Landing rave reviews for her indie film “The Rider” (which was also Dark Horizons’ top film of 2018), filmmaker Chloe Zhao took the unexpected course of jumping right onto a Marvel Studios film – “Eternals”.
While “Black Widow” is the first of the official ‘Phase Four’ films, it’s a prequel and so “Eternals” marks the first real feature set in that universe after the events of “Avengers: Endgame” and “Spider-Man: Far from Home”. It’s also a new potential franchise launcher, one not really beholden to any multi-film arc for now, and so it gives Zhao quite a bit of creative freedom.
Indeed it was Zhao’s “fascinating” pitch that won over Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and got her the job. The film tells the story of a war between alien races and follows a group of Eternals, super-powered beings who have secretly been living on Earth for millennia, as they clash with long-time rivals the Deviants.
In new profile piece for THR, she reveals that one of the key elements of her take is that Japanese manga comics serve as a key influencer on her approach:
“I have such deep, strong, manga roots. I brought some of that into Eternals. And I look forward to pushing more of that marriage of East and West…how much further and bigger can we go after [Avengers] Endgame? Because I’m not just making the film as a director. I’m making the film as a fan.”
Zhao also reveals she didn’t have to alter her filmmaking style to fit into the Marvel mold:
“I shot exactly the way I wanted to shoot. On location. A lot of magic hour. Three-hundred-sixty degrees on the same camera as I did on Nomadland. Same rigs. It’s a bit surreal. I’m still waiting for the shoe to drop. It hasn’t. I think I got lucky in that Marvel wants to take risks and do something different.”
That desire to do something different is reflected in the diverse cast which includes Angelina Jolie, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, Lauren Ridloff, Don Lee, Kit Harington, Lia McHugh, and Barry Keoghan:
“I wanted it to reflect the world we live in. But also I wanted to put a cast together that feels like a group of misfits. I didn’t want the jocks. I want you to walk away at the end of the movie not thinking, ‘This person is this ethnicity, that person is that nationality.’ No. I want you to walk away thinking, ‘That’s a family.’ You don’t think about what they represent. You see them as individuals.”
In the piece Feige briefly discussed the inclusion of an LGBT relationship saying it “was always sort of inherent in the story and the makeup of the different types of Eternals” and he finds it “extremely well done, and I look forward to that level of inclusion in our future movies being less of a topic.”
“Eternals” arrives in cinemas on February 12th 2021. Zhao shot and completed the Frances McDormand-starring Fox Searchlight film “Nomadland” after shooting “Eternals” with that film premiering at Venice next week ahead of a December 4th release.
