Chloe Zhao directs the big screen adaptation of Jack Kirby’s “Eternals” for Marvel. I was rather disappointed by this at first, Zhao directed one of the year's very best films “The Rider,” and won the Oscar this year for “Nomadland,” merging a groundbreaking blend of fiction and non-fiction into her stories, but signing on to a Marvel movie as a follow-up is not something I anticipated this talented artist to do.
Regardless, Marvel released a “welcome back to theaters” message to all its audiences today. “The world may change and evolve. But the one thing that will never change, we’re all part of one big family,” Marvel Studios says in the new “welcome back to theaters” promo.
The trailer has our first glimpse at Zhao’s “Eternals” and I have a very mixed reaction towards it. There’s lovely natural lighting being used by Zhao, it does feel very independent from the rest of the Marvel canon, but it also doesn’t register as “cinematic”. The Marvel films have a fake quality to them, an aesthetic that feels primarily rendered via computer technology. The real gimme here, for cinephiles at least, is Zhao, but the Disney/Marvel restrictions may have just been too much for this to truly be an auteur’ed MCU movie ala Shane Black’s “Iron Man 3,” James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” or Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Ragnarok.”
The first look features footage of the entire cast which includes Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek and more. The story takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame” and centers on “an alien race living on Earth for over 7,000 years who team up to protect humanity from their evil counterparts, the Deviants.”
“Eternals” is set to be released in theaters on November 5th, 2021. You can watch the full Marvel teaser below.