When you look at the wave of negative press that has followed Marvel Studios recently, it can largely be traced back to the release of “Eternals.” At the time, no one ever imagined a film from Marvel Studios would be the victim of terrible reviews and relatively low box office (though $402 million worldwide is still better than “The Marvels”). And apparently, the backlash “Eternals” received from critics really affected members of the cast, including Kumail Nanjiani.
Speaking on a recent episode of Michael Rosebaum’s podcast, Inside of You, Kumail Nanjiani talked about his experience working on “Eternals.” Specifically, the actor talked about what it was like to see the film get hammered by critics, all while he had to go on a worldwide tour to promote the movie.
“The reviews were bad, and I was too aware of it,” Nanjiani said. “I was reading every review and checking too much.”
He added, “It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed, so they lifted the embargo early and put it in some fancy movie festivals and they sent us on a big global tour to promote the movie right as the embargo lifted.”
As for why the movie was killed in reviews, Nanjiani isn’t quite sure. He believes the film is great, but thinks there might have been other things going on in the world that affected how “Eternals” was received by critics.
“I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie,” he explained. “It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to [my wife] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some shit has to change, so I started counseling. I still talk to my therapist about that.”
He continued, “Emily says that I do have trauma from it. We actually just got dinner with somebody else from that movie and we were like, ‘That was tough, wasn’t it?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, that was really tough,’ and I think we all went through something similar.”
Obviously, it’s sad to see how the “Eternals” backlash has affected Nanjiani. No one wants that to happen to someone. That said, the film clearly suffered because of high expectations (directed by Chloe Zhao, come on!) and being the first in a wave of subpar Marvel projects. It would be interesting to see how “Eternals” would have been reviewed by critics if it was released today, with the low expectations hitting every Marvel Studios film. That doesn’t mean the film is great, by any means. However, there’s no denying the cinematography and storytelling in “Eternals” is better than something like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” right?
Regardless, there is still plenty of time for Kumail Nanjiani to get his superhero gear on again and redeem himself to Marvel fans. We’ll just have to see when he’ll get that chance.
You can hear the full discussion below:
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