On the set of Eternals, Marvel’s biggest and most ambitious movie yet
A $200 million blockbuster with a cast that has to be seen to be believed, Marvel’s Eternals is a superhero film unlike any you’ve ever seen before.
It’s a grey and wet November morning in London, as almost all November mornings in London are.
But inside Pinewood Studios, where Marvel is part way through production on their sprawling $US200 million epic ensemble film Eternals, the future of the MCU is looking bright.
Or should we say the past? Eternals is an ambitious project, spanning 7,000 years of storytelling and following a group of god-like superheroes adrift in the world of men. It’s based on a cult favourite Jack Kirby comic book series and represents the biggest departure from core storytelling that Marvel has made thus far.
Sure, Marvel has made ensemble movies before, and made them well. Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the studio’s biggest hits, right? And didn’t we all love those Avengers movies? (We did. The capstone of the series made a phenomenal $US2.797 billion worldwide, the highest grossing film of all time, until an Avatar re-release tipped James Cameron’s film back on top.)
But Eternals is something else entirely. The original source material is a fandom deepcut and, it must be said, a little bit wacky. The heroes are all unknown characters.
It helps that Marvel has assembled a cast including Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kit Harington, Richard Madden, Gemma Chan and Kumail Nanjiani to play them, yes. And also that arthouse darling Chloe Zhao is at the helm steering the ship, fresh from her groundbreaking Oscar win for her film Nomadland.
But Eternals is still a huge gamble for Marvel, as they enter their fourth phase of storytelling in the aftermath of the completion of the Avengers saga. Can Eternals stick the landing?
Well, Marvel is sparing no cost in trying. Inside London’s Pinewood Studios in November 2019, Eternals’ production design team is hard at work building some of the biggest sets ever made for one of the studio’s films.
First up is the Eternals’ spaceship the Domo: fully constructed both inside and out, a vast wedge-shaped vehicle painted in a rich, deep green.
This is the ship that brought the Eternals to Earth, some 7,000 years ago, explains Eternals’ production designer Eve Stewart as we walk through one of its many corridors. As such, it had to look different to anything else that had come before in the Marvel franchise. The original design looked like a pizza slice, she jokes, but they ended up with this geometric iteration instead.
Internally, long corridors lead to three huge spherical rooms. We tour two, both of which could easily fit 100 people in them. The first is largely empty, save for a ring of seating arranged around a sunken viewing platform, where the crew receive communications via portal, and the second, spotlighted in the film’s trailer, which is decorated with glass panels displaying what can only be described as space flowers.
Everything we see, from the space flowers – pearlescent and trippy – to the ship itself was crafted by hand, as per filmmaker Zhao’s directive for physical sets. It took approximately ten weeks, the designer shares, and a team of 400 people, to build the space ship.
Other sets, including the backdrop for an ancient Babylon action sequence, took 12 weeks to build. Still, Stewart doesn’t mind. She points out that when she did Cats she had 12 weeks in total for the whole film. On Eternals, it was 12 weeks a set.
And there are a lot of sets. The movie zips back and forth between timelines, taking in everything from Mesopotamia, Babylon and the Aztec empire, to present-day London, where Sersi (Chan) is working at the Natural History Museum and trying to live a normal life, despite her mythological powers and immortality, and Australia, where warriors Thena (Jolie) and Gilgamesh (Lee) are in exile in the middle of the red centre to a dusty stone shack, making pies and brewing beer.
Will there be any kangaroos in the film? “I’ll let you know,” Stewart jokes.
Another location was Ajak’s (Hayek) homestead in South Dakota, a destination close to director Zhao’s heart, as it serves as the setting for her previous films The Rider and Nomadland.
“She was really keen to get South Dakota represented in it,” Stewart shared.
The costumes similarly comprise the breadth of history and story on display in the film, as well as a fresh supersuit for each of the core main cast.
Costume designer Sammy Sheldon Differ used 3D body scanning of each actor to help create a unique supersuit for each character, all in slightly differing shades of mottled jewel tones: think emerald for Sersi, pearl for Thena, sapphire for Ajak.
The first model took Sheldon around five months to produce, but each subsequent iteration was a much faster process. Which was helpful, because Sheldon created at least six of each character’s costumes, in order to ensure continuity – and to accommodate wear and tear on this action-packed epic.
When Tyree Henry tried on his suit – in a rich purple – for the first time, he cried. “He was so happy,” recalls Sheldon Differ. “He’s such a sweetheart.”
Adds Ivo Coveney, the costume effects supervisor: “He just said I didn’t think anyone would make me a superhero... He was looking away from the mirror as we were dressing him for the final time and he wouldn’t look. We could see him taking deep breaths and he turned around and he shouted, ‘Oh my god, thank you!’ He was such a joy.”
The trickiest one to nail, though, was Kingo, the character played by Kumail Nanjiani. Why? Because the comedian’s body kept changing as he bulked, and bulked, and bulked up for the role. “He really worked out, he looked amazing,” says Sheldon Differ. “He lost five inches off his waist!”
The overwhelming mood, among everyone I speak to on set, is excitement. Eternals is 10 weeks into production and what has been shot already is thrilling. Producer Nate Moore, who greets us at Pinewood Studios, can’t wait to share a sizzle reel, which looks less like a Marvel movie and more like one of Zhao’s intimate, personal dramas including the Oscar-winning Nomadland and The Rider.
The director insisted on shooting a large chunk of the film on location, and the cast have just returned from 10 weeks in the very windy Canary Islands, where a pivotal action sequence was staged on an isolated beach.
Don Lee, the Korean action superstar of Train To Busan fame making his Hollywood debut in this film, is grateful to be back in London. Why? “Korean food,” he laughs. “I love meat, barbecue, pork. I found a good place in London, so I’m happy about it.”
Moore shows us beautiful footage, filmed on a sandy shore at sunrise with the light pouring in, illuminating those costumes to brilliant effect. It’s fluid and poetic and very romantic, which is apt, given that Moore describes the film as, ultimately, a love story between once-and-maybe-future partners Ikaris (Madden, who was cast because the Marvel team were all obsessed with Bodyguard, Moore reveals) and Sersi (Chan).
For those wishing there was more romance in the MCU, Eternals could be the film to deliver on that promise; it even features Marvel’s very first sex scene. A tame one, but a sex scene nonetheless.
And there’s also a same-sex relationship between Phastos (Tyree Henry) and his partner, which is lovingly rendered on screen. “To us, love is love,” explains Moore. “To these characters, love is love.”
A reference that Zhao brought to producers Moore and Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, early on in production was the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. The bestseller is a history of humankind but not as you know it: Harari attempts to track our species through evolution, the good, the bad and the ugly. What are the qualities that make us who we are? What are we striving for?
Both Moore and Feige read the book straight away, and realised that through Eternals there was potential to make broader commentary on what it means to be human, perfect and imperfect as we are.
The overarching theme of the film is, Moore says, “examining the value of humanity”.
He adds: “All we can do is tell the best story that we can.” And hope that the audience connects.
But don’t worry, there’s also plenty of action. Overseeing all the stunts is Eunice Huthart, a no-nonsense Yorkshirewoman and former contestant on UK Gladiator, who came up in the film industry as Angelina Jolie’s stunt double in the Tomb Raider films and, later, on Mr and Mrs Smith. Eternals reunites her with Jolie.
Does Jolie listen to her on set? Huthart guffaws. “No, not one iota. I don’t think she listens to anybody,” she jokes.
These days, she’s breaking ground as one of the most in-demand female stunt co-ordinators, working on projects including Eternals and The Rise of Skywalker. Though, “I would hate to think I only got the job because I’m a woman,” Huthart stresses. Eternals is the busiest she’s ever been on a job, she admits, mostly because of the number of characters – each with their own fighting style and abilities – that she has to juggle.
“Having ten characters – I think if we had five characters, literally my work would have been half. We’ve got so many,” Huthart says. Her favourite characters to work with are Nanjiani’s Kingo and Lee’s Gilgamesh.
“Our actors have done 99.9 per cent of the action themselves,” she reveals. “We’ve taken them out of their comfort zones, but they’ve trusted us well enough and rolled with it, and we’ve got some nice stuff so far that we’re quite proud of.”
It’s Thanksgiving on the day we visit – they’re serving roast turkey for lunch in the craft services tent – and most of the American cast have taken the day off to spend with their families. But before she departs, we speak to Lauren Ridloff, star of The Walking Dead and a deaf actor who will play the Eternal Makkari, blessed with the gift of superspeed.
“Makkari is deaf, but it’s not a driving force of who she is, it just happens to be one of the things about her,” Ridloff shares. The actor praised the Marvel team for the “collaborative experience” on set, in particular the conversations around how Makkari would communicate with the rest of the Eternals – in particular Druig (Barry Keoghan) and Kingo (Nanjiani), through variations of American Sign Language (ASL).
Before she leaves, Ridloff echoes a sentiment that we have heard a lot all day, from producers through to production and costume designers and, now, cast. This is not your average Marvel movie. Zhao has made something unique for the studio, a true departure for Marvel and the real beginning of this new, phase four of the cinematic universe.
“This film has a completely different feel, a different vibe,” Ridloff shares. “It’s a really epic, broad, sweeping, over years and years and years, and spanning a lot of time. The Eternals and their relationships with each other change.”
Eternals is in cinemas from Thursday, November 4
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