"The Marvels" Director And Writer Nia DaCosta Shares 17 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Making Of The Movie
🚨 There are mild spoilers ahead for The Marvels! 🚨
1.First, director and writer Nia DaCosta said she was first approached by Marvel to direct and write the sequel to Captain Marvel around the spring of 2020.
"So, it was like a lot of darkness, and this was a beautiful ray of light," she told BuzzFeed. "It was that spring and summer that I was basically in conversation and then I got the job in July."
2.In terms of story, Nia always knew it was "going to be Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Monica Rambeau" leading this film, and that it was something Marvel "really wanted to do."
She elaborated, saying, "I think my executive producer Mary Livanos was really instrumental in bringing Monica Rambeau into the MCU. First in WandaVision and now in this film. So, I was super excited because one, I love Ms. Marvel, but two, I thought a team up movie with these women would be amazing. It was really exciting for me to get the opportunity to pitch on an idea like this."
3.Marvel always knew where Carol, Kamala, and Monica were coming from in terms of previous movies and shows, but because of release date shifts and more, what could and could not be included changed throughout the process.
"But as has happened before in the MCU, like sometimes release dates have to shift and switch, and so then you're like, Oh, actually, that character can't show up here because they're not going to be in the MCU yet," Nia explained. "But they're so adept at it because they've been doing it for 15 years now. 33 films. So you just lean on the experts basically." Nia added that while what to include sometimes feels like "a moving target," Marvel always knew "where they're coming from, where it's going."
4.The post-credits scene from Ms. Marvel, which featured Carol suddenly appearing in Kamala's bedroom and switching places with her was shot specifically for The Marvels and then was added into the show as a little teaser.
"That was from my movie," Nia excitedly revealed. "We shot it for our movie, and then Kevin [Feige] and the team took it for Ms. Marvel."
5.When it came to writing Nick Fury's character in The Marvels, Nia said she wanted to "really exemplify who he is to the MCU, which is like the dad of the MCU." She loved his individual relationships with Carol, Monica, and Kamala, and how he's always looking out for them.
Nia continued, saying, "Like, he got the kids together for the Avengers. He's checking in on Captain Marvel, he's checking in on Monica. He's connected to everyone and everyone respects him in different ways enough to listen to what he says. Also, like, in the case of Winter Soldier, enough to challenge him. I really love him as sort of the father, godfather character in the MCU. So it was really fun to have him in that mode here, but also get to be a bit lighter, I think. Samuel L. Jackson was amazing. I loved working with him. I can't wait to do it again, hopefully."
6.For depicting Carol, Monica, and Kamala switching powers, Nia said it was "important" to her that "the audience was sort of disoriented with them" during the first big switching scene. Nia's goal was to make it feel like the audience was in the action with them.
"So throughout the course of that initial big set piece, [the audience is] figuring out what's happening the same way the characters are figuring out what's happening as well," she added.
7.In terms of how they filmed the power-switching moments, Nia said it was a big collaborative effort between herself, the stunt team, VFX, the overall crew, the director of photography, editors, and more.
Nia explained, "It was really just my amazing crew, my VFX supervisor, my stunt coordinator, my DP Sean Bobbitt, my second unit director and myself, our fight coordinator, and just figuring out, 'Okay...what do we want it to be, first of all? How do I want this to look? And then how do we shoot it?' And then my amazing AD, who just figured out, 'Okay, here are all the passes that we need to get for each shot.' And then, my truly masterful editors, who got all this footage, and like figured out how to put it together. They did such a great job. That sequence is actually one of the closest to what they originally did initially, all the way through to what you see in the final film."
8.To get all of the various versions of Carol, Monica, and Kamala switching powers, they would film Brie Larson, for example, doing all of her action, then have Teyonah Parris or Iman Vellani do "whatever [their] switch in [was] going to be."
Nia added, "Then, you do a clean play and then you have the green screen and all that stuff. So it's kind of like repeating it within the same moment, just to get every part of the action."
9.For the scene where Carol and Monica come face-to-face for the first time in years, Nia explained that "good rehearsal time" helped make the scene so powerful. "Brie and Teyonah, in the rehearsal, were so beautiful, and just to see them as actresses, and as people who have been these characters already, like to work through what that should feel like, work the script, it was really, really great," Nia said.
"Also, as someone who loved WandaVision, and saw that moment of Monica kind of making a face when Captain Marvel was mentioned, I was like, Oh my gosh, like, what happened?!," Nia added. "So it was cool to work out with Mary Livanos, my executive producer, and Kevin Feige, to figure out, 'Okay, what do we want to say about this relationship? And how can we develop it throughout the film?'"
10.Nia said she worked closely with Brie to help develop Carol's journey in The Marvels. It was a collaborative effort where Brie gave her feelings on what Carol has been up to between Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, but she was also "open to exploring different parts of her character and turning over new stones."
"It was great. It was really, really cool. Also because I wanted to deal so much with who Carol was now and what she's been doing the past 30 years," Nia added.
11.When it came to Carol's character in this movie, Nia wanted to explore "her jadedness" and how she feels this heavy weight of abandoning Monica. So, what helped was having Kamala there to show Carol that she has done good in the world and that there are people who look up to her and see her as a hero.
Nia elaborated, saying, "To have a character like Kamala who's super enthusiastic and who sees the best in her, when she's in a place, especially in relation to her sort of abandonment of Monica, it helps make her feel like, Okay, I'm not this terrible person maybe that I think I am. I'm actually doing a good thing and this young woman really looks up to me. But, also it comes with a lot of pressure. It was a mix of helping with her development, but also just staying true to the character that everyone fell in love with in the comics."
12.Another important aspect of Carol's character that Nia wanted to bring to The Marvels, was being able to see what, "Carol does when she's not punching Thanos in the face or blasting her way through spaceships. I really want to know who she was as a woman, as a person, who feels this impossible weight on her shoulders."
"It was really important to me. Like, that was one of the things I really wanted coming into directing this movie," Nia added.
13.One of the ways Nia was able to do this was in the opening scene where you see Carol getting ready for a seemingly typical day on her spaceship with Goose. In fact, the first version of that scene Nia wrote "was much longer."
Nia continued, saying, "But it's not an indie movie so you kind of have to [laughs] shorten things up a little bit. But I loved the small things. Like, her playing with Goose and the morning routine of getting ready and having a FaceTime call with your best friend, Nick Fury. I just wanted it really grounded and relatable."
14.The rehearsal process before filming began on The Marvels was really important to Nia, and it's something she took with her from previously directing indie movies. She also made sure every day started the same, so even though they were making a huge blockbuster movie, it felt like a very small production.
"I think there's parts of the process that remain the same no matter what movie you're doing. For me, it was that rehearsal time. That's super important to me with the actors," Nia began. "And then, starting every day basically the same, which is you get your actors on set, you rehearse again, you block through, you figure out what you want to do, talk about what the day looks like. Things can go so fast with any movie, especially these kinds of movies, so you really want to make sure that you have that moment where you really connect with the material on the characters and the emotional underpinning of everything before you start throwing people around on wires."
15.In fact, in rehearsals were where some comedic improv happened between Brie, Teyonah, and Iman that ultimately ended up making it into the final script.
"They're all really funny, like the three of them are super funny, in different ways, too," Nia began. "I mean, even when we were rehearsing, some of the things that they improved during rehearsal made it into the script that we eventually shot."
16.When it came to creating the character of Dar-Benn, Nia wanted the villain to have "a very clear motivation" so you understood "what she wants to do and why she's at odds with Carol, and also the other two Marvels."
In terms of working with Zawe Ashton to develop the character, Nia said, "Zawe's amazing. She just really came in and left it on the floor, you know, like, we really want to have fun with that character Dar-Benn. She was great. Like you're saying, you love her in everything you've seen her in. She just brings so much character and depth, and humanity to our villain."
17.And finally, Nia absolutely loved being able to include big and small Easter eggs in The Marvels. In fact, she wanted to include even more than what we see in the final film.
"I wanted to include so many more, but they also were like, 'You need to slow down,'" Nia joked. "I really love our tag. I love our tag. I think it's amazing. I think it's pretty great."
The Marvels is in theaters everywhere now.