and the immovable object Zhao’s artistic sensibilities. In many ways, this looks and feels nothing like any Chloé Zhao film we’ve seen before

“This film is unlike any other Marvel film in many ways. There are, for example, at least a couple of firsts: a genuine sex scene, and an onscreen gay kiss — unheard of in the normally rather chaste MCU. 

“More often, however, it seems that it falls into familiar traps about saving world and learning to work as a team; when a huge, CGI heavy battle begins to thwart an other potential apocalypse you start to feel like someone is leaning on you.

Nicholas Barber, BBC Culture critic also gave Eternals three stars. He said that Eternals could be the most disappointing MCU film to date.   

He wrote, “Suffice to say that the Eternals score high in terms gender, ethnic, and sexual diversity, but lowly for being memorable. It can be difficult to identify which Eternal is friendly with because they are a sketchy and drab group. 

“By rights, their super-soap opera ought to have its own 20-part series of Disney+. The plot of a film is so full that one Eternal announces that he doesn’t want in and walks out just before the final battle. It leaves us wondering why we have spent the last hour hanging around with him. 

Eternals is adapted based on a series 1970s comics from Jack Kirby. Although there are some traces of Kirby’s visionary design, Zhao and her co-writers have reduced it down to basic dialogue.                     

Charlotte O’Sullivan, Evening Standard critic praised the film and gave it four stars. She heaped praise on the cast, except for Gemma Chan’s ‘wooden’ performance as Sersi.

She wrote, “We’re used top-notch bickering at Marvel, but the self aware, sibling-like rivalry in Nomadland seems extra divine because this allows ideas explored here to be revisited.” Perhaps we don’t really need a true home’ in order to live happily. Or a boss’.

“The cast is fantastic, with one exception. Chan is a bit too wooden. She’s the chosen one, according to the script. But I wish Zhao hadn’t chosen her. 

“Anyway,” the fights, especially the last third of the film, are breathtaking, beautifully paced, and packed with detail.