Now that the water around the fallen Celestial statues is a lot calmer, Eternals director Chloé Zhao has been speaking exclusively to Empire Magazine about the divided critical reception to her unique entry into the IP heavy world of the MCU.
Eternals was always going to be a challenging film to gauge; featuring no recognisable superheroes, a world building, time-spanning narrative, all compounded by a release date right in the midst of a global pandemic. The Oscar-winning Zhao was well aware of the world in which her ethereal collective were being unleased, telling Empire that “Eternals was planned to be released soon after Endgame, and not at a time when everyone is having an existential crisis. The film itself is about existential crisis, both for humanity and God. So I think we definitely felt it was coming.”
Eternals earned over $400M at a global box-office hit by pandemic closures, and it was also subject to a series of ridiculous bans based on the depiction of a same-sex relationship. It’s Rotten Tomatoes score sits at a surprising 47%. Zhao reflects on the mixed-reception by saying:
“The truth is that nobody is one layer. In this case, we truly stepped out of the box that I think the world put us in, and met in the middle because of our shared interests. And by truly doing that, it made a lot of people uncomfortable on both sides. But there are also people who are more comfortable with the order of their world [being] disturbed. And then they look at our love-child and go, ‘Oh! This touches different sides of me!’ I like that. So I completely understand the divisiveness coming from critics and the fans. Because when you take this to extremes that are seen as opposition – the world I come from and the world of Marvel, that has been divided in a way that’s so unfair and unfortunate – and to merge the way we did, I actually see the reaction as a testament to how much we had merged with each other; how uncomfortable that might make people feel.”
You can read more of the interview over at Empire Online, or in their forthcoming issue, but don’t forget to let us know what you thought of Eternals and Zhao’s comments about the reaction to it by heading to our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
“Marvel Studios’ Eternals features an exciting new team of Super Heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ancient aliens who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years. Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, an unexpected tragedy forces them out of the shadows to reunite against mankind’s most ancient enemy, The Deviants.”
Eternals is directed by Chloe Zhao (The Rider) and features a cast that includes Angelina Jolie (Maleficent) as Thena, Richard Madden (Bodyguard) as Ikaris, Don Lee (Train to Busan) as Gilgamesh, Salma Hayek (The Hitman’s Bodyguard) as Ajak, Lauren Ridloff (The Walking Dead) as Makkari, Brian Tyree Henry (Child’s Play) as Phastos, Lia McHugh (American Woman) as Sprite, Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick) as Kingo, Kit Harington (Game of Thrones) as Dane Whitman, Gemma Chan (Captain Marvel) as Sersi and Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk) as Druig.
