With Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings out and in the world, it's now time to turn all eyes toward Marvel Studios' next project: Eternals. The film is directed by the Oscar-winning Chloé Zhao, whose work on Nomadland brought her name to the forefront of the industry.
Clearly, she houses an insane amount of talent—after all, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige stated that her pitch for Eternals was the best he had ever heard, something he probably doesn't say lightly.
The film is set to once again take characters out of obscurity and throw them into the spotlight. To do so, Marvel has brought aboard some big-time actors, such as Richard Madden, Kit Harington, and Salma Hyek. Then, of course, there's Angelina Jolie, who is bringing Thena to life on the big screen.
Jolie is one of the biggest names on the project, and her involvement was a surprise to many when it was announced.
The actor recently sat down with Total Film and discussed how she went about bringing this over 7,000-year-old character to life.
Angelina Jolie Is All In On Eternals
Via Twitter user CreamOrScream, Angelina Jolie talked with Total Film about her time on Eternals, and the topic of her character's interesting ability came up.
For those who don't know, Thena has the power of manifesting weapons, similar in concept to what Hela was able to do in Thor: Ragnarok—just with a little more variety. But how did Jolie train for that?
According to the actor, "it was fun," and going through a fight with the character was "a bit of almost everything:"
"I knew she had the staff with the crescent, because they had to do that, because that's from the comics. When I was first training, they'd make a list of multiple [weapons] and I kept thinking that they were not very focused. As it got closer, I realized that it was going to be a bit of almost everything. But it's a funny thing to coordinate a fight if you're sticking somebody with one thing, and then you can quickly make a sword into a spear. It was fun."
When it came to approaching those fight sequences, Jolie said that she found it better to "be very feminine, and fight from that place" instead of "going to mirror a fight of a male energy:"
"I did. Maybe because I've done a lot of these action-type films. I think there often is an instinct in your mind to think, 'To be a strong woman, I'm going to mirror a fight of a male energy.' Which I've done, when I've done action films. And I kind of felt like to be fully in my strength, and to be this particular woman, I would go to what is most feminine about me, and the softer, lighter side of the female body. I wanted her to be very feminine, and fight from that place."
Angelina Jolie's Passion Shines Bright
It's always fantastic to hear when an actor is going as deep as Jolie seems to be going with her role. It makes it even better to see she clearly has some knowledge of the character from the source material. Not many actors truly pay attention to that kind of stuff when they hop on board some of these superhero projects, which is a sad notion.
From the sound of it, Chloé Zhao made the right choice in bringing Jolie aboard, and one can only hope that every other actor bringing one of the Eternals alive will have taken it as seriously as her.
Not only is Jolie really diving into the role, but she also sounds like an extraordinary person on set. One story stated how she helped deaf co-star Lauren Ridloff solve some major road bumps when it came to filming with so many blue screens.
Fans can watch Eternals when it hits theaters worldwide on November 5 later this year.
