After more than a dozen years and twenty-five films produced, one would think that the Marvel Cinematic Universe will soon be running out of superheroes. Playing November 5, Eternals (Eternals), twenty-sixth opus in the long-running saga, recalls that on the contrary, there remains a host of characters from the comics to bring to the big screen. In a desire to mark a certain revival, Marvel has secured the collaboration of Chloe Zhao, winner of the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for Nomadland.
“In a post-Infinity saga, Nate Moore [qui coproduit le film] and I wanted to take another bold step that would say, “You don’t know everything about the Universe yet. There are these ten spectacular superheroes that you have never met and who have been here all the time, ”says Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios and chief creative officer at the Marvel Cinematic Universe (UCM) at the meeting. ‘a virtual conference attended by the director and most of the stars.
Created by the Celestials, a sort of supreme beings, the Eternals are extraterrestrials living incognito on Earth for thousands of years. Their mission is to protect humans from a species as mysterious as it is monstrous: the Deviants.
Chloe Zhao smiles at the memory of her initial encounter with Marvel’s bonzes. Rather than trying to reassure them by detailing how she would film such and such a special effects action sequence, she recited a poem by William Blake to them: Auguries of Innocence.
“In this poem, Blake tries to make it clear that we can perceive the infinite beauty of the Cosmos inside the smallest things on Earth,” notes the filmmaker. My vision of the film aspired to translate this scale; something as immense as the creation of the Sun and as small as the whisper of lovers. “
We are thinking here of a rare (the first?) Sequence in the UCM where we see two characters, Sersi and Ikaris, making – chastely – love.
A buried quality
Recalcitrant superheroine, Sersi is in this case the protagonist of the film. Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians) the interpreter. “Sersi does not have the most spectacular or extravagant powers […] What she does have, however, is empathy and a real affinity for mankind. She is a free spirit. I enjoyed taking this trip with her… Ultimately, she becomes her own person and develops her own power. It’s a bit of an initiatory tale, even though Sersi is thousands of years old. “
If they are distinct in their respective powers precisely, the Eternals remain very united, no matter how much time has passed since they saw each other. This privileged link is one of the elements that appealed to Angelina Jolie, interpreter of Thena, who in the film is at the origin of the myth of the goddess of war Athena.
“I’m a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a huge fan of Chloe, and when I was told about the cast, what that family would be like, I wanted to be in it right away. At this point, I knew next to nothing about the plot or who I would be playing. One aspect for which Chloe is renowned is her ability to infuse reality into her films. “
To pursue the star, this realism is, among other things, dependent on the filmmaker’s flair for choosing performers who, sometimes unwittingly, have a quality close to that of the character. The fantastic context, far from the almost documentary authenticity of Chloé Zhao’s previous films, Songs My Brother Taught Me, The Rider (The cowboy) and Nomadland, is incidental.
“This quality buried in us grows in the film,” continues Angelina Jolie. Thena is perhaps the most out of the ordinary character that I have played. Yet my children find him to be the closest to me. She has this vulnerability and this invincible facade, and must combine the two … “
They recognized each other
One of the stated goals of the producers and Chloé Zhao with Eternals was to make sure that more fans could recognize themselves on the screen. In fact, what immediately strikes the imagination is the diversity of the cast. Apart from Gemma Chan and Angelina Jolie, the credits include Salma Hayek (Ajak), Brian Tyree Henry (Phastos), Richard Madden (Ikaris), Kumail Nanjiani (Kingo), Lia McHugh (Sprite), Don Lee (Gilgamesh), Lauren Ridloff ( Makkari), who is deaf …
Diversity is thus cultural, generational, bodily, “experiential” … The faction of spectators who already find the UCM too woke just have to beware.
Visibly delighted, Salma Hayek admits to having pinched herself when Chloe Zhao contacted her for the role of Ajak, one of the three heroes, with Makkari and Sprite, who have gone from masculine to comics to feminine in the film.
“I’ve always dreamed big – I wouldn’t have found myself here otherwise,” says Salma Hayek. In my big dreams, I saw myself playing a superheroine, working with the best filmmakers in the world, playing in big blockbusters, but also in artistic films with depth… But that didn’t really happen. You fight for that in your twenties, thirties, then in your forties you say to yourself: “Too bad! They do not understand ! They don’t see that I would have been great! Let them go and be seen, I am going to have a child! ” And you give up. But suddenly, in your mid-fifties, a brilliant filmmaker gives you the opportunity to do it all: play a superheroine in a blockbuster which also has artistic qualities and depth. So I was wrong: anything is possible. “
As you are
Launched in his speech, the highlight of the conference, the star of the film Frida went from laughter to tears: “Think about it! I am a small Mexican with big tits in the mid-fifties: I do not correspond to the image we have of a superheroine. Recently, I ran into a Latino mother and her three daughters, and they were all dressed up as Ajak. It was so moving to see that they recognized each other. “
Same story with Brian Tyree Henry, whose character, Phastos, finds his faith in humanity by founding a homoparental family, resulting in a first kiss between spouses of the same sex for Marvel.
“Phastos predates everything and has witnessed the turpitudes of humanity, but he still chooses love. He chooses to have a family even though he may have to bring himself to see it die… You know, I’m interested in the image of black men in movies, how we are portrayed. There have been so many portraits where power is taken away from us, where we are powerless… Chloe and Nate give us back power, ”says Brian Tyree Henry, who also underlines the total acceptance towards him shown by the filmmaker.
“When Chloe asked me to play a superhero, I spontaneously asked, ‘How many pounds should I lose?’ She replied: “What? We want you exactly as you are. ” Then again, as a black man, looking at me and saying “we want you exactly the way you are”, I had never experienced this. I saw myself as a child, watching all those superhero movies and not seeing any of them reflecting who I was… ”
In these uncertain times, Brian Tyree Henry hopes that like Phastos, people will regain faith in mankind, believing that it is worth saving, that it holds much goodness and beauty. By revisiting William Blake’s poem, we tend to agree with the actor: “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a Sky in a wild flower / Hold the Infinite in the palm of the hand / And the eternity in an hour. “
The film Eternals premieres November 5.