Angelina Jolie Pitched Marvel A Team-Up Story With An Unlikely Eternals Co-Star
Angelina Jolie has specific plans in mind for her Marvel future. She even shared her own idea for a future Marvel movie with the head of the studio. Here's what she said.
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Eternals is the latest movie to join the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film introduces fans to a new team of heroes, sent to Earth by a Celestial to rid the world of deviants. Now Angelina Jolie, who portrays Thena in the film, has revealed that she would love it if her character did a team-up story with Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo in a future Marvel project.
In an interview with D23 Inside Disney podcast, Angelina Jolie and her co-star talked about the movie and what fans would like to see from their characters in the future. Jolie said Thena and Kingo would make a great pairing because they’re kind of perfect opposites. “I think Kingo and Thena haven’t had enough play. We were saying one of us is very physical one of us is very verbal. One of us is very… an extrovert and one of us is a bit of an introvert. We’re kind of perfect opposites,” Angelina Jolie told listeners.
Kumail Nanjiani was quick to agree with her, saying, “I think we would make a really good pairing and I’m so glad you said that to Kevin at the after-party for the premiere. You were like what about the two of us?” To which Angelina Jolie added, “Yeah, we’d be so good.”
This exchange revealed that not only is Angelina Jolie up for more Eternals, but that she’s sharing her ideas with Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel. Previously, she has shared that she would be happy to be in future Marvel projects, but that she doesn’t want to do a solo movie for Thena. She likes the family atmosphere of Eternals and would want to recreate that if she were to return.
Eternals is the 26th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was directed by Chloé Zhao who wrote the screenplay with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo. The film stars an ensemble cast including Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie.
The story is set when the return of half the population in Avengers: Endgame ignites “the emergence”. This means, the Eternals – an immortal alien race created by the Celestials who have secretly lived on Earth for over 7,000 years – have to reunite to protect humanity from their evil counterparts, the Deviants. Angelina Jolie’s Thena is more to the side of the story, as an Eternal sturggling with her own mind.
In an interview with The Playlist before the film’s release, the Eternals director said the best part about making this movie is its close ties to the origin of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So as it stands this story is going to have a big impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward. “We got to play and do whatever we wanted to make a strong standalone film and leave everything on the table,” Zhao told the publication. Angelina Jolie’s director also said she’d be back in a second working with the team at Marvel for a sequel.
For anyone not familiar with comic book lore, the movie fits right in with the original story. The only difference is the gender-swapped characters which will have no bearing on the plot. Created by Jack Kirby, The Eternals made their Marvel comics debut in 1976’s The Eternals #1. The story follows a fictional race of humanoids, described as an offshoot of the evolutionary process that created sentient life on Earth. The original instigators of this process, the alien Celestials, wanted the Eternals to be the defenders of Earth. This leads to the inevitability of war against their destructive counterparts.
Upon its release, Rotten Tomatoes critic reviews for the Angelina Jolie starrer were not very good. With a score of only 64%, Marvel’s ambitious Phase Four project hit a disappointing record as the lowest-rated Marvel movie on the platform so far, falling just below 2013’s Thor: The Dark World and its 66% rating. In general, the reviews have been over the place with most agreeing that Eternals is a massive swing for the franchise.
Some folks think a lot is going on in the story. Others feel like it might lose the audience as it tries to explain the extensive backstory. However, reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are often just a reference point for fans and rarely affect the wider success of a movie. Marvel’s Eternals starring Angelina Jolie was released in cinemas worldwide on November 5th.
