Chloé Zhao has directed an Oscar-winning drama about nomads living out of their vehicles, a Shakespearean family drama, and a massive Marvel superhero movie. So when someone suggested that Nomadland and Eternals represented opposite ends of the filmmaking spectrum, Zhao replied that she saw no contrast.
Variety reports that, during a masterclass at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, Zhao reflected on her career, her love of manga, her experience making Marvel’s Eternals, and why she believes comic book movies deserve to be taken seriously as storytelling.
“I do feel it’s important to not write off stories because we don’t consider them high art,” Zhao said.
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Chloé Zhao Says Comic Book Movies Have Value
Zhao revealed that she actually dreamed of becoming a manga artist when she was growing up.
“But I wasn’t very good at drawing. I wasn’t up to standard,” she said with a laugh. “I wanted to tell stories. I didn’t think cinema was an option for me.”
She eventually found her way into filmmaking, directing Nomadland, which won the Golden Lion at Venice before going on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. She followed that success by directing Eternals, her 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe movie starring Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie.
For Zhao, making Eternals was an opportunity to combine her love of manga and storytelling.
“I loved doing it,” she said. “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.”
While superhero movies in general have declined from the enormous box office heights they reached before the pandemic, Zhao doesn’t believe that their popularity (or lack thereof) should determine whether their stories have artistic value.
“The purpose of storytelling for me, humbly, is to create containers for people … to try to process what they need to process,” she said. “Archetypes are such a great way to do it — and we see them in myths — is because it’s something we all share.”
Zhao Compared Eternals to Nomadland
During the masterclass, the moderator pointed out the apparent contrast between Eternals and Nomadland, Zhao’s intimate drama starring Frances McDormand. Zhao didn’t see it that way.
“What contrast? It’s people in nature… with animals… who have complicated relationships with them,” she said.
That perspective makes sense considering the filmmaker’s approach to both movies. Nomadland follows a woman who loses her job and begins living out of her van while traveling around the United States for work, while Eternals follows an immortal alien race tasked with protecting Earth from evil beings. The films couldn’t look more different on the surface, but Zhao sees common ground in the way both stories explore humanity, nature, relationships, and the world around us.
Chloé Zhao, Marvel, and the Martin Scorsese Debate
Zhao’s comments also offer an interesting counterpoint to the long-running debate over whether superhero movies should be considered cinema or something closer to theme park entertainment. Martin Scorsese famously compared Marvel movies to theme parks in 2019, sparking years of discussion about the artistic merits of comic-book adaptations.
Zhao isn’t interested in writing off an entire category of storytelling simply because it doesn’t fit someone’s definition of “high art.” And considering that Eternals was a Marvel movie she genuinely wanted to make, it’s not surprising that Zhao has a different perspective on the genre. The film wasn’t the box office success Marvel had hoped for, earning around $400 million worldwide against a budget of more than $200 million, but Zhao’s defense isn’t really about whether a comic book movie makes money. It’s about whether the story can mean something to the people watching it.
Chloé Zhao on Finding Her Way Into Filmmaking
Zhao also revealed that she didn’t grow up watching a lot of movies. In her late 20s, she spent several years working as a bartender and described herself as feeling “lost” before discovering filmmaking.
“I was still longing to tell stories,” she said. “Film became a very natural choice. I always say film directors don’t actually need to know how to do anything really well. I see it as someone who is going to manage an ecosystem, bringing everyone together.”
Zhao returned to Venice this year after premiering Nomadland at the festival in 2020. That film earned the prestigious Golden Lion and ultimately made Zhao only the second woman to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her more recent film, Hamnet, also earned major awards attention, receiving eight Oscar nominations and winning Jessie Buckley an Academy Award for her performance as Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare.
But despite everything she’s accomplished, Zhao admitted that she’s currently wrestling with a very different kind of question.
“My life is occupied by screens. Am I missing life because I was always there trying to capture it?” she asked rhetorically. “I am going through that crisis right now.”
Even an Oscar-winning filmmaker can occasionally wonder whether it’s time to step away from the screen. Meanwhile, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is climbing the ranks as one of the highest-grossing films of all time, so it’s clear that audiences haven’t really turned their backs on comic book movies yet.
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