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Marvel’s Eternals Director Chloe Zhao Addresses Film’s Superman Connection

The film centers around immortal aliens from the planet Olympia.

Marvel’s Eternals is the forthcoming film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has an unexpected tie to DC comics. But don’t hold your breath, it’s not the cinematic crossover event of a lifetime you might think it is.

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Instead, Superman and DC are referenced as works of fiction within Marvel’s earth, a move direct Chloé Zhao said is a nod to mythology and the many forms of Superman across cultures, ComicBook reports.

The scene specifically in question revolves around a young child seeing Richard Madden’s Ikaris utilize some of the powers that bear a resemblance to Superman and mistakenly proclaims that he is the DC hero.

“I take some responsibility for that. I think we’re in the business of telling stories about mythology, and Superman, for example, comes from origin of mythology. In many different cultures, there’s a form of Superman…And the people that created Superman and the brilliant filmmakers [who] brought Superman to screen, their movies are basically, in my opinion, doing a modern interpretation of that mythology,” Zhao said.

The film centers around immortal aliens Eternals from the planet Olympia. A whopping 10 new heroes will be introduced in the film, which also boasts a plot spanning 7,000 years and an appropriately epic run time.

The Eternals were created by the Celestials, who are beings larger than Earth, and Zhao has previously said in an interview how playing with changing aspect ratios for the IMAX version of the film was one approach she took to showing scale in the film, as inspired by other IMAX films like Christopher Nolans’ Interstellar and Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune.

The epic tale will unfold in theaters on November 5th, 2021.