Eternals Helmer on Marvel’s Willingness to Shoot Practically

Both Chloe Zhao and Marvel Studios executives have called Eternals a hefty “risk” for the studio, largely because of how the movie itself was filmed. Upon Zhao’s insistence, Marvel Studios left the sound stages behind for outdoor set pieces and real-world filming locales. According to the filmmaker, this decision was made because the film needed to be immersive and had to take audiences on a trip unlike anything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen before.

“When I pitched the film, we spent half the time talking about what and the other half talking about how. That’s very important to me. Sometimes, we get excited about the what but we don’t talk about how,” Zhao said in a recent stop with THR.

She added, “We knew that this film had to be immersive, and we knew that there had to be a level of realism to everything, from action to the Eternals in historic periods. So we, as the audience, have to actually believe that these immortal aliens have walked the planet for several thousand years. I want the audience to discover these characters and their relationship with this planet.”

Because of that, Zhao and the studio opted to film in natural light whenever available.

“Shooting natural light in this situation added to that realism, and we were able to just go into a world and not worry too much about setting up a lot of lights,” the filmmaker recalled. “Our actors could actually interact with this environment, so you can believe them in their outfits and that they actually could have existed in ancient Babylon. We called it ‘National Geographic;’ it’s a more anthropological way of capturing things. That is natural light.”

Eternals enters theaters November 5th while Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be available for Disney+ subscribers to stream on November 12th.

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