By Marvel Studios’ “Eternals” in late 2021 marked the beginning of the downturn for the company – a spiral it has yet to break out of.
The studio had its share of misfires before, such as the second “Iron Man” and “Thor” films, but this was something different. Reviews were really harsh, despite the presence of Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloe Zhao and a well liked cast.
The film also saw bad box-office by Marvel standards – taking in just $402 million worldwide. The criticism of the film was rough and, according to one of its stars, it really impacted the cast.
Speaking on a recent episode of Michael Rosebaum’s podcast, Inside of You, actor Kumail Nanjiani talked about his experience and how hard it was to promote the film after the reviews hammered it:
“The reviews were bad, and I was too aware of it. I was reading every review and checking too much. It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well-reviewed, so they lifted the embargo early and put it in some fancy movie festivals.
They sent us on a big global tour to promote the movie right as the embargo lifted. I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie.
It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to [my wife] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some s— has to change, so I started counselling. I still talk to my therapist about that.
Emily says that I do have trauma from it. We actually just got dinner with somebody else from that movie and we were like, ‘That was tough, wasn’t it?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, that was really tough,’ and I think we all went through something similar.”
Whilst there have been murmurings of a sequel since release, there’s been no indication of the studio moving towards one – even the world-shifting events of the film seem to have been largely ignored in subsequent MCU entries.
“The Marvels” has largely eclipsed “Eternals” as the biggest flop of the MCU of late – that film has just hit Disney+ in IMAX Enhanced form.
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