And she thinks that leaves plenty of room to explore.“There is a whole other film about what happened over those 500 years, which we’d be happy to work on and come to Australia,” she says with a laugh via Zoom call from Los Angeles, seated by her Eternals co-star Don Lee, who plays fellow superhero Gilgamesh.“We have often talked about between us what those 500 years have been – we imagine they got into some good trouble in Australia.”And just what kind of trouble might that be?“We can’t tell you that,” she says, with mock outrage, protecting potential spoilers in the (admittedly unlikely) event the project actually comes to fruition.Though the scenes are set in the Outback – where Thena and Gilgamesh are in self-exile as far from humanity as they can get – they were actually filmed in Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands which sits about 100km off the north coast of Africa. Director Chloe Zhao, this year’s winner of the Best Director Oscar for her indie drama Nomadland, would have dearly loved to shoot in Australia, but the sprawling scope of the story, the A-list cast and the time constraints of a big-budget blockbuster made that impossible.Eternals tells the story of 10 super beings – also including Salma Hayek’s Ajak, Richard Madden’s Ikaris, Gemma Chan’s Sersi and Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo – who have been anonymously living among (and occasionally guiding) humanity for 7000 years. Over the millennia they have spread to all corners of the globe under instruction from celestial beings to protect the human race from their evil counterparts, the Deviants. The film, the 26th in the phenomenally successful superhero franchise, is also in part Zhao’s love letter to the wonder of planet Earth and the human race, and she says that to “capture the beauty of our planet … the Outback of Australia must be included”.“If we could, we would have travelled the world and shot exactly where we wanted to but with a cast like this and in the time period, it’s just impossible,” she says. “What was important for me was the expansiveness and the colour of the dirt and also the way the sun reflects on to the ground. We looked at a lot of photos obviously and did the best we could – it will never be the same as the Outback. I think we even said ‘could we go?’ but there was no time for it. Some day, though.”Jolie is also itching to return Down Under. She shot her 2014 war drama Unbroken in New South Wales and Queensland and can’t speak highly enough of the experience.“Listen, you know I would be there in a second,” she says of the chance to shoot here again. “I loved it. I loved working in Australia and I couldn’t have made Unbroken without the Australian crew. “That was a really tough film to make and it was very demanding for everyone that worked on it. They were professional, robust, had a great attitude and I loved it. I love Australia.”As to whether she’d ever follow in the footsteps of Zhao and Aussie Cate Shortland (Black Widow) by directing a Marvel movie, Jolie is not so sure.“(Chloe) did this so well that I’d be a little intimidated,” she says. “But I don’t want to say never, because that’s quite an exciting idea.”It seems like perfect synergy that Jolie, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars for more than 25 years, has finally made an appearance in the record-breaking MCU, easily the most dominant cinema force of the new millennium. In addition to her ethereal beauty and style, and her acting credentials in dramas from Girl, Interrupted to A Mighty Heart, Jolie’s action roles in Lara Croft, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Salt and Wanted made her the ideal choice for Thena, who she describes a “fighter, like the Goddess of War”. Certainly, her kick-ass skills came in handy for a character who can manifest different weapons in her hands and is most at home on the battlefield, but Zhao says it was a vulnerability she saw in Jolie that most fascinated her.“She was willing to show on camera the vulnerability and scars from her own life and how being vulnerable and being feminine and not being afraid to lean on the shoulder of a strong man … these are actually feminine strengths, they are not weaknesses,” says Zhao.In Eternals, thousands of years of conflict and battle have left Thena with Mahd Wh’ry, a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder and dementia-like memory loss that has caused her to be volatile, violent and unpredictable and led her to isolate from humanity with Gilgamesh.Jolie has been open about her struggles with mental health over the years, having wrestled with suicidal thoughts, depression, eating disorders and substance abuse, before becoming an advocate for mindfulness, meditation and therapy. The past decade has also had plenty of trying moments for Jolie, from a cancer preventive double-mastectomy in 2013 to her divorce from fellow A-lister Brad Pitt and the ongoing custody battle for their six children, Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne.Eternals has been celebrated for its diversity and inclusivity – in addition to spotlighting African-American, Asian and Latina superheroes, it also features the MCU’s first deaf hero and first openly gay hero – and Jolie eagerly took the opportunity to represent mental illness too.“I tried to be very open with her and share a side of myself that I don’t usually share and what I like about her is that she is struggling with her mental health and also very, very strong,” she says. “And a lot of people think that those two things don’t coincide in the same human being and of course they do. When we talk about different inclusion and diversity, there is also those who struggle with mental health, and that’s who I am coming into it.”But perhaps the highest accolade for Jolie’s role came from her own children. Five of her six children walked the red carpet with Jolie at the US and UK premiere of Eternals and agreed that they saw more of their mother in Thena than any other character she had ever played. A huge compliment, then, for children to see their mother as a superhero?Angelina Jolie looked every inch the movie star at her latest premiere, and brought two of her children as her dates.“I think that’s the side they are referring to – I have to ask them,” she says with a laugh. “I think it’s that even though she’s a superhero, she’s also very human and she kind of holds herself together.“A lot of us were cast to bring out something from our own lives, something within ourselves, that maybe we weren’t even aware of.”Korean action star Lee makes his Hollywood debut in Eternals playing the strongest member of the team and sharing most of scenes with Jolie. Despite hardly having any rehearsal time between meeting Jolie and the cameras rolling on the scenes together, he says it felt like they were “old friends who finally got to work together”.“I felt so comfortable because she always looked out for the other actors,” he says. “We had this great onscreen chemistry and we had a great time.”Eternals opens in cinemas on November 4.
Source: Sun Herald
