Marvel Studios altered the costumes of the Eternals so they don't draw comparisons with the X-Men. Directed by Academy Award-winner Chloé Zhao, Eternals will debut MCU's next superhero team, who have been on Earth for thousands of years but are only now going to make their presence known. Naturally, there's a lot of excitement surrounding the project as it nears its release, with Disney ramping up the marketing for the blockbuster.

The Eternals were created by the Celestials and sent to Earth to protect humans from the Deviants. Although the film's narrative will span centuries, its primary arc takes place in a post-Avengers: Endgame universe, with Smart Hulk's (Mark Ruffalo) snap essentially kickstarting the heroes' new mission. The promotional campaign for the film has focused on teasing their collective arc as they re-assemble after a long time to address the looming Emergence. Aside from Marvel Studios opening an entirely new pocket of the MCU, Eternals is also the first movie to feature a superhero team sporting coordinated battle suits.

Related: Why Eternals Needs To Be Longer Than Infinity War

There have been a lot of discussions online about Marvel's decision to update the Eternals' costumes - while they still share similar elements with their comic book counterparts, for the most part, they look very different. According to producer Nate Moore during an Eternals set visit interview attended by SR in January, 2020, the filmmakers didn't want the new heroes' aesthetic to draw comparisons with the X-Men, who wore all-black in their film from 2000. That said, they also wanted to ensure that the characters looked like a single, coordinated unit, and costume effects supervisor Ivo Coveney expanded on this by pointing out similar detailing across the Eternals' costumes.

Moore: When you have this many characters, one of the challenges is to not, no disrespect, to not put them all in black X-Men uniforms. To give them all personality, but to also make it feel like a whole. To make it feel like they came from the same place because, unlike the Avengers who all have their own mythologies and are brought together, these people all come from the same place.

Coveney: When you look on the detailing and all of the pieces, there's a language. There's icons that are repeated throughout and that's what's tying them together, the language of the detailing on the pieces. Because production were very keen not to, we didn't make a uniform. They had to be individual characters, they had to be on their own. It wasn't like we were making an X-Men suit that everyone was having. But it was trying to make sure that we could, when you looked at them, they looked like they were from the same place. Born of the same universe, yeah.

Thena with a spear and a shield made of cosmic energy in Eternals

As Moore mentioned, the Avengers don't wear uniforms because, at the end of the day, they are individual heroes with personal narratives, and the same applies to the Guardians of the Galaxy. In the case of the Eternals, they were created to function in unison, sent  to Earth together to carry out one mission. While they have ultimately gone their separate ways, their mandate remains the same, hence why they reassemble once it is clear that the Deviants are on their way. So, expect them to bring out their coordinated suits when they gear up for their long-awaited showdown.

Moore's dis of the original X-Men movie's avoidance of color shows just how far superhero costumes have come since the genre's film boom began, but the differentiation could be more significant, as the mutants and the Eternals could someday cross paths in the MCU. Marvel Studios reclaimed the rights to Fox's Marvel catalog after Disney purchased the studio, though there's no word yet on when or how the fan-favorite heroes will make their debut in the franchise. So, while the focus so far has been on rebooting Fantastic Four and incorporating Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool, it's only a matter of time before they factor into the MCU.

More: All 13 Marvel Movies Releasing After Shang-Chi (& When)

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