The latest version of Marvel Studios Eternals has rightly drawn comparisons to Game of Thrones, Greek mythology, and more, thanks to on-screen backlinks and a few familiar character names. He has even created an exciting vampire crossover in the actual Marvel Cinema Universe with his titles when Blades’ voice is only heard off-screen while talking to the new Dark Knight to be created, Dane Whitman. But that’s not his only interesting connection to pop culture’s world of vampire stories.
Far from Marvel’s frontiers, the 1994 film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire left its mark on the history of popular culture. And Eternals Sprite is an almost perfect mirror for Kirsten Dunst’s little Vampire Claudia in the film. In addition to Sprite’s supernatural youth and immortality, there is a deep underground stream of personal conflict and unresolved frustration over the life she never chose, which is almost the same as Claudia’s inner turmoil.
Sprite is as old and immortal as the rest of the crew at Eternals, but she still has a child’s body as she is gifted and cursed with too much eternal youth. Although she is still considered a child, and the similarities with Peter Pan and Tinker Bell are mentioned in the film, her character and battles are even closer to Claudia in the vampire interview. Yet another secular and immortal woman trapped in a child’s body, Claudia experiences the same frustrations after living through years of life, wisdom, and emotional development, but without the corresponding physical development.
But both girls feel the weight of these realities when it comes to controlling an adult’s emotions while still trapped in a child’s body. Sprite has fallen in love with Icarus, who plays an adult. It expresses her grief and frustration that she will never be allowed to grow up and experience things like love, especially another immortal she has known for years. In the vampire interview, Claudia is also angry at Lestat, who transformed her into a child. She is forever trapped in a fortified body and cannot experience adult love and physical attachment.
This loss of a future she has never had ultimately drives Claudia insane. In Eternals, Sprite decides, due to his loneliness, frustration, and dissatisfied love for Icarus, to volunteer for a genocide. It was unfair for Lestat to capture Claudia in his childhood, and it was unjust for Arishem to create a sprite in the same way he had frozen in time. Although the two stories with Claudia in Tragedy and Sprite in Wish Fulfillment end very differently, the core of their conflicts remains the same.
While Blade’s vocal cameo causes a lot of publicity at the end of the film, similar journeys by Sprite and Claudia are another interesting parallel to a movie that is already preparing viewers for future vampires. Daywalker’s modern MCU lobby is now just around the corner. It’s interesting to see how Marvel has been inspired by vampire stories outside their comic book library. And with a few stories stacked on the horizon, Phase Four becomes a big world of storytelling.
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