The approach also complemented the ubiquitous digital effects. If the movies all look relatively the same, audiences are better conditioned to expect the same product every time they buy a ticket. This kind of broad network television lighting made sense for a company eager to one day churn out four movies a year, one for each fiscal quarter. And when execs wondered about the cost of actually shooting in Spain’s Canary Islands or even (gasp) the real Piccadilly Circus in London (as opposed to using a green screen recreation of it), Feige said, “I had to keep saying, ‘This is right out of a camera there’s no VFX work to this at all! Because it was a beautiful sunset, with perfect waves and mist coming up from the shore on the giant cliffside-really impressive stuff.”Įver since the switch to digital photography in 2011, beginning with Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel’s films have settled for a bland and often beige house style that accentuates the flatness of their colors. “ was really fighting for practical locations,” Feige told Variety. This perhaps explains comments Feige made a few months ago when he recalled extolling the visceral acuteness of Zhao’s eye to Disney executives.
Sometimes this creative choice works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but rarely does Eternals look like an ensemble of actors trading one-liners in front of a blue screen in Atlanta, Georgia. It takes a moment to sink in as Zhao’s setup absolutely refuses to indulge in the self-deprecating sarcasm which has become a defining feature of Marvel movies since 2012: She’s going to take this seriously, isn’t she?įor the most part, the answer is yes. From its opening introduction of the team comprising the Eternals arriving on Earth some 7,000 years ago, the film’s earnestness is nearly startling. Marvel Is Seeing the (Natural) Lightįilmed before Chloé Zhao won a deserved Best Director Oscar for Nomadland, Eternals still benefits from Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige‘s confidence in the filmmaker behind The Rider.
In other words, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, and even the loopy Guardians of the Galaxy still looked like Marvel Studios movies and still felt like Marvel Studios movies.Įternals does not, which is its greatest strength.
#Does icarus die eternals movie#
Similarly, the compositions Taika Waititi had the time to lovingly craft in Jojo Rabbit are far more lively and playful than the often standard two or three-shot framings which comprise most character interactions in Thor: Ragnarok, a movie more amusingly written than the previous Thor movies but without even the visual flourishes of Kenneth Branagh’s first Thor flick from way back in 2011 (the last MCU movie to be shot on 35mm). Jordan, that a dubious compromise has been made. Some filmmakers like James Gunn, Taika Waititi, and Ryan Coogler certainly have pushed harder against these constraints, but there is no denying that when the entire climax of Black Panther is defanged by the poorly rendered CGI dolls who take over for Chadwick Boseman or Michael B. Or, to mix metaphors, there’s little chance of hitting a home run. One of the many tradeoffs to playing it safe like this though is that the studio has rarely been able to allow a filmmaker to make the template their own. Some MCU movies are certainly better than others, but when safety rails are always up, you’re never going to throw a gutter ball. Often these guidelines and formulaic elements can be pointed to as a strong reason why Marvel has previously not struck out with most critics or moviegoers after 25 films. The film’s reach truly does exceed its grasp.Īnd yet, it still reached far outside the parameters of what we typically associate with a Marvel Studios movie. The movie wants to be a superhero creation myth, but also a grandiose epic about the cyclical nature of violence it attempts to be a melodrama about its dizzying cast of 10 broody protagonists, but it also must sell action figures with CGI beat ‘em ups. This isn’t a controversial statement to make for the first Marvel Studios film to receive a negative “Rotten” score on the aggregate movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes.ĭespite its expansive pacing-which, believe it or not, is two minutes longer than Denis Villeneuve’s Dune- Eternals struggles to balance its competing impulses and obligations. This article contains Marvel’s Eternals spoilers.
0 kommentar(er)
