The Marvels director Nia DaCosta addresses report about leaving postproduction

Marvel may have a lot of issues to sort through right now, but none of them are Nia DaCosta’s fault. Concerns about how her film The Marvels will perform amid a reportedly confusing storyline and “lengthy” reshoots have plagued the film; further, Variety reported that DaCosta began work on another film during postproduction which one source called “kind of weird.” But beginning preproduction on one film is not actually that weird for a director to do—“It happens quite a bit,” DaCosta says in a new interview for the movie.

“I think there’s just a lot of energy and criticism around Marvel anyway, so I’m not surprised” that the postproduction story gained traction, DaCosta explains to interviewer Jake Hamilton. “But for me personally, it was literally just that they moved the date of the film four different times. And so, instead of it being a two year process, which I was deeply committed to, it became a three-and-a-half year process.”

Marvel Studios “knew the entire time I had an obligation, a greenlit movie, with people who are waiting for me,” DaCosta shares, so every time The Marvels date moved she “pushed that, and I pushed it again, and then I pushed it again. And then eventually we all knew like, ‘Okay, if this pushes again, I’m not going to be able to be in L.A. to do the rest of this in person.’” Instead, they “figured out a way to do it remote, we figured out the best process. And actually at the time that I left to go to London to start prep on my next film, everyone was so clear about what the film was, what we wanted, everyone knew what I wanted. So it really wasn’t the dramatic sort of thing that I think people are feeling like it is.”

With the actors strike still going on, DaCosta is in the unenviable position of having to promote the film on her own without any of its stars. And this time around, promoting the movie means defending the movie, and in some ways defending the entire MCU, from the tumult and speculation that surrounds the film and the franchise as a whole. That’s a lot of pressure for an up-and-coming director, particularly when female-led blockbusters already tend to be unfairly scrutinized in the first place.

Among the things DaCosta has been made to answer for includes the film’s relatively short runtime, which should come as a boon to those who have derided Marvel’s increasingly lengthy movies. Instead, it’s been twisted by some as a reason this entry might be worse than the others. “I really wanted it to be under two hours. I always think about the runtime actually, when I go into a film. I just feel like there’s no need to have it long if you don’t need to, because 1 hour 45 minutes is pretty average for a movie, so we were all really excited,” DaCosta told Digital Spy about making the MCU’s shortest film. “I just think you do what’s right for the movie. I didn’t even know about this runtime thing until I think it was reported on. You have to do what’s right for the movie.”

Then there’s the fact that The Marvels draws on a lot of lore, as its three main characters originate from different MCU properties. “They have a whole history before this. We have Ms. Marvel, the TV show, Captain Marvel, WandaVision, and it was kind of a constant negotiation to figure out, ‘Okay, how much information do people need? It was a real trial and error,” the filmmaker said to GamesRadar. “We don’t want people to have to watch anything else but, of course, you also have to be honest and be like, ‘This is the [33rd] project in this universe. It’s sort of a sequel to five different things. So at a certain point, you have to just be like, ‘Okay, yeah, there are some things that we can’t get in here, but it’ll be fun.’”

All of these issues—if they do qualify as issues—stem from systemic problems within Marvel Studios, problems surrounding complicated continuity and bloat that existed well before DaCosta even signed on to the project. It’s not her responsibility to right the ship, but like many female directors and female-forward films before it, DaCosta and The Marvels are seemingly being set up to take the fall for the franchise should the movie underperform. When you look at it that way, it’s even less surprising that she should start preproduction on a new project after spending so many years on The Marvels. Better to throw yourself into something new than wait around to be thrown under the bus.