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Eternals Movie Is A Love Letter To Creator Jack Kirby Says Marvel Head
President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, says that Eternals is a love letter to the creator of the original comic, Jack Kirby. Eternals recently had its world premiere in Los Angeles with many praising the film for its striking visuals, epic scale, and emotional depth. The film tells the story of an immortal alien race, known as Eternals, who reunite after thousands of years in hiding on Earth in order to battle an evil force known as Deviants.
The film is based on The Eternals comic by Jack Kirby, which was first released in 1976. Along with Stan Lee, Kirby is widely considered one of the most important figures in comic book history, with his works including the likes of The Fantastic Four, Thor, Black Panther, and Silver Surfer, among others. Kirby passed away in 1996, but The Eternals comic has continued and is currently in its fifth volume. Directed by Chloé Zhao, the MCU's Eternals stars Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Gemma Chan, Salma Hayek, Barry Keoghan, Lauren Ridloff, Kumail Nanjiani, Don Lee, Lia McHugh, and Bryan Tyree Henry.
In an interview with THR, Feige discusses how the film pays homage to Kirby and the debt the film owes to the influential comic creator. Feige also notes how unfortunate it is that Kirby never lived to see just how truly successful and powerful his stories would become as part of the MCU. Feige makes clear that Eternals, and much of the MCU as a whole, all started because of one man's ideas and his execution of those ideas in comic book form. Read Feige's full comment below:
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"The whole movie is a love letter to what one man was able to do with a pencil, sitting at a little desk on the East Coast. The other day I was like, ‘How cool that I live in the timeline where William Shatner went to space in real life?' One of the bummers, you could argue there are many, of the current timeline that we live in, is that Jack Kirby passed before he got to see any of this."
Early feedback suggests that Eternals is visually distinct from many other Marvel films and that Zhao's soft touch has elevated the film beyond what is traditionally expected of superhero fare. These initial reactions lend credence to the idea that Eternals truly is a love letter to Kirby and to the notion that a single man with a pencil and an idea has the power to change the world. MCU films are often criticized for feeling very similar to one another, but Feige's comments and the early reviews that have emerged suggest Eternals may indeed be a more singular and unique vision than previous entries.
As Feige suggests, it is a shame that Kirby never got to see the true power of his creations like Stan Lee did. It's likely that, had he still been around, audiences would have been treated to Jack Kirby cameos in MCU films just as they were with Lee. As the MCU is now in its fourth phase, it would be great to see the studio truly let individual filmmakers put their stamp on films to create different, more unique superhero movies, as Zhao seems to have done with Eternals. While general audiences haven't yet gotten their hands on the film, hopefully it does indeed end up feeling like a love letter to a truly influential and game-changing individual when it releases on November 5th later this year.
Eternals (2021)
Release Date: Nov 05, 2021
