Last year was a significant one for filmmaker Chloé Zhao. In the opening months of 2021 she made Oscars history, winning Best Picture and Best Director for Nomadland. And just a few months later, she released one of the most divisive films in the MCU – ambitious cosmic epic Eternals. While the film pulled in over $400 million at the box office (in the pandemic era, too), it received a mixed reaction from critics and Marvel fans. Now, in a major new Empire interview, Zhao reflects on the initial reception of the film, its evolving status, and why it may have landed the way that it did
The director says she was aware of the mixed reviews on release, but wasn’t concerned by them. “I think the need for consensus is a hindrance for any authentic creative process,” she tells Empire. “Just like it’s a hindrance for living an authentic life as a person. I have been on the receiving end of somewhat consensus, and divisiveness about my work. Neither of them has any real influence on me as an artist, because every time I’m lucky enough to create, I learn from the process. From what I’ve succeeded [at], and what I’ve failed [at]. But that learning process is a very intimate affair. Anything beyond that, for me, it’s just a part of the ecosystem that exists because of the nature of the industry we’re in. Like a flower or a rock, I acknowledge and appreciate their presence. But that’s as far as it goes.”
Released at a point when the Coronavirus pandemic had been causing disruption worldwide for nearly two years, Zhao wasn’t surprised that opinion was split on her tale of troubled heroes trying to navigate their place and purpose in the cosmos. “Eternals was planned to be released soon after Endgame, and not at a time when everyone is having an existential crisis,” she says. “The film itself is about existential crisis, both for humanity and God. So I think we definitely felt it was coming.”
Zhao also spoke about how the film was received in relation to her previous works – including Nomandland and fellow indie favourite The Rider – and the assumption that major elements of Eternals were a product of the ‘Marvel process’ rather than her as a filmmaker. “When people have that feeling, like they need to put order into things, they need to understand it by putting it into boxes,” she says. “It is not about us, it is about them. And I say that lovingly, because they have a level of comfort [with] how their entertainment and their world – their beloved Marvel, or their beloved indie filmmaker – functions. That’s the order of the logic of their world that’s being disturbed. So I appreciate their passion, to try to make sense of it.”
She continues: “The truth is that nobody is one layer. In this case, we truly stepped out of the box that I think the world put us in, and met in the middle because of our shared interests. And by truly doing that, it made a lot of people uncomfortable on both sides. But there are also people who are more comfortable with the order of their world [being] disturbed. And then they look at our love-child and go, “Oh! This touches different sides of me!’ I like that. So I completely understand the divisiveness coming from critics and the fans. Because when you take this to extremes that are seen as opposition – the world I come from and the world of Marvel, that has been divided in a way that’s so unfair and unfortunate – and to merge the way we did, I actually see the reaction as a testament to how much we had merged with each other; how uncomfortable that might make people feel.”
Read Empire’s full Chloé Zhao interview – talking Eternals’ seismic twists, surprise cameos, and Star Wars influences – in the Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness issue, on sale Thursday 17 March and available to pre-order online here. Eternals is streaming now on Disney+, and is also available on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K and digital.