Filmmaker Chloé Zhao is not exactly someone who reads as a perfect match for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Her previous directorial efforts, The Rider and Nomadland, are small-scale realist dramas with casts composed of mostly untrained actors, save for Oscar-winner Frances McDormand in the latter. Zhao is now making the move to big-budget blockbusters like Marvel's Eternals and a sci-fi western Dracula reimagining, yet her general approach hasn't changed as much as one might expect.
Much like she cast non-actors to basically play themselves in The Rider and Nomadland, Zhao put together the Eternals cast based on the real-life personalities of the actors. Eternals costar Kumail Nanjiani confirmed as much during an interview with Vulture, in which he explained how he came to play Kingo: an Eternal who's blended in on Earth by living as a Bollywood star. “I was like, ‘Okay, so how do you see Kingo?’ [Zhao] was like, ‘He’s you. I picked you because I wanted him to be you,’" Nanjiani said. "That’s how she picked the entire cast. She wanted everybody to put pieces of themselves into their characters," he added.
Casting actors based on their actual personalities isn't unheard of in the MCU; one could argue the success of Iron Man can be attributed to Robert Downey Jr. more or less playing himself in the role of Tony Stark. MCU star Chris Evans is similarly known for upholding a lot of the same values as Captain America in his personal life, in the same way the late Chadwick Boseman often carried himself with the same composure as Black Panther. Still, Zhao's practice of hiring actors because of who they really are reveals a common approach to Nomadland and Eternals -- films that couldn't be any more different on paper.
The parallels don't end there. In addition to directing, Zhao wrote Eternals. "In the writing process, that’s sort of where I bring my sensibility in, that’s a huge part of it," Zhao explained in a recent interview. "And creating situations that will allow certain kinds of cinematic language to come in, that is something that I’ve learned from my last three films." However, just as Zhao based Nomadland on Jessica Bruder's non-fiction 2017 book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, it's believed she drew from the earlier Eternals script draft by Kaz and Ryan Firpo.
Zhao has indicated her goal with Eternals was to create the same sense of intimacy that The Rider and Nomadland had, combined with the grand scope and scale befitting of the cosmic superhero property. It's a welcome idea, not least of all when so many indie filmmakers before her have struggled to recapture what made their earlier movies unique after trying their hand at a franchise. Indeed, the results are nearly always better when a director's voice comes through loud and clear in their studio projects, with relevant examples in the MCU including Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther. With a little luck, Eternals will be joining their ranks in the future.
Directed by Chloé Zhao, Eternals stars Gemma Chan as Sersi, Richard Madden as Ikaris, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo, Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, Salma Hayek as Ajak, Lia McHugh as Sprite, Don Lee as Gilgamesh, Angelina Jolie as Thena, Barry Keoghan as Druig and Kit Harington as Dane Whitman/Black Knight. The film arrives in theaters Nov. 5, 2021.
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