For Chloé Zhao, the budget of the eternal was “unlimited” and “it was dangerous”

The director returns to the failure of her visit to the Marvel universe. She tries to explain why it didn’t work.

She returns these days with her new film, Hamnetdevoted to William Shakespeare and his wife. The opportunity for Chloé Zhao to return to the set of her previous film: THE Eternal. Three years after the flop that slowed down her career, she recounts her experience with Marvel.

In an interview with Vanity Fairthe Oscar -winning director of Nomadland admitted that shooting a blockbuster of superheroes with colossal means had been a double-edged weapon:

“The eternal had, literally, a budget and unlimited resources. And it is in reality something quite dangerous for a filmmaker …”

Profusion of means can indeed generate a form of indecision. And she specifies how this experience helped him better understand her art:

“The eternal prepared me in Hamnet because it was a work of construction of world. Before, I had only done films anchored in reality. I learned what to do or not to do, what is realistic or not. On the eternal, everything seemed possible. For Hamnet, we had only one street corner to represent Stratford … and suddenly, every detail takes on meaning.”

Released in 2021, in full pandemic, The eternal had garnered $ 402 million at the world box office. An honorable score in the context, but which did not prevent the film from being one of the least well received from the MCU, undergoing a terrible reputation with the fans.

For Chloe Zhao, the postponement of the film due to the covid weighed heavy in the scale:

“The eternal had to go out just after Avengers: Endgame, and not at a time when everyone was going through an existential crisis! But the film himself talks about an existential crisis, for humanity and for God. We felt that it was going to be divisive at that time …”

The director also recognizes that the shock between Marvel aesthetics and her approach as an independent author accentuated the tensions. Lovers Nomadland regretted the presence of too conventional elements of the MCU, while certain Marvel fans have not adhered to the visual ruptures proposed by Zhao.

“We really tried to get out of the shackles in which we were locked up, and to find ourselves halfway thanks to our common interests. This is what made the spectators uncomfortable, those of the two camps. But there were also who were affected by this fusion, by this unexpected mixture. But I totally understand the division between critics and fans. It is the sign that we pushed the film. really jostled the established order. “