Eternals is going to explore a more cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and when it was being made, it didn’t feel like your standard superhero fare. At least, that’s what one of the producers believes.
“I think a lot of times when we think about movies, we think about genres we haven’t done,” Nate Moore, producer on Eternals, tells ScreenRant. “And to deal with immortality which I think is sort of a fun topic to deal with, but also doing a more hard sci-fi movie frankly with something we really hadn’t tackled and to do something that didn’t feel necessarily like a superhero movie.”
Moore is quick to clarify this “still an action movie“, but that he’s referencing Eternals as a “palate cleanser” now that we’re moving on from the Avengers facing Thanos and into Marvel Phase 4. Certainly, he has a point in the sense that Eternals is removed from that battle, being about a race of immortal aliens that have lived among us for centuries, now awakened because the Deviants are threatening mankind.
The director, the Academy-Award winning Chloé Zhao, is part of why Eternals feels like a departure. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige championed her cinematography in getting her the job. “And I had to keep saying, ‘This is right out of a camera; there’s no VFX work to this at all!'” Feige told Variety. “Because it was a beautiful sunset, with perfect waves and mist coming up from the shore on this giant cliffside – really impressive stuff.”
Eternals stars Angelina Jolie. Richard Madden, Selma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Koeghan, and Gemma Chan as the titular team, each with their own unique powers. At the recent world premiere, reactions were positive, calling it “spectacularly weird” and “epic”.
Eternals is in theatres November 5.