Chloe Zhao is one of the most thoughtful directors. She really puts a lot of care into her shots and into her characters. I was so excited to see the trailer for her new film, Hamnet, which looks like a return to form.
– YouTube www.youtube.com
Previously, she spent some time in the Marvel world after an indie film, where she had a lot of money to make an Eternals movie that just didn’t hit with critics and fans. As she looks back on that experience while opening her new film, I thought she had some really poignant words to share.
In a new Vanity Fair interview, Zhao said, “Eternals prepared me for Hamnet because it’s world-building,” Zhao told the publication. “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. 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. Because we only have that street corner [in Hamnet], suddenly everything has meaning.”
Now, I think this is relevant for our readers because I’d guess that most of us are making things that have limitations. We often see those things as holding us back, but they can actually make us more creative.
We have to solve problems and even put more thought into shots and executions, because there are no second chances.
I think Zhao yearned for that again because she knew it brought the best out of her.
Of course, she does not hate Marvel or regret her work. And I think she views it as an experience that taught her a lot.
“In this case, we truly stepped out of the box that I think the world put us in, and met in the middle because of our shared interests,” Zhao said. “And by truly doing that, it made a lot of people uncomfortable on both sides. But there are also people who are more comfortable with the order of their world [being] disturbed. And then they look at our love-child and go, ‘Oh! This touches different sides of me!’ I like that.”
She continued, “I completely understand the divisiveness coming from critics and the fans. Because when you take this to extremes that are seen as opposition — the world I come from and the world of Marvel, that has been divided in a way that’s so unfair and unfortunate — and to merge the way we did, I actually see the reaction as a testament to how much we had merged with each other; how uncomfortable that might make people feel.”
It sounds like all parties got what they needed from the experience and now have gone back to particular phases in their careers that are more personal.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
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