The Marvels is the last big superhero blockbuster of the year. In this interview, director Nia DaCosta talks about the making of the ambitious MCU crossover
In March 2019Captain Marvelturned into a billion-dollar success for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The sequel was a mere formality. However, the franchise didn’t make it quite that easy for itself. Instead of Captain Marvel 2, The Marvelsis now arriving in cinemas – a crossover film that brings together three different MCU projects in one space adventure. I spoke to directorNia DaCostaabout this remarkable feat in an interview.
The Marvels unites three powerful superheroes: Director Nia DaCosta has brought them together
Brie Larsonreturns as Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel, while characters from the MCU series become important at Disney+. On one side: Kamala Kahn, who returns asMs. MarvelNew Jersey and is played by up-and-coming starIman Vellani. On the other side is Monica Rambeau, played byTeyonah Parriswho has transformed herself into a superhero inWandaVision .
The superheroines are brought together by directorial discovery Nia DaCosta, the youngest female filmmaker in the MCU. After the indie successLittle Woodsshe recently brought an iconic horror character back to life withCandyman. At 33, she is now bringing a 250 million dollar blockbuster to the big screen – including an ever-hungry monster tentacled cat.
Moviepilot: I saw 20 minutes from the movie and they looked pretty freaky. What interested you most about The Marvels?
Nia DaCosta:Wacky sums it up well. That was one of the main reasons why I really wanted to make the movie. Marvel had something incredibly ambitious in mind and that piqued my curiosity. I also found the relationship between the three women [Carol Danvers, Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau] very touching on a personal level. I liked the idea that they have to come together before they become a team at the end of the movie.
(Brie Larson as Carol Danvers in The Marvels)
At what point did you come on board as director and co-writer?
There was already a very detailed draft of what the story should look like. However, the script had not yet been finalized at that time.
The Marvels is closely associated with Ms. Marvel and WandaVision. How does screenwriting work when so many differentprojects – films and series – interact with each other?
It’s not possible without the help of the people involved in the other projects. There are a lot of discussions between everyone involved, because things are always changing, especially in post-production. We are in a system of constant feedback. There really are so many feedback loops. If something changes for the others, we have to adapt it. And if something changes for us, the others follow suit. You can really imagine it as a long, big conversation
What did your pitch for the movie look like back then? And how were you able to convince Kevin Feige to hire you as director?
With a lot of admiration. [Laughs] Basically, I just picked up on what appealed to me most from the outline of the movie. It was a lot about how I want to empathize with the world of the characters as a filmmaker, especially in terms of the three main characters. For me, Carol, Kamala and Monica were like three sisters who have become estranged and are reunited after a long time. I wanted to add this idea to the story. Apart from that, I told [Kevin Feige] how I would realize certain scenes and set-pieces and that convinced him.
The Marvels is your first Hollywood blockbuster with a budget in the hundreds of millions. What changed during production compared to your previous films?
Shooting takes much longer. Basically, every process takes longer than with an indie film or a film that’s made with a moderate budget at a studio. You work in a completely different system.
Can you describe this system? The big question I always ask myself is: Can you keep your creative voice in a system like that?
I think in some ways it’s absolutely possible. But you end up using your creative voice to tell something bigger than yourself. That’s how I approached The Marvels
(Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau in The Marvels)
What did you really want to bring to the MCU as a filmmaker?
The Marvels] is the first movie where I was able to shoot big fight scenes. It was something I was really looking forward to – finally being able to expand the canon of fight scenes with my own ideas. I was able to immerse myself in effects work and put a lot of thought into how to translate the action into the cinematic space. On The Marvels I was able to do things I’d never had the opportunity to do before. I felt like I could spread my wings here.
The first thing I think of is the action sequence where Carol, Kamala and Monica fight in three different places and keep switching places.
Yes, exactly! It was very complicated to shoot, but I had a great team who supported me in every way. We thought long and hard about exactly how this fight would work, broke it down to its component parts and then thought about how to make it work. At the end of the day, each department knew exactly what they had to do
Did you draw inspiration from other action films?
I tended to immerse myself in comic book history and looked at a lot of comics I’d already read, but I was also able to discover a lot of new things. Of those, I borrowed the one that made the most sense to me in terms of the characters. The Captain Marvel run by Kelly Thompson, for example, really inspired me. It’s really fantastic. That’s how I found Carol’s story – and it’s much darker than the previous films she’s appeared in. With Ms. Marvel, I particularly enjoyed the first issues of the comics. For Monica, in addition to the comics, I of course also took a close look at WandaVision.
An important name that should not be forgotten is Goose. The cat or Flerken already appeared in the first part, but had to be recast for the sequel, if I understood correctly?
Yes, that was because we shot the movie in the UK [and not in the USA]. You can’t easily travel internationally with cats all the time, it’s very difficult logistically. So we found two new cats to portray Goose in the movie. Their names are Tango and Nemo and they are wonderful!
How exactly do you shoot a Marvel blockbuster with two cats?
The most important thing is to make sure that the cats are okay, that they feel safe and that they don’t get hurt. But we don’t shoot everything with the cats. In many scenes in which Goose appears, he devours whole people with his tentacles. As cats can’t do that in our world yet, we often had to resort to digital doubles. So in the finished film you see a mixture of the real animals and their digital counterparts.
(Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan in The Marvels)
For a contemporary superhero blockbuster, The Marvels has a surprisingly short running time. Was that a conscious decision or did it just happen in the editing room?
Personally, I wanted the movie to be under two hours. Because I think it’s nice when a movie is exactly as long as it needs to be. Too many movies are unnecessarily stretched out. Of course, there are stories that are longer. Lawrence of Arabia completely captivates me, even at four hours. With The Marvels, we came to our running time quite naturally at the end. I think it’s now an hour and 45 minutes. And it’s not that short, it’s actually a very average running time
At the beginning of the year there were reports that you had done reshoots at The Marvels. What exactly do I mean by that and how did it change the movie?
Reshoots are a very natural part of the process. They are planned into the production schedule right from the start. They told me that directly when I started working. That’s how Marvel movies have been made for 15 years. I trusted the process. When you get involved in such a big project, you have to do that. It’s just another part of the development and refinement of the movie so that you end up with the movie that you see on the screen in the theater.
Can you run through this using a concrete example? At what point do you know that you have to shoot a certain scene again or add a completely new scene?
This is different for every project. When we talk about reshoots, it’s often about individual things. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had this attitude? Oh, and here I would like to add this detail.” So it’s more of a supplementary shoot. We don’t change the entire movie. It’s just part of it. When you bring the individual parts of the film together in post-production, you take a close look at the shots and at some point you realize that something is missing here and there. And then you make these decisions.
After working on The Marvels for the past three years, what are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of my crew, the cast and especially the three women who carry the movie on their shoulders. What [Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris] have been through! Every day they put their bodies on the line, were thrown against mats and hung from wires. They played their hearts out in front of all those green screens. I’m incredibly proud of them and everyone who made this movie possible.
The Marvels opens in German cinemas tomorrow, November 8, 2023.
