TIFF 2024: Sydney Sweeney Draws Surprising Parallels Between ‘Eden’ and This Classic ‘60s Survival Flick

Published 09/08/2024, 3:00 AM EDT

Sydney Sweeney’s first survival thriller has premiered, and the actress has some interesting analysis of the film. Eden, starring Sweeney alongside a high-profile cast comprising Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Jude Law, Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Toby Wallace, and Richard Roxburgh, focuses on a group of post-Europeans who fled to an uninhabited island only to discover it is far from paradise. While many survival thrillers hover around a similar plot, Sweeney has picked one classic that almost seems like a first copy of the Ron Howard film.

Sydney Sweeney likened the 2024 movie to a survival drama from the '60s, which has seen several adaptations so far. 

Sydney Sweeney labels Eden a reimagining of this classic thriller

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Sydney Sweeney walked the red carpet for the premiere of Eden at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7. The actress was seen posing alongside some of the biggest celebrities in the industry and her Eden co-stars, Ana de Armas and Vanessa Kirby. On the red carpet, the Euphoria actress was asked by the Associated Press News, if the thriller “kind of looks like an adult version of Lord of the Flies”. To which Sweeney eagerly nodded, saying, "I have literally been saying that to everyone”.

Lord of the Flies was originally a novel authored by William Golding and was later adapted twice as films, once in 1963 and then again in the 1990s. While the book was immensely successful, the film adaptations did not quite hit the mark, even though the '60s adaptation is considered a more faithful one than the latter. Nonetheless, Sweeney comparing her movie to this classic speaks more than it meets the eye.

From ‘Euphoria’ to ‘Eden’: Every Sydney Sweeney Project Releasing in 2024 and Beyond

There are actually several parallels between Eden, Lord of the Flies, and the mythological Garden of Eden that might justify the comparison.

How Eden mirrors Lord of the Flies?

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Sydney Sweeney is a marketing wizard, and after Anyone But You, everyone is aware of that. It is, therefore, safe to say that the actress, in all her interviews for movie promotions, drops some easter eggs here and there to pique curiosity about the project. Even her comparison of Eden with Lord of the Flies was not something she randomly blurted out. The original novel, from which Lord of the Flies was adapted, has quite a few parallels with the story of the Garden of Eden. 

The island where the military school boys end up could be seen as a stand-in for paradise, much like the Garden of Eden. It was a stunning tropical island, packed with everything the boys needed to get by. While they could have created a perfect society in this paradise, they ended up going wild instead. And now from Sweeney’s take, along with the title of the recently premiered movie, it seems Ron Howard's Eden might have followed a similar path to Lord of the Flies.

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Sydney Sweeney vs Ana de Armas vs Vanessa Kirby: How Are the ‘Eden’ Actresses Compared to Each Other

What do you think about Sydney Sweeney's comparison? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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Hriddhi Maitra

1614 articles

Hriddhi Maitra is a Hollywood News reporter at Netflix Junkie. An enthusiastic movie buff, Hriddhi found her true calling when she worked as a Cinema Content Writer at My Cinema Story while analyzing movies objectively, and offering constructive feedback. Coming from a background where she worked in different niches like finance, food, travel, medicines, automobile, and entertainment, we can safely say she is a jack of all trades.

Edited By: Aliza Siddiqui

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