No. "The ancient gods were aliens" is a sci-fi trope going back probably a century. It can be argued to be the core essence of Lovecraft's Elder Gods, though there's a lot of magic mixed in with the sci-fi elements. Hubbard's take in that book was that, when the Earth was forming, an evil warlord dumped millions of rebellious conquered enemies into our planet's primordial volcanoes, and their death-agonies were imprinted on us as we rose to sapience. Scientology is based on the notion that purging these alien "memory engrams" allows us to achieve our full potential to stop ageing, communicate telepathically, teleport, etc. It's one step along the cobbled path of "ancient alien visitors" stories, coming in 1950, barely a step ahead of Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel" (1951), and followed by Star Trek,
Chariots of the Gods?, Stargate, and a whole raft of other variations.
In the Marvel comic universe, there are a host of quasi-related cosmic entities. The Celestials and Galactus pre-date the present incarnation of the universe, in different ways. Both have created, directly or indirectly, empowered beings roughly on our scale down through the ages. In the comics, Ego the Living Planet wasn't a Celestial. That's one I still want to see ironed out in the MCU. As far as Titans and Eternals and Deviants... While the Marvel comics managed to keep things a lot more internally consistent than DC, there are still some problems. I'll get to that in a second. I do not envy the production team the task of clearing up some of the inconsistencies. For those who stayed for the mid-credit scene, they showed that they are tackling this head-on with
Eros/Starfox showing up saying flat-out he's Thanos' half-brother and somehow an Eternal, despite the film showing us the Eternals are constructed beings. So that's a thing we can look forward to. There are questions I am left with that I am wanting answered.
Also from the comics is the notion of the Celestials planting seeds/embryoes in the cores of suitable proto-planets, and the intelligent life that arises are a sort of immune system to protect it while it's incubating. This is what gave rise to all the powered entities on the Marvel Earth, from the subtle like the FF and Bruce and Tony to the overt like the mutants. I have always loved how the Celestials have been depicted in the comics, and didn't like all the dialogue Arishem had in this movie. Here's the best slug at capturing their essence:
It's a niggle, but in the comics, the Celestials so very do not have anything like a uniform appearance. We saw the red six-eyed dude in Guardians of the Galaxy. It's Eson the Searcher:
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...Who looks very different from Arishem. I mean, much moreso than above versus who we see in the Eternals. There's a lot to reconcile, and I don't know if they can... In the comics, when the First Host came to Earth a million years ago, they created the Eternals and Deviants out of hominid stock, as well as introducing the X-factor gene, all to see which would prove most viable down the road. When the Second Host visited eons later, they destroyed the Deviant kingdom of Lemuria and sank Atlantis. The Third Host forced the submission of the Gods of Earth -- extradimensional aliens worshipped as deities,
including Athena, Hephestos, and Hermes (Mercury). There are the classical Greek Titans and Olympians (Hercules -- who should be Herakles, but whatever -- becomes an Avenger, after all), as well as the alien Titans (named after the moon of Saturn where they're from, in the comics) and the Eternals who are analogues for many of the Olympians and with where we are currently, that's a whole big mess of contradiction that I'm curious to see if they can find their way out of (of course, I'm still waiting for an explanation of how the ancient Norse had Loki in their mythology, despite MCU Odin not finding baby Loki until after the last time the Asgardians visited Earth). Bit of a difference to have the Celestials create a hundred Eternals from
homo erectus stock a million years ago to live among us, are reborn when they die,
et cetera... versus sending ten constructed, basically, bio-androids here a mere seven thousand years ago.
Ultimately, I'm hoping this is the beginning of a decade-long road to the Coming of Galactus.
