Bryan Tyree Henry explained how working on Eternals helped him to regain faith in humanity.
In a Variety piece about the upcoming Marvel film introducing the MCU’s first gay couple, Henry spoke about what it was like playing one half of that pairing. His character, Phastos, is an Eternal, but as the heroes go their separate ways through the ages, he settles down with a family. And his role and the film as a whole helped the actor have more hope about the world and his place in it.
“I remember when I was coming to this project that I, Brian, had kind of lost faith in humanity, just looking at all the things that we’ve been through and just what the images of Black men were and how we’re being portrayed and how the power was taken from us, the lack of power or feeling powerful,” Henry said. “What I really loved the most about Phastos is that through all of that — him being eternal, him never being able to die — he still chose love. He still decided to have a family, even though he may have to watch them perish. He still tried to find a way to bring heart and love to everything he did, even though his genius was used against him.”
“It just really resonated a lot with how I felt my place in society was,” Henry continued. “How we can be kings and queens, and at the same time, they’ll take our pedestal and take our superpowers from us like that. So what I love the most about Eternals is that [director] Chloé [Zhao] and [producer] Nate [Moore] just re-instilled that power back in me again.”
Eternals is certainly the most diverse film to date, and it also brings Zhao’s auteur lens to the MCU. As a result, it’s clearly a movie unlike most modern blockbusters, which could be why it seems to confound critics. So far, the critical consensus for Eternals has been mixed, with many praising Zhao’s ambition but claiming the movie doesn’t quite work. As a result, it’s now tied with Thor: The Dark World for the worst Rotten Tomatoes score of any Marvel Studios project.
Of course, audiences might feel quite differently when it hits theaters next week. Though Zhao is certainly not a director of crowd-pleasing cinema, the global scope of the film and stabs at better representation could win moviegoers over.
Eternals arrives in theaters on Nov. 5.
Source: Variety
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