It’s always refreshing to stumble upon a new sci-fi show that demands immediate attention and viewers respond to so passionately, like Netflix’s eerie new alien invasion saga, “The Eternaut.”
This six-episode series arrives from Argentina, and it’s easily one of the biggest surprises of the year with a 95% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and legions of genre fans clambering on board.
Filled with resonating imagery, outstanding performances by its superb Spanish-speaking cast, and visual effects by DNEG and many other leaders of the SFX industry, director Bruno Stagnaro’s “The Eternaut” has a humble origin story of how it finally came to the small screen after a half-century of failed adaptation attempts that also included an aborted animated series.
“The Eternaut” came to life in 1957 as a serialized sci-fi comic for Hora Cero in Buenos Aires written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and injected with stark detailed artwork by Francisco Solano López.
Looking at some of the original comic strips and its veiled political commentary, it’s hard to believe that Robert Kirkman wasn’t aware of — or influenced by — this international marvel at some point before bringing his “The Walking Dead” comic book saga to life, but perhaps it’s just mere coincidence.
The intense setup here is fairly straightforward as these types of sci-fi mystery shows go, with Buenos Aires residents going about their evenings when a sudden nightmarish snowfall descends over the metropolis, killing millions indiscriminately. We follow a man named Juan Salvo (Ricardo Darin) and other bands of survivors as they don makeshift protective suits and venture outside to wander the desolate streets littered with corpses, only to find another invasive threat far greater than toxic snow. Carla Peterson, César Troncoso, and Andrea Pietra also co-star with Darin.
Gastón Girod’s wonderful muted cinematography here is a true revelation: a billowing red Santa Claus balloon skips over the roofs of a mountain of abandoned cars; falling meteors create an unholy glow in stained glass church windows; a solitary masked figure cuts a lonely trail through abandoned snow-covered boulevards; lumbering alien cockroaches wrap victims in spider-like threads. Together, they create a striking visual tableau from which to tell this harrowing tale and pay respectful homage to the comic strip source material by replicating its dramatic panel style.
Yes, we’ve seen this brand of post-apocalyptic mystery box setup and its ensemble survival aspects in other TV offerings like “The Walking Dead,” “The Last Of Us,” “Colony,” “The Rain,” “Falling Skies,” “Invasion,” and countless others in recent years.
But it’s important to point out that “The Eternaut” was written and illustrated nearly 70 years ago! It was one of the original archetypes, the template, of the genre for all that came later. Those 1950s newspaper comic strips and subsequent graphic novel collections are practically a national treasure in Argentina, and the list of filmmakers trying to deliver its doomsday sci-fi story in other mediums was long and impressive.
It’s a bit of a slow burn to begin, but it picks up rapidly once we’ve been introduced to the collection of main characters, so be patient and hang with it as viewers will be well rewarded. We’ll save some of the big geeky twists for you to discover once the haunting visuals and compelling performances kick in.
With a second season already greenlit, “The Eternaut” is currently streaming on Netflix.
