ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Why Marvel Needs to Make Eternals 2

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

ScreenCrush Rewind tackles all the movie and TV hot topics, offering reviews and analysis of Marvel, Star Wars, and everything you care about right now. Hosted by Ryan Arey, and featuring a panel of industry professionals. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. So that was a lot? Hey, welcome back to Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Erie. Marvel Studios has made a lot of mistakes over the past few years, like these. But when I look back and I think about the future of Marvel Studios, I think their biggest mistake was canceling the Eternals, too.

But person, the Eternals was a big old steep bomb. Everybody knows that. Even me. I'm just a little dog. Ah, but I'm going to explain why this Eternals franchise had so much potential and why a sequel would have been a billion-dollar blockbuster. But more importantly, we're going to talk about what the cancellation means for the creative direction of this studio. This used to be a house of ideas that trusted filmmakers to tell stories. And now, I think canceling the Eternals too means that it's going to become a risk-averse content mill. And the culmination of Marvel's new play-it-safe strategy is bringing back Robert Downey Jr. is Dr. Doom. So what we're talking about here isn't just the story of the Eternals. It's the story of how Marvel Studios went from being a Maverick indie studio that catered to fans

to becoming an IP assembly line that serves the shareholders. But more importantly, guys, I want to talk about the Eternals film itself. Why it's better than you think, why Disney thinks it failed, and how a sequel was necessary for Marvel to move on and create new exciting stories for us. But before we get rolling, I want to remind you that Screencrush is now on tour. We are coming live to a city near you soon, where you can help us create a new Screen Crush video, meet us in person, and just all around let's nerd out together.

Now, I'm going to talk about this and some exciting new merch drops a little later in the video. So let's talk about The Eternals. I don't think this movie was necessarily a masterpiece, but you got to admit, it had a lot gone for it. It's leagues ahead of newer, less inspired MCU movies like the Marvels or Quantum Mania. And yet, the Rotten Tomato score was 47%, which I do not think this movie deserved. The Eternals was released right at the beginning of the Critics' Marvel backlash, when Hollywood and critics alike finally rebelled against Marvel's chokehold on the box office. Personally, I much prefer the Eternals over Thor the Dark World or The Incredible

Hulk, both of which had higher Rotten Tomatoes scores. But it's important for us to remember that Marvel tried to do something different with the Eternals, but then Hollywood punish them for it. They brought on writer-director Chloe Zhao, who was celebrated for intimate personal character dramas like songs My Brother taught me and The Rider. And while the Eternals was filming, Chloe Zhao won an Oscar for directing the Best Picture winner Nomad Land. So with the Eternals, Zhao was tasked to bring that same intimacy to a large-scale Marvel blockbook. She decided to film on location using natural lighting. If you want to know the full potential of this film,

let's just look at the first 10 minutes of the movie. This was one of my all-time favorite openings of any Marvel film. It began with this text on screen that could have been lifted either from the Book of Genesis or from like self-serious 80s action movies like Highlander. And this shot of the Sun was awe-inspiring in IMAX, as the Eternal ship, reminiscent of the 2001 Obelisk, arrived on our solar system. And then when the Eternals awakened on their ship, it's something straight out of a weird-ass 70s sci-fi movie

like Logan's Run, Zanadu, or Zardaz. This movie isn't afraid to leave us with questions in its opening moments. We don't really understand who these people are, but then the Deviant Battle shows us everything we need to know. The Eternals save this fishing village from monsters. And it just looks so different from the usual Marvel visual style we'd seen before. The way their energy manifests, the way their uniforms look, it's all sending a message.

This is not your typical Marvel movie. When the Eternals save the Mesopotamians from the Deviants, we understand how these villagers could see these people as, gods. It's an opening that is filled with limitless potential. Zhao's opening action sequence does a great job of setting us up for the idea that we're going to be watching a typical Marvel hero film, but then she slowly dismantles the idea of that typical film over the next two hours. There is just so much to love in this opening. Why, hello, handsome. Nice face you shaved there. Why, thank you. That's because of Dollar Shave Club. Look, guys, we are not teenagers anymore, and we know there's more to shaving than just

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That's right, Doug. Now back to what I was saying. Unfortunately, the rest of the Eternals never lived up to its opening. sequence. But before I get into what doomed the movie to a one and done, I want to praise a few aspects that worked very well. First, the loaded cast, probably the best ensemble ever assembled outside of an Avengers movie. Gilgamesh and Thina's relationship was especially tender, and Macari's powers are really the best I've ever seen Super Speed displayed on film. And as a history buff, I love seeing the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and this kind of secret history of the

Marvel Universe. Now look, I could go on, but this isn't a video about why the Eternals is great. It's a movie about why the Eternals didn't land. So, let's see. talk about some of the film's missteps. For one, we do have these large, epic visuals, but the characters still act like goofy, self-deprecating Marvel characters. Like this is a movie about 12 space robots who are losing their faith and their gods. But instead of committing to the seriousness of that idea,

we constantly have to have silly moments that undermine the gravitas. Like when the Eternals visit Fastos, this is a man who lost his faith in humanity after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But then, he found his love in a new family. There's a lot of heady themes to explore, there. That could be an A-24 film, but instead, we get this. What's this even made of? Vibranium.

Fall Collection. Ike. I hate that line. But the weakest component of the movie, it has to be its structure. After that epic opening, the movie time skips 5,000 years, which means that we spend the rest of the film slowly doling out exposition while they slowly get the band back together. And that kind of structure works in movies like the Blues Brothers, where Jake and Elwood Blues solely recruit R&B legends featuring musical numbers from the likes of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. But in the Eternals, God, this structure starts to drag. By the time we get to Fastos and Macari,

it seems like we're speed running through all of these characters' lives. And we've talked on this channel before about how the Eternals should have been a TV series. It would have given the character's room to breathe, but more importantly, every episode could have focused on a separate eternal and given this cast the room they needed to shine. But instead, we got a four-hour biblical epic crammed into two and a half hours that did not deliver on the ideas it proposed in its beginning.

A film about a dozen god robots losing their faith in triggering a cosmic abortion to save the earth, that should have never felt boring, but the Eternals often reverted to becoming a typical Marvel movie. Now like I said, I still think the movie was overall success, or at least more promising than other Part 1 films like Incredible Hulk Thor, First Avenger. But more on those movies and a bit. It is easy to see though why Marvel thought Eternals was a failure. The movie reportedly went over budget, $272 million, which actually worked out to about $232 million after tax breaks. But then it only made $400 million worldwide. But remember, that was 2021. So we're talking about like pandemic box office.

Shang Chi made about the same amount of money worldwide, so I think it's fair to say that 400 million was an accurate expectation for a blockbuster in our first summer back in theaters. But with a cast this large and expensive, you can see why Disney would be reluctant to greenlight a second movie. But Marvel Studios also set themselves a ridiculous expectation for this film. In many ways, it was like Marvel's Pocahontas. Because it promoted racial harmony and had a musical number? No, because Marvel Studios really thought this movie was going to win them a Best Picture Oscar. So what's that guy under with Pocahontas? Well, see, Beauty and the Beast was nominated

for a Best Picture Oscar in 1991. After that, Disney animation really wanted another shot at an animated feature film winning the big statue. And that was one of the main engines that drove them to create the movie Pocahontas. The movie is typical Oscar Bay with like themes of racial harmony and a historical grounding. But it still had these cartoonish like Disney characters. So this made the film tonally imbalanced. And this is very similar to Marvel Studios. The studio earned a Best Picture nomination with Black Panther in 2019, so then they hired an up-and-coming indie darling to get them the critical acceptance that would cement them as a true beacon of blockbuster quality. But the serious tones and themes introduced in this movie are undercut by the studio's

inability to break away from its mold. Just like Pocahontas couldn't get rid of the goofy cartoon sidekicks, Eternals couldn't get rid of lines like this. What's this even made of? Vibranium. Fall collection. IKEA. Ass. Now, Kumail Nanjiani, who played. Kingo told Michael Rosenbaum on the Inside of You podcast.

It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed. And so they lifted the embargo really early and they also put it in some fancy movie festivals. And they sent us on a big, like, global tour promoting the movie right as the embargo was lifted. Nanjiani went on to talk about how the experience with that movie having to read those reviews while touring for it, actually sent him into counseling. I'm just telling you this so you understand how much faith Marvel had in this film.

Kevin Feige even told the Hollywood Reporter in 2019 that The Eternals is a very big movie. It is a very expensive movie, and we are making it because we believe in Zhao's vision, and we believe in what those characters can do, and we need to believe that we can continue to grow and evolve and change and push our genre forward. That's a risk if I've ever heard one. So, Feigey's vision for the Eternals was not necessarily to create a big crowd pleaser, like this, it was to elevate the superhero sub-genre into a realm of high art. Unfortunately, a 47% Rotten Tomato score was a crush and slap in the face.

Marvel was suddenly like Charles Foster Kane, trying to buy his mistress acclaim as an opera singer. Yeah, or he's like Michael Corle-Earon and Godfather 3, a gangster who tries to go legit, but the world would only ever see him as a criminal. That's what I thought I was out. They pulled me back in. Yeah, that's why I started working. in here. I had to leave my old life behind. Oh, you used to live a life of crime? Yeah, I used to sell bootleg t-shirts out the back of my van. Oh, that explains why we have all

those t-shirts laying around, like this Creation of Peace parody shirt showing Iron Man giving life to Ultron, or this I Hate You 3000, showing Mark 1 Tony armor and a doom cloak. Now, we have all of these and more at our merch store, Screencrushmerch.com, where we design all the merch ourselves. We also just launched a new VHS collection to celebrate all of our nerdy nostalgia with this new nerd shirt and many other designs. And also, guys, you can buy an exclusive shirt at our Screen Crush Live Show. This month, we are coming to Washington, D.C., and Chicago, where you can meet me and the team. And get this, we're also going to work together to create an original brand new screen crush video with you guys. I love meeting you face-to-face, doing a Q&A. It is going to be

so much fun. Links for all of this stuff is listed below. Now, back to what I was saying. Now, like I said, Marvel took a big risk on the Eternals, but this was a studio built on risk. Right whatever does your man. Well, Robert Downey Jr. was a really big, risk. He had just done time for drugs and they cast him as the lead in a superhero movie. The Avengers was a huge risk, building several different franchises to cross over into one film when those franchises were all very different from each other. And also like bringing in a racy director like James Gunn to launch a weirdo space opera about a talking tree and a raccoon. Hell, even hiring two sitcom directors to helm the biggest movie of all time, that was risky. But the

thing is, Marvel's risk used to always be rewarded at the box office. So Disney gave them free reign. But, you know, just as an experiment, put the Eternals in the perspective as one of the phase one, films. Captain America First Avenger made 370 million at the box office. Thor made 450 million, and they were both considered successes that were able to anchor new franchises. Now, of course, they each cost about $145 million, almost half of the budget of the Eternals. But I do think that these two movies are comparable with the Eternals, because all three of them launched a franchise, but their first installments didn't really dominate the box office. But in phase one, Marvel and Disney had faith in the character of Steve Rogers, and they hired the right people to take his

story further in Winter Soldier. Just like their investment in the character of Thor would eventually give us Thor Ragnarok, which for my money is the high water mark of the MCU. I think that a second Eternals movie would have easily made double the box office of the first film. They just needed to follow the formula established by the other Marvel sequels. First of all, you know, added more characters from your universe. Winter Soldier and Ragnarok added in Black Widow and the Hulk, respectively, and the box office for both of those movies was huge compared to the original. You see, those two franchises succeeded because Marvel believed in their characters, and they saw the potential of placing them in new, challenging situations. And the Eternals set up a truly epic story that I really want

to see them finish. Now, you remember, after the Eternals turned the giant statue and the ocean into stone, Eresham comes to earth and takes away half of the team. The other half are traveling the universe to free more of their kind when Harry Stiles shows up as Star Fox, the brother of Thanos. And he's also accompanied by the great Uber geek Patton Oswald as Pip the Troll. Now, I should note that part of the reason I was excited for an Eternal sequel is that these are two incredible characters in the comics. Pip just likes to party, and he brings a level of lowbrow humor to these grand cosmic tales. And Star Fox is an Avenger with the superpower to charm people. So for comic fans, people who really love these comics, this was one hell of a cliffhanger.

Although, if I'm honest, I actually think Chloe Zhao's original ending of the Eternals waking up on the ship with their memories erased was better, but whatever. An Eternal sequel had an incredible pool of characters they could have drawn from. But don't just look at the characters set up in the movie. Look at the wider Marvel universe. The Eternal sequel would have had a huge pool of characters to draw from. Star Fox and the others could have recruited Star Lord, who is a half celestial to help find other Celestials. Adam Warlock or another Guardian of the Galaxy could have also been added in there.

Hell, Kingo even says that he knew Thor. Speaking of Out, Thor used to follow me around when he was a little kid. Now he's a famous Avenger and won't return my calls. So why not bring Thor into this franchise as well? A second Eternals movie had limitless possibilities. It could have taken us to new worlds, introduce new cosmic gods, like Eon. That's the tree with an eye growing outside of his tree face. We could have seen the Eternals witness the creation of life itself.

We could have expanded the capabilities of what this cinematic universe could do. And that's all exactly what Jack Kirby envisioned when he created this team. Kirby was fascinated by stories of gods and cosmic beings. He co-created Thor, created the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the new gods. His boundless imagination catapulted Marvel Comics forward and scale past anything that the industry had ever seen before. But now, we don't have any visionaries like Jack Kirby, or at least their influence as being tempered by studio algorithms, cue ratings, and balance sheets. For instance, look at the marvels. Now, I've heard from insiders that early cuts of the movie were more epic and scale, but also more character driven.

But then, the studio cut the movie to ribbons to get it down to 100 minutes after director Nia Dacosta was sidelined from the edit by scheduling conflicts. Well, right, how do you even? know that they cancel the sequel. That's a great question. So there were behind the scenes that Kevin Feige really wanted to do a big budget sequel to the Eternals, but Disney CEO Bob Eiger pushed back. He told the Hollywood reporter that, quote, Marvel will focus on stronger franchises going forward. And according to Scooper Daniel RPK, Eiger killed Eternals 2 after seeing disappointing results from Quantum Mania and the Marvels. He reportedly called the proposed Eternal sequel a guaranteed flop and a colossal waste of resources. There are also reports that Disney is pushing Marvel

to focus on, quote, guaranteed hits. In other words, Marvel's primary goal is now going to be to give us more of the same and to stop trying to build new franchises that may not work well in the short term, but have much better long-term effects. Again, like Captain America and Thor, two films that started off very humbly with small entries, but then their box office grew and grew with every new sequel. Now, I know that all sounds great. We're going to get more Black Panther, more Spider-Man, those movies we love. But here's the thing. Eventually, creators are going to move on. Actors will die, and Marvel is going to be reduced to giving us remakes of Iron Man 1. I want to remind you guys that pursuing a strategy of guaranteed hits

is the strategy that Warner Brothers has pursued for years, giving us far, far too many Batman movies instead of taking risks on other great DC characters. And I'm scared that Marvel is now going to go down that same path. Instead of encouraging collaboration and invention, they're suppressing it. I mean, the great thing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that it gives these filmmakers an incredible sandbox to play in to expand on each other's ideas.

The true Marvel miracle was that they showed how their lesser-known IP, like Captain America, like Iron Man, like Thor, could be box office draws on the level of Spider-Man. In the early days of the MCU, the introduction of any new character was so exciting because we couldn't wait to see what the studio would do with those characters. But now, Marvel's second-guesses every release, and by canceling Eternals 2, they have abandoned valuable resources. You see, every movie and show that Marvel makes is also a springboard for other creatives to share and add their ideas to this process.

But now that Disney has taken a firmer hand in the process, I think we're going to see Marvel take fewer risks, and they're going to double down on nostalgia bait like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Robert Downey Jr. Well, wait, what's wrong with Hugh Jackman Wolverine? We've already seen Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, a bunch. And Deadpool and Wolverine was fun. It was so much fun, but it didn't particularly, like, do anything new for the character

of Logan or even bother to explain exactly why Wade thought he needed to be an Avenger. See, in that movie, character came second and nostalgia came first. When Marvel announced the Downey Jr. and the Rousseau's are returning for Secret Wars, you could practically see the flop sweat pouring off of the studio. They're terrified. The studio used to bring in directors with a voice and allow them to try new things. But now, I think that's done. Under Iger's new directive to focus on guaranteed hits, the studio is going to stop telling stories and start pumping out content. And that's not cinema. That's IP heroin. And this franchise will die

if we don't find out what Harry Stiles is going to do with that glowing little orb. Yeah, person, that seems just a little bit heavy-handed. Are you sure you're right? will die if i cannot find out what harry styles is going to do with that glowing little ball look guys i don't like complaining about marvel i think the people at the studio know exactly what they're doing and they want to take risks and take us to new places but i do think that disney is putting their thumb on the scale and the financial people are making creative decisions and that never turns out well for the movie business but what do you guys think should we get eternals too are there any other marvel projects you think are too risky for disney to take but you really want to see them

let me know in the comments or at me on x threads or blue sky and if it's your first time here please subscribe and smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie.