Eternals reigns with $161.7 million global opening despite hurdles
The gods of Marvel have arrived, and movie-goers are worshipping at their altar.
Eternals, the latest instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was the highest-grossing movie in theatres this weekend, despite heading into its worldwide opening with chatter around conflicting critical consensus and international territories dropping the title from cinemas.
The film earned an estimated $161.7 million at the global box office, with $71 million coming from the domestic gross.
Mixed reviews from film critics landed Eternals with 48 percent to date on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest score of any MCU film. (Rotten Tomatoes scores are continuously in flux.) However, the Rotten Tomatoes verified audience ratings were much higher at 81 percent to date.
Directed by Nomadland Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao, the film stars Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Don Lee, Barry Keoghan, and Lia McHugh as the titular cosmic beings who were sent to earth by the Celestials aeons ago to protect humans from creatures called the Deviants.
Eternals head into its opening weekend in theatres with an estimated $9.5 million from Thursday night domestic screenings and a $19.8 million global preview night total. By Saturday morning, the international gross expanded to $69.1 million, with $30.7 million coming from U.S. theatres.
It’s a strong start, especially given the ongoing situation with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting mask and vaccine passport mandates in theatres, in addition to multiple international regions refusing to screen the film in cinemas, which is a more complicated issue.
Eternals opened in most international locations on Nov. 5 with the exception of China, Russia, the Middle East, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
A week before Eternals was set to premiere in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman on Nov. 11, censors in those areas decided to pull the film, EW has learned. Eternals features a same-sex kiss and a same-sex relationship between characters played by Henry and Haaz Sleiman, but the censors were seeking further cuts beyond that. Those markets generally take issue with the depictions of gods and prophets.
The United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt will be screening a version of Eternals without depictions of intimacy, not just the same-sex kiss but also a heterosexual sex scene between two of the Eternals. This is generally considered normal practice within these markets.
Jolie spoke with news.com.au during a press roundtable discussion and addressed international locations taking issue with the depiction of a same-sex couple.
“I’m sad for [those audiences]. And I’m proud of Marvel for refusing to cut those scenes out,” she said. “I still don’t understand how we live in a world today where there’s still [people who] would not see the family Phastos has and the beauty of that relationship and that love. How anybody is angry about it, threatened by it, doesn’t approve or appreciate it is ignorant.”
China is a separate issue altogether. Zhao faced a backlash among Chinese nationalists during awards season. Old interviews had been dug up, one of which was with Filmmaker Magazine. She was discussing what drew her to make her feature film directing debut with Songs My Brothers Taught Me. “It goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere,” she said. The quote does not appear in the current version of the interview, but it can be found elsewhere on the publication’s website.
Separately, Zhao was attributed by news.com.au as saying, “The U.S. is now my country.” It has since been corrected to read, “The U.S. is not my country.”
As a result, Zhao’s Oscar wins for Nomadland were censored online in China, while Chinese state-run media outlets barely mentioned the victory, The New York Times reported in April.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings faced a similar hurdle when old comments made by its star, Simu Liu, resurfaced. He was referring to what his parents told him about conditions in China under Communist rule and referred to the nation as a “third world” country with people “dying of starvation.”
Mainland China, which has surpassed North America as the world’s biggest movie market, limits how many foreign films are released in theatres. Plus, they maintain heavy censors on content. Just last week, Hong Kong passed a strict censorship law that allows film licenses to be revoked if they are “found to be contrary to national security interests,” Reuters reported.
Analysts also point to a low point in U.S.-China relations affecting Hollywood releases. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of compounded factors affecting a film like Eternals not screening in certain international territories. But with the allure of the Marvel name and the diverse all-star cast, Eternals is already making its mark.