THE MARVELS Director Talks About Her Experience Making the Film - "What the Hell Does Any of This Shit Mean?’
The director of The Marvels, Nia DaCosta, recently sat down with Vanity Fair for an interview and talked about her overwhelming and stressful experience making the movie. She revealed that it was such a crazy process that she would frequently reach out to other Marvel directors for help and guidance. She reached out to filmmakers such as Chloé Zhao (Eternals), James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) before even accepting the gig.
She joked about some of the questions she would ask saying: “Are they going to kill me and destroy my soul? Is Kevin Feige a bad man? And they were like, ‘No, he’s just a good guy who was a nerd.’”
While she was in the middle of making The Marvels, DaCosta revealed that she would text Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton on some of the more difficult shooting days. She would tell him, “I’m overwhelmed,” and, “I’m so stressed.” She went on to talk about how confusing things got:
“Sometimes you’d be in a scene and you’d be like, ‘What the hell does any of this shit mean?’ Or an actor’s looking at some crazy thing happening in space, and they’re [actually] looking at a blue X. There were obviously hard days, and days where you’re like, ‘This just isn’t working.’”
Directing a movie isn’t an easy feat. It’s a lot of hard work, long hours, and trying to bring a certain vision to life. It’s got to be even harder when making a big-budget VFX-heavy movie when you’re working on a set of blue screens. I imagine that’s when the imagination needs to kick into a new gear. She managed to get through it though and completed the movie. She also had a good experience that inspired her to want to create her own world. She said:
“It was really great to play in this world, and to be a part of building this big world, but it made me just want to build my own world more.”
The filmmaker was previously asked about what she thought about MCU superhero fatigue, and she said: “I think superhero fatigue absolutely exists.” She goes on to explain how she hopes her upcoming movie stands out above the other superhero films saying:
“The biggest difference from the other MCU movies to date is that it’s really wacky, and silly. The worlds we go to in this movie are worlds unlike others you’ve seen in the MCU. Bright worlds that you haven’t seen before.”
In The Marvels, “Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel has reclaimed her identity from the tyrannical Kree and taken revenge on the Supreme Intelligence. But unintended consequences see Carol shouldering the burden of a destabilized universe. When her duties send her to an anomalous wormhole linked to a Kree revolutionary, her powers become entangled with that of Jersey City super-fan Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, and Carol’s estranged niece, now S.A.B.E.R. astronaut Captain Monica Rambeau. Together, this unlikely trio must team up and learn to work in concert to save the universe as The Marvels.”
The film stars Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton, Gary Lewis, Seo-Jun Park, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, and Samuel L. Jackson. Nia DaCosta directs, and Kevin Feige is the producer.
The Marvels is set to be released on November 10th.