The Oscar-winning director’s delicate cinéma vérité style is a million miles from the cosmic chicanery of the MCU
Marvel’s decision to hand Chloé Zhao the reins to The Eternals, the studio’s sprawling, millennia-spanning tale of godlike superheroes, looks like a stroke of genius after the Chinese film-maker won the best director and best picture Oscars for her film Nomadland this week. What was it that Marvel president Kevin Feige saw in the director’s intimate, sober yet ultimately spirited work that inspired him to think that she could become the film-maker to spin the Marvel Cinematic Universe into its most far-out venture yet? It could not have been Nomadland itself, for all reports suggests that Zhao worked on The Eternals (due out in November) concurrently with the best picture winner.
More likely it was Zhao’s previous film The Rider, a poetic tale of poverty and desperation among the Lakota Sioux of the Pine Ridge Reservation which, like Nomadland, used untrained actors for authenticity. This was the movie that inspired McDormand, also Nomadland’s producer, to approach Zhao about working on the eventual Oscar-winner.
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