The 26th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Eternals, is right around the corner, and to get fans ready, Marvel Studios has dropped a new behind-the-scenes featurette entitled “Visionary." This two-minute glimpse into the new film focuses on what director Chloé Zhao - fresh off her Best Director Oscar win for Nomadland - brings to the MCU.
Kevin Feige discussed bringing the Eternals to the big screen and how “there was only one filmmaker who could bring that to the screen. The humanity and scale and the epic nature of that and its Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao”. Keeping the grand scale and action that fans love about the MCU, but combining that with an emotional scale to match it, is a heavy task for anyone, but Zhao apparently was up to the task.
Zhao went on to say in the video that she “came into the film as a filmmaker who wants to tell a story, but also a fan. So my vision of the film is how can we capture something so epic and intimate at the same time and how to have these moments coexist in the film.” She would continue to talk about the layers of the film and that, “there’s a great sci-fi adventure. There’s a very complex family drama and we get to learn that these Eternals have been helping shape our history and who we are and we also shape who they are as well”.
The rest of the video's focus turns to the cast expanding on that grand scale and Zhao’s unique vision. Stars like Angelina Jolie further talked about the epic scope and Kumail Nanjiani talked about Zhao wanting to use as many practical sets as possible, with Zhao herself expanding on that by saying, “ you want to see the character in relationship with the world behind them”.
The featurette finishes by showcasing the different landscapes the film shot in and throughout the interviews in the video, they teased the fans with Zhao’s eye for storytelling promising one the most visually stunning Marvel films up to this point. The “epic journey” of Eternals releases on November 5 and stars Nanjiani, Jolie, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, Kit Harrington, Gemma Chan, Don Lee, Barry Keoghan, and Brain Tyree Henry. Check out the featurette and read the synopsis for Eternals below.
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.