The Big Picture - ‘Eternals’ Is a Big Miss. But Is Marvel Too Big to Fail?

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

The newest entrant in the MCU comes from Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloe Zhao, but something isn’t quite right about the movie. Sean is joined by Joanna Robinson to break down the film and what its struggles mean for the future of Marvel (1:00). Then, writer-director Joanna Hogg stops by to talk about her latest, ‘The Souvenir Part II,’ the follow-up to her brilliant 2018 film (54:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Joanna Robinson and Joanna Hogg Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Head into the Ringerverse to stay up to date with all things superheroes and nerd culture entertainment. Hosted by a rotating lineup of superfans at the Ringer, including Mallory Rubin and Van Lathan, shows will provide instant reactions to blockbuster releases, insightful backstories on canon, and mind-bending theories, as well as fresh takes on the latest news and rumors. Check out the Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about eternals and an eternal question. Is the MCU too big to fail? Later in today's show, I am joined by the genius filmmaker Joanna Hogg to discuss The

Souvenir Part 2, the second installment in her autobiographical coming-of-age diptych. Part 2 is as soulful and insightful as Part 1. I hope you'll stick around for that conversation. But first, we welcome a Joanna of our own, one of the co-hosts of the Ringerverse podcast, and my co-host, recapping Succession on the Prestige TV podcast. It is my joy to welcome the goddess of war, Joanna Robinson. Hello.

Hello. I'm so proud to be the second most important Joanna on this podcast. That never happens to Joannas. You know how growing up they had those little novelty license plates where you could have your name on it? And I'm sure there was Sean's galore. Sean as far as the eye could see. You couldn't find's not so much no Joanna's that is deeply sad you know one place where I remember getting one of those vanity license plates was at Disney World as a child and of course we're talking today about a Disney property a Marvel property the movie is Eternals this is a movie of much consternation amongst MCU fans and perhaps amongst Hollywood analysts so we're going to talk about the movie itself. We will demarcate anywhere where we share spoilers. We'll try to limit the spoilers in our chat, but we'll talk a little bit about what works and

mostly what does not work about Eternals. And then we'll talk a little bit about what this means for the future of Marvel, because Marvel, of course, has been the centerpiece of the movie industry for the last 10 or so years. And it feels like there is a fly in the ointment now, or is there? We'll see. Joanna is an expert in this field, and so we'll get into all that. So let's start with this, Joanna. What is Eternals? Who are the Eternals? Where did this movie come from? Why does it feel so different from some other MCU movies? Give us some context. Yeah. So theals which is you know a jack kirby joint and jack kirby for context um is if you're looking for another film in the mcu that feels the most

jack kirby it would be thor ragnarok right the like big electric colors and gonzo sort of space vibe of that movie so um that is sort of some of the context there and then as far as literally what is this movie you know it's a story it's a story throughout history um about 10 immortal figures uh who the eternals who created as sort of guardians not guardians of the galaxy but guardians of our planet earth and they've been here since the dawn of civilization. They're all incredibly good looking and they each have a specific skill set, very specific set of skills, as Liam Neeson might say. And then something's gone wrong. Something's gone wrong and they're largely non-interventionist. If you're sitting there saying, why have I never seen them before when Thanos is here at the Battle of New York, etc.

That's all explained in the movie. They're largely not interventionist, except something sparks some intervention in this film. It's a lot to carry, right? Ten new characters. Millennia of history. You know what I mean? A lot to carry, right? 10 new characters, millennia of history. You know what I mean? A lot to handle. And if it feels different,

that's because it's very intentional. Marvel's intentionally set out to say, okay, Alexander Wepte had no more worlds to conquer. We've done Endgame. We know our formula. We know it hits. We have the biggest film of all time. did our series finale with endgame now let's try to do something a little different and like obviously the films we've seen so far post endgame haven't been that different

black widow and shang chi feel very like of a piece but this is their big grand experiment um as you mentioned clojah is the director, not necessarily the first person you would think of to direct a Marvel movie. And they want to do something different. And I want to say, before we get into the things that do or do not work,

I want Marvel to do different things. I just want to make that really clear that whatever my issues are or aren't with this movie, it's not that I'm mad that it isn't like everything I've ever seen before, if that makes sense. So did that contextualize the conversation, Sean? No, perfectly. You laid it all out. I think the Chloe Zhao aspect of it is certainly a factor, though not the totalizing factor for why this movie has some issues. I think

obviously Chloe Zhao, well-renowned at this point for her work on Nomadland, which won Oscars. And as a naturalist filmmaker, a filmmaker inspired by people like Terrence Malick, somebody who looks at the beauty of the real and natural world and finds a way to elegantly put it on screen with this sort of like poetic and flowing visual style.

That is obviously significantly different. One might even say oppositional to the strategized, structuralized MCU in which all fight sequences are pre-visualized by a world-class team of engineers. And also the storytelling must be told in just such a way as Kevin Feige has helped to design it so that future stories can speak to the stories that came before. This kind of feels, you know, different, maybe even the complete opposite of what Chloe Zhao has done. So on the one hand, I'm with you 100%. I've actually been crying for three years about why Marvel

movies aren't a little bit more different or taking more risks or telling different kinds of stories. And I love the cosmic and I love a little bit of sci-fi sprinkled onto my superhero story. I'm a Guardians fan. I'm obviously a fan of some of the bigger stories that we haven't yet seen. I can't wait for Galactus to enter my MCU. There's parts of this that I'm really excited about. is so expansive and so time-conquering, literally across millennia, that in addition to the 10 new characters that you cited, and also their villains, and also their purposes, and also their creators, there's so much here. The tones are shifting all the time. The kind of movie it is is changing all the time. And so I didn't walk out of Eternals thinking, and I'm curious how you felt about this because you are so entrenched in this universe. I didn't come out of the movie thinking like that movie sucked. That wasn't really my takeaway. My takeaway was more like, there's a lot of skill at play here. There are a lot of

really talented people and they just kind of bungled the execution. Like it's just, it's all over the place. It doesn't seem like it totally knows what it wants to be. And it was an unusual feeling because even if you don't like every Marvel movie, even if you don't like most Marvel movies, you can look at them and say, sure seems like they set out to do what they wanted to do. I can only think of a handful of examples

where I didn't feel that coming out of a Marvel movie. This was one where I was like, hmm, this really feels like it got away from them. What did you think? Yeah, no, I think the word that came to mind as you were describing that, it's a really good point, is competent. They all feel like extremely competent baseline

and then have achieved heights above that. But like at the very least, there is like a tightly run ship, the Marvel machinery, which has been in operation for over a decade now is like, you know, a well-oiled machine. There are exceptions to that in the early days and they learned a lot of lessons from that. And it seems, it feels like a backslide. I didn't, I also didn't walk out saying, wow, this movie sucked. I want to enjoy every movie that I see. And like, you know,

I was just earlier today listening to your great episode on Dune. One thing that I love so much about the Dune conversation is how fun it's been to talk about. And I wanted this movie to be a big smashing success so we could all have fun talking about it. That's really fun for me. So I'm always rooting for the thing. So usually when I, when it doesn't quite get there for me, I walk out and my brain starts to puzzle over how it might've been better. How could we have gotten here to a space where we were all really thrilled to talk about this movie where Angelina Jolie like stabs a bunch of things and that's fun. You know what I mean? So why isn't it all as fun as that? And a main takeaway, I mean, we're going to get into like sort of some more specifics,

but it just feels like there's too much story in this story. Yeah. And especially in an era when Marvel is pivoting towards TV and we're spending luxurious hours and hours with Falcon and the Winter Soldier chasing like a story that almost feels too small for the number of hours that they had to cram all of this. Like you can easily see an Eternals like season where each character gets their own episode. It's very lost, by the way. And I know I compare a lot of things to lost, but like imagine if you had the like the Athena episode or the, you know, whatever. And those flashbacks they do to like previous in their history. It's all built in there.

It's ready to go. You just can't stuff it into a two hour plus bag. That's what I think. i completely agree with you i think i i i hate when we say this should have been a tv show because i want better movies honestly but this should have been a tv show there and frankly just the star power alone we know that brian tyree henry could carry an hour of television we know richard madden can do it they've both done it before. We know Gemma Chan is capable of that. Certainly Angelina Jolie is capable of it.

I think that there was a little bit of bit off more than you could chew to the story, but I don't want to necessarily say that they shouldn't be trying to do this time-spanning, cosmos-spanning kind of storytelling in their movies either. You know, there is a way to be true to the Kirby vision

of a certain kind of a movie. In fact, Thor Ragnarok is kind of bouncing from world to world many times throughout the film. So it's not that. It's more just the number of people that are involved here is just an overload.

And frankly, like, it does feel like some of the performers are in different movies. You know, there's a little bit of a tonal mash happening here where, you know, Kumail Nanjiani, it's been much discussed that he got into an incredible bit of shape for this film. And frankly, he did like everything I was hoping he would do.

He was very charming. He was very funny. I really enjoyed his character, Kingo. I really enjoyed the way that they integrated, you know, a kind of Bllywood backstory into uh his framework but it he does not feel like he's in the same movie as richard madden like at all i mean i you know they have they have scenes together where i'm like these guys don't know each other like this is not this is a different movie and so that yeah no go ahead well also is, feels like to me a lot missing from his story.

There's like some late in the film stuff that happens where I'm like, this needed to be established earlier for me to understand the stakes of this, this here's, you mentioned the Ragnarok, which obviously benefits from the fact that we're already, we're pre-invested in Thor. We're pre-invested in Loki.

We're pre-invested in their relationship, but you also mentioned that you're a big guardians fan. And so I was trying to like, I think it's interesting. There's another movie that you might be surprised that I'm going to compare this to later on in the making of, but in the why wasn't this better camp, I think Guardians is a really instructive thing to look at because that was a big gamble for them at the time. One that paid off for them in spades. Like a pretty different tone felt really risky for them. Divorced from the larger MCU story, you know, siloed off into its own thing.

And then a group of like outlandish characters that none of whom we had met before. And one's a raccoon, one's a tree. That being said, like what what Guardians does so well, first of all, it doesn't have to skip around in time the way that this film feels like it has to do. But secondly, it's a found family story. Ultimately, it's a character story. And this film purports to be about heart and connection. It keeps literally saying that that's what it's about but i don't feel these characters connecting with each other and i think when you when you raise a filmmaker like terrence malick who like puts his puts his films together in the edit and doesn't really care about the performance of his of his actors i just watched all of terrence malick's films this summer as like an experiment so like wow hold that thought for another terrence malick pod

we'll do together one day great uh can we call it like waving grass that's that's my hands through the grain of course but um like that or uh you know i just interviewed the the screenwriters they're going to be the ringer verse. They were talking about 2001 as like an inspiration for them. These are all not very human stories. And these are stories not about humans. You know, like they also mentioned that Chloe is inspired by vampire stories. You know what I mean?

So we're not watching the closest thing we have to a human connection are Camille and Johnny's like Valley ballot, who is my favorite part of the movie, maybe, and Kit Harington's character. Those are our human entrees into this world. And it's not enough, I think. Yeah, you make a good point. I mean, I think the other thing too is

Guardians of the Galaxy, while a similar bet, a kind of big ticket cosmic story from a filmmaker who had never worked even close to a size of that budget with James Gunn the first time around. But someone who clearly was dying to make a movie like this his whole life,

but also brought a sense of humor that I think the MCU was ready for. The MCU had already been kind of greasing the wheels for this kind of like antic sense of humor to essentially power its story. The tone of Chloe Zhao's movies is much different from the typical MCU story.

And I like the idea of a kind of earnestness coming to the story. But the truth is, is that you can almost feel them reshooting or retrofitting what audiences are expecting in an MCU movie onto this other kind of film. So we get these sequences where all the characters are together around a dinner table and cracking jokes about Steve Rogers and cracking jokes about what it means to be a hero.

And it just feels completely disconsolate with the rest of the story that we're watching. And so I don't know if that is something that happened after the fact. I don't know enough about the production itself, but it feels like two movies happening at once, if not more than that. And it's just distracting. It's a thing that Marvel is sort of famous for is that they have built into their production schedule. They have a lengthy reshoot schedule and it's sort of something like that's how they make movies nowadays is they make the movie and then they kind of make the movie again once they figure out what they want to fix. Well, fix it in post is like a, you know, it's a huge part of what Marvel does.

And it's not like major reshoots from Marvel is not a sign of trouble. That's just like their process. Right. But I agree with you completely. It's such a good point that, you know, the Kumille stuff especially even like as as funny as it is in isolation it feels like a reshot graft of a different tone and it just doesn't blend at all and so i'd almost rather they just go full earnest um like i said i was listening you guys talk about dune and like the lack of humor in that movie like just go full earnest um chloe zha like there's no there's very little

humor in nomadland or the writer or anything like that that's not what she does you know what i mean so um i don't know or or or hire a different filmmaker yeah i mean that that's one thing that you can say about dune is you never feel like it is kowtowing to its audience in any way you know it's not it's like this is the movie we want to make that we believe is true to the vision of the filmmaker and the source material and the collision of those two. And it's just hard to walk away from Eternals feeling like this was one person's vision.

And it doesn't even necessarily just feel like Kevin Feige's vision. He's often cited as the kind of, the true auteur of this universe of films. And I don't know, it just, it feels a bit all over the place. I mean, we can talk a little bit more specifically about the things that don't work in it. I guess, what else jumps out to you that you liked about the movie? Are there things that were effective that you would recommend about it before we kind of dissect a little bit more deeply?

Some of the action, I would say no, but I really did genuinely find pleasure in angelina jolie's like balletic sort of fighting style i thought that was beautiful and not something we've really seen in the mcu before and i just i really got like a visual thrill watching it uh performance wise i really liked this sort of weird side movie that was happening with barry keown and lauren ridloff they had this like really cute me too right they just had this like really cute peripheral chemistry that was much stronger than the alleged chemistry that was at the center of the story the alleged love triangle that's at the center of the story so like i would have watched that movie happily um barry keown seemed like the one performer in the movie too who

for lack of a better phrase was sort of doing whatever he wanted. It was giving a little bit more of a naturalistic independent film actor performance in this movie. Everything else was much more like I know how to be a mainstream comic presence. I know how to be an emotional leading

man. What Barry was doing is not so far afield from what you might have seen him do in The Green Knight this summer, you know, where he was, he's idiosyncratic and like mumbly and not everything, his intentions are shaded

throughout the film. A lot of people speculated going into this movie that he might be the villain of this movie because of the way that he's, he appears in the trailer and he's kind of positioned and his role is actually

much more complex than that. And I think his character's point of view is much more complex and interesting but we don't spend a ton of time with him and then like we start to see the the you know the embers of this romance that you're describing but then we don't get like a ton of time with their romance so like it's kind of the challenge of introducing a a 10 character team is we don't the ones that are working we don't get enough time with and the ones that are not working too often lead the film. The other thing that I find interesting about this is that I don't know if... Kirby obviously was inspired very much by the core mythologies, the Greek,

the Roman, the historical mythologies for these character types. But it also feels like he's riffing on pre-existing hero archetypes in our culture you know the richard madden character icarus is of course a riff on icarus but in the film specifically he's superman there's a joke at his expense about him being superman which on the one hand i think they thought was like kind of clever but is actually kind of confusing when you're watching the movie because they don't feel like some sort of ancient alien being it just seems like superman is flying around doing stuff and that's i wonder how audiences will respond to that too yeah and that's i mean it's wild that that joke is in there honestly uh because i yeah it's supposed to be a joke i guess he he comes off much more cyclops

than he does right in his demeanor isn't he very like like Scott in all of his stiffness, which is odd because Richard Madden is such like, it can be such a charismatic, he's one of my favorites of all time. And like, uh, off Thrones, he's my guy, Robb Stark's my guy, the bodyguard, big bodyguard fan, like all that sort of stuff. And then I was just sort of surprised at the stiffness of some of these performances from, from actors we've seen much better from. The other performance that really worked for me was Brian Tyree Henry. He was jammed into a few scenarios that I didn't love. But as a performer, he's just so warm and I just want to bask in him. But we get less of him than we do a lot of other characters. And that's, I think, a misstep. They shove some

of their best, most interesting performances really on the sidelines of this characters. And that's, I think, a misstep. They shove some of their best, most interesting performances really on the sidelines of this story. Yeah. The other thing too is that because as part of the storytelling, this team invariably goes their separate ways for a long period of time. So many characters... Brian Tyree Henry's just not on screen for 90 minutes consecutively, which is if you have an actor that is that good, that is that compelling, you want to get back to him. And then by the time we get back to him, the story also has to propel itself forward. So we don't totally get to invest in his character. It's very tricky. I will say he's a, he was a part of like what I thought was like the

gravest and most confusing story choice in the whole movie, which is, um, I'll just share it with the audience. I, if you don't want to hear this, it's a mild spoiler, but it gives you a little bit of insight into some of the tone clash happening in this movie. A visual clue is in the trailer, so I think you're kind of in safe territory here. Okay. So Brian Tyree Henry effectively plays sort of the engineer Eternal, an Eternal who understands mechanics and helps human beings learn about how to build new technologies. And it is more than implied. It is almost confirmed that his guidance has led to the creation of nuclear bomb technology. And in fact, what he showed humans led to the tragedy at Hiroshima.

And in fact, he is literally amongst the ruins of hiroshima in 1945 and it is frankly i i really try to not get into this territory when talking about movies and podcasting and being what people are offended by but i was like this is wildly offensive to insinuate that like some cosmic alien is responsible for what were very clearly human choices and obviously it's a comic movie i don't want to stand on ceremony about this but it was a real like how did someone not throw their body in front of this decision and it speaks to i think some of the some of the storytelling slipping through the fingers of the writers filmmakers producers etc i don't what did you think about that moment in the movie there's um did you see you saw the film yesterday right i did the beatles film yes

much lower stakes but i had a similar like terrible horror wash over me as a certain plot line on like unfolds at the end of that um i can i spoil yesterday is it the john lennon sequence yeah yeah yeah the john lennon's like alive in this world and then like they have i think it's robert carlo playing john lennon and john lennon's talking about like you know talking about who john lennon would be if he was still alive it felt so wildly disrespectful to me that i was like how did this pass any committee how did anyone watch this and say yes go for it you know what i mean and i felt like i said lower stakes but i felt similarly about this moment where i was just like what is is happening here? You also just like, it's

one of those things where you didn't need it. You could have made up another event because we're in the MCU or not in the real United States of America, or you could have just, even a lower stakes, even a John F. Kennedy assassination, that's obviously a traumatizing event. But if you would somehow somehow found something that was limited in scope, for goodness sake, this is one of the signature horrifying events in world history.

So, anyhow, I think that that's more instructive than it is anything else about how this movie's a little all over the place. I don't think it's completely thoughtless in that I think what they're trying to... A main conceitited this movie is like, is humanity so special it's worth saving? Like what is so special about humans? What is so special about earth? You know, so it's a beat that is like, that is Brian Tyree Henry's characters reflecting on the cruelty, the inhumanity of humans and stuff like that. So that's interesting for that larger story they're trying to tell, but I don't think it connects in a way that makes it feel worth it.

I think it just gives his character too much responsibility in a way. And lets us off the hook. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So we've mentioned some of the story issues. We've mentioned some of the complications with the performances. You know, stakes is an interesting issue here. You mentioned how this is a non-interventionist group. And so every other thing that has happened in these 25 previous films kind of sort of doesn't matter, including the snap, which is very briefly mentioned by, we didn't mention Salma Hayek is also in this film as the kind of matriarch eternal, the sort of leader of the crew. And she does have a moment where she acknowledges its existence and the absence of half of humanity for a period of time in world history. But because it's so separated and distinct, on the one hand,

you'd think that would be exciting that we wouldn't necessarily have to carry the baggage. But on the other hand, because it's be exciting that we wouldn't necessarily have to carry the baggage but on the other hand because it's so big it spans so much time and also because of like what the eternals actually are it's a little hard to get emotionally invested in some of this story did you feel that way exactly i mean like i don't want to talk about what the eternals actually are but i'm like who am i who am i emotionally latching on to other than barry keown and lauren rudloff like who am i caring latching on to other than Barry Keoghan and Lauren Rudloff? Like, who am I caring about in this movie? Because that's the beauty.

Again, that is the beauty of the MCU. Love it or leave it. Like, something that they've done that other superhero films have done less successfully is giving you characters to care about. Giving you characters who love other things. Like we talk a lot about Bucky and Steve or these various other, you know, Pepper, Tony, et cetera, et cetera. When a character loves something or when they are loved, then we become emotionally invested in them. And in theory, that's here in this movie. We've got Cersei, who is the main character, I think it's safe to say, of this movie played by Jim Chan in the middle of a love triangle. But what's tough, and it's

hard to talk about, honestly, it's hard to talk about without spoiling it, but there are twists and turns of this movie. And I think a big mistake this movie makes is sacrificing some of our emotional understanding of what's going on in order to preserve a surprise or two and it holds its cards too close for too long yeah and then it's just so i went into the movie knowing what was going to happen which is sometimes how i live my life and um and so then i i knew what was actually going on with like a lot of these characters that is revealed in the final act of the movie. It still doesn't play for me knowing that, but I think that's because that those performers have to, um, hide like how they're feeling.

So the audience isn't gotten onto what's happening. And I hate that happens in TV all the time where I'm just like, you're sacrificing your story for the sake of surprise. And, and I actually think there's a version of this story where the same thing happens, but if the audience knows from the start, there's suspense, you know, there's that old like Hitchcock thing about suspense versus surprise. And like suspense is knowing the bombs under the table but not knowing whether or not like everyone's going to make it out in time versus the room just exploding yeah do you mean but you spend that time knowing the bombs there and like so if we had known and we're wondering when everyone else is going to know that's i'm not saying that would have been a perfect movie

but i think that's a more interesting movie than what we got do you know what i mean i think that is so smart i think you're right on I think actually letting us in on it while not letting the characters in on it would have been a much better story choice. I mean, easy for us to kind of like post-game Monday morning quarterback, all the decision-making of the MCU, which is consistently the most successful thing in our culture for a long, long time. But I agree with you in this case, I think that would have been a much better way to execute that story. And, you know, related to that, and this is spoilery, but it's a little hard to talk about. If we don't necessarily care about our heroes, we care even less about our villains.

You know, one of the, I guess, originally when the film was introduced, the point of the Eternals is effectively to battle what are known as the Deviants, which are these sort of like neon colored aquamarine monsters that are kind of like giant dog tigers. They're really like, it really feels like kind of circa 1997 Lawnmower Man style CGI, especially for Marvel. It's kind of shocking how not good it looks.

I mean, we saw this movie on an IMAX screen. Yeah, it looks so bad in the trailer and I was like, surely it will look better. And then it didn't. It never looked better uh

and there is one of these these demon dogs uh and this is again in the trailer so it doesn't feel like a spoiler to say becomes sort of like personified and is is played however you want to put how many air quotes you want to put around played um by Bill Skarsgård, who's an actor that I really enjoy a lot. Excellent Pennywise. Fantastic villain. It himself, yes. Yeah, he's here. But it feels like a nothing,

complete nothing burger. And like villains aren't make or break in the MCU. I think Guardians has a pretty shitty villain in Ronan. For sure. With much love and respect to our Lord and Savior Lee Pace. But like it's certainly I think they've gotten so much better and especially off of

Shang-Chi which is a film that I liked a lot more than maybe some other people liked. But that is one of my I think that's like my top MC villain in Shang-Chi. So coming off of that where it's so emotionally connected to this where it's obfuscated and and then there's these CGI dogs and what's happening.

It doesn't work for me. No. Yeah. I had a very similar issue. And then obviously there is a kind of more grand villain that is revealed throughout the story that I also think doesn't work. I guess audiences will be able to decide for themselves. One other thing that I have to say about this movie,

I'm a huge admirer of Chloe Zhao's. I talked about her nonstop during Oscars coverage last season and I was a huge fan of The Rider as well. This movie does not look very good and there was a lot of pre-release hype from Feige and others about Zhao's desire and decision

to shoot the film in the real world. And that's obviously something that she's well known for, as I noted. But they're still basically just glopping a bunch of mediocre CGI onto those real world landscapes and those beautiful vistas and those sunsets. And you're not looking at the sunset when that's happening. You're trying to keep your eye on the super speedy character who's punching a demon dog i can't believe i just said that out loud but i mean that is like that is what our life is that's what movies is now and that's how we're doing things so it is ultimately i guess a

little bit disappointing or maybe just like a misuse of talent to have someone who cares so deeply about that that real world reflection and then to just kind of glop all this stuff on top of it. What did you make of that? Yeah, I mean, I agree and disagree. Like, I think some of the golden hour beach scene Vista stuff did work for me. I wasn't feeling emotional, and that's a problem. But I did stop and say, that's pretty a couple times. And I do think the ending set piece, which involves a beach and some golden hour light and also some aquatic stuff, that looked kind of cool.

That CG kind of worked for me. Though, like, I can't talk about it directly. But the dogs never do. And they're all over the place. They're all over this movie. And it's, and they're, and they're all over the place. They're all over this movie and that's a problem. So yeah. Okay. Let's get a little bit more existential.

Now we don't know. We're recording this podcast on a Wednesday. Yeah. We don't know what the box office will be for the film. We know that the critical reception has been soft, to put it mildly. Famously, this is the first film since Thor, The Dark World, to come in sub-60% on Rotten Tomatoes. Joanne, I don't know if you

know this, but I'm not a strong advocate of the work that Rotten Tomatoes does. I think it can be manipulated in many ways. I'm with you. Okay. Thank you. Very glad to hear that. That being said, I think it's just a tool to better understand i don't think it is the bible of critical thought but it does indicate something and especially with a marvel movie in which the fan base and the some of the people who kind of chronicle

that world on a full-time basis are more sympathetic to all stories told in that space the fact that the reception has been so weak indicates something fascinating and i don't know if it's a turning point or not obviously at the mcu is spread a bit thin these days now we've already seen three television series with a fourth to come in hawkeye this is the third film of the year some of that is due to covet and things being pushed back but some of that is essentially spring launching phase four and figuring out where to go after that end game closure of storytelling. Now, for I feel like a couple of years now, you've been at work on a book about the MCU, the production of MCU films, how this came to be such an important part of our cultural

life. What do you think this movie means for the future of the MCU? And are there going to be any lessons from it? I mean, I, I don't, I, you know, it's every time I count Marvel out and they come back in,

like, you know, we're all old enough to remember like the Edgar, right. You know, public dispute. Uh, I was sure like that duo of like Ant-Man and Dr. Strange, I was sure those movies wouldn't do well. And then they did really well. Uh, so this question of like too big to fail is a too big to fail

possibly on the other hand. And, and I don't count us among them because we are Marvel fans. We like the Marvel properties. We're not, you know, we might be like film snobs who do Terrence Malick marathons over a summer, who does that to themselves. But also, you know, we love the MCU. There are plenty of people in the industry though, who are ready for a turn of the tide because Hollywood is a sharky town, right? And so like, if you're at the top for too long, people are kind of rooting for something else. And also these things are cyclical. I don't think the phrase superhero fatigue is useful here at all, but I do think the trends of what people are interested in have to shift and change. And I think even the people at Marvel are a little, as I mentioned, they already did Endgame.

So they're like, okay, well now what? Some TV. Okay. Like, all right, we're working on TV. Kevin Feige is making a Star Wars film. Like his eye does not seem to be quite on the same prize. You mentioned Feige as this like main filmmaker of the MCU. Now that wasn't always the case, but certainly has been the case for a very long time.

And now when you talk to people, and I say this all the time to the point where it's probably getting boring, but now when you talk to Marvel TV showrunners or other people, they don't talk about Feige as a singular vision. They talk about the triumvirate that sits at the top of Marvel, which is longtime producer Victoria Alonso and longtime producer Louis Desposito. They've been there since the beginning, but now they seem like it's a three-headed Hydra. You know what I mean? At the top here, then you have the Marvel Parliament. It's what they call it, which is the layer of producers below them. The main producer on this film is Nate Moore, who had great success with Black Panther. Great guy. Love Nate and stuff like that. But like Nate is running this film

and it's with so many plates spinning. They're obviously like, as you said, spread thin. That's exactly the phrase. The Chloe Zhao thing is really interesting to me. I know some things and I don't know other things. So I will be clear about what I know and I'll be clear about what speculation. The thing that I know is that this is a troubled production. And the thing that I know is that when Kevin Feige is called to set to mediate, there's this great anecdote that Joss Whedon tells in the Marvel Studios history that Marvel themselves just released about how I think it was on the set of Ultron. Speaking of sort of famously troubled productions, troubled productions where Joss was talking to Kevin and he's like, Oh,

Hey buddy, like wherever you are, that's where the problem is. That's what I know. And then he looked around and he's like, Oh wait, am I the problem right now? Oh no.

You know, like that's a, if Feige's there, it's a problem. And Feige had to come out and like mediate some stuff on this set. I know that. That's what I know. The other thing that I think is interesting is the timing. Chloe was obviously hired before she won her Oscar, but the edit is happening after she won her Oscar. And you mentioned on our notes Captain Marvel, and I think that's a really good thing to think about, where they hired two indie filmmakers in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to try to do that film.

But that's a very designed-by-committee film, and it felt that way, right? It certainly does not feel like an Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck film to me. No. A lot of previs, a lot of whatever's going, you know, and that's because Marvel hired these two directors and then just knew that they could shape whatever film they needed to

around them, right? That's how that film went. They might have hired Chloe Zhao thinking they could do something similar with her. What, and this has also been reported,

this is not speculation, it's been reported that she was very insistent on her edit of the film. That's unusual for Marvel. And they haven't had something like that happen since, I'm going to say something that you haven't heard in a long time,

Incredible Hulk. Wow. Yeah. So what do you know about what happened on the Incredible Hulk? Well, all I know is that Edward Norton, whom I adore as an actor and have always been a huge fan of is well known and in fact our our friend Brian Cox recently had some comments about Edward Norton and from his book I don't know if you noticed that but he fancies himself a um writer

director producer on all projects that he is participating in. And that led to a lot of fractious feelings throughout the production of Incredible Hulk. Is there more to that? I mean, and what's interesting is like, he essentially took over the edit of American History X to the point where the director of that film wanted to have his name taken off the film. Yes, Tony K.

Yeah, because Edward Norton took over it. But Norton got nominated for an Oscar from that. And so when he comes in to do the Hulk, he's in an incredible power position. He basically pulls the same thing with Marvel. Marvel at the time, this is only their second movie they've ever made. They're not Marvel yet. They kind of let him run roughshod. And then it's a huge public blow up and causes Kevin Feige to say

the most publicly like censorious thing he's ever said about someone that he's worked with. He said about Edward Norton. If you ask me if anyone's coming back to the MCO, I was like, everyone to me is on the table, even Joss, not Edward Norton.

Like that is a bridge that is cinders. And I think it's, I don't think it's a similar relationship with Chloe Zhao to any degree, but I think maybe her coming off an Oscar win put her in a position where she could have a greater control over an edit. So they couldn't really do their whole, we'll fix it in post, we'll fix it in reshoots, paste something together. Captain Marvel, however you feel about it, does still feel like a competent film. It's not my favorite Marvel post we'll fix it in reshoots paste something together that will that Captain Marvel forever however you feel about it does still feel like a competent film not my favorite Marvel film but it still feels like a coherent Marvel film I don't know what do you think about all that it's all

fascinating and really useful kind of backstory and information around the kind of the culture of movie making at the company which which I am always fascinated by. I think I'm probably a little bit more down on Captain Marvel than you. I think it felt like they brought Anna and Ryan in, who I really admire and I profiled previously on other films, to kind of like direct the acting on Earth. And then everything else was for Marvel to make, which I thought wasn't just an odd creative decision.

You know, like that just seems like you explained it well, that it was almost like we'll make all the things over here and you guys just worry about making Brie seem cool in the 90s and so that movie doesn't really work for me at all I think that I don't know enough about the Chloe situation to speculate on it specifically but it wouldn't be surprising if a filmmaker who had just won an Oscar felt strongly about their vision being correct. I mean, there are not a lot of Oscar-winning directors who have MCU credits at this point, so well within her rights to want to see her vision through while also coping with the reality of hundreds of millions of dollars on the line in the most precious intellectual property in all the land so it's a it's an interesting collision of art and commerce in a way that marvel isn't always

i will i will agree i want to say about ryan and anna i completely agree with you like at that point i'm like why hire ryan and anna you know what i mean and i i love their other work and so i think that was like a real misuse of their skills. I still do think Captain Marvel hangs together better than this movie does as a film. And to be clear, I don't think design by committee, film by committee is a good way to do filmmaking. Marvel did have that era, the Edgar Wright era, where they got this reputation of not allowing interesting creative people to be interesting and creative at their studio and then they let Ryan Coogler do what he did with Black Panther and then they let Taika do what he did with our Ragnarok and so then they they shed that reputation um but I think with something like Eternals you know whether it's

just like a specific mismatch of director and studio, because like what Ryan was doing and what Taika was doing, yeah, it felt like a Ryan movie to a certain extent. It definitely felt like a Taika movie. A James Gunn movie feels like a James Gunn movie. All that stuff is true. I don't know what happened with Chloe. And I don't want to irresponsibly speculate. I just do think, and I agree with you that like, if you've just won the Oscar for best direction,

I mean, you have muscle behind you. Yeah. You should be feeling your own. Of course. You know what I mean? Yeah. And to be clear, I do want artists to make art that they have control over.

It's just, Marvel is not, as they weave their giant interlocking tapestry, collaboration is much more the name of the game over there. It's not auteurism. So I don't know. I just think it was like a mismatch of creator and space it raises a very interesting question about the flexibility of the marvel format um it was recently i think i was doing a pod with van and

charles and we were talking about just kind of lamenting that wandavision as a series had to conclude with a kind of prototypical cgi fight in the. And how that was for a show that was so idiosyncratic, and I thought sometimes incredibly successful and other times a little bit less, didn't necessarily always land the plane. It was pretty consistently surprising until that moment. And I think one of the things that bogs Eternals down too is it knows that it has to have a kind of

end of act two fight sequence, and it needs to have a big, noisy, kind of world-threatening conclusion. And that is an issue that a kind of end of act two fight sequence, and it needs to have a big, noisy, kind of world-threatening conclusion. And that is an issue that is kind of coming up in these films over and over and over again. One of the things about being a Marvel comic books reader is certainly there are crossover events and major scaled action runs throughout these books. There are viruses that threaten the existence of mutants. There are battles waged in the skies that threaten the entire population of the world. But it's been cited many times. The Matt Fraction run on Hawkeye, for example,

is a great example of just coming all the way back down to Earth and still telling a great story. I'm still waiting for the good Daredevil movie. I'm still waiting for the version of that story, which is on the street and works well. I know Marvel can do this. They don't have to make every movie and TV show a fight for the ages, or in the case of Falcon and Winter Soldier, a disquisition on the responsibility of civility and government. There's a way to go a little, to slow down, de-escalate and still make something that is very special and so eternals when you bring in someone like chloe xiao who has worked so well in in big landscapes but with small intimate stories something is lost here it's like a missed opportunity and now i wonder if do you think

that they'll basically like pull down the gate on trying to do stuff like this or bringing someone like this in i wonder you know what's wild is like, in terms of like future Chloe's, I don't know. I'll be really interested to see who they hire going forward. So I have a non-answer for you there. But I think it's interesting how much this film pitches towards the future of the franchise. And then Nate Moore was just in the press recently saying like, making more Eternals is not necessarily a priority for us, you know? And I'm just like,

wow. Is that a reflection of the tracking? Is that a reflection of the troubled production? Cause Chloe Zhao, I think I said the opposite. I think she has publicly said, I'd love to make another movie. Um,

I think it, like I said, I think it was a really fraught production for them and i think the reception the early reception has sort of put a web like it listen if it makes gangbusters money you know money talks obviously but to your point about um being a marvel comics reader versus being like a marvel and mcu watcher The burden, and I always think about Ultron, I think is the ultimate example of like just being bogged down with the burden of having to pivot to what was coming next, right?

That burden grows heavier and heavier as you add TV shows. It just all has to fit together in a way that just feels so heavy. And so in theory, it should be a relief for Eternals to be again, like siloed off from the rest of what's going on, going off into the cosmos, not having to deal with multiversal, whatever's happening on earth and all this sort of stuff. And yet it doesn't. And again, I just think what I would love to use a Jane Austen term, I think, is what I learned from Jane Austen, which is like the idea of retrenching. It's probably just like a warfare word, right? It just means, you know, like sort of just like, let's just sit back, slow down,

and figure out what's going on. But I worry in this era of content is king, that that is never going to happen. And I worry in this era of a new man in charge at Disney, which is Bob Iger's era, Disney ending, is part of this bigger mix of what's happening. More, more, more in the Bob Chapek era. Exactly. So like, you know, would a Bob Iger see the value in retrenching and a Bob Chapek might not? And what I've heard, I mean, I don't know what you have heard or know about Bob Chapek, but I've heard that like he's not really a story guy. That's not who he is. He's a money guy. And that's, you know, we need money guys but we need story guys too.

Kevin Feige's a story guy. You know what I mean? And I don't know. Am I worried about this era of Disney? They haven't had the best year. Do you know what I mean? Marvel TV was successful,

but even some of the other like non-Marvel, like Jungle Cruise, like all this other stuff, obviously it's hard to know in COVID. But you guys were just talking on the Dune podcast about what a time Warner Brothers is having right now between Dune and Succession and Curb and stuff like that.

Like Warner Brothers, which felt like it was floundering, is on a little surge right now. Yeah, Matrix coming, the Batman coming. They've got a bunch of stuff in the hopper. They got a Will Smith Oscar performance coming. It's actually kind of an interesting time for Warner Brothers.

Exactly. So it's interesting. Well, okay. So that tees up, I think, where I want to close this conversation because, in fact, it's a huge moment for Marvel because they have all of these other properties that they acquired in the fox deal now they are potentially saying goodbye to spider-man as sony attempts to

build its spider-man extended universe something that i think we'll all be talking about on all of our podcasts come december but um you know fantastic four has already been announced x-men will happen we know there's a Blade movie. We know that there's a second Black Panther film. We know that there is a fourth Thor movie. We know there's a second Doctor Strange movie. These movies are going to bring together all the stories we've been seeing on TV and on film for the last 10 years.

Plus, we're getting Moon Knight and She-Hulk and the Marvels. There's so much stuff coming the idea of retrenching seems impossible to me i mean how they can't stop they have this they have this well but what what is the what is the um ever ever moving machine called do you know what i'm talking about oh i know what you mean but i don't know what what it's called anyhow the perpetual perpetual motion machine like that is what marvel is right now yes and they did just push back a bunch of release dates so what does that tell you on their schedule that feels like a retrench to me miss marvel was uh the tv show miss marvel was pushed back like

an entire over an entire year when it was originally supposed to air that feels like a retrench to me do you know what i mean so i don't know if they'll just keep on doing i think i think they should i would just rather they do that than put out things that aren't up to snuff and maybe they'll and there's a lot that i'm so excited for moon and i'm so excited for she hulk i'm so excited for thor love and thunder of course i'm so excited for and that i mean how is that not going to be phenomenal you know know what I mean? So like, I don't, I don't mean to be like a downer about, uh, anyway, I think it would be idiotic to say like, has Marvel lost its Lester? Like, no, obviously they still have a lot of things that they're doing that are really exciting, but maybe it'll, maybe it'll feel like a little diminished. Maybe it won't feel like as primary

and something that we were talking about in the ringer slack that we haven't brought up yet is like the end of endgame also meant some major luminaries leaving the franchise and robert downey jr in chris evans in scarlett johansson unfortunately unrelated chadwick boseman passed away so a lot of your like big heroes that were here for aren't here. So will Marvel feel beta by comparison? Not like beta cuck, but like just like the B string. I'll just say that. Like will Marvel feel lesser because of that? Again, I think it's probably a mistake to feel too confident about that because when they started they started with a bunch of like heroes that nobody wanted Iron Man and Thor nobody knew

who they were really and nobody wanted them so it's just never count them out but they I think this thing keeps happening in their history which is that Feige tries to like pull away for one reason or another this happened around Iron Man 2 as well Fe Feige's like, okay, we're doing it. We got it. I don't need to be as hands-on. And then I think which is what becomes increasingly true and what is dangerous is that you really need Kevin Feige to make these films work.

That's why I'm worried about the future of Spider-Man. But I don't know. Did that answer your question or did I just perpetually motion myself into a tangent? No, no. I mean, this is why I wanted to talk to you about it because I think you have an incredible amount of insight into it. And also just are

wise enough to know that counting them out would be the biggest mistake imaginable in culture because they have such a head start. It reminds me a little bit of the head start that Netflix has as a subscription service where it's kind of like every kid born between 1995 and 2020 has got Marvel in their DNA at this point because of the fact that they first met it probably around 2008 with the launch of Iron Man and so

I don't know like I've been signed up since 1982 when I was born you know I worked in a comic book store I was obsessed with this stuff so you worked in a comic book store. I was obsessed with this stuff. I didn't know you worked in a comic book store. I certainly did. I'm excited to talk to you about that. In the future, I mean, I, again, I like Shang-Chi a lot. I like Black Widow, which is the launch of Yelena a lot. Like there are new, you know, and Florence Pugh's debut felt like oh, right.

Totally. Amanda and I talked about that on the show. We were like, fuck yeah. This is awesome. She's here. Yeah, she's here. So, you know, again, there's a lot that I'm excited about. And in conclusion, I wish Eternals had been better than it was.

That's the end of our book report on Eternals and the future of the MCU. If you enjoyed this conversation, please listen to Joanna. She's appearing on many, many podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network, but primarily at the end of every week, or excuse me, at the beginning of every week with Mallory Rubin on the Ringerverse. Depends. Sometimes it's

a Friday, sometimes it's a Monday. Just listen to every episode, then you won't miss her. You can listen to us for the next, what, seven, eight weeks covering Succession on the Prestige TV pod. Joanna, thanks for doing this. With someone great. Thanks for having me, Sean. Okay, let's go to my conversation with Joanna Hogg.

I'm delighted to be joined by Joanna Hogg to talk about her films today. Joanna, thank you for being on the show. I'm really delighted. Thank you for having me. Joanna, I wanted to start with this question. Do you remember the first film you saw that made you say to yourself, that I want to do that? As a filmmaker?

Yes. Very good question. I mean, the film that popped into my my head and it was one of many films um there's a film called ticket of no return by a german filmmaker called ulrika odinger and uh i i just remember seeing that uh before i went to film school and it was so uh i don't know it was so interesting to me i haven't seen it many years, so I don't think I can even describe it to you. But it was just very vivid and very much not rooted, well, maybe rooted in reality. But it was quite stylized, but seemed to be talking about alcoholism.

I mean, yeah, there were lots of ideas in there. But yeah, I find it very exciting filmmaking anyway. How did you become exposed to it? Did you go see it at the cinema or did you how did you see it I saw it at the cinema because uh at that time uh before I went to film school and while I was at film school it was a very uh it was a great time for rep cinema so you could see anything from anywhere in the world all through the night double bills triple bills quadruple bills and uh and i saw it i think i might have seen it at the scala cinema in london you know i read that you first imagined the souvenir uh in 1988 as a possibility to be

made as a film was that the first film that you had sort of conceived that you had sort of sort of thinking about i want to make this or were there a lot of ideas prior to that uh there were a lot of ideas prior to that uh yeah a lot of ideas actually when i think about it because uh um that was i'd been to film school or already i'd graduated from film school when i first started thinking about this particular story and then even prior to film school a bit like Judy in the first part of the souvenir I had ideas of films that I wanted to make that were quite ambitious considering I had no experience making films whatsoever at that point in time so I was I was always conceiving ideas and stories

you know even even after film school when i started working in television i just constantly yeah i have all these ghost films that were never uh that never materialized how much of your career and your your sort of professional life has turned out the way you had expected when you were julie's age i think not in the way that i that i expected mean, it depends what point in time we're talking about, because I went through a very sort of disillusioned period after I graduated from film school, or maybe a couple of years after I graduated, where I had thought I was going to go on and make feature films. And like I said, I had quite large ambitions

for the kind of thing that I wanted to do. But then I ended up partly a confidence thing and partly what work came up and work that I needed to do to earn money. I ended up in television, which was very different to how television is now. Not as interesting really. And, um, I, I, I guess I, yeah, I wouldn't have expected that segue into that form.

You know, I had a conversation with David Chase, the creator of the Sopranos recently, and, and he, I think has a very similar point of view and talks very similarly. I feel like about the first part of his career and his relationship to television and his kind of almost desperation to be making feature films, but never really getting the chance to do it because he found himself, for financial or personal reasons, needing to kind of keep his TV jobs. And now, you know, he in part was responsible for making television what it is right now. I'm wondering, like, if you have any desire to toggle back to what you were doing 30 years ago

because the form has changed so much. Even though the form has changed so much and there's very interesting work going on in television and I watch television a little bit, I certainly did during the pandemic more than usual, I have absolutely zero desire to go back to that i i think really partly because it's uh it's more of a producer's medium and certainly a writer's medium too and obviously i'm a writer as well as a director but uh i i feel that as a filmmaker um i'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I feel, yeah, that, that, that, um, I, I can keep with my own vision more clearly than maybe I could in television.

And I'm not sure if I've got an interest in being a showrunner. Um, there's, there's minimal amount of time to do work. And, uh, so I, I, I feel, yeah, I want to stay focused with cinema. Well, as long as cinema exists. I'm always fascinated by the sort of the diptitch, the two-part film. There are a few examples over the years. I love that you always wanted to tell this story as sort of a two-parter. Were there other examples that you looked at or thought about, or was there anything that was an inspiration in terms of breaking up this story? i find it quite hard actually to find a connection in that kind of a way i mean there are films that have different episodes within them and they may be

sort of split in half but within one film one story uh no i i i there's no particular analogy for what I wanted to do. It was less about the sort of cinema form in the sense of these two films and more about a story that needed a break in it. But it wasn't enough to make a break within one film because also I wanted the span of time, I wanted the hours to be able to develop the character. So, and I mean, I guess I didn't even think of doing it like this, but if I tried to do a four hour film,

that would have been much harder to make. But it wasn't for those practical reasons. It's just that there's a very natural break between the stories. But I feel, well, last night, for for example um in la they showed a double bill of part one and part two and and that's only the second time of having uh the double bill being shown the other time was last month in paris and um i'm excited that the films can be seen in that way one after the other i don't think that's the only way of them existing obviously but um i'm i'm interested yeah i'm interested in something that has this uh sort of breadth to it and and but but but they're different keys they're different musical keys each part forgive this sort

of practical and economic question but when you have a story that is this personal that is so you know very clearly modeled on aspects of your experiences, how do you sell a movie like that? How do you get people interested in producing a movie like that when it is so clearly modeled on something? You're not selling sort of a story that is this expansive world, or do people not even necessarily know that it is from your personal experience when you're out sort of presenting it to them? They do. not even necessarily know that it is from your personal experience when you're out sort of presenting it to them um they they they do i mean i think that that uh uh that's not necessarily interesting to them you know anyone financing a film is not enough that it's personal obviously it's got to do something else i mean i think it's just about the way that i i'm building um my body of work, because I started in such a particular way,

in a very small way, I'm not in a hurry to expand the canvas in a sense, because I'm so, well, I'm too much of a control freak, but I started in a way that was already quite personal, a particular process for making a film without a conventional screenplay. And along the way, not initially, but along the way, I have gathered supporters of that process in the form of producers and distributors and the people that you need to help you to make a film and finance a film. So I'm fortunate yeah i've carried i've carried

these these collaborators with me it doesn't mean i won't have new collaborators in the future but it but um yeah so you know specifically bbc film and the british film institute in london and then a24 in the states you know they they what, uh, what I'm trying to do and, you know, wonderfully support this process that doesn't involve presenting a convention script. In fact, no one, even myself has a complete idea of what I'm going to be doing. There's a wonderful scene in part two, in which you submit your script to the sort of advisory board at the film school. And I was wondering if writing that and filming that scene was a kind of catharsis.

I told you I could do it like this moment for you because it almost seems like you're rendering everyone's confusion as to your process on the screen. Yeah, it's true. I don't know. I mean, this that that even making films is a cathartic uh thing i'm not sure because i'm always uh there's always the next thing to do or the next thing the next challenge or the next thing to think about there's never a sort of moment where i think oh yes i've i've uh i've expressed that and now i feel relief i mean actually in specifically with the film school,

there's been a certain amount of guilt that I felt because I think, well, I've sort of given them a little bit of a bashing through these two films. And actually now, you know, as time goes by, I realized the positives that have come out of that experience. And so even though I had those battles like Julie does in that scene, not exactly like that, but I felt that they didn't understand

what I wanted to do. And I had someone, one of the tutors say to me, well, if you go ahead and make this film, we're not going to support you, which is pretty much what they say to Julie. And I went ahead and made it. So maybe the fact that I was challenged so much strengthened me, strengthened

my resolve and my passion for what I wanted to do and to stick to my guns. So maybe sometimes in life we need these kind of opposites to push against. Yeah, I think people will legitimately find that inspiring, that sequence and the way that the film plays out. I love films about making films. Is that a sub-genre of interest to you? It certainly is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's not, I mean, hopefully not in a geeky kind of way, but I'm interested in, obviously there's a particular appeal to films about filmmaking. And I did, you know, I did rewatch, uh, kind of, you know, seminal films,

uh, on that subject, you know, day for night, eight and a half, one can't forget. Uh, so I'm,

yeah, I, I, I, I, I'm, yeah, I am interested in that as a subject.

One thing I was curious about, and I don't know if you've reflected on this at all, but you've been wanting to realize this project for a long period of time. And if you've thought about what the film would have looked like or how it might've been different if you had made it 10 years ago or 20 years ago

and what you kind of accrued in the time that passed. Yes, yeah. Well, I mean, and I often think in a more sort of global way, you know, if I'd made those films that I wanted to make back, you know, when I was in film school, when I left film school, whether I'd actually still be making films now, it's quite possible that I would have got derailed. And I mean, I don't think they would have necessarily worked out well because I didn't have any perspective at that time. So if in 1988, I've tried to make that two-part film, I can't imagine what a mess that would have been. So you're grateful in some ways for how this may have played out? Well, maybe. There's always regrets. And, you know, there's so many stories I still want to tell.

And like I say, there's a kind of finite amount of time to do it all in. One thing I was thinking about as I was preparing for this is, is I still want to tell. And like I say, it's kind of fine. I'm out of time to do it all in. One thing I was thinking about as I was preparing for this is, you know, all of your films obviously have personal elements in them and you've been open about sharing that. But I think given the acclaim of the souvenir

and the sort of rise in your profile, honestly, as a filmmaker, do you worry now about the idea of kind of overexposing yourself or allowing people to interpret your own life? Very much so. You just saying those words right now i kind of freaks me out a bit i i yeah and i and and and and what i'm what i'm most worried about that is the the work itself that it gets

affected in some way um with the with the response and i think mean, this isn't me kind of crying out for people to say negative things about my films, but I think I've often formed my ideas and my stories around difficulties. So I, and well, like you took that example of the scene with the tutors, you know, and Julie kind of fighting against the tutors. I think I need a little bit of a fight. And I don't mind being heckled. I mean,

so there's a certain amount of inspiration I get from the darker side of things in a way. So, the sort of acclaim that you describe is, I'm not very good at dealing with that if if there is such a thing happening do you sense a you know an irony to that of sort of working for a long period of time to get the opportunity to make the kind of work that you want to make you've made it you know at the risk of embarrassing you i think many people feel like you have emerged as a really a profound filmmaker in the last five or ten years and your work is very important to people now so does that make you feel uncomfortable at all? There's a pressure

in that of course and right now I'm editing a new film and I think well yeah you just never know how things are going to go or how people are going to respond to something and yet it's so important for me

not to kind of sit back and think oh yes people like the work i'm going to carry on uh you know doing things like the things that they like you know to please people in that sense that would be obviously a disaster so i have to keep taking risks and the risk is that people will turn around and say well that's a piece of shit that you've just made or whatever it is so i i the important thing is i i can't really think about the the impression the films are making um because that will trip me up so i have to just you know i find that yeah this particular grooves that i'm interested in and I just have to stick with that and and this process that I'm doing right now with you is uh I find a very difficult one because I don't um I

don't stand back from the work um certainly when I'm making it I'm so I get so immersed in in in a film and shoot and edit um so I find uh I'm not very good at looking back i don't look back at the work anyway yeah in the past i've asked a lot of filmmakers if they read reviews of their own work or criticism and you know i'm curious if you do that but also i'm just curious how it feels to have someone tell you what they think about a film like the souvenir or just to hear something that maybe maybe not positive about a movie that is so specific and personal and so long in the coming yes well it it's strange and i mean this is just typical we're kind of humans after all but i probably if someone says something negative uh about film uh that i've made uh that

will linger more than something positive i find you find when someone's telling me their response to a film and if it's really positive, it's hard to really completely take it in. And maybe on some level, it's important not to take it in, actually, like I say, in terms of the creative process going forward. I'm not

interested in any self-congratulation. I mean, that's just so far from my nature anyway. Were you already off and into the production of part two before you had kind of heard the reception to part one? What was the timeline like there? Well, that was really important. And I was worried about that

because originally I wanted to shoot the two films together because I didn't want to have any kind of break in between. I wanted to just carry on through the story. Of course, that didn't happen. But I made the decision not to read anything in response to part one. And I really managed to keep to that. Of course, people tell you things, so you can't be completely cushioned from it. And then I had to do press and interviews like this for part one. So I did gather gather a response but I was really worried that someone would say something that would derail the second part or make me think in the wrong kind of way about a character or a character maybe that I shouldn't develop in the second one I mean I just

didn't want any ideas from the outside at all because I knew where I wanted to go with it I knew what I wanted to explore but it was just this odd hiatus having to step back reluctantly from the process. And also the energy, it takes such a long time to build up that energy for a film shoot and get everybody into the story and then to have to stop for a year before continuing was, yeah, wasn't easy.

But however, I'm glad that that did happen because I had so many more ideas than when we didn't get to shoot part two. I was going to ask you that actually, how much it had sort of changed by having a little bit of a break there. Did it meaningfully change? It did not so much change, but additions were made. I had ideas that I wouldn't have had if I'd shot them back to back. One crucial difference was the film within the film that Julie makes or dreams, however you like to see it, that I hadn't really thought of that film within a film in the same way when we were making part one.

And I forget what other differences, but I, yeah, I definitely, well, and actually critically, I was able to sort of observe the process of part one and how it was for me to reconstruct that part of my life. And so that reconstruction that I observed then literally went into part two. So in a sense, part two is about the making of part one. Right.

From my experience. Yeah, I wanted to ask you that as well, which is, you know, how much are you relying on sort of memory and interpretation and obviously the kind of what you're changing versus is there reportage that's going on? Are you interviewing people from your life to get a sense of what you seemed like at that time? I did some of that.

There was a lot of research also into what I'd said or written myself, recordings of myself talking to somebody. Or then I talked to somebody that I was at film school with and asked them what their experience was not so I didn't want to know so much of how I was then but I kind of wanted to know just how film school was just fill in some of the gaps for me but it was yeah it was mostly about part two anyway it was mostly about um having recent memory, as I say, of making part one. And the idea of what it is to make a film, even though it was Julie who's still a student, what it is to be on a film set and be doing something so acutely personal. So I wanted Julie to be in the shoes that I had been and then what I realized is

that honor in playing Julie in part two had also observed the process of part one and how I was making part one and how and then and therefore where Julie was going to go next anyway so it's it's almost impossible to describe the different and the different roads the different ideas the different ways of working but that went into it. Yeah, it's sort of a Russian doll of conception of yourself, right? You can keep pulling it open and open and open. I wanted to ask you about Honor, actually. Obviously, you both had a significant personal relationship

before working on the film, but how has your relationship changed since making these two films? Well, I mean, I suppose the issue is because it's so all-encompassing making a film and then editing it and then doing this part of the process that we haven't actually had that much time together really in in the last few months and she's also studying psychology at edinburgh university So she's been really busy with her studies. And then I'm in LA right now and she's in Edinburgh, but she was meant to be here with me now. And unfortunately, her visa didn't come through. We don't understand why. I mean, it's not that they said she couldn't come, but we didn't hear. And then I came on so I would have this would have been a really nice time actually uh to spend time together um are you aware of how the uh the Richard Ayoade character

has emerged as sort of a beloved brat on the internet there's there's something kind of brewing right now I think with that figure I don't know if you've picked up on that at all I've been told a little bit about that. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny. I mean, he's really adorable. So, I mean, he's really, really great. I mean, obviously, he's only a part of the whole.

But he, no, I can understand. I can understand why. I mean, I find him very funny. What can you tell me about that character and kind of forming that character? Because he becomes very important in part two, in a way. Yes. Well, I mean, I always had that journey that the character was going to make through part one and then into part two. It wasn't like I thought, oh, I've got to have more of Richard in part two.

He was always in part two, more part of the story, or developed in that way. It was a really fun journey with him because he's a director too, obviously. And so, we had many discussions about different ways of being a director and then how in that point in time in the 1980s there were a number of sort of auteur filmmakers who had very ambitious ideas and were very yeah I kind of had a vision and maybe a certain arrogance with it so we were kind of fascinated in that and we looked at a lot of interviews of directors at that time. And then now, I'm not going to name any names, but, you know, not just from the UK, but from the States, from France. You can look at different ways of directors being and how directors, well, certainly at this stage.

I mean, this is like a performance in a way. I'm not very good at performing, but, uh, but watching these interviews of these directors performing, right. Anyway, it was, was, uh, it was really interesting.

And Richard did a lot of research into that character. So it was, uh, yeah, a lot of work went into that, but then he also has this very natural ability. This is the kind of question that you usually ask when you're interviewing the director of a comic book film,

but, um, I'm going to ask you anyway, is there there could there ever be a part three of the souvenir uh uh no no yeah it's a it didn't sound like a very clear no but it is a no uh i mean the the slight hesitation in my voice is to do with i feel that all my films i i something i pick up something from the last film and put it into the next film. There's a sort of chain reaction of all my films. So I feel that they're all sequels of each other in some way. I don't know. So not so clearly like it will be Julie, you know, kind of life after film school.

No, but there might be something of one of the characters that moves forward. Who knows? Can you tell me your feelings about releasing a movie into this climate right now it's obviously been a very complicated time for movies in general i'm curious how you feel about you know where and how people see your movie yeah well obviously i'm concerned like you know everyone else making films is concerned and we don't really know um you know what's going to happen but i mean it's evidence last night um as i said there was a double bill of both souvenirs at the aero cinema

in santa monica and i don't know how many seats there are in there 400 more than 400 but it was completely packed so what pandemic you know i mean so that was really uh that was really exciting to see so i hope you know for for you know when the film gets released um later in october that some people will have the confidence to go back to the theater joanne are you allowed to speak about what you're doing next uh i'm allowed to but i don't want to can you say anything about it it's a ghost story oh that's that's intriguing um all right well i'll i'll end with this we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what is the last great thing they have seen you are of course an avowed cinephile i'm wondering if you've seen anything great lately oh uh just have to think about that for a second because I've been watching a lot

of film noir. Okay. Heat, Michael Mann's heat. Oh, I'm in LA thinking about it. That's, that's a phenomenal film.

And then also I've discovered recently Ulu Grossbard and straight time with Dustin Hoffman. Wonderful film. Incredible film. Incredible film. Just released on Blu-ray. Yes. Is that right?

Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. Just this week. Literally just this week. Well, he was a great director and he was such a great director with actors. I just think the performances in Straight Time are really phenomenal. So I find that a real inspiration rather to to watch can i just ask you to speak a little bit about heat because i would not have guessed that that

would have been what you would have said but it is a favorite on this show so i'm curious what you responded to okay well i'm in awe of a film like that because i don't think i could ever i could ever do something like that on the other hand there is something there's a small part maybe not even a small part of me that would like to do something that ambitious with those amazing action sequences and and yet it's not just an action film it's got so much complexity complexity to it and it's got um i mean there's just so much going on and it's so uh yeah it's such a uh a portrait of la i mean i don't actually know la that well but i i you know it's like the ultimate la film i think it's such a portrait of LA I mean I don't actually know LA

that well but I you know it's like the ultimate LA film I think it's incredible it's a marvelous recommendation congrats on the

souvenir the souvenir part two Joanna thank you for doing the show okay thank you thank you to Joanna Hogg

thank you to our Joanna, Joanna Robinson, and our producer, of course, Bobby Wagner. He produces every episode of The Big Picture for your hearing pleasure. We will see you next week on The Big Picture.