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FEATURES ON SCREEN PREVIEW

8 COMIC-CON

Your one-stop shop for all the news fit to print from the world’s biggest geekgasm.

Features: Benedict Cumberbatch in a cardie!

14 KNIVES OUT

Rian Johnson tells Empire about his all-star whodunnit. Our money’s on Michael Shannon being the killer. In every film he’s ever made.

17 TRAILER TALK

Team Empire takes in the first teaser for Cats, and hacks up a furball along the way.

18 CARTON OF MILK

Talking dairy products with the one-man Armie, Mr Hammer.

22

ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP

Ten years on, the old gang Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Abigail Breslin return to make us all feel mega-old.

43 EMPIRE 30

We pick the 30 films of our lifetime, one for each year since 1989. Sorry, Event Horizon, you came this close.

44 BATMAN

The blockbuster that launched at the same time as Empire and, just like us (ahem), changed everything. Sam Hamm, the writer, tells us how.

70 MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

George Miller reveals the secret ingredients of an action classic. Just add explosions.

74 MINDHUNTER

David Fincher and his cast spill their guts on Season 2 of the Netflix procedural.

80 APOCALYPSE NOW

Clockwise from top left: Batman, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Moonlight, The Dark Knight, Pan’s Labyrinth

Below: Scarlet Witch and Vision.

26 ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

The verdict on Quentin Tarantino’s latest pulp fiction.

29 THE FARWELL Awkwafina’s family trick their dying grandma. Totes awks!

37 SPOILER SECTION

Featuring the ends of Midsommar and The Lion King

49

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION Frank Darabont talks to us about the movie that launched a thousand Morgan Freeman narrations.

51 SCREAM

Do you like scary movies? Luckily, director Corin Hardy does, so we got him to write about one of the greatest slasher movies of all time.

59 SHAUN OF THE DEAD Edgar Wright reflects on how the night is always darkest just before the Shaun.

Empire loves the smell of an interview with Francis Ford Coppola about his masterwork in the morning

86 ANIMALS

Alia Shawkat and Holliday Grainger are Dublin up for this Irish-set tale of debauchery and female friendship.

92 JAWS 2

If you thought the making of Jaws was full of drama, intrigue and malfunctioning sharks, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

REVIEW

98 WILD ROSE

9 Je track-b songs f

Jessie Buckley goes by-track on the key from her new film.

102 M D sci-fi c

MOON Duncan Jones on his lassic as it turns 10n.

110 a Tim

THE RANKING Team Empire goes for m Burton.

“WHY ‘30 YEARS, 30 Films’ this month, Empire?”, I can hear you think to yourself due to the fact all humans are energetic beings connected as one, hence my possession of a psychic ability that allows me to tap into your very deepest thoughts. Well, it’s as simple as this: Empire Australia and New Zealand turned 18 this year, but Empire UK turned 30, and since we’re the Baby Bear to their Momma/Poppa Bear, we party when they party. You, dear reader, then get to delight in the ultimate party fusion as we lay out the movie geek punch and film nerd chips for your sipping / snacking pleasure.

The list itself, for me, brings back a flood of memories: I was a kid that was completely engulfed by the Batmania of 1989, owing a Bat-logo T-shirt, a Batman poster for my bedroom wall and, most importantly, a VHS recording of Prince’s ‘Batdance’ that I nabbed off Rage and watched waaaaay too much (if such a thing is even possible).

Poring over the list is sure to fire up the movie projector in your mind to screen iconic scenes from the last 30 years: “Oooh! There’s Michael Madsen hacking a man’s ear off and ruining ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ forever!”; “There’s the heart-tugging climax to Lost In Translation where you can’t hear what Bill Murray is whispering into Scarlett Johansson’s ear!”; “GOTDAMN, the T-1000 just went and turned its arm into a metal sword and put it right through that poor woman’s ear!” (I don’t know why I picked three references in a row featuring ears. I don’t have an ear fetish. Honest. Stop looking at me like that!)

Obviously with a list like this that only allows us to choose one film per year, a lot of really great movies miss the cut. Some favourites that spring to mind that give me the sad pangs due to their absence include Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Pulp Fiction, Bottle Rocket, The Big Lebowski and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise trilogy. (I don’t know why I picked three films in a row starting with the letter ‘B’. I don’t have a B fetish. Honest. Stop looking at me like that!)

What are some of your favourites that you would’ve liked to have seen in the list? Drop me a line and let me know!

Yours in not-weird fetishes,

JAMES JENNINGS EDITOR

... ALSO THIS MONTH AT EMPIRE:

reviewer George Palathingal spotted this sweet nod to Empire Australia founding editor / avowed QT fan, the late, great Chris Murray, at the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood premiere.

CLASSIC LINES OF THE MONTH

“I saw a house whose owner had painted the façade black and had a Bat-signal on the garage. And I thought, ‘This has gone too far.’”

p.44

“If it had been made in a sane, logical way, it’d have been a sane, logical movie. And war is an insane, illogical thing. Was then, and it is now.”

p.83

“Suddenly he’s on the floor on his back and I have my hands around his neck. They’re yelling, ‘Stop it! You’re gonna ruin your career!’”

p.107

CONTRIBUTORS

Michael Adams, Liz Beardsworth, Elizabeth Best, Simon Braund, David Michael Brown, Jenny Colgan, Nick de Semlyen, Fred Dellar, Andrew Dickens , James Dyer, Angie Errigo, Ian Freer, Alex Godfrey, Chris Hewitt, David Hughes, Travis Johnson, Dan Jolin, Tim Keen, Will Lawrence, Andrew Lowry, Ben McEachen, Jim Mitchell, Anthony Morris, Ian Nathan, Kim Newman, John Nugent, Helen O’Hara, George Palathingal, David Parkinson, Seb Patrick, Sophie Petzal, Nev Pierce, Jonathan Pile, Olly Richards, Adam Smith,

to service providers assisting Bauer in the conduct of the Reader Offer and to other organisations providing special prizes or offers that are part of the Reader Offer. An opt-out choice is provided with a Reader Offer. Unless you exercise that opt-out choice, personal information collected for Reader Offers may also be disclosed by us to other organisations for use by them to inform you about other products, services or events or to give to other organisations that may use this information for this purpose.If you require further information, please contact Bauer’s Privacy Officer either by email at privacyofficer@bauer-media.com.au

EDITOR JAMES JENNINGS

ART DIRECTOR KATIE SMITH

PHOTO EDITOR KRISTI BARTLETT 02 8114 9493

Empire

SEEING TOO MANY STARS

I think the bottom end of your review star meter is broken and I’m wondering about your ethics. I don’t really want to do this, but: are you sure that the atrociously flat, paint-by-numbers plotted Men In Black: International and how-did-they-screw-thisup-with-this-cast-seriously X-Men: Dark Phoenix were somehow good enough for three stars? I mean, they were both functional, but bad. Very bland, Hollywood dross bad. Yet you gave both three stars. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the giant multi-page pre-release features on them in the previous June issue, would it? Hmm? Lift your game. We want to trust you. I usually can, but this.?

ANDREW JOHNSON, AUCKLAND NZ

As you’d know, Empire runs features on a huge range of the latest movie releases, and we can assure you that appearing in the mag has no bearing on film ratings. Will you agree with them all? Probably not! But everyone has different opinions, which is what makes reading reviews fun/infuriating. We hope we’re back in the trust circle.

AND WE ALL SHINE ON

As soon as I learned that Doctor Sleep, the sequel to Stephen King’s classic The Shining, had earned a Hollywood adaptation, I devoured the book – visually, not dentally or digestively – and, thanks to your teaser article, I began the twitchy, semi-breathless wait until its November release date. I know your fine publication has friends and connections in high Hollywood places, so could you please at the very least send your good vibes to the producers so that the film delivers on every promise and is every bit as good as the book? I’m aware that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining occasionally strayed from the source material yet still remains a masterpiece, however the 1997 mini-series, while more accurate, lacks Kubrickian

CONTACT US VIA: EMPIRE MAGAZINE, LEVEL 8, 54 PARK STREET, SYDNEY, NSW 2000 / EMPIRE@BAUER-MEDIA.COM.AU / @EMPIREAUST (#EMPIREAUST) / FB.COM/EMPIREAUST

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Regarding your July 2019 issue, I noted a most horrible oversight. In your otherwise exceptional The Ranking, how could you neglect Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, one of the greatest ’80s comedies ever. It has better writing than Ghostbusters, and most of the others. I heartily agree with your inclusion of Trading Places, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Beverly Hills Cop, yes, but no FBDO? Maybe you meant Saturday Night Live and CSTV Regulars Comedies, as the incomparable Steve Martin and Martin Short hosted a number of times. I continue to love and adore your regular features: Masterpiece, Classic Scene, Story Of The Shot and amazingly spot on reviews. Please keep up the awesome work.

DAVID LEAVITT, VIA EMAIL

Thanks David! And you’re right – leaving Ferris off the list is a gross oversight. But comparing it to Ghostbusters? Tread carefully, friend. Tread carefully.

finesse, so there’s always the risk that Doctor Sleep may suffer from a similar shortfall. So together, let’s you and I and all loyal Empire readers combine our own Shining abilities and give our Tinseltown tycoons a mental nudge as we chant, “Please make Doctor Sleep awesome, please don’t let it suck ....” Ready? Aaaand .... go. I’ll take the awkward silence as a sign you’re just summoning your inner psychic abilities. Redrum...

RAY MILCZARSKI, HAMILTON VIC

Well Ray, we love a good joint, psychicallypowered setting of intentions to make sure a Hollywood sequel is as good as the original beloved classic, so count us in! Readers: please get on board. Ta.

BUELLER, BUELLER, BUELLER?

I’m sorry to sound a little pedantic, but who puts together a list of ’80s Comedy Classics (Empire #220) and doesn’t have Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in their Top Ten?! I mean really, what have the panel been watching? I can forgive the absenc of Caddyshack (just) and the stacking of the Top Ten with Steve Martin fi (that was a little harder to do), but Bueller? Wake up and smell the co Mrs Bueller. What would Princip Rooney say?

JASON KELLY, ARNCLIFFE NSW Okay, we get it! We screwed u royally. We can assure you we hundred per cent ‘Save Ferris.’ Soz.

Writers this month receive a Blu-ray copy of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, out on digital 11 September and DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UltraHD 25 September.

SPINE QUOTE

HONOUR ROLE

SPINE QUOTE #221

“I got all these kings. You win, you got a Joker.”

THE CONNECTION

From Erin Brockovich (2000), referring to Joker being on the cover.

THE WINNERS

Congratulations Lily Rose, You’ve scored yourself an Empire cap!

Send answers to empire@ edia fil m.a ,

BY JOHN

No./1

Welcome to Phase Four

WITH THE THREE-phase Infinity Saga dusted and done, there was a strangely muted excitement ahead of Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con presentation this year. Sure, there’d be announcements, but could it really measure up to what we’d lost? Happily, the signs point to yes, with this imperial phase for a studio on top of the world (literally, box office-wise) promising to be a bigger and more daring universe. Here’s how they’ll pull it off.

BIGGER AND BETTER REPRESENTATION

The billion-dollar grosses of Black Panther and Captain Marvel torpedoed the notion that only white men called Chris or Robert could lead a Marvel movie, and now we begin to see the benefits of that trailblazing. There was only a single piece of white male casting announced (or rather, confirmed) on Saturday, in Richard Madden’s Eternal, Ikaris. Admittedly, he

The MCU ’s next era looks wild, weird, and totally unpredictable. Here are the three big takeaways from Comic-Con

sounds a bit like a Chris, but baby steps, people. The MCU welcomed a female Thor in Natalie Portman, its first Asian superhero, its first LGBT heroes, and its first deaf superhero, suggesting that it’s not just colour or gender diversity that they’re expanding. There’s still a way to go Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige formally confirmed just one female solo lead, in Black Widow, though he generally promised a Captain Marvel 2 but you would have to be deeply cynical not to see this line-up as an enormous step towards better representation in the world’s biggest films.

BOUNDARY-PUSHING BEHIND THE CAMERA

It’s not just the casts that look different. Directors such as The Rider’s Chloé Zhao, who’s making The Eternals, and Short Term 12’s Destin Daniel Cretton, on Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, are sure bets to create films

with real texture and personality, something that should stretch the limits of the Marvel template to breaking point. Taika Waititi promises more Ragnarok-style mould-breaking with Thor: Love And Thunder, in the intriguing notion of the Jane Foster Thor, which previously seemed too far-out for the MCU, while Scott Derrickson aims for true scares in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (also the two best titles of the franchise to date). It’s even possible that Blade could take the MCU into R-rated territory, which really would be a new frontier.

TONS MORE CROSSOVERS AND CONNECTIONS

Prepare for a massive expansion in the MCU mythology aided by the Disney + TV shows that look set to become an intrinsic part of this universe in a way none of their predecessors were. Teyonah Parris’ adult version of Captain Marvel’s Monica Rambeau will crop

up in TV’s WandaVision, while Wanda herself crosses over to Doctor Strange Shang-Chi will introduce a whole new eco-system of villainy under the mysterious Ten Rings organisation, while The Eternals has to establish two entirely new races of Earth-based super-people (in the Eternals and their counterparts, the Deviants) that have been living among us all this time. Might some of these bad guys have a connection to Feige’s careless promise of forthcoming mutants? The possibilities for complications, connections and intricate crossovers are endless, and as juicy as a jugular to a starving bloodsucker. Phase Four may not be the Marvel we know, but it could be the best one yet.

HELEN O’HARA

Clockwise from main: Kevin Feige presents the new MCU; Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton; The Walking Dead’s Lauren Ridloff will star in The Eternals; Taika Waititi hands Mjölnir to the next Thor, Natalie Portman.

Marvel is heading back to space — and now it’s going cosmic, immortal and god-like

THE MCU HAS done space opera before, in Guardians Of The Galaxy. It’s even explored cosmic characters with near-infallible powers, like Captain Marvel. But The Eternals — a comics deep-cut that even well-read aficionados won’t be too familiar with— looks set to deliver a full-on gods vs gods adventure on an entirely different scale for the MCU.

Introducing the new team to the Hall H stage, Kevin Feige described the Eternals as super-powered “immortals who have been on Earth for 35,000 years”. In the comics they were created by another, even older race called the Celestials. We’ve actually already met a couple of Celestials on screen before — Kurt Russell’s Ego in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, and the enormous severed head/ecosystem of Knowhere in the first film. Concept art from Comic-Con suggests that the Celestials will play a key role in the film.

The Eternals, however, were charged by their creators with protecting our planet against their warlike cousins, the Deviants — a race that, on the page at least, included Thanos. Could The Eternals be laying the groundwork for the MCU’s next big bad?

Whatever happens, director Chloé Zhao will be sure to keep such wild cosmic concepts grounded. She helmed one of the best films of 2017 with The Rider, and the potential merging of her intimate, arthouse sensibilities to a universe-andmillennia-spanning story could pay dividends. Marvel has gotten better at letting directors have more of their own imprint on the final product in recent years, and Zhao’s is a voice they’d do well to let shine.

The cast is also impressive, and diverse, with Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie and Lauren Ridloff all set to star. Ridloff’s casting as Makkari is particularly significant, making her the MCU’s first deaf superhero. There’s potential for ties to past and future films too. We’ve seen two Celestials already but Marvel loves to bring back characters in unexpected ways: don’t be surprised if Knowhere’s origins are explored. And since the Eternals represent the beginnings of human mutation, could this be how the X-Men are finally introduced into the MCU?

AMON WARMANN

Main: Marvel’s concept art for the planet-protecting immortals The Eternals (plus a few Celestials).

Above: The cast, featuring Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Lia McHugh, Angelina Jolie, Don Lee and Lauren Ridloff, who will play the first deaf superhero, Makkari.

was one of the big surprises of weekend — and will have huge mifications for the MCU

How TV

fits into the MCU

Disney+ will make the small screen as important to the MCU as the big screen — here are the key connections

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

The first Disney+ Marvel show, written by John Wick’s Derek Kolstad, will feature returning Civil War villain Zemo (Daniel Bruhl).

LOKI

The Tom Hiddleston-starring series will continue the Loki storyline directly from Avengers: Endgame’s 2012 flashback. Mewling quims are not yet confirmed.

WANDAVISION

The Scarlet Witch’s 2021 TV show sets up her appearance in Doctor Strange 2 later that year — and also includes a grown-up Monica Rambeau from Captain Marvel

HAWKEYE

Jeremy Renner has confirmed that Clint Barton will explore his Ronin moniker from Endgame — while introducing new Hawkeye Kate Bishop.

WAS THE moment that nobody saw coming. vel head honcho Kevin Feige had one more thing, Columbo-style, veal: Blade, the vampire-killing walker, was coming back to the fold. how? Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali ed up the phone and offered himself or the role. And Feige agreed. It seems like perfect casting, and the kind that even the original Blade, Wesley Snipes, seemed to approve of, calling Ali “a beautiful and talented artist”. The problem now is: how do they introduce Eric ‘Blade’ Brooks into the MCU? Blade’s world is a vampiric one, teeming with pointy-teethed goons. This announcement instantly changes the MCU, retconning to a place where vampires are everywhere Blade himself is a half-vampire or ‘dhampir’, after his mother was bitten while pregnant, meaning there would have been vampires for at least as long as S.H.I.E.L.D. has been operational. Why haven’t we heard about vampires until now? Have they just been hiding in the shadows all this time? Is this a question with a multiverse-based answer?

Tougher still is how Marvel will juggle the expectations of MCU fans with die-hard daywalkers. The vampire-killing world is violent, R-rated. The MCU has never gone above PG-13. Does Blade promise a different kind of MCU movie? Could it even live alongside other potential R-rated movies like a new Deadpool entry? Or will he join the new-look Avengers? In the comics, he’s first recruited to the team by Black Panther. The full Blade reboot won’t arrive until Phase Five — but don’t rule out an early Wakanda cameo. JOHN NUGENT

Why there’s more to Picard than nostalgia

“ENGAGE,” SAYS JEAN-Luc Picard towards the end of the trailer. Because of course he does. But while the line was entirely predictable, the rest of our first look at the belated Star Trek: The Next Generation sequel was anything but.

The Borg! Data! Seven Of Nine! A glimpse of the new series not only shocked with some unlikely reappearances but offered hints as to what the galaxy has endured in the two decades

Cue a new ship, a new crew (including Alison Pill, Evan Evagora and Harry Treadaway) and a new mission that appears to lean on both the wreckage of the Romulan Empire (destroyed 10 years prior) and what remains of the Borg Collective (both a damaged Cube and some kind of Borg internment camp are shown).

since Star Trek: Nemesis

Until Comic-Con, almost all of the Picard imagery had revolved around the character’s vineyard where he retired after leaving Starfleet and hanging up his Admiral’s pips for good. Picard is lured from his bucolic dotage by the arrival of Dahj (Isa Briones), a woman with a portentous heritage (“She’s the end of the everything... She’s the destroyer”).

Both Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis are returning (as well as Jonathan Del Arco, who played Borg drone Hugh in the series), but Picard is no return to Next Gen camp. Having clearly learned from Discovery’s more cinematic style and focussed, arc-led storylines, this 10-part series feels more like a continuation of the movie canon (‘Star Trek 10.5’, if you will) and one that could herald an exciting new era for the franchise. Next up? Sisko after Deep Space Nine, please!

JAMES DYER

Above: Mahershala Ali will be the next Blade. Taika Waititi is very excited. Left: Marvel’s Brave New World series, featuring Blade.

The biggest non-Marvel hit of Comic-Con promises to unite Star Treks old and new

Inside the most diverse Academy class yet

With the Academy refreshing its voting base, three new Oscar voters tell us what it means to be part of Hollywood’s most influential club

“I wasn’t aware that you could be nominated to be a voter for the Academy, so it was a real shock when the email came in. I woke up in the morning and I had this email congratulating me and I didn’t know what was going on. To know that I was nominated in both writing and directing categories — it was so special. My manager said, ‘That’s not bad for a director who’s never made a film in America!’

I think the Academy’s push for diversity is important because if you’re only representing a small portion of the planet then you’re only pushing forward films with that small focus. We need to see ourselves mirrored back to us on screen. It’s important that storytelling becomes meaningful for everyone. We need to right the balance. It’s happening, slowly.”

“I was at home in London when I saw that I had been nominated on the news; it was very gratifying because it’s been a long haul to get here. I’ve been in this industry as an actor and an artist for over 20 years, and to see the type of diversity that’s now emerging is huge.

I never thought that I’d see this new wave of gender and ethnic diversity in my career, and I’m glad to be part of this new push for equality. It’s important for a plethora of diverse voices to be heard in Hollywood. I think it’s not only wonderful for the creative arts, but also people underestimate the power that the media has on society.

I think it can lead the way in how we as a society embrace each other and become more accepting and reflective of the way that we want to live as a human family.”

“I’ve largely been an outsider to the film industry, so it’s very gratifying to have my voice included. I felt validated by my peers. I have lots of opinions about movies and am a serious cinephile, so I hope I can contribute something of value.

I’ve seen some pushback to diversity, as if this means that the quality will go down. What people don’t realise is how difficult it is for new voices to be heard. Voters tend to nominate people they know and men tend to trust other men and hire them more. In my personal experience, many men on film crews have an instant distrust of a female director, as if they don’t believe she can pull it off. Audiences now have an interest in films by women and people of colour. So the new Academy goals are in line with what the people have asked for.”

BETH WEBB

JENNIFER KENT

DIRECTOR, THE BABADOOK AND THE NIGHTINGALE

ANNA BILLER DIRECTOR, THE LOVE WITCH AND VIVA

ADEWALE AKINNUOYE-AGBAJE ACTOR, SUICIDE SQUAD AND TRUMBO

THE ACADEMY BY NUMBERS

Meet 2019’s most terrifying pensioner

We speak to Pennywise’s latest form in It: Chapter Two — a sweet old lady who actually “gets scared easily”

HORROR HAS A new face. Glimpsed in the first trailer for It: Chapter Two is the mysterious Mrs Kersh (Joan Gregson), who lives in the childhood home of Beverly (Jessica Chastain) — a seemingly innocent elderly woman who, it emerges, is actually a form of It, the cosmic demon better known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The trailer scared the bejesus out of anyone who watched it. Including, it seems, Mrs Kersh herself.

“I’m not a horror fan,” Gregson says to Empire with a chuckle. “I get scared easily.” The French-Canadian actor has six decades of work on her CV (including, notably, the 1999 Stephen King miniseries Storm Of The Century), but nothing like the terrifying Mrs Kersh. “It’s my first horror, and I had a wonderful time,” says Gregson. “I thoroughly enjoyed working with Andy [Muschietti, the director] and Jessica Chastain.”

Gregson had not read King’s original novel (“I have to listen to audio books, my eyesight is going”), but did watch the 2017 It film. “It was scary,” she admits, “but I watched it with fascination, because there’s so much psychology in that film.”

She’s keeping schtum about the

exact horror her character unleashes (“You’ll have to see the movie”), but describes Muschietti’s direction as unique, shepherding her through the sequence with military precision. “Andy was wonderful. He would say, ‘Okay, do this, do that, now go!’ I was guided by what he was telling me to do. I’ve never had that kind of direction before.”

It clearly worked: the trailer became a huge hit online, with over 40 million views to date, turning the of-five into something of horror sensation. “The re been quite extraordinary. sent me something the ot where I’ve been lampoone says, referring to the mem the trailer. “I nearly died

As for seeing the final Gregson has reservations really looking forward to and I’m scared to death, because I know there are things that are just going me. One of my daughters to see it. I may jump out some point.” If you get sc

It: Chapter Two, it may be you won’t be the only one

Above: Just a sweet, smiling old lady… what harm could Mrs Kersh (Joan Gregson) possibly do?

Below: Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise. Delightful

Delightful. r grandmotheran overnight eaction has My daughter her day ed,” Gregson me following !” product, “I’m it actually, lots of to terrify s is refusing of my skin at cared watching e a comfort that

e JOHN NUGENT

The story behind Rian Johnson’s unexpected left turn

After a billion-dollar Star Wars movie, the filmmaker explains his unpredictable next move: an original, sardonic murder mystery entitled Knives Out

WHEN IT COMES to the title of Rian Johnson’s new movie, it’s tempting to play detective. Knives Out, eh? Surely that’s got to be inspired by the director’s experiences on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where he was besieged by whingeing fanbabies, furious at the perceived destruction of their childhoods, right? It must, therefore, be a reference to the fact that they had their knives out for him from the moment the movie was released (and, in some cases, before), yes? Well, no. “I’ve had that title for a long

while,” says Johnson. “Years and years ago. I just love that title.”

Sometimes, we should leave detecting to the detectives. Knives Out, then, is not a reaction to Johnson’s time (which might be an ongoing thing, with his non-Skywalker Saga trilogy still a possibility) on a major franchise (“Not at all. I had the time of my life making The Last Jedi”). Instead, it’s an example of a director using newfound clout from a billion-dollar grossing behemoth to get a smaller movie off the ground. The type of movie that Hollywood doesn’t tend to make these days. One that’s been buzzing around Johnson’s head for a while.

“I’ve had this idea for about a decade,” he tells Empire “It started with wanting to do a whodunnit. The whodunnit mystery is

something that I have loved since I was a kid, reading Agatha Christie mysteries. Then, after The Last Jedi, I was able to sit down and write it fairly quickly. It all happened very fast. I started writing it in January of last year, and we had wrapped the film by Christmas.”

Knives Out, then, as the posters proclaim, is “a Rian Johnson whodunnit”. In the same way that his debut, Brick, was a Rian Johnson film noir, The Brothers Bloom was a Rian Johnson con-artist flick, and Looper was a Rian Johnson time-travel movie. In other words, a characterbased, knowing twist on the usual ingredients. “A whodunnit is distinct from other types of detective fiction,” he explains. “It’s a cast of characters. There’s a person at the centre of it that everyone wants something from. They’re

bumped off and there’s some detective who comes in and solves the case. That, to me, is a whodunnit.”

Johnson’s whodunnit revolves around the murder of Christopher Plummer’s elderly patriarch, which brings with it no lack of suspects in his own rapacious, grasping family, and the attentions of the mysterious Benoit Blanc, Johnson’s very own answer to the great detectives he grew up reading, and watching. “Coming into it, being such a big fan of Poirot, it was hard to know even where to begin in terms of creating a new detective that’s going to hold a candle to that,” he admits. “Benoit Blanc has some of the elements of Poirot, in that he’s a bit self-inflated, but there’s a warmth to him which shines through with Daniel.”

Daniel, of course, being Daniel Craig, Johnson’s first choice for the role, who took advantage of the bump in Bond 25 production to sign on, excited by the possibilities of a Blanc page. And around him, Johnson has assembled something that, for him, is one of the signatures of a big-screen whodunnit.

“I was thinking about the Agatha Christie movies that had Peter Ustinov as Poirot when I was writing this,” he says. “They were my tonal touchstones, with that sense of an allstar cast, a bunch of actors you love to see, having a blast.”

Accordingly, Johnson’s suspects, most of whom are related to Plummer’s Harlan Thrombrey, include Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon (a red herring if ever there was one),

Ana de Armas, Toni Collette, Don Johnson and, cussing his way through the film’s trailer with an air of barely concealed prickish delight that would give Captain America a hernia, Chris Evans. Throw in LaKeith Stanfield as Blanc’s partner, Detective Elliot, and that’s one heck of a cast. “I wanted to give the kids a chance,” he laughs. “People you don’t usually see. It’s wonderful to have a big cast of movie stars, but specifically it’s wonderful in this movie because that’s part of the pleasure we’re going for.” So, that’s the mighthavedunnits taken care of. As for the howdunnit, whydunnit, whendunnit, wheredunnit, whatdunnit and whodunnit? All in good time.

CHRIS HEWITT

Clockwise from main: Director Rian Johnson (right) on set of Knives Out with Chris Evans and Ana de Armas; Johnson with Joonas Suotamo on the The Last Jedi; Finn (John Boyega) and Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) do battle in the same; Knives Out’s starry cast includes LaKeith Stanfield, Noah Segan and Daniel Craig.

Keira gets political

Keira Knightley has done pirates and period dramas now she’s angry about Iraq, in government thriller Official Secrets

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING, OFFICIAL Secrets is another Keira Knightley period drama. “I was thinking of it as completely modern,” Knightley admits with a smile. “But when I got on set, [I realised] the clothes are actually a period thing.” That period is the early 2000s no corsets here and the story is a tough, serious political thriller about a real-life Iraq war whistleblower.

The British actor has made many interesting choices since her early Pirates Of The Caribbean/ Pride & Prejudice era but never a meaty real-life political drama. The prospect intrigued her. “I’ve always loved political thrillers,” she says. “It’s a film genre I would always watch. But the opportunity is not one that’s come to me before. I was excited to do something completely different.”

She plays Katharine Gun, a translator working for British intelligence who, in 2003, leaked an incriminating internal memo about the Iraq war. Gun was later arrested; her immigrant husband was almost deported as a result of the leak. The character was a “fascinating” challenge for Knightley. “Her morality is absolute. When I met her, I asked her if she regretted it and she said she didn’t, despite what her and her husband went through. That’s not a common thing.”

It demanded a tough, understated performance, with Knightley’s preparation including dipping into the Chilcot report, the official inquiry into Iraq. The film, directed by Eye In The Sky’s Gavin Hood, flits from whistleblower thriller to All The President’s Men-style reporting (Matt Smith plays a journalist for The Observer) to courtroom drama (with Ralph Fiennes as the defending lawyer) and offers no easy answers.

“I think you still question whether [Gun] was right or wrong. I did when I read it. I’m on her side, but do I think everything should be out in the open? No, that would be chaotic. We need to have intelligence services that remain secret for our protection, but we also need to know that our institutions are bound by our laws.”

Yet Knightley who has campaigned for Amnesty International claims to be less political than she could be. “I mean, I’m a very lazy person,” she says, self-deprecatingly. “I try to keep myself informed. I do read the newspaper. I do vote. Am I as politically active as I could be? Probably not. But am I interested? Yes.” With a story like Katharine Gun’s, it’s hard not to be.

JOHN NUGENT

SMALL TALK

Top to bottom: Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) faces trial; Gun and husband Yasar (Adam Bakri) at the Liberty offices with lawyer Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes, top right); Director Gavin Hood with Matt Smith on set.

Cats

Chris Hewitt (ReView Editor): When this was first announced, I was nervous but also excited about how terrible this film might be. Nobody sets out to make a bad film. But I’m hoping that they’ve made the worst of all time.

Nick de Semlyen (Features Editor): Where are the humans? Is Cats a bit like Cars?

Joanna Moran (Photography Director): The white cat is played by Francesca Hayward, who is the principal dancer at the Royal Opera House.

Nick: I quite like that they’ve got hair inside the ears. That is quite faithful to, er, cats.

Chris Lupton (Creative Director): So does she have six nipples?

James Dyer (Editor-in-chief, Digital): Judi Dench!

Chris L: She looks like Pat Butcher from EastEnders

James: Is she wearing a fur coat? This is like the equivalent of someone wearing a coat made of human skin.

Chris Mandle (Contributor): It’s a coat made from the skin of her enemies.

Ben Travis (Online Staff Writer): Judi Dench has a cat moustache!

Chris M: Old ladies often do though.

Ben: Did the actors know they’d look like this? How did anyone think this looked okay?

Nick: The technology is quite bad.

Chris L: They got it right with Captain Marvel, de-ageing Samuel L. Jackson.

Chris H: Nobody turned into a cat in Captain Marvel Although I would see flerkins in this film in a heartbeat.

Joanna: That one’s tail is coming out of its arse.

Chris H: Now we have Jennifer Hudson, who plays Grizabella. She’s like a… prostitute cat, for lack of a better term.

Chris L: She looks like she’s fallen on hard times.

James: The size of the cats is getting to me. They’re like were-cats, but they’re also small! Look at them in that massive house, the proportions are all off.

Chris L: But look at that cat jumping on the bed. That does at least look proportionate.

Chris H: Now there’s a cat dancing around in a graveyard showing off her fanny. Why is this happening?

James: Jason Derulo is here. He looks like Sabretooth.

Nick: Is ‘milk’ like ‘alcohol’ in the world of cats? They’re hanging out at a ‘milk bar’.

James: Now we’ve got Idris Elba, literally a cat in a hat, and he’s also wearing…

contact lenses for some reason?

Chris H: He’s Macavity. Not exactly the villain, but he’s the ‘heavy’. The wrong-un.

Ben: He does look like a wrong-un.

Ben: It’s upsetting that everyone’s naked.

Chris H: It needs authentic bums and testes.

Chris L: This cast is huge. I thought this next cat was James Corden dressed as a bear and then I realised it was Rebel Wilson.

James: This is not ‘cat-shaming’ but it’s just… there are too many cats! And they are all upsetting to me! I can’t deal with it!

Chris L: Oh but look at Taylor Swift. I have to say I think she looks great.

Chris H: This song does not sound good.

Ben: Let’s be honest. If ‘Memory’ is the signature song from this musical… it’s a total dirge. It’s almost an anti-set-piece, when it should be the film’s big moment. But it doesn’t look like an exciting sequence.

James: The tone of the song is definitely at odds with the very upbeat, actionpacked choreography.

Chris M: It looks like it’s taking place during the throne room in Jupiter Ascending.

Ben: But not in a good way.

Chris H: Why is her hand… a person hand?

Ben: They all have people hands!

Chris L: The sizing is weird. The cutlery is massive. That character is rodent-like.

Chris M: They should have called it ‘Rats’.

Chris L: Oh, Judi does not look happy here.

Ben: Every time I see Judi I think she’s going to look better… and yet!

Chris L: He spat on her!

Nick: I like that it specifically got pulled out for the trailer. “We need the bit where Corden gobs in another person’s mouth.”

Nick: Each of the cast look like they’re at different stages of mutating into a cat. Idris Elba is at about ten per cent. Judi Dench is at about 95 per cent.

Chris M: Idris has only just been bitten by the radioactive cat.

James: So where are the people? Will there be people? Or is this Planet Of The Apes but with singing fucking cats?

Chris M: Okay, it’s over. Roll-call: who is excited to see Cats? I will only watch it very drunk on a plane.

Chris H: No. It’s based on a legendarily bad musical. I do not understand.

Nick: I want to see it. But I also do not want to see it.

Ben: I think I will see it. But I don’t want to see it for the reasons the film wants me to see it. CATS

Unfiltered, uncensored, uncompromising trailer reactions from team EMPIRE

CARTON

What was your role in your first-ever school play?

When I was living in the Cayman Islands, I did a nativity play and played Joseph. Sometimes you just come out of the gates swinging, I guess.

When in your life were you most starstruck?

Probably the first time I ever met Tom Cruise. I know him now and we’re very friendly, but when that guy enters a room there’s an appreciable difference in the atmosphere. He changes the air in the room. It’s an amazing quality.

Have you ever sent fan mail?

If I really enjoy a performance by an actor I don’t know personally, I will sometimes reach out to them. I think most recently I emailed James McAvoy to say I loved a performance of his. He replied! And I bumped into him not long after and he was very nice.

How much is a carton of milk?

I would say $1.25? Is that a lot? I usually prefer a pint of Timothy Taylor, but milk will do.

Which film have you watched the most?

Cool Hand Luke, Apocalypse Now or The Matrix

Those are the only films I have downloaded onto my iPad, so when I’m somewhere without the internet they will be what I’ll watch. One of them will always fit my mood.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever put in your mouth?

Durian fruit. It’s the worst. It tastes like putrid, rotten onions that have been sitting in the sun for a month. It’s horrible. The thing about it smelling awful but tasting great is a myth. I found it to taste exactly as bad as it smells.

Have you ever stolen anything from a hotel?

Yes. The other day I was on my way home from a hotel and realised I had stolen a towel, which makes absolutely no sense because I have towels.

What’s the last TV show you binged?

Archer It’s fantastic. It’s an animated TV show that’s irreverent and hilarious. I’m bingeing it right now. I’m working on a film that’s very intense, so this is great for turning off my brain.

When was the last time you were naked outdoors?

I have no aversion to being naked outdoors. Last time was at my house, before leaving for Montreal. I was in the sauna and got really hot so I had a naked walk around the garden to cool down.

COMING SOON

DEATH ON THE NILE

(2020)

Hammer will play Simon Doyle, one of the many starry suspects in Kenneth Branagh’s latest Poirot whodunnit.

REBECCA (TBC)

In a new take on the Daphne du Maurier novel, Hammer plays Maxim de Winter, with Lily James as his wife.

FIND ME (TBC) This Call Me By Your Name sequel is in the works, with Hammer and Timothée Chalamet reprising their roles.

What is the worst smell in the world?

I’m going to have to go back to durian. This is becoming a durian hit-piece.

What is the weirdest thing that scares you?

I do not enjoy the presence of spiders. I’ve never had a particularly bad experience or a horrible bite, but I am just convinced that every single one of them is plotting to kill me.

What is your favourite animal?

Tigers They’re just fucking formidable. Huge and incredibly strong and very graceful.

Who is the most famous person you could text right now?

Well, it’s gonna be Tom Cruise again. I don’t know when I last texted him, but I shot him an email over the holidays.

Do you have any tattoos?

I have one on my ring finger for my wife and one on my left inner wrist, which says my last name.

What is your earliest memory?

Being in a little pedal car, in my greatgrandfather’s backyard.

If you wrote an autobiography, what would you call it?

As I’m saying this I realise it’s incredibly dumb. But: ‘Let’s Get Hammered’. OLLY RICHARDS

ILLUSTRATION ARN0

No. /10 Who’s inside The Rock this time?

Your complete guide to the in-game avatars and their new players in JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL

No. /11

A

brief history of Disney diversity

Exploring the long and uneven road to Halle Bailey being cast as Ariel in the upcoming Little Mermaid film

WORDS ELLEN E JONES

1941

Dumbo included a gang of African-American stereotypes disguised as crows, with their leader named ‘Jim Crow’ in a nod to the South’s segregation laws. These scenes will reportedly be omitted when aired on Disney+.

1992

PRINCESS JASMINE

ALADDIN

If you were a little brown girl growing up in the 1990s, Princess Jasmine was a thrilling addition. Between that excitement and Robin Williams’ Genie, we may have overlooked the dodgy orientalist ‘othering’.

JIM CROW DUMBO

ANTHONY ‘FRIDGE’ JOHNSON (SER’DARIUS BLAIN) is now in...

PROFESSOR SHELDON OBERON (JACK BLACK)

EDDIE GILPIN (DANNY DEVITO) is now in...

DR SMOLDER BRAVESTONE (DWAYNE JOHNSON)

MILO WALKER (DANNY GLOVER) is now in...

FRANKLIN FINBAR (KEVIN HART)

MARTHA KAPLY (MORGAN TURNER) is now in...

RUBY ROUNDHOUSE (KAREN GILLAN)

No. /12 How Speed: The Play puts you in the driver’s seat

Natalie Bochenski, co-creator of Speed: The Movie, The Play, on turning the Keanu Reeves action classic into a live comedy show

FEELING THE NEED FOR SPEED

About five years ago, myself and the other two writers, Greg Rowbotham and Dan Beeston, were kicking about ideas for shows we’d like to see. We wanted to do a no budget, no special effects version of a big movie, and Speed came up. I loved that movie as a kid – it’s a balltearer of a film. The play is such a fun thing to perform – it’s like a rollercoaster that doesn’t stop.

FINDING A BUS

Of course we started wondering, “Where are we gonna get a vintage bus without having to buy or hire one?” We thought we’d have to shelve the idea. I couldn’t believe it, but three days after we had the idea I went to a local fe perfect bus was there. I felt like universe had blessed me! It turned out there is an organisation called the Queensland Omnibus & Coach Society, and we struck a deal with them to borrow the bus in return for some donation

stival and the the ns.

1995

POCAHONTAS POCAHONTAS

Pocahontas was Disney’s first lead woman of colour. Sadly, they also made her a colonial apologist fantasy, based on scant historical evidence and no consultation with the Powhatan Nation.

YOU’RE THE BUS HOSTAGE

The key thing with the show is that you are a passenger – or hostage – on a bus that’s out of control. It’s stationary, but we create madness all around it – we have people running up and down the sides of the bus to give the impression it’s r lo-fi special effects. We ing audience member to be ra Bullock and ‘drive’ the bus. We love to involve the audience and make them the hero of the whole thing. People respond to the experience in an overwhelmingly positive way.

moving and othe also get a willi Sandr e o

KEANU LOVE

This is the year of Keanu Reeves being the “Internet’s boyfriend.” It’s so bizarre – actually it’s not, because he’s fabulous. But that wasn’t there when we started the show in 2015. We’ve had the Keanu love from the beginning! But it has exploded this year, and everyone adores him. It’s also important to note the show isn’t making fun of him or the film in any way – It’s a very loving homage. He’s such an awesome dude!

JAMES JENNINGS

SPEED: THE MOVIE, THE PLAY WILL BE ON FROM 20 - 29 SEPTEMBER AS PART OF THE SYDNEY FRINGE FESTIVAL 2019. FOR MORE, VISIT WWW. SYDNEYFRINGE.COM

2009 009

PRINCESS TIANA

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG

From the Grimms’ tale and the cultural setting of 1920s New Orleans evolved Disney’s first African-American princess. Voiced by Dreamgirls’ Anika Noni Rose, Tiana proved that black faces belong in European fairy tales.

2016 MOANA MOANA

Moana became a true queen in this Polynesian myth-based musical. Most magnificent of all is how animators gave her a realistically strong physique with which to navigate the oceans and lead her people.

TBC

ARIEL THE LITTLE

MERMAID

The casting of African-American actor/ singer Halle Bailey as Ariel was a major milestone. Ignore the smattering of racist trolls online: non-traditional casting for a key member does make a whole new world.

Above and left: Speed: The Movie, The Play and some of its many wondrous lo-fi props.

Below: Co-creator Natalie Bochenski. .

[ FIRST LOOK

Zombieland: Double Tap

Woody Harrelson and the gang are back to tackle more zombies — and impersonate The King

[ TREND REPORT

A FULL DECADE after the original became a cult zomcom hit, Zombieland is back for a second helping. And if our exclusive first look is anything to go by, it’ll be all shook up. It’s unclear why Harrelson, as apocalyptic survivor Tallahassee, is dressed as Elvis Presley here, but it’s clearly a labour of love for the actor. Earlier this year,

he revealed to The Late Late Show that his Elvis impersonation was the thing that first got him noticed in drama club, ultimately changing the course of his career. Elvis, it seems, was always on his mind...

JOHN NUGENT

ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP IS IN CINEMAS FROM 17 OCTOBER

CLIFFORD McBRIDE

AD ASTRA

Tommy Lee Jones, unable to sanction Brad Pitt’s buffoonery, finds himself lost in space. A rescue mission is mounted but does he even want to be found? Or would he rather be left to nap?

CLAY BANNING

ANGEL HAS FALLEN

Gerard Butler’s Mike Banning is back, and this time he’s tracking down Banning Sr, played by Nick Nolte in full wilderness mode. You think your family reunions are fraught? You haven’t been to a Banning family reunion.

MUFASA

THE LION KING

Twenty-five years after first getting caught in a wildebeest stampede, James Earl Jones’ Mufasa gets trampled in exactly the same way — only this time around, more photorealistically.

This year, cinema has more daddy issues than a therapist’s waiting room — here’s our pick of misplaced papas

WORDS JOHN NUGENT ILLUSTRATIONS BILL MCCONKEY

Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenberg can’t believe what Woody Harrelson and Luke Wilson are wearing.

ON HIS CAREER AS AN AMATEUR BOXER

“I had my first fight when I was 12. I had 27 fights in total; it was something I thought I wanted to do professionally for a long time. I picked up an injury and was out for 16 months; during the injury break, I joined a drama class on Saturday mornings and started to take it more seriously. After a couple of losses, I didn’t return to the ring.”

ON HIS FIRST DAY FILMING PEAKYBLINDERS

“I was sandwiched between Tom Hardy, Aidan Gillen and Cillian Murphy. I was nervous, but used that as fuel. I thought: ‘You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t earned it.’ Watching them was a masterclass.”

ON PLAYING SAM, A CHILD PSYCHOPATH, IN CHANNEL 4’S BORNTOKILL

“I honestly never imagined that playing a child psychopath would turn out to be a dream role for me, but it really was! The seriousness of the role demanded a lot of preparation. Sam wasn’t a fully-fledged psychopath at the start. He was a great challenge to play.”

ON HIS FAVOURITE MOMENTS AS AN ACTOR

“There’s a certain energy that happens when all the prep has been done and no matter what direction you get, what set you’re on, who you’re acting with, you’re in your element. Nothing can break that. You feel unstoppable.”

ELIZABETH AUBREY

Listen up, Sam Mendes No. /

Here’s how to compose a film out of a single shot — by the filmmakers who pulled it off

FOUR YEARS AGO, director Sam Mendes opened his Bond movie Spectre with a daring, carefully choreographed four-minute tracking shot following 007 through a Mexican Day Of The Dead parade. How do you top that? Shoot an entire movie in this style. 1917, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth and Richard Madden, tells the harrowing story of one day in World War I through the eyes of two shellshocked soldiers shot in one continuous take. “One-shot movies” are notoriously hard to pull off: if a single person misses their mark, the whole production has to start again. Three veterans of this unique filming method offer up their advice.

DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOUR STORY DEMANDS IT

There’s no point using this style as a gimmick, says Martin Otterbeck, director of photography on 2018 terrorist drama Utøya: July 22, about a real-life massacre in 2011 that left 69 people dead in Norway. “[The terrorist] was on the island for 77 minutes. We really wanted to show how long 77 minutes can feel like,” he says. “We didn’t do it [in one take] to show what great filmmakers we are it was about letting the audience feel the true horror of this terrible act.” REHEARSE

LIKE CRAZY

“It’s like a symphony,” according to Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, cinematographer on 2015 one-shot bank heist thriller Victoria “Every instrument is playing its part. So if you fuck up, you’re in trouble.” He and the Victoria crew had four weeks to rehearse, ironing out every detail like a stage play. “None of us had done anything like this before. So our escape plan was to prepare as much as possible. Everyone knew what to do minute-by-minute, second-by-second.”

MAKE SURE YOU’RE FIT ENOUGH

No edits means no rest for your film’s poor cameraman/woman, who’ll need to be able to endure holding heavy equipment and walking around locations for long periods of time. “I had to become a professional athlete for this film,” laughs Otterbeck. “Two months ahead of the film, I was on a training programme for every day, seven days a week, to cope with the physicality.” Grøvlen who held a 5.5kg camera aloft for two hours, without a break, for each of Victoria’s three attempts at filming agrees: “I definitely needed a massage after!”

ASSEMBLE A WATERTIGHT TEAM

“There’s got to be a high degree of precision in every department, from every individual on

set,” says cinematographer Michael Fimognari, who helped bring the one-shot spooks of Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House’s sixth episode to life. “The dolly grip, the camera operator… everyone. It gets stressful in the last few minutes of a really good take, when it’s so good and it’s all working but you know there are still a hundred moving parts that could fail at any time.”

REAP THE REWARDS

Why go through all this effort? What’s the effect on filmgoers? “I think on a subconscious level, you believe what you see more,” says Grøvlen. “It’s happening in front of your eyes. It feels authentic that way, more plausible, because it’s closer to real life.” Says Fimognari: “You don’t have the bail-out of the usual cinematic constructions. It’s unrelenting. There’s no place to hide.” Sam Mendes, it would seem, has his work cut out. AL HORNER

Left: Sam Mendes plans Spectre’s onetake wonder with Daniel Craig;

Below: Andrea Berntzen in Utøya: July 22; The ‘Two Storms’ episode of The Haunting of Hill House; Laia Costa in Victoria

How to play Elvis (by ‘Elvis’)

Newcomer Austin Butler has been cast as Elvis in a new biopic. We asked Elvis impersonator JD King for his advice

THE VOICE

“To me, the key to Elvis is the voice. And that’s the thing that Austin’s gonna have to work on the most. My worry with him is that he might not have a deep enough range. Elvis had quite a baritone singing voice. It’s mastering the Memphis accent as well. And the metre is very deliberate it speeds up and then kind of hangs there. He needs to get the mouth in the right place it’s quite far forward.”

THE MOVES

“A lot of Elvis’s moves are derived from classic 1950s jiving and bopping. But he was also a black belt in karate. He integrated a lot of karate kicks and swishes into his movements. He’d do a lot with his hips, of course, riding from side to side, but if you’re a historian of Elvis, you know that he dances very differently in the 1950s to how he did in the 1970s. Little details like that are important, if you want to impress the Elvis nerds like me.”

THE HAIR

“The quiff was a signature for Elvis pretty much throughout his whole life, but in the ’70s it became more of a big mop. And of course, the sideburns got bigger and bigger, until they took up about half his face. I have to use quite a lot of hairspray, because I have very fine hair. If Austin’s lucky, and he’s got nice thick locks, it’ll be easier to get it standing up straight. It’s always a struggle for me, din h e usu ust go for something in the middle. If things don’t work out with Austin, I’m on standby!” NUG

No. /17 Sandman isn’t

as unadaptable as you think

FOR MANY COMIC-book

fans it looked like a dream that would never come true. Since Neil Gaiman’s (below) The Sandman debuted in 1989, it was arguably the greatest comic book to remain unadapted, deemed too expensive, too expansive, too uncommercial and too damned weird to ever work on the big screen. All of which was probably once true. However, it is ideal for the new golden age of longform TV a fact Netflix, which greenlit an adaptation, has woken up to.

beauty of longform TV. It doesn’t need to be. With access to Netflix’s deep pockets, The Sandman’s vast, CGIdependent scope is finally achievable, while its strong horror flourishes and its out-there thinky concepts will hardly scare off viewers in the Peak TV era. It also comes custom-built for a six-to-seven season run — one for each of its storylines, including Dream’s initial quest to regain his power after he’s accidentally imprisoned by an occultist, his journey to recapture errant nightmares who wander the world, and his inconvenient inheritance of Hell.

p Destiny, irium, ath.

d ces the eare,

It centres on Dream, aka Morpheus, lord of the realm of dreams, and one of The Endless, a dysfunctional family of metaphysical beings who each represent an aspect of the human condition: D Despair, Desire, Del Destruction and De Spanning aeons, and with guest appearan from Lucifer, Loki, Furies and Shakespe it’s not a simple narrative.

But that’s the

Of course, that would be crazily ambitious, and it remains to be seen what showrunner Allan Heinberg’s der Woman) tegy is. But he’s got rything he needs budget, running e, awesome source rial — to create thing truly, mind-blowing. ’re gonna dream, m big.

(Wond stra ever b time mate some deeply m If you dream

DAN JOLIN

Why Neil Gaiman’s metaphysical comic book about dreams and storytelling is actually tailormade for longform TV

Morpheus, making it to TV at last.

Below: Dreamweaver and creator Neil Gaiman. ALLSTAR, CAPITAL PICTURES, GETTY IMAGES

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

DIRECTOR Quentin Tarantino

PLOT LA, 1969. TV actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt) are increasingly yesterday’s men. The new Hollywood is embodied by Rick’s neighbour, rising star Sharon Tate (Robbie). Their fates will collide in the most unexpected way.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood features perhaps the most Quentin Tarantino-y shot of any Quentin Tarantino movie yet: wannabe movie star Sharon Tate (Robbie) with her dirty bare feet up on a cinema seat watching pretty much forgotten 1969 James Bond rip-off The Wrecking Crew starring Dean Martin. Yet foot fetishisms and cult movies are not the only QT obsession to be celebrated in his ninth movie; drive-ins, doughnuts, tracking shots following cars, key characters meeting at traffic lights, bubblegum pop music, reinventing forgotten actors (hello TV Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond as film director Sam Wanamaker) and the joy of radio are all present and correct. Once Upon A Time... is a heady compendium of Tarantino inspirations, ideas and motifs, brilliantly made and perfectly performed, but perhaps lacking the zip, fun and intensity to make it your new favourite Tarantino flick. At its heart, it’s a likeable buddy movie

CAST Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Al Pacino

focussed on Burt Reynolds-alike TV actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his stuntmanturned-gofer Cliff Booth (Pitt). Rick is the former star of ’50s Western show Bounty Law but, as pointed out by agent Marvin Schwarzs (Al Pacino in an over-extended cameo), is on the skids, playing villains opposite up-and-comers, subtly reinforcing his second-fiddle status. Tarantino has a blast sketching out Dalton’s career from fake TV featurettes to clips of films (‘The Fourteen Fists Of McCluskey’ sees Dalton flamethrower Nazis!) to brilliantly conceived posters (‘Operation Dyn-O-Mite!’). Best of all, Dalton defends himself over accusations of not being cast in a ’60s classic so Tarantino cheekily but seamlessly inserts DiCaprio into the famous flick. It’s the director at his most playful, and Once Upon A Time... could have benefited a bit more from his silly side.

If Dalton is on the verge of becoming a has-been, his cohort Cliff Booth is a never-was,

a stuntman who can’t get work so is forced to drive Rick around, living in a trailer and feeding his mutt. He also may or may not have killed his wife. Both QT alumni DiCaprio as Calvin Candie in Django Unchained, Pitt as Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds the pair are mellow, enjoyable company radiating moviestar chemistry from every pore (watch them watching TV show FBI). Pitt’s confident swagger and poise is present in every frame but DiCaprio

adds different notes; Dalton is a man who can see that he is yesterday’s news and finds a poignancy as he comes up against the edge of his talent. Reading a pulp Western novel about a horse breaker with the genius name ‘Easy Breezy’, Dalton breaks down on recognising himself: “He’s not the best anymore. He’s coming to terms with what it’s like to become slightly more useless each day.” It’s a moment of heart rare in the director’s canon.

The third star on the film’s walk of fame is Sharon Tate (Robbie), an actor on the brink of stardom and Manson murder infamy, bombing around LA in a sports car with husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and next-door neighbour of Rick Dalton. Much has been made of Tarantino’s treatment of Tate, barely giving

Main: Leo was still bloody annoyed about not getting the denim jacket. Left: Margot, however, fully approved of her ’60s threads.

Stuntman Cliff (Brad Pitt), ready to show the car who’s boss. Below: Cliff, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and agent Marvin Schwarzs (Al Pacino) do the Hollywood schmooze.

ARMSTRONG HHH

OUT 12 SEPTEMBER / RATED G / 100 MINS

DIRECTOR David Fairhead

CAST Harrison Ford, Neil Armstrong

her a voice, but what she lacks in dialogue, Robbie compensates for with gesture and charisma, Tarantino imbuing the character with affection. She might not have enough screen time to enter the Female Tarantino Characters Hall Of Fame we salute you Mia Wallace, Jackie Brown, Beatrix Kiddo, Shosanna Dreyfus, Daisy Domergue but she makes Tate register, especially charming her way into seeing her own film for free. More memorable are The Leftovers’ Margaret Qualley as Pussycat, a vibrant, livewire hitchhiker and, best of all, Julia Butters as a loquacious eight-year-old actor reading a Walt Disney biography and espousing the Method (she can only be addressed by her character name). This is QT at his best: original, unexpected and delightful.

The three separate storylines Dalton, Booth and Tate form a mosaic depicting a fascinating era of American pop history, when old-school machismo met the progressive counter culture and one guard gave way to another. Yet what Once Upon A Time... doesn’t coalesce into is a gripping story. This is not the razor-wire tautness of Reservoir Dogs or the thrill of Pulp Fiction’s non-linear razzle dazzle. Instead it provides a loose framework for scenes to run along different tracks. Some of them are fantastic (Booth’s run-in with Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh), others drift (Dalton as a guest villain in TV Western Lancer). In the second half, a narrator becomes more prominent to shore up less surefooted storytelling. You’ll also be hard-pressed to find that killer QT line you’ll still be quoting at Christmas. It’s Tarantino working in a less showboat-y, more mature mode it shares DNA with Jackie Brown so pack patience with your popcorn.

As ever, the gear-shifts between tones come thick and fast your expectations are continually and royally fucked. Cliff’s encounter with Manson’s followers (featuring Lena Dunham and Dakota Fanning) is all set fair for an old-school Western showdown but goes to a completely different place. By the time Manson’s acolytes arrive for their night with

destiny (or is it?), one of them delivers a chilling denouncement of Hollywood’s fascination with murder (“My idea is to kill the people who taught us to kill”), invoking the film-creates-violence debate Tarantino has been battling his whole career. Moments later, the film jumps headfirst into a whole new sphere of madness altogether.

At every stage, the filmmaking is on point. Robert Richardson’s stunning cinematography pops but never feels overly mannered, Arianne Phillips’ costume design is too stylish for words, and Harry Cohen’s dense, bravura sound design interweaves music, radio chat, adverts and TV chatter to spellbinding effect. It’s a film that courses with a love of moviemaking and Hollywood lore (a party sees Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen) and might be Tarantino’s most personal film to date; look out for a clutch of his repertory group actors and nods to his own universe (be sure to stay in your seats, QT is going MCU with an end-credits sting). It has a skein of melancholy, for a bygone age he couldn’t partake in and possibly for his own career. This is reputedly his penultimate film, stopping at the magic 10. Even if its his own choice, the reverie of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood suggests he’ll miss it. And we’ll miss him too. IAN FREER

VERDICT If it’s not top-drawer QT, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is at once an engaging buddy comedy, an intoxicating fact and fiction mash-up, gorgeous filmmaking and a valentine to the movies that delivers geek nirvana.

“Stoic” and “dependable” are ideas that come up a lot in David Fairhead’s enjoyable if not groundbreaking portrait of Neil Armstrong, the test pilot-turnedastronaut who became the first human being to set foot on the moon. They are also terms that could describe the film itself. Fairhead, director of last year’s equally solid Spitfire doc, has mounted a film that ticks all the boxes but doesn’t do it with much flair, edge or depth.

Structurally the film takes a womb-to-tomb approach, tracing Armstrong’s strict Ohio upbringing, his passion for flight (he got a flying licence before a driving licence), his three years in Korea on active duty and his rise to lead the Apollo 11 mission. Interspersed are more personal threads the death of his daughter Karen aged two that played so deeply into Damien Chazelle’s First Man biopic and his life post his epochdefining achievement, a reluctant career in public speaking, entering the corporate world and divorcing his wife Janet (“He said he would change,” she says about the end of the marriage. “He had 38 years to change”). There feels more to these topics than the film is willing to get into.

The story is told through talking heads with Armstrong’s family and colleagues (Buzz Aldrin is absent the pair didn’t get on), but the film’s masterstroke is having Harrison Ford narrate Armstrong’s own words, the actor imbuing the astronaut’s thoughts with an apt no-nonsense gravitas. There’s some lovely home movie footage and it gives a good account of the moon landing itself there is a tense bit where Armstrong struggles to find a parking space on the lunar surface.

But this tried and trusted approach overegged by an insistent score doesn’t do enough to bring the by now familiar tale to life, and coupled with a central figure who wouldn’t trouble Amy Winehouse or Maradona in the compelling documentary subject stakes means Armstrong never reaches the stars (you get the sense the saltier Janet a NASA widow might have provided a more interesting, leftfield way into the story). In the wake of the awe-inspiring Apollo 11, Armstrong feels solid and dependable like the man himself — but little else. IF

FREAKS HHHH

OUT 12 SEPTEMBER / RATED MA15+ / 104 MINS

DIRECTORS Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein

CAST Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Lexy Kolker, Amanda Crew, Grace Park

SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Chloe (Lexy Kolker) lives alone with her father (Emile Hirsch) in a run-down suburban house. She’s forbidden to go outside, but longs to play with another girl who lives across the street. Her father seems paranoid and given to flights of fancy; he drills on how to appear “normal” if they are ever separated. Meanwhile, an ice cream truck operated by the somewhat sinister “Mr. Snowcone” (Bruce Dern) trawls the neighbourhood, and Chloe wants a cone. Chloe’s father says the truck is filled with children’s bodies. Is her father crazy, or is something very strange going on here?

Well, that would be telling, and Freaks is a film worth going into as cold as possible. Writing and directing team Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (the Kim Possible movie, of all things) carefully dole out information, with each revelation changing up our understanding of each character, the situation we’re in as a whole, and even the genre the film is operating in. What begins as a surreal horror told from a child’s point of view, à la Bernard Rose’s Paperhouse, Terry Gilliam’s Tideland, or even the Stephen King adaptation, Firestarter, goes through multiple iterations and expansions as our understanding of what’s going on grows with Chloe’s.

Doing so is a gamble, but whoever cast the lead role did the job right; young Lexy is an absolute gem, fully capable of everything the script asks of her – and it asks for a lot. Veterans Hirsch and Dern are reliably great, and Battlestar Galactica veteran Grace Park shows up as a government agent later on when the world of the film opens up wider than its initial claustrophobic, housebound setting.

If the ultimate reveal is less than mind-blowing, it’s only because the path taken to get there has been so gripping by comparison. This is an assured, mature, dexterous piece of genre cinema that deserves the fervent cult following it will almost inevitably attract.

TRAVIS JOHNSON

THE FAREWELL

PLOT Aspiring Chinese-American writer Billi (Awkwafina) butts heads with her family’s traditional values when they elect not to tell their matriarch, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), that she has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. It all comes to a head when the extended clan gathers for a lavish family wedding.

WRITER AND DIRECTOR Lulu Wang draws on her own experience as the product of two often conflicting cultures to spin a subtle and nuanced tale of family and identity. A precisely mixed dramedy, the resulting film will have you guffawing with laughter one minute and choking back tears the next as it deftly guides us through a maze built out of traditions, relationships, old traumas and new hopes.

The central conflict is a fascinating one. As explained by Billi’s Uncle Haibo (Jiang Yongbo), the idea is that the family will bear the emotional burden of her impending death for Nai Nai, letting her have a few last months of peace and happiness, effectively socialising the angst over her mortality. For Billi, though, who has dwelt in the U.S. since early childhood, this robs Nai Nai of her agency. However, her assumptions about the obvious wrongness of the family’s duplicity are challenged when it’s revealed that Nai Nai did the same thing for her own ailing husband.

Which all sounds heavy going, but The Farewell refuses to wallow (although there are moments of pure emotion that hit like a punch).

It’s frequently hilarious – one scene set in a cemetery (bear with me) in which the gathered family, leaving offerings to the spirit of Nai Nai’s late husband, argue over had he quit smoking before he died, is an absolute highlight, with Haibo pointing out that since the old man is already dead, leaving a cigarette on his grave is unlikely to do him any further harm. At another point, the family resorts to having Nai Nai’s test results forged in order to prevent her from learning about her illness, an effort that simply beggars belief for Western audiences but certainly rings true in the context of the film.

Still, The Farewell’s real strength is its adroit cast, of which Awkwafina is the absolute standout. While she’s well and truly proved her comedy chops in fare like Crazy Rich Asians and Bad Neighbours 2, here she effortlessly pivots into more dramatic territory, embodying a mix of self-doubt, defiance, and affection that rings true in every scene. If she wasn’t already a star, it’d be labelled a star-making turn. The rest of the ensemble doesn’t slouch, either, and while veteran character actor Tzi Ma is great as Billi’s dutiful father and Diana Lin is excellent as Billi’s prickly and conflicted mother, it’s Zhao Shuzhen as the seemingly oblivious object of the whole exercise who carries the day. She’s a heartwarming revelation as the spry and irascible grandmother, dispensing homespun wisdom like a sage as her descendants do their best to keep her from figuring out what’s really going on, and the simple conversation scenes between her and Awkwafina are incredibly moving. TJ

VERDICT

Warm, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking, The Farewell presents a complicated cross-cultural problem with remarkably insight and humanity, and marks both director Lulu Wang and star Awkwafina as vital voices worth keeping a close eye on going forward. Watch it with family.

DIRECTOR Lulu Wang CAST Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen

THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE 2

DIRECTOR Thurop Van Orman

CAST Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom

PLOT The war of pranks between Bird Island and Piggy Island is raging. Yet when a third ice-capped island threatens the safety of both, pig king Leonard (Hader) suggests a truce so Red (Sudeikis), Bomb (McBride), Chuck (Gad) and Silver (Bloom) join a mission to nullify the danger.

IF JUDD APATOW were creating a live-action ensemble dramedy about life and love and muddling through, he could do a lot worse than purloin the cast of The Angry Birds Movie 2: Jason Sudeikis, Danny McBride, Josh Gad, Leslie Jones, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom, Tiffany Haddish, Peter Dinklage, Awkwafina, Sterling K. Brown, Maya Rudolph (plus a cameo by Nicki Minaj). Instead this stellar collection of talents is being put to use in

the sequel to a 2016 original inspired by a popular app where you catapult birds to flatten green pigs. Still, untethered from the shackles of its gamebased origins, new creative team Thurop Van Orman and John Rice’s film is a more enjoyable affair, still lacking the storytelling craft of a Pixar or a Laika, but delivering gaudy, hit-and-miss fun. Aptly enough for a film about flightless birds, it doesn’t get off to a flying start. After a frenetic pre-credits sequence that throws a lot of gags at the screen and sees what sticks (answer: not a lot), a simple set-up emerges. Both Bird and Piggy Island are under attack from Eagle Island, led by purple bird Zeta (Leslie Jones on lively form) who uses a volcano-type super-weapon to lob ice bombs at the avian and porcine communities. Her simple, admirable plan is to use the two islands as a summer vacation escape from her glacial surroundings. King pig Leonard (Hader) suggests a truce to Red (Sudeikis), the hero of the first film, who is reluctant to accept: if there is no war, he can no longer be a hero and will lose his new-found popularity. But seeing a chance to earn glory again, he agrees to team up with the Pigs. For the most part, this is heavy weather stuff: Red and his buddies Bomb (McBride) and Chuck (Gad) are not the most winning protagonists, the set-pieces, like a speed dating sequence, fall flat, and a battle of wills between Red and sparky super-smart science geek Silver (Bloom) is predictable.

Things pick up immeasurably when The Angry Birds Movie 2 transforms into a Birds-And-Pigs-On-

A-Mission movie, as a motley crew try to infiltrate Zeta’s island and disable the super-weapon. Here we get an assemble-the-team sequence, a mission briefing, a peculiar scene of opera singing in a submarine, Garry the gadget guru (Sterling K. Brown) and lots of Ethan Hunt-styled dangling. Running alongside the main plot is a sub strand involving three hatchlings baby angry birds knowingly voiced by the children of Nicole Kidman, Viola Davis and Gal Gadot who have to recapture three eggs that have floated out to sea it takes in a huge whale, a journey to the stars and a fearsome snake. It eventually and perhaps too conveniently crashes into the main plot, but it has the quality of a good self-contained short, taking an absurd idea and having fun with it.

Unlike the first film’s dubious-for-a-kids’ film messaging be wary of foreign strangers; it’s okay to get angry sometimes the second film stays on safer ground, deconstructing gung-ho macho heroics (Red comes to agree Silver is the brains of the outfit) and persuasively arguing things are always better when we work together. And in these turbulent times, who can disagree with that.

IAN FREER

VERDICT

Moving beyond the confines of the app’s premises, The Angry Birds Movie 2 starts slow but flourishes into breezy, colourful fun.

The Angry Birds 2 cast: not very app-y.

ANIMALS

DIRECTOR Sophie Hyde

CAST Holliday Grainger, Alia Shawkat, Fra Fee

PLOT Aspiring Irish writer Laura (Grainger) and American ex-pat Tyler (Shawkat) have been best friends for 10 years, spending most of their twenties drinking and dancing across the streets of Dublin. When Laura falls for charismatic pianist Jim (Fee), the pair find their friendship stretched to the point of potentially no return.

A DEFINITIVE SCENE IN Animals

Sophie Hyde’s bawdy adaptation of Emma Jane Unsworth’s acclaimed novel sees a well-meaning Laura (Grainger) try to lull her sister’s newborn baby to sleep. Upon completing the task, she instinctively places the baby on the bare floor, to instant howls of dismay from her on-looking sibling. It’s a perfect, gently funny moment that captures a new era of women on screen, caught adrift in the slipstream of their twenties, not quite equipped to grasp

the burdens of adulthood.

Laura is 32 and frustrated, a shambolic author whose page count for her big novel has barely reached double figures. She finds solace in Alia Shawkat’s barista Tyler, a boozy muddle of fishnets, freckles and fake fur who lurches around Dublin in a constant fug of tequila and frontmen’s musk.

Where Laura has an eye to the future, Tyler is hell-bent on living in the now, a rising issue that sparks a stubborn emotional tug-ofwar between the two friends. Things aren’t helped when Laura falls for the toothy charms of Fee’s classical musician in one of their local haunts. When she becomes engaged and moves out, the friendship takes a series of further tumbles as the pair succumbs to the ebb and flow of their growing indifference.

Shawkat has earned her stripes as an indie darling of Hollywood, rising from secondary characters in Whip It and Green Room to more rambunctious leads in millennial murder mystery series Search Party and her self-written feature Duck Butter. In Animals, Shawkat strikes more of a comparison to Richard E. Grant’s raging protagonist in Withnail And I; an elusive and irresponsible bohemian-type, only doused in sequins. It’s her most extroverted role yet, and she owns every inch of it.

Though Tyler is undoubtedly the most enigmatic of the pair, it’s Grainger who delivers a career-changing performance as

lost soul Laura. The ruinous nature of her relationship with Tyler requires some serious emotional manoeuvring, and Grainger who is better known for plummy period dramas — relishes something with more bite.

It’s a joy to see both on screen together in such robust roles, done justice by Unsworth’s screenwriting. Her dedicated first screenplay doesn’t cut corners by demonising the women, so that even at their worst both characters are coloured with empathy, sparing the audience from judging the women in the same way that they judge each other. The cyclical nature of events does sag over the film’s runtime, but the magnetism of these two debaucherous comrades is compelling enough to forgive an occasionally lulling narrative.

Above all else, Animals is a passionately performed film about women baring their flaws and still being not just likeable but loveable. It’s a simple premise, but one that rarely makes it to the screen, and when it does it should be protected at all costs.

BETH WEBB

VERDICT Grainger is a revelation and Shawkat a rebel in this delightfully defiant celebration of women’s imperfections. Stick with them through the chaos and you’ll be rewarded with an utterly electric tale of female friendship.

Maybe they should have gone for chrome and glass.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE

DIRECTOR Jim Jarmusch

CAST Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover

PLOT After polar fracking sends Earth off its axis, the residents of the sleepy town of Centerville start to notice some strange events: the days are longer, the animals have all disappeared — and the dead are rising.

JIM JARMUSCH IS no stranger to visiting other worlds. In Dead Man, he went Western; in Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai, he dabbled in Mob movies; in Only Lovers Left Alive, he hung out in a cool-as-fuck rock star vampire world. But whatever his flirtations with genre, every Jarmusch film remains recognisably Jarmuschian. The Dead Don’t Die follows that trend, blending his signature low-key style with some high-end genre affectations. But the tension between the two worlds is never quite resolved.

Which is not to say there’s not a huge amount to admire here, and the set-up is extremely strong. Like Richard Linklater or Kelly Reichardt, Jarmusch likes to simply plonk a camera in front of interesting, downto-earth characters, and let them just shoot the shit. And that’s how the first act rumbles on, as we are slowly introduced to a quietly colourful array of simple everyday folk in a simple everyday town named ‘Centerville’, to heavy-handedly emphasise just how simple and everyday it is.

Some of it feels recognisably politically incorrect for middle America, or really any insular community: we witness regulars at the local diner gossip about the “foreign woman” who’s just started working at the town morgue, while another character wears a Trumpian red baseball cap (with a decidedly more offensive slogan). Like much of his filmography, Jarmusch is content to spend some quality time with his characters, and the film’s early scenes show a subtlety of observation that perhaps doesn’t remain as the running time rolls on.

Guiding us through Centerville are two police officers, played by Bill Murray and Adam Driver, who take a relaxed approach to law enforcement and a serious approach to coffee and doughnuts. Murray and Driver are two of Jarmusch’s favourite muses —the De Niro and DiCaprio to his Scorsese, if you like — and few

actors capture that lacksadasical sense of humour quite as well as them, both faces almost Buster Keaton-esque in their deadpan resolve. Through the pair we are introduced to a vast ensemble of supporting characters effectively an entire cast of cameos. It’s hard to pick a favourite among so many gently glorious little turns, from Danny Glover’s essentially decent old store owner, to RZA’s cryptically wise delivery man, to Tom Waits’ hairy hermit, to Tilda Swinton’s Scottish samurai.

Clockwise from here: “It’s just halitosis, dear, nothing to worry about”; Danny Glover, Bill Murray and Adam West witness strange goings-on in Centerville; Iggy Pop, as Coffee Zombie, rocks out at the local diner.

And for a little while, it feels like this could just be a freewheeling (if slightly off-kilter) portrait of small-town life, like a wackier version of Jarmusch’s previous film, Paterson But something is rumbling in the background, and soon the foreground too; a hand reaching through the soil of a grave marks the moment the film reaches through into more formulaic genre territory.

Patience is always a virtue in a Jarmusch movie, of course; he is a master of slow cinema. But after such an intriguing start, The Dead Don’t Die plateaus, dramatically, comedically and frightfully. George Romero is referenced, both directly and indirectly, from the grave-reaching hand onwards. But the genre has moved on since Romero’s 1970s heyday. Zombies no longer hold the power they once had; they need something more than moaning and stumbling. Even the zombie comedy is no longer novel, with the likes of Shaun Of The Dead and Zombieland offering witty, cine-literate takes on the template. It’s not clear what fresh ideas The Dead Don’t Die can offer here.

Much of its in-universe rules are borrowed directly from Romero: like 1978’s Dawn Of The Dead, these ghouls are all obsessed with the one thing they desired as living beings. Here it’s given a rather first-base 21st-century spin, the zombies wailing about WiFi and Bluetooth, which feels like an overly didactic Black Mirror first draft. Zombies have always been a useful parable, an allegory in which to feed on the brains of modern society, and the stuff about a dying Earth certainly feels more prescient. But what is Jarmusch really trying to say about capitalism that Romero didn’t already say in 1968?

There are other problems with the film elsewhere: some audacious swings into meta-comedy feel overly smug, while one particular character reveal is so bonkers and out-of-place that you wonder why it wasn’t left on the cutting room floor. But in spite of itself, The Dead Don’t Die remains a Jarmusch joint, to the end. It’s still a disarming world to hang out in; you just wish it could have been a little less indulgent.

JOHN NUGENT

VERDICT

It’s a lesser Jarmusch, yes but it’s still a Jarmusch.

GOOD BOYS

OUT 19 SEPTEMBER RATED TBC / 89 MINS

DIRECTOR Gene Stupnitsky

CAST Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams, Brady Noon

PLOT When sixth-graders Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and Thor (Brady Noon) are invited to a ‘kissing party’ by the coolest kid in their class, their innocent attempts to learn more about the opposite sex ahead of the bash begin a misadventure that takes them way out of their depth.

THEY GROW UP so fast, don’t they? One minute Jacob Tremblay was that adorable kid on the Oscar trail for Room – and now four years later in Good Boys he’s swearing up an absolute storm, being grossed out by porn, and kissing a sex doll he mistakenly thinks is used for CPR. If the idea of naive, inquisitive pre-teens dropping F-bombs and boastfully misusing sexual terminology raises a smile, there’s plenty to enjoy in this largely sweet, often funny Seth Rogen and Evan Goldbergproduced nice-kids-in-big-trouble comedy.

Here Tremblay is Max, leader of the Beanbag Boys a trio of childhood friends who have just moved up to middle school. With puberty and personal growth on the horizon, the tight-knit union between Max, compulsive truth-teller Lucas (Williams) and loudmouth Thor (Noon) is on the verge of loosening slightly. Each has their own preoccupation Max has his eye on girls, more specifically his crush Brixlee (Millie Davis), Lucas is in denial about his parents’ surprise separation, and Thor is desperate to shake off his wimpy image while also wanting to embrace his love of musical theatre. The surprising level of character

development is dialled into a shaggy-dog plot where the Beanbag Boys are forced to replace Max’s dad’s (Will Forte) expensive drone and prepare for their first ever ‘kissing party’ leading them into the path of mean-girl party-drug-taking teen duo Hannah (a fresh-from-Booksmart Molly Gordon) and Lily (Midori Francis).

If the combination of gross-out gags, sweet meditations on friendship, and odyssey of increasingly extreme hijinks sounds familiar, Good Boys undeniably plays out at times like Superbad: The Early Years particularly the dynamic between the brash Thor and skinny, gawky Max, closely modelled on Jonah Hill and Michael Cera’s 2007 double act. Good Boys at least twists that formula by shifting the age group down a few years and some of its best moments come in focusing on a leading trio so young they haggle over bedtimes, are in awe of rival playground gang the ‘Scooter Squad’, and, in the film’s best gag, are repeatedly flummoxed by child-proof packaging. The jokes rarely stretch beyond the Beanbag Boys’ misconceptions around sexual language and grown-up situations (“Girls shove it up their butt to stop babies from coming out,” says Max when confronted with a tampon), and the shock value of seeing youngsters behaving badly. Still, the screenplay, from director Gene Stupnitsky and co-writer Lee Eisenberg, who have pedigree on The Office US, gets good mileage out of the conceit with regular witty lines and a well-handled set-piece involving a paintball massacre in a frat house. A final-act swerve into more melancholic, sentimental territory goes on a little long, but isn’t enough to dampen the fun. Treading the line between the crass and the cute with care, Stupnitsky ensures that despite all the chaos, the central trio remain good boys.

BEN TRAVIS

VERDICT

Its kids-say-the-funniest-things gags become one-note, but Good Boys has consistent laughs, winning performances, and a dollop of sweetness to boot.

The addition of a third slushie flavour blew minds.

RIDE LIKE A GIRL

DIRECTOR Rachel Griffiths

CAST Teresa Palmer, Sam Neill, Sullivan Stapleton, Magda Szubanski, Sophia Forrest

PLOT The uplifting story of jockey Michelle Payne (Teresa Palmer), the youngest of 10 children brought up by single father Paddy (Sam Neill), who became the first woman to ever win the prestigious Melbourne Cup in 2015 after overcoming a serious fall that saw her put into an induced coma.

with an emotional true story that saddles up on the modern feminist zeitgeist to tell its story of a female jockey sticking it to the man in the machismo fuelled sport which is a boys club on every level, from those who train the horses to those who ride them. Against adversity and serious injury, Michelle Payne (a touching and genuine performance from Teresa Palmer), became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, telling all who doubted her ability to “get stuffed” on national television in the process.

FOR A RACE that stops the nation, the Melbourne Cup has not been a prolific source of cinematic inspiration for Australian filmmakers. And a quick glance at the form of previous runners reveals why. While rare winners like director Simon Wincer’s beloved Phar Lap have won audience favour, lame nags like The Cup, starring Steven Curry, often stumbled past the finish post.

Now Ride Like A Girl steps onto the track

The feature debut from actor-turneddirector Rachel Griffiths, the Muriel’s Wedding star who previously cut her teeth behind the camera shooting episodes of the Aussie teen drama Nowhere Boys, Ride Like A Girl is a handsomely mounted biopic following Michelle’s life from an early age. As the film informs us, Michelle’s mother Mary died in a motor vehicle accident when she was six months old, leaving her father Paddy, played with typical stoic ease by Sam Neill, to raise their 10 children on his own. A family steeped in the equestrian life, they live and breathe for their horses, Michelle never knowing a life when she didn’t want to be a jockey.

In a delightful touch, Michelle’s brother Stevie, who has Down syndrome, is played by the real Stevie. A much loved face on the racing circuit, he was a highly regarded strapper (looking after the horses and

saddling them for track-work and races), his performance adds an authenticity and a beautiful poignancy to his scenes with his on-screen sister. It’s genuinely affecting, as is the torn relationship between Michelle and her father. Not so successful is the comedy casting of Magda Szubanski as Michelle’s religious former teacher, especially when the nuns head down to the TAB to make a bet and are seen cheering on the race. The reactions of her family to Michelle’s big win as they watch the race on the television or listen to it on the radio should have had emotions swelling, but by inserting such clichéd broad stroke comedy the emotion of such a momentous event is dissipated.

What they do get right are the races themselves. The tension before the race starts, the thunder of the track, the hustle and bustle as the riders shout abuse at each other and jostle for pole position. Deftly using archive news footage to heighten the realism, especially during the Cup, they add a grit sometimes missing from the rest of the film.

DAVID MICHAEL BROWN

VERDICT

An often moving and beautifully shot sport biopic blessed with a wonderful central performance from Teresa Palmer, Ride Like A Girl is occasionally hindered by cliché but makes a winning dash for the finish line.

Clockwise from left: Michelle Payne (Teresa Palmer); with brother Stevie (Stevie Payne) and father Paddy (Sam Neill).

DORA AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD

PLOT Having spent her childhood years in the jungle, extroverted adventurer Dora (Isabela Moner) is sent to an American high school in the hope of better integrating into society. When her parents go missing on a top-secret expedition, however, Dora must use her certain set of skills to try and find them.

IF YOU THINK that a live-action reboot of Nickelodeon’s favourite cartoon overachiever is for kids only, you’re in for a meta-infused treat. Based on the ongoing hit series that follows the adventures of a Latina girl and her magical accessories, Dora And The Lost City Of Gold keeps the characters but clearly has a wider audience in mind.

Enter James Bobin, director of the latter Muppets movies, whose signature self-awareness of his subject matter proves the perfect match for Dora 2.0. He squashes the cartoon’s fourth wall-breaking format in minutes. “She’ll grow out of it,” Dora’s

hopeful dad (Michael Peña on scene-snatching form) suggests when she asks a question to thin air.

Peña joins Eva Longoria as our plucky heroine’s ambitious parents, who decide that teenage Dora should get a taste of the outside world — specifically her cousin’s West Coast high school — in a bid to up her social skills. Bringing Dora’s bouncy optimism into the midst of caffeinated, surly teens is a neat way to gently mock her characteristics without ever being cruel, while highlighting the crippling angst of adolescence. “This is high school. It’s life or death,” warns her cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg), who has survived only by keeping a low profile.

When Dora’s parents disappear in search of the ominous Lost City, she recruits Diego and two classmates in a race to track them down before a gang of mercenaries beat them to it. Bobin filters Indiana Jones-calibre traps and treasure hunts through a Gen Z lens, where solving the puzzle ends with a group hug over golden glory.

For those worried that the lessons of self-worth might prove overbearing, however, Bobin has you covered, most notably with a song about the importance of poo that’s guaranteed to raise a chuckle. The awards race for Best Original Song starts here.

BETH WEBB

VERDICT

A little heavy-handed with its moral messaging, this is nevertheless a self-deprecating and diverse tale of discovery. Michael Peña’s take on rave culture alone is worth your money.

DIRECTOR James Bobin

CAST Isabela Moner, Eugenio Derbez, Michael Peña, Benicio Del Toro, Jeff Wahlberg

Dora (Isabela Moner) with her Mum (Eva Longoria) and Dad (Michael Peña).

FEATURE

THIS MONTH’S SPOILER TEAM ↓

Midsommar

THE PARENTS 1

Ben Travis: The thing that lingered with me most from Hereditary is the sheer dread and emotional trauma that director Ari Aster conjured and in Midsommar, that’s most keenly felt in the opening sequence. It could almost be its own short film, a kind of miniature companion piece to Hereditary where a family implodes from within though this time there’s no supernatural get-out to blame. It’s just sheer human tragedy, shot in a way that creates unbearable anxiety with filmmaking that is utterly calm and considered.

Nick de Semlyen: Midsommar’s been compared endlessly to The Wicker Man, but it actually has more in common with Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, another tale that opens with a heinous family tragedy. Intentionally or not, Aster follows

Top: Dani (Florence Pugh) with Christian (Jack Reynor).

Above: Hmm, something feels not quite right...

the same template, with a hyper-intense nightmare prologue, expressionistic and near-abstract, in which everything from the music to the visuals is dialled up to an operatic pitch. Here, though, it’s the parents who meet their doom, while the daughter is left behind, bereft. At least nobody’s wearing a red mac.

NICK DE SEMLYEN Associate Editor (Features), Empire

HELEN O’HARA Editor-At-Large, Empire

IAN FREER Contributing Editor, Empire

TERRI WHITE Editor-In-Chief, Empire

WILL POULTER Star, Midsommar

BEN TRAVIS Online Staff Writer, Empire

2 THE BEAR 6 THE SEX SCENE

Ben Travis: The old adage goes that if you introduce a massive grizzly in act one, someone has to be burned alive in its carcass by act three — the unlucky victim here being Jack Reynor’s Christian. It’s a shocking demise,

wreathed in symbolism and open to all kinds of interpretations. Bears pop up all over fantasy and fairy tales from the family trio in the story of Goldilocks, to more recent interpretations like the mother bear in Pixar’s Brave

One shows up here before we even get to Sweden John Bauer’s painting ‘Stackars lilla basse!’ (or, ‘Poor little bear!’) is in Dani’s flat, depicting a blonde woman in a crown kissing a giant, hunched bear on the nose.

THE OLD PEOPLE

Nick de Semlyen: Jordan Peele, a self-confessed horror junkie, has admitted he found Midsommar to contain “some of the most atrociously disturbing imagery I’ve ever seen on film”. There’s little doubt he was referring to the Mallett’s-Mallet-on-acid sequence in which Aster continues his war on the human head, two people of pensionable age having their craniums systematically mangled in a ritual known as ‘Ättestupa’. It’s a set-piece that’s horrifying, surreal (not least because it takes place

in bright daylight), and also weirdly funny — as the kills turn into overkills, the reactions of the onlooking natives remain utterly nonplussed. Yet this isn’t just splatter for splatter’s sake: Aster based the scene on real Swedish folklore (admittedly with embellishments). The lethal hammer used to turn the elders’ noggins into jelly is called a cudgel, and apparently was once used to dispatch elderly Swedish family members when it was felt their time had come. Less IKEA than I-kill-ya.

5 MARK’S DEMISE

Terri White: When Christian, who has been looking for a way to shake Dani off since the start of the film, finally gets his leg over with someone else, it’s the most batshit sex scene you’ve ever seen. He’s seduced, via some kind of hallucinogenic drink, by Maja (Isabelle Grill), who only really wants the sperm of an outsider for an incest-free pregnancy. But they aren’t alone, and while the two get it on, they’re surrounded by a bunch of pagan women, all nude, moaning, pendulous breasts swaying in time. One elderly viewer even puts her hands on his arse to aid completion. It’s a disturbing moment as Christian is ultimately humiliated, used and discarded. Couldn’t we have just been left thinking he was a dick?

7 THE CRAZY ENDING

4 DANI S SURNAME

Terri White: There is no great subtlety but plenty of sign-posting here: Dani’s family name is Ardor, which is from the Latin for “to burn” which Christian eventually does, while stuffed inside a bear, at Dani’s unhinged direction.

Will Poulter: I thought it wa unique way to go. That deat inspired by an old Viking pra it’s very disturbing. I knew s the moment that Mark goes with the woman who lures h that hut that it was the last you’d see of him before his demise. Until, of course, you see the Mark skin-suit. Because I’d done The Little Stranger, a version of my head already existed in a warehouse outside London. They were able to construct the skin-suit off that. I didn’t try the mask on... a double of my face is the most

as a very th is actice, hooting s off him into thing s d

Nick de Semlyen: When relationships burn out, some people set fire to possessions which remind them of their ex. Midsommar takes that concept just that little bit further, with the ex himself being consumed by flames — and while he’s still alive. It’s strong, strong stuff, yet there’s an ambiguity here that seems designed to divide audience sympathies. Some will cheer Dani’s escape from a stifling, toxic relationship, while others, horrified, will boo her as a villain. Considering this scene, even the film’s makers seem conflicted: Aster has said in an interview since that the sequence is Dani “fusing with this community... she’s able to just purge”, while Florence Pugh says she approached it as if Dani has had a mental breakdown and is “someone that’s completely gone now”. Personally I’m somewhere in between, but the fact I can’t stop chewing over this particular cinematic inferno is a mark of its formidable and lingering power.

The Lion King

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE 1

Helen O’Hara: A few shots are framed differently and it’s a little more leisurely, but this is the same sequence. It does make you marvel at the technology involved, but would it really have been less The Lion King if they had changed a few details? Have we discovered no interesting new facts about how wildlife on the Serengeti interact since 1994 that they could have added in? Even the detail is similar, with the same colour of bird landing on an elephant’s tusk as they walk through the watering hole.

THE ELEPHANT GRAVEYARD 2

Ian Freer: The Elephant Graveyard scene, where Simba and Nala, disobeying orders, head out of the confines of Pride Rock to prove their bravery, is one of the more effective uses of the live-action aesthetic and improves on the original. The barren wasteland, which plays host to a stripped- back version of Scar’s song ‘Be Prepared’, provides a striking visual contrast to the sun-kissed beauty of the rest of the movie. The built-in-a-computer set has a real sense of foreboding and eerieness about it. It is, in modern parlance, a big mood.

Helen O’Hara: This is much more authentically volcanic-looking than the original. There are none of those glowing lava pits that you get in so many cartoons, which never seem terribly credible because, well, they’re just not. We get a much longer chase of little Simba and Nala by the hyenas before Mufasa arrives, but I’d say this actually improves on the original moment where Simba opens his mouth to roar, and we hear Mufasa’s growl instead.

THE STAMPEDE/ DEATH OF MUFASA 3

Ian Freer: The death of Mufasa is an example of how Jon Favreau borrows even the grammar and shot selection of Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s version watch the camera pull out on Simba’s face as he watches his father die. The scene is such a carbon copy that Hans Zimmer doesn’t even have to change a note of his score.

Helen O’Hara: At the risk of sounding geologically obsessed, they’ve done something interesting with the rock here, making it a really treacherous sedimentary rock that crumbles like fruit cake at the slightest pressure. There’s a parallel there, see? Treachery!

Ian Freer: Favreau’s decision to rigorously follow the 1994 template highlights an interesting difference from the way cinematic stories have evolved over the past 25 years. To use a wanky screenwriting term, the ‘inciting incident’, the thing that kicks the story into gear, is the death of Simba’s father but compared to contemporary storytelling it happens much later than we’ve become accustomed (which is usually within the first 10 minutes). It makes the early section seem sluggish by modern standards and you feel the

drag with the extra half-hour on the running time. Helen O’Hara: It’s not so much that there are huge numbers of new scenes before this; just that lots of them are given more room to breathe. Think of that opening scene following the little mouse, aka Scar’s Wannabe Lunch, which was nowhere in the original. Here, Scar spends a little more time telling Simba why he has to stay in the gorge (it’s not so he can kill him, honest) so the build-up is prolonged as is our agony in waiting for that death, too. Some of these touches really help, I think. The poignant moment where Simba curls up next to his father’s lifeless body is genuinely moving, so it’s not all wasted time.

Scar and the hyenas: “Come and have a go...” etc; Mufasa’s in there somewhere…; The Elephant Graveyard — bit spooky, isn’t it?

HAKUNA M ATATA 4

Ian Freer: If you want to feel the difference between the two versions, the crossing-theriver shot in ‘Hakuna Matata’ (a hymn to not giving two shits) is instructive. In the original, there is bounce, spirit and joie de vivre as the fast friends go on their merry way; in the new version, it’s a carefully constructed biological study of animals walking across a log. Impressive but lifeless.

Helen O’Hara: I have so many unhelpful logical questions about this scene but then, I did in the original as well. How many grubs would a lion need to eat to grow 400lbs? The internet suggested he’d have to eat six a minute, 24 hours a day, which seems impractical.

THE NEVERENDING 5 FLIGHT OF THE FUR

6 SPIRIT

Helen O’Hara: If you hire Beyoncé, she’s going to record a new song. And if that means a Best Original Song Oscar next year, it’s a bonus!‘Spirit’is aiming for a‘Circle Of Life’ feel with lyrics involving heavens opening, destinies calling, and standing up and fighting. Stirring stuff, yes, but no instant classic.

Ian Freer: Something interesting starts happening as the song ad libs to fade. Timon and Pumbaa start riffing in a postmodern way “It’s our signature song”, “Now he’s riffing” as if the characters are aware of the song’s importance. A fun if bizarre choice for such a faithful, strait-laced production.

Helen O’Hara: Yes, but that improv from Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner is consistently fun, after all the power and plotting and tragedy we’ve had up to that point. That said, it does pose those meta questions. I’m still wondering how Timon can compare Zazu to a puffin a little later. How does he know what a puffin looks like?

BE OUR GUEST 7

Helen O’Hara: The original film had that self-referential moment where an imprisoned Zazu started to sing ‘It’s A Small World After All’, only to be mercifully cut off by Scar. The equivalent here is an inspired riff on ‘Be Our Guest’ from Beauty And The Beast as Timon serves Pumbaa to the hyenas by saying, “Allow me to present: your dinner,” in a French accent mimicking Beauty And The Beast’s Lumière. After starting the song — “Be…our…guest” — he quickly scarpers from the hyenas. The moment means we sidestep something that works in cartoon logic but not at all in this more grounded reality. The original Timon and Pumbaa somehow contrived a grass skirt, lei, apple and ukulele out of nowhere; this pair only have their wits. And yet it works at least as well.

Ian Freer: Taking a leaf (or feather) out of Robert Zemeckis’ book, Favreau traces a tuft of Simba’s fur from floating down river to being rolled on a dung beetle’s ball to being ferried along by ants to arriving at the nose of wise mandrill Rafiki (John Kani) who, with a Lassie-like sense of ESP, deduces that Simba is still alive. The moment is virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake and smacks of the Dr Ian Malcolm/Jeff Goldblum maxim: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Helen O’Hara: I love the idea behind this, but it prompted questions about the speed food travels through a giraffe’s digestive system that I could have lived without contemplating.

SIMBA VS SCAR 8

Ian Freer: The final battle has some very 2019 flavours. It’s a sign of the times how Pumbaa’s trigger into action is specifically fat-shaming rather than more general disrespect (“You call me Mr PIG!”). One difference you could never have anticipated in Favreau’s new version is that Scar’s alliance with the hyenas smacks of modern-day politics, with leaders siding with any old scum to get them over the winning line. It makes Simba’s victory all the more satisfying.

Helen O’Hara: It only just occurred to me, watching this scene, that we don’t see a single lion kill anything larger than a grub not even Scar. I realise they’re the heroes, but these films may be giving kids a dangerously rosy view of lions. Still, it’s good to see that Rafiki picks up his staff (or Gandalf’s staff?) and still gets his moment of heroism.

Clockwise from left: “Pride Rock posse, make some noise!”; Simba, Timon and Pumbaa get acquainted;

THE PAST THREE DECADES HAVE SEEN MANY MASTERPIECES, BIG AND SMALL, JOIN THE MOVIE PANTHEON. OVER THE NEXT 30 PAGES WE CELEBRATE OUR FAVOURITE FILM FROM EACH YEAR, WITH HELP FROM THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THEM

THE SUMMER OF 1989 saw madness erupt all over the globe, and it was all thanks to a nocturnal mammal. “It was crazy, weird and bizarre,” says Sam Hamm, co-writer of Tim Burton’s Batman and one of the people responsible for the ensuing Batmania. “There’s nothing you could do but disassociate from it. To be honest, I found it kind of scary.

I was grateful when things calmed down a little bit.”

The project, a fresh bigscreen spin on the 1930s-created Caped Crusader, had been in development throughout the ’70s and ’80s, nobody quite sure how to make it work. CBS considered shooting a film where Batman went into space.

Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy were, at one point, suggested for Batman and Robin. Peter

O’Toole was in talks to play the Penguin. Then a gawky, geeky director named Tim Burton took the mantle, and things finally started slotting into place. Hamm, drafted in to put Burton’s dark but whimsical vision on the page, had a good feeling from the off. “I truthfully thought that Batman was ready to erupt as a phenomenon,” he says. “For a couple of years before the picture came out, you could not go down Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles without seeing young hipsters wearing Batman gear. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns had just started coming out as Tim and

I got together. It was just this sort of presence in the air.” Even so, there were hiccups. The casting of Michael Keaton drew the ire of furious fans, who had been promised a moody film, an antidote to the camp ’60s Batman — then told the actor who would be suiting up was Mr Mom. “I admit, when I first heard the name Michael Keaton, I thought, ‘Really?!’” admits Hamm. “But when I thought about it for 15 minutes, I started to see it, because the deal is you don’t cast

Top to bottom: Batman (Michael Keaton) meets the Joker (Jack Nicholson); Life’s a beach for the vaudevillian Joker; Burton’s decision to cast Keaton drew ire from fans.

Batman — you cast Bruce Wayne.” The writing process was complicated by Warner Bros. executives insisting Robin be crowbarred into the script (“Tim and I spent a weekend at my house in San Francisco wearing out the carpet with our pacing, trying to figure it out,” Hamm recalls), before the notion was dropped for budgetary reasons. And the casting of the Joker, the movie’s Big Bad, turned into a headbangingly protacted affair, with everyone from John Lithgow to Brad Dourif going for the role.

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“Nicholson plays it as if he’s a vaudevillian who has contempt for his audience, and just wants to amuse himself,” extolls Hamm. “But it’s Keaton’s weight that allows him to go off the way he does.”

Batman hit big. In fact, it hit huge, making $412 million globally (enormous money at the time) and spawning a Prince soundtrack and endless merchandise (including Batman breakfast food, making him the first superhero to get both a serial and a cereal). “There was Bat-shit everywhere,” its writer laughs. “I felt like Bruce Wayne that summer, because I would look at it all and nod my head, but I couldn’t say, ‘That’s me! I’m Batman!’ One day I saw a house eight blocks from mine, whose owner had painted the façade black and had a Bat-signal on the garage. And I thought, ‘This has gone too far.’ A lot of our constituency were seriously cracked.”

The entire affair rocked Hollywood, and set the scene for the superhero-movie domination to come. Burton’s philosophy, taking these characters seriously and delving into their psychologies, would be pushed further by Christopher Nolan, although The Dark Knight would sadly fail to feature henchmen with matching Joker-jackets. Warner Bros.’ blizzard of merch would be repeated, and intensified, with subsequent Bat-movies featuring numerous changes of costumes in order to justify extra action figures.

Most of all, it proved that even the mustiest comic-book could be transformed, with the right filmmaker behind the wheel, into a four-quadrant blockbuster event. “Audiences now get to see in widescreen and colour and surround sound the most extravagant action sequences that you could have imagined when you were a child paging through a 15-cent comic book,” Hamm says. “Batman happened to come along and demonstrate that there was an appetite for that kind of material. And so now that’s the world we’re living in.”

NICK DE SEMLYEN

11 May is GoodFellas Day. Henry Hill’s final 24 hours as a wiseguy is played out in one epic sequence that ends when he’s busted by the Feds. Inspired by the voiceover in Truffaut’s Jules Et Jim, Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi’s narration delineates how the wired Hill can’t differentiate between anything; picking up his brother and making tomato sauce are as important as off-loading guns and the Pittsburgh drug deal everything’s on the same level to the strung-out gangster.

Stylistically, Scorsese is trying to give the audience the feeling of spinning recklessly out of control on drugs. Much of this is evoked by Michael Ballhaus’ restless camera movement. When Henry takes a hit of coke, the camera flies towards his eyes. Elsewhere, it whip-pans, zooms, then pans and zooms at the same time, never giving the audience a chance to settle.

When the camera finally does rest locked onto Hill inside his car it’s Liotta’s performance that provides the animation, all antsy tics and paranoia, as Hill tries to figure out if the helicopter above is really chasing him. Liotta is a whirling dervish throughout the sequence, a dishevelled wreck compared to the sharp-suited young man we met at the beginning. He is manic intensity personified listen to his cackle as he leaves Sandy’s (Debi Mazar) house.

Adding to Hill’s frenzy is editor Thelma Schoonmaker’s work, always cutting on movement, never letting things settle. Taking their cue from the French New Wave and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Before The Revolution, she and Scorsese use jump-cuts to highlight Hill’s jitteriness (as when he is forced to brake quickly) or compress time to mirror his lack of control. At the key turningpoint in the sequence when Lois (Welker White) uses the home phone to call about the drop, letting the Feds in on the action the moment is crystallised in freeze-frame, as if the celluloid itself

understands that Henry’s fate is sealed. GoodFellas became the first Scorsese film to be shown to preview audiences by a studio: the overwhelming response was that the Last Day set-piece left them ‘agitated’ this is mostly down to Schoonmaker’s cutting.

Ever the music-lover, Scorsese mashes up six songs into the 11-minute sequence, his rule of thumb being it could only be music heard at that time. Sometimes the lyrics ape the action. When the baby is put in the pram for the drug smuggling, the Rolling Stones’ ‘Monkey Man’ kicks in, the first lyric opining with ‘I’m a flea-bit peanut monkey and all my friends are junkies’. Elsewhere it runs the gamut from the explosive rock of Harry Nilsson’s ‘Jump Into The Fire’ (as Henry leaves the house) to the exquisite Ry Cooder slide guitar on Mick Jagger’s ‘Memo From Turner’ (Henry puts a gun in boot) to the hard-as-nails blues of Muddy Waters’ ‘Mannish Boy’ (Henry snorts coke). The result is a beautifully choreographed mini rock opera. Play it loud and proud every 11 May. IAN FREER

Top to bottom: Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) takes his last drive as a wiseguy; Paranoia while making meatballs; The look that gives away a coke-fuelled headstate.

walking out with my mate Fergus, and saying, ‘Anything’s possible now.’ Which, looking back, was true. Terminator 2 fundamentally did things that absolutely could not be done before.

Top to bottom: No bars held for the switchflipping new Terminator, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick); And then things heat up...; Reflecting on the scariest bad guy in an age; A good old T-800. wh

“To me, the most exciting thing about visual effects is when it’s applied intelligently to storytelling and isn’t just spectacle for the sake of it. That moment when the T-1000 Marvel Studios VFX supervisor Jake Morrison remembers how seeing the morphing-machine madness of Terminator 2 changed his life

“I WAS 16 or 17 when I first Terminator 2, at the ABC in Surrey. This was well before visual effects was a focus o interest, because in those d it didn’t exist as a thing you could aim for. I remember

t Patrick es through the bars is extremely

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days u

“We’d previously seen the water creature in The Abyss, and the stained-glasswindow knight in Young Sherlock Holmes, but this was the first time we’d seen CGI used to pay off the idea that ‘they could look like any of us’. You really believed it when he walked out of the crash, flames were everywhere, and he turned from this silver figure into a fully formed Robert Patrick. That storytelling technique had been around for donkey’s years you’d do a little turn away from camera and you cut back and there’s a makeup change but to sustain that, and be able to see that on camera, is really key for me.

“I recently referenced the reservoir bike chase with my team on [Taika Waititi’s] Akira, but I still watch Terminator 2, even outside of work, usually while exercising in my gym. It’s a treat. It’s highly addictive. And while I wasn’t planning to work in visual effects when I first saw it, I do think it flipped a switch, turned a few little levers and cogs in my head. It was a game-changer for me, for sure.”

Back in 1992, Empire met an excitable unknown director named Quentin Tarantino. These were our first impressions of the man who’d soon conquer Hollywood.

TALL, RANGY AND sporting an unkempt thatch of hair, Quentin Tarantino is not your immediate idea of a “man of the moment”.

Tucked away in the corner of a Whitehall pub, he is more interested in this, his third pint of draught Guinness, than buying into the Next Big Thing malarkey. Probably because he wolfed down too many E numbers as a child, Tarantino is extremely animated. He is also eminently likeable, which probably explains how he got away without a dressing-down from the world’s number-one female recording artist [Madonna], having described her as a “regular fuck

machine” in his script Speaking quickly in a voice not unlike that of Mickey Dolenz and punctuating his enthusiasm “It’s a really incendiary movie, you can’t show it to an audience without getting a reaction” with words like “man” and “cool”, he really is rather proud of his creation.

So he should be. The 29year-old writer-director has come a long way in the last couple of years. After training as an actor and enduring various false starts on the production side of things (his first job was as an assistant on a Dolph Lundgren video, literally clearing the dog shit out of the car park so Dolph wouldn’t get his trainers dirty), he spent six years killing time in an LA video shop until one day, out of pure frustration, he began to hatch a big idea.

“It’s a simple fact that I get a kick out of heist films, so I thought I’d write one,” begins Tarantino matter-of-factly. “I’d had the idea in my head about a film that doesn’t take place during the robbery, but in the rendezvous afterwards. When I worked at the video store we had this one shelf that was like a revolving film festival and every week I would change it. And one time I had heist films, like Rififi and Topkapi and The Thomas Crown Affair I started taking them home and it was in the context of seeing a heist movie every night that I put my head round what a neat

genre that would be to redo.”

The Guinness long forgotten, Tarantino is now in full swing.

“The thing about heist films is they have this built-in suspense mechanism,” he babbles, “even with something like Treasure Of The Four Crowns, you know, that crazy 3D movie, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, they’re getting too close to the beam,’ and you get real nervous, so I thought, ‘Okay, I’m gonna do one of these.’ And I thought I’d write one where they all got away, ’cause I hated it I hated it where they’d do the robbery and by some little quirk, fate steps in and fucks ’em over.”

Idea firmly implanted, Tarantino scarpered off to the stationery shop and purchased a set of felt-tip pens and a notebook “You can’t write poetry on a computer” declaring to his gobsmacked mates that these were the tools with which he was going to create a masterpiece and, over the course of three weeks, he bashed out a script. Backed by residuals from the repeat fees of an episode of The Golden Girls in which he had played an Elvis impersonator, Tarantino ran his idea by producer chum Lawrence Bender and, armed with $30,000 and a 16mm camera, set about making his movie.

JEFF DAWSON

Mr White (Harvey Keitel) looks after a wounded Mr Orange (Tim Roth); Below: Mr Brown, aka Tarantino himself.

AS TOLD TO DAN JOLIN ALAMY, SHUTTERSTOCK

the best prehistoric apex predator she could be. A roaring apogee of dinoflesh made real.

DAN JOLIN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

inhalations lift him up and down. When he calls her ‘the most beautiful thing I ever saw’, I can only agree. She’s one sick Trike. BEN TRAVIS, ONLINE STAFF WRITER

SO ASTONISHING ARE the film’s effects, it’s still hard not to believe that Spielberg and co rocked up to an actual secret tropical island and just filmed the creatures they found there. Five Empire writers select the dinosaur closest to their heart.

None of the BC beasts is more tangible than the Triceratops. She reacts with astonishing realism thanks to some flawless puppeteering, both convincingly alive and visibly unwell, creating the sort of heart-filled spectacle that Spielberg does best. She brings out the best in the characters Ellie’s compassion and curiosity, Tim’s excitement, Alan’s bliss as its

The truly unforgettable menace is its Velociraptors, cunning hunters able to creep into human habitats and ferret out any hiding places. To the T-Rex, humans are barely worthy of notice; the Dilophosaurus and Compys are small enough that you could at least hope to fight them off. But the Raptors are made to prey on us. The sense that humanity has met its match is bone-deep, and it utterly terrified me.

HELEN O’HARA, EDITOR-AT-LARGE

The dinosaur that still hits me right in my otherwise fossilised heart remains the Brachiosaurus. Its introduction is a perfect dino-cinematic moment: the flabbergasted faces of Dr Alan Grant and Dr Ellie Sattler; the swelling, soaring strings of John Williams’ theme; and towering above them all, the full, enormous scale of the gentle sauropod, as stunning as it was in 1993. You crazy sonofabitch, Spielberg, you did it!

JOHN NUGENT, NEWS EDITOR

I grew up on the films of Ray Harryhausen. I grew up on monsters. I also grew up on wildlife programmes, and thanks to Steven Spielberg, Stan Winston and Dennis Muren’s artistry, the T-Rex was more than a monster. She was an animal, driven only by her flesh-rending instinct to be

When night falls and the foliage starts twitching, the park’s freakiest denizen comes out to play. The fact the Dilophosaurus is an obscure dino gave the creature shop licence to tweak the design, adding a rattling neck-frill and deadly saliva. I’ve always loved the setpiece in which IT dork Nedry patronises the gawky beast, before suddenly waking up, too late, to its true nature. Still no idea how it gets into the car, though. NICK

DE SEMLYEN, ASSOCIATE EDITOR (FEATURES)

THE SHAWSHANK

REDEMPTION, to adapt a line from its narrator, is a film that crawled through a river of shit and came out on the other side. Commercially ignored upon release, Frank Darabont’s adaptation of a little-known Stephen King prison-set novella has become widely considered one of the greatest films of all time: beautifully acted, uplifting, a film that makes you believe in the power of hope. Here, director Darabont reflects on the long journey of his beloved debut film.

Shawshank is one of the films of our lifetime. How does that make you feel?

Buoyant and delighted and extremely grateful. Gosh, it was so long ago now. Twenty-five years. Twenty-six, I guess, since we shot it. To know that it’s had this kind of lasting effect on people is exceptionally gratifying.

It’s now a film you can refer to by just one word, “Shawshank”. [Laughs] You know, that makes us like Liza or Barbra.

Did you imagine that it would become an important film for many people?

I never really looked that far ahead. When you’re shooting a movie, you have no idea.

I thought we had a good script. But there were days on the set where I thought, “Boy, I feel like I’m really screwing this up.”

Oh, really?

Oh God, yeah. You know, I had a

very fascinating encounter with [Kramer Vs. Kramer director]

Robert Benton the year it came out, at the Berlin Film Festival. He remembered being a first-time director, and he said, “How do you like it?” And I said, “I don’t know that I ever want to do this again.” He said, “You know, that’s par for the course. Every day of filming feels like a failure. But that doesn’t mean that you’re failing. You know, if you’re being true to the script

[of Andy Dufresne’s wife and lover]. And I realised, “I need two more nights here. I’ve only got one.” I got the most important shots I could think of. Richard Francis-Bruce, the brilliant editor, and I were banging our heads against the Steenbeck for months, trying to figure out how to cut it together. Then one morning I thought, “Why don’t we just do it as a courtroom scene and use the shots I got as little flashback moments?” It worked a treat.

Did you change your approach in directing as you went along?

The one thing I did learn on Shawshank is how different every actor is. Tim [Robbins] was a text book example of that. He’s a very intellectual guy. He needs to talk about the scene to come. He needs conceptual conversation, he needs more information.

Morgan [Freeman] is the other way around. I remember about halfway through the shoot I was talking about a scene to come, and Morgan was being very polite and listening. But I could see his eyes glazing a little. And I stopped and said, “Morgan, let me ask you something. You don’t really need all this conversation, do you?” And he goes, “No, not really. I just need you to tell me when to stand, when to sit. And do I turn left or do I turn right?” And I went, “Good lesson to learn.”

We’re in the middle of a glut of Stephen King adaptations at the moment. You were ahead of the King curve.

and the actors are being true to the text, you could wind up with something pretty darn good.”

Which is true.

It is. But every day of filming did feel like a failure. One great example is the opening of Shawshank, which if you read the script was very much two blocks of consecutive narration. And my very first night of shooting on the movie was the night of the murder

I guess I was. I’d love to go back to that. If Steve ever comes up with another Green Mile, I’d love to do another piece with him. And God knows one can’t have this conversation without complimenting him on having written a brilliant, wonderful, humanistic, heartwarming story. Without Steve King, I doubt I ever would have really directed. He’s been the patron saint of my career.

CHRIS HEWITT

Above: Prison partners Red (Morgan Freeman) and Andy (Tim Robbins). Right: Andy is liberated, at last.

ALAMY, SHUTTERSTOCK, UNIVERSAL

IT COULD’VE BEEN just a chilly, technical exercise in computergenerated imagery, but instead Toy Story became one of the most heartfelt, resonant films of the 1990s. A hellish production period, forging a path into untested territory, taught the studio the essential elements they would need to establish the most successful animation house in history...

Pixar had been a software company for its first decade of existence, with John Lasseter’s short films designed chiefly to showcase the company’s image-rendering product. Stepping into feature animation required an untested team to do something that was at least when they started impossible. So, inspired by the success of the short Tin Toy, Pixar chose a story that their technology could (theoretically) handle: toy characters composed of mostly hard, shiny surfaces. As the tech progressed, so would the subject matter: fish! Furry monsters! Superheroes! But the state of the art shaped those

films even as their ambition steadily pushed the limits of what computers could do.

As well as Disney-trained animator Lasseter, Pixar was blessed with the business mind of Steve Jobs and the technical genius of Ed Catmull. The core Pixar brain trust began to coalesce around that trio: Pete Docter went with Lasseter to a Robert McKee screenwriting seminar; Andrew Stanton shaped the story, and Lee Unkrich handled the edit. Disney veteran Joe Ranft proved key in finding the humour and heart. Outsider Joss Whedon came in to write dialogue and key characters, adding Rex and Barbie and giving Buzz his blissful delusions.

Pixar’s genius lay in realising that visual dazzle was not enough: the story also had to sing. They were well into development on the spaceman toy which would threaten an existing equilibrium, when artist Bud Luckey suggested that the other lead should be a cowboy. It gave the film its mismatched buddy dynamic, added a nostalgic hit for two generations of adults, and had a certain logic. They were, said Lasseter, “both classic American heroes exploring wild frontiers”, albeit frontiers in Andy’s room. That buddy dynamic would become Pixar’s default, on the template established by Tom Hanks’ decent, fretful Woody and Tim Allen’s blithely ignorant Buzz.

At a time when Disney was reliant on fairy tales and no other feature animations seemed interested in entertaining adults as well as kids, Pixar aimed at every demographic. While kids thrilled to the bright colours and silly antics, parents could enjoy the pin-sharp dialogue. “The word I’m searching for I can’t say, because there’s preschool toys present,” sighs Woody, and the film gets meta when Rex claims, “I’m from Mattel. Well, I’m not really from Mattel, I’m actually from a smaller company that was purchased by Mattel in a leveraged buyout.”

All filmmaking is about the versions you don’t show, but that’s particularly true for Pixar’s early films. The studio put together roughly storyboarded and animated scenes to keep track of how the work was going, but when they did so a year in, they realised they’d lost the film entirely. Woody was, in Hanks’ terms, “really a jerk”. Lasseter and the team had been trying to follow Disney notes, looking for an edgy, teen-friendly tone, and had lost sight of their own goals. They had a come-to-Jesus moment and decided that, if they were going to fail, it would be on their own terms. In a few weeks, they retooled the first third of the film and found Toy Story and the mantra that would shape the studio: fail early, fail often. But and this is key don’t fail in the end.

HELEN O’HARA

Corin Hardy, director of The Hallow and The Nun, recalls how seeing Wes Craven’s meta murder-thon for the first time blew his mind.

WHEN WES CRAVEN decided to spoiler! murder Drew Barrymore in the opening ten minutes of Scream, it was just the start of a series of smart and very considered wrongfootings that would play on the common traits of the slasher movies of the past 30 years (from Black Christmas, through Halloween and Craven’s own A Nightmare On Elm Street). But ultimately Scream would draw in a much wider audience than the films it had satirised, leading to a mega metafranchise and changing the landscape of scary movies from that point on.

Light years ahead: Buzz and Woody.

That point was 1996. I was in my second year of a Theatre Design Degree at Wimbledon School of Art, majoring in Special Effects For The Stage & Screen. Effectively I was training to become a monstermaker, prosthetic FX artist, sculptor, and possibly even a horror filmmaker. A little bit like Jamie Kennedy’s character Randy from the film, I was the geeky guy that knew everything about horror movies.

Above: Courteney Cox, Jamie Kennedy and Neve Campbell, er, scream their heads off.

ALAMY, SHUTTERSTOCK

However, I heard about Scream from someone else, a girl on my course who wasn’t a horror fan, and this kind of threw me. I can only liken the feeling to when one of your favourite lesser-known bands scores a hit single; suddenly everybody loves them and you get a little bit sad or maybe even angry because y k w that from that day o world will be differen course, in Scream’s was ultimately for th absolute better, but a

walked to the cinema the following night, I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to experience.

you know n, the nt. Of case t s e as I

Even at the Wimbledon Odeon, the energy at that screening was palpable from the off. A few seconds into the film as the title appeared in red everyone started to m and then immediately And that repeated hout the movie’s entire e, like a maniacal drug.

o I’m sitting there, the hardened horror fiend

surrounded by this mainstream crowd, trying to play it all cool and eat my popcorn, maan, when suddenly the film starts satirising all the things I loved about horror and turning them upside down. I felt my world marginally beginning to shift. I could feel that this was a significant moment for a genre I loved Craven had done something risky and dangerous and clever as sin. And I think only he could really have done it that well, because he had lived inside its constraints for so long.

Scream was responsible for opening up the world of horror and exposing its flaws but in a respectful, knowledgeable and bitingly brilliant way, whilst managing to pull off a crazy-fun, genuinely scary, coherent story, as well as creating another iconic anti-hero in ‘Ghostface’ — a mask based on Edvard Munch’s famous ‘The Scream’ painting. When I finally made my own first and second horror movies [The Hallow and The Nun], I came to fully appreciate how important it is for horror to be able to transform and transcend and reinvent.

I never met Wes Craven, but if I had I would have thanked him for creating some of the most indelible horror movies of all time, and for deftly walking a genre tightrope, balancing horror and the mainstream so that we could all benefit. There is maybe no better example of this connection than Scream

Craven is the master.

1997 WAS A cool year for cinema. What were the auteurs doing?

L.A. Confidential Boogie Nights. Jackie Brown. Lost Highway This was independent spirit writ large, the indie boom having blossomed big-time. Even the blockbusters Face/ Off, Men In Black, The Fifth Element, Starship Troopers, Con Air were postmodern, satirical and hip (as always, let’s forget Batman & Robin ever happened). But the biggest film of them all? It was so wonderfully uncool.

Until this point, James Cameron had been pretty cool himself all of his directorial output was genre work, sometimes sci-fi, sometimes action, mostly both. Now, though, he wanted to make an old-fashioned romantic drama. Nobody expected this to work, including, eventually, Cameron himself: as the troubled production dragged on (160 arduous days), the budget ballooned (to a then record-breaking $200 million) and the release date loomed like a lethal iceberg, he became

convinced his period epic would lose the studio $100 million. The film, said everyone, would be as disastrous as the ship.

Cameron, though, stood by his guns throughout, and his gamble blindsided everybody. It takes a dead heart not to succumb to Titanic’s purity, its charm, its astonishing absence of cynicism. Even ‘My Heart Will Go On’ (performed by Celine Dion in just one take, as a demo) is the business. There was no room for cool here. This was one for the ages.

Boat-sinking spectacle aside, Titanic hinges on Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s chemistry, and they are never not heartbreaking together, particularly, of course, at the end: that tragedy is, surely, what makes the film endure. If you’re not welling up at the mere memory of it, you’re a danger to society.

The first film to hit a billion at the box office, by 1998 it had become the highest-grossing film of all time, ending up with $2.187 billion (including re-release money, twice, but still). It won 11 of its 14 nominated Oscars, resulting in Cameron’s misunderstood “I’m the king of the world!” moment on stage even if you do read it as a lack of humility, you have to hand it to him, taking home

the big ones for the film everyone bet against.

DiCaprio went stratospheric after Titanic. An indie darling up until then, he’d become a heartthrob thanks to 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, but that was small fry compared to this. Danny Boyle, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg all came knocking. Winslet, meanwhile, retreated, favouring a smaller spotlight with indie fare like Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke Both of their careers would find balance in time.

Cameron’s Titanic keeps on sailing, forever being parodied Empire had The League Of Gentlemen’s Tubbs and Edward take it on for a photoshoot a couple of years ago, while James Corden and Celine Dion recreated it just a few months back. It is truly iconic.

Do they make films like this anymore? Not really. Then again, they weren’t making them in 1997 either. But Cameron’s never been one to follow the herd. He wouldn’t direct a feature film for another 12 years. He didn’t need to.

A MAN DONNING a baseball cap shouldn’t be significant. But when Mahershala Ali walked on stage in Hall H at the tail-end of Marvel Studios’ Comic-Con presentation just a couple of months ago, and nonchalantly placed a cap on his head with a logo that revealed not only that Marvel was planning a Blade movie, but that he a two-time Academy Award winner, no less was going to play the title role, it was laden with significance.

Because Blade is where, in a roundabout way, the Marvel Cinematic Universe began. When discussing the origins of the MCU, and the larger

ALEX GODFREY

DiCaprio and Winslet in that iconic scene.

Below: The unsinkable becomes the unthinkable.

comic-book movie bubble (which still shows no signs of slowing its expansion, let alone popping), the illinformed will often cite

Sam

Raimi’s Spider-Man

Above: Blade (Wesley Snipes) takes on the henchvamps.

Right: Sometimes a half-human, half-vampire just needs to take his top off.

in daylight, is to rid the world of bloodsucking bastards.

e were y

And yes, that film was a huge hit, with a record-breaking opening weekend and a host of copycats in its wake. Or they’ll go back two years before that, to Bryan Singer’s X-Men. But before either of those, another Marvel movie paved the way. The first Marvel movie, in fact. Blade is not anyone’s idea of a top-tier Marvel character. Back in 1998, when the movie came out, no kids were going to school with Blade lunchboxes. Unless they w deeply cool/weird (delete as applicable). Blade is, after all, not a particularly kid-friendly character, being a half-human, half-vampire whose driving purpose in life, made easier by an ability to walk around

an up-a at the k Norring music v megaph at the

Undeterred, Marvel set the movie up at New Line Cinema with David S. Goyer — then nd-coming writer — eyboard, Stephen ton, an in-demand video director, at the hone, and Wesley Snipes e silver stake. Snipes had tried to get Black Panther movie off the ground, to no avail, but jumped at the chance to bring Blade

— real name Eric Brooks, so you can see why he prefers the flashy nickname — to the big screen. (There’s a sense with Blade that racial politics aren’t as much to the fore as they are with Black Panther, but it still seems important that the lead of the first major Marvel movie was African-American, 20 years before Black Panther finally arrived.)

The result is not a perfect movie, but one that is incredibly slick, entertaining, and very cool. Watching Snipes, clad in

his armour, long, black leather coat, taking out wave after wave of henchvamps, is a reminder of a great, ultimately wasted talent: an actor who was every bit as comfortable with being an action star. Of course, it’s possible that someone would have broken the seal on Marvel’s incredible back catalogue sooner or later, but consider this: if Blade didn’t make $70 million in the States, showing Hollywood that there was gold in them thar hills, there would be no X-Men, no Spider-Man, no Iron Man, or Captain America, or Avengers, or Black Panther, or Captain Marvel or — yes — Mahershala Ali, a worthy successor to Snipes, walking onto the stage at Hall H, and bringing things full circle with nothing more than a baseball cap. All hail the Daywalker, star of the most important comic-book movie of Empire’s lifetime.

CHRIS HEWITT

ALAMY, MPTV

Above: Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Neo (Keanu Reeves) make fetishwear cool again. Left: Agent Jones (Robert Taylor) illustrates why firepower alone sometimes isn’t enough. Below: He needs guns; lots of guns.

worked as Keanu Reeves’ stunt double on the film. “It made [real] action an essential part of big-budget, high-concept films. Action especially martial-arts action was no longer a low-budget, genre affair. It could look and felt big and stylised and cool.”

WHAT IS THE Matrix?

On paper, it’s high-concept hokum. A cyberpunk thriller soaked in pseudo-philosophy, with a pair of little-known directors pushing camera tricks as the film’s central gimmick. When the Wachowskis pitched the movie to Will Smith, that was certainly his impression, and the reason he turned down the role of Neo to star in Barry Sonnenfeld’s Wild Wild West instead. But the Wachowskis’ first movie, neo-noir Bound, had been critically lauded, and that gave

the pair just enough juice to convince Warner Bros. that their sci-fi vanity project, fronted by Keanu Reeves instead, might just be worth the risk.

The gamble paid off. And then some. With that flo-mo kick from Carrie-Ann Moss’ Trinity, sending Agent Brown (Robert Taylor) flying across a room in the film’s prologue, the Wachowskis set out their stall. The directors’ innovative concept harnessed the martial-arts spectacle of Hong Kong action cinema and —

thanks to visionary VFX whizz John Gaeta enhanced it with bleeding-edge CGI to create something that felt entirely new. The ‘Bullet Time’ ‘gimmick’ transformed the movie’s set-pieces from simple adrenaline hits to zen-like art form: a soaring ballet of fists and bullets painstakingly choreographed by action master Yuen Woo-ping.

“The Matrix completely changed action in cinema,” recalls John Wick director Chad Stahelski, who

Cool it was. All shades, black leather and PVC, The Matrix wrapped its gun porn in fetishwear, the achingly stylish heroes performing superhuman feats while looking preternaturally sharp. But while it oozed style, it was never short of substance.

The film’s ‘pseudo-philosophy’ proved anything but, with the Wachowskis prescribing Baudrillard as required reading on set, and exploring the themes of his Simulacra And Simulation through the prism of accessible sci-fi.

Long before Inception dared to twist our understanding of what is and isn’t real, the Wachowskis turned blockbusters existential, adding layer upon layer to the film’s transformative mythology, daring audiences to find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

In offering a complex, thought-provoking story with revolutionary fight work and effects, the Wachowskis showed just what an action movie was capable of. Their action didn’t supplement the narrative but drove it, dispelling the assumption that intelligence and spectacle could not co-exist. That the film’s two sequels failed to live up to the original’s promise is regrettable, but neither Reloaded nor Revolutions can detract from the first film’s achievement.

“There probably isn’t a frame I shoot that hasn’t been influenced by my experience on The Matrix,” says Stahelski. “The framing, the look, the work ethic needed to create a cinematic world, the world-building. That and the philosophy that your imagination is truly the only limit out there.”

Christian Bale, it’s a surface that’s endlessly hypnotic.

Even now, in the age of Instagram selfies and hyper-narcissistic ‘influencers’, Bateman’s morning skincare routine is eyebrow-raising. (Don’t forget to tweeze those eyebrows.) His excessive, obsessive regime takes in a herb-mint facial mask, an anti-ageing eye balm and a water-activated gel cleanser. The sequence pushes something usually commendable taking care of your hygiene into weird, terrifying territory. As for the character’s intense friendliness when he’s out in public, Harron has said that Bale was inspired by watching Tom Cruise on a talk show.

The character’s fixation on details extends to his work life. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, American Psycho’s bankers compete with each other over their business cards. “Look at that subtle off-white colouring,” we hear Bateman think as he regards a particularly impressive bit of paper. “The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark…” The sight of a victim screaming for mercy may fail to move him, but a smooth, uncoated paper stock stirs his soul. Ironically, there are errors on his own card: “acquisitions” is misspelled, and there is a space missing in the name of his company.

The Matrix altered audience perception of what is real, as much through spectacle as mind-bending narrative. Depicting action in a manner that Western audiences had rarely seen before, the film, like its hero, dared to show us a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.

MOST ICONIC MOVIE monsters are not renowned for their grooming. You wouldn’t seek moisturising tips from Frankenstein’s Monster, or ask Pinhead if you can borrow his lip balm. The exception to the rule is Patrick Bateman, the immaculately turned-out and dispassionately homicidal protagonist of American Psycho Mary Harron’s 2000 satirical horror movie, based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, is a character study of a man who isn’t really a man; as he explains in chilling voiceover, “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory... I simply am not there.” He’s all soulless surface but in the hands of Harron and star

JAMES DYER

Bateman’s work-out routine is similarly deranged: he likes to do 1,000 crunches before hitting the office, ideally in front of a television showing the climax of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre To acquire the correct physique, Bale had to transform his body, working with a personal trainer for three hours a day, six days a week. The results are astonishing although in the film the only person who seems to take pleasure from them are Bateman himself, leering at his reflection in a mirror as he has sex with two prostitutes.

Bateman’s other passion: Phil Collins. In fact, he seems to be obsessed with ’80s pop music in general. It’s left ambigious as to whether he sincerely loves these tunes, or is just trying to fit in and appear more normal, but one thing is certain: his monologue about Huey Lewis’ discography as he prepares to dismember rival Paul Allen (Jared Leto) with an axe is both disturbing and hilarious. “Mary’s approach to it as a satire a look at the social etiquette of the era, rather than a movie about a serial killer was exactly what I wanted to do,” Bale told Empire in 2009. “It was one of the most fun movies I’ve ever shot.”

NICK DE SEMLYEN

Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman: a new breed of monster.

In 2001, Empire ran its first major report on Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. This excerpt gives a sense of the scale and intensity of the high-risk endeavour — not to mention the passion that was being poured into it.

AS THE SHOOT wore on and the pressure mounted, Jackson could be seen cycling from set to set at the Wellington studio on an old bicycle, eager to save time. Orlando Bloom remembers one miraculous day when he traversed the whole country by helicopter to get to his next shot, complete with stick-on ears and blond wig. Promised breaks came and went, six-day weeks of 14- to 15-hour days became the norm. And somehow throughout it all, spinning every plate, Jackson just kept going.

“I’m totally unfit, but I’m the tortoise guy who can keep plodding on. Mentally I had days when my brain would feel like it was mush, I felt I had no imagination left. When your imagination starts to lock, you panic. Honestly, there were days when I was just turning to the actors and hoping they weren’t as tired as I was, and pointing the camera at them hoping we were getting good stuff.”

The cast, too, felt the pressure, sick of sticking on their Hobbit feet, sick of the outdoors, just completely knackered. Working together under such extremes, in an elemental, beautiful environment like New Zealand, combined with the spiritual rub-off of a storyline about a group of disparate personalities uniting for

a common cause, was bound to bring them close. But these were friendships cast in stone.

“Because of the length of time, the unceasing grind of it,” says Viggo Mortensen, “we came to know each other’s good and bad points. You became entangled in each other’s lives in a good way. I felt that I became part of them and they became part of me.”

The Hobbits in particular became their own band of brothers. When not sh ti they learned to surf they took trips to Th and Australia, they w skiing, snowboarding white-water rafting and bungee jumping

They referred to themselves as Hobb

“We became frie life,” says Sean Astin

shooting together, hailand went g, its. ends for n, who

Above: Panicky moments as the Black Rider nearly discovers are little heroes.

Left: Sir Ian McKellen, hatted and cloaked up as Gandalf The Grey.

Below: Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn takes aim.

had his family with him for the duration. “They were like uncles to my daughter. Art imitated life or life imitated art, or something.”

Consequently, away from the camera, much hilarity was to be had. Sean Bean (a devout Sheffield United fan) would find himself frequently nutmegged by Dominic Monaghan (a devout Manchester United fan) during on-set football tournaments. The pair even enticed Mortensen back to the 20th century to watch England vs Germany in Euro 2000, via satellite. Monaghan returned one afternoon to find his trailer sealed up with police tape, care of Mortensen. He returned the favour by smothering the front of Aragorn’s trailer in shaving foam and tracing the words, “false king!”

“W would do this thing he Fellowship had to do ” laughs Monaghan, t person on set, we l scream their name. we were waiting for Ian McKellen, the whole of the Fellowship would start going, ‘Oh, we are just waiting for

Ian McKellen!’”

To commemorate the experience, the entire Fellowship got matching tattoos of the Elvish symbol for nine.

Naturally, any triumph of good over evil was going to require much pummelling, slashing and delivering of ugly enemies unto their makers. Thus the Fellowship were given expert training for months before shooting. For the swordplay, Bob Anderson (who once taught Errol Flynn, no less) would put them through their paces. Bloom, who had to be a brilliant archer, spent his time firing arrows at paper plates in a unique spin on skeet shooting. As the shoot progressed and relationships developed with the stuntmen, the white heat of battle soon became second nature. “We got to know people’s body language so well that we got faster and faster, took more chances. It was like a dance partner you’ve worked with a long time,” says Mortensen.

But, given Jackson’s previous form, just how bloodthirsty could it get?

“We pushed it as far as we could,” says Jackson slyly. Making the Orc blood black rather than red has allowed him some latitude. “It’s a PG, but I am pushing it...”

On 19 December 2001, The Fellowship Of The Ring will be released on 10,000 screens worldwide, and John RhysDavies, at least, is convinced the biggest opening ever is assured. At the 2001 Empire Awards, he confidently bet Empire a bottle of fine vino on this very issue. Jackson, meanwhile, will not be drawn. He just hopes people partake of some of the joy of his journey.

“Hitchcock gave my favourite quote: ‘Where some people’s movies are slices of life, mine are slices of cake.’ I think that sums up what films should really do.”

This time, though, it’s the whole damn dessert trolley on offer.

IAN NATHAN

FOR A FILM full of stink spirits, faceless ghosts, dragon boys and kimono-wearing frogs, Spirited Away seems oddly real.

Sure, Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 Studio Ghibli animation is set in a magical dreamland accessed through an abandoned amusement park, one where parents are turned into pigs and sentient balls of soot scurry around characters’ feet. But to anyone able to recall the emotions of growing up, Spirited Away felt familiar: a fantasy rooted in the reality of being a kid, in an oversized world that at once enchants and terrifies. The film follows Chihiro, a cherub-cheeked 10-year-old forced to leave her friends and move to a new town. En route, her family happens upon a strange woodland and set out to explore. Soon, Chihiro

finds herself lost in a supernatural realm decorated with exquisite bathhouses and bizarre creatures, some of whom mean her harm.

So far, so Alice In Wonderland But Spirited Away’s combination of jaw-dropping visuals, bittersweet music and deliciously dreamy storytelling (Miyazaki famously never wrote scripts, preferring to storyboard from his imagination instead) set it apart. The film struck a uniquely floaty tone that enraptured audiences, becoming a hit at home and abroad. Four years earlier, Miyazaki had entertained Japanese audiences with Princess Mononoke, an epic fable about warring forest tribes. This follow-up was even bigger, blasting its way to the all-time Japanese box-office record and becoming a cult smash with Western audiences too.

John Lasseter was in part to thank for this: it was the Pixar head honcho who persuaded Disney to buy the distribution rights and put a dubbed version of the film in Western cinemas in 2003. Awards glory followed: to this day, it’s the only hand-drawn and non-English-language animation to have won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. More important than its awards haul, however, is its legacy. In 2019, it’s regularly

referenced as one of the most charming and bewitching films ever. A recent run in Chinese theatres saw it hold off Toy Story 4 at the top of the box office. With Studio Ghibli’s future unclear and the director’s days as a filmmaker presumed over, it’s viewed today as the definitive Miyazaki fairy tale: a whimsical feast for the senses that whisks you off to another place, just as its title promised.

Like Mononoke, it packed an environmentally conscious message about the fragile beauty of our natural surroundings, and man’s knack for stomping all over that beauty. Humans are reduced to slobbering animals in Spirited Away, which also features a river-monster made of pollution and calming beats where characters are allowed to gaze admiringly at the streams, sunsets and plant life in front of them. Miyazaki described these moments as ‘ma’ pockets of purposeful emptiness, that give the movie room to breathe.

Miyazaki is rumoured to have recently stepped out of retirement to work on one last film: How Do You Live?, his swansong, supposedly due in 2020. Whether it can reach the heights of Spirited Away, a film that still soars like Haku’s dragon, is unknown. Whatever happens, at least we’ll always have this, a coming-of-age cartoon reverie that perfectly captures the terror and wonder of being a kid.

AL HORNER

Chihiro finds herself in a strange but enchanting land.

ALLSTAR, ALAMY

THERE WERE BIGGER films in 2003 this was the year of Finding Nemo and The Return Of The King and those more garlanded, the final Lord Of The Rings film winning a whopping 11 Oscars. But while in January of that year, if you were to overhear film connoisseurs discussing Coppola or Scarlett they likely meant Francis Ford or O’Hara, come December, chances are they’d be referring to Sofia or Johansson.

Lost In Translation is a film both timeless and deeply of its time. A vignette on loneliness and the craving for genuine connection, it was released just two months after the launch of MySpace in August 2003, arguably the gateway to this newfangled thing, ‘social

media’. You’ll see no smartphones on the bar at the Park Hyatt, Tokyo this is a film whose characters communicate largely face-to-face, and if not, via the media of calls, faxes and notes under the door. It’s fair to say that on paper not a great deal occurs if it were to be released today you can imagine somebody tweeting, “IT’S SO BORING NOTHING HAPPENS” and yet what does transpire is, if you are of a romantic or exisistential bent, nothing short of momentous.

Tracing the burgeoning relationship between two lost the word comes up several times, not just in the title individuals (and it’s noteworthy that they don’t speak to each other until 32 minutes into the film, a third of the way through), this is a film as much about rediscovering yourself as meeting your soulmate.

Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) are looking at life from opposite perspectives he’s a married movie star past his prime, she’s a young woman drifting as she tries to figure out how to do life but united in their sense of emotional anaesthesia. “I didn’t feel anything,” weeps Charlotte to unmoved friend Lauren after watching monks chant at a shrine. Both staying in the Tokyo Hyatt for a week he to make commercials for Suntory Whisky, she accompanying her photographer husband while he’s on a shoot their relationship unfolds delicately,

from a smile in the lift, to crazy nights out in the hectic playground of downtown Tokyo, to a miserable lunch where, having had an almighty bust-up, the strength of their awakened feelings becomes inescapably clear.

Sofia Coppola making only her second film, after The Virgin Suicides explores the beautiful mystery of human love and communion in a fever dream of neon lights and woozy visuals, set to an ethereal pop music score from the likes of Air and Phoenix, and it’s utterly beguiling. And then, of course, there is that final scene, when Bob jumps from his airportbound taxi, follows Charlotte down the street, turns her tear-strewn face to his and whispers in her ear. “WHAT DID HE SAY TO HER?” the Twitterverse would fret. Well, so we did in 2003 as well, but to no avail. As Bill Murray said himself when asked: “It’s between lovers.” Private. Not for public consumption. Imagine that in 2019. Coppola would go on to hone her elegant skills with the punk party of Marie Antoinette and near-wordless reverie of Somewhere Johansson would become one of Hollywood’s A-list, not to mention Black Widow. Murray would happily just carry on being Murray. And this small indie mood-piece will arguably remain the brightest moment in each of their storied careers.

LIZ BEARDSWORTH

EDGAR WRIGHT AND Simon

Pegg’s romzomcom is that rarest of things: a universally beloved British horror comedy. Perhaps it connected because of its whip-smarts and its whip-pans. Or its emphasis on character work amidst the gore. Or maybe because it’s really, really funny. Either way, it launched Wright and Pegg’s movie careers, and established the former as a significant new directorial voice. But it wasn’t always thus. As Wright explains,

It’s sake not smartphones as Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) hit it off.

it took a while for the first flavour of the Cornetto Trilogy to be hailed as a classic.

Coming off their sitcom Spaced, Wright and Pegg struggled with scepticism, and a low budget.

“People would be dismissive of us to our faces. I remember vividly being in the reception at Pathé, and the receptionist said, I kid you not, ‘Wow, they’ll give anyone a movie these days.’ Working Title were the ones who gave us a chance, but a couple of times we ran out of time and money. It was a tough shoot for me. I had put so much pressure on myself to make something good. We didn’t really have the climax we wanted, so Eric Fellner said, ‘If you had an extra day or two, what would you do?’ So I came up with a plan, to amp up the ending, and have more mayhem and more

Above: Umbellas and hockey sticks: fighting off zombies since 2004. Right: Things were turning nasty in the Tesco Black Friday sale.

zombies being killed. That was a real lucky break.”

Backed by Universal, Shaun Of The Dead was heavily marketed, well-reviewed, and slowly found an audience.

“The opening night, a few of us went to see it at Camden Parkway. We were sitting at the back, watching people laugh. On the Sunday I went to see it with my brother. There were

maybe only 20 people there. It was the last time I went to see one of my films in general release. It did well at the UK box office, but it wasn’t a smash, like maybe Hot Fuzz was. It was a slow burn to success. Once the DVD came out, it really seemed to snowball. We spent all of that summer promoting it in the States, with Simon and Nick, which was amazing. Would a weird film like Shaun Of The Dead get a release now

in the States, like it did in 2004? I don’t know. It’s a different landscape.”

Fifteen years on, Shaun Of The Dead is the dictionary definition of a cult classic, even inspiring Hallowe’en costumes.

“It was a life-changing movie for me. I think one of the reasons it became a perennial is it’s always on ITV and ITV2. But the thing about films that get repeated late at night is, if they don’t rate, they don’t get repeated. So people must keep watching it. One of the nicest things that can happen is when somebody quotes lines to you, or you hear a line used in a different context. That happens a lot with Shaun Of The Dead. And as somebody who read Empire from the start, it makes me feel very proud to be part of this.”

CHRIS HEWITT

IT FEELS STRANGE now that, back when Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were cast as cowboys in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, people thought playing characters in a same-sex relationship would permanently knock their careers out of shape. It was risky, kissing another man on screen when, people seemed to argue, there were plenty of parts going that required you to snog a woman.

Fast-forward 14 years and straight actors are more than happy to play LGBT roles from Rami Malek to Timothée Chalamet via Cate Blanchett — so much so that a higher degree of devotion to understanding queer themes is now expected of anyone signing up to such a project. Wherever you stand on the issue, it’s clear we’ve come a long way.

In Brokeback Mountain, adapted from a New Yorker story by Annie Proulx, cowboys Ennis del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) are hired to tend to the flocks atop Brokeback Mountain one summer, where they quickly begin a relationship unlike any other. But life back on the ground is unlike life on that undisturbed vista, and soon they must return to society, abandoning their simpler, more rural way of life for something altogether more pragmatic and tempered.

Both men marry and become fathers, but are soon back in each other’s orbit. Down from the blissful mountain, where society has seemingly unwritten rules about what emotions men are allowed, both cowboys find the weight of the armour they must wear exhausting. The love that came so naturally that neither had to even speak it into existence suddenly sits on the surface of their lives, like oil on water.

Elements of Brokeback, such as the societal rejection of homosexuality, have begun to feel dated. Contrast with Francis Lee’s agriculturally adjacent God’s Own Country, where the two men identify as gay even if they don’t wear it on their sleeves. The threat of being outed, or even being discovered, has perished; Josh O’Connor’s Johnny Saxby is plagued by more modern problems. And in Call Me By Your Name, in the vague idyll of ‘somewhere in

Northern Italy’, liberal values extinguish any potential anxiety about a same-sex summer romance.

But, at the time, Brokeback’s mainstream success notably in suburban areas such as Portland, Houston, Dallas and Denver was a powerful indicator that LGBT stories had a broader place in pop culture outside of New York and Los Angeles. It may have lost Best Picture to Crash at the 2006 Oscars, causing Proulx to lament that, “We should have known conservative heffalump Academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture.” Its legacy, though, has outlived the fraught zugzwang of awards circuits, whereby every decision seems to be a controversial one.

The story of Ennis and Jack is largely one of wasted potential and an elegy to lives not lived. That alone could be Brokeback’s ultimate legacy; it came at a time when the reality of being out and gay was inherently tragic and that tragedy was an important, necessary thing to communicate to audiences. The stories it has helped spearhead are vast, from the mainstream (Moonlight, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) to the lesser-known (Spa Night, Beach Rats), all with one shared goal: to continue Brokeback’s examination of sexuality, to ask difficult questions about the emotional well-being of men. Long may it continue.

CHRIS MANDLE

AS GUILLERMO DEL TORO

stood on the stage of the Dolby Theatre in February 2018, holding his Best Picture Oscar aloft for The Shape Of Water, it’s important to remember that this wasn’t his first awards rodeo. Eleven years prior, he had already shattered the glass ceiling of fantasy films and rode roughshod over the notion that the Academy has disdain for genre pics when Pan’s Labyrinth won three Oscars, including a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Not bad for a deeply personal Spanishlanguage film featuring fairies, fauns and fascists. Here, Doug Jones, del Toro’s long-time friend and collaborator, who

Peak performance: Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack and Heath Ledger as Ennis.

played two roles in the film the Faun and the chilling Pale Man reflects on del Toro’s masterpiece.

“The convention fan circuit is quite a big phenomenon now for us. And I can tell what sticks with people by what pictures are flying off my table. The Faun and The Pale Man are among the most popular still. If I had one movie pla y funeral which woul a long funeral I wou to be Pan’s Labyrinth the film that I think m an actor make sense.

“Who of us did a vivid imagination a I think Guillermo’s co to children in his mov something we all rela is this girl, little Ofelia an imagination that s

d make it uld want it h That was made being .” d not have s children? nnection vies is ate to. Here a, who has she’s told

Right: Jones’ main role as underworld gate-keeper The Faun. Below: Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, the little girl with the big imagination. not to use. I th relate to that.

who were enco our imaginatio who become G Toros, and go o Oscars in their “

ink we can all But those of us ouraged to use ons are the ones Guillermo del on to hold r hands one day.”

‘If you want a fi good and chea two of those.’ G with all three.

“There’s a saying: film done fast, ap, you can have Guillermo did it He’s just my

favourite director ever. He’s such a people person. He knows psychology better than most therapists, so he knows how to direct each actor differently.”

“When you’re doing two [characters] in the same movie, you don’t want people to be like, ‘Isn’t that Marsha in a different wig?’ At first, I thought Guillermo was just

being a cheap-ass, wanting [me to play] two roles for the price of one. But The Pale Man is a creation of The Faun, so Guillermo wanted a body type that you could recognise between the two of them.”

“My real legs were wrapped in green-screen material, with bony, emaciated little pony legs attached to my real legs that I negotiated myself. I thought, ‘He barely has the power to walk because he’s been atrophying for so long since his last meal.’ All they had to do in post-production was wipe away my real legs.”

“There are little nuances you can’t define. He had to age backwards, he’s got auburn hair, clear eyes and ears, and he’s very smooth by the end. He’s the portal-keeper for the underworld, which is a very high-pay assignment from the king of the underworld. I felt very regal.”

“As the only American in the cast, my biggest fear was getting the Spanish dialogue correct, and letting it flow out of me. But it helped reduce stresses — people were talking Spanish around me all day, and if I heard English I knew it was directed towards me. I could let every other conversation go.”

CHRIS HEWITT

Above: Doug Jones’ onescene antagonist The Pale Man.

THE COEN BROTHERS and Cormac McCarthy are not an obviously heavenly match. The directors, even at their most serious, are poets of absurdity, while humour is about the last thing you associate with the black-souled characters of McCarthy’s gorgeous, violent novels. But look closer and there are common threads between the two works. Both McCarthy and the Coens delve into the tragic ironies of human existence and the universe’s lack of concern for our little plans, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the match turned McCarthy’s book into a Best Picture Oscar-winner and fuelled a trend for warped, reimagined Westerns.

We know what to expect from this story, or we think we do. Josh Brolin’s resourceful, basically decent Llewelyn Moss is clearly our hero, so he’s probably going to get away with the money he lifted from a dead gangster. Tommy Lee Jones’ level-headed, experienced small-town sheriff Ed Tom Bell will surely figure out the mess of bodies in the desert and bring the bad guys to justice. And Javier Bardem’s psychotic fixer Anton Chigurh will not

prosper. That’s how these things work. Except that they don’t. That’s the point, of course. All the signs wrong-foot us, as the Coens play out the genre conventions of the Western and the thriller, only to subvert each in turn. Jones’ laconic narration bookends the film and his anecdotes pepper it: he’s even become a meme, the endlessly unimpressed authority figure peering at you from over his newspaper. Brolin has rarely been as charismatic, or as desperate and cruelly, he might have gotten away with it but for the impulse to do a small kindness for a dying man.

But it’s Bardem who steals the show. Almost Chigurh’s first act is to strangle a sheriff’s deputy to death despite his handcuffs: the killer’s eyes bug out ecstatically and he wears a demonic grin. From there, he gets worse: his confrontation with a convenience store owner who offends him by asking about the weather is bonechilling. That coin toss may not go Chigurh’s way, but there’s a sense that he might yet lash

out despite his own rules, an edge of unpredictability as disturbing as his haircut.

Admittedly, the store owner’s question was a silly one. The weather must have been dry, and hot, because vast, empty desert landscapes shape the film. With nowhere for Moss to hide, only to run, life out there looks impossible. And, ultimately, it is for Moss, killed ignobly and off-screen by a stranger, and for his wife, and for almost everyone that Chirgurh meets.

But that violence is only half the story. What the Coens found in the novel is that there is absurdity everywhere. It’s in Moss’ stoic underreactions (“Yup,” he grunts when he finds that suitcase full of cash) and Chigurh’s elaborate code of honour. And there’s the same dark fatalism that underpins

Blood Simple or A Serious Man underneath, the idea that man’s best-laid plans fall apart in this capricious universe. This may be a comedy that’s desert-dry and black as night, but you have to laugh.

HELEN O’HARA

On 24 August, 2007, Empire’s Dan Jolin met Heath Ledger on the Chicago set of Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film. Less than five months before Ledger’s tragic death by accidental overdose of prescription drugs, it was the first time he’d ever talked about playing the Joker.

LEDGER WAS IN civvies, a battered grey trilby pulled low over his head. He’d never seemed comfortable talking to the press, and that day he

Javier Bardem sporting that striking ’do as killer Anton Chigurh. Below: Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss stumbles across a drug deal gone bad. Just say no!

seemed more nervous than usual. Understandable: he’d never taken a role in such a big movie before, let alone one so tightly shrouded in secrecy.

At the time I suspected we’d see something very different from Ledger’s Joker — this was Nolan’s ‘play it for real and make it for grownups’ take on Gotham, after all. But nobody outside of the production had any idea of just how spine-tinglingly chilling and entertaining his take would be. Although perhaps we should have known, after the tantalising clues he left during our chat...

Everyone say fearless to ta role. Is that t I definitely fea that scares m me at the sam know if I was f I certainly had

es during ys you’re ake on this true? ared it. Anything e, I guess, excites me time. I don’t fearless, but d to put

Top to bottom: Joker (Heath Ledger) appears with his gang; His bedside manner left a lot to be desired; Ledger, of playing the Joker: “We all have evil in us.”

on a brave face and believe that I have something up my sleeve. Something that was different.

differen Did you rew Batman? Not after I g I’ve seen it m I’m a huge f seen Chris’ film I knew t a difference Nolan

watch Tim Burton’s got the role, but many times before. fan, but having first [Batman] there there was e between a Chris n film and a Tim

visuals like that. I guess the rest is just trusting your research and trusting all the definitions of a psychopath. And then just running with it. I don’t know. I’m trying not to give it too much thought at this point.

What did you think the first time you saw yourself as the Joker?

I haven’t looked at it yet. I heard it in the [first] trailer and it kind of freaked me out a little bit.

Are you having fun playing him?

Burton film. Therefore there was enough room for a fresh portrayal. So I steered away from what Jack [Nicholson] did. Hopefully.

How do you find the evil within this character?

I don’t know. I think we all have it in us. Sometimes I’ll connect some scary thoughts. It’s kind of like eating raw meat, what that does to your mouth and your eyes, and simple little

Yeah, it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a role. I’m really surprised Chris knew I could do it, or thought I had something in me like this. I don’t know how he came to cast me to do it. But yeah, it’s the bomb. It’s definitely the most fun I’ve had, the most freedom I’ve had, and the work schedule is great. I work two days and have three weeks off! It’s been like that for six months.

Does your Joker have any cool gimmicks?

No, not a lot of gimmicks. He’s just bloody.

So the film’s gory, then?

I mean, it’s a PG-13, isn’t it? But I wanted to present kind of an X-rated performance, if I could. That’s what I’ve been going for.

ALAMY, SHUTTERSTOCK

HAVING

ALREADY SPENT

$100 million on Avatar, James Cameron was three years into the four-and-a-halfyear production before he saw a completed shot that gave him any confidence it would work. The first trailer didn’t give the public much confidence either, treated with about as much positivity as the recent Cats unveiling. People mentioned FernGully They mentioned the Smurfs. How goofy it all looked. What a joke this would be. Right?

Titanic had consumed Cameron. For years after he explored the deep. When he finally emerged, he set to work on something that seemed even more ambitious than the biggest film of all time. This was unprecedented world-building, in which we would all virtually visit a 22nd century jungle moon. He would pioneer the medium to get there.

Cameron wanted the experience of watching Avatar to be like dreaming with our eyes open and, via nextlevel performance-capture techniques, it was. The movie, certainly in 3D, and even more so in IMAX, was utterly transportative, like a real-life Total Recall we were on Pandora. We were there. There really had been nothing like this before, a palpable, enveloping

thrill-ride that accounted for all those repeat viewings.

Yet these were no hollow gimmicks the technology was there to service the action. For all of Avatar’s innovation, this was tried-and-tested storytelling, Cameron drawing from Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs as much as he was from America’s involvement in the Iraq War. Underneath the civilisation he invented, behind the new Na’vi language he co-created (with USC linguist Dr Paul Frommer), this was a simple tale of human folly, of oppression, of war. “It’s at a system level that we totally fall apart act like complete monkeys,” he told Empire. Avatar made $1 billion in 19 days, eventually resting at $2.79 billion, comfortably toppling Titanic Once again, Cameron had beaten the odds and made the biggest film of all time and it would remain so until mere months ago, when Disney pulled out all the stops to conquer it with Avengers: Endgame Regrettably, because of its behemoth box office,

Avatar kickstarted a 3D trend that has only recently subsided. For a decade, studios subjected us to mostly lesser 3D experiences, sometimes cheaply, almost always distractingly. None of them none have come close to what Cameron achieved with Avatar

The film itself has cooled somewhat, its delights dampened on smaller screens. Still, Avatar cemented Cameron’s reputation as some sort of sorcerer, unable to direct something that isn’t a phenomenon. This was event cinema, redefining the form. And it had such an effect on Cameron that he devoted the remainder of his life, so far, to it. Whereas once Titanic consumed him, now it was Avatar’s turn.

Whether or not such success, or cultural impact, or even mere entertainment value can be repeated again and again, and again, and again is anyone’s guess. But it would be foolish to doubt him.

ALEX GODFREY

WHEN VISUAL-EFFECTS

supervisor Paul Franklin first read the script for Inception (in a locked, guarded room in LA, late February 2009), he couldn’t wrap his head around it. “I was left reeling,” he admits. He was expecting it to be another modest, relatively low-budget film, like 2006’s The Prestige. Then Christopher Nolan revealed there would be 800 VFX shots more than in either of his Batman movies to date. “I thought, ‘Ooh, what have I gotten myself into?’” Franklin says. “It was an extraordinary confluence of all different types of filmmaking, with a genius director given full rein to do whatever he wanted.”

As these four gobsmacking set-pieces prove…

Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully in avatar form. Below: And sharing a moment with Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri.

When Ariadne (Ellen Page) realises she and Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) aren’t in a Parisian café but a constructed dreamworld, her anxiety causes that world to spectacularly destroy itself around them. The inspiration was Zabriskie Point’s super-slo-mo explosion which Nolan wanted to pull off using minimal CGI. “The challenge was, how do you set off explosions in a Parisian street without destroying the street?” says Franklin. “So special-effects supervisor Chris Corbould came up with this

fantastic series of air mortars that were packed full of soft, lightweight debris: flowers, croissants, things like that. Then we added the more dangerous stuff: crockery, bottles, large pieces of furniture. Although the car was real. We just digitally painted out the cable pulling it.”

Tasked with showing the streets of Paris folding impossibly over each other, Franklin recalled watching all the bridges on Chicago River being raised during the shoot of Batman Begins “It looked like the whole world was folding on a hinge,

Clockwise from main: That immense moment when Paris starts to fold; The perfect recreation of the drunkest you’ve ever been; Nicola Hoyle’s crumbling coast-city; Croissants and flowers form a slo-mo explosion.

because the road markings, the sidewalks, the street lamps all go with the bridges. So I suggested to Chris the idea of a series of linked bridge segments.” One of Franklin’s artists, Alison Wortman, produced a “little test” of how it might work. The moment Nolan saw it, he told Franklin, “That’s the shot. We’re putting that in the movie.”

On first reading the script, Franklin figured Arthur’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) twisting corridor tumble-scrap would at least require digital doubles and extensions. But... “Chris Nolan was absolutely adamant that he wanted to get this for real. And Chris Corbould and his team absolutely rose to the challenge.” Corbould built the 100 foot-long, rotating corridor in a soundstage in Cardington Studios, so there is, Franklin confirms, only one shot which

required visual effects: when Arthur falls into the hotel room, grabs the gun and shoots his foe.

The surreal vista of this crumbling coastal dream-city was tough to nail, with all the concept art looking “like things you’d seen before,” Franklin says. So he suggested a different approach. “We built a digital model of a glacier, and visual-effects artist Nicola Hoyle wrote a piece of software which analysed its internal volume and filled it with architectural blocks. We ended up with this very complex organic city. Nobody other than Chris would have been able to go to the studio and say, ‘The VFX guys are trying this cool idea. It’s going to cost a lot. You won’t see anything for six months. You have to trust them.’ That wouldn’t have happened with another filmmaker.”

DAN JOLIN

BRIDESMAIDS LANDED LIKE an oestrogen-studded bomb in 2011, blowing apart almost every single assumption about female-fronted comedies. That they were too big a risk. That they wouldn’t make any money. That men wouldn’t buy a ticket (because, ewww, women making jokes). That women would be too busy buying a ticket to the latest romcom, (with the emphasis

firmly on rom). Because, you see: women didn’t want to watch funny women; men certainly didn’t want to watch funny women, so what sense would it make to produce a film that relied on both these maxims being dead wrong?

It’s fair to say that cinema oftentimes likes its comfort zone. But Bridesmaids challenged the softness under its arse — even if it did so in the Trojan horse of a ‘wedding movie’. The wedding, as it turned out, was the least important bit of the story, co-written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. Annie (Wiig) is doing a job she hates (and which she is terrible at, spectacularly calling one teenage customer “a little cunt”), living in a weird flatshare and attempting a relationship with a fuck-buddy (Jon Hamm) who is all fuck and no buddy. All of which is brought into sharp focus when her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged.

But it was her fiancé Doug who was arguably the one drawn like a cold bowl of porridge. He got just one line — remember it? Us neither — and one awkward dancing-withan-overbite scene. For this is the story of women; of a beautifully broad and freaky group of women in the bride and bridesmaids of the title, played by Ellie Kemper, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendonCovey and, of course, Melissa McCarthy.

It was about women’s

friendships and haterelationships, in all of their beauty, spite, romance and ugliness. It was honest, dirty, sweary, sweet and out-and-out rank in places. It portrayed women not as fragile objects of purity and grace, but shitting-in-the-street, vomiting-in-the-sink but still full-hearted human beings. It didn’t drag out the usual cinematic tropes of women who are meant to make you laugh — sardonic and cynical (read: bitter) or full-on raging nuts. But, perhaps most significantly of all, it simply allowed them to be funny. Or rather, provided a platform for them to be funny — there was no “allowing” involved. The message for anyone walking out the screening as Wilson Phillips closed down proceedings was loud and clear: Women. Are. Funny. Too. In the months that followed (after it opened to a $26 million weekend), a landscape that hadn’t been visible before appeared in front of our very eyes as, in the slipstream of Bridesmaids, studios scrambled to have their own female-fronted comedy hits. Let’s be clear: not all were successful, but it’s undoubtedly made women’s comedies easier to get financed, greenlit and made. For women to be trusted to write women’s stories in a frank and fucked-up way. Women of Bridesmaids, we’d go for questionable Brazilian meat with you any day.

TERRI WHITE

IN 2012, THERE was an idea. An idea to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could create something more than just a regular sequel. To see if multiple superheroes could work together without making one almighty mess. It was the The Avengers Initiative, and it

Woman behaving badly: Kristen Wiig’s Annie livens up the flight.

changed the game for good. Here’s how.

Marvel Studios had already risked frontloading its less well-known (Iron Man) and goofier (Thor, Captain America) characters through Phase 1, but that was nothing compared to the risk of bringing them all together — to have Tony Stark rubbing shoulders with a literal Norse god, while fighting hordes of space aliens. But thanks to a sharp script from geek god Joss Whedon — who knew a thing or two about ensemble casts from his Buffy and Firefly days — it worked. Partly it trusted in the comics — if Hulk and Cap and Black Widow could co-exist on the page, why should the big screen be any different?

Whedon’s screenplay did exactly what the UK title promised: it assembled the Avengers, prioritising the group over every individual hero. Sure, Hawkeye drew the short straw on screen-time and character development

Above: The Big Six — Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). Right: Assembler Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).

Below: Loki (Tom Hiddleston), in search of the Tesseract.

but everyone got their moment to shine when the action hit. Speaking of which…

Blockbusters are worthless if they don’t bust those blocks real good — and the final hour of The Avengers delivered next-level action spectacle beyond a comicbook fan’s wildest dreams.

The Chitauri army is a largely faceless enemy, but allows the Avengers themselves to take centre stage in the Battle Of New York Cap and Thor fighting back to back, Iron Man flying into

the jaws of a Leviathan, Hawkeye firing an arrow over his shoulder, Black Widow hijacking a Chitauri speeder, Hulk smashing. The threat was bigger, the action constantly flowing, punctuated throughout with zingy gags and storytelling beats. And it was fun — with high stakes, yes, but a wit and levity that remains Marvel’s signature tone. If it feels smaller now than it did in 2012, it’s only because Endgame is so much bigger but hey, it doesn’t get any bigger than the biggest film of all time.

For better or worse, The Avengers showed Hollywood execs that audiences were ready for ‘universe’ storytelling, beyond the traditional sequel model, with the mid-credits stinger introducing the dreaded Thanos. Individually, the likes of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger fared well, but together they were box-office dynamite, making $1.5 billion worldwide. It didn’t take long for other studios to follow suit in establishing their own universe franchises — though what proved harder was doing it right. DC and Warner Bros. gave us the hastily instigated super-squabble of Batman v Superman followed by a limp Justice League, before scaling back down to focus on more satisfying individual hero stories again. And then there was the proposed ‘Dark Universe’ for the Universal Monsters, which amounted solely to a starry cast photo. Marvel Studios made the Avengers Initiative succeed by following one simple rule: assemble with care. BEN TRAVIS

ALAMY, DISNEY

IT’S THE FILM that puts the ‘pace’ into ‘space’. Ten minutes into the 91-minute runtime of Gravity, debris travelling faster than a speeding bullet hits the Space Shuttle Explorer, and our heroes, Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Lt Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), are almost immediately in the gravest peril. Latecomers will not be admitted.

Things hardly slow down after that, director Alfonso Cuarón barely stopping for whatever breath is left in the astronauts’ fast-fading oxygen tanks. That opening sequence runs an astonishing 17 minutes

without cutting, and in fact, the entire film has just 156 shots, far fewer than most conventional films. Cuarón loves a long, uninterrupted take his filmography, from Children Of Men to Roma, is full of them and watching Gravity is like bearing witness to an immersive, incredibly stressful live stage show in space. Seen on the big screen, it was that special thing: a proper cinematic experience Part of the joy of it is that it feels so authentic: the attention to scientific realism may be unparallelled. Although the film’s inciting incident the long-theorised Kessler Syndrome, in which space-junk causes a catastrophic chain reaction in near-Earth orbit has not yet actually happened, everything is based on insanely meticulous research, every space-nook and space-cranny accurate to NASA’s exacting standards.

Ask any passing astronaut and they’ll agree. NASA’s Mike Massimino, who, like Bullock’s character, spent some intimate time with the Hubble telescope, marvelled that the film featured a one-of-a-kind wirecutter, identical to the one he used in real life the kind of detail only an astronaut would notice.

All of this is surface detail, a nerdish rigour that cemented the important part: characters to care about. Yes, there’s George Clooney at his most movie-star charming (“You

Out of this world: Sandra Bullock is centre-stage as Dr Ryan Stone.

never realised how devastatingly good-looking I am,” he purrs during an especially tense moment) but it’s Bullock who is the film’s core, her vulnerability giving the journey pathos and immense stakes. It is, as much as anything, a film about motherhood and grief, not usually themes considered when you’re blowing up space stations. Gravity is the rare blockbuster to give a female character centre-stage and make her fully realised, rather than just ‘one of the boys’.

For all the complicated effects and uncomfortable working conditions (Bullock spent up to 10 hours a day hanging in a mechanical rig while robotic-controlled cameras moved around her), Gravity is a very simple story, told efficiently and brilliantly. It doesn’t waste a second. It’s unlike any sci-fi you can think of. In fact, it’s not even science-fiction at all Cuarón simply won’t have it. “It’s science-fact,” he told Empire insistently in 2013. So what is it, then? A space film?

A disaster movie? A thriller?

A horror? A melodrama? A comedy of errors? The answer is all of these things, and more. Really, there had never been anything quite like Gravity, and in the years after 2013, there hasn’t really been anything since. As Kowalski says at one point: “Gotta admit one thing can’t beat the view.”

JOHN NUGENT

THE FIRST BEST Picture winner to win with a parenthesis in its title, Alexander G. Iñárritu’s Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) is perhaps the magic trick of Empire’s lifetime. The 119-minute movie about fading movie star Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), who attempts to reclaim his fame (and himself) by mounting a Raymond Carver play on Broadway is constructed to look like one seamless shot, even though the action takes place over three days and numerous locales. Here’s how invisible tricks delivered Iñárritu’s virtuoso vision...

As befits a film about ego run rampant, mirrors abound in Birdman To free up the camera, a lot of effort went into removing the crew’s reflections digitally. A 2.5D digital matte painting of the reflected environment was created replacing everything around Michael Keaton in the foreground. The smudges and dirt on the mirror footage were then cut and pasted onto the digital mirror.

Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York the corridors on the set were made wider than normal to accommodate Steadicam operator Chris Haarhoff (note The Shiningesque carpet, another film about a man in meltdown).

DP Emmanuel ‘Chivo’

Much of Birdman’s action takes place in the wings at the St James Theatre, recreated at

Lubezki had a crew of eight grips moving lights and diffusers as the actors and camera moved through the scene. The result resembled an avant-garde ballet.

The fluidity of Birdman is created in long takes stitched together to create one flowing movement, hidden by cheeky edits often obscured in darkness or by motion blurs during fast pans. The actors were asked to deliver up to 15 pages of dialogue in oners often running up to 10 minutes. According to a running tally kept by the cast, Emma Stone fluffed the most takes, Zach Galifianakis the fewest.

Clockwise from main: Michael Keaton’s actor Riggan, stalked by the memory of his former superhero role; Naked (ish) in Times Square; Magically coming into land; Confronting volatile co-star Mike (Edward Norton); With best friend and lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis); The mesmerising mirror shot from Riggan’s dressing room.

The moment Riggan runs out into Times Square dressed in his underpants is the antithesis of the film’s hyper-rehearsed MO. Iñárritu wanted Times Square to be packed, so shot the sequence at the busiest time on a Friday night. Sixty extras surrounded Keaton and a marching band was hired to distract the public. The shot was captured without a hitch in just two takes a crazed guy in his briefs is no biggie in New York.

Just as it is about the battle between theatre and film, Birdman mixes bleeding-edge digital VFX and old-school stage craft. Just after Riggan flies through the air in a bravura CG assisted sequence, when he comes down to land, Keaton is being lowered onto the street by a crane. As he lands, a passerby surreptitiously moves behind Keaton and unhooks him from the wire, letting the actor walk into the scene. Pure sleight-ofhand. Pure Birdman IAN FREER

ALLSTAR, ALAMY

ASK ANY ACTION director worth their salt — your Edgar Wrights, your Gareth Evans, your Chris McQuarries — about George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, and chances are a strange, beatific smile will cross their face. A single tear may even roll down their cheeks. For them, and for us, Mad Max: Fury Road is the movie that raised the bar on action filmmaking. And it’s all down to the genius of a quiet, septuagenarian Australian doctor who had spent the last couple of decades making movies about dancing penguins, talking pigs — anything but rollicking, high-octane, desert-set chase movies. But when he came back to action, Miller knew exactly what he was aiming for. “I wanted to do virtually a silent movie with sound and music,” he says. “And on a technical level

I thought, ‘My God, we can do stuff. You can do something much more spectacular, much more safely.’” Here, he exclusively shares some tips from his action rulebook.

Miller, and his DP John Seale, devised a visual style which would centre the action in the frame of each shot, meaning that the viewer’s eye always remains focused on what’s important. “It’s visual music,” he says. “In order to read it with the eye so it’s not dissonant, all the visual passages have to

flow. Eye-scan is hugely important. A lot of filmmaking in action was basically refreshing the frame second or two second regardless of any cau between one shot an other. What we were about in Fury Road w there had to be a stro connection between

Above: Typically understated, Tom Hardy as Max in the project Miller describes as “a silent movie with sound and music”. Left: Stunt action that’s a long way from dancing penguins. Below: Charlize Theron as the formidable war captain Furiosa.

which handily allowed useful developments in technology.

“For the polecats in the final chase, initially I thought it would be way too risky to put someone on top of a pole on a moving vehicle, so my thought was to comp in those guys swinging back and forth,” says Miller. “But by the time we moved to Africa, the stunt riggers had figured out a way to make it actual by having the pendulum effect. It was very, very safe.”

The film suffered major delays in starting production, m from Australia to Nam

y every ds, usality d the clear as that ong shots.” moving mibia,

There i it’s mai enhanc from ac from th part, w trucks aro sp Mi a bi logis very destr Rig w

s CGI in Fury Road. But nly there to augment, to ce, to remove harnesses ctors or track marks he sand. For the most hen you see cars and and bikes weaving ound each other at high eeds, that’s exactly what ller shot. “Every day was g stunt day. Just the stics of that alone were tough.” The spectacular uction of Furiosa’s War was, astonishingly, done

ALAMY

for real. “We looked at doing it with scale models, and doing it as a pure CG shot. I was then persuaded that in a movie in which everything else had been done in a real world, to have that vehicle do that stunt as CG was too big of a cheat.”

One of the film’s six Oscars went to Miller’s editor, Margaret Sixel, for her work in making sense of all the madness. “I don’t think anybody could imagine what a Rubik’s Cube of a movie it was for someone to cut. To be able to see the whole at the same time that you’re digging down into the granular is an exceptional sort of mindset. I’m usually good at that stuff, but she eclipsed me.” Fury Road may feel like a classical action movie, devoid of the modern trend of shakycam, but it’s cut faster than any of the previous Mad Max movies. “I realised that we as audiences are speed-reading films now, compared to 30, 40 years ago.”

CHRIS HEWITT

“CAREER SUICIDE” IS a phrase

Barry Jenkins heard a lot during the eight-year struggle to get Moonlight made.

“We are going to follow a young black boy struggling with his sexuality and his mom is addicted to crack cocaine,” Jenkins told Empire in 2018 about the pitch. “We’re going to cast three actors to play him and the last actor looks nothing like the other two.”

The finished film not only gifted Jenkins the most famous Best Picture win in Oscar history, but became a cinematic rarity. Brokeback Mountain had tackled homosexuality and masculinity, while Crash highlighted the hardships of growing up black in America. Moonlight, though, is the only Best Picture to hang a lantern on black/queer intersectionality and do so in such delicate, nuanced ways. It also consigned the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite to the dustbin.

The film has its roots in Jenkins’ attempts to write a film about his personal connection to his mother. Two years later he was introduced to Tarell Alvin McCraney’s semi-autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue and discovered “a cosmic synchronicity between our two personalities and our two lives” which opened up a rich vein of creativity.

“On discovering Tarell’s play, I thought, ‘Oh, this is great. It’s about him, not me. I can kind of address some of these personal things without making it personal,’” he says. “But I think every film a director makes is personal on some level. It became way more personal than I ever wanted it to be.”

Both men grew up in Miami. Both had complex relationships with drug-addicted mothers. Like Moonlight’s protagonist Chiron, Jenkins withdrew into

himself to avoid being pulled into a world of crime. But unlike McCraney and Chiron, Jenkins isn’t gay. While the director had reservations about accurately representing Chiron’s sexuality, he so strongly identified with every other aspect of the character, he felt “it would be cowardly to turn my back on him for that. Once I got past that, I was neither a straight man or a gay man. I was the man telling the story.”

For all the film’s huge success both cinematically and culturally, there are things Jenkins would do differently now particularly the first time we meet Naomie Harris as Chiron’s mother. “I think it was the first day of working with Naomie,” he recalls. “I think that’s one of the rare times where the visual director in me took a back seat because my main objective was to get to know Naomie.” Yet overall, Moonlight poured sunshine on Jenkins’ own self-belief as a filmmaker.

“I doubt myself all the time,” he says. “I still doubt myself now. So this is not to do with the Academy Awards, this is to do with the actual film as it exists it was confirmation for me that I could trust my aesthetic impulses, my creative impulses, and that what I had to say was worthwhile. It was extremely validating for me personally.”

And for an entire community around the world.

IAN FREER

Friends reunited: Kevin (Andre Holland) and Chiron, now called Black (Trevante Rhodes).

IT SPEAKS TO the phenomenal staying power of Get Out — a rare horror movie that’s told from the black perspective — that its writer-director Jordan Peele picked up the Best Screenplay Oscar over a year after it first debuted in US cinemas. The Academy hadn’t been able to get the film out of their head, and neither, it turned out, could the rest of us. There are few films which have infiltrated the public consciousness quite like the story of Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), a black photographer who discovers some terrifying secrets when he visits the parents of his white girlfriend. It didn’t take long for terms like ‘The Sunken Place’ to become part of the vernacular, or for jokes like, “I’ve watched Get Out three times” — a play on a memorable line involving Obama — to

pervade the internet.

But it is a film worth revisiting time and time again, not only for its nail-chewing twists and turns but for its biting and layered examination of racial relations. Peele started writing the script in 2008 as a response to a rising sentiment that we were living in a post-racial era following Obama’s election, and Get Out’s February 2017 release — a month after Donald Trump’s inauguration — could not have been better-timed. There are multiple scenes that expose the racism of white liberals, and although their ultimate plan in the movie is as fantastical as it is disturbing, the real-life overtones are more frightening than any jump-scare. A closer look reveals that the film is studded with subtle symbolic details, such as the picking of cotton from a leather chair at a crucial moment.

Despite its deadly serious themes, Peele’s debut is consistently hilarious. That’s in large part due to the fact that much of the cathartic humour

is rooted in its scares. There’s no better example of this than the film’s final moments, in which the flashing lights of a police car appear. It seems Chris is destined for the kind of bleak fate that has befallen many innocent AfricanAmericans (and indeed, he does wind up in prison in the film’s alternate ending), but instead the dark moment turns into one of Get Out’s funniest as his best friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery) bounces out of the car. Another reason to get Get Out on again and again is to spot the many nods to classic horror. Being the genre aficionado that he is, it’s no surprise that Peele lists The Stepford Wives, Rosemary’s Baby, Halloween, The Shining and many more as influences for the film. The astonishing thing is that, with his very first effort, Peele has made a classic that can sit comfortably alongside those on a shelf. And this was just the beginning — let’s see where he goes.

Empire went on set of Black Panther in Atlanta in 2017 for a cover story the following year. Producer Nate Moore had developed the story in the Marvel writers’ programme and was key in the film making it to screen. This excerpt from

AMON WARMANN

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) ‘faces the enemy’ with Rose (Allison Williams). Below: The mysterious Georgina (Betty Gabriel).

a second interview with him, just before Black Panther’s release, revealed the personal, cultural and cinematic significance of the film that would go on to gross a billion dollars in just 26 days.

Can you remember when you first encountered Black Panther?

It was as a kid. There was a Captain America cover with Captain America in the foreground, flanked by the Falcon and Black Panther. That was the first time I saw Black Panther and he was awesome. The character design was really unique. When I started getting into comics, one of the first runs of Panther I did read, which I still think is a super powerful, was Christopher Priest’s. He very smartly figured out the most interesting thing about Black Panther was that he was a king and a superhero, so he was constantly pulled between his duties to his nation and wanting to do the right thing.

And it’s the first mainstream black superhero from comics

that has made it to the screen.

Yes, as the lead character, assuming that you don’t consider Blade a mainstream comic. And the first mainstream African hero. And I make that distinction because it’s something that we found very important in making the film — that T’Challa and Wakanda felt very African. Ryan [Coogler] especially was leading the charge and going the extra mile to get all the details of what that would mean, to be African in the film. And something that, by the way, Chadwick Boseman, even during Civil War, wanted

Above: T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) go head to head. Right: Bodyguards Ayo (Florence Kasumba) and Okoye (Danai Gurira). Below: T’Challa suited up as Black Panther.

character in modern Western cinema, where it’s not Blood Diamond or something where there’s a white character who’s your entry point into the film. I think seeing representation on that level is important. And important for a continent of people. Not that we can speak for a continent, but for them to be able to see themselves on screen, I think, is going to be really impactful.

Can you speak a little bit about Ryan Coogler?

unique, pective that we don’t et to see in film

that sense does like a significant nt for entation?

to bring to it, from the way he spoke and the way he moved. Making sure there was African influence. Not because it’s not cool to be African-American, but just because again, that’s a detail that makes T’Challa super-unique and it’s a persp often g And in it feel l momen represe I think a film w African was the

so. I can’t recall where a black n character e lead

Yeah, look, he’s a really special filmmaker and only 31 years old. The first time I learned about Ryan Coogler, I and another writer just happened to go to the movies one day after work and we went to see Fruitvale Station We were so hed by the eally have an ion. It was And so that’s even knew n Coogler. saw even the d, I remember oing, “We guy.”

emotionally touch film we couldn’t re actual conversat that effective. A the first time I the name Ryan And when we s trailer for Cree Kevin [Feige] go should find this TERRI WHITE

MANSON, BTK, SON OF SAM... DAVID FINCHER’S MINDHUNTER IS BACK WITH A BLOODY PARADE OF SERIAL-KILLER ALL-STARS, AND BY DIALLING DOWN THE SENSATIONALISM IT’S MAKING THEM SCARIER THAN EVER

I WANT TO HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON IN YOUR HEAD.”

David Fincher is issuing instructions to a moustachioed man, who is gazing into a mirror, adjusting the shoulder strap on the woman’s slip he’s wearing. The crew, similarly delicately, adjust the lighting for this moment of self-fulfilment — one of a series of episodepuncturing vignettes of Dennis Rader (played by Sonny Valicenti), aka The BTK Killer. Bind. Torture. Kill. And do it quickly.

Fincher is on a tight schedule for these late additions to the lengthy shoot. While the scene is set, he sits at the monitor with lead writer Courtenay Miles, adjusting dialogue, as the art department present him with crime-scene photographs and mementos of victims for sign-off. Multitasking can be murder.

Camera set, they shoot. Once. Twice. “That is fucking creepozoid,” says Fincher, after the third take. If you can manage to unsettle the director of Seven and Zodiac, then you’re probably doing your job. The next few days filming in this cavernous Pittsburgh studio will involve FBI office politics, masks (literal and figurative) and autoerotic asphyxiation. As one crew member puts it, “Some things you can’t unsee.”

Back for its second season, Mindhunter has lost none of its fearlessness. BTK returns, of course, but following impactful portrayals of lesser-known serial killers Edmund Kemper and Jerry Brudos, this year is taking on the iconic — including arguably the two most famous serial killers of all: Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) and David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam (Oliver Cooper). The latter we’ve previously seen on screen being commanded by a demonpossessed dog in Spike Lee’s Summer Of Sam And — on the 50th anniversary of the murders his ‘disciples’ carried out — Manson is everywhere, including in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (portrayed by the same actor, Damon Herriman). But whereas most movies lean into the mythology of Manson, or embellish Berkowitz, Mindhunter is looking to re-examine reality. This isn’t hellhound hyperbole or gauze-softened myth. It’s the ugly truth.

“WE WANT TO BELIEVE THEY’RE MADMEN,”

says Courtenay Miles, “But when you read their history, their journals, letters, you see it is a human being in there. But it’s a human being gone wrong.” Miles was first assistant director on the debut series — the aide-de-camp to the director’s general — and made the unlikely but

long-cherished transition to writer when Fincher gave her a shot. She immersed herself in the world of serial killers‚ and lost sleep as a result. “All of the characteristics that are in their mental structure and their compulsions are things that any other human being can identify with,” she says, reflecting on the long gestation of serial killers. “They’re made over 20 years. Nurturing these compulsions. That just got under my skin.”

Miles got the chance to be disturbed — and earn her first screenwriting credit — because Fincher cares considerably less about reputation than he does about his own lived experience. But while the first season saw him employ emerging directors (the most high-profile being Asif Kapadia, whose greatest achievements were in documentaries), here he’s joined behind the lens by two cinematic heavyweights. Carl Franklin is of late an in-demand director of TV, including House Of Cards, but was responsible for some astounding crime cinema in the 1990s: Devil In A Blue Dress and One False Move. In that

grubby, merciless thriller, the wife of Bill Paxton’s seemingly guileless cop observes, “Dale doesn’t know any better. He watches TV. I read non-fiction.” Mindhunter bridges that divide. The other director is Andrew Dominik, whose three features all deal with the ruthless reality beneath criminal lore and legends (Chopper, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward

Robert Ford, Killing Them Softly). Dominik has wrapped his two episodes. Franklin is shooting four, Fincher three — but, as Dominik puts it, “his tentacles are everywhere”.

Today, while Fincher films BTK, Franklin is on the neighbouring stage with series leads Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany. As the FBI odd couple of ambitious idealist Holden Ford and reality-worn veteran Bill Tench, they’re wrestling with how to take what they’ve learned interviewing killers out into the field — specifically a live investigation of what became known as the Atlanta Child Murders (or ATKID). Between them is Albert Jones as Jim Barney, the AfricanAmerican agent who was denied the chance to

Here: Agent Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) takes a call. Below: Agent Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) joins the protests in Atlanta.

join their Behavioural Science Unit in Season 1. He understands the implications of a case that doesn’t have the prominence it would if a string of white, middle-class children were being killed, rather than working-class African American ones. “That certainly was in the air,” says Jones. “These are black children that are going missing and being found dead. This notion that it wasn’t getting the immediacy and the attention it warranted lit a fire in Atlanta.”

As filming goes on, Fincher and Miles stand in the shadows between stages, whispering about pages they have just revised, trying to get the details just right. “Get it to Carl,” Fincher says. “Just go, ‘Look dude, this has been crunched together from 15 different versions — you need to make it so you buy it...’ You’ve got to let him know to make the vernacular work...”

Franklin will later say this process of continual revision isn’t that unusual on long-form storytelling, where a domino effect can be triggered by one adjustment. “They could be problems, they could be hidden gifts.” Still,

in Franklin’s fourth month of his five-month stint, there’s definitely the sense that no other production is quite as rigorous as Fincher’s. Shooting one scene, a crew member suggests they gloss over a detail (“I’m inclined to say it doesn’t matter”), but Franklin interjects, “Yeah, we could do that, but ‘you-know-who’, that’s his whole thing.” The next day the two directors will have a chat about the need for additional shooting and, after Fincher leaves, another crew member turns to Franklin and smiles: “He came in like a phantom, crushed your dreams and went away!” Franklin nods, “That finish line just gets further and further away!”

There’s affection in the resignation, though. After the shoot, catching up on the phone, the 70-year-old director will marvel: “He sees the invisible. And we all do, but his version of the invisible sometimes means reconstructing, deconstructing and then reconstructing reality… Steven Soderbergh and I had a conversation about it. He was saying he feels like a graffiti artist compared to David.”

ANDREW DOMINIK, WHO GOT TO KNOW

Fincher through their mutual friend Brad Pitt, was specifically engaged to tackle Manson, who he’d been fascinated by growing up. “Somebody who can come up with their own mythology and then persuade other people of the reality of that. And also that they managed to convict a guy who wasn’t at either crime scene. It’s a really interesting thing.”

Fincher credits Dominik with really challenging what they were looking to do with Manson how to make sure his presence was serving a purpose outside of his notoriety. “We don’t need to up the salacious mythology of Manson,” says Fincher. “He does just fine by himself. But what was interesting was Andrew began, months before we came to shoot, to really challenge, like, ‘What is it you want out of Manson, other than like a guest star? ’Cause that’s just silliness.’”

While as a director Franklin is something of a shepherd, Dominik is more of a provocateur. McCallany mentions they often had different ideas on how to play a scene. In the Manson interview, in particular, it had combustible results. “Andrew got me so riled and kind of off-balance and unsettled that I found myself having these crazy reactions,” says the actor.

Clockwise from top: David Fincher on set with Groff and McCallany; Tench and Det. Art Spencer (Nate Corddry); Dr Wendy Carr (Anna Torv).

“Like, my face is twitching and I’m looking at Manson like I’m going to jump across the table and strangle him.”

Dominik describes his directing style as “creating collisions between people” and he definitely set out to get a reaction from McCallany. “Holt is an actor who is superprepared, right? He knows his lines. He knows everybody else’s lines. And he plays the guy who always knows what’s going on. So when he comes to work, that very need — of wanting to feel prepared — is not what you need in the scene. You want a guy who’s being blindsided all the time. And so I think a lot of what I was doing was trying to get Holt to feel blindsided or uncomfortable.”

The infamous killers were physically recreated with the help of Kazu Hiro, who won an Oscar for transforming Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill on Darkest Hour. “He’d kind of retired and we just called and begged,” says Fincher, who initially had him agree to do just Manson. “And then we said, ‘Oh, what about Berkowitz?’” Empire has seen the ‘Son of Sam’ interview and the resemblance is uncanny — the scene electric.

“The thing that makes Son of Sam interesting to me was the crippling stranglehold that he had on one of the largest cities in the world [New York],” says Fincher. “And then you meet him and he’s so mundane. He’s not the guy next door, but he could be. And I think that’s in keeping with the tenor of what we set up with the first season, which is, ‘This is not gonna be the serial killer of the week.’”

Still, even as the Berkowitz interview prods and picks at the self-mythologising nature of these killers, there is undoubtedly a frisson from facing such famous psychopaths. “Part of the appeal of Mindhunter is that it is the all-stars. [The killers] are wildly entertaining when they’re on screen,” says Dominik. “Enjoying somebody in a television show isn’t the same as condoning their behaviour.”

Still, the Kiwi-born/Australia-raised director would suggest that that isn’t really what the show is about. “I think David’s real idea is that he wants to make a show about the American disease, which is narcissism. This idea that we shape the world according to our desires and our needs. And I think he looks at profiling as being a great way to tell that story.” In that sense Mindhunter is as much about bureaucracy and personality as it is murder. “The subject of the show is really the profilers themselves,” he offers by way of explanation.

THERE’S AN ELEMENT TO MINDHUNTER

that explores the masks we all wear. “You get inside the psychology of the killers, but you also are inside of the psychology of the investigators,” says Franklin. “You actually begin to inadvertently start to profile these people.”

Pressure grows as the Behavioural Science Unit grows, powered by the funding of new FBI overseer Ted Gunn (Michael Cerveris). Fincher observes: “As David Geffen once said to me, ‘The devil is the one who shows up with the biggest cheque.’ You gotta watch out for the person who’s going to give you your heart’s desire.” Tench is pulled more between work and home, Holden between ambition and personal frailty,

and in-house academic Dr Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) struggles with the Unit’s changed priorities. “You get to see a different dimension, so you see that persona, that mask, she has is her work face,” says Torv, whose character sees her theories co-opted into live investigations, rather than the psychological research she signed up for. “What is her function? If this is being applied to real-world cases and that’s not a place where she [functions], what is she doing there? She’s given up her life.”

It might be reductive to suggest Dr Carr is the most vulnerable person in the team, but she has the most to lose. “I mean, she’s a gay woman living in the late 1970s having to hide it from everybody around.” She also appears to be the person whom viewers treasure. Groff says one of the things he is asked most about Season 1 is Carr’s recurring interaction with a cat in her apartment building. It’s the same for Torv, who has her own theory as to what the ill-fated feline represents. “I’d always thought of the cat as

Above: Ford and Tench at a crime scene. Right: Ford, Agent Jim Barney (Albert Jones) and team unearth grisly goings-on.

Left: Investigating the Atlanta Child Murders.

being like one of the faceless many, the people these serial killers practised on. But we never hear about the homeless and the abandoned and the people that go missing that nobody misses.”

It’s a bleak thought, but in tune with the spirit of the show, which is uniquely unsettling despite featuring no explicit brutality. “Hearing about these things can be way more effective than seeing them literally played out in front of you,” says Groff. “It forces the audience to lean in a little bit more and become a little bit more engaged, and therefore I think a little bit more scared.”

There’s an extended sequence in an early episode of the new season where someone who escaped a killer recounts their experiences — what happened to them, what happened to the person they were with. There is no blood, blade or bullet, but it will haunt you for a long, long time.

While the likes of Manson, Berkowitz and BTK still make the headlines, the show is more concerned with the consequences of violence.

“David’s intention from the beginning was like, ‘These are sad, disgusting individuals. I don’t wanna celebrate them. I don’t want this to be the comic-book version of villains,’” recalls Groff, who contrasts that approach with a lot of the films and documentaries he has watched in relation to serial-killer material. “It’s like, ‘Ooh, creepy music and weird cutaways of knives and blood’, and they really lean into the melodrama of what happened. That is not what David wanted to do with this. He wanted to look at it in a very realistic way. Which is more unsettling and scary.”

Unsettling for the viewer. Unsettling for the cast. Through being matter-of-fact and eschewing the sensational, Mindhunter really gets inside your head. Jones recalls leaving his New York home to travel to the production. “I do remember going down to work and telling my wife, ‘Make sure that that window is locked in the bedroom when I’m gone, please. Just for me. Just make sure that it’s locked.’”

C U LT M OV I E S

MINDHUNTER ISN’T THE ONLY PROJECT TACKLING CHARLES MANSON IN 2019

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

Set five decades ago, in the year Manson’s followers committed their notorious murders, Quentin Tarantino’s Pacific Coast epic shares its Manson with Mindhunter (actor Damon Herriman). Tarantino recreated the cult leader’s ranch close to its actual location, calling the set “kinda spooky”.

THE HAUNTING OF SHARON TATE

Starring Hilary Duff as the doomed star, this film was inspired by a quote in an interview Tate gave a year before her murder, saying that she’d had premonitions of her death at the hands of a satanic cult. Tate’s sister Debra has called the endeavour “classless”.

CHARLIE SAYS

Matt Smith plays Manson in flashbacks, but this indie drama is focused more on his followers, putting three of them (played by Sosie Bacon, Marianne Rendon and Game Of Thrones’ Hannah Murray) up front. It’s set three years after the 1969 killings.

TATE

Endorsed enthusiastically by Debra Tate, this is a straightup biopic of Sharon Tate, following her from her beauty-pageant days to her death at the age of 26. Kate Bosworth, who stars, has said the film will “take away the microphone from the maniac”, minimising Manson’s presence in the story. NICK DE SEMLYEN

Left: Tench and Ford grill a suspect.

Below: Fincher directs McCallany.

MINDHUNTER SEASON 2 IS ON NETFLIX NOW

Francis Ford Coppola, photographed exclusively for Empire at the Grand Hotel Majestic Bologna, Italy, on 28 June 2019.

AS HE PREPARES TO UNLEASH

A DEFINITIVE NEW CUT OF HIS

WAR EPIC, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

REFLECTS ON WHY APOCALYPSE

NOW HAS LOST NONE OF ITS CHILLING PO WER

a voice rang out over a sky full of burning palm trees. In fact, it was just the beginning. When Apocalypse Now blazed into cinemas 40 years ago, it opened with a scene that’s as mesmerising today as it was in 1979. A jungle engulfed in flames blurs into a face haunted by untold terrors, his head — and seemingly, world — turned upside down. The noise of distant helicopter blades accompanies the sight of a spinning hotel ceiling fan, as strange visions of ancient relics fade in and out of frame. All the while, that voice carries on, the sorrowful sound of Doors singer Jim Morrison: “This is the end…”

It was the start of not just a cinematic masterpiece — director Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinogenic war epic about a soldier’s mission into the heart of darkness — but a cultural obsession. Coppola’s vision has clung to the public imagination with napalm-like stickiness ever since. It’s regularly referenced and parodied, and appears time and again atop polls

determining the greatest movies of all time. The Vietnam conflict it depicted may be over, but Apocalypse Now’s take on the dark, primal power lurking in man remains scarily relevant in 2019’s time of terrorism, drones shot down over Iran and containment camps for migrants in America.

Apocalypse Now has never become Apocalypse Then. It isn’t merely a film about Vietnam, nor one about the darkness war brings out in those who fight it. It’s a movie about the darkness within us that makes war inevitable: the recurring catastrophe our species can’t stop venturing up river towards. It might always remain relevant for precisely this reason, suggests the man who risked everything to make it.

“It’s outrageous what we do to each other, what’s going on in the world,” sighs Coppola

Left from top: Willard (Martin Sheen) emerges; Robert Duvall as Kilgore; Holy Communion as the battle rages; Sheen and Coppola on set; Marlon Brando as Kurtz.

himself. “Human beings are the only species that can believe in fictions. Corporations. Religions. Nationalism. Terrible things have been done in the name of these fictions — and they’re still being done.”

•••

Empire’s conversation with Coppola, a rare extensive interview for the filmmaking legend, is taking place on a hot June morning in Bologna, Italy, in a hotel near the city’s Piazza Maggiore; tonight, thousands will congregate in the square for an open-air screening of a new version of Apocalypse Now, branded the ‘Final Cut’. The director is 80 now but still strapping and handsome, turning up today in a fashionable jacket-and-cravat combination. He’s gentler and more playful than you might expect, too, if you’ve heard the stories from the film’s famously disastrous shoot. While making his magnum opus, depression, pressure, power and money

turned Coppola into a Colonel Kurtz-like monster, or so the legend goes. His production became as chaotic and consumed by madness as the war he was there to depict, or so Hollywood lore would have you believe.

He’ll confirm which of the many outlandish rumours that have swirled around Apocalypse Now ever since are true, and which are false. But first, he wants to explain how elated he is that his film remains resonant. “Awards are voted for by people. Depending on who those people are, you win or lose. But the test of time is something that’s not controlled by anyone,” he smiles. “To me, the real judgement as to whether what you did was successful is if people are still watching it 20, 30, 40 years later.”

Its longevity might be because the film grapples with the same questions great art has always sought to answer. “When I made a movie, I always wanted to know what its theme was, in one word if I could,” he says. His acclaimed

Godfather

films, released prior

to Apocalypse Now and earning the Californian nine Oscars, were about succession. Apocalypse Now, arriving five years after his second chapter in the Corleone saga, dealt with morality. “There was one sentence in the script I always felt was the gist of the entire movie. Which was, and pardon the language: ‘We teach the boys to drop fire on people. Yet we won’t let them write the word “fuck” on an airplane because it’s obscene.’ This strange contradiction, that sometimes what we know is morally wrong can be turned around and made morally right in certain religious and nationalist contexts, is very troublesome.”

Themes such as succession and morality are everywhere in ancient stories, in Greek myths and Persian poetry: they’re timeless topics for dramatists, Coppola explains. “So if your movie deals with those sorts of essential themes, there’s a chance your movie might survive.”

Apocalypse Now has survived. But Coppola and his cast almost didn’t in the process of making it. Grab your surfboard: the director of one of the most celebrated films of its era wants to take you on a journey through its troubled creation, a production that endured typhoons, terror threats, tropical diseases and much more. “The film is a reflection of the circumstances of how it was made,” he says. “Would it have been the same end product if making it had been a smooth ride? No way. If it had been made in a sane, logical way, it’d have been a sane, logical movie. And war is an insane, illogical thing. Was then, and it is now.”

•••

In a parallel universe, Star Wars never happened. Instead, a young George Lucas went wading through landmine-littered fields on location in Vietnam, slap-bang in the middle of actual combat. This was the original plan for Apocalypse Now: a guerilla-style, 16mm adaptation of screenwriter John Milius’ script, loosely based on the novella Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Coppola had taken Lucas and Milius under his wing and into his inner circle: a filmmaking cabal named Zoetrope. Funnily enough, Warner Bros., the studio Coppola had pitched the script to, had some reservations about packing a cast and crew off to a literal war zone. Apocalypse Now was rejected, so Coppola put a pin in it. He made The Godfather, then The Conversation, then in 1974, The Godfather Part II This run of artful box-office hits made him a king of New Hollywood: an auteur with endless acclaim and ambition in his belly. His next project, he decided, would be Apocalypse Now Except it would no longer be a scrappy, band-on-the-run type movie. It was to be an epic unlike anything else that had been seen on screen before.

“I thought, ‘Hey, maybe I should do it as this big war picture,’” he remembers. “In those days, we were always trying to do a big picture that’d be successful, so that we’d have some money to do little pictures.” He had no real personal connection to the conflict that he wanted to exorcise, no friend or relative who went to ❯

Vietnam and never came back, whose death he’d hoped to process. “I can’t say I did it for any moralistic reason — it was just practical. No-one else was there. I owned the script, after Warner Bros. rejected it. So I just decided I’d do it myself.”

The film would be shot in the Philippines. But still, Coppola faced problems. Firstly: no-one wanted to finance it. The US military’s loss in Vietnam was still a raw topic that studios weren’t sure they wanted to touch. Coppola, in fact, got so frustrated at his inability to find funding that one night he threw all his Oscars out of a window, damaging them in a fit of fury. His mother ended up asking the Academy for replacements, making up a lie about a clumsy cleaner.

Problem number two was that no-one wanted to be in it. Production was to take six weeks. None of the stars Coppola approached wanted to spend that long in swamps and rice fields: not Steve McQueen, not Jack Nicholson, not Robert Redford or Tommy Lee Jones. “I offered Al Pacino any role he wanted, because I had no actors who would go. I was desperate. I said to both Al and Bobby De Niro they could play any part they wanted: ‘Take your pick!’”

Coppola decided to self-finance the picture, eventually persuading Harvey Keitel to play Captain Willard: a military man with demons of his own, sent to assassinate a colonel who’s seemingly gone insane, played by Marlon Brando. The first hiccup came when Coppola realised he had to fire Keitel soon into filming: he didn’t command the right darkness. Hours of footage were ruined, with scenes needing to be reshot and Willard recast. On most movie sets, this would constitute disaster. On Apocalypse Now, it ended up being a minor blip compared to the catastrophes to come.

“I was very distraught, very worried,” Coppola recalls of a shoot that plunged headlong into pandemonium. Cast and crew were struck down with tropical diseases. The Philippine army, who’d loaned the production helicopters and vehicles, kept stopping the shoot so they could tackle Communist insurgents hidden in the hills. At one point, the director was warned that the set may be attacked. The production was already millions over budget and weeks behind schedule when in May 1976 a typhoon wrecked their set, halting filming for two months. Brando turned up underprepared and overweight (“I didn’t know what kind of costume to put him in because you couldn’t have a military costume — they didn’t make them that big!” chuckles Coppola). And while shooting the scenes at Kurtz’s compound, police threatened to seize the crew’s passports after it transpired actual dead bodies were being used on set, supplied by a grave robber who sold cadavers to medical schools for autopsies. Coppola wasn’t aware at the time but says today: “Knowing the mentality of the prop department… that’s very possible.”

On 5 March 1977, a year after the film began shooting, star Martin Sheen, roped in to replace Keitel, suffered a heart attack. According to reports, this was the moment Coppola — whose family faced bankruptcy if Apocalypse Now was abandoned — imploded, suffering an epileptic

seizure as guilt and stress finally broke him. “That’s not quite true,” he clarifies. “I felt no responsibility. Martin was a big smoker. And also every morning he’d jog like five miles. Obviously that was bad for him, to be such a serious smoker and to be exerting himself in the morning like that. I was concerned that I was going to lose him because he was a wonderful person.”

Coppola found himself juggling his worry for his star with his need to keep things rolling: the banks he’d borrowed from, he feared, would pull the plug on his production if they heard Sheen was unwell. “What I told his wife was, ‘Let’s take him immediately to the best possible care, but just don’t take him out of the movie. I’ll keep shooting while you’re gone.’ And I did. I shot for the whole time he was gone with his brother. Eventually he did come back, thank God.”

It all sounds, well, apocalyptic. But Coppola’s official line is that it really wasn’t so bad. “It’s normal when a director is making a film [that] they’re in a state of fear. ‘I’m falling behind, I’m gonna get fired! This is the worst

Below from top: Willard’s boat arrives at Kurtz’s camp; Kilgore serenades the troops; Dennis Hopper and Coppola on set.

movie ever made!’ People are very self-doubting. All artists are. Even very acclaimed artists get frightened. It’s part of the work.” In Hearts Of Darkness, the 1991 ‘making of’ documentary that uses on-set footage shot by his wife Eleanor, he describes wanting to kill himself. Was that just talk, a fleeting moment of terror? He pauses. “I’ve never really felt close to suicidal thoughts,” he says. “I was scared because I knew I was getting into danger of financial ruin. [But] I figured, ‘Hey, I was born poor.’ The idea of being poor [again] wasn’t scary to me.” With each setback, Coppola picked himself back up. He had to finish Apocalypse Now. What other option was there?

•••

Somehow, against the odds, the movie came together. A new ending was written and filmed on the fly, replacing a big battle (“Willard decides to stand alongside Kurtz, and at the end they’re firing together. It didn’t work”). It had been an unspeakably painful shoot that Coppola still can’t quite believe he made it through; if they were making it today, he says, he’d use greenscreen. The film bowed at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where it won Coppola a second Palme d’Or, making him only the second director to win the award twice. Reviews were mixed at first but audiences kept coming back. Key scenes soon became ingrained in pop culture: the baptismal shot of Willard emerging from water, ready to carry out his murderous mission, for example, became one of the defining images of 1970s US cinema. “It’s supposed to show the human being emerging from the chaos to face this strange destiny,” says Coppola today. Robert Duvall’s line about “the smell of napalm in the morning” took on a life of its own, as did the film’s showpiece moment: a helicopter ambush in which the US military obliterates a village to the blaring din of ‘Ride Of The Valkyries’.

The story of that sequence sums up the entire chaotic nature of making Apocalypse Now “I didn’t know how to do it. But I had the confidence to trust that I’d learn how to do it while I’m there,” says Coppola. “It takes a lot of courage to not know what you’re doing and just go ahead on the assurance that you’ll figure it out. That’s the secret of life, really.”

In 2004, the year after US soldiers invaded Iraq, news footage showed troops going into battle using music to psych themselves up. The track, as they crashed through Fallujah front doors and reduced homes to rubble, was ‘Ride Of The Valkyries’. Art imitates life and life imitates art. Apocalypse Now retains a prominent place in our cinematic landscape because of moments like these: reminders that mankind’s capacity for madness remains intact. Apocalypse Now still captivates at 40, and Coppola hopes it will another four decades down the line. “Then we’ll see if it’s really stood the test of time,” he laughs. In other words — this isn’t the end. Not by a long shot.

2017’S KONG: SKULL ISLAND WAS DEVISED AS A LOVE LETTER TO COPPOLA’S MASTERPIECE. DIRECTOR JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS WRITES EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT HIS PASSION FOR THE FILM

Apocalypse Now belongs to an extremely rare echelon of films. This might seem odd, but to talk about it I need to evoke Chinatown It’ll make sense in a minute… If a filmmaker ever pitches you a character relationship that attempts to approximate the Möbius strip filled with obsession and madness embodied by Willard and Kurtz… trust me, when I say it won’t work. Likewise, if someone pitches a Jake Gittes-esque arc of a guy who makes it his business to not get involved, but he gets involved along the way it won’t work. These are films that are referenced frequently (by me included), but the reference is meaningless because they are singular entities that can never be recreated. The elements within cannot be transferred into another film because they only existed once. Few films can claim this potency, and Apocalypse Now hits you in a way that cannot be reproduced. The film is like a deep-tissue massage if you fight it, it’ll hurt. Instead you must relax and surrender to it.

So, with that being said Kong: Skull Island was my love letter to all things Coppola and Vietnam. I could never hope to recreate it, but I could loudly beat my chest and roar with adoration. I give full credit to [producers] Mary Parent, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni and Alex Garcia, who didn’t laugh when I pitched Ray Harryhausen-thrown-in-a-blender-withApocalypse Now. I never thought a studio would want to make it, but I’m glad they did.

The very first piece of concept art I had made for Skull Island was a collaboration with the great ‘Crash’ McCreery [concept art supremo]. This was the progenitor image seared into my brain that gave birth to my film. But it all started with ‘Hueys’ and napalm in the morning. Then somehow... it gave birth to this . Thank you, Francis Ford Coppola. You are my Kurtz.

FEATURING DRUGS, BOOZE AND FLAMING PUBES, SUNDANCE SMASH

ANIMALS IS THAT RARE THING: A DEBAUCHED ODE TO FEMALE FRIENDSHIP. ITS CAST AND CREATORS EXPLAIN HOW THIS YEAR’S INDIE CHARMER MADE IT TO THE BIG SCREEN

THE CHARACTERS OF ANIMALS

need no introduction,because you’ve met them before. In bars and on buses and at house parties where fag ends and beer bottles lie scattered across carpets. You’ve met them spilling out of clubs and into taxis, then again the next morning in the queue for self-check-out tills, bumper packs of paracetamol in basket. You might even be one yourself. There’s only one place you don’t run into them often: on cinema screens. “These are raw, imperfect modern women,” says Emma Jane Unsworth, who wrote the riotous new comingof-age drama, about two wine-demolishing Dubliners drifting through life in a blur of boys and booze. “You know those patriarchal arcs in movies where you’ve got this messy woman who decides to finally sort herself out, throw all the alcohol in her house away, stop having sex and start settling down? Urghhh!” she groans. “We wanted to mess that up. They present women as this thing that needs to be fixed, to be tamed. We wanted to do something different.”

So while the characters of Animals need no introduction, let’s do so anyway. Laura and Tyler are two witty, wisecracking BFFs living in a flat covered in clothes and Polaroids detailing past escapades. It’s a type of friendship that’s scarcely seen on film. “Female friendships are very under-represented. Quite often they’re secondary to the love story,” says Holliday Grainger, who plays Laura. “It’s the way they’re represented as well. In Animals, you see all the flaws in their friendship. The good, the bad and the ugly.”

Laura is a local gal, a coffee-shop barista who tells her family (and herself) she’s writing a novel, but has amassed a grand total of 10 pages in 10 years. “She always anticipated it just happening to her. Instead she’s discovering it won’t just fall into her lap,” explains director Sophie Hyde. “In her romantic life, meanwhile, she’s caught in this tug of war — between her desire for convention and a kind of political urge to reject that convention.”

Tyler, played by Alia Shawkat, meanwhile, is an American abroad who oozes glamour (brace yourself for an explosion of tweets declaring her various combinations of fur coats and cowboy boots “A GIANT MOOD” when the film arrives

this month). Tyler rebels against everything from parenthood to sanitary pads, and shakes hangovers off with a swish of her sunglasses. “If she had it her way, she’d avoid all that adulthood shit forever, and she and Laura would just party ’til they grew old and died,” laughs Shawkat. “Her biggest strength is her biggest weakness — she knows how to have fun, to enjoy the present, to see the magic of life outside of normalcy that a lot of people waste their lives on. But she probably leans a little too far into all that.”

This all changes when Laura meets Jim (Fra Fee), a straight-and-narrow pianist who inspires her to shake off her hedonistic habits — and cracks in her and Tyler’s friendship start to show. For years, they’ve pissed, puked and partied their way to oblivion every weekend. Now, as Laura and Tyler contend with their early thirties, they appear to be on different courses. “It comes with that time,” says Hyde. “We all have an expectation of what our lives will be at that age, the people we’ll become. In our twenties, we can be anything. Then suddenly you hit 30 and it’s like, ‘Oh — I’ve gotta choose.’ Choosing one path means giving up the option of others.

So you’re there staring into the void of all the things you no longer could be, all the lives you’ll never live. That’s terrifying.”

No-one ever prepares you for the types of crisis turning 30 can create, as a gulf opens up between the person you are and the person you feel under pressure to be. Animals drops you deep into that emotional warzone, Hyde’s camera wading through every debauched detail of Laura and Tyler’s attempts to escape it. Animals is the stench of cigarette ash, the smear of mascara, the slow, dreaded creep of morning light under curtains at a house party that should have ended hours ago. Close your eyes and you can almost taste on your tongue a Sambuca shot from long ago. It’s one of the year’s most poignant and laugh-out-loud dramas, buoyed by brilliant performances and a hilarious, heartfelt script that went down a storm at Sundance. Where did it come from, how did Absolutely Fabulous help inspire it, and just how exactly does one end up accidentally committing an act of arson on one’s own pubic hair? It’s a story that begins on the Manchester club scene, with a man named Chicken Sandwich.

UNSWORTH WAS IN

her late twenties when things began to change. “I was really aware that I was one of the remaining few from my friendship group who hadn’t settled down, who hadn’t found a partner, hadn’t established a career and wasn’t really thinking about those things,” she recalls on a warm Sunday afternoon from her Brighton home. She’d been living in Manchester, where she grew up, getting a taste for raves and recklessness that she clung on to, as her friends began having kids. “I was still partying and I felt really judged for all that. I knew I wanted to channel that feeling of judgement into something.”

So the writer and journalist began penning Animals, her second novel, released in 2014. It collected stories from her own experiences as a party person. “A lot of it is from wild nights out and wild nights out I’ve been told of. I’m a great stealer of anecdotes,” grins Unsworth. “Then I popped it into a great big soup that I twisted to make work for the story.”

Tyler was based on a friend at university called Alison Taylor. The spaced-out drug dealer Tyler and Laura meet early in the film who introduces himself as Chicken Sandwich was based on a real-life dealer with the same name (“It was one of the great joys of my life to make him a character in this. I love that there’s an actor now with Chicken Sandwich on his IMDb page”). The baptism by Beaujolais that occurs when a drunken Laura meets her baby niece and proceeds to accidentally splash wine in their face was based on an unfortunate

❯

Clockwise from far left: Holliday Grainger plays Laura; Alia Shawkat is her bestie, Tyler; Director Sophie Hyde on set; Laura has fun with her new man, Jim (Fra Fee).

incident at a music festival (that’s Ribena in the movie, by the way; no babies were inebriated in the making of this movie). The flashback in which Jean (Amy Molloy), Laura’s sister, gets naked, starts dancing on a bartop and manages to torch her genitals with a tealight also really happened. “It was a friend of mine! Yes, that was one rather crazy dinner party…”

What started off as “a story about two women, this comedy duo running around town drinking and being pretentious but hopefully also charming and hilarious as well, snowballed into something else: this ferocious thing about our bodies, social milestones and things like that,” says Unsworth. The result was the book Animals — a relatable read that prompted rave reviews, including one from writer Caitlin Moran describing it as “Withnail for girls”. When it was optioned for big-screen adaptation and turned into a screenplay by Unsworth herself, with acclaimed Australian filmmaker Hyde brought on to direct, the script brought back plenty of memories for Shawkat and Grainger, who were invited to read for the film’s tearaway leads.

“There’s definitely a part of me that was very alive in my early twenties that likes to hang out and have a drink, to get loose and see where the night goes. I think when I was younger, I interpreted the idea of boldness, how to be bold, as partying. Like, ‘Okay, let’s see how crazy we can get!’” says Shawkat. “I definitely pulled from that memory of a time when the night is endless,” says Shawkat, “which is something I liked about Tyler. For all her flaws, she has this poetic vision of anything being possible tonight, so why not chase it?”

This is usually where an actor recounts what drew them to the role. With Shawkat, there’s no need: the 30-year-old has spent her entire career

to date exploring adults who refuse to grow up (she’s best known for playing Maeby in cult sitcom Arrested Development) and intimate female friendships, in indie fare like Search Party and the drama Duck Butter, which she also co-wrote. The relationship at the fore of Animals and the freewheeling spirit of her Peter Pan partier — Tyler makes the schemers of Arrested Development look like a wizened group of investment bankers in comparison — made accepting the role a no-brainer.

“I was so excited. Exploring a close female relationship wasn’t particularly new to me, but the dynamic between those friends was new. When we did rehearsals, we talked a lot about how intense those friendships can be: almost like romantic relationships, just without the sex,” she explains. “They can get very interpersonal and confusing and manipulative.”

Grainger agrees. “As much as they’ll always have heartstrings attached to each other, they need to go and explore something for themselves,” says the 31-year-old. “You find yourself questioning as you get older, towards your thirties, is this person actually good for me?” adds Shawkat. “I know we have fun together and have a lot of memories, but I don’t know if this is who I want to be. And that was actually something I’ve been dealing with in my own life. I’ve had to ask myself the same question.”

“I wanted to crack open the myths that might be trapping me and other women like me, myths that have been allowed to enclose me, putting this pressure on,” Unsworth recalls of writing Animals. There’s a moment in the film where Tyler asks Jim, “What kind of person are you?”, thrown by Laura’s love interest’s smart shoes and sensible approach to the world. In Animals, just like in real life, everyone is secretly asking themselves the same question.

SHAWKAT HAS A

problem. “I CRAVE IT!” she exclaims, explaining how she’s been unable to quench her thirst for Guinness since returning to LA from the film’s shoot last year. She, Grainger and the crew “went a little bit Method actor” while making Animals. How are you supposed to capture the chaos of clubland Dublin without spending time in its bars? “We hit it hard on the weekends. We didn’t go quite to the extremes of Tyler and Laura but there were a few nights where we saw the sun come up,” she laughs.

Right: Tyler, not one to mince her words.

The novel had been set in Manchester, but its big screen adaptation takes place in Ireland.

“This was a funding issue,” says Unsworth, “a compromise we could make without losing the beating heart of the film.” Movies like Animals, about real, flawed women and their non-romantic relationships, don’t generally get made, because according to industry myth, they don’t tend to make money. As a result, the team behind the film had to search far and wide for financial backers. Eventually, enough cash was scraped together to make the film, from a variety of different benefactors, including Screen Australia, Screen Ireland, The South Australian Film Corporation and Creative England.

“I didn’t have enough experience of the whole being optioned process to know what I could expect,” says Unsworth. “Now I know it’s quite lucky to get a film like this to be made and for me to be offered the chance to write it, especially as I hadn’t written a screenplay before.”

To sweeten the deal for their Irish backers, a new setting for Laura and Tyler’s antics was decided upon: Dublin. At first, this gutted proud Manc Unsworth. “I really wanted it to be set

there, to be a love letter to my city.” It actually ended up sharpening some of the script’s themes. “Sex is a way of reminding myself I have a body,” Laura confides in the film. “In my twenties it was a way to forget. In my thirties it’s a way to remember.” In Ireland, women still battle to enjoy this kind of agency over their bodies: it wasn’t until this year that a near-total ban on abortion was lifted in the country. The battle for women’s rights over their own bodies didn’t end there: some hospitals have refused to carry out certain terminations, as the country struggles to balance its religious foundations with the right for women to have control over their own reproductive systems. An hour’s drive away, in Northern Ireland, abortion is still illegal (in almost every circumstance): more than 1,000 Northern Irish women travelled to the UK last year to have terminations, while a 21-year-old woman was recently given a three-month suspended prison sentence for buying abortion pills online.

“It’s a film about women’s bodies,” says Unsworth. “What they feel like they should stop doing with their bodies at a certain age, and what

they should start doing with their bodies at a certain age. So yeah, that definitely felt... intensified.” And anyways, Dubliners and Mancunians are very similar, says Grainger, a fellow Mancunian (though you’d hardly believe it from her impressive Dublin accent in Animals). “As cities they’ve both got very strong literary and musical histories,” she reasons. “There’s a pride and a no-nonsense attitude its people have.”

Once assembled in Ireland, Hyde, her cast and crew began putting together a movie inspired by serious cult classics. “Withnail And I was a big influence, just in terms of the characters but also visually,” says the director, who learned a thing or two about intimate portraits of characters striving for change making her debut feature, 52 Tuesdays, about a parent undergoing gender reassignment. “Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, and Lost In Translation were touchstones too. We were looking for films that elevated Animals out of broad comedy but still had a comic feeling. We even took a little bit of Absolutely Fabulous Gotta love Ab Fab!”

The finished product is a drama not a million miles from two other empowering tales of women coming into their own: 2019 critical smashes Eighth Grade and Booksmart. “Most people think of coming of age at 16 or 17. But this is just another type of coming of age, into adulthood,” Hyde explains.

You may not have seen characters like Laura and Tyler on your screens much before, but after Animals, that may be about to change. “You want faces that feel real, bodies that aren’t pretty and perfect,” says the director. “To me, there’s such beauty in watching people like this, and like us, expressing their flaws. In broad comedies you have a lot of girls-gone-wild sort of stuff, but not where they’re real characters trying to figure life out.” Animals’ cast and creators want to inspire more stories like it, putting more riveting, riotous tales of female friendships in front of audiences. That’s change everyone should raise a glass to. Just be careful not to spill it on any newborns.

Left and below: Jim’s arrival shifts the balance of the girls’ relationship. Will they falter?

THE FIRST SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER JAWS WAS FAMOUSLY BUT JAWS 2 MADE IT LOOK LIKE A DAY AT THE BEACH

A HELLISH MOVIE TO MAKE.

It took a few moments before Jeannot Szwarc realised he was throttling the star of his movie. The 39-year-old FrenchPolish director of Jaws 2 had agreed to an emergency meeting with Roy Scheider, producer David Brown and Universal Studios production executive Verna Fields (who had edited the first Jaws). It was intended to clear the air between Szwarc and Scheider. Just over two months into a testing, mostly water-based shoot at a remote location on the Florida Panhandle, tension between the two was at breaking point.

Scheider, who’d reluctantly returned to the role of Amity Island police chief Martin Brody as a contractual obligation, contended that Szwarc’s attention was unduly absorbed by the shark a second great white now stalking Amity’s waters. Szwarc, an emergency hire after Jaws 2’s first director was fired, emphasised that he needed to focus on the mechanical shark, which remained just as cumbersome and prone to malfunction as it had on the first film. Eventually Szwarc snapped. “Look, I gotta get this picture done,” he spat, “and I don’t wanna spend all my time worrying about your ego.”

That was when Scheider swung at him.

“I don’t know what happened,” Szwarc recalls, laughing, almost 42 years later, “but suddenly he’s on the floor on his back and I have my hands around his neck. David and Verna are yelling, ‘Jeannot, stop it! You’re gonna ruin your career!’”

Szwarc’s career survived the assault. But shooting Jaws 2 would test him, and everyone involved, to their limits. As Szwarc puts it, “It was a war.”

After the travails suffered by Spielberg and his crew during an arduous five-and-a-half-month New England shoot in 1974, and despite costing more than twice its original $4 million budget, Jaws was a phenomenal success. It was, at the time, the highest-grossing feature film in cinema history. Though sequels were not yet the studios’ instinctive response to success, and were then justifiably seen as an exercise in diminishing returns, Jaws was too big to ignore. Within weeks of its release, its producers, Richard Zanuck and David Brown, decided they’d be fools not to take a second bite at the box office.

But Spielberg wanted nothing to do with it. He was already deep into Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Besides, says Carl Gottlieb, co-screenwriter of Jaws and rewriter of Jaws 2, “There was no honour in doing a sequel.”

Zanuck and Brown’s initial choice for the filmmaker to step into Spielberg’s deck shoes remains, to this day, mystifying. John D. Hancock had a moderate success with Robert De Niro baseball drama Bang The Drum Slowly, but it hardly suggested he’d be able to handle a sea-based spectacle like Jaws 2

“I really have no idea why they chose him,” admits Joe Alves, who’d served as production designer on Jaws and returned in that role,

with the additional responsibilities of associate producer and second unit director, for the sequel. “John hadn’t done any action movies. It was an interesting choice.”

At the insistence of Universal studio boss Sid Sheinberg, Jaws 2 was to be a “kids in jeopardy” story. Set four years later, it would see the arrival of a second giant great white in Amity’s summer waters, stalking and gnashing a gang of seaborne teenagers, including Brody’s children. Hancock’s Amity was on the skids, a town that had never recovered from the ’75 shark attacks: a “haunted, darker, moodier” place, as Hancock described it.

The shoot kicked off in early June 1977, back in the Edgartown district of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, which had doubled for Amity in the first film. Few of its residents were pleased; “Universal Go Home” and “Jaws Bites” T-shirts were a common sight on Edgartown’s streets. Still, the plan was not to stay long; Alves was keen to avoid the problem of passing boat traffic, which had plagued the first Jaws, and resolved to move the production to the Gulf of Mexico’s more quiet and temperate waters for all the shark-and-boat action.

The 24-strong special-effects team, under the supervision of Jaws veteran Bob Mattey, set up their ‘Shark City’ workshop in the remote Florida town of Navarre Beach. But back in Edgartown, Hancock was struggling. One day, while shooting a scene with some of the

Above: A whale mauled by the new shark. Yikes!

Right: Roy Scheider returns as Amity police chief Martin Brody.

Below: Director Jeannot Szwarc looks through the lens.

kids on the dock, he announced to Alves he was wrapping at 3pm. “Jesus, John, we got another four hours of daylight,” Alves told him. “What’s the problem?” Hancock was having trouble, he said, “getting the kids lined up and started.” Alves thought, “Jeez, if this is a problem, wait ’til we get to the boats. And the shark.” A few days later, during a trip down to Florida, Alves heard the news: the studio had fired Hancock.

“When the dailies started to come in, the studio was aghast,” explains Gottlieb. They were shocked by all the technical flaws. One of the shots was framed so badly it cut one actor

off at the neck during their dialogue. And they despised Hancock’s drab, downbeat vision. This was not the big, summer entertainment they craved. Gottlieb recalls Sid Sheinberg grumbling that, “It’s like having people over to your house and serving them a lovely fish dinner, then asking them to come back and giving them hamburger.”

Only 18 days into production, with $2 million already spent on a mechanical shark that hadn’t even yet been filmed, the biggest sequel ever made suddenly shut down.

For two weeks the production teetered on a cliff’s edge. If the film was to survive, the studio needed someone who would work fast, who ideally would keep Hancock’s crew, and who wasn’t big enough to make demands. Alves found the solution.

“I had worked with a lot of young directors on Rod Serling’s television series Night Gallery, including Steven Spielberg and John Badham,” he says. “There was one I really liked: Jeannot Szwarc. He had directed most of them. He was very clever, we had a good relationship, and he had a movie out called Bug [a horror about mutant, fire-starting cockroaches], so I suggested him.”

Szwarc wasn’t impressed with what Universal proposed he work with. The script, he says, “needed work,” while Hancock’s footage was “absolutely the worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life.” (In the end, only two second-unit shots were used.) But, he tells Empire, “I was young. Also, I knew it was gonna be big. If I pulled it off, it would be good for my career.” So he agreed and plunged straight in, with little over a week to prep.

Gottlieb was parachuted in, too, to extensively rework the script, written by Howard Sackler (who’d devised Quint’s USS Indianapolis monologue for

Jaws) and rewritten by Hancock’s wife, Dorothy Tristan. It was now early August. While Gottlieb was holed up at the Navarre Beach Holiday Inn, working desperately to “put the script together in some shootable form in the time allotted”, Szwarc and Alves got out on the water and cracked on with the action.

Having reasoned that holding back on revealing the shark would feel too much like Spielberg déjà vu, Szwarc resolved to show as much fish-flesh as possible. “I didn’t have Richard Dreyfuss [who refused to be involved without Spielberg]. I didn’t have Robert Shaw. And I didn’t think people were really too excited about Roy Scheider,” says Szwarc. “So I wanted to do stuff with the shark that has never been done before.’”

For some scenes he placed a cameraman on the shark’s back, sitting in a saddle with a hand-held camera, to pull off ‘fin’s-eye view’ shots. He also insisted that the ‘sled shark’, which was towed into frame by a boat, be rigged to open and close its mouth. This allowed him to pull off the film’s most impressive moment, when the beast narrowly misses making a snack of Brody’s eldest son (Mark Gruner) as he’s heaved into a boat.

But conditions were merciless and the going was slow. It took hours to reset if the sled shark missed its mark, which it often did, usually before sinking to the seabed. The scene where the shark attacks a helicopter took Alves three gruelling days. “The first day the helicopter flipped over and broke the propellers. The next day the shark missed the helicopter and attacked a camera boat. The third day, I finally got the shark to attack the helicopter.”

There were some near misses, too. “Working with the shark was mostly incredibly boring, because it would take forever to do anything,” says Keith Gordon. At 16 years old, he was

Left: A close-up of the burn scars that set the great white apart from Jaws’ Bruce — and made it even angrier.

one of the youngest cast members, on his first-ever movie in the role of class clown Doug, one of the 17 teenagers terrorised by the great white during the final act. “But there were times when it was incredibly scary.”

Such as the experience of shooting the scene where Doug’s boat is capsized. “There weren’t a lot of safety people around and we were out in the middle of nowhere,” Gordon says. “The sled shark would hit my boat at 40 kilometeres per hour, and I got knocked into the water a bunch of times. One time, my foot got caught in the cables that were pulling the shark. I managed to get loose, but it was scary. Looking back, it was probably way more dangerous than would be allowed these days.”

While none of the cast were seriously hurt, there were injuries among the crew.

First assistant director Scott Maitland was hospitalised after an ocean swell caused him to fall back in a boat and damage his spine.

One of Bob Mattey’s special-effects crew fractured three ribs while tussling with heavy sharkmachinery out on the sea. And four divers were stung by jellyfish.

The days were long and the shoot dragged on. So long, in fact, that to have any chance of completing principal photography by Christmas, Szwarc had to implore his cast and crew to work for 22 days straight without a break. Though he at least ensured that every Saturday would end with a big cast-and-crew booze-up on Universal’s dollar.

It was very hard work,” the director says, “but the ambience was very good.” His young cast coped admirably, too, buoyed by the fact that they were far from home and having a bit of an adventure. “It was kind of like being on [castaway TV show] Survivor,” laughs Gordon. “It was pretty cool.” The only main player who openly expressed their vexation was Scheider. “Yes, my main actor was a little bit of a pain in the neck,” sighs Szwarc. “Roy didn’t want to do the picture, but the studio had him by the balls. He was a great actor, but not a very nice man.”

During the shooting of an opening gala at the Holiday Inn, Scheider berated Szwarc

in front of the crew and 200 extras, dismissing him as “a television director”. He sent memos to the studio accusing Szwarc of neglecting him, and wrote Szwarc a letter which stated: “Working for Jeannot Szwarc is knowing he will never say sorry or ever admitting [sic] he overlooked something. Well, enough of that shit for me!”

When he wasn’t shooting, Scheider focused on improving his tan, which presented another problem for the production. “Scheider was a fanatic sunbather,” says Gottlieb. “Every moment we were outdoors, he’d be there with a reflector and baby oil. It was his only pleasure. We were getting notes from the lab saying, ‘Can you put him in the shade? Because he’s getting darker and darker as the movie shoots.’” The star was repeatedly asked to desist his flagrant ray-catching. But, as Alves recalls, “He didn’t listen to anybody. He just ignored us.”

It was unsurprising, especially given the pressures of the shoot, that Scheider and his director would come to blows at that fateful meeting. After Verna Fields pulled the two men apart, Szwarc remembers them all melting into hysterical laughter. The tension, it seemed, was relieved. A pact was made to keep what had happened strictly between them. “Now this will give you an insight into Roy Scheider,” Szwarc fumes. “The next day I show up on the set and my camera operator goes, ‘Oh, here’s The Strangler!’ Roy told everybody! He said he let

Above: Definitely going to need a bigger boat.

Right: Brody on the prowl. Above right: Teenagers on the menu: Lucy (Cindy Grover) and Patrick (Ben Marley).

me throw him on the ground. That was what was important to him. I mean, don’t get me started…”

Even so, Szwarc admits, “after that it was fine. We started working together and I got good work from him. One night we were at the hotel and there was a prize fight on the television. Roy was sitting next to me at the bar and he leaned over and said, ‘I thought our fight was better than this one.’”

The battle to make Jaws 2 lasted for 10 months, taking in the shutdown and five weeks of post-production photography, which took place in early 1978. It wound up costing Universal $30 million — almost four times the cost of Jaws. “It was tough, it was a nightmare, and I think we were all happy to go home when it was finished,” says Szwarc. Yet, he insists, “most of my memories are good ones — well, except for dealing with Roy. We did it. Don’t ask me how we did it. It was unbelievable.”

While nobody — including its creators — would argue that Jaws 2 matched Spielberg’s original, the movie made $208 million worldwide, becoming the biggest sequel ever made — until Rocky II came along the next year.

“I think it’s a very good sequel,” says Szwarc. “It delivered. People liked it.” Gottlieb fondly remembers standing outside a theatre where it screened and seeing an excited child come out, run up to some friends standing in line for the next show and saying, “Oh man, Jaws ate a helicopter!”

“I said earlier there’s no honour in doing

a sequel,” he adds. “But if you get it right, and I kind of think we did with Jaws 2, there’s no dishonour in it, either.”

As wild as it had been, the production hardly hurt its participants’ career prospects. A few years later, Gottlieb would return to script Jaws 3-D, which Alves would direct, while Gordon would go on to become a director himself, making acclaimed World War II movie A Midnight Clear in 1992, and more recently working on TV shows such as Better Call Saul and Fargo. “Jaws 2 was huge for me,” he says. “It was my film school.”

Szwarc, meanwhile, earned kudos for pulling it all off. While he would never match Spielberg’s post-shark-wrangling success, he returned to crowd-pleasing spectacle with Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie. When we speak, the 81-year-old has only just decided to retire after decades of TV work, and is in the midst of packing up his Beverly Hills home to return to his homeland of France.

As for Roy Scheider, who died in 2008, he arguably did better than any of them. After all, he never had to make another Jaws

SHARK’S TALE THE GREAT WHITE’S TIMELINE, POST- JAWS 2

1979 1941

Spielberg might have refused to do Jaws 2, but he was happy to go back in the water to spoof himself during the opening of his World War II comedy flop, when a skinny-dipping swimmer (Jaws victim Susan Backlinie) falls afoul of a Japanese submarine — all to the iconic John Williams theme.

1983 JAWS 3-D

Sadly, all of Joe Alves’ shark-based experience didn’t make the second Jaws sequel — to this day Alves’ sole directing credit — a success. The SeaWorld Orlando setting made the shoot more bearable, but a low budget and a penny-pinching producer (Alan Landsburg) meant there was little substance to match the 3D novelty.

1987

JAWS: THE REVENGE

The nadir of the franchise. In this deservedly ridiculed stinker, Lorraine Gary returned as Ellen Brody, for some reason stalked all the way to the Bahamas by a vengeful great white. After all, wrote critic Roger Ebert, “What shark wouldn’t want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it?”

2006 JAWS UNLEASHED

Thirty years after the events of Jaws, another great white arrives in Amity… played by you

This oddly successful video game not only had a nonsensical title (the shark isn’t called Jaws and was never leashed to begin with), but was also glitchy as hell.

2015 JAWS 19

In the not-too-distant future of four years ago, Steven Spielberg’s son, Max, directed this holofilm sequel in which a shark attacks an underwater city, and which came with the tagline, “This time it’s Really Really Personal.”

(As seen in Back To The Future Part II.)

Left: Jean Coulter as ‘Ski Boat Driver’. Although not named, the character crucially burns the shark’s face, giving it its distinctive scars.

Above: Producer David Brown with Szwarc. Below: Scheider and returning screenwriter Carl Gottlieb.

EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT

Songs in the key of life

Star JESSIE BUCKLEY guides us through the top tunes of this year’s Brit musical drama, Wild Rose

THERE ARE MANY THINGS Jessie Buckley could reasonably have expected to be doing this winter. Shooting a film, perhaps. Going on holiday, possibly. Sitting at home watching Wimbledon and the World Cup, for another.

Going on tour, not so much. Yet that’s exactly what Buckley is about to do when she rings Empire late one June afternoon. She’s fixing to head off on a mini-jaunt around Scotland and Ireland with her band, singing songs from Wild Rose, the film which confirms that Buckley is an astonishing, dynamite talent. “I’m so excited to be on a tour bus,” she laughs. “And so are all the band. We’ve got little bunk beds. It’s a nice way to round up a good old journey.”

It’s a journey that began when she signed on to Wild Rose, attracted by the lead role of Rose-Lynn Harlan, a Glaswegian single mother who, upon release from a brief stint in prison, eventually manages to turn her obsession with, and talent for, country music into the thing that might just turn her life around. Buckley has always been a singer she came second in the BBC’s Oliver!-themed talent show, I’d Do Anything, when she was 18 but has chosen to focus on acting of late, in the likes of Beast and Chernobyl But Wild Rose gives her the chance to show off her incredible voice across a series of songs. Including one written by Mary Steenburgen. Here, Buckley talks us through the pick of the bunch.

COUNTRY GIRL

The film’s opening track, this cover version of the Primal Scream song sums up Rose-Lynn’s attitude towards life upon her early parole, as she focuses on music to the exception of her relationship with her mother (Julie Walters) and her children; the lyrics also dispensing some sound advice. “It’s a brilliant story,” says Buckley. “You go to a lot of different places in your head when you sing it, it’s about trying to clasp redemption while also sticking two fingers up to redemption and getting on with your life.” Which is a very Rose-Lynn Harlan thing to do. The film’s writer, Nicole Taylor, specified many of the songs in her screenplay, but Country Girl was a fairly

Here: Jessie Buckley as troubled ex-con Rose-Lynn, who dreams of conquering Nashville. Right: With mum Marion (Julie Walters) and kids Lyle (Adam Mitchell) and Wynonna (Daisy Littlefield).

late addition. “That wasn’t in the script at all,” says Buckley. “It was ‘Country Roads’ [the John Denver song], which would have been a very different feeling for the top of the film. I can’t imagine any other song for the beginning of the film now.”

OUTLAW STATE OF MIND

Another fairly early song, this sees Rose-Lynn fresh out of prison and immediately determined to return to singing gatecrash a set at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry and, having kicked the contracted singer off stage, tear into a version of the Chris Stapleton hit. “It’s a song written for people who are tempted to be outlaws,” says Buckley. “It’s a dark song, it’s got depth and darkness and such attitude.” Unlike ‘Country Girl’, which was entirely pre-recorded, this was filmed live in front of a group of raucous extras. “That was so much fun,” recalls Buckley.

“I remember the first take, we were shooting handheld and nobody really knew what was going to happen.” What happened was that Buckley, not to put too fine a point on it, went for it. “Rose-Lynn, I blame her, because she set the room on fire,” she laughs. “After the take finished, the focus puller was just sweating. It just exploded. I was doing The Worm on the floor, jumping up and down on the stage, and nearly popping my shoulder out. It was so much fun. Then I had to do it 12 more times, just like that.”

I’M MOVING ON

Having taken a job as Sophie Okonedo’s (Susannah) cleaner, Rose-Lynn finds herself lost in a reverie whilst running a vacuum cleaner around the house. Headphones on, she starts belting out a raucous version of Hank Snow’s 1950s standard. In a little touch of magical realism, Harper studs members of the band around her as she shakes and vacs. “We actually went back and reshot that scene,” reveals Buckley. “I think it came to Tom [Harper, director] while we were filming, to have these band members be part of what’s happening inside her mind, and to pop up while she’s in her reverie.” Let the record show that Buckley actually was listening to herself, piped into the cans. “It was just great fun,” she says. “I just acted the maggot, really, for two full days of singing.”

PEACE IN THIS HOUSE

After Susannah (Okonedo) discovers that not only can Rose-Lynn sing, but she can sing, she urges her to record an audition video on the family computer. This opens doors that lead to a chat with the legendary Bob Harris in London, and a trip to Nashville, but for now this is the film’s most intimate moment. Just Buckley, singing Wynonna Judd’s soft country

Below: Rose-Lynn performs ‘Glasgow (No Place Like Home)’; About to be released from prison; Falling into friendship/ mentorship with employer Susannah (Sophie Okonedo).

ballad, a cappella. “It’s probably the first time that Rose-Lynn has ever really done something like that, and exposed herself like that,” says Buckley. “As an actress, with all these songs it’s about what Rose-Lynn can’t say in her real life, but finds a way to focus on in what she sings. In my head, she was talking to her kids, and that’s the dream version of what life might look like for her.” Buckley has sung on stage, and in front of millions on TV, but this was a new experience for her. “It was a bit more scary and vulnerable, I suppose,” she admits. “And it’s scary for Rose-Lynn, to let herself be seen. She’s putting herself out there for the first time in that moment.”

WHEN I REACH THE PLACE I’M GOING

Another a cappella version now, in the film’s truly showstopping moment. On a trip to Nashville, ostensibly to try to get her foot in the door of the country music scene, Rose-Lynn joins a tour of the legendary Grand Ole Opry (slightly more roomy than the Glasgow version), drifts away from the main group, and discovers

an empty stage. With an unguarded microphone. So, she sidles up to it and, tentatively at first, delivers a powerful rendition of Judd’s 1992 ballad. A rendition so powerful, in fact, that it entices some nearby band members to accompany her. It’s a pindrop needle-drop moment, and is perhaps lent extra poignancy by the fact that Buckley was actually performing the song on the genuine Grand Ole Opry stage. “You’re standing in the spot of ghosts,” says Buckley, who admits that country wasn’t her bag before she signed on. That’s changed somewhat. “Legends and myths have been made in that space, where Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris and Towne Van Zandt, and these heroes of country and singing and storytelling have stood. It’s an amazing space. It feels like a church. The floors are filled with scars of things that have happened in the past.” Buckley interprets the song, which was specified in the script, as a “journeying song. There’s always a dusty road, or a character on a journey, looking for something.” And it’s here, at this moment, that Rose-Lynn finds that something. Which leads to…

GLASGOW (NO PLACE LIKE HOME)

The film’s denouement, which takes place a year after Rose-Lynn leaves Nashville post-haste, and heads home to get her life on the straight and narrow. Which leads her to Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry, where she, happier, fulfilled, surrounded by her family, performs ‘Glasgow (No Place Like Home)’. In the film, it’s meant to be a Rose-Lynn original, but it was actually co-written by, of all people, Mary Steenburgen. Yes, that Mary Steenburgen. Who, it turns out, has become a prolific songwriter since 2007. “Before we started filming, they were looking for an original song,” says Buckley. “They sent out a brief, and Mary Steenburgen got that brief, but asked if she could read the script. And she and Kate York and Caitlyn Smith just sent this song in. The minute we all heard it we were like, ‘That’s the one.’” The film ends on a high, with another Rose-Lynn live performance, but one that’s in complete contrast to the unfettered chaos of ‘Outlaw State Of Mind’. “We must have done nearly 30 takes of that song, but I never lost my voice and I didn’t feel tired until the end,” says Buckley. “I was so full of what everybody was giving. It’s not just Rose-Lynn’s moment, it’s her and her relationship with her mum, with the people of Glasgow, and her kids. All of that coming together was like a swelling feeling, where you just let go.”

IF HARPER AND his producers had been able to hold on a little longer, there’s a strong chance that Buckley might have written the film’s final song herself. Because, while most of the songs we see Rose-Lynn play are covers, some original Buckley co-compositions did make their way into the film, and onto the movie’s soundtrack. But they only popped into being once the film had wrapped. “That happened by accident, really,” she says.

“We’d all lived with this character, and I was just messing around one day [in the studio], and one of the producers in Universal said, ‘Have you ever written?’ I’d written some lyrics and odd tunes in my head, but never really told anybody about them.” A few days later, Buckley had co-written enough songs for a solid EP, including ‘Alright To Be All Wrong (The Dreamer’s Song)’ and ‘Cigarette Row’. “It was an extra layer of narrative,” adds Buckley. “We would go around to Nicole Taylor’s house and it just poured out of us.” Oliver!’s loss is our gain.

CHRIS HEWITT

ALLSTAR, CAPITAL PICTURES

Clockwise from main: A frosty reception from Marion when Rose-Lynn returns from her spell inside; Mother’s pride, with the grandkids; Finding herself on the same stage as her C&W heroes.

Shine on

As Duncan Jones’ MOON clocks up a decade, here are 10 things you should know about his debut movie

“IT’S SCARY,” SAYS Duncan Jones. “I’ve been making movies long enough that I’m celebrating the tenth anniversary of something.” That something being Moon, Jones’ 2009 debut, a lo-fi sci-fi which focuses upon Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a lunar technician ploughing a lonely furrow 380,000 kilometres from home. Until things change when he discovers that he’s actually a clone, part of a long line of clones, and — along with a new version of himself — starts planning a way out. Moon stood out for its spare atmosphere, its stunning Rockwell performance(s) and Jones’ eye for detail, but over the last 10 years it’s become a modern classic. The director took time out from prepping new movie Rogue Trooper to tell us 10 things about his first film.

1 It wasn’t meant to be his first film

In the beginning, there was Mute. That futuristic tale of a mute bartender was Jones’ first love, and he’d persuaded Sam Rockwell to come on board. When that didn’t come together, Jones and Rockwell still wanted to work together, so,

“I went away and wrote Moon,” says Jones. “Sam and I both wanted to do a science-fiction film together, and something with a blue-collar working man at the heart of it.”

2

came from an unlikely source

It

Jones set the movie on the moon for a couple of reasons. “At the time, I was in a relationship with a girl from Korea who’d moved back there, and we were trying to maintain a long-distance relationship,” he says. “And I’d spent three years at graduate school in Nashville, and that sense of isolation I channelled into being on the far side of the moon.”

3 It gave Rockwell the roles of a lifetime

The idea of having multiple Rockwells came from Jones’ desire to put together a package that would appeal to him as an actor. “It was also interesting to me on a philosophical level. I have changed dramatically over the years. What was I like when I was 16? Massively different to how I was when I was 30. And I know not all of those guys would get along, for sure.”

4 It was very nearly Paddy Considine

Had Rockwell not worked out, Jones is adamant the movie would still have happened. He had an ace up his sleeve called Paddy Considine. “I would have used Paddy in a heartbeat,” he says. “There’s something about both of those guys that’s raw, truthful and open-hearted. It’s what this character needed.”

5 It was originally a straight-to-DVD relea Chances are, had the mov launched on DVD, as was plan, Jones’ career would gone in a different directio Everything changed at th Sundance Film Festival in in 2009. “There’s a place c the Eccles Theater in Park City where the film had it premiere,” says Jones, “an it was at that point Sony Classics got involved and said, ‘This film deserves a cinematic release.’”

Above: Lost in space lunar technician Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) comes unstuck in Moon

Below: Director Duncan Jones.

Below left: Sam heads back to Earth if only it were that simple.

6 It inspired his Twitter handle

If you want to follow Jones on Twitter, you can find him as @ManMadeMoon. Even his Twitter handle is a perpetual reminder of his debut. “At the time, I was the man who made Moon,” he laughs. “And I shall remain @ManMadeMoon as long as this crazy social media platform remains online.”

a boo g

Through is awake blares ou

One And the lev to the time arou film no al J g

7 It gave Chesney Hawkes ost hout the movie, Sam ned by an alarm that ut Chesney Hawkes’ The d Only. It’s an example of vel of detail Jones applied e movie. It’s a joke first around; second time und, an ironic clue to the m’s reveal, that Sam is ot the one and only. “It lways felt perfect,” says ones. “It was such a great subtextual frustration for Sam Bell

to be hearing that all the time.” Jones has since used it in all his films. “It became this thing where I have to use it all the time,” he adds. “The one that’s going to be fun is if we can work it into Rogue Trooper.”

8

It reused bits of RedDwarf

Much of Moon was made practically, on a budget of just $5 million, which meant recycling tiny scale models that Jones’ crew team found at their Shepperton base. “We needed model miniatures as we went along,” he recalls. “‘Oh my God, we don’t have a return shuttle for the outside of the base!’ So a lot of the materials were old Red Dwarf spaceships and bits and pieces that they would scavenge.” Somewhat apt, of course — Moon shares quite a bit of DNA with Red Dwarf. Except for the talking cat.

9

Its first day was a reunion of sorts

Rockwell isn’t the only actor glimpsed in Moon. At one point, a video message from Earth shows characters played by Benedict Wong and Matt Berry. “Benny and Matt were old drinking buddies,” says Jones. “We shot that first because the film sets were still being built, and we needed to have it playing when we shot the later scene with Sam.”

10

It’s connected to Mute

If you’re eagle-eyed, you’ll spot Rockwell in Mute, reprising his role as Sam Bell, now back on Earth and fighting the good fight, along with over a hundred of his fellow clones. Don’t expect a third film in the series where Sam teams up with Mute’s Leo (Alexander Skarsgård), though. “It’s more like Three Colours Red, White, and Blue,” says Jones. “It’s a connected universe as an anthology more than anything else. If I do get to make the third piece, people will see how they connect in a much more subtextual way.” Look out, Marvel. Here comes the DJCU: the Duncan Jones Cinematic Universe. CHRIS HEWITT

LAST MANN STANDING

I think I saw it as a kid in the basement of a church, which must have been in the late Forties. It’s funny, this thing had just always been on my mind. So that’s where it came from. It’s always been there.

So is your film an adaptation of Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel The Last Of The Mohicans: A Narrative Of 1757 or a remake of George B. Seitz’s 1936 film adaptation?

I used a lot of different sources. The novel’s not any good. A really great document was the screenplay for the 1936 movie by Philip Dunne. I made sure it got a screen credit in my film. It was a very good screenplay. The film itself doesn’t live up to the screenplay. That in a way became the spine in advance for what I did.

BY 1992, HEAT auteur Michael Mann had made a name for himself with a series of visually stylish contemporary crime thrillers steeped in the legacy of Michelangelo Antonioni, Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Pierre Melville. Thief, Manhunter and L.A. Takedown traded the emotion drenched tropes of the genre with a cold, procedural reality punctuated by shocking moments of visceral brutality. Not only that, he had changed the face, and the pastel-shaded sartorial stylings, of the TV buddy cop series as executive producer on Miami Vice And then he turned his attention to the period drama – albeit an action-packed period drama. Not that he was a stranger to historical storytelling. Mann’s expressionistic 1983 adaptation of F. Paul Wilson’s novel The Keep, his self-proclaimed “World War II fairy tale,” had already seen him travel back to war torn Romania, but with The Last Of The Mohicans, the director found a story perfectly suited to his widescreen cinematic vision. Mohicans was also an introduction to Daniel Day-Lewis, then an arthouse darling after bravura performances in films like Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot and Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, to blockbuster land.

With the release of both the theatrical and director’s cut of Mohicans on Blu-ray, Empire spoke to Mann about his epic tale of a romance caught in the crossfire of one of the most savage military conflicts in US history.

What inspired you to make The Last Of The Mohicans?

In 1990 I had just finished doing Miami Vice and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. I had been thinking back to when I was three or four and my memories of the original The Last Of The Mohicans movie.

What were the challenges working on a production of that scale shot in remote locations? It was a challenge and that’s the thrill. It was a huge production. We built a replica of Fort William Henry! The fort was real on three or four sides. All the interiors were real interiors. It was a real fort! Compared with looking at a green screen and seeing a piece of tape and telling the actor, “See that piece of tape? That’s not a piece of tape, it’s Fort William Henry!” [Laughs] I’d rather build the real thing!

How was working with Daniel Day-Lewis?

He was great. We became lifelong friends. He had the same ambitions that I had to just get it right. He thought I was just crazy for wanting him to do it. I remember walking in London in the middle of the night talking about this. It wasn’t the complexity of the character he was questioning, it was the physicality. But then he started training. For about eight months. Then when he came over to the States to learn survival skills, he could do everything that Hawkeye does, which is to say he could do everything that Daniel Boone was able to do.

Do you recall a favourite memory filming in the mountains of North Carolina?

I have many. All of it! There’s not just one favourite part, but directorial vanity achieved an apex with one crane shot that was insane. We started on a French cannon firing, then a Steadicam walked onto a crane that lifted up and you saw the whole of the battlefield and everything was happening all at once. I was able to call on a radio and tell which gun or cannon to fire or which group should attack the fort. It was one of those things, after several takes, I already had the shot but it was so exciting I did a few more takes anyway [Laughs].

DAVID MICHAEL BROWN THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS ULTIMATE EDITION AND DEFINITIVE DIRECTOR’S CUT ARE OUT NOW ON BLU-RAY.

LEGENDARY DIRECTOR MICHAEL MANN TALKS ABOUT

THE MAKING OF HIS HISTORICAL EPIC THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS

THE VIEWING GUIDE

A deep dive into the must-see moments from the month’s big release

Capernaum

PUTTING AN ENTIRE film on the shoulders of a small child is always an immense gamble. It’s one that really paid off in Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum, the story of a young boy living in the slums of Beirut, who tries to sue his parents for bringing him into a world that offered him no shot at a good life. Labaki tells us how she created her Oscar-winning hit and how she drew one of the performances of the year from a child with no experience.

FROM A TO ZAIN

Labaki used largely non-professional actors in her film and shot chronologically to give them the

chance to develop with the characters. Her 12-year-old lead, Zain Al Rafeea, was discovered in the slums where the film is set. “The first scene is the doctor examining him to figure out his age,” says Labaki. “Working with non-professional actors, you don’t know if the film will come to life aΩs you imagine it... Working with Zain, the first day was a revelation that it was going to work. He was good immediately. So charismatic. He’s magic.”

HIS DAY IN COURT

The scene that kicks the story into motion is Zain’s appearance in court, arguing his parents should never have allowed him to be born. It would be a big scene for any actor, let alone one who’d never been on screen before.

“Fortunately, he didn’t feel pressure because nothing impressed him,” says Labaki. “He didn’t work from a script. We would just talk and talk so he understood what the scene was. I would talk all the time. It was a very difficult job for our editor because we had to take my voice off all the time!”

YOU CAN’T CHOOSE FAMILY

Zain’s own observations were used to shape his character’s path, particularly with regards to how he reacts to his parents, who offer him no hope of a happy life and sell his teenage sister for marriage to a much older man.

“He was so angry in those scenes,” says Labaki. “It was like he was angry at all fathers he’d seen beating their children. It didn’t take much for him to understand who the character was.”

BUT YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS

The relationship at the heart of the film is that between Zain and Rahil, an undocumented Ethiopian mother he meets at a fairground. To preserve the naturalism, Labaki kept them apart before shooting. “I didn’t rehearse much,” she says. “It was important they didn’t know each other well, to get that feeling on screen. As we were shooting, they became closer, became family. We shot for six months, so they really come to know each other and you see that.”

MINOR MIRACLES

Labaki’s script asked for some things that couldn’t possibly be scripted. Notably, one scene in which Rahil’s baby, Yonas, refuses to drink from a bottle because he wants his mother, who has been arrested. “I was asking for a miracle,” says Labaki. “What was I doing scripting that?

You can’t ask a baby to refuse a bottle and then start crying and for Zain to know how to handle that. When it happened in front of my eyes, I felt like something bigger was pushing me to make this film. I got my miracle.”

HARSH REALITIES

Labaki says that she spent four years immersing herself in the lives of children who live like Zain, so that everything in the film was in some way based in reality. She didn’t want to exaggerate or invent story to sensationalise. She wanted to reflect their world as she’d seen it. “Everything is based on details I’ve seen,” she says. That includes a quietly heartbreaking scene in which Yonas is fed dry milk powder, because that’s all there is to eat. They don’t even have the water

to make it drinkable. “I saw that a lot, because most of these children don’t have water,” Labaki continues. “I would go into apartments and see children on their own – on their own – opening a can of milk powder because they’re hungry. It’s all from things I’ve seen, but the terrible thing is that the reality is 100 times harsher.”

FACES IN THE CROWD

Perhaps the film’s most affecting scene has Zain and Yonas on the streets alone, unsure of how to survive without any adults to care for them. Labaki shot it in a very busy street, disguising her crew to meld in with the huge crowd of people who had no idea a film was being made. “There was a very disturbing reality in that scene,” says Labaki. “They’re alone on the sidewalk and people would pass them without looking, because it wasn’t unusual to see that. That was horrifying.”

ALONE AGAIN

Zain is devastated when he learns from his parents that his sister, the only member of

his family he loved, has died due to complications with her pregnancy. He breaks down. “It took a very long time to get Zain to that moment where he’s so hurt he bursts into tears,” says Labaki. “He knows girls who were married at a very young age [like his sister in the film]. He understood, but it took maybe 40 takes to do that scene.”

REVENGE

In retaliation for his sister’s death, Zain attacks and stabs her much older husband, which gets him arrested and sent to Roumieh prison for five years. This pivotal moment in the story showed Labaki just how much of himself Al Rafeea was putting into his performance. “There are things Zain says that were not scripted that showed me he knows what he’s talking about,” she says. “We took out a lot of swearing, but through the swearing you could see his anger. Zain has seen so much. I could see how angry he is with life.”

How to write the biggest movie of all time

Above: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans).

Below: Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus.

Avengers: Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely talk penning billion-dollar-plus blockbusters

Congratulations on having written the biggest film of all time! That’s a pretty great thing to have on your LinkedIn page.

Christopher Markus: [Laughs] It’s a little hard to grasp.

Stephen McFeely: I should join LinkedIn so I can put it on my page.

If you can’t humblebrag about that achievement, what’s the Internet even for?

SM: [The achievement] doesn’t hold a lot of water in my house. I’m still taking out the trash.

How do you deal with the amount of characters in a movie like Avengers: Endgame?

SM: We were on that movie for

four years, but the critical, crazy-looking part was the last four months of 2015 when we got back from Civil War Not the Civil War, but shooting Civil War The planning for that period looks like Carrie from Homeland We had 3 x 5 cards all over the walls – movie one [Infinity War] on wall, movie two [Endgam another. Each wall trading cards of all characters in the M could move them around or put team together and think about, “What if they went to this place, or what if these people

switched places? Who would be interesting together?” It was a really fun blue sky period and that lead to two outlines by the end of that year that turned into scripts that we re-wrote for the next two years.

How do you split up the writing workload between you both?

CM: Generally we will outline together until we come up with a long, extremely detailed outline so we’re clear on what’s happening. Then we’ll number it and separate it and be like, “You do one through five, I’ll do five through 10.” Then we’ll come together later and put it together and not edit it and just keep cranking through the outline until we have a large, unwieldy draft that we will then rewrite as if a third writer had written it. We sit at a desk together and fix this really pretty terrible script.

l process! st draft it or six riting ately and three to ur weeks writing together. And

then on a Marvel movie, we wind up rewriting that movie ad infinitum. We realised after the very first script we wrote, where we sat shoulder to shoulder and argued over commas, that we got into the writing game because we like to write! And sometimes that’s by yourself. It’s important for every project to take four to six weeks to sit in your underwear and crank out pages.

When writing an MCU film, you not only have to trace character arcs in a particular film, but their arcs over a huge series of films. How do you track it all?

CM: Again, you break out the 3 x 5 cards and start colour-coding and tracking people until you have a grasp of it. We’ve been around for it so much of it now that a lot of it is ingrained now.

SM: Some of it is our own, so Cap’s journey we’re pretty familiar with.

CM: With some characters you know they’re not going to get much screentime, so they won’t need a multi-stage arc – you might only touch on them two or three times in the movie. Every beat needs to be very precise, but it doesn’t have to move them as far as others.

SM: The job of Avengers: Endgame was to say goodbye to the original six Avengers, so that was where the major arc work was going to happen. Where did these characters need to get to by the end of the movie so we could feel good about saying goodbye to them?

Speaking of goodbyes: Old Steve Rogers is still alive. Could we him see feature in another MCU film?

SM: You mean a 100-yearold Cap? [Laughs]

CM: I’m sure you could make a hell of a movie starring a 100-year-old Cap, that would be awesome!

JAMES JENNINGS

AVENGERS: ENDGAME IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY, 4K ULTRA HD AND DIGITAL.

Dr. Strangelove

ONCE HE REVIEWED the footage, Stanley Kubrick knew he had to cancel the custard pie fight. His megawatt farce was due to conclude with the American President, nutball generals, Soviet ambassador, and titular paraplegic former Nazi engaged in apocalyptic flan-flinging. But Kubrick realised that there is nothing as unfunny as actors having fun. What he needed was the ultimate symbol of man’s urge to self-destruction.

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb became a black comedy, said Kubrick, when he “woke up and realised that nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic to be treated in any conventional manner.”

Literally overnight, he flipped a Cold War thriller (based on Peter Bryant’s bestseller Red Alert) into a “Kafkaesque” satire, calling upon counterculture author and self–styled “existential hipster” Terry Southern to revamp the script. The plot stayed much the same: when nuclear war is

inadvertently sparked, a final B-52 fails to stand down thanks to a busted radio. Major ‘King’ Kong, the bomber’s chipper commander, carries on regardless with his payload of nukes, begetting the end of the world. Back in the War Room, the high command dance around the inevitable.

Nobody can agree whether it was Kubrick or Southern, but the perfect ending was devised: Kong atop a nuke, whooping and hollering, as it hurtles toward impact. Cue: a montage of mushroom clouds and Vera Lynn crooning ‘We’ll Meet Again’. Nuclear-level irony.

They tried John Wayne for Kong, but his agent dismissed the script as “pinko bullshit”.

Once the film was built around a multiplicity of Peter Sellers, Kong was to be the fourth of four roles, after President Merkin Muffley, Group Captain Mandrake and Strangelove. But Sellers claimed he had a “complete block” when it came to Kong’s yee-haw delivery. Then he tumbled from the cockpit — “accidently-on-

purpose”, suspected Kubrick suffering, so he claimed, a hairline fracture of the ankle. The director decided what they needed was “a real-life cowboy”.

Slim Pickens was a former rodeo champ plucked to star and stunt in cowboy pictures because he was, boots to brow, just that a cowboy. He had a drawl that could corral chickens. Kubrick remembered him as the shit-kicking deputy in Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks. Pickens jumped at the chance, before realising he didn’t have a passport.

When he finally lolloped onto set, looking as if he’d just dismounted, the British crew thought it was Method. Southern welcomed him with a slug of Wild Turkey. “Play it as straight as you can and it’ll be fine,” came Kubrick’s instruction.

Pickens sat astride the prop nuke dangling from a crane, waving his hat, back in the rodeo. The image was deliberately phallic, the climax of Kubrick’s “sexual framework”, a cowboy riding to nuclear orgasm. IAN NATHAN

DR STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD

INSTANT TRIVIA ↓

1

Bonanza’s Dan Blocker was offered the role of bomb commander Major ‘King’ Kong, before it went to stuntman Slim Pickens.

2

The film marks the feature debut of one James Earl Jones, who played Kong’s crewmate, Lt. Lothar Zogg.

3

Kong was inspired by a reallife pilot, Alvin ‘Tex’ Johnston, who flew for Bell Aircraft and Boeing, and was famous for his cowboy boots, Stetson and daredevil attitude.

4

In the film’s source novel, Red Alert, the chief bomb was named Lolita. Which, of course, was the name of the movie Kubrick directed immediately prior to Dr. Strangelove

Above: Cowboy-turnedactor and stuntman extraordinaire, Slim Pickens.

How iconic images came to life

Spreading the word

JUST LIKE DENNIS, the mud-gatherer played so memorably by one Michael Palin in Monty Python And The Holy Grail, The Missionary is now 37. Often overlooked in Palin’s CV, The Missionary is a charming character comedy about an English missionary, the Reverend Charles Fortescue (Palin), who becomes involved with Maggie Smith’s adventurous Lady Ames, and establishes a mission to try to save a group of prostitutes. Empire spoke with Palin about the film that saw him write for the first time without his long-time writing partner, Terry Jones.

Not wishing to age you, but The Missionary is now 37 years old.

Almost everything ages me now, really. I don’t feel any older mentally. Probably I feel less old, so I always tend to be slightly taken aback by the fact that it was 40 or 50 years ago that we did this, that and the other. Surely it can’t be!

Does it come up often for you?

It was very significant for me because it was the first time I’d written a script of my own. I felt quite excited by the prospect, and also exposed by the prospect, of having to produce something you initiated, and therefore it had to be just right. But I learned a lot.

You had worked with Terry Jones for so many years. What made you write this without him? Well, Terry and I were going in slightly different directions anyway. I felt, because we’d worked together for so long, that a chance for us to realise what we individually wanted to do was a good thing. We still wrote together for The Meaning Of Life, but I also worked with Terry Gilliam on Time Bandits The old Python writing boundaries had already been broken, if you like. But I was always very aware of Terry, and of his opinion. I sent him the script, he was very, very useful over certain things in the writing and the plotting of it, and very supportive when the film was complete. We remained, and remain still, very good friends.

Where did the idea come from?

I do remember having the idea whilst I was running on Hampstead Heath. Where it was going to go from then was more difficult. I had the idea of a missionary coming back from Africa. There seemed to be comic potential in how such a character might fit into Edwardian England. Also, it was a chance to explore Englishness, but of a different period. I wasn’t sure exactly how the missionary should be played, what were his motivations and the motivations of the other people in the film. I never really sorted those things out. I think it made sense, the story, but it’s occasionally a bit rickety.

The movies you wrote — this and American Friends — are both quite gentle character pieces. Were you keen to move away from that idea of ‘Pythonesque’?

I think the idea of moving away from Python is something that prompted Ripping Yarns several years before, for both Terry and myself. We both felt very strongly that the work we did after Python, especially if it was comedy, had to look different and have a different shape. I see The Missionary very much in the same genre as a Ripping Yarn. American Friends perhaps less so, because that had a particular genesis in my great grandfather’s diary.

Did it ever cross your mind to direct?

It crossed my mind slightly. People do round up my career sometimes. I hear them say, “We’re very lucky to have with us Michael Palin, actor, director, writer.” I’ve never directed anything. Well, I have. At university. I was much more keen on the writing. There are things I didn’t have to worry about but Richard [Loncraine] probably did. If I had to make all of those decisions and write and act, it would be overwhelming.

Your diaries would perhaps be a lot shorter, due to exhaustion.

Well, I’d have written about exhaustion. An exhausting read, written by an exhausted writer.

Your career went in an unexpected direction with the travel documentaries after A Fish Called Wanda. It seems that movies have never really been a major pursuit for you.

There was that period from Life Of Brian to A Fish Called Wanda where movies were the main thing in my life. I was always writing and acting in other people’s movies. It was exciting. After that I didn’t know where to go with movies. I was beginning to think about writing American Friends, but I was quite exhausted with film. So when the BBC said, “We’d like you to do Around The World In 80 Days,” I thought, “This will be a nice break [before] the movies I’m obviously going to make in future.” It turned out, of course, that it created a genre that was very successful. It’s funny how the travel programmes superseded the acting and writing.

The Missionary took you to Kenya. For the first time?

Yeah. That was a little victory over the producers, who thought it would be far too expensive. But we wanted that authentic feel. The camera broke almost immediately, and Neville Thompson, the wonderful producer, flew back, got another camera, and flew back. It was impressive. I’m glad we did it.

CHRIS HEWITT

Top to bottom: Maggie Smith as the unpredictable Lady Isabel Ames; The Bishop (Denholm Elliott) and Charles Fortescue (Michael Palin) embark on good works; Palin enjoyed the chance to explore Edwardian England; Fortescue’s rescue remedies are not the most orthodox. Right: Missionary in a position.

MICHAEL PALIN on TheMissionary — his first solo film as writer — as it turns 37 years old

THE RANKING

Four Empire writers. Ten movies. Ordered definitively.

Tim Burton movies

Chris: Why do we keep being drawn to the films of Timothy Burton?

Dan: I can speak personally, having grown up as someone who considered himself something of a social outcast in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Chris: Yeah, you weirdo.

Dan: Exactly. I was called weirdo, gothic…

Chris: That’s because you’re a gothic weirdo.

Dan: Yeah. Weirdo gothic freak, all that sort of thing.

Chris: Parents can be so cruel.

Dan: But the films of Tim Burton kind of spoke to me and people like me. They felt like, these are for us. Though I confess that I kind of grew out of it. And he didn’t. So by the end of the ’90s, I was rolling my eyes at Sleepy Hollow

Nick: Shots fired.

Dan: It isn’t a bad film. But I was like, here we are again. But then I got my just desserts, because his next film was Planet Of The Apes, which is nothing like a Tim Burton.

Chris: Generic and bland.

Dan: So it was almost like, “Oh no, come back, Sleepy Hollow.”

Helen: Sleepy Hollow’s so good.

Nick: It’s my favourite Tim Burton, so you take that back, you freaky goth weirdo.

Helen: Sleepy Hollow is delightful. I feel it’s almost the last performance that Johnny Depp gave.

Nick: I love the atmosphere. It’s the most Halloweeny thing ever. It feels like it’s got some pace and some focus, which is something Tim Burton films often lack. I really like Mars Attacks!, but it doesn’t have any structure.

Helen: Mars Attacks! is weird, but a lot of fun. Just those aliens going, ACK! ACK! ACK! Chris: ACK! ACK! ACK! Helen: Every time they come proclaiming peace and immediately vaporise everyone, I find it highly amusing.

Chris: It’s a movie that ends with Tom Jones about to break into song surrounded by animals. It’s a glorious, tongue-in-cheek, wonderful parody. It’s such a fun, utterly demented film. I like the earlier Burton films which are really collections of sketches. Batman is one of those movies.

Helen: I would say that Batman Returns and Sleepy Hollow are two of his most plot-driven films.

Chris: All his movies are about outsiders and weirdo gothic

OUR CRITICS

CHRIS HEWITT

Big fan of Burton. Even bigger fan of his clothing chain, Burton Menswear.

HELEN O’HARA

Owns the Mars Attacks! soundtrack. Slim Pickens is handy for alien invasions.

NICK DE SEMLYEN

Terrified by Beetlejuice as a child. Still can’t say his name once, let alone five times.

DAN JOLIN

Has a baffling soft spot for Pee-wee Herman. May be Large Marge in disguise.

freaks struggling to fit into society. It’s almost this outsider wish fulfilment, in a way.

Bruce Wayne is a weirdo gothic freak. Edward Scissorhands is a weirdo gothic freak. All these films are deeply personal.

Dan: The thing with Edward Scissorhands, and I know I’m not normal in thinking this, but I find it a little too arch, a little too stylised. I prefer Beetlejuice to Edward Scissorhands

Helen: Nuh-huh. Absolutely no. A hundred per cent never.

Chris: Why?

Helen: I find Beetlejuice curiously uninvolving. It doesn’t settle on what it wants to be for a long time, and when it does, it rushes through it.

Nick: I find it deeply unsettling. That banana song is horrific. It really makes me want to run away. I find it unnerving.

Chris: I like it a lot. Along with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure talk about a collection of sketches masquerading as a film it really establishes that Burton template right from the off. The over-the-top visuals, the gothic references, Danny Elfman’s score, Michael Keaton being weird. It’s all there in Beetlejuice, and it’s very funny. I think we’ve said Beetlejuice enough now to conjure him.

Nick: I do not wish for that.

Chris: I think we’re all of a similar age, which is…

Helen: Very young.

Chris: So I’m guessing our first exposure to Tim Burton was Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice or Batman

Helen: Batman

Nick: Batman

Dan: Pee Wee

Nick: Batman was just huge. That was the pop-culture event of 1989. I don’t think

I was aware of Tim Burton himself, because it’s not massively Burtony.

Helen: It’s pretty Burtony in retrospect. It became fashionable, after the Chris Nolan Batman movies, to rag on the Tim Burton Batman films, but actually I think they’re in their own way really, really good. The soaring, towering Gotham with this ridiculously overstyled, gothic New York is fantastic.

Nick: It’s very visually witty. I saw it again recently and I was struck by how well designed it was. I love the bit where the Batwing goes up and it’s framed against the moon.

Chris: That’s the cover of the Danny Elfman soundtrack CD.

Nick: It’s really fun. It feels like Burton is having fun with it.

Chris: I know there’s a lot of love for Batman Returns

Helen: You’re damn right. Yes, the villains get a whole load of screen time but it’s hard to care when they’re Danny DeVito’s Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman.

Nick: I don’t like DeVito’s

Penguin, to be honest. He just upsets me.

Chris: Not least because he’s now the President of the United States of America.

Nick: The flavour of that film is a bit too strong. You’ve got too much going on.

Dan: I’m not a huge fan. Batman gets that balance right between campness and seriousness. I think Batman Returns goes too far. I can’t accept penguins with rockets strapped to their backs.

Helen: I’ve been saying for years that penguins are evil. So I felt this entire film was backing me up.

Nick: We should talk about Ed Wood

Helen: Some of Johnny Depp’s early stuff with Burton was phenomenal. He has to give Ed Wood so much heart and optimism and idealism. It’s a wonderful line he manages to walk.

Dan: Ed Wood is a proper film. It’s shot in black and white, it’s gorgeously expressionistic, but without any of the flourishes you usually get from a Tim Burton movie.

Chris: Burton idolised these people. He thought Ed Wood was a genius in a weird way, and sees a lot of himself and his story, coming up through Disney and not fitting in, in that.

Helen: That affection and love for the characters shines through. Ed Wood’s crossdressing is treated with respect and sympathy. It’s probably his most heartfelt movie. That and Edward Scissorhands Chris: Is there anything from his later years that you really liked?

Dan: I liked Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

I dismissed it without seeing it.

Helen: Someone said, “Oh, Tim Burton’s making his film again,” and that summed it up for me.

Chris: Right, enough squabbling. Let’s vote!

THE TOP TEN

ED WOOD (1994)

Dan: “Everything came together in just the right way here: Burton’s sense of humour, his visual flair, his love for quirky cinema, his chemistry with Johnny Depp. A film so good it’s, um, good.”

BATMAN (1989)

Nick: “Martial-arts minions, Prince jams, Jack Nicholson’s all-caps acting: the most fun Bat-film ever.”

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)

Helen: “Arguably Burton’s most personal film, the story of a Goth outsider with uncontrollable hair.”

BATMAN RETURNS (1992)

Helen: “The finest depiction of Batman’s rogues’ gallery to date and his best romantic match.”

SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)

Nick: “Burton at his liveliest, it’s also thick with both dread and fog a stylish Gothic hoot.”

MARS ATTACKS! (1996)

Helen: “A gleefully apocalyptic B movie that plays like Gremlins on a worldwide scale. Ack ack ack.”

BEETLEJUICE (1988)

Chris: “Pretty much the lodestone of all things Burton, this is deeply bonkers and very, very funny.”

BIG FISH (2003)

Dan: “A lovely, tall tale-telling curio with Albert Finney and Billy Crudup. Also includes a literal big fish.”

PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE

(1985)

Dan: “Still one of my favourite Burtons, even if Herman’s wacky charms are something of an acquired taste.”

MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR

CHILDREN (2016)

Chris: “Has enough quirks to make you wish for a Timbo X-Men movie.”

SHAZAM!

OUT NOW / RATED M / 132 MINS

Finding the fun has been lucrative for the DC movie universe, and while Shazam! may not have hit the box-office highs of Wonder Woman or Aquaman, it’s still a crowd-pleasing delight, poking fun at superhero tropes like a less-vulgar Deadpool (the phrase “dead kiddie pool” comes to mind, then is immediately dismissed for creepiness). Director David F. Sandberg, known for the horror likes of Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation, shows a lightness of touch here, revelling in the chance to inject some weirdness, but handles the origin story without overplaying the camp. His secret weapon is star Zachary Levi, who inhabits the enthusiastic/troubled role of the titular hero with gusto. Paired with an appealing, unpretentious young cast, he’s all fizzy energy and wide-eyed enthusiasm, and gives the film a lift as easily as his character can chuck a car into the sky.

JAMES WHITE

WILD ROSE

OUT 18 SEPTEMBER / RATED M / 101 MINS

There is a thunderous strength to Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose that emanates from her like nuclear radiation. As aspiring country singer Rose-Lynn, with her Glaswegian growl and crooked grin she is already fearless, but onstage something larger than her modest frame rolls through the room, electric and captivating. We join Rose-Lynn fresh from a 12-month prison sentence, her fringed jacket matching a court-ordered anklet. Upon returning home to two children left in the care of mum Marion (Julie Walters, steely but loveable), it’s clear that everyone sees Walters as the preferred matriarch. Torn between motherhood and stardom, Rose-Lynn inches towards self-indulgence, but Buckley implores you to stick with her. A born performer as worthy of the screen as Rose-Lynn is the stage, her unbridled energy is infectious, and climaxes in an original closing song that will summon goosebumps and tears alike.

BETH WEBB

MID90S

OUT NOW / RATED MA15+ / 85 MINS

Scrappy boys, battered knees, bashed-up boards the kids in Jonah Hill’s fresh and sharp directorial debut, Mid90s, are alright, even if they’d probably think that doesn’t quite sound cool enough. Hill revisits memories of his boyhood spent skateboarding in LA, and brings them into focus with achingly trendy nostalgia. A super-16mm frame finds a pack of early adolescent boys, focusing on Stevie (wunderkind skateboarder-cum-actor Sunny Suljic) he’s smaller and younger than the others, but will put himself through anything just to fit in. At home, he ducks the punches from his older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges) and avoids the overbearing protection of his single mother. It’s not a coming-of-ager about romance or self-actualisation, but Mid90s embraces the imperfect angst of youth in revolt and lets it scream as loud as it needs to.

ELLA KEMP

LORDS OF CHAOS

OUT NOW / RATED R18+ / 118 MINS

A grimy little film about Norwegian black metal murder and suicide was always going to be an acquired taste, but one as unpolished and as gruesome as this seals that deal bigtime. Jonas Åkerlund, the Swedish director who made his name with provocative music videos (most notoriously for The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’), is on fighting form here, binning his usual stylistic indulgences for a more grounded drama. He presents this true story as a bunch of rebellious young men trying to one-up each other, pioneering and perfecting their aural skuzz, but getting rather carried away with a slew of church burnings and a whole lot of violence. It is nasty but never less than compelling, and surprisingly emotional Åkerlund imbues the characters with relatable frailty and vulnerability, his leads Emory Cohen and Rory Culkin selling every second. It’s all terrifically upsetting.

ALEX GODFREY

ALADDIN

OUT 18 SEPTEMBER / PG / 128 MINS

Tim Burton and Disney were famously not a good fit when the director was starting out in animation. But time is a great healer, and now h r h is with this liv -action tak on beloved 1941 animation, Dumbo From the lovely wordless montage that opens it, Burton is as playful and emotionally honest as he has been since 2003’s Big Fish, as Colin Farrell, Eva Green, Danny DeVito and various circus folk (Burton onc again d lighting in painting ‘freaks’ as heroes) try to protect the title star, the cutesy flying elephant, from the avaricious clutches of Michael Keaton’s billionaire theme park owner. And there’s the rub: while this may seem unusually sweet and d void of satirical sting at first glanc , consider this: Burton has made a Disney movie in which the bad guy is, essentially, Walt Disney. Maybe they’re still not quite a good fit.

ROD YATES

Team Empire on the month’s essential movies

CROSSWORD AND GIVEAWAYS

WIN! ALADDIN ON DVD

WANT TO SEE Will Smith crack jokes while wearing baggy genie pants? Sure you do! Enter to win one of 10 DVDs of this adaptation of the animated Disney classic, out on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UltraHD 18 September.

TO ENTER, TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE MANGA IS, AND WHY.

WIN! MODERN FAMILY SEASON 10 ON DVD

THIS BELOVED mockumentary TV sitcom starring Ed O’Neill, Sofía Vergara, Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell is, incredibly, on to its tenth season on our screens, and we have 10 DVDs on hand for you to win by answering the question below. Out on DVD now.

TO ENTER, TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE TELEVISION COMEDY SERIES IS, AND WHY.

WIN! THIS IS US SEASON 3 ON DVD

ACROSS

1 Superhero portrayed by Asher Angel (6)

4 Did this cause waves for Rufus Sewell? (3,3)

9 Zoe who’s Gamora in Guardians Of The Galaxy (7)

10 Florida city linked cinematically with Vice, Rhapsody and Blues (5)

11 Morricone located amid a Sean Penn Iowa address (5)

12 Straight Outta — (N.W.A’s rap biopic) (7)

13 This French-Italian actor appeared with Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love (4,7)

18 In which Kevin Bacon first encountered those Graboid sandworms (7)

20 Mandy or maybe Demi (5)

22 Jessica from Tootsie or Hope from Death Wish (5)

23 Taron, once Eddie The Eagle, now Rocketman (7)

24 Legendary French star Signoret (6)

25 Nearer, like a Mike Nichols award winner (6)

DOWN

1 A Shock To The — (Michael Caine) (6)

2 Tim from Toy Story or Joan from Death Race (5)

3 — And Gladiators (Patrick Bergin) (7)

5 It’s a 1970 Brian De Palma black comedy (2,3)

6 David Mamet’s 2004 action thriller (7)

7 Cowboys & — (Daniel Craig) (6)

8 He directed Quantum Of Solace and Finding Neverland (4,7)

14 Land where Robin Williams yelled, “Good mooooorning!” (7)

15 He was Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie in The Krays (1990) (3,4)

16 Publicity photographs (6)

17 Catherine who was Harper Lee in Capote (6)

19 Cinema chain (5)

21 Wild Bunch Warren (5)

AUGUST ANSWERS ACROSS: 1 Capote, 4 Nyong’o, 9 Raw Deal, 1

11 Imrie, 12 Ed Helms, 13 Christiane F, 18 Shalako, 20 Greta, 22 Et

23 Belushi, 24 Turner, 25 Escape. DOWN: 1 Carrie, 2 Power, 3 The 5 Youth, 6 Natalie, 7 Omar Sy, 8 Albert Nobbs, 14 Heather, 15 Ang

16 Osment, 17 Nadine, 19 Annie, 21 Easy A. ANAGRAM MYSTERIO

10 Ultra, han, e Jedi, gela’ss, , O

THIS ACCLAIMED comedy-drama television series involving the heavy use of flashbacks stars a killer ensemble - Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Sullivan and more - and we have 10 DVDs to win. Out now on DVD.

TO ENTER, TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE US TV SERIES IS, AND WHY.

COMPETITION ENDS 30 SEPTEMBER

FOR A CHANCE to win these prizes, email us at empiregiveaways@bauer-media.com.au, write the prize in the subject line, your preferred format if there are both DVD or Blu-ray options and complete the answer in 25 words or less, not forgetting to include your contact details. All competitions are open to both Australian and New Zealander Empire readers. For conditions of entry visit www.bauer-media.com.au/terms/ competition-terms

CLASSIC SCENE

Standout sequences from the great movies

Swingers

STEPHEN MERCHANT: “I used to do film reviews many years ago in Bristol and Swingers was one of them. I was completely blown away. It was authentic and funny and this scene in particular was hysterical and also captured something about my own dating anxiety, of trying too hard.”

INT. MIKE’S APARTMENT — NIGHT

Mike (Jon Favreau, who also wrote the movie) has just procured the number of a girl called Nikki (Brooke Langton). Alone in his apartment, he calls her. He is nervous.

NIKKI: Hi, this is Nikki. Leave a message.

The phone beeps.

MIKE: Hi, uh, Nikki, this is Mike. I met you at the, ah, at the Dresden tonight. I just called to say that I had a great time and you should call me tomorrow. Or, uh, in two days. Anyway, my number is 213 555 4679.

Nikki’s answering machine beeps as Mike says the final

chosen by STEPHEN MERCHANT

digit. He starts to put the phone down, then decides to redial.

NIKKI: Hi, this is Nikki, leave a message.

Another beep.

MIKE: Hi, Nikki, this is Mike again. I just called because it sounded like your machine might have cut me off when I… before I finished leaving my number. Anyway… and you know, also, um, sorry to call so late, but you were still at the Dresden when I left, so I knew I’d get your machine. Anyhow, my number’s 21…

The beep cuts him off. He redials instantly.

NIKKI: Hi, this is Nikki, leave a message.

MIKE: 213 555 4679, that’s it. Just wanna leave my number. I wouldn’t want you to think I was weird or desperate… We should just hang out and see where it goes, ’cause it’s nice and, uh, you know, no

expectations, so… okay? Thanks a lot. Bye bye.

He hangs up. Puts the phone down. Exits frame. After a beat, he rushes back, grabs the phone and dials again.

NIKKI: Hi, this is Nikki, leave a message.

MIKE: I just got out of a sixyear relationship, okay? That should explain why I’m acting so weird. I just wanted you to know that. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m sorry. [Beat] This is Mike.

He hangs up. Toys with the cord on the phone and dials again.

NIKKI: Hi, this is Nikki, leave a message.

MIKE: [Pacing] Hi, Nikki, this is, this is Mike. Could you just, uh, call me when you get in? I’m going to be up for a while and I’d just rather speak to a person instead of trying to fit it all into…

He’s cut off again. That infernal beep.

MIKE: FUCK!

He claws at his head in exasperation. Dials again.

NIKKI: Hi, this is Nikki, leave a message.

MIKE: Uh, Nikki. Mike. This, uh… this just isn’t working out. I think you’re great, but uh, maybe we should just take some time off from each other. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s what I’m going through. Alright? It’s, it’s, it’s only been six months…

The phone is picked up on the other end and a voice speaks.

NIKKI: Mike?

MIKE: Nikki! Great! Did you, did you just walk in? Or were you listening all along?

NIKKI: Don’t ever call me again. She hangs up.

MIKE: Wow! I guess you’re home.