The Marvel Cinematic Universe has explored the galaxy before, but never like this. In Marvel's Eternals, an ancient race of extraterrestrial beings descends on Earth with a mission from the Celestial Arishem: protect humanity from the Deviants, mindless killing machines that would hamper the development of life on the planet. However, when they discover the true purpose of their mission in the face of an impending crisis, the family they've known for thousands of years might not make it through intact.
Speaking to CBR, Eternals screenwriters Kaz and Ryan Firpo broke down some of the decisions they made in the film. They explained why vampire stories influenced their approach to the plot and how they turned to anime for inspiration. They recalled the moment they clicked with director Chloe Zhao and how a love of geek culture brought them all together. They also teased their future plans for the characters, confirmed a major death, compared Marvel's creative strategy to playing chess and more.
CBR: I know you worked with Eternals director Chloe Zhao to craft this film. What was something that she brought to the movie that surprised you?
Kaz Firpo: Right away, Ryan and I wrote about three or four drafts of the movie before Chloe came on board. So we were working with Nate [Moore] writing this movie -- Nate Moore was a producer, formerly, of a small movie called Black Panther. He came on board and was producing this with us, and he's just a really great guy.
We began these conversations about directors... We started watching films, talking about who could bring this incredible vision to life, and then we watched the writer. Even though it seemed like such a crazy idea at the time, we just all knew we couldn't get that version of the movie out of our heads.
At the time, Nomadland was -- she was still in prep on that; they hadn't started. So it was really an interesting time to take that sort of big chance. Right away, as soon as Chloe walked in the room, she's just -- she's a big nerd! I think that's one of those things that you think you got this like elegant, humanist filmmaker, but she loves Marvel. She's a fan. She writes fan fiction. I mean, she's just really all-in on this. We also discovered that it's a very small world. She went to NYU grad school; I was an undergrad. Her co-producer of Nomadland produced my thesis film at NYU. It's just like a really small film school club.
So right away, we had a lot of synergy. We were talking about the same things, like same references: Final Fantasy VII, Princess Mononoke. We brought all that stuff into Eternals. Really, there's no immortal, epic love-space-god movie that you can watch as a reference point for Eternals. There's nothing like it, you know? So we really all had to kind of cobble together these references and bring all our own passions to bear and put them in this movie. So collaborating, for sure, it's a conversation. It's a bunch of people in a windowless room eating cereal, talking about immortal gods. That's how a movie like this gets made.
Ryan Firpo: Another really specific one is, yeah, Chloe has a love of anime. So the powers that she brought to Kingo -- I think, in our versions, Kingo had the power to basically supercharge any object. So he could pick up anything and it would essentially become a supercharged weapon. But then, in the evolution when she came on and was working on the script, that then they kind of -- what I just realized after seeing it for the third time, last time, is at Kingo's powers are basically finger guns. [laughs] So him throwing the hadoukens and all that stuff like that, that's very kind of anime reference, that stuff that Chloe brought in that I thought was really cool and definitely an upgrade from what we had written.
A script changes a lot from the development stage through to the theatrical release. What were some of those changes? What's something that, perhaps, turned out for the better, in your opinion?
Kaz Firpo: That's a particularly interesting, sort of tricky question. I'm gonna tell a story to stall while I let Ryan find that very specific thing, because no one's asked this question. But what I will say is that 10,000 people work on a Marvel movie. It's really crazy -- especially this one; Eternals, especially. Everyone is making a bunch of micro decisions that gets you to where the movie is.
So for us, it's been pretty remarkable to look back at some of the original outlines. We wrote literally nine drafts of a 30-page outline that was just between Victoria Alonso, Kevin Feige, Nate Moore and Lou [D'esposito], all the heads at Marvel. We would all talk about it, revise it, revise it, but these big ideas -- even the places we go -- I mean, they're all a part of that original intrinsic idea.
The hand coming out of the earth and... even that turn with Ikarus: this idea of an immortal superhero, basically, questioning their mission and being caught between their responsibility as a loyal soldier and the family that they love and the love affair of their life and to be caught between those two things. Those were the original core elements of this film.
So the places we went -- I worked on an archeological dig in college; I minored in classics, so to bring that to this movie, to look at these unexplored time periods from Babylon to Mesopotamia to Ancient India to the Fall of Tenochtitlan. All those places, they were in the outline, and I think that what Chloe really did was bring them incredibly, beautifully, stunningly to life.
Ryan Firpo: On a more minor level, the relationship between Makkari and Druig, that's something that we hadn't scripted, actually. So we were kind of surprised by that -- and really pleasantly surprised. We thought that that was a really strong, beautiful chemistry that she found between Barry [Keoghan] and Lauren [Ridloff]. I think a lot of that just had to do with casting.
Movies are big machines, and they take a lot of planning and a lot of strategizing, but great filmmakers like Chloe are also leaving themselves open to discovery. I think she discovered that chemistry between them through the process of making the movie and I think that adds a really nice little sprinkle of beauty and humanity that really fleshes out and rounds out the whole team.
Kaz Firpo: Yeah, we ship Druig and Makkari, for sure.
Eternals is just another chapter in this massive, sprawling universe. How hands-on was Marvel during this process?
Kaz Firpo: I mean, absolutely. This is what I always like to say about this, is that Marvel's secret sauce is not some magical algorithm on a computer; it's the people that run that company that love what they do and hire people who love what they do. So there was no mandate. There was never a conversation of, "Okay, so you have to have this in the movie, and it has to be this." It really was a process of creative discovery, telling a story that was different and special right away.
You know, I'm half Japanese. I was raised by two women in San Francisco. We just wanted to bring this eclectic Bay Area weirdness to a movie on a cosmic level. That was a big part of it for us, is we really wanted to take people places they hadn't seen before and reflect the world as it really is, which is a very diverse, different and a strange place.
So there was never a mandate almost in any part of the process. That was really the gift that Marvel gave us from the beginning, was that they were willing to take risks, to do something different and to explore corners of the MCU that had never been explored, from the dawn of man to the truly weirdest reaches of outer cosmic celestial space. One movie manages to do all that, and it was ours.
Ryan Firpo: I think that Kaz pretty much covered it. Yeah, I would say that I guess the analogy that I use a lot, because people often think Kevin must have some secret whiteboard somewhere where he's plotted out the next like 30 years of story, and it's not really like that.
I equivocate it to playing chess. When you're a good chess player, your objective is to checkmate the other opponent, obviously, but you don't know exactly how that's gonna work, but you create many paths to victory for yourself. That's what they're really great at, is that they're just creating all these little door that they are not exactly sure which one and how they're going to go through them specifically, but there's so much opportunity that they can take a number of different paths to success.
As you've mentioned, this movie balances a lot of different elements, and that's on top of introducing 10 individual characters. Which part of that was the most challenging for you?
Kaz Firpo: Yeah, I think like all stories in the MCU, they're icebergs. There's so much beneath the surface. There's so much richness. I mean, Jack Kirby is [a] legendary creator. He spent years telling stories that haven't been brought to the screen yet. So for us, I think the biggest thing is trying to find the stuff that we love. I
think all these stories, like every story in the MCU begins with characters, finding 10 -- in this case -- 10 characters that you love, that you want to spend time with, that you want to get to know. I think this has been reported on, but there we wrote drafts of the movie with 12 characters, that had even more Eternals. So for sure, the challenge is to lay out this mythology, to have this big emotional, existential question at the heart of a movie.
I've said it before: there's no immortal space god epic love story that we can watch and just go, "Oh, yes, that's how they did it in the past." We were sort of blazing a trail with a very strange and gonezo movie like this. So everything is a challenge: getting up every day and sitting in front of a computer by yourself is a challenge, I'll tell you that much. [laughs]
But for sure, writing a movie of this cosmic scale, I think the greatest challenge was just to always bring it back to these people, because that's what the movie is about at the end of the day. It's about people being soldiers, being challenged, being caught between their responsibilities as soldiers and the love they have for each other, for this family and for the people they're protecting.
Ryan Firpo: Yeah, and I think, just from a craft perspective, just balancing the the pacing, basically, between a save-the-world, present day storyline that has a very clear and urgent ticking clock, and then flashing back to these different points in time that could be as long as 5000 years previously. That was definitely a challenge, of giving the flashbacks a reason for being.
Then, on top of that, I'd say like just preserving and emphasizing the love story between Sersi and Ikarus in the middle of all this craziness that's going on. Those were the two biggest challenges, I think, in constructing the script.
Of all the characters, I think Thena's story surprised me the most. Tell me a little about the development of her arc and the implications of her Mahd W'yry illness?
Kaz Firpo: Absolutely. The short short version of a really interesting story was that we were sitting in the writers room one day, which is literally a windowless room at Burbank, the Burbank headquarters, and Nate walked in the room and he said, "Hey, Angie is interested in being in the movie." And we were like, "Who's Angie?" He's like, "Oh, Angelina Jolie." She was interested in being this film, because I think she was really interested in the modern mythology that Marvel was tackling. This was the perfect chance to bring her to this universe.
Thena, right away, her character, we always wanted her to tackle this concept that's right out of the comics, down to the very strange verbiage that Jack Kirby chose. Yeah, it's absolutely a metaphor for everything from dementia to the strength and fragility that exists in all of us. I think that only an actress like Angelina Jolie could bring that absolute grace and fragile innocence to a role where she'd also be one of the most badass warriors in the history, of certainly human civilization and maybe all time. That was a big part. We were challenged to explore that and to look in and that even superheroes can be imperfect.
Ryan Firpo: We also just really wanted to explore the weight of being immortal and what would it be like to live for that long and see so many people that you love come and go, basically -- basically, a lot of things that vampire movies and vampire stories deal with.
So this became a really cool aspect that we took from the comic books that could explore that, but also, it had the bonus of tying into the secret subplot that the Celestials are forcing upon our unknowing Eternals. So it did a lot of things. Then it also, like Kaz was saying, gave Angelina just a great opportunity to have a really complete and satisfying arc and explore her range as an actor.
Another character that fascinated me is Kingo, and in particular, his choice to abstain from the conflict at the end of the film. How did you arrive at that decision for him?
Kaz Firpo: I think the short version is -- he actually says it quite eloquently in the film, and it was something that we always explored. We actually had a grid; there are a lot of grids when you make a movie and characters, but one of those grids was, "What does everyone believe?"
I think that's a really core, intrinsic part about a movie, when this is about a group of missionaries. They're intergalactic space missionaries that came to a place to try to do what their space god told them to do. I think that, for Kingo, he's still a believer. I think he even says that in the film. He's like, "Look, I support this mission. I really do believe that we're doing the right thing by creating life. I'm not going to go and kill all my friends, just because I believe that."
It's what the film sets out to do on so many levels, is create these shades of gray. I think Ikarus lays at the far end of the spectrum. He really believes that it's duty above all, even above love, even though ultimately he confronts that. I think Kingo falls somewhere right in the middle, where he's saying, "Look, I believe in my god, but I'm not going to hurt my family to do it." Then you have everyone else who's willing to die to save these humans, these people that they've fallen in love with.
So yes, it's very challenging, and I think that even in the moment, is challenging, but we definitely wanted to reflect all those ways that war, ideology, belief can divide us.
Ryan Firpo: I think too, with Kingo, he is somebody who has basically been living as human, very much publicly and very outwardly. He's sort of surrounded himself by all this human family that is his film -- his cast and crew, basically. Shadow Warrior forever! So then he's somebody, I think, the human characteristics would rub off on him and this fear of death, this consciousness of mortality is something that he is more aware of, maybe, than the other Eternals, who were off living in isolation.
So I think that decision at the end is motivated by everything Kaz said, but also just by fear. He just doesn't want to die. He thinks that going down that path is a path to certain death, whereas the other version, he might survive. Even if he ends up on another planet with no memory, at least he's not dead.
Like you mentioned, Ikarus is also torn by this conflict, and ultimately decides to live up to his namesake by throwing himself into the sun. My friend and I were debating whether or not this would kill an immortal space robot, so: what does this mean for him? Is he really dead? How do you interpret that?
Kaz Firpo: What is the melting point of an Eternal? Yeah, how long does it take to literally melt an Eternal robot? For what it's worth, I don't want to prove you wrong, if you were on the side saying that he didn't die, but yeah, it was always that. He can't bear to face his family after what he's done, which he realizes.
I don't think that Ikarus even thinks that he's wrong. I think that he just has so much regret. He's very sorry. I think he's sorry for the way he lived his whole life on this planet, and that's a lot of burden to carry. So really, that act is basically saying, "I made a mistake, but I can't face my family, and I can't go on living."
It began as an exile that I think, throughout the course of the filmmaking, really became something that needed to be definitive. It really is a moment of saying, "It's sacrifice." It's sort of saying, "I can't serve the Eternals. If I can't serve the Celestials, and I can't be with my family, then I choose this third option," which -- for him -- really is oblivion. So yeah, he dead.
Ryan Firpo: Yeah.
Eternals ends with a title card that simply says, "The Eternals will return." How involved are you with where the Eternals go from here?
Kaz Firpo: There's definitely a Marvel sniper sitting out there watching me. He's gonna take me out if we say too much here. But I think the short version is, if audiences really love this film, if this incredible number-one-movie-in-the-world weekend that we just had continues, I think there's a very real conversation about telling more stories in the Eternal universe going out into like the weirdest reaches of cosmic space and getting a little weird out there with the Celestials. I think that would be a great sequel.
I think maybe it's a rescue movie -- an intergalactic rescue from the World Forge might be in order. I think that you might get some new characters. You might get to meet the gods of space and time themselves. I think you might get to get out there. I think what Michael Waldron and Kate Herron did with Loki is incredible and the way that they were starting to break open the multiverse, and Eternals is more looking at the cosmic side of things and really dealing with space and time
. But yeah, we've always even joked that there's a incredible prequel series to be made here on Disney+, where 10 episodes, each episode follows one Eternal for an hour. It's Thena dealing with the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece and being the inspiration for the goddess herself. It's Kingo hanging out with Gandhi in 1920s India, helping broker the peace, the great disentangling of colonialization. It's really diving into these historical stories by the lens of one or two Eternals. Maybe Sprite shows up for a little bit, and each character kind of overlaps, but it's mostly Kingo's story.
I think it's just an incredibly rich universe, for which there's just so much more. Yeah, if we're lucky, it'll be a trilogy of very special stories.
Ryan Firpo: Yeah! I mean, Kaz really covered it. Like I said before, Kevin and Marvel and everybody there, they're putting the chess pieces -- they're giving them a path to victory -- but they're also reading the climate and making their choices. So I think, like you said, we want to see the Eternals again. We want to see the story continue. A lot will be dictated by how these next few days go, really.
Kaz Firpo: The door is open!
Ryan Firpo: Yeah, the door is open.
Kaz Firpo: We left the doors open for the story, and I think it's up to the audience to step through.
So far as I can see, the opening weekend went well!
Kaz Firpo: Hey, we're not gonna complain about that. It's a very different movie. That's why I'm just over the -- I've seen it enough times now, where I've sort of gotten past it to -- where I get to the point now where I'm just like, it's incredible that it got made. That's what I'll say. It's a miracle; making any movie is a miracle, but making a very strange and fresh and original one? Well, that's just one in a million.
I have to say, seeing Eternals back-to-back with Dune was quite an experience.
Ryan Firpo: Oh my God, we had the same experience!
Kaz Firpo: We had sandworms in the original Eternals! In Babylon, it was a sandworm that attacked, and they changed it because they were like, "Well, we think Dune may come out sometime around this." And they weren't supposed to go head-to-head, obviously; that just happened because of this pandemic we just had, that you may have heard of. Yeah, they weren't supposed to go head-to-head, so --
Ryan Firpo: Funny little factoid: we had actually a friends and family screening over the weekend at the Chinese [Theater], and just by coincidence, Denis [Villeneuve] was actually in the audience. He just slipped in to see it, I guess, with --
Kaz Firpo: At the Chinese Theater in the back row with his partners and they were just watching Marvel's Eternals! Chloe has got a lot of love for Denis and vice versa. They're very talented filmmakers. So, yeah, he was out there. He was supporting us on opening weekend. If Denis can do it, so can you!
Marvel's Eternals is now in theaters.