Chloé Zhao: ‘As a woman film-maker, I don’t want people to think I’m there to check a box’

We have become used to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU to the cognoscenti) sweeping up talent from independent cinema. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck moved from rough-hewn dramas such as Half Nelson and Mississippi Grind to Captain Marvel. Cate Shortland, Australian director of the oblique Somersault, recently gave us the nifty Black Widow. You will find another batch of indie eggheads directing live-action translations of Disney cartoons.

It is easy to sneer. But the deal has worked effectively so far. Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose Short Term 12 could not be easily confused with Iron Man, is one of the biggest hits of the developing post-Covid-19 universe. Now we have Chloé Zhao’s Eternals.

Zhao, an endlessly amiable Chinese-American, may be the MCU’s most distinguished transfer yet. Just six months ago she became only the second woman to win best director at the Academy Awards. Nomadland, her touching study of boomers adrift in the American west, also took best picture. Now she gives us a $200 million (€172 million) film about a legion of immortal aliens who have been quietly helping human society progress for 7,000 years. Cinema is in a strange place.

Having just come off an Oscar win, Zhao will hardly be dazed by the attention. But Marvel films and Marvel press junkets operate on a different scale. It’s like moving from a commando assault to the Normandy landings. I wonder if we have already sapped her will to live. These things can be soul-destroying.

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“Well, don’t ask me the question you think that people are going to ask me?” she says with a hearty laugh.

Yeah, I don’t think we are going to be able to avoid that. The one thing everyone wonders about these deals between Marvel and independently minded film-makers is where control lies. Raised in China, educated in Brighton, Los Angeles and Massachusetts, Zhao made her name with fluid naturalistic dramas – The Rider, her second feature, broke through following acclaim at Cannes in 2017 – which drew extraordinary performances from non-professional actors. Her earlier films are all imprinted with a characteristic vision. Did she feel that she had the same control over Eternals?

“Well, I think every film is a storm,” she says. “Do you think we were in control with Nomadland? Everything that could go wrong went wrong with that film. And it’s how you react to those limitations – and those surprises. That’s what’s going to define your work and define you as a film-maker. The things that are limited on a small film, you have freedom with on a large film.”

I can see that. You are not so constrained by time. You can (as she does) open Eternals with a Pink Floyd track and not worry about the outlandish licensing costs. On a film like Nomadland, every delay puts painful weight on a limited budget.

Big budget

“You just have to trust the team around you,” she says of the big-budget experience. “One thing I found difficult on Eternals is that you have to learn to have patience. Right? Because if you make one move on a smaller movie five people move with you. Here 500 people move. So you have to learn to be concise.”

For the greater part of the MCU’s 13-year reign, Marvel Studios – owned by Disney since 2019 – has been dealing in familiar characters. You may never have read a Captain America comic, but you surely have some idea what he looks like. As the stars of those first films move on to middle-aged projects, Marvel is now delving into the more obscure corners of its back catalogue.

Based on a Jack Kirby comic book that first emerged in 1976, Eternals stars the likes of Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani and (yay!) Barry Keoghan as hilariously named super-beings – Kingo, Druig, Ajak and so forth – who survive various ancient civilisations to save Earth in the 21st century.

There are already worried mutterings about whether the Marvel brand will be enough to draw punters to such a weird and unfamiliar project. I wonder if Zhao feels the accountants at her shoulder. Whole industries have grown up to analyse the opening weekends of such movies.

“Well, as a fan of the MCU, coming into this world, I wanted to satisfy the fans,” she says. “At the same time, I want to trust the fans. If we show them something different they might love it or they may have questions about it. But they can discuss it. We have to evolve as a genre. The MCU has to evolve. So I’m quite excited for this to go into the world.”

The cinema exhibition business needs these films to succeed. Long before the pandemic hit, the epic franchise – James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Fast & Furious, MCU – had become the defining energy in movie economics. Without these pictures, the gargantoplexes become carpet warehouses.

“Because of the pandemic the theatres have really suffered,” she says. “I am very proud Marvel is putting these into theatres. I hope people go to see it. I hope that the film does well also for that reason.”

Too damn 'woke'

She speaks of fans having “questions” about Eternals. I regret to inform you that the usual online suspects are complaining about the film being too damn “woke” (their inverted commas). The most unreasonable are, of course, always the noisiest. The vast majority of Marvel enthusiasts have reasted with unsurprised shrugs to the news that Eternals features the MCU’s first unambiguously gay superhero. Bryan Tree Henry plays an ancient Eternal who, before apocalypse looms, is living in suburban bliss with his male partner and their young son. Is this even worth discussing?

“Look, Marvel wanted to do this,” she says, sounding slightly wearied. “This was in their treatment. It’s not something I forced on them. I was impressed by that. I’m hoping the conversation will be more about: why is that family in that part of the story? About the significance of that instead of who they are.”

Zhao has gone on quite a journey over the last 12 months or so. When she arrived at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of Nomadland in 2020, she was already deep into post-production on Eternals – the film, like so much else in the coronavirus era, has been much shifted about the schedule – but she didn’t have much of a presence outside the filmerati. Nomadland won the golden lion at Venice and, unusually for an early favourite, remained the bookies’ pick until its triumph at the Oscars in April. I imagine Hollywood immediately prostrated itself at her feet.

“No, honestly it hasn’t really affected my life because I was working on Eternals before the ceremony and the day after the ceremony,” she says. “I think it allows a lot of opportunities. But also there are expectations as well. So there’s nothing that’s free in the world. Ha ha! But it made my parents very happy.”

When Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win best director in 2009, nobody expected immediate parity to break out, but few would have been so pessimistic as to suggest that it would take another 11 years for a second woman to take that prize and that, in the intervening period, only one other woman would be nominated. But some barrier was crossed this year. Only seven female directors have been nominated in the Academy’s history. Two of them were up in 2021. Emerald Fennell, director of Promising Young Woman, competed with Zhao for the statuette. The good news is that, at time of writing, Jane Campion is favourite to win in 2022 for The Power of the Dog. Is the door properly open now?

“Look, I want to be hopeful. I also think for every step we take forward there may be a push back – to go back couple of steps. There is always this push and pull. But I hope women are still making films true to themselves. I hope people are still selecting films because they truly love them. Because that’s true progress. As a woman filmmaker, I don’t want people to think I am there because people needed to check a box.”

For now, she has to negotiate the Marvel junket mayhem. As we speak, interviews are being shuffled left, right and downwards. Austrians are waiting on Belgians to finish their conversations with Barry Keoghan. Olympic opening ceremonies are easier to organise.

“Ah, I feel so lucky,” Zhao says in her unhurried fashion. “Seeing how excited people are and seeing how inspired they are by some of our cast members. I am so happy to find out people were talking about our movie. People were discussing our movie! How lucky is that?”

Eternals is on cinema release from November 5th