Director Chloé Zhao has had a pretty strange track record with big, commercial Hollywood projects over the last few years: Although she continues to draw accolades (and even a tidy box office draw, with Hamnet bringing in more than $100 million last year) from her more emotional and ostensibly personal work, Zhao’s forays down into the IP mines have produced less promising results. Her Eternals was one of the lowest performers in Marvel Cinematic Universe history, with its star-studded cast of characters almost immediately discarded by the mega-franchise’s overseeing architects. (Whither Kingo?!) And that film still fared better than Zhao’s efforts to reboot her favorite teenage TV show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which was killed off at Hulu back in March.
Still, none of this has soured Zhao on the importance of pop culture’s pulpier properties. Giving a masterclass this week at the Venice International Film Festival (per Variety), Zhao spoke about the power and importance of working with the big, dramatic character types that tend to crop up in comic book narratives. “I do feel it’s important to not write off stories because we don’t consider them high art,” Zhao told listeners. “The purpose of storytelling for me, humbly, is to create containers for people … to try to process what they need to process. Archetypes are such a great way to do it—and we see them in myths—is because it’s something we all share.”
Zhao even went so far as to push back on a question from a moderator about the “sharp contrast” between her 2020 Oscar winner Nomadland and its immediate follow-up, Eternals. “What contrast? It’s people in nature… with animals… who have complicated relationships with them.” Zhao also noted that comics were her first love, way before film: “But I wasn’t very good at drawing. I wasn’t up to standard.” Speaking of making Eternals specifically, she said “I loved doing it. For any of you who love anime, I know you know this was a girl’s dream come true. Comic books are the western equivalent of [manga]. They are very different, but I live in the west, and that’s what I had access to.”
Keep scrolling for more great stories.