Why does Marvel keep hiring world-class directors if it won’t trust them?
Chloé Zhao is the ideal collaborator for Marvel Studios, and the pairing still doesn’t work
Film Features Ant-Man
The concept of “selling out” has evolved over the past couple of decades. Which is to say, it’s now considered more of an inevitability than an unforgivable sin. Like musicians who license their songs to big-box stores or movie stars who appear in car commercials, directors who devote from three to five years of their lives to shepherding a piece of billion-dollar IP are… well, if not celebrated, certainly widely accepted for getting in on the only kind of movie Hollywood seems interested in making anymore. Some see the job as a paycheck, while others earnestly love the lore of whatever franchise pulls them into its massive embrace. But regardless of these filmmakers’ respective motivations, Marvel Studios wants them on its roster.
Fresh off stellar reviews and a triumphant awards-season run for Nomadland, which won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars in April, Chloé Zhao is arguably one of Marvel’s best gets yet—and not just because of her pedigree. Zhao signed on to Eternals in 2018, around the same time she was shooting Nomadland, and didn’t have to be wooed into working with Marvel Studios. (Not everyone is easily lured—filmmakers who have rejected Marvel Studios’ advances include Ava DuVernay, the Duplass brothers, and Lucrecia Martel.) Zhao participated in the writing of Eternals and is a longtime fan of the MCU who took the initiative to pitch the studio on her vision for the film.
Zhao has opinions on where the franchise is going overall, and insists that the studio’s “previsualization” strategy, where action scenes are mapped out by digital artists long before they’re actually shot, did not limit her participation in those scenes. In a recent interview with Indiewire, she says that “Previs became something for me to explore ideas with,” adding that while Marvel “help[ed] [her] because I’ve never used these tools,” ultimately she was the one making decisions on “how visual effects could look in the real world.”
It should be an ideal marriage: Zhao brings a handcrafted aspect and singular vision that MCU films are often criticized for lacking, while Marvel Studios offers the resources for Zhao to make an epic on a level she was never able to before. But watching Eternals, something is off. The planets do not align. There are moments when the oxygen seems to have been sucked out of a scene, moments that confuse because you know both the filmmaker and the actors are more talented than that clunky, airless reaction shot would suggest.
Is Zhao’s style a poor fit for the MCU? Or is the way these films are shot and conceived too rigid to allow a personal vision to fully blossom? Historically, the evidence points to the latter: Martel walked away from a meeting with the studio about Black Widow after it offered to “take care of” the action on her behalf; the difference between scenes directed by the project’s eventual helmer, Cate Shortland, and those handled by second-unit crews is obvious. Similarly, Thor director Kenneth Branagh said in a new New York Times profile that his use of Dutch angles in the film “created a miniature furor. Marvel actually tried to see whether they could horizontalize them again.”
Because while Marvel wants a director whose name is well-known among cinephiles to lend its projects prestige, ultimately the studio is working with a pre-established formula that’s built around post-credit sequences and merchandizing strategies, not art. As Edgar Wright said after walking away from Ant-Man in 2017, “I wanted to make a Marvel movie, but I don’t think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie.” And you can see the compromises being made between artist and studio in Eternals: Zhao’s interest in stillness and slow-burn character study remains, but it’s inelegantly peppered with the MCU’s quippy comic book wit. World-building references are shoehorned in, and the film’s much-hyped sex scene is only risqué for this particularly sexless cinematic universe.
In the end, those of Zhao’s signatures that do make it to the screen are essentially Easter eggs for fans of slow-burn festival fare. A South Dakota setting is a wink to fans of The Rider. A luminous sunset over a character’s shoulder seems made for YouTube explainer videos to pause and comment that Zhao is “known for her use of natural light.” Call it the One Perfect Shot-ization of the MCU—the digestion and packaging of artistic style for global consumption.
The lighting in Eternals—at least in those outdoor scenes where Zhao is able to do her thing—is indeed gorgeous. In a handful of scenes, sunrises and sunsets frame the film’s superheroes in glowing halos of life-giving sunlight, and a shot of Gemma Chan’s Sersi communing with the children of ancient Mesopotamia is bathed in golden rays as precious as the moment itself. Both of these scenes use visual language to present the characters as gods—symbolism that’s applied intermittently, ultimately reducing it to little more than pretty decoration sapped of any deeper meaning.
Not to mention, as A.A. Dowd points out in his review of the film, “What’s the difference in shooting a real landscape and just generating one on a laptop if it’s going to serve as wallpaper for another round of visually undistinguished comic book combat?” This is especially true in an early scene where the Eternals are called to battle the one foe they are actually allowed to fight, the slobbering extraterrestrial beasties known as Deviants, on the beaches of some ancient shore around the dawn of humanity. Mixed with the monochrome tangle of CGI that is a hallmark of MCU action scenes, Zhao’s naturalistic color palette goes to mud.
That sequence is doomed under any conditions. But later on in the film, when the heroes trek to an isolated village deep in the Amazon rainforest in search of one of their own, we get a scene that—projected under ideal conditions—has the muted beauty of a still forest just before dawn. Put in the plainest terms, that means it’s dim and shadowy. Which could also make it close to illegible in some of the chain theaters about to be carpet-bombed with Eternals screenings: A common sin of suburban multiplexes is to partially unscrew projector bulbs to save money. A note from Marvel to theaters advocating for the proper way to project Eternals—akin to how Kevin Feige advocated for Zhao to Disney—would go a long way toward proving that the studio really does care about the art, and not just the clout.
Ultimately, an MCU movie is a product, and a global one at that. Disney has a board of directors, and its members are invested in making money for the company and its shareholders above any abstract concerns about artistic integrity. Given this harsh truth, however, why even bother to recruit directors like Zhao with an established, distinctive style? Why not just use a rotating house staff of creatives, more akin to a television show?
A generous read on the situation would be that middlemen like Feige really do value the contributions of people like Zhao but are ultimately caught in a struggle between creativity and commerce. In that case, perhaps the MCU falling out of favor with critics and at the box office is the best thing that could happen to the franchise at this point. With less at stake, more could be accomplished creatively—just look at what’s happened with the rival DCEU after the tepid reception of Justice League forced the studio to re-evaluate its strategy. For the time being, however, Chloé Zhao is simply one more action figure on Marvel’s shelf.
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Those Xers who spent the early 90s whinging about people selling out and bleating about their own purity are fuckwits who deserved to be mocked then and in the present day.Fuck those people and their self-indulgent self-mythologising.
Sir this is an Eternals article
Yeah making “selling out” not even a thing has been a triumph for the arts. Really just a total win all round. Indeed.
No, you have to be mad about what some people might have said about something 30 years ago. Complaining about selling out is terrible but holding a grudge about what a guy (does the math) ten years away from qualifying from Medicare said when he was 25 is definitely completely reasonable.
I’m a Millennial, but I’m going to disagree and say Gen X was right. Everything being a sequel/IP since 1999 sucks.
I really thought the last two sentences in my post conveyed my sarcasm. Lol. My bad.
This is why I’m going to soon cave and start paying attention to indie films.
“Everything being a sequel/IP since 1999 sucks.”Yeah, I really miss beautiful slow paced indie dramas like Nomadland, A listers in a beautifully shot historic drama like The Last Duel and or weird noirish expieriments like Pig.Instead I’m stuck watching pre-existing IPs like Dune and Candyman. Also does “Wes Anderson” count as an IP?Seriously, if you don’t see the interesting stuff happening in film right now (even just American film) that’s on you.
I liked Nomadland & Pig, but that doesn’t change how dominant sequels/IP are.https://stephenfollows.com/how-original-are-hollywood-movies/
https://stephenfollows.com/hollywood-sequels-by-the-numbers/Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is an adaptation, whereas “Isle of Dogs” is original. A director does not count as IP, a film does.
First, I’d like to say “Ouch” on the Last Duel’s behalf. It was quite good!Second, I’m not sure why I care about something being “dominant”. If everything really were a sequel or existing IP I’d be pissed, but the reality is that a lot of great original content is being produced.And finally, the Wes Anderson quip was tongue in cheek. He also had a major release this year which is not part of any existing IP, but he is such a brand including The French Dispatch seemed almost like cheating.
I just saw Last Duel on Monday, after people trying to guilt audiences over its poor theatrical performance. It was alright, better than my gripe-filled notes on its approach to “truth” might indicate, but not as good as the two movies I mentioned (it’s also an adaptation of a book, and to a greater degree than Nomadland). I also saw Dune a couple weeks ago, but didn’t feel the need to mention that (I suppose I should reserve my opinion on that until part 2).When I discussed sequels/IP being “dominant” I gave links providing some numbers. Those numbers aren’t 100%, so original films exist (otherwise the Oscars would have to get rid of their Original Screenplay category), but they’ve receded compared to earlier decades.You could argue The French Dispatch is adapting three New Yorker stories, though very loosely and akin to how Grand Budapest Hotel took on Stefan Zweig. A director being a “brand” is subjective, but to the extent that someone like Tarantino or Nolan can still produce original films and put them in theaters in wide release, those would be counter-examples to the generalization.
Hollywood, 2035: “All right guys, we need more of that nostalgia money, so get this: GRITTY ROYAL TENENBAUMS REBOOT – I think we can get Finn Wolfhard to play Richie.”
So what should those younger than GenXers call the slick corporate types we used to call suits? Thought partners?
“Yuppy scum”? “The Man”? “PMCs”?Fun to be had renaming them for the modern age imo.
Record company gonna give me lots of money and everything gonna be all right!
I prefer the TISM version:
Are you kidding me? Gen X was born selling out, selling out has been our dream.
I find it most interesting that after all these years of Marvel movies it’s the movie made by a Asian woman they’ve decided to hold up as the problem.
We didn’t name us. Get mad at Doug Copeland my dude.
Not a fan of Reality Bites, I’m guessing.
We were largely talking about music. We were right then, and we’re right now.
There’s a lot of “Eternals is bad but I can’t put any blame on Zhao” stuff from critics right now.
Especially odd considering many of the criticisms involve the idea that Zhao’s style does indeed come through, but fits very poorly with the Marvel story being told.
Yeah, I mean “slow burn” and “Jack Kirby comic” don’t seem like two things that would mesh well.
I think a lot of it has to do with the very modern trend of crowning a given director after they’ve directed 1 film of note. A lot of them just turn out to be mediocre to average storytellers who used up all of their best ideas on their first film. I am not saying that Chloe Zhao is one of them, but the director of A Wrinkle in Time springs to mind. Ava DuVernay directed Selma and it was very good and then she was given carte blanche on A Wrinkle in Time and it turned out to be pretty bad.
Some directors work better with a smaller scale. Once they ascend to blockbuster levels, they can’t manage the larger production, especially when the visual effects become a larger part of that. Christopher Nolan was able to do it, and studios just hope the next one will be able to as well.
Oh, yeah, I agree. There are plenty of directors over the years who have had really good films and really bad films and other directors who have specialized in certain types of films over others. With this modern batch of directors, the media types just need to stop hyping them up as this ‘amazing get’ if they’ve only done basically one film. If someone has only done one film, we don’t know what they are yet, but they are overwhelmingly likely not to be this era’s version of Hitchcock or Kubrick or Spielberg because almost no one is.
“If someone has only done one film, we don’t know what they are yet, but
they are overwhelmingly likely not to be this era’s version of Hitchcock
or Kubrick or Spielberg because almost no one is.”
And, ya know, none of those directors woulda made a good Marvel movie (maybe Spielberg at one point…) And it’s not like Hitch liked to experiment with what kinds of films he made.
I think you’re right. Of the three, younger Spielberg probably would have had the best shot of making a successful film within the Marvel restrictions. Kubrick probably would have ended up taking 7 years to make a Marvel movie that people would have argued for 50 years whether it was a masterpiece or trash. Hitchcock probably would have read the structure of the contract and not even bothered to try.
Joel Schumacher was a prime example of that. The smaller the budget he had to work with, the better quality the finished product.
I think he was able to handle the bigger productions, but he just went off the rails with what he was trying to do. Batman and Robin is exactly what he wanted it to be.
Whatever complaints one will make about Batman & Robin– and there are plenty to make– you can’t say it isn’t EXACTLY what it’s trying to be. It set a goal and NAILED IT.
This.
People often don’t grasp the sheer immensity of a $150m+ studio production. You’re talking about 500+ individual cast and crew members, excluding executives from the studio(s), production companies, distributors, etc.
While it’s not the director’s job to corral all of those varied entities, often times they end up either getting saddled with those additional responsibilities, or they voluntary take those responsibilities because they feel overconfident in their abilities.
Chloe Zhao’s best film (and what got her the job), had a budget of $5m. The Eternals has a budget of $200m (so roughly $350-400m when you includes marketing and advertising). Most people, regardless of talent, can’t easily scale up 40x-80x whatever it is they’re used to doing/making, let alone do so while still being expected to maintain certain elements mandated by whomever is paying them, along with the specific strictures they face due to their employment.
That being said, I didn’t like Nomadland and it’s rather disquieting that Amazon has given her carte blanche to write and direct a Bass Reeves documentary.
Directors who are successful at scaling up are usually very good at delegating. They tend to have a regular crew they can trust. So now instead of the DP also being the camera op, there’s a larger crew that the DP is in charge of for all cinematography-related matters. Or the one wardrobe person now has an entire department. Directors who are used to being more involved in every decision may have trouble maintaining their vision. Communication becomes important, and that’s why you see control freaks like Kubrick or Nolan so successful. The amount of preplanning they do really helps explain what they’re looking for.
Particularly since Barry Jenkins is, you know… RIGHT THERE.
Exactly, and although I misspoke, since the Bass Reeves film is going to be a biopic, not a documentary, imagine the outrage if Amazon hired (or even considered and word got out) a black director to make a film based on the life of Qin Shi Huang, Liu Bei, or Cao Cao? As a black man, it’s bothersome because not only do we rarely get to tell our own stories, we’re almost never afforded the opportunity to tell stories that aren’t ours.
I saw it in the theaters. “Pretty bad” would be a big step up.
Selma wasn’t DuVernay’s first film. (Though if it was, trying to analyze the arc of a director’s career after two films is going to involve a lot of baseless speculation!)
Well, yes, she did have a couple of festival features that almost no one ever saw and a couple of short films and some television shows, so I guess you can say that she directed other films prior to Selma, but the reality is that she was given A Wrinkle in Time almost solely on the performance of Selma at the box office.
“Movies that aren’t seen by a lot of people don’t really count as movies” actually goes a long way to explaining the mentality at work with the Story Is Everything! brigade. And Selma did $52 million domestic so I don’t think that call was made entirely made on a (successful, but not unheard-of) $52 million gross. Wasn’t it a prestige hire as much as anything else?
I didn’t say that festival movies that hardly anyone sees don’t count as movies. As I said in my first post, ‘1 film of note.’ Her festival films simply weren’t very noteworthy. They, at the very least, demonstrated to the people who had the power to hire her for projects that people will see that she had a basic command of the fundamentals of filmmaking, that is assuming the people who hired her to make A Wrinkle in Time had even seen them. To that extent, they were useful to her. But they are footnotes in her resume.There is another class of festival filmmaking that requires a lot of interpretation and analysis and, for that reason alone, those films are never picked up for wide release. Are you claiming that I Will Follow and Middle of Nowhere fit that category? At first blush to me, they both seemed like pretty straightforward story-based films that were never picked up because no distributor believed they would attract a wide enough audience to warrant the costs of trying to distribute them. But you may have seen something different in them than I saw.
I’m not making any claims about either of those movies except that they were feature films that were both released theatrically. I haven’t seen I Will Follow and I liked Middle of Nowhere pretty well. My point is that there’s a kind of pervasive cornball emphasis on storytelling and storytellers that reduces movies to telling stories for a wide-release audience (which, in 2021, basically means: Making a superhero fantasy). And in this scheme, where you say something like: A lot of them just turn out to be mediocre to average storytellers who used up all of their best ideas on their first film. …about a director whose big fantasy movie for Disney was her fourth feature, it comes across like the faux-expertise of a screenwriting handbook, and therefore depressing! The idea that A Wrinkle in Time didn’t work because the director used up all her storytelling ideas making (in this case) her third film, a historical/biographical drama, just seems a bit one-size-fits-all. Which, again, I find kind of a bummer and indicative of pretty unadventurous tastes (not in you, necessarily, but in audiences as a whole, whether based on reality or the perception of them).
“ The idea that A Wrinkle in Time didn’t work because the director used up all her storytelling ideas making (in this case) her third film, a historical/biographical drama, just seems a bit one-size-fits-all.”Yes, that bit of criticism is reductive. The failure of A Wrinkle in Time was puzzling as I thought Ava D would be a good fit for the material. I know the movie has its supporters but personally I thought it was below par.
It’s a strange one. As I said in my review here at the time, which may have been perhaps a notch too kind, some of the stuff that she had done well in the past — framing and staging conversations to be visually dynamic and compelling, for example — wasn’t particularly strong in the movie. But there were moments that had real emotional detail missing from a lot of similar movies. I haven’t seen Eternals yet, but I’m definitely getting some of those vibes. (As I also said at the time, Last Jedi and Black Panther are so much fun that it feels like a distinctive director really can do well with Disney Products, but those are the exception more than the rule.)
Selma is full of objective lies about history. There’s a reason she hasn’t done anything in a few years. She’s a hack and not a good person either (from personal experience).
I mean, she must be a bad person, to have made the first-ever historical drama that uses dramatic license!
It’s not dramatic license when you’re knowingly falsifying objective historical facts in what purports to be an accurate retelling of history. Dramatic license is paraphrasing conversations or assuming things that are unknowable – not lying about things that are well known i.e. Lyndon Johnson didn’t want the civil rights act to pass because…racism I guess?
See also, WW84
I dunno…would you call Mickey Cimino modern?
Yeah, you’re right, the phenomenon certainly wasn’t unknown in prior decades, but it just certainly seems like it’s a lot more prevalent from the 2010’s onward.
Mostly I made that comment to dunk on Heaven’s Gate, a film that is strangely fascinatingly horrifying, like watching slow-motion footage of car full of Teletubbies crash and catch fire before any of them can get out. I’ve got to say that this whole Zhao-Marvel thing reminds me a lot of, say, a celebrity chef putting his name on a line of $20 saucepans. Sure, his name’s on the packaging, but we highly doubt that’s what they use at home. It feels more like a “cool director endorsement” rather than any organic interest in Marvel’s films – come here, do some token pointing about on set, let us put your name on whatever happens, and here’s giant paycheque. I’m not really willing to call her a one-hit wonder just yet, but you might be on to something too.
I don’t know if she is or not. My impression, from distilling all of the reviews, is that there is a real pacing issue with The Eternals and that she attempted to make a genre of storytelling a slow burn that doesn’t lend itself well to the slow burn. That doesn’t mean she’s a one hit wonder at all, but it does mean perhaps that, like Ang Lee, she didn’t bend herself enough to the genre she was attempting to adapt.
True. I get the feeling, also, that this is Marvel swinging its clout around: “Yeah, hoity-toity artsy-fartsy cinema wankers: we got that Chloe chick you guys all gushed over for that vandweller movie – WE FINE ART FILM NOW, BITCHES.” Or, in short, I’m still perplexed by the whole thing.
They hired her before she even shot Nomadland, though.
It’s really much more mercenary than that. You get a name director of Chinese descent and sprinkle a few actors of Chinese or South Asian descent in the cast, and you find yourself doing much better in the already hyuuuge Chinese market. As talented a filmmaker as Zhao is, I doubt they give one solitary fuck about her “style.”
Is this getting released in China? I’m asking since I heard it may be iffy since China isn’t a big fan of hers: https://www.insider.com/china-censors-chloe-zhao-oscars-win-past-criticized-beijing-2021-4
I wondered about that. Usually auteur directors aren’t goimg to jive with the CCP, and she certainly seems the type to be critical of oppressive authority.
Is this getting released in China?Well, they’ve already refused to cut the gay stuff out of the film, which has gotten it banned in some middle eastern countries. Considering what the Chinese censors did to Bohemian Rhapsody, they might do the same.
I completely forgot about that whole controversy. Maybe it won’t be released in China, but make no mistake that The Eternals was made with an eye squarely on the Chinese market (Shang-Chi as well). Of course, I’m not saying they shouldn’t make these films, just that I have a cynical outlook as to their reasons, because China is, frankly, a huge, huge market for these Marvel movies. Unfortunately, the CCP seems to be cracking down on “Western influence” and perceived insults, so that market may be dwindling.
The funniest part is that Zhao’s extremely tepid critiques of China got this movie blacklisted there.
I would love to see your Teletubbies slow motion, firey car crash movie idea realized.
It’s really interesting because the average audience member of The Eternals wouldn’t know or care about Chloe Zhao because they haven’t watched, nor intend to watch, Nomadland (or any of her other films).
Sure, she won an Oscar, but for the MCU, that Oscar isn’t causing a flurry of additional ticket sales because they’ve gotten her to direct this film. Kenneth Branagh has a track record exponentially better than Zhao, but that doesn’t mean that his fans flocked to watch Thor.
There are only a handful of directors currently making films who would move the needle in a positive direction (in terms of ticket sales) when it came to making a big-budget studio film. Funnily enough, I can’t imagine any of those directors accepting the job. Quentin Tarantino wanted to do a Star Trek film; Rod Roddenberry balked, and they got the director of WandaVision, Matt Shakman, to do the next film. WandaVision is lovely, but how many people are going to watch the next Stark Trek film because he’s directing it, versus them simply wanting to see a Star Trek movie, regardless of director?
In comparison, imagine how many non-Star Trek fans would go see the next movie solely because Tarantino was the director? I’d say that the amount of Star Trek fans who wouldn’t see a Tarantino version is far less than the amount of Tarantino fans who would see a Star Trek simply because it’s a Tarantino film. Shakman doesn’t move the needle; Tarantino does, so I find it odd that at least in the MCU, they seem hell-bent (aside from the Avengers) to hire semi-prestige directors who the audience couldn’t give less than a fuck about.
Part of the problem is as the market for “smaller” films has collapsed there’s a huge gulf between your awesome indie or your “independent” $4 mil feature, and a $200-million tentpole. I feel bad for the DuVernays or Josh Tranks of the world because they don’t really exist in a world that will allow them minor successes or failures. Toss in the weird issue Disney has with allowing their MCU house style to adjust to the needs of the film, and it seems a recipe for disappointment all around.
I think a lot of it has to do with the very modern trend of crowning a given director after they’ve directed 1 film of note.This sounds right to me. But critics and cinephiles aren’t necessarily the ones driving this trend. The studios have discovered that elevating an up-and-comer is an easy way to make their blockbusters look more artisanal, at least until release day. Chloe Zhao is a good example. But so are people like Gareth Edwards, Rian Johnson, Ryan Coogler, and Colin Trevorrow. If you look back a generation, just before the MCU got big, then people like Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder, and Guillermo del Toro were marketed as visionaries early in their careers. So, this trend isn’t just about cinephiles hungry for a new auteur to champion. It’s also about studios promoting young talent before there’s much of a track-record to talk about.
And let’s be honest, if this was Chris Nolan or Denis Villanueve, they wouldn’t be defending them like they are for a rising star female director. Nomadland was great, but that doesn’t mean Marvel’s Nomadland makes sense.
Jordan Peele being anointed the king-of-all-horror based on a single movie is another great example.
based on a single movieI think he had a second movie, too. Something about rabbits and Hands Across America.
He was anointed the king-of-all-horror well before Us came out.
So the success and acclaim of Us just confirmed that title, then.
M. Night fell off for a long time. The big 3 franchises (Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street) had been dead for nearly a decade (and were bad when they did reappear). Franchises like The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, and Saw aren’t really associated with a single director or vision. Lastly, movies like It are adaptations, and again, aren’t associated with a singular directorial vision.
Because of that, Get Out struck many chords, as it wasn’t a franchise, nor an adaptation, had a clear directorial vision, was a horror film with social commentary and pertinence, and made a great deal of money relative to it’s budget. It also came from a director with a background outside of horror, so it came as a surprise.
The reality is that if people like Wes Craven (RIP) and John Carpenter were still making great horror films between the lull in M. Night’s career and the box office ascendancy of movies in The Conjuring and Saw-series, Get Out wouldn’t have stood out as much, and the industry wouldn’t have been so quick to anoint Jordan Peele as a master of horror.
I don’t think the problem is that Zhao and DuVernay are directors capable of only one good film. Directors have individual sensibilities and talents that often lend themselves to particular genres. Christopher Nolan is not likely to make a great slapstick comedy. Experience is also a factor — just like athletes and surgeons, directors get better with practice. Perhaps Zhao and DuVernay will get better with the fantasy genre over time, or perhaps their sensibilities will never fit the categories. Either way, its not an indicator that they only have one good film in them apiece.
Steven Spielberg is not likely to make a great slapstick comedy. Cough 1941 cough
Feels like they’re trying to find the next Taika Waititi.
She also made 13th recently which was excellent. I think people spend too much time blaming directors and not enough time blaming these pieced together, 5 credited writer, awful scripts. Modern blockbuster writing is pretty lackluster for the most part, and especially within the confines of a bug machine, a director can only do so much (I know Zhao is a credited writer on eternals with 3 other peeps).
Yeah, I went to it after listening to the audio-book of it and while it had some good ideas, like the villain torturing the black child protagonist with a perfect/Eurocentric version of her, but the rest didn’t work. A lot of the writing and characterizations feel like they were just copied from CW’s typical melodrama or some of Oprah’s weird hippy dippy woo bullshit.
CoughMKnightShyamalanCough
Right. Ordinarily, we criticize a director when they don’t adapt their signature style to the material. We don’t, for example, say that Spielberg should get to continue using his signature style when filming Schindler’s List. His ability to adapt to the needs of the story being told, whether that’s popcorn entertainment or more sophisticated storytelling, is part of his strength.
Spielberg absolutely uses his signature style in Schindler’s List. He only doesn’t if you literally consider his signature style “kids looking with awe lit with beams of light in the darkness.”
his signature style “kids looking with awe lit with beams of light in the darkness.”Spielberg has a few signature styles and that is one of them, albeit overly-simplified.
What I mean is, his visual style encompasses a lot more than a few types of shots he’s used repeatedly.
Then what you’re saying is that his signature style is malleable enough to let him make very different movies. Maybe Zhao’s isn’t — or at least isn’t malleable enough to make this kind of movie. But it’s weird to say she is an “ideal collaborator” with Marvel when the resulting collaboration doesn’t work. It feels more like an effort to decide that making a bad movie couldn’t possibly be Zhao’s fault, because the AV Club is committed to praising Zhao regardless of the work product.
Well, I mean, I’m generally more interested in the MCU being able to accommodate Zhao than I am in her “ability” to accommodate the MCU. Put another way: If her last movie was Nomadland and the producer’s previous movie was Shang-Chi, I get the hesitation to say it’s her fault if this doesn’t work. But maybe Eternals is really interesting! I’m seeing it tomorrow. I just know that I thought previous movies by the people who made Captain Marvel and Shang-Chi were pretty interesting, and those movies, while enjoyable enough in the moment, are not.
What’s the basis for saying that the MCU didn’t “accommodate” Zhao? She agreed to make the movie, and I haven’t seen her or anyone else saying Marvel stood in her way in making it. To the extent you’re disappointed Zhao is using her talents here, rather than on works you consider more worthy, you’re welcome to feel that way.But again, it feels like you (and the author of the article) are bending over backwards to explain how not only is it not Zhao’s fault that Eternals isn’t very good, but that we should feel bad for how Marvel must have screwed it up for her. And it seems strange for you to assume that the reason that directors you’ve liked (Zhao, Anna Boden, and Destin Daniel Cretton) made mediocre Marvel movies is that Marvel messed it up for them, despite the fact that other Marvel directors have done better. Isn’t it at least as likely that it’s harder to make a blockbuster popcorn movie than you’re assuming, and that the skills needed to make a great small, introspective movie like Nomadland or Half Nelson don’t necessarily translate?
I’m not saying the MCU didn’t accommodate Zhao. As I said, I haven’t seen the movie. You’re saying “maybe her style isn’t malleable enough,” and I’m saying, I’m not particularly interested in a director’s style being malleable enough to fit the MCU (something that has had so many movies and shows fit into their templates already). I’m more interested in how malleable the MCU can be, and maybe the answer is, not especially. You’re basically asking why someone would be “rooting” for a filmmaker rather than a brand (and, as such, assuming any “fault” lies more with a brand than a filmmaker). The answer is I’m interested in filmmakers and not really interested in brands! So, I’m naturally more interested in whether Zhao can bend the MCU a certain way than whether she finds a way to Make a Marvel Movie. There are 20+ of those already.And given the common ground the more middling MCU movies share, and the existence of so many middling MCU movies, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that maybe the Marvel machine brings some of those middling qualities with it. After all, isn’t that their whole selling point? Continuity between movies? Is something like Captain Marvel a case of “skills not translating” or skills not being called upon at all? All evidence is that the studio and general audiences were extremely happy with Captain Marvel. So I kinda doubt the studio is going “oh, man, that one just did NOT pay off because the directors’ skills did not translate.”
I wasn’t suggesting Zhao’s skills might not be well-suited to the MCU, but to blockbuster, popcorn movies in general. You say you’re interested in “whether Zhao can bend the MCU a certain way.” Well, we have at least some evidence on that — a Chloe Zhao Marvel movie, one that seems to have plenty of her in it. The results don’t seem that promising. You seem eager to characterize our discussion as a battle between filmmakers and brands, with people who disagree with you on the side of brands. You even say I’m “rooting” for Marvel, even putting it in quotes when summarizing my views (though it’s not a term I ever used). I don’t have any particular rooting interest in Marvel. I agree with you that I wish its movies were more inventive. I thought Chloe Zhao was a promising choice to do that. But, of course, there are inventions that work and those that don’t. Eternals isn’t very good. And in the wake of it not being very good, I’m not sure why you and the author of this piece are so eager to shield Zhao from that judgment.Your touchiness about this is especially surprising, since you said this about A Wrinkle in Time: “The simple answer is that making a big-budget fantasy with both technical chops and a human soul isn’t as easy as Disney has been making it look with movies like Black Panther and The Last Jedi.” I agree. What you said about DuVernay, I’m saying about Zhao. Yet somehow your view seems to be that this means I’m a corporate fanboy failing to recognize that Zhao’s bad movie couldn’t possibly be her fault.
Your original comment was this:Ordinarily, we criticize a director when they don’t adapt their signature style to the material. We don’t, for example, say that Spielberg should get to continue using his signature style when filming Schindler’s List. His ability to adapt to the needs of the story being told, whether that’s popcorn entertainment or more sophisticated storytelling, is part of his strength.I’m saying no, I don’t “ordinarily” criticize a director for not adapting their signature style to the material; and no, I don’t think there’s a double standard, which is what the post you were agreeing with seemed to be implying (basically, that people are bending over backwards to not blame Zhao if her movie is disappointing—do I have that right?). I don’t see this as especially inconsistent, especially as someone who has watched all of these Marvel movies and is familiar with almost all of the directors involved (save Cate Shortland; Black Widow is the only work of hers I’ve seen). I’m not accusing you of being a corporate fanboy! Just that yes, I do extend more understanding toward an artist than I do toward a production entity. I admit I do rankle when people venerate the storytelling involved with the blockbuster popcorn picture, as if that’s a genre and not a marketing designation. And sure, that statement about DuVernay’s film applies to Zhao’s as well. But DuVernay’s film also had the appearance of a more personal undertaking, because it’s not Part 25 of an ongoing Wrinkle in Time Universe. Having gone out to see Eternals and hated certain pieces of it and really liked others, I can say that the stuff that struck me as seeming closest to Zhao’s sensibility was interesting, and the stuff I hated most felt straight off the MCU factory floor. It actually made me resent the MCU (whose movies are rarely below a C+ for me, individually!) in a different way: They’ve made these things so closely resemble each other that just recognizing some Chloe Zhao style in this movie felt like a huge relief! I’m not even some massive fan of hers: I liked Nomadland a lot and was mixed on The Rider. But at least the Gemma Chan bits of this new movie felt markedly different from a lot of the other MCU stuff.
You write: “I admit I do rankle when people venerate the storytelling involved with the blockbuster popcorn picture, as if that’s a genre and not a marketing designation.”I have no idea what this means. There can be fantastic storytelling in blockbuster movies or in smaller movies, or terrible storytelling in either. I’m not sure there’s anyone saying, “The storytelling in all blockbuster movies is, by default, awesome.” Do you think that the storytelling in blockbuster movies is, by default, suspect? It sort of sounds like you resent people liking the storytelling in popcorn movies.I’m also not sure it makes a lot of sense of think of blockbuster as a “marketing designation.” It’s not like it’s movie marketing executives who are deciding that Iron Man is a blockbuster, and Nomadland is not. It’s audiences doing that. The taste of those audiences is suspect. But surely you aren’t surprised that a fun, light superhero movie makes hundreds of millions of dollars, while a movie about an itinerant Frances McDormand does not. There doesn’t need to be some studio executive pulling strings behind the scenes for that to happen.
It’s a two-part objection:
(1.) I think it’s reductive and cheesy to reduce movies to the storytelling—it just isn’t a big part of what interests and engages me about this medium. Increasingly, I find, whinging on about storytelling is a way of inflating the importance of mass-appeal movies, implying that if they’re making a lot of money, they must be telling a good story, which of course sounds more noble than “having a good trailer” or “comforting audiences with things they already like.”(2.) In the original definition of blockbuster, of course, that’s an audience designation (well, actually, a marketer/executive term for something the audience “decides” unconsciously and collectively, but close enough). But that’s not how you referred to it—understandably, because that’s not really what the word means anymore. It’s typically thrown around well before a movie actually meets its audience, actually meaning “aspiring blockbuster,” or tentpole picture, which is a fine way of describing a studio’s intent with this sort of thing. What rankles is when it’s somehow conflated with genre—a type of, yes, storrrrytelling. That’s how you seemed to be categorizing it when you describe it as a type of movie that some directors might not have the skill set to master on a quality level. (You are talking about quality, yeah, because we’re talking about reviews and reactions and such? Not literally whether a movie draws a crowd, which Eternals almost certainly will regardless of anything else.) My plea is to frame that question as whether a director can master big-scale fantasy, or science fiction, or action-adventure, or whatever… because “blockbuster” is not a genre. I mean, what is a “successful” blockbuster-type movie from a quality perspective? If a blockbuster is truly an after-the-fact designation (which, again, I agree that it used to be), doesn’t that mean anyone who directs a hit movie is by definition good at it, and anyone who directs a movie that doesn’t hit is by definition not good at it?You’re simultaneously saying that a blockbuster is not a marketing designation, because audiences make that call… and saying there is some kind of storytelling skill set for making a blockbuster that’s as tricky as any other type of movie… and saying that audiences sometimes have bad taste. It all sounds a bit contradictory me, and results in the conflating of a marketing designation (tentpole movies, wannabe blockbusters, etc.) with genres (which, if storytelling is your bag, are at least easier to evaluate on those terms!).(It’s also extremely naive to frame different movies’ financial success as purely the will of the audience, given differences in release patterns, marketing plans, and what kinds of movies get made—as if studios just make a bunch of movies, push ‘em all out equally, and let the audiences do a blind taste-test!)
If you’re going to get so hung-up on the phrase “blockbuster,” I’ll drop it and use your preferred term instead. It’s not clear that Chloe Zhao’s talents particularly lend themselves to a big-scale action-adventure movie — the one she made isn’t very good. I’m not sure why the AV Club and you are so desperate to assert that Zhao was not responsible for the shortcomings of this big-scale action-adventure movie. Better?As for your objection to storytelling, it still makes no sense to me. A movie is, fundamentally, a visual story. All the artistry of the film — from the way it is written, to the way it is shot, to the way it is acted — is in service of telling the story more effectively. For example, to the extent you like the sepia-toned color palette in O Brother Where Art Thou?, that’s likely because you think it makes some aspect of the storytelling more effective, not because you think sepia-toned movies are just better in the abstract. I’m skeptical that storytelling “just isn’t a big part of what interests and engages [you] about this medium” — your recent reviews are, to a large extent, about how effectively a movie tells its story. It seems more like it annoys you that Marvel fans (or fans of “mass appeal” stories) tend to praise the storytelling, since you disagree.
It’s more that I find it annoying how the “it’s all storytelling!!” mentality leads to a lot of literal-minded and reductive thoughts about what makes a movie good or interesting or worthwhile. Marvel fans just seem particularly susceptible to that stuff at the moment.
That fans of the most popular movie franchise have, collectively, thoughts that a professional film critic finds “literal-minded and reductive” seems like a heartbreak you’ll just have to live with. And I’m not sure I know what any of this has to do with Zhao. It’s not like you’re arguing that the teeming masses have lacked the sophistication to understand Eternals — most of the public hasn’t seen it, and your own view on the movie seems more-or-less in line with other critics are saying.Zhao chose to make a big-scale action-adventure movie. I suggested maybe her talents aren’t suited to a big-scale action adventure movie, and you seem to be huffing that it’s not her fault, because a big-scale action adventure movie is a dumb thing to make anyway.
What it has to do with Zhao is the original thought that critics are somehow being too easy on her by wondering if maybe Eternals being a mixed bag might have as much to do with the MCU machine as anything else. Given the other MCU movies—even some of the good ones!—I continue think it’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. It’s not like people who disliked past MCU movies were especially cutting in their treatment of, say, Boden/Fleck, or Scott Derrickson or whoever. (Nor, really, did many who really loved those movies seem to give much credit to the directors, ha.) So I fundamentally disagree with: “Ordinarily, we criticize a director when they don’t adapt their signature style to the material.”
Hot take: its not a big deal if this movie doesn’t live up to expectations or out right tanks. The industry and its accompanying media are salivating because any slight downturn in Disney’s fortunes is lucrative drama. But its going to take much more than one disappointing outcome to knock the MCU off its pedestal. Of course if Marvel is held to an impossible standard — no bombs or failures ever — it will eventually fall short of that standard. It’s prudent for a studio and a franchise to experiment so they can evolve. On a fundamental level I understand the desire to keep a win streak going, but at a certain point its not rational to expect to succeed forever.
Well, yeah, there is also that. But more subtly, his use of elegant single takes to deliver exposition, virtuosic camera movement, and hot white light are all very much in step with his other movies. It’s the material that’s different, not really the style (though of course he does try new things in some of his movies).
I agree; I think it’s all the more impressive that you can recognize the same director behind Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List.
And in spite of his tremendous talent, there are still some stories for which Spielberg’s style or sensibilities wouldn’t be a good fit.
it’s pretty funny that the fanboys think that marvel and the disney machine can never fail, only ever be failed by audiences and directors.
I mean, the track record speaks for itself.
Any director or franchise having fanboys is pretty much a road to hell. Fanboying and anti-fanboying is one of the reason MCU discourse is so tedious, because liking or disliking a movie now makes you a martyr for the ages.
I certainly think Marvel has a significant share of the blame here — the whole idea for Eternals seems pretty questionable.But I think we’re seeing two variations of the same problem. There are some Marvel fanboys who think that Marvel can never fail, only be failed. And there are some backers of Chloe Zhao (including, it seems, a lot of film critics) who are eager to place the blame for a bad movie on anyone other than the film’s diverse, acclaimed director. Isn’t the likely reality that, when to comes to a bad movie, there’s no shortage of blame to go around?
A lot. Maybe Zhao just wasn’t the person for the job this time. She’s never directed a movie like this or a project so large. Maybe hiring the person who directed the action-packed Nomadland just wasn’t the right call.
I won’t deny that as the director Zhao ultimately has to take a lions share of the credit/blame for the final product. But when the flaws of the film are flaws that are common to the 20+ films of the franchise that preceded it, I think it’s not unreasonable to figure that the producers are playing a major role in creating those flaws.
I think there’s a general realization that makes MCU so successful is also what annoys critics the most- the familiar story beats, the CGI ending, the need to seed the next movie, etc.So when a movie tries to break out of the mold, it doesn’t quite work.It’s like asking for gourmet McDouble. The making-of GIF looks cool, the ingredients are thoughtful, but its expensive, and truffle oil and ketchup dont mix well.
Given that many were happy to throw criticisms at Nomadland, especially as awards season rolled along, it all feels a bit like they just don’t care for the MCU and its effect on cinema at large, and are mostly using her as a weapon.
Blaming anything on a woman POC director is of course, never an option around these parts. And that’s not a jab at her qualities but on the level of writing here.
There’s a lot of “Eternals is bad but I can’t put any blame on Zhao” stuff from critics right now….and none of it seems to be based on anything. Unless Zhao secretly blinked an S.O.S. to Marah Eakin during their interview, it doesn’t seem like she’s communicated to anyone that Marvel interfered with the film, or didn’t trust her, or that she didn’t have enough creative control. The scene that’s drawn the most vocal criticism in the reviews I’ve seen, the one at Hiroshima, sounds like something that Zhao, with her affinity for real-world locations, might have wanted.
I saw it tonight in IMAX and — I’m wondering WTF everybody’s problem is. It’s beautifully-shot, the cast is diverse (including a loving, openly-gay relationship for one of the Eternals, his husband and son), the premise has a bit more depth than usual, and if the ending gets a bit crashy-bangy, that fits given the endgame of the movie.
I wouldn’t say it’s transcendent, but it’s a solid 3-1/2 – 4 out of 5, and there’s enough Chloe Zhao that sneaks through so it doesn’t feel like Movie, Marvel Superhero….
is the problem that Marvel is imposing form on the film-makers (the production designers, composers, cinematographers, costumers – everyone, not just the director) or it that the form of a superhero story? You could ask the same question about the comics themselves – many artists look muted when they have to grapple with the form of a 20-odd page book, a required amount of exposition, a required amount of fights.And good shout on “the One Perfect Shot-ization of the MCU”
I’m guessing the superteam movie in particular is headed for trouble. They pretty much require a bigger scale and have a lot of other structural pieces that have to be worked around, and that tends to squeeze out the things that a less conventional director might do.Having her do an Eternal movie that was a smaller scale followup with just one character might have worked better.
Idk about “imposing”, no one had a gun to her head making her take the job.
Eh, who knows what went down. The history of Hollywood is filled with stories of promises of creative control being broken after directors sign on to projects.New execs move in, budgets are changed, timelines shorten, SFX teams are canned and new people get assigned…It’s certainly possible this is all stuff she freely took on, or it’s possible a couple of months into preproduction the studio came down with a bunch of hardball demands that meant she had to choose between quitting and damaging her career, or else accomodating them as best she could.
Or maybe something in the middle? Movie making is messy and few directors get exactly what they want or were promised. Some make do better than others. It’s not like taking or leaving a dealer’s offer on a used Buick.
Most superhero comic artists are way more inventive and interesting, even the only okay ones, than a MCU movie though? Not to mention the truly great ones. Jack Kirby, Frank Quitely, etc, plenty of great artists work well in the superhero genre
yeah, thats fair, though ironically Kirby’s work became way more crazy than most mainstream comics (his Eternals is completely batshit)
I think the MCU trusts their directors if they happen to fit in with the house style tonally already. James Gunn and Taika came in being known for fun and irreverent films. So those movies fit in with the directors’ filmographies, but they were also hardly doing anything that Marvel wouldn’t normally do. I haven’t seen Eternals so I can’t comment on whether or not Zhao’s voice comes through, but I would imagine she would have a harder time slotting her style into the MCU than someone like Gunn.
This is why I’ve never quite jived with that Edgar Wright quote. I think Edgar didn’t want to make an MCU film, which was different than what a Marvel film was at that time. I think Marvel would be perfectly fine with an Edgar Wright film.
Edgar Wright (who is awesome, and I really liked Last Night in Soho) has basically said that he didn’t give a shit about fitting Ant-Man into the larger MCU story. Which, that sounds nice and all, but you don’t hire a director to direct episode 17 of a TV series if they aren’t going to give a shit about what happened in the previous 16 episodes. Like sorry, but they’re telling a story, and they want you to keep telling the story. I’m glad that Ant-Man was still fun & he figured that out quickly & went on to direct Baby Driver instead, it was a win for everyone.
The Edgar Wright stuff is very odd. Back in the pre-Iron Man days apparently Edgar suggested linking their films and effectively create what we know as MCU. Supposedly the original plan was to just do individual films based on the characters they still have the film rights to.Also the delay in Edgar being able to make Ant Man probably didn’t help. He wanted to waited until his producer/friend had recovered from cancer treatment to start making the film, by which time a Marvel House Style had formed. If Ant Man had come out before say Iron Man 2, there’s a good chance Marvel would have wanted to ‘make an Edgar Wright film’.
It was also the way Marvel went about. He and his writer spent months on their screenplay, and Marvel was seemingly happy with it, then at the 11th hour before they went into production their ‘story group’ completely rewrote the script and expected him to be happy about it. That’s when he said ‘fuck this’ and left, and I don’t blame him.
To be fair the “story group” is gone. They were kicked to the curb when Feige gained full reign
Which was the best thing that could have happened. All those guys were hacks, tied to Perlmutter.
Disney learned that one the hard way with TLJ, when they killed the Star Wars cinematic franchise by letting Rian Johnson do exactly that.
In fairness, Wright pitched Ant-Man pre-MCU.
Edgar Wright had no right to expect anything else than what happened. It’s unreasonable to agree to take a job on a big franchise movie series known for its interconnections, then gripe that you were expected to follow the tropes of a big franchise movie series known for its interconnections.
They didn’t hire him to direct episode 17 of a tv series (and incidentally, shows HAVE hired directors like that for series and they’ve done fun stuff while ignoring what happened before it), they hired him to direct Ant-Man and while they were deep into pre-production they said “By the way, here are several scenes you need to include that serve absolutely no purpose to this movie whatsoever and really aren’t all that necessary to our larger plans, but we’re doing it anyways.”
My favorite bit in “Ant-Man” is when Scott and Yellowjacket are fighting inside a briefcase and someone kicks the home button on the giant cellphone and says “I will disintegrate you!”, which makes Siri say “Playing ‘Disintegration’ by The Cure”. Then the fight carries on with “Plainsong” blaring over everything. Marvel has always made good use of music in their movies, but that’s still their best musical cue imo. And I thought for sure that gag had to have been a remnant of Edgar Wright’s script, but apparently it was all Peyton Reed’s idea.
Most of the scenes people like to go “that must have been from Wrights draft” have ended up being revealed they were added by Reed, but they have to keep the narrative going that Ant-Man is worse because it didn’t have Wright. Similar to the idea that anything “controversial” or something that’s “taking a risk” is something that was “snuck” by the studio and remained in the movie, as opposed to doing those things is exactly why the studio hired that person.
Edgar Wright was attached to Ant-Man for 8 years, so unfortunately, it wasn’t something they “quickly” figured out. He was hired back in 2006, two years before Iron Man even released, so the whole concept of what a Marvel/MCU movie even was shifted while he was on it. They hired him for one story and vision, and then kept changing it as the movies became more heavily serialized.
I can imagine a similar thing happened with Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi. It was so discordant relative to what happened in The Force Awakens, that it seemed as though there were elements of either miscommunication or people going off the reservation that it just didn’t jive at all.
Granted, I think the sequel trilogy failed on almost every front aside from some of the cinematography and sound design, but TLJ sticks out like a sore thumb, almost as if Rian Johnson knew that he wasn’t coming back for the third film and said, “Fuck it. Let’s just do the shit I wanted and let whomever follows deal with the rest.”
>Which, that sounds nice and all, but you don’t hire a director to direct episode 17 of a TV series if they aren’t going to give a shit about what happened in the previous 16 episodes.Isn’t that exactly what Rian Johnson did in the movie I won’t name? Critics seemed to love it that time.
you don’t hire a director to direct episode 17 of a TV series if they aren’t going to give a shit about what happened in the previous 16 episodes. Like sorry, but they’re telling a story, and they want you to keep telling the story.Disney’s handling of the Star Wars sequel trilogy says very much otherwise.
Yeah, he was developing a “Marvel movie” before the MCU existed and clearly didn’t want to shoehorn an extra fight scene with Falcon into the second act, or whatever (seriously, that scene is the “out of key guitar solo” of the MCU). That said, I disagree with the title of this article. Besides Chloe Zhao (who got this gig long before Nomadland won every award ever) I can’t think of a “world-class” (read: critically revered) director who worked in the MCU. Kenneth Branagh, I suppose, but he was in a bit of a fallow period in the mid-00s. Taika Waititi and Peyton Reed both had some good credits before their MCU movies, James Gunn not so much. Whatever you want to call Joss Whedon, “world-class film director” is not it. It would be more accurate to say, “Why does Marvel keep hiring directors with a solid track record, getting one or two blockbusters out of them, and cutting them loose when their salaries go up?” But that question answers itself.
COOGLER.
Who’s really proof that the Marvel plus indy director combo can aboslutely work.
It can, though I suspect it’s a more delicate alchemy than that success really suggests. This might be cynical, but part of me also feels like maybe Marvel was a little reticent to exert too much influence over their first big Superhero of Color MCU project. Or maybe Coogler is just too talented and shone through the process. My working theory is more that Marvel really falls down more in terms of allowing less singular voices to bring some style into their house. Coogler and Waititi both made movies that bring out their sensibilities. But I would have also loved something like Civil War to have a visual sensibility beyond “like what you did in Winter Soldier, but less distinctive!” or Shang Chi to have more than momentary bursts of color. Black Widow actually had that a bit, for me. A bit of a different texture, visually, than what some of the other movies offer (even though they just can’t stop with the flying/falling airships in the climax).
I think the problem is that people want it to be one or the other, when the truth is somewhere in the middle. Marvel movies improve when they let the directors have their own spin but are still identifiably Marvel products. It’s where that line gets drawn between “Marvelness” and the director’s voice that people argue over (unless you just unequivocably hate or love Marvel, which a perfectly fine personal choice, but kinda removes you from any kind of discussion). The other problem is properly marrying the director to the project. Zhao was perhaps the wrong choice for this project but could have been a great choice for a different one. So I guess I’m agreeing that it’s a delicate alchemy (maybe more or less so depending on the project and director), but people want to slot it into blanket statements like “Marvel is steamrolling creators” or “The directors are given plenty of freedom” when the truth is a lot messier.
He specifically hated the character of Hope and didn’t want to include her, or if he had to, he at least didn’t want to suggest she would be Wasp in the future.
To answer your salient question: because the overwhelming majority of audience members couldn’t care less about the director, since the MCU films aren’t necessarily conducive towards seeing any significant degree of a distinct directorial vision.
Further, very few of these directors, however talented they might be, have readily identified directorial idiosyncracies that audience members would immediately identify. That’s not a knock on the directors, but rather a general dearth of truly unique directors who ever get to make their vision shown in a manner that becomes widely visible.
The directors that the MCU/Disney hire, overall, tend to be highly competent. That’s a good thing, because you can often trust a highly competent director to handle a movie production that’s going to cost $100m+ before marketing and advertising is added in. Once you get into the realm of directors who are considered “brilliant”, that’s when you have to worry, because a lot of that brilliance is often tied to idiosyncracies that just won’t mesh well with the expected fundamentals from the studio, or they’re brilliant because they’re often limited to the smaller scale of lower-budget films.
The glimpses you get of Edgar Wright’s vision don’t really work for me in Ant-Man. In particular, the scene when Ant-Man and YellowJacket accidentally activate a Cure song while fighting in a suit-case feels very Edgar Wright-y, and honestly, it’s too-cute-by-half. And I say that as someone who likes Edgar Wright.
“I think Marvel would be perfectly fine with an Edgar Wright film.”
Hmmm, yet they WEREN’T and he LEFT.
Gunn and Taika are not on the same level of prestige or, imo, artistic power as Zhao.
Would you mind sharing your thinking on this more? I consider myself a cinephile and have a pretty wide range of films and directors that I enjoy. I also see MANY films every single year. I saw Nomadland when it came out and…it just can’t understand the hype. It was boring. There are beautiful shots in it but…it just did not blow me away or convince me that Zhao is this amazing artists/director. If anything, her style to me seemed like a direct rip off of what Andrea Arnold did (much better in my opinion) with American Honey several years ago.
You know I forgot about American Honey and now I’m comparing it to Nomadland and while the latter isn’t boring at all imo I am coming around to thinking AH might have been better. And the more I think about it Gunn during his Troma years was genuinely subversive lol. So perhaps I’m going to reassess.
Very interesting! I loved American Honey and I think Andrea Arnold is a massively underrated director. I feel terrible for her after what happened to her work on Big Little Lies.
They were when they were hired. Zhao was hired before Nomadland had even finished filming.
A claim can be made that Taika and Zhao are on close footing w/r/t prestige at this point from an industry perspective; she’s got 4 nods and 2 Academy wins to his 3 and 1, and they split the difference in terms of wins when they were head-to-head.
OK, but you sort of have to make the movie presented, right? Like, if David Fincher decided to do a light rom com, and it wasn’t funny or romantic, it wouldn’t be an excuse to say, “Fincher is too much of an artist to make a dumb rom com.” You can’t really make a movie, have it not work, and then say the reason it doesn’t work is because you’re too awesome for the movie.
OK, but you sort of have to make the movie presented, right? Like, if David Fincher decided to do a light rom com, and it wasn’t funny or romantic, it wouldn’t be an excuse to say, “Fincher is too much of an artist to make a dumb rom com.” You can’t really make a movie, have it not work, and then say the reason it doesn’t work is because you’re too awesome for the movie.
Gunn and Taika are not on the same level of prestige or, imo, artistic power as Zhao.That’s BS, Taika Waititi is an incredible and distinctive talent who has either created or collaborated in some of the best movies and television of the last decade and a half. Any perceived lack of prestige is because he works primarily in comedy and fantasy instead of a more “respectable” field but his artistic power is off the charts.
I love genre stuff and still find most of his stuff dull.
This isn’t an original observation from me, but looking back it is weird how much of a Shane Black film Iron Man 3 is and how he was able to leave his footprint on it in a way other directors haven’t (maybe Gunn comes the closest…I’ve never really bought that Ragnarok is as wacky and Taika-eque as others feel it is).
If I had to guess, RDJ threw his weight around a bit for the director who more-or-less revived him as a leading man option with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but idk.
Isn’t one answer that a Los Angeles-set action movie about a damaged, silver-tongued protagonist is pretty Shane Black-y already? I mean, surely Black telling them he wanted to set the movie at Christmas wasn’t too much of a compromise for Marvel.
I think the issue is is that Marvel is operating more like a TV studio. An “auter” coming in and trying to dictate their way on everything isn’t going to work. Marvel Studios has departments and staff who have been working together for over a decade, trying to disrupt that process isn’t going to fly. That’s not to say they have to stick to a strict style, but there definitely is a box, a bigger one than people act like there is, to work in. You have to be a collaborative person to thrive there, which is why directors like the Russos were a perfect fit. I think it’s why comedy directors have also been successful, because comedy has more of that collaborative style.
It’s auteur.
seems that the article sums it up well. Big name director for film cred and get their fans and sound fancy. marvel formula for mcu fans.
Zhao is great, but how many people other than me and professional critics actually saw “The Rider”? That would have to be a drop in an ocean compared to how many saw Endgame. It would not seem to be a useful way of adding more fans. Hiring a popular director of films aimed at the Chinese market might be, but even when making Shang-Chi they hired an American indie director.
it builds reviews and press or they wouldn’t bother at all. there is a purpose.
When you say Marvel’s driven to hire directors for “reviews,” that just seems like a more cynical way of saying, “Marvel wants its movies to be good.”
And it’s also possible that they’re going for awards recognition, beyond the technicals. I imagine that a superhero movie directed by a Chloe Zhao as an awards contender (had it been good) would have been easier to swallow/understand than a better movie but directed by, say, Jon Watts. It could be partially about who Academy voters’ biases around the types of directors who are supposed to get nominated.
you elaborated better on my “Big name director for film cred” yes
I wonder, even beyond critics and awards recognition, that there’s an element of insider baseball where MCU wants to keep hiring prestigious directors when possible because that in turn attracts actors who help elevate an MCU film above your run-of-the-mill John Carter from Mars or Jared Leto Morbius movie or whatnot.
I mean I’m sure money is the biggest factor of getting these big names, but I assume most people operating at this level of fame have big egos and only want to work with “the best” when possible.
And it’s also possible that they’re going for awards recognition, beyond the technicals. I imagine that a superhero movie directed by a Chloe Zhao as an awards contender (had it been good) would have been easier to swallow/understand than a better movie but directed by, say, Jon Watts. It could be partially about who Academy voters’ biases around the types of directors who are supposed to get nominated.
They hired her before Nomandland even existed. She shot Eternals, and after it went into post and got delayed a year because of Covid, she shot and released Nomadland. They’re using her win in marketing, but it had nothing to do with her hiring.
the article mentioned others as well.
The vast, vast majority of people who will see “The Eternals” won’t know the name “Chloe Zhao”, even after her recent acclaim for “Nomadland”.
I’m not sure Marvel was counting on Nomadland-stans for box office returns.
They literally couldn’t. Nomadland was shot after she had finished shooting Eternals. She did it during Covid when Eternals was pushed back a year. They’re using it in marketing, of course, but Nomadland literally didn’t exist when they hired her.
I’m not sure Marvel was counting on Nomadland-stans for box office returns.Especially considering that Nomadland was produced after The Eternals. Nomadland’s earlier release is due to less time needed on postproduction (no/little CGI in Nomadland) and COVID-related delays for The Eternals (while Nomadland wasn’t delayed, went with a same-day Hulu streaming release and took advantage of people being stuck at home and blockbusters not being released).
And the director’s fans are secretly happy they can finally watch a non pretentious movie too, they just whine about it and pretend they aren’t to protect their own cred afterwards.
Zhao was initially considered for Black Widow in 2017, and then signed on for Eternals in September of 2018. She wasn’t a big name director then; she didn’t even start filming Nomadland until Eternals was in pre-production.
the article mentions other directors also.
Zhao may be an MCU fan, but based on her previous work isn’t she basically a broccoli salesperson who’s been hired to shill Big Macs? No shade on either food group, but I’m not sure the sales skills are entirely transferable.
This. The article does nothing to explain it. It’s “Marvel’s fault”, essentially.
That’s a great way of putting it, and articulates what I’ve been trying to get at. I don’t want burgers 24/7, but when I bite into that burger, I’d rather not get a mouthful of broccoli. And I love broccoli!
Not an impossible whopper fan, I take it?
They just want the slight bump of prestige. All of their movies are prevised years ahead of time and then they just plug in a director for the acting scenes. Like, I can’t even get excited about Sam Raimi coming back because it’ll still mostly be premade Marvel product to tie into Disney+ shows and set up whatever later sequels.
All of their movies are prevised years ahead of time and then they just plug in a director for the acting scenes.Where did this stupid talking point come from? It sounds like some Fox News-level BS that’s suddenly being repeated on every Marvel-related story. It’s clear from interviews with the directors, etc. that a lot of stuff changes, even in the big set-pieces as the films are being made. So, either this is a complete fabrication, or an extreme exaggeration.
Martel continued, “They also told me, ‘Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that.’ I was thinking, well I would love to meet Scarlett Johansson but also I would love to make the action sequences.” https://www.indiewire.com/2018/12/lucrecia-martel-marvel-offer-black-widow-sexist-dont-worry-action-scenes-1202027524/
That quote doesn’t actually imply that the action scenes are pre-made, especially not before the director is even hired. It’s very clear Martel and Marvel weren’t a good fit for each other, so good news for all of us, they didn’t opt to work together.
Cool. Here’s another one. “But now, instead of just using previs in small doses, companies like The Third Floor have developed it into a tool for designing entire movies. And no studio’s embraced that approach more than Marvel, which has enlisted the help of The Third Floor for 19 of the 23 films in its Infinity Saga.For 2014’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” Marvel had gotten to the point of previsualizing two-thirds of a movie. Today, the studio is known to use visualization to map out every single scene.”https://www.insider.com/marvel-plans-movies-action-scenes-years-before-filming-previs-visualization-2021-1
Okay. You still haven’t shown where they’re doing all of this years ahead of time, without any input from the director. No one’s arguing that Marvel isn’t doing pre-vis on their movies, just that the idea they have their movies all blocked out before the director is even hired seems pretty unsupported.A better quote to pull might have been:Occasionally, rough previs might be underway even before the cinematographer or director has signed on to the project, a practice that can be controversial in Hollywood. Director Lucrecia Martel said she turned down the offer to direct the upcoming “Black Widow” movie after Marvel told her not to worry about the action sequences.It is true that Marvel encourages their team of previs artists to play an active role in story development.Even so, “occasionally” and “some” are doing a lot of work in there. It’s a pretty big leap to the movies being “mostly pre-made.”Look, I’m not denying that there’s a lot of previs in here, and that has implications. Movies in general and MCU movies in particular are collaborative (and commercial) art, and the more directors have to trust SFX houses to provide significant elements, the more that’s going to be the case. The idea everything is pre-fab and there’s no space for director’s visions in Marvel movies is perhaps needlessly hyperbolic and a little precious about directors being the singular visionary behind a movie. Especially when you have movies like Shang-Chi just released earlier this year doing some pretty neat things with its action sequences.
Yes, I’m not saying that directors have no control. But the movie as is is planned out way ahead of time for the most part. Because Marvel has a schedule too maintain and movie connections to keep up. It’s how they keep budgets in line and maintain the brand, which in the end is the entire reason these movies are being made. You’re very free to like these movies. I’m just uncomfortable with the way these movies are made and how they mostly exist to push people to the next MCU thing.
I’d also disagree with the narrative that they are that much pushing the next thing.I mean, don’t like what you don’t like. I’m not actually trying to change your mind. I don’t even disagree that there’s some concerning trends in the industry that the MCU seems to embody, per se. But there’s a very fear mongering, faux news rhetoric to the handwringing about Disney and Marvel that loses a lot of nuance in the conversation and also, in my own opinion, leads to people overlooking some of the actual fun things that happen in these movies.
Okay, let’s just agree to disagree. Clearly you still care about these movies a lot, I burnt out around Infinity War and only have found them disappointing for the most part for a long time now. It’s not about fear mongering it’s about being very tired of seeing the same mega franchise take up all the air for months and months out of the year. This year alone there are four movies and countless Disney+ things, you won, Marvel is going to continue forever at the moment. I really do hope you enjoy Eternals. I honestly do wish I could still get something, anything out of this franchise.
You’re getting comment sections like this to play in!
“One of the secrets to their success is working with The Third Floor to create previs years before even the movies come out. The Third Floor is one of the world’s top visualization studios and has worked on 19 of the 23 installments in Marvel’s “Infinity Saga.””Says it right in this article. https://nofilmschool.com/marvel-previsBut you know some things get overlooked these days.
As if every Kanbar student from the 90s and 00s doesn’t cream themselves over using natural light, spending nights alone with a bottle of prosecco and a double VHS copy of Barry Lyndon.
Critics keep saying that they don’t want an MCU movie that feels like all the other MCU movies. Well, here ya go.
But a lot of the criticisms are that it does still feel like an MCU movie. Just a long boring one.
Well, that’s on the director then. Plenty of brilliant filmmakers have made really fun MCU movies. Good for Zhao and the MCU for both taking a big swing with this collaboration, it just seems to have not worked out this time. Alas.
Well, that’s on the director then. Plenty of brilliant filmmakers have made really fun MCU movies. Uhhh… sure. But no director has ever made an MCU movie that didn’t feel like every other MCU movie. And that’s because of the heavy hand of the Marvel producers. Good for Zhao and the MCU for both taking a big swing with this collaborationMost of the criticism is that they DIDN’T take a big swing. They just put sunsets behind standard MCU exposition/fight sequences.
They just put sunsets behind standard MCU exposition/fight sequences. Who’s they? The director directs the movie. And yes I know they have a second unit that handles lots of the fight scenes but that’s incidental. And if you think that Iron Man 3 is indistinguishable from Guardians of the Galaxy is indistinguishable from Captain America the Winter Soldier is indistinguishable from Black Panther is indistinguishable from Thor Ragnarok is indistinguishable from Infinity War, well, I don’t know what to tell you.
Who’s they? The director directs the movie. And yes I know they have a second unit that handles lots of the fight scenes but that’s incidental.The second unit?! The second unit is not pulling the strings here. The producers are. The directors of MCU films do not have final approval over any aspect of the film.Did I say the Marvel films were indistinguishable? I said they all feel alike. I can still tell them apart, lol.
Compared to, like, actual movies, they are indeed indistinguishable
Winter Soldier didn’t feel like every other MCU movie. Neither did Thor Ragnarok. And neither did Guardians of the Galaxy.
It shocks me that reviews are hammering a Marvel movie for being a Marvel movie.Like, yeah…that’s what people go to Marvel movies for. The whole success of the universe at this point has been fitting different types of films over that framework. If this style of film doesn’t mesh well…okay lesson learned.It’s not Zhao’s fault, it just didn’t work.
Is Zhao’s style a poor fit for the MCU? Or is the way these films are shot and conceived too rigid to allow a personal vision to fully blossom?Why can’t it be both? Or—and I know the thesis of this piece is that everything bad about the movie must be Marvel’s fault—there’s also the distinct possibility that sometimes good directors make crummy films. Similarly, Thor director Kenneth Branagh said in a new New York Times profile that his use of Dutch angles in the film “created a miniature furor. Marvel actually tried to see whether they could horizontalize them again.Counterpoint: Branagh’s Dutch angles in Thor were distracting and pointless.
Holy counterpoint Batman!
I rewatched the first Thor movie recently for the first time in quite a while, and the Dutch angles really at just so pointless. I could see using a few of them, but at some point there’s so many you don’t know what they’re supposed to communicate.For real, though, it gets to be like Battlefield Earth.
Battlefield Earth was actually filmed by strapping a camera on top of a cute dog’s head, which the dog tilted to the side every time he got confused about the plot/the dialogue/John Travolta’s whole vibe.
>the Dutch angles really at just so pointless. Theyre not though.Dutch angles=bad seems to be the consensus on the Internet for some reason
Not every type of film is in any particular director’s wheelhouse. Also, not every style meshes with every genre/subgenre. Maybe superheros aren’t well served with contemplative, maybe Chloe Zhao isn’t really a superhero director.Some of it is just how expensive and high-profile Marvel movies are. Like, if James Cameron wanted to make a romantic comedy or family drama he could do it, and if it fell flat then it’s not like he spent an Ever Given making it.
Also, wasn’t that like Branagh’s first ever directing gig? And he did a pretty mediocre job. And hasn’t exactly had a rousing directing career ever since. The guy’s a talented actor, but it’s not like he’s the world’s most brilliant director, or something.
Nope, it was his twelfth.
Yep, that was my mistake.Still, looking at his resume, it was his first real blockbuster; and going by that and subsequent follow-up films (Jack Ryan, Artemis Fowl) he’s a poor fit for it. So I don’t think his criticism of the experience carries that much weight, imo.
That scale in terms of effects, I guess. But don’t forget that as far back as Henry V in 1989 he was doing big battle scenes. I remember his Hamlet being quite massive. It’s not like he was doing small-scale work before Thor.
He had directed quite a few movies, mostly Shakespeare, before then. He’s been nominated for best director at the Academy Awards. That’s why he was hired, to give a Shakespearean flavor to the family dynamics.
And I think he did that part well! The Dutch angles though… No.
Agree
I think I assumed it was his first because, for years and years, he was A Shakespeare Guy, and making a comic book movie was a really unexpected career choice for him.More importantly, it certainly feels like it was made by a first-time director. The use of the dutch angles is the perfect illustration of this: it’s very “film student who thinks tilting the camera qualifies as a visual style.” The movie is pretty mediocre, and with very mediocre direction.And nothing in his repertoire since certainly screams “amazing, talented director.” He’s probably a lot better at directing Shakespeare than he is anything else. (I thought Murder on the Orient Express was competently made, but the most remarkable thing about it was The Mustache That Ate Hercule Poirot.)
Run, don’t walk, to see Henry V.
He’s very good at directing Shakespeare. He’s really a theater guy and maybe he felt that with a weaker source material than Shakespeare he should put stuff in to “class it up.” Which is not to say his Shakespeare movies are stuffy. he does a lot to make them accessible and use the movie format to his advantage. Nothing’s ever quite matched the high of his Henry V, but they are all pretty solid. I have to admit that I have a huge soft spot for OG Thor, although I fully concede that the criticisms of valid. It’s just a big ridiculous movie.
“Dead Again” is a fun, sexy, straight bonkers romp of a thriller. It’s one of the outliers of his career (only Much Ado has any of the same energy, and I can see Thor trying to recapture it but failing) and perhaps the most underrated thing he’s ever done (eclipsing his impressive ninety minute Woody Allen impression in Celebrity). I recommend it to you wholeheartedly.
It was his first big budget action directing gig, but not his first directing gig. He had a long history of directing dramas (largely Shakespeare adaptations), dating back to 1989’s Henry V, which is why he got the gig for Thor. They wanted a Shakespearian feel to the Asgardian Thor/Loki drama. Though, he also directed the 1994 adaptation Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but that was on only a budget of $45 m and didn’t have the large MCU action set pieces.
Not sure how serious you are being because the internet, but Thor was his 12th feature, and tbh represented the turning point in his downward trajectory imo. HOWEVER, his adaptations of Henry V and Hamlet are legitimately masterpieces, and his visual storytelling/sense of scope in the latter is one of the better uses of 70mm I’ve ever seen. One of my personal favorites, and would definitely recommend!!
Also, wasn’t that like Branagh’s first ever directing gig?
No, but it was his first time directing something of that scale.https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000110/#director
HE FUCKING DIRECTED A FOUR GODDAMN HOUR HAMLET ADAPTATION.“First of that scale” my fucking ass.
And it felt like every minute of those four hours. I love Hamlet, but that movie was darn near unwatchable.
“First of that scale” my fucking ass.
Yes, it was the first of that scale. It was by far the highest-profile movie that Branagh had directed, and he wasn’t an action director (still isn’t).
You really haven’t seen Henry V.Shakespeare adaptations never were action blockbusters, of course, but time was that they were popular high-profile work. It seems unimaginable now, but for example, DiCaprio’s star really started to rise not with Titanic, but Romeo+Juliet, which waa released the previous year, and is what GOT him Titanic.
Frankenstein, Much Ado, Othello…
He didn’t direct Othello.
My bad!
It was his 12th feature.
I’m not sure a lot of people saw Thor and thought, “What’s missing here is more Branagh.”
Also, wasn’t that like Branagh’s first ever directing gig?Is this supposed to be ironic, or something?
No, Jesus christ, he directed Hamlet>And he did a pretty mediocre job.
Got like 78 or so on rt which was pretty good considering more out there comic stuff tended to flop back in the day
“wasn’t that like Branagh’s first ever directing gig”Branagh already had an Oscar nomination for directing 22 years before he made Thor.
“Counterpoint: Branagh’s Dutch angles in Thor were distracting and pointless.”
That’s not a counterpoint.
There are only two things I hate in this world: People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.
Counterpoint to the cinematographers of the Internet. They were fine.
I like how Feige gets slammed because cinemas haven’t swapped bulbs
I read it as they might potentially not swap bulbs and if they don’t then it’s Feige’s fault. It’s a weird paragraph.
I think its supposed to be that Feige not writing a letter is indicative of him not caring enough about the director’s vision to make sure it is shown using the best possible technology. But that really feels like a stretch. i will agree with the writer that when a movie is unnecessarily murky due to tech problems it would make for a more frustrating viewing, for sure.
This whole bulb issue, is this even still a thing? Ebert was on this relentlessly in his last ten years or so, but since his death I can’t say I’ve seen it around as a big discussion point. And you can really dim them by partially unscrewing them? That’s unlike any other bulb I can think of but maybe that’s how it works.
In theory, yes you can. But there is a very fine line between “dimmed” and “no longer in contact, so it’s off.”
Yes, because cinemas have tons of money to throw around after being mostly closed for 18 months…
There’s a gigantic 2-volume “The Story of Marvel Studios” book that just came out, and I’m curious how it deals with stuff like Edgar Wright leaving “Ant-Man” and James Gunn’s temporary firing.
There’s a good chance it might complete elide over those events!Didn’t the Force Awakens DVD documentary not even mention Harrison Ford’s injury?
I flipped through a copy of the MCU book, and it definitely covers some stuff that Marvel usually ignores for inter-studio licensing reasons. A few years ago for Christmas I got a “MCU Visual Dictionary” book that totally ignores The Incredible Hulk and the two solo Spider-Man movies, but the huge new book acknowledges all that stuff. So I doubt they get too deep into the story of why Edgar Wright left or the messiness around James Gunn’s firing and rehiring but I wouldn’t be surprised if they at least touch on some of the less flattering decisions the studio made.
“Didn’t the Force Awakens DVD documentary not even mention Harrison Ford’s injury?”
How are those things the same?
Don’t need the book for the Gunn situation, he’s talked about it, and more info has come from the trades. Some exec under Iger saw the mess on Twitter and made their own decision to fire Gunn. Iger wasn’t in the office, I think he was coming back from vacation or something. Feige was caught completely off guard. It was an entirely avoidable situation if that one exec wasn’t trigger happy.
the difference between scenes directed by the project’s eventual helmer,
Cate Shortland, and those handled by second-unit crews is obvious.
I thought Black Widow had a pretty distinct look and feel to it from the other MCU stuff actually. I remember that fight scene between Natasha and 20 other Widows, in which the latter were shot and framed to look downright monstrous. I can’t imagine that was a creative decision made by the same 2nd unit that did every other MCU action scene.
Sure, there were some shots that were unique, but pretty much everything once the floating fortress started falling apart looked like a lot of other MCU action scenes. Lots of explosions that blow characters into big solid objects without killing them, debris flying around that always narrowly misses the main characters (probably while they fall ridiculous distances without dying), etc. To be fair I guess a lot of time she was sliding down the side of stuff so it was a bit more believable than a free-fall but I would argue that those sorts of tricks are part of the house style too.
Right. They put an episode of Assembled for Black Widow on D+, and while of course these things aren’t going to go into actual problems of making the projects, it does show that Shortland was there all the time working with ScarJo. And that they used tons of practical locations, pretty much for everything except the Red Room stuff (obviously). The idea that “2nd unit” is bad is also stupid. You know what was a second unit scene? The opening of Civil War. By the John Wick guys. Using a 2nd unit, like everything else, isn’t bad, it’s just how you use it.
I really agree with this. I really felt Cate was present in the earlier fight scenes, which are honestly fairly different from the standard MCU fight sequences. I think it’s pretty notable how all of the fight scenes in Black Widow feel really short and purpose driven. They don’t have the normal showing off for the funsies of action elements that you usually see.Things fall apart more on the action sequences that are more heavily CG, which could be Marvel, or could be because Shortland has less of the skillset to get what she needs out of that sort of situation, or (honestly) could have been COVID related, since they would have been rushing to get those post-effects in when everything shut down.
Comic books are completely formulaic. Especially Marvel comics of the last 30 years. And…..somehow the Marvel movies are ALSO completely formulaic? *gasp*Newsflash: it’s a business and the formula is netting them billions and billions of $$$. Eyeroll at some precious “artist” doesn’t get their “vision” on-screen on one of these cash cows. Sheesh.
Formulas aren’t good or bad! I love the rules of comic book storytelling, and it’s all about what art you can create inside the rules. It’s like complaining about the rules of a haiku.Tapping the sign, from tvtropes.org: “They are not bad, they are not good; tropes are tools that the creator of a work of art uses to express their ideas to the audience.”
I love that quote from TVTropes, and I love how many, many people who often use TVTropes’ trope names(including hyperlinks to the specific pages!) never seem to have read that.
“Comic books are completely formulaic.”
At least you didn’t paint an entire industry with one ignorant, asshole brush, you ignorant asshole.
Because nobody wants another Fan4stic or Solo: A Star Wars Story, or Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where they hire a director for cachet their name brings but then the whole thing turns into a shit show where the tone of the movie is at complete odds with the viewer expectations and general franchise image. Nobody wants to be a cautionary tale of an artistic triumph but commercial flop. And the majority of the audience don’t want that either, just the critics do. That is why. This isn’t movie making like from the old days, this is a tv show brought to the big screen instead. And when ER let Tarantino do an episode, they didn’t have George Clooney spouting the N word every two seconds or having Laura Innes having her toes sucked for ten minutes. He got to add a couple of shoeless scenes and an ear trauma scene, but that was it. Same with Marvel movies, a director can put a few touches but they better stick to the show format overall. If they don’t like it, they don’t need to accept the call. Tarantino took the ER job because he liked the ego boost, and it was good for his career at the time and he knew it.
At this point, the MCU is a multi-billion property that is essentially keeping theaters across the country from closing. Decisions the MCU makes on whether to put a movie on streaming or in theaters rocks the industry. It is being asked to handle diversity issues that the DCCU never seems to get asked and Sony and Fox sure as fuck didn’t get asked.
So yeah, they aren’t going to take as many chances as some indie studio with a director who maxed out his or her credit cards to finish the financing and is begging actors to work for scale in exchange for a possible Golden Globe nomination.
At some point, an action movie depends as much, if not more, on a director’s ability to keep the trains running on time and everyone safe than it does his or her vision.
Its clear that Disney/Marvel wanted another “Black Panther” with this. Trying so hard to get that award season clout. I don’t understand it. Just keep making movies that print money. Hire good directors who fit your style instead of trying to mold a prestige director into your style. Its why Gunn, Taika and the Russo’s worked so well. Their styles fit the MCU style.
The problem, i think, is that it can be hard to know whether a director’s style is adaptable to the Marvel model until AFTER you try it.I mean Ryan Coogler wasn’t known for directing quippy action movies, and yet Black Panther is great.
Black Panther is fine
But he did make Creed, which had a sizeable budget, was connected to lore, and had to be big and crowdpleasing (and a bit quippy). He also showed a flair for staging action in it. Zhao has nothing like that on her resume.
One of the things that makes Black Panther great is that it’s not a quippy action movie.
The few quips are the worst part. Especially Shuri’s What are those?? shoes part.
That line gets so much hate and it baffles me. It fits perfectly within the scene: we’ve gotten a full picture of Shuri as a genius, but to remind us she’s still a kid she dopily references a meme in a way that’s sorta cringy because kids are sorta cringy. Reminds me of when I’d be talking with my much younger cousin in the aughts (dude skipped two grades and won state science awards) and his exceptional intelligence was obvious but then he started rambling about Naruto and stuff because being really smart didn’t mean he wasn’t twelve.
The issue with the line is that it was about 3 years too late. It was a popular meme in 2015. Memes have a very short shelf life, so even if you assume the script was being written sometime in 2016, you’re still looking at a line that was 2-3 years old, and irrelevant, by the time the movie was released.
It actually proves the opposite of your point about your cousin. The fact that it was Shuri, and not T’Challa, who said the line is the issue. Shuri would know that the meme was played out. T’Challa wouldn’t. If he said it, it would be funny, because he’s an older man using an old meme, not realizing it’s no longer cool. Shuri saying it comes across as weird, because she’d know it was an old meme, and wouldn’t say it in the first place, especially because it was played completely straight.
The equivalent would be a movie in 2005 using the “Wazzup” from the Budweiser commercials.
But that’s what makes the line work.Because Shuri is a teen, but not an *American* teen. So she’s sorta in tune with pop culture and the meme economy, but is slightly out of date with it.Maybe it just hit cause i was born in a different country and i remember that feeling of cool shit from America only filtering down to us after it was out of date.
But it’s still very distinctly an MCU movie. Including several action pieces and quips.It has its own style, but manages to make that style fit within the overall Marvel style. Black Panther could easily have been a different movie. One much more dour and without any of the fun side digressions and one liners. It’s not, and personally I think it’s a better movie for it. But you can’t tell what sort of movie it’ll be, and how well the styles will mesh until after you make the attempt.
It’s still an MCU movie, but the idea that it’s a “quippy action movie” is just plain false. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe T’Challa makes even a single quip; the entire premise of his What If episode hinges on the idea of such a solemn dude being goofier.To me, the best counterargument against MCU films consuming their directors is Black Panther versus Thor Ragnarok, which were released back-to-back and have the same skeleton of a story (warrior prince learns that his idealized father had a dark history after his death and must face the ramifications of that history personified by a new family member usurping their throne) but are night and day tonally. The former is deeply serious, occasionally to a fault (the CGI finale is kinda lame for all the gravitas the rest of the movie is going for), and the latter is deeply silly, occasionally to a fault (cracking a joke when Asgard is destroyed because lord forbid we let ourselves feel bummed about something even for a second), but the directors clearly left their thumbprints on the projects.
have the same skeleton of a story (warrior prince learns that his idealized father had a dark history after his death and must face the ramifications of that history personified by a new family member usurping their throne) Holy shit. How did I never notice this?? deeply silly, occasionally to a fault (cracking a joke when Asgard is destroyed because lord forbid we let ourselves feel bummed about something even for a second)This is a fair point, but I think (and I could be giving everyone involved too much credit) that they were playing the long game here. Yes, Ragnarok didn’t spend a whole lot of time dealing with the heavy shit, but repressing all of it landed on Thor like a ton of bricks in Infinity War and Endgame. He clearly does not cope well.
Right.I’m not saying that Black Panther is just a quippy action movie. It’s clearly a Coogler joint with the same sensibilities that informed his debut film, Fruitvale Station. But it does so in a way that works with the action and the quips that are in it, rather than against them.T’Challa doesn’t suddenly turn into Spiderman, which would be a bad way to integrate the style. Instead we have other characters who provide the quips and the wit at appropriate moments and in appropriate ways. So you can have a serious conversation about race, Pan-Africanism and the legacy of colonialism right along side a chick beating up dudes with a spear in an illegal South Korean casino.A different director might begrudgingly make the movie purely the serious conversation and then toss in a few jokes at random because the studio forced them to. Or go overboard and have T’Challa cracking jokes constantly. And neither of those would be good. But it’s not because the integration of the styles is impossible, just that the director wasn’t able to make it work.
Yeah and The Russos weren’t really known for anything. Yet they knock it out the park each time.
Not known for anything….except for helping to define the style of some of the best sitcoms of the 21st century.
Martin’s getting on Feige’s nerve, probably
Honestly not surprised that the director of Nomadland made another boring-ass movie *hides*
Nobody’s ready to talk about it, but that poverty tourism was a way more egregious Best Picture winner than Green Book.
Very few movies make me rather angry after watching them, but Nomadland was one of those movies.
What a miserable movie, and even with the good cinematography, it doesn’t make up for a miserable viewing experience, especially when the other nominees in the category all had more memorable movies in almost every conceivable way.
Not MCU, but they seemed to give Ang Lee free reign on HULK and that was a big mistake.
Just awful. That was his idea of making it ‘comic-booky.’ Slapping on some comic book panel transitions.
Slapping on some comic book panel transitions.I hated when Walter Hill did that to The Warriors, too. That film was fine as it is.
I still think Hulk is great. I just wish audiences agreed with me.
All the Hulk stuff is pretty great. I much prefer that character model to the one in Incredible Hulk. Still, the other stuff, ugghh…
Ang Lee’s Hulk rules
Honestly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Just utter dogshit.
“Not MCU”
And therefore not relevant.
They won’t criticize her because she’s a woman of color.
Haven’t seen it yet, but Eternals seems to make the mistake The Avengers cleverly avoided, introducing a whole team in their first movie.
But introducing multiple characters at the same time is literally every movie.That’s not the problem, the problem is if the multiple characters are all forced to be equally important and the movie simply isn’t able to juggle that. Or, worse, expects the audience to just know who they are.My expectation going in to this is that there will be a few Eternals who are the main characters and the rest will flesh out the supporting cast. No different than something like Iron Man where you’ve got Stark as the lead and the Pepper/Happy/etc flesh out his supporting cast.Where the failure likely falls is on the marketing. They wanted to treat these 10 characters as all equally important. So audiences go in expecting that. Mostly likely a side effect of their increasing paranoia about “spoilers” and leaks.
I think this is slightly different, as each Eternal isn’t a hero in their own right that occasionally team up together. Being a team is their thing. Now, could they maybe have cut a few more instead of having to introduce 10+ main characters? Yes.
The difference is that with the Avengers you already gave a fuck about them as individual heroes, at least for the core group. With the Eternals, I have zero reason to give a fuck about them either individually or as a group.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯Don’t know what to tell you, they’re a group. Did you care about the Guardians before that movie? Virtually no one knew who they were or gave a fuck about them, but now everyone loves them. It’s all in the execution, and it sounds like this just has too many characters to introduce at once. If you never saw movies about characters you didn’t know or cared about, you wouldn’t see any movies in the first place.
Don’t know what to tell you, they’re a group.Yes, as we all know, it is a fact of science that the Eternals are a group and can never appear in works of fiction without one another.
Yeah, but at that point you’re basically saying ‘make a whole parallel MCU’ if you need to give each Eternal their own introductory movie. If the Eternals worked as a cohesive whole in their comic storyline, there’s no reason why they can’t do so in a movie.
Oh, I’m definitely not saying that. Don’t make a dozen Eternals movies for my sake. I almost certainly won’t watch them all.I’m just always amused when the plots of comics are presented as immutable facts that filmmakers have no choice but to depict.
“if you need to give each Eternal their own introductory movie.”
How about replying to the ACTUAL COMMENT?
But Guardians of the Galaxy proves that that isn’t necessarily a fatal mistake if handled properly.
There’s like half as many Guardians as there are Eternals which helped a lot. Even then pretty much all the character work is based around Starlord so there was only one that really mattered.
I think the caveats you list here all fall under the umbrella of the term “if handled properly”
Part of the reason that Guardians worked is that none of the characters are especially powerful relative to the enemy that they’re directly facing, or in the greater scope of the universe. Therefore, them coming together felt needed, along with spending more time with them as it was conducive to understanding how them teaming up was necessary to overcome their most pressing issues all throughout the movie.
With the caveat of having not seen The Eternals, I can imagine one of the issues is that these characters are already painted as being so powerful, that it makes the stakes they’re facing seem rather inconsequential, and then raises the question of “where the fuck have you been these past years?” when the world, at various points, was going to shit? Sure, the movie might answer that question, but the implication of the question (and the implications foisted upon the main protagonists) and its existence is rather off-putting on its face.
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think I agree. I don’t really think power factors into it at all. It’s not a problem of narrative scope; it’s a problem of character. Case in point: neither the squad from Suicide Squad (2016) nor The Suicide Squad (2021) was powerful relative to their opposition. But the latter was a success because it invested in character and emotion, and the former’s failure to do so made it a total mess.
i guess what i’m saying is, james gunn is really good at this specific thing
That’s exactly my point.
In all 3 of his films, the relative power levels of the protagonists were significantly less than the opposition. Therefore, it made it easy to root for them, because the stakes were clear, and they were, for most of the movie, underdogs. It also made it much more realistic to invest narrative time in getting to know the characters, because the audience had to see exactly how their teaming up would result in them being powerful enough to overcome the antagonist(s). Even though Suicide Squad was a mess, one of the things it did right was show (in an admittedly hamfisted way) the necessity of the team to overcome the opposition. What screwed them over was that, due to time constraints by WB and their general skittishness over untested characters, many of the characters had to be given short shrift (which is something that Gunn did a really good job of rectifying in The Suicide Squad).
With The Eternals, you have these supremely powerful beings going against what exactly? If the stakes are low, because the protagonists are so powerful, it lessens the impact if you don’t spend enough time showing why these characters view and experience the stakes as life-or-death, whether it be for themselves or the people they protect/represent. That is one of the reasons why it’s often hard to make a compelling Superman film without either depowering him, putting him up against other Kryptonians, or developing a character specifically designed to have powers that can neutralize him (Doomsday). Conversely, it’s much easier to make a compelling Batman film, because aside from the suit, the technology, and the training, he’s just a man. The stakes are that one well-placed bullet could kill him, and in a crime-ridden city like Gotham, there’s plenty of guns and plenty of bullets.
You can’t separate the power levels of the protagonists from their character. In fact, much of the characterization of superheroes and villains come from the powers they have, don’t have, and who they have to contend with. You know this implicitly. Think about any superhero movie, and then take away the powers of the heroes and villains. Then ask yourself, “Do we still have a compelling narrative?” Most of the time, the answer is no, because the narrative is inextricably linked to what the characters can do or can’t do relative to everyone else.
This extends to the emotional development of the characters. Tony Stark becomes less of an arrogant douche because he finds himself invested with a great deal more power due to his development of the arc reactor, the MK1 suit, and so on. Then he begins getting sick due to that power. Then he realizes, as powerful as he is, he’s merely one man who needs help. Finally, he takes the ultimate step in sacrificing himself, and all of his power, to eradicate a world-ending threat in Thanos. His entire arc is tied to his power, and how he deals with his power. It’s made all the more compelling because he’s already powerful in the temporal sense, because as Tony Stark, he’s still a genius, billionaire, playboy. philanthropist.
Not to be unnecessarily cliche, but Spider-Man let us in on the poorly-kept secret in 2002, when Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility”. That statement is true both figuratively (as Uncle Ben intended), but also literally (as in the reality that due to Peter Parker gaining his powers, he now had a responsibility to take on Norman Osborn or any other villains who the authorities or the military couldn’t or wouldn’t). In other words, if you remove the powers, you remove the responsibility, since who would put the continued existence of New York on the shoulders of some meek and mild kid from Queens? Further, if you remove the responsibility, you remove the stakes, at least from the narrative perspective of that specific protagonist. Even though we enjoy and commiserate with an underdog, we often find a protagonist with no chance of success boring (just as, on the inverse, we find an overpowered protagonist with no chance of failure boring).
That’s why I referenced power levels, but in reality, “power levels” is merely a catch-all for the capabilities of any protagonist(s) or antagonist(s). Jake Gittes in Chinatown realized that he was powerless to take on Noah Cross and the corruption of the titular Chinatown, hence the famous last line, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” As talented as Jake was as a PI, it meant very little when compared to what he went against. Because of that, even with his personality foibles, he was easy to root for because it was obvious he was an underdog. However, if Jake Gittes was a billionaire whose brother was the President of the United States, now you have a much less compelling narrative even if you kept everything else the same (let’s imagine that, like Bruce Wayne, Jake Gittes with his billions decided to moonlight as a PI for shits and giggles).
True. But Guardians has HALF the cast of Eternals.
I mean X-Men did it fine all those years ago.
Good point, this is exactly the same situation. The X-Men, like The Eternals, were almost completely unknown out of the very insular world of comic books.
Also, The Eternals certainly had a wildly popular cartoon that aired for five years previous to the movie coming out, and also The Eternals is coming out at a time when comic books regularly had distribution in the millions of copies. And let’s not forget that, at the time, The Eternals was one of the most popular comics at the time, appearing in four core books and countless spin-off titles, highlighting the popularity of the characters.
EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING SITUATION.
I guess. Unless you were a fan of Storm.
Yes, that is why the X-Men movies are notorious flops.
It’s not like that’s Eternals’s only DCEU-ish sin. It also air-drops multiple godlike entities into a preexisting timeline, on the main planet where most of the other films have taken place. It’s the Captain Marvel problem times a million. That’s a recipe for audience fatigue and skepticism (and, at the fringes, outrage. HOW DARE YOU IMPLY THESE CERTAIN HISTORICAL EVENTS INVOLVED SUPERS?)People immediately picked up on that with the whole Thanos thing, but obviously Thanos’s bullshit was just the tip of the iceberg. You’ve got thousands of years of human civilization to explain away, with these chuckleheads’ incoherent mandate of selective interference crashing through every event in history like a bull in a china shop – or worse, a bull sitting around in a china shop not doing anything, which also makes no fucking sense. It’s lose-lose.
I’d say the character development issues are just a microcosm of that. These overlords must’ve been pretty fucking stupid to not engineer the Eternals and their rules so as to prevent them from becoming emotionally attached to humanity. It comes across as suspiciously convenient that most of them care so much.Hey, there’s an idea for a better version of this movie, which I’m 99.999% sure must’ve been a comic already: they don’t care, except for one mutant that got cooked wrong in the incubator, and so the story follows him/her/it through history having to balance empathy/humanity with their own need to not get detected and nuked. Turns out, obviously, that they’re part Deviant. Twist upon twist, the pure Deviants are actually evil as shit too. Gotta subvert the obvious allegories.
Just saw it (I regret supporting it) and it’s everything you say and worse. My expectations couldn’t have been lower and I still can’t believe how bad it was.
Avengers also included superheroes that were already well known and who had fun and very human personalities. The Eternals aren’t well known individuals, none are really singularly compelling and there doesn’t seem to be a sense of humor in the bunch.
This definitely strays from the MCU formula because it puts CHARACTER FIRST. None of these people were characters. They were a bland costume, one generic power and zero personality. Out of ten characters I can name maybe three personality traits.
If Chloe Zhao was a white man this would be a very different piece
Here’s the thing, and critics never ever seem to get this.
The MCU is a TV show with episodes that come out every six months or so instead of every week.
Think of Star Trek: TNG/DS9. Different episodes featured different characters and there’d be a few “big” events around sweeps or season finales.Cap – Picard; Iron Man – Data; Thor – Worf; Ant-Man – Odo/Quark episodes. Black Panther – Bajoran stuff. Avengers movies – Borg or Dominion episodes.
Other than Winrich Kolbe or one of the actors who got to direct, can you name a TNG or DS9 director?
The Bond franchise has the same shit attached to it. In the heyday of Bond – 70s and 80s – the “directorial vision” was Cubby Broccoli calling up John Glen or Lewis Gilbert and saying, “Hey, dipshit. When you get done washing my car, I’ve got a script for you.”
I get it. MCU movies are the biggest thing out there right now and critics, finally getting that their spitballs aren’t slowing down the battleship, are whining that the battleship isn’t pretty enough.
Yeah, critics complain about Marvel movies all looking the same, but unless you’re watching Community, you expect most episodes in a TV series to have the same visual style.And like with TV shows, creative control of the project rests with the showrunner (in this case, Kevin Feige) not the director of any given installment.
Marvel makes sci-fi /fantasy adventure movies. Unlike Universal Studios or 24th Century Fox, who make all kinds of movies, Marvel makes specifically sci-fi/fantasy adventure movies. So, complaining that Marvel is still making sci-fi/fantasy adventure movies is like complaining that the Frisbee company doesn’t make flower-pots.
I say who gives a shit. Congrats on Zhao for getting paid.Also, fun that we’ve decided to have this conversation *now* when it’s an Asian woman who’s making the movie. Not telling at all.
Any franchise, really. Star Wars has fired numerous directors over the past decade, at least on the film side of the studio. The TV folks seem to have a better handle on letting directors infuse episodes of a show with their own signature vibes. But remember when Cuaron directed a Harry Potter movie and it was the weirdest kid’s movie in forever, and is still considered the high water mark of the entire franchise? It can be done, although it’s also worth noting they quickly reverted to the formula.
The title of this article and then the content make no sense. “Why won’t Marvel trust directors” and then about how Marvel trusted Zhao to do what she wanted. And she’s said nothing but “they let me do what I wanted and were there to help if I needed it.” Going to that quote from Martel, the easy way to read it is as them dismissing her as not an action director. OR, it was used in a way like “it’s ok you haven’t shot action before, we have a team in-house that does action and they’ll be there to help you through it if you need it.” But that doesn’t make good headlines.And then things that are done industry wide have all of a sudden become “Marvel only” problems. Only Marvel does greenscreen. Only Marvel uses CGI and has CGI setpieces. Only Marvel does pre-viz. Only Marvel does reshoots. Everyone does these things. And not it’s Marvel’s fault theaters are cheap and lazy and won’t fix their screens and projectors?Why not just use a rotating house staff of creatives, more akin to a television show?I mean, honestly, that’s not the worst idea. It’s why the Russos were perfect for Marvel (and have had middling to terrible output since on their own). TV is a heavily collaborative space, where every department works together, and usually only have like a turnaround time of a month from writing/shooting to it airing. Why TV directors are thought of as lesser is beyond me. Being able to work in a TV environment successfully should be a badge of honor, not some spot on their record. Movies are supposed to be collaborative too, yet we’ve come up with this “auter” idea, where it becomes basically one or two people who “make” the movie. It’s really dismissive of all of the other people who work on them to then give all of the credit to one person. Anyway, that’s an entirely other thing.In a sense, Eternals getting a low Rotten Tomatoes score (which ultimately means nothing and definitely doesn’t mean what most people think it means) can be a good thing. It means people went in expecting a Marvel movie and they didn’t get that. They got something different, even if not entirely different. Because I honestly don’t know what people want from Marvel anymore. If they play it safe and “stick to the Marvel conveyor belt style” it’s bad, if they try to make a big swing like this it’s bad. What’s the sweet spot? I think the answer is there is no answer, because the goalpost is going to constantly move to make sure they never meet it.
Also, Nomadland can’t be used as a reason for getting Zhao or anything for Eternals. She shot Eternals, it went into post, she started shooting Nomadland, and then Covid hit. So Eternals got pushed back a year, but since Nomadland was a smaller film, in that year she was able to shoot, edit and release it. So it’s really not a factor in any of this.
Damn, nailed it. Great posts! Only thing, I have slightly disagree with is:“Because I honestly don’t know what people want from Marvel anymore. If they play it safe and “stick to the Marvel conveyor belt style” it’s bad, if they try to make a big swing like this it’s bad. What’s the sweet spot?”Truth be told Marvel Cinematic Universe has been remarkably well received and reviewed from both critics and audience. There have been quite of few Marvel movies I felt in my opinion, were just okay, and they were still killing it with reviewers and audience. So it’s hard to say what’s the sweet spot? When Marvel hits the sweet spot so often. For instance, it’s like having incredible sex with your partner 9 times in a row, but on the 10th time, for some reason (the mood, the timing, who knows) the sex wasn’t that great, and you tell your partner, “I don’t get you anymore, why can’t I find your sweet spot?” Um, so the 9 previous times didn’t happened?
Yeah, no. Sorry.
“Filming for Nomadland took place over four months in fall 2018, with writer-director Zhao splitting time between the set and pre-production for Eternals (2021).”
“By the film’s official announcement in July 2019, principal photography had begun at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England.”
Nice try though.
I take the Martel quote with such a grain of salt, honestly. They talked. Clearly she wasn’t a good fit for their project, and she and the studio appear to have been on the same page about it.I don’t see a reason to turn it into some kind of piece of damning evidence.
Yea, it’s just instantly taken as a “SEE, MARVEL HATES ART AND SMOTHERS DIRECTORS, THEY’RE EVIL” point instead of trying to add any sort of critical thinking to the situation.
The only way to know for sure is for Marvel to hire Wes Anderson to make the next Punisher movie.
Dianey are too cowardice to do that
“That bullet through the mobster’s head? Perfectly symmetrical!”
Not everyone’s particular sensibilities are going to mate well with everything. You look at Zhao’s films, and you think “that’s an outside-the-box pick to direct a megabudget fantasy epic”, and maybe it turns out that she’s a little too outside the box to make that particular combination work.But, you don’t really know until you try – I don’t know if Eternals is a good movie, but even if it’s not I still can applaud Marvel for taking that kind of risk to make a movie that really distinguishes itself from their house style. Sometimes it’ll work out, and they can end up with something that’s really different and really good. And sometimes it won’t. They’ve got money that they can play with, so I think its good that they do.
Although I think it might be worth considering, for them, exploring putting stories on screen with smaller scopes and budgets. I mean, effects are nice and all, but story and character is what really drives all movies. And it’s easier to take risks with mixing up the storytelling styles of different directors when you’re not committing 200 million to the production budget and that again in marketing.
I mean, compared to most of the MCU, Black Widow is pretty small and personal except for when they indulge in the Bond homage in the third act. And then that third act is used to act like the entire movie is nothing but a big CGI splatfest. I think the floating fortress could have been something else and have been better, but it’s really extreme how people take it as what the rest of the movie is.
It seems that the reviewers here and over at Io9 have decided that nothing will get published unless it is a hot take about how Marvel is now the Diane Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General in ‘Harris Bergeron’, of the movie making world. I imagine that they read the stories about various directors pissing on comic book movies and decided that they needed to hop aboard that train – and this is their way of following through.
a low Rotten Tomatoes score (which ultimately means nothing
Exactly. I really don’t understand why people pay any attention to that site.
Because it’s an easy thing to make headlines about and stir the fanboy pot to generate more hate clicks.
The title of this article and then the content make no sense.I agree completely and logged in to say the same. Everything I’ve read/heard in interviews with Zhao is that she was given more freedom than just about every other MCU director and that you feel the freedom when watching The Eternals (which I’m seeing tonight so I can’t personally opine on it.). I.E., reportedly The Eternals feels like a different breed of Marvel film…the scene compositions, settings, lighting, etc. all feel like there’s a real director director behind it, rather than the by committee feel of the other MCU movies.The problem is it just didn’t work here (for some reviewers).I like Youtube’s MovieBob’s explanation for why he thinks it’s not doing well on review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes. His theory is that it’s more a reflection of the inherent limitations or review aggregators and not The Eternals itself. RT scores don’t reflect a spectrum of how much or little the movies are liked. Rather, RT boils reviews down to a binary good or bad (i.e., 3/5 is just as “good” as 5/5 and 2.5/5 is just as bad as 0.5/5). So, while MCU movies generally have high RT scores, if one looks at the actual positive reviews, you’ll see they’re normally pretty mediocre, just barely on the “good”-side of mediocre…with common refrains being something along the lines of: “this latest MCU film is an overall entertaining movie but suffers from the same formula with boring shots and fight sequences as the rest of them.” So, a movie like Doctor Strange may have a high “Fresh” RT score of 89%, were one to look at the reviews, one would see they were rather middling, hovering around 3/5. And this makes sense, while the MCU formula won’t produce “high art”, it does aim to be comfortable and please the widest possible group of people possible.
But movies that try to do more, that try to swing for the fences/not play it safe, generally don’t please everyone. They’re not playing it safe. Not shooting for the lowest common denominator. Sometimes it pays off but, more often than not, it doesn’t. While such films may have very high reviews/engagement from certain critics/moviegoers, they may also have bad reviews (or at least just on the negative side of middling) from others. Such movies can have relatively low RT scores despite having good-great reviews from those who like it. This may be the case here. I note that MovieBob gave it 8/10.Also, sometimes when someone takes a risk, it just doesn’t work out. This may also be the case here. I’m curious what the actual fan ratings will be.What’s a little disappointing and ironic about the media having takes like this article is that a poor performance by The Eternals may lead Marvel to not give future directors the freedom they gave Zhao. If when they play it safe their movies obtain RT scores in the 80s-90s (even if the actual ratings are middling) but in movies where they give the director more freedom the score is low, why risk taking a chance and shaking things up?
And then things that are done industry wide have all of a sudden become “Marvel only” problems
The practices aren’t only industry wide: Marvel is just borrowing from the studio system that was place in Hollywood going back to the 1920s and ‘30s. Directors worked with a regular team of the studios artists and craftspeople. Hitchcock and many other directors prevised shots. The studio system had its problems but it also produced great works.
“Movies are supposed to be collaborative too, yet we’ve come up with this “auter” idea, where it becomes basically one or two people who “make” the movie. It’s really dismissive of all of the other people who work on them to then give all of the credit to one person.”This is a fundamental misunderstanding of auteur theory.
If they play it safe and “stick to the Marvel conveyor belt style” it’s bad, if they try to make a big swing like this it’s bad.
I don’t see how the second part follows. This isn’t getting mixed reviews because it took a big swing, it’s getting mixed reviews because a lot of people seem to be finding the characterizations shallow, the running time overly-indulgent, and the stakes hard to connect with. These are problems plenty of films without Marvel’s branding have run into, and they’re problems that go beyond “it’s not what I want from Marvel.” I obviously haven’t seen the movie yet so I have no idea if I’d agree with those complaints, but at the very least it doesn’t sound like they’re outlandish or overly-picky… they just sound like standard criticism of the sorts of pitfalls plenty of other big-budget spectacles fall into all the time.
As for taking a big swing, sometimes it pays off. Sometimes it fails horribly. That’s the nature of a big swing, and if the latter winds up being the result in one instance, it’s not an indictment of ambition as a basic concept.
I think it is a mismatch of artist and material for sure. It’s not that Zhao *couldn’t* do a Marvel film, it’s that maybe it’s not the right leap to go from low budget neo-realist pictures straight to 200 million dollar franchise tentpole. There’s no room for failure when you’ve got that much invested, so of course Marvel is going to be cautious and have lots of handlers to make sure all the VFX heavy scenes are shot “correctly” and it’s at the expense of the personal vision. I think it would’ve been wiser to offer a smaller budget, say 50 million, to allow more room for a unique vision, greater room for the film to grow in the box office realm. If the film falls short, you can chalk it up to “Oh well, the pairing didn’t work,” but if it does work, then you give more budget for the sequel.
Marvel will never do a wide-release for a $50 m MCU movie in theaters. The movie release calendar is just too packed with $150+ m movies (which are staggered in away so as to not directly compete with one another).However, in addition to their 6-8 part TV shows, it would be great for Marvel to use Disney+ as a vehicle to deliver midbudget MCU movies with low/middle tier characters…or even smaller budget/story films with top tier characters. Take Black Widow for example. Cut the CGI-fest at the end and you’ve got a relatively low stakes spy movie with a much smaller budget. Would have done exceedingly well as a Disney+ exclusive. (I’m not saying Black Widow shouldn’t have been in theaters. I’m happy the character finally got a big budget blockbuster [even if not completely successful]. Just using it as an example.)
I think this is some of the better MCU/Eternals coverage I’ve read, even if in the end I disagree with a lot of it (with the huuuuuuuuge caveat that I haven’t seen Eternals). It was very thoughtful, and I enjoyed reading it. That said: the Branagh Dutch angles story is very amusing, but he was wrong to lean on them and the studio was right to freak out. They just suck, though suck less to me knowing how attached to them he is. The other thing, which others have said, is that maybe the director of something like Nomadland really just was not a good match for the MCU. Serious Oscar Bait (TM) is a genre, action is a genre, and they don’t often mesh well. Having seen Eagle vs Shark and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, I’m surprised Taika Waititi did as well as he did with the MCU, though if I never see Korg again I will die happy (sorry). At this point with a lot of these directors it seems that they are set up in the public eye as “maturing” or “fixing” the MCU, and that is a not ever going to work out the way people think.
Honestly, the combination of poor reviews and the director makes me more interested in watching The Eternals than just about any recent Marvel film. I’m all for something interesting, but messy, rather than bland but competent.
I hate to knock a person’s creds, but what exactly makes Chloé Zhao a “world-class” director? I understand and recognize that she won a couple Academy Awards for Nomadland (2020), which is cool and all, but that doesn’t make anyone “world-class” by itself these days, otherwise we’d be calling Ben Affleck a “world-class director and writer” as well. Oh, and he even has just as many directing credits as Chloé Zhao right now too, who only has 3 prior full-length movies to her name, and until now, none of them were high budget visual effects pieces. If I’m to be honest, Marvel movies don’t handle stillness and slow-burn character studies all that well… They never have and I don’t expect them to start now, so if anything, this is just further proof that high budget comic book films about characters that fight big CGI baddies kinda need to stay away from directors that make films like Nomadland. I really don’t understand why Chloé Zhao is referred to as “arguably one of Marvel’s best gets yet” while mentioning something about pedigree when she wasn’t born into the film industry. She didn’t direct her first movie until she was 33, which is older than I am now, and 6 years older than when Ryan Coogler directed his first film. She’s had a good (small) roster of directing, writing, producing, and editing, but again, these are for some really small movies.To me, she seems too inexperienced to helm a Marvel movie of this scope, and with this many recognizable faces and talents. I made this call when I first looked up who was in the cast and who was directing this thing, and so far I don’t see a good argument as to why she was chosen for it. Slow-burning and softly expositional films like the one’s that have made up her career don’t sound like they’d make a good fit for Marvel movies. Sometimes, it seems that Marvel just likes to hire fresh-faced directors for projects they’re seemingly not ready for in hopes of catching lightning in a bottle… Regardless of their past successes or recent awards, the director’s signature style of filmmaking kinda needs to mesh with the MCU, and that isn’t often very easy. Even Joss Whedon struggled getting these big budget blockbusters off the ground, and he was pretty much tailor made for the job. Take for example, Shane Black, who directed Iron Man 3, arguably one of the worst movies in the MCU behind Thor 2: The Dark World. That was only his 2nd movie after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), which was well received, but clearly that experience didn’t equate to making a good Marvel movie. This is where I often find complaints of studio interference to be a bit absurd, as if Marvel doesn’t usually interfere in every movie they put out, because I’m starting to feel that they could be the ones picking up the pieces to make a somewhat passable film. In Alan Taylor’s case, the director of Thor 2: The Dark World, he came off of mostly directing TV stuff, where Thor 2 would only be his 2nd movie with a theatrical release, and even as terrible as that movie is, it’s still his highest rated movie on IMDb. He would later direct Terminator Genisys (2015) and The Many Saints of Newark (2021), both of which weren’t as well received as Thor 2, surprisingly. This leads me to believe that had Marvel not interfered, Thor 2 could have been a much worse movie… That is, however, just my speculation. I just don’t believe that had Chloé Zhao been given the full reigns of the Eternals that we’d see an MCU movie worth raving about. No one is going to be happy walking into the theater of the next Marvel film only to be greeted with an emotionally slow-moving think piece about self discovery that’s more along the lines of The Rider (2017) than The Joker (2019). And I don’t think that all this is solved by boiling down the issues of the film and saying “they should trust the artist and their vision” because the parts where we see Chloé Zhao’s vision and style shine through are the parts that few people have been all that interested in.This is why I don’t believe that the problem here is with Marvel hiring “world-class” directors for movies and mistrusting them. I think Marvel has a problem hiring inexperienced directors and writers for their massively budgeted movies. Just recently we had Black Widow show up and get classified as “possibly the worst MCU movie” and NO SURPRISE, it was Cate Shortland’s 4th theatrical movie (still rated higher than most movies this year). This isn’t always a bad thing, because it does give them a lot of experience and puts their name out there at least. Sometimes even some inexperience directors find their niche with big budget stuff, as with Taika Waititi, where Thor 3: Ragnarok (2017) was only his 5th movie with a theatrical release, and he handled it beautifully—considering that Marvel was certainly running some interference, as Waititi has no writing credits in the film, which was written by Marvel regulars Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher L. Yost. But people who break the mold and get early experience directing a Marvel movie with great success is few and far between. From what it looks like, Chloé Zhao was given just as many opportunities and guidelines as any other Marvel director (Example: Ryan Coogler). It’s impossible for us to know to what extent the studio’s interference amounted to, but she even got writing credits, which is something Taika Waititi should have been given, but wasn’t, and yet Thor 3 still rules.
If Eternals didn’t work (I’ll decide when I see it) the culprit is more likely Marvel having chosen the property for adaptation as it is the director’s style or the boundaries the MCU places on directors. Plenty of directors with distinctive styles have done good work within the MCU. (Gunn, Waititi, the Russos, Favreau, pre-garbage revelations Whedon…)Beyond that, the MCU has shown itself able to accommodate many different genres/styles into its stories (historical war epic, 70’s style political spy thriller, wacky comedy, space opera, heist film, character study, magical fantasy, and yes big honkin’ team-up.)But I was skeptical from the beginning about The Eternals because the flavor of its characters and what they are doesn’t really fit what has worked about The Avengers (as a team and individually) or Guardians of the Galaxy (which worked because they played both the relationships and the silliness straight.) But the Eternals, played straight, are still pretty dull and underwhelming despite being in theory a about fantastical immortal race of beings. I was so skeptical that it wasn’t until they started releasing trailers that I accepted it wasn’t a holding place for Fantastic Four or X-Men, I just couldn’t believe they would try to adapt it. If anything this may be a lesson (that Inhumans should have already taught them) that just because something works as a part of the comic world doesn’t mean it can be adapted to the MCU. In part comics can feel like a sprawling garden where you can hang out in the tropical flowers or the fruit trees or at the fountain and be happy. The MCU needs to feel connected, it’s part of the charm, and I’m having trouble imagining how to connect The Eternals (which the trailers seem to even admit to with the “oh, we never interfere” thing.)
A luminous sunset over a character’s shoulder seems made for YouTube explainer videos to pause and comment that Zhao is “known for her use of natural light.” Call it the One Perfect Shot-ization of the MCU—the digestion and packaging of artistic style for global consumption.I have no idea whether this is a fair comment about the film, but it pinpoints what was so deeply annoying about the marketing campaign. Kevin Feige primed the online fandom to fawn over the natural light, and they sure did. And the trailer gives us that one shot of a field with a gabled house in the distance to fan the flames of the Terrence Malick comparisons. I have no reason to think the film itself is anything but sincere. But Disney has been using it to promote the chip-on-the-shoulder narrative that franchise films are just as good as…you name it. The marketing is creating a defensive narrative about the franchise, potentially at the expense of making people want to watch the film. I like Terrence Malick as much as the next effete intellectual snob, but I watch his movies when my date has to work late.
I haven’t seen Eternals yet, and my hopes as a big fan of The Rider (even more than Nomadland personally), have been metered from the start. Warner Brothers on one hand has no real house style because they do let their directors loose (Snyderverse) and when they don’t (Green Lantern). The Nolan movies are the biggest successes (I think they’re better movies than they are Batman stories). From my friends in the film industry this conforms to WB’s rep, that they do let directors lead. Marvel on the other hand great taste but definitely limits the creativity of who they hire, and they’ve had off experiences when they let the reins go. This isn’t all this regime, but the first Hulk (a noble failure imo) and the Spider-Man broadway show are cases of Marvel hiring the best and letting them loose, and every other time it’s about controlling the product. Which is how the MCU is born of consistency, but the best Marvel superhero movie (Spider-Verse) isn’t theirs. Gunn and Watiti have tastes that aren’t so off from the kind of stories MCU wants to tell, so their movies have some character and work well with the model. And while Captain Marvel was a great success, I don’t think it was a great mesh except for Ben Mendelsohn, who Boden & Fleck worked with on Mississippi Grind. (Sugar’s their best, imo)It sucks that it looks like this one isn’t working, because as life is timing it’s coinciding with lots of different cultural contexts and conversations. There’s this conversation about what’s the MCU house style do to the artists in it’s midst, there’s MCU fatigue, superhero fatigue, an indy auteur non-white woman in this coming for a giant franchise picture, which are hit or miss to begin with but following an unprecedented series of hits.Marvel has a big box that’s still a box. I think there’s a ceiling to what they can achieve outside of a team-up/punch up story. The Loneliness of the Silver Surfer with lots of floating and then mingling with humans—when he was trapped on Earth—is the Chloe Zhao story in the MCU, if there is one. A What if where Peter Parker is a photojournalist watching Gwen Stacy be Spider-Woman, a la Marvels, or Wandavision ending with a divorce instead of a fight are actually different stories.
And you know what, I haven’t seen Shang-Chi yet either. Did that work pretty well? Short Term 12 isn’t exactly the calling card you’d expect. Though kung-fu/wuxia story has a lot of precedent and is an easy fit for a superhero movie. (And Tony Leung is a better get than Angelina Jolie in all movie star registers imo except for American name recognition. That’s hiring a ringer)What I’ll be thinking about when I finally watch it is I wonder if Zhao picked the Eternals? It’s not a gangbuster property, it’s got lots of characters, and maybe it’s just me, it doesn’t have a recent successful run to cherrypick stories from. I didn’t like the big Neil Gaiman run too much—kinda ponderous does seem to be the house take on then. Like the Sentry. A thing Marvel tells you is important and makes important because they write the stories but never landed. (Unless everybody else likes the Sentry?)
The answer to the headline is pretty easy: branding and goodwill. They couldn’t give two shits about Chloe Zhao’s style (as Katie says, “maybe” some people do, but the people who have final approval over the hire definitely don’t), they just want a prestige hire to lend legitimacy and goodwill to their projects, and do a good job with the actors while the second unit directs every action/effects scene – that’s been their M.O. for a while now. I don’t care what Zhao says about her involvement in previs, we know her involvement was minimal based on past Marvel movies and her own experience. I’d imagine she collaborated with the previs team, and gave some suggestions after seeing their work, but there’s zero chance that was a priority for her.
For all involved, at the end of the day – it comes down to money. Marvel & Disney wanted another box office hit (with a bit of street cred from Zoe Chao directing), and Chao prob wanted to finally get some cash after making indie stuff that probably doesn’t pay great. It’s likely a crass observation, obviously, but this is Hollywood, not a soup kitchen.
Because Marvel is owned by Disney and Disney wants basic formulas that will make them tons of money.
HOT TAKE
“With less at stake, more could be accomplished creatively—just look at what’s happened with the rival DCEU after the tepid reception of forced the studio to re-evaluate its strategy.”I’m unclear what the point of this is. Are we saying Shazam and/or Aquaman were some sort of creative milestones? Or that they were somehow ‘more’ than the pleasant blandness of the mid-tier MCU movies?
This seems like a really interesting article and topic. I do kind of wish you had waited to post it until more of us have had a chance to see the movie.
I want Thanos shitting into a bucket.
I’m sad that I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the thread to reach the best comment on this article.
Did you do it?Yes.What did it cost?Everything.
Zhao’s naturalistic color palette goes to mud.It could also be that maybe Zhao’s style was just the wrong approach for the Eternals, the Kirbiest Kirby book that has ever Kirbied. Even if you take into account that it’s seemingly following the more subdued-by-comparison Gaiman and Romita take…
Is it a matter of the studio not trusting the director, or the whole production not knowing how to fully translate the work?
Zhao’s a fantastic director, and I think she’d have succeeded if she’d been allowed to focus on a singular hero/property. Something closer to street-level. Eternals is seemingly world-changing and huge in scope, right? Also, it seems like the directors that fare best in the MCU aren’t so much the ones that “adapt” to the house style—something which I find dubious outside of the big tentpole films—but which play around in genre. “Superhero film as roadtrip movie” or “Superhero film as spy thriller,” etc. You know, like comics tend to do.
I think she’d have succeeded if she’d been allowed to focus on a singular hero/property.My understanding was she approached Marvel about wanting to make an MCU film and was originally considered for Black Widow, but during discussions she specifically expressed an interest/desire in making The Eternals…so i don’t think saying she wasn’t allowed to focus on a singular hero/property is right.This is what she wanted to make. It just seems that it didn’t work out (for most critics…we’ll see about general audiences).
Ahh, this I did not know.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing but I thought James Gunn said Marvel is pretty much hands-off with maybe minor exceptions. I’ll see if I can find it but I thought directors like he and Taika Waititi have been pretty open about it being a positive experience (I totally could be wrong).
There probably isn’t a strict hands-on, hands-off rule, depending on the director. Gunn’s and Taika’s sensibilities might probably be more in line with the style Marvel wants, so they get less pushback on things in general, while other directors might not have had the same privilege.
Excellent point! That being said, it does sound like the director herself said they were hands off?
I can’t wait to see the film to understand the issue is.
As much as I’d like to believe Zhao and Feige, there’s always the possibility that they had agreed to say she was given as much creative control as possible even if it weren’t the truth.But I personally think it’s just Zhao’s style not being a good fit for the movie she and Marvel wanted to make.
That’s totally fair. As much as I like the Batman films they are not at all my favorite Christopher Nolan films.
Well, at least there is some trust between them:https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/nov/04/eternals-banned-middle-east-same-sex-kiss
Clearly, there is a ceiling on what you can do with a bunch of superheros farting laser beams on each other. Maybe a Guillermo Del Toro is the closest to having an auteur’s vision that aligns with the inherent genre silliness, but practically, something like Iron Man is about the best the material can achieve – Fun, quippy and light on its feet.I feel for a director looking at the challenge of doing anything marginally interesting with the material. The Joker leaned away from the genre trappings and was a pretty well assembled, wholely derivative work – Maybe it’s a proof of concept. I can see Branagh (who always seems like he’s promising to do something more interesting than he ends up doing) being stymied by the utter banality of what he is faced with (not only the scenario, but the whole reality of the Marvel production factory) and just throwing up his hands and clinging to some idea that an expressionist take might jumpstart something interesting – I guess it’s why I’m partial to Joel Schumacher’s game, winking contempt for the genre – At least he had fun with what could be a totally dreary exercise.
The thing is, we have real proofs of concept in various dramas from ancient Greece, where these archetypal characters can successfully interrogate all kinds of existential concerns, or what it means to live in a society or be an individual. The works of Homer have a little bit of “action”, although never in any extended form, but the dramas left the killing off stage – Something really interesting could be attempted by leaving the action entirely offstage, or at least winnowing it down to the very very bare minimum.Don’t @ me about how I just don’t like superhero movies – You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.
Ignoring most of this, I have to wonder if you can really call Greek dramas proof of concept when you’re taking something that was successful in a completely separate culture, for a completely separate audience, in a completely separate medium, with completely different expectations for what the production should achieve.
I kind of see what you’re saying, but I think that ignores just how much their dramaturgy underlies any of ours – So why discard what makes their tragedies timeless enough to still be performed and read now to focus on the quality of watching someone play with action figures.
Besides that, I think that superheros very precisely fit into the archetypal qualities that the Greek Pantheon of gods fulfilled – The influence to me seems totally obvious and intentional. There are other cultures’ myths too, but they clearly have some metaphorical meaning that still resonates.
A lot of people do draw that connection re: mythology and superheroes. And, in a weird way, I do think you get some of that with superheroes in comic books, rather than movies. Because in comic books you don’t have time and movement, you have to move the focus other places, so despite the fact that they can (and often do) have weird and wild imagery, the gravity of the story HAS to be on something other than the spectacle. The Gwenpool run from a couple of years back comes to mind, because as you go on you dig into what it means to be a character whose power comes from meta knowledge.A lot of why ancient theater looks the way it does, with action happening off screen, is also because of restrictions on the form. While you do have time and motion, you’re limited for space and scope and visualization. What you have is people, so you show people, and you largely go through the emotional arc with those people.Movies have time and motion and space and scope, and different expectations that come with that. These particular movies are, it’s also worth mentioning, meant to be very broadly accessible. It would be a little bit of an oversimplification to say they’re kids movies, but kids are meant to be able to watch them, and teens, and adults, and as usually happens with things that are meant to have broad appeal (which isn’t a BAD thing), they’re also not going to meet everyone’s specific needs. If that’s not for you, I can definitely get that. I can watch superhero movies and enjoy them, but I can’t read YA fiction to save my life. The tropes and the style of storytelling frustrate the hell out of me. That’s not a problem with the genre or a problem with other adults who read YA when they’re looking for something easier. It’s just a mismatch of my needs with what the genre conventions.
Good point – Maybe when you can make a real action scene, you do it, and when you have a stage and a few actors with lifespans into their 40s, you don’t bother. I had to keep myself from using the term “kids movie” in my first comment, but I agree.
I guess what I’m getting at is that The Eternals is ostensibly FOR ADULTS, or at least it sees itself that way, and so I think they need to commit to not appealing to the broadest possible audience, and I think that means not building around action set-pieces, which seems antithetical to their business model. I imagine that something more interesting is possible, but I think they can’t do this negotiation of 50% auteur and 50% Marvel production, or else they end up with compromises that satisfy no one.Or maybe there’s no There there…
Easily the greatest director to make a commercial for Amazon. Such an artist.
Christ, imagine the shitstorm of whiny fanboi wanking that’d happen if Tarsem Singh were ever persuaded to do a Marvel film…
“Chloé Zhao is the ideal collaborator for Marvel Studios”
Based on what?
“Why not just use a rotating house staff of creatives, more akin to a television show?”
Good suggestion, maybe they’ll start doing that NEARLY TEN YEARS AGO.
Given that we have had 50000000000000 articles just like this over the last decade, I’d say the answer is because – financially, it works. And until that changes (which could be now, for all we know), they won’t stop.
Maybe she isn’t cut out for big superhero cinema, seeing as her pedigree is small drama, but no, of course it’s just Marvel
Wait, does dimming the projector bulb even work when you’re showing DCPs? I can’t imagine a lot of places are getting prints.
“The lighting in Eternals—at least in those outdoor scenes where Zhao is able to do her thing—is indeed gorgeous.” -We’ve got people writing for the “Audio/Visual Club” that still don’t understand that directors don’t “shoot” or “light” their movies. When will industry journalists begin to acknowledge the existence of the cinematographer and what they do.. Its 2021 guys. Come on.
THANK YOU. That is a huge pet peeve.
Not every director who wins an Oscar is ‘world class’, just like not every actor who wins one is the best of the year or even goes on to find continued success. Disney mostly hires workmanlike directors, some of whom they can leverage short term buzz with. They have a budget, probably shop around a bit, hear a decent pitch, and pick someone with some well received films under their belt who can produce a movie within a pretty tight time frame. Eternals seems like a tough movie to pull off even for an established director with experience in huge complicated blockbusters. I don’t think Ridley Scott would have made a great Eternals movie. It has to introduce a large ensemble of characters that nobody has heard of, in a continuity-heavy movie series, and almost directly after a status quo rocking crossover event that was a decade in the making. It could probably look less dreary but the finished product seems fine enough. It’s not like most other marvel movies are better than a B-
They just want to sell their name. Also last time Disney trusted a director we got the Star Wars sequels
The answer to the question asked in the headline is obviously money. Almost any competent Hollywood director can be slotted into a Marvel film. The “pre-vis” concept has evolved from creating rough animatics to delivering completely polished blueprints that leave little room for director’s input. It’s not just wholly CGI sequences either. Specialized second-unit stunt crews often deliver shot-for-shot sequences timed to the second that are basically replicated exactly when the real cameras roll.
It’s truly shocking that an Oscar-bait director who was offered a rare big payday to direct a superhero movie might have phoned it in a bit. I doubt Marvel is all that upset. Eternals was always a ‘swing for the fences’ project for them. Guardians was too and it connected. But even if it failed, they would have been fine with the core Avengers heroes.
if the Eternals movie is really beautiful production design and big weird fights interspersed with awkward dialogue scenes, then that sounds a lot like the Eternals comic that Kirby created. Honestly, late-stage Kirby is weird…
Eternals was basically his way of continuing his New Gods ideas and plot threads, but it never really took off and it got canceled not long after, which is why it was just such a half-baked concept.I don’t know why Feige prefers the Eternals over having another go at the Inhumans. At least with Inhumans, they have a clearer role; Black Bolt is space royalty, with half of his allegiance being to the humans/Earth. Maybe it’s because Feige thinks it’s too close to the failed TV show, or because he’s not a fan, I don’t know.
So New Gods was Thor redone for DC after he fell out with Stan, and Eternals is New Gods after he got fed up with DC. Basically, we need a giant mash-up of Thor/New Gods/Eternals and insert “take my money” gif here etc etc
Every single MCU flick looks exactly like the one that came before it. This is an extremely expensive tv show you get to watch in a theater.
Don’t forget that Disney also fired two directors for Star Wars.
Sorry, but a critically successful Nomadland does not mean you can cut-and-paste the director into the Marvel universe and it works.
Zhao was hired BEFORE she won those Oscars. People seem to forget that. I don’t think there’s anything in her short filmography that screams action blockbuster movie potential directing gig.And let’s talk Kenneth Branagh who directed Thor. Good or bad?Which directors have publicly expressed an interest in directing an MCU movie? We already know which ones would rather die than direct a comic book superhero movie…
1- Unless Zhao actually confirms that Marvel did not treat her movie the way she wanted to, it’s a little early to absolve her of any blame. She’s never made a film like this before so we can’t assume she would be good at it. Her willingness at trying to be something new should be commended but it does come with the risk of her having a learning curve.
2- We’re only a few years away of critics hailing Black Panther as a masterpiece that changed everything, and Thor Ragnarok got a lot of praise as well. Not mentioning Ryan Coogler or Taika Waititi anywhere in this article feels disingenuous.3- I have yet to hear anyone mention that the source material might be to blame for many of the film’s problems. People talk about The Eternals as if it was something new but the comic was created in 1976. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. Jack Kirby deserves every praise he got as an artist but he was seriously limited as a writer. The mythology was overly complicated, needed too much plot exposition and none of the characters left a strong impression; exactly the same criticism the movie has received.
I have no idea if this movie is good or bad, but if it is bad…why is it because Marvel didn’t “trust” her and not because she made a shitty movie? This is such nonsense. It’s her movie. If it sucks, she…like anyone else who makes a movie…can own it.
I really don’t understand how anyone can watch Nomadland, and think, “yeah, she’d be great directing a Marvel movie!”
Didn’t she direct Nomadland after wrapping up Eternals?
I understand that a lot of people liked Nomadland and The Rider. But calling Zhao a “world-class director” in a time when Hong Sang-soo, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Claire Denis, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lucrecia Martel, and Jean-Luc Godard are all alive and making movies seems a bit much.
Thank you.
It’s the moviemaking equiv to the trophy wife–not fit for the task at hand.
She showed that she can direct somber dramas. Not sure why anyone, including the director herself would think that she would be a good fit for the MCU.
Modern cinema projectors have a setting for how bright you want the output to be. Because different screens are different sizes. It’s not a case of ‘unscrewing the bulb to save money’. Were you born in the 1900s?
Anyone who directs a Marvel movie knows very well it’s part of a collaboration. Doesn’t mater if your James Gunn or Taika Watiti. Marvel has too much at stake to give a director free reign.
A faction of MCU fans (and perhaps the company itself) has a complex about these films not being regarded as “serious” cinema, as if dominating the box office and being well-reviewed by critics isn’t satisfying enough. Who cares what a handful of cinephiles think as long as you’re enjoying the films?The seed of this kind of cinephile clout chasing started earlier, with people saying Winter Soldier is really a conspiracy thriller, and comparing it to other classic films of the genre. But it went into overdrive with Eternals, with people touting the use of natural light, real locations, comparisons to Malick, etc., as if shooting outside in natural light at dusk is all it takes for a film to be Malick-like. Content-wise I highly doubt there’s any similarity to Malick, and even on a visual basis alone, his films look far more beautiful than the muted colors and flat, overcast lighting Eternals (judging from the trailers). That flatness is endemic to the MCU in general, but Eternals looks like it takes it to an extreme. Shouldn’t these films explode off the screen in light and color? What is with this middling look? I’ve said it before here that Marvel’s non-style feels like it was chosen so as to not even get anywhere near a bold choice, in case it puts someone off.
Has the Marvel house still always been a thing, or has it grown as the universe gets more creaky, reliant on multiple continuities or whatever. Because there are films where the director’s style shines through – Taika Waititi and James Gunn come to mind.Maybe the Guardians as a property, for example, just automatically lends more personality than something naturally blander like Black Widow. I know people love Black Panther, but it felt like just another Marvel film in the second half, complete with video game boss fight shenanigans.
Going to steal this from Cracked, that noted this trend years ago in regards to Hollywood in general, Spielberg did not jump to big budgets right away, he probably did not learn how to do everything from zero as nobody does, heck even if Tarantino is great and famously did not go to Film School I doubt he would have been able to do Django from day one.
Mmmmm. I think just because you say and imply that you *want* “Chloe Zhao to be ideal collaborator for Marvel, doesn’t mean it’s so. I don’t think she is. But that doesn’t make me right or wrong. But it certainly gave me pause when I discovered she would be helming Eternals. There’s a lot of “fault” to be placed at the Disney machine for being boringly formulaic in their origin story telling. But I don’t know how she qualifies for the best person for this role. As Patton Oswalt once said, “I want a green lantern ring, but just because I want one, doesn’t mean I’ll get one.” They need someone helming the bigger picture of a complicated story. Disney should have learned their lesson from before when they brought in the Russo’s to course correct half-way through the grand arch. Marvel feels like they’re back to ripping out one-offs and fingers crossed it comes together five years later.
Why…? It’s called mar·ket·ing
Taika Waititi did tremendously well when combining his particular brand of film-making with the “Marvel formula”…!
“filmmakers who have rejected Marvel Studios’ advances include Ava DuVernay…”… who did accept an offer from DC.
Aren’t all the Marvel/franchise directors people that have made one or two relatively low budget films. They add something to the advertising of the film but they are ultimately subservient.
I don’t want to be harsh but most Oscar films are trash. Middle brow trash.