If you’re a fan of Marvel movies, you might have seen director Chloe Zhao’s new comments about her own installment, Eternals. Speaking to Vanity Fair, she said, “Eternals had, like, an unlimited amount of money and resources. And here we have one street corner that we can afford, to [stand in for] Stratford… Eternals didn’t have a lot of limitations, and that is actually quite dangerous.”
Of course, she’s talking about the movie in comparison to Hamnet, the adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel that’s due to come out on November 27, 2025. Following a fictional story about the life of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes, following the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, it’s a world away from the MCU in more ways than one.
“Eternals prepared me for Hamnet because it’s world-building. Before that, I had only done films that existed in the real world. I also learned what to do and not to do – what’s realistic and what isn’t,” she continued.
The Marvel movie marked Zhao’s first big blockbuster, but even though she was fresh from winning the Academy Award for Best Director for Nomadland, Eternals was largely trashed. Even four years on, it’s still got a 44% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and is routinely the butt of the internet’s Marvel-themed jokes.
I’m an Eternals truther, and am still scratching my head as to why the world was so intent on – nay, enjoyed – bashing it so much. But even though Zhao’s comments about the lack limitations being dangerous were aimed at her own experience as a director, I can’t help wondering if the same principles apply to Avengers: Doomsday… and that’s worrying.
Avengers: Doomsday will likely have no limits either, and I don’t think that’s a good thing
Even from its initial casting announcement (I still can’t believe that millions of us watched a line of chairs for five hours), Doomsday has felt like Marvel’s most limitless movie yet.
We’ve got at least 25 massive names reprising roles from the last 20 years of MCU and X-Men movies, probably a lot more who still haven’t been announced, claims of a budget that keeps rocketing, a six month filming schedule littered with elite CGI and VFX enhancement, and the most unhinged level of online hype already reaching levels that make me dread the official marketing campaign.
If anything, Doomsday feels so much bigger than Endgame was, but there’s a huge chasm between them. Infinity War, and Endgame after that, made total sense. We’d been gearing up for the mother of all battles for years, thanks to well-sown seeds long before Marvel fatigue was even a thing. We cried, we screamed, we pushed up the box office numbers. It can probably never be recreated.
Why don’t I feel the same about Doomsday? As Zhao points out, having no limitations is a dangerous thing, and I think we’re already seeing that in the rumors surrounding how it’s being filmed. The difference is that the Marvel-safe Russo brothers are back at the Avengers helm, but their more recent standalone movies, like The Electric State and The Gray Man don’t exactly fill me with hope there either.
If the internet is to be believed, actors have wrapped filming their scenes without the script being completed, others (such as Alan Cumming) are filming scenes where they don’t know who they’re playing opposite, and fake rumors are flying around social media, including an on-set feud between Robert Downey Jr. and Ryan Reynolds (that’s been proven false).
To me, it all feels like a car crash happening in slow motion. It’s overwhelming, there’s too many things going on, and it feels like it would be an absolute miracle to have a salvageable product at the end of it, let alone a brilliant one.
The sceptic in me thinks Doomsday is nothing more than a stretched-out franchise cash cow that doesn’t need to exist at all, and I wonder how much better Phase Six would feel if neither this nor Secret Wars were there at all.
Nonetheless, Doomsday is the movie moment of the decade for Marvel, so of course they’re throwing caution to the limitless wind, even if it doesn’t make sense looking in from the outside.
If I had superpowers, I’d predict a very profitable movie that’s a cultural disaster, which could harm the franchise we’re quietly pleased doesn’t have a new movie out in the next six months. We’re indeed in dangerous entertainment times, with seeming no limits on what happens when making Doomsday, and Zhao’s comments should be heeded as a warning.
You can watching existing Marvel movies and TV shows on Disney+ in the US, UK and Australia.
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