Eternals has once again been compared to Nomadland, the previous directorial offering from Chloé Zhao.
Producer Nate Moore spoke to Empire about the tone of the film and how Zhao's previous work, especially this year's Oscar-winning Nomadland, informed the upcoming Marvel movie. "Chloé’s interested in telling stories about outsiders who find themselves adrift in new worlds. Nomadland and Eternals both share that DNA," Moore said. "Nomadland doesn’t have the same bells and whistles as Eternals, but it has the same thematic resonance."
While Marvel Studios has long hired critically acclaimed directors and writers for its projects, Zhao's multiple wins at the Academy Awards earlier this year for Nomadland, released after Eternals was wrapped, adds some esteem to the superhero movie.
"This is definitely a new one for all of us," Moore said. "'From the Academy Award-winning director of…' isn’t a phrase you’re used to hearing before Marvel movies."
All year, the people involved with Eternals have spoken about how the movie is connected to Nomadland and Zhao's body of work as a whole. Despite the big names in the Marvel film, the casting process was still compared to Nomadland, which featured a number of non-actors playing versions of themselves.
"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,'" Kingo actor Kumial Nanjiani said in February. "That’s how she picked the entire cast. She wanted everybody to put pieces of themselves into their characters."
Similar to how integral Taika Waititi was to the tone of Thor: Ragnarok, Zhao was essential in getting Eternals to the screen. "The truth is, we would not have even attempted this if it weren't for Chloé," Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige said earlier this month. "We thought, here's a filmmaker who is equal parts cinematic visionary and genre nerd. She can outtalk any of us when it comes to manga and Star Wars and Marvel comics. It's quite an astounding combination. And this movie, I think, represents all of the immense multitudes of Chloé."
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. While the Deviants have hidden underground, the Eternals have lived secretly among humanity for millennia.
Eternals is currently on track to release exclusively in theaters on Nov. 5.
Source: Empire
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