SpoutBlog on spout.com

Under discussion:

Akira  (1989)

Alien  (1979)

Blade Runner  (1982)

Brazil  (1985)

Black Hawk Down  (2006)

Matchstick Men  (2003)

Kingdom of Heaven  (2005)

A Good Year  (2006)

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt  (2007)

American Gangster  (2007)

Atari  (2009)

io9 has confirmed an earlier report that Ridley Scott will direct an adaptation of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian future novel. Scott says that Leonardo DiCaprio approached him about adapting the book, and it looks like he will star in the film as well. This is exciting news; not only does it herald the return to science fiction for the director of Blade Runner and Alien, it also means that Leo, who is working on a live action adaptation of Akira, has two dystopian future projects in progress.

Brave New World is one of my favorite books, and Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies, for many of the same reasons, but I’m still having trouble getting excited about this news. Scott’s work on Blade Runner was amazing, but that was 26 years ago, and he hasn’t made a science fiction film since. I’d like to believe he can jump back in the saddle, but considering what he’s been up to for the past two and a half decades, I have my doubts. While the quality of Scott’s filmography is admittedly debatable, it’s safe to say he’s made some pretty terrible movies, Kingdom of Heaven and A Good Year come to mind. Even his films that have some potential end up falling short. American Gangster, while not a bad movie, felt like only like a sufficient execution of a script Scorsese would have passed over in the nineties.

Even if Scott can get his Blade Runner mojo working again for Brave New World, it could still be really bad. Blade Runner and Brave New World are very different stories, set in very different worlds. Blade Runner took cues from Neuromancer and the dystopian stories of Philip K. Dick to create a dingy future noir, complete with brutal violence and assassinations. Brave New World, on the other hand, takes place in a world where technological advances and a strict caste system have sanitized society. People are conditioned to desire nothing more than their predetermined station in life, dutifully ingesting a drug called soma to dull any inappropriate desires.

While Blade Runner used rich visuals to convey the bleak state of the world, Brave New World features nearly unfilmable social situations. Family structures have been abolished and children are grown in futuristic farms. Sex is nothing but a social activity for the sterile citizens, and they are encouraged to start young. Bernard, an agitator who has the courage to suspect that something is wrong with this way of life, begins to be slightly disturbed by constantly seeing groups of children having orgies. How are you going to film that, Ridley?

Brave New World also differs from Blade Runner in that there is much less violence. There’s a riot scene that could be pretty cool, but it’s safe to say that the action would look nothing like Black Hawk Down. In one scene a child is beaten senseless as part of a ritual. In another, a man flies into a rage and beats a woman he has unrequited feelings for, in front of a crowd of on-lookers. Having not been exposed to violence in their sanitized lives, this scene sends them into a frenzy, which of course results in a massive orgy.

The Brave New World film will either be the most ambitious porno in history, or it will be scrubbed of its controversial content. I’m not sure which would be worse.

Of course, on the page Brave New World reads nothing like porn –– on the contrary, it’s satire. Huxley, a Brit, was inspired to write it after seeing what he viewed as degenerate American youth culture and runaway industrialization on a trip to the States. It’s a dark comedy with no punch lines. In some ways it’s more similar to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil than to Blade Runner. Which raises another problem: Ridley Scott is an extremely serious filmmaker. While Nicolas Cage attempts to get some laughs in Matchstick Men, the heart of that film, and all Scott’s films, is undeniably earnest. In Brazil, on the other hand, we’re encouraged to laugh at the future, despite the fact that it’s soul-crushing and bleak. Huxley had a similar goal in mind.

I do have some hope for DiCaprio’s involvement, however. His acting skills have steadily improved over the years, and the fact that he’s taken the initiative to produce both Brave New World and Akira adaptations is a good sign. We haven’t seen a lot from Leo the Producer, but there are more interesting projects on the horizon. In Atari, set for a 2009 release, Leo will play Nolan Bushnell, godfather on the video game industry. He’s also producing The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Scorsese will direct, and Leo will play the budding young president. Sounds good. I wonder if it’s too late for Leo to offer Brave New World to Scorsese? Now that would be a dystopian science fiction movie.

Under discussion:

Watchmen  (2009)

Kevin Kelly covered the Watchmen press preview in Los Angeles last week, and the same footage was shown when the preview came to Manhattan yesterday. Kevin’s piece has all the nuts and bolts of what happened in the footage, so check that out if you haven’t, but since I’m fundamentally incapable of fanboy enthusiasm, I thought I ought to weigh in with just a few additional thoughts, from my ignorant/cynical perspective.

With that said… OMGITSFUCKINGAWESOME!!!!!

Just kidding. But not completely. More after the jump.

I think it’s interesting that Warner Brothers and DC Comics are going out of their way to position Zach Snyder’s film adaptation as an impossible dream realized, a movie that no one ever thought could be made, a movie that no one else could make –– especially considering the relatively quick turnaround once Snyder signed on (he started working on the project right before 300 came out on March 9, 2007; Watchmen is currently in post-production and will be released on March 6, 2009). Last night’s presentation was introduced by DC president Paul Levitz, who suggested that Snyder was not only the perfect man for the job, but maybe more importantly, he came along at the perfect time. “The sheer scope of Watchmen required a level of technology, a level of courage, and a level of imagination that defeated three studios,” Levitz said.

But it seems that Snyder wasn’t able to pull all this off (assuming he did — I’ll get into my impressions of the 26 minutes of footage in a bit, but as I’ve warned before, assumptions made on full films based on 20-something minutes are dangerous ones) because he is, to borrow language from Watchmen itself, so much of a superman –– he comes off as a good-natured geek who speaks with the enthusiasm (and confidence, and stubborness) of a little boy, who’s working really, really hard to make the movie that he, as a fan, would want to see.

His initial attraction to Watchmen? Snyder said that as a fan of Heavy Metal magazine, “When people bought me comic books, I was like, ‘No one’s really fucking or dying in this,’” but Watchmen “had this sort of adult quality to it.” Snyder might have the “imagination” and “courage” and techno-savvy to get this job done, but maybe more importantly, he’s got the sensibility of the adolescent male that Warner Brothers will have to attract if they want to push an almost 3 hour (it’s currently at 2:40; it might get shorter, but probably not by much) epic based on an unusually cerebral graphic novel with zero franchise potential into a megahit.

As for the footage itself…Snyder warned that some of the effects in what we were shown weren’t done. I hope this wasn’t in reference to the first few shots of the opening sequence (including a recreation of The Maclaughlin Group with a dead-on Eleanor Clift-alike), or the bulk of the prison fight sequence, because these bits have a realness––as in, you could actually see the grain of the film––that I really enjoyed. If the whole idea of Watchmen is that superheroes (fantasy) are inserted into actual historical situations (reality), then it would only make sense to make that world that they move in look as real as possible. And there does seem to have been an effort to do this. Snyder said that using real sets was a priority, and that only the scenes set on Antartica and Mars used green screen, and although there’s a shot in the opening sequence of someone falling many stories from a building that would seem to give lie to this, it does look like an alarming amount of the footage we saw was shot on real sets. “I just thought it was cooler to build everything,” Snyder said. “Maybe it was 300 backlash, I don’t know. And we couldn’t go to Mars.”

In any case, the footage we saw seemed to veer wildly from noir-lit hyperrealism, to baroquely fake bits bearing the cheesy, painted-over look of 300. This may work in the full context of the film, or maybe when all the effects are done, it’ll all look like the later. I hope not. Of the scenes we were shown, by far my favorite was the sequence showing the origin story of Dr. Manhattan, which blends cinematic realism and digital surrealism exceedingly well. Billy Crudup’s performance as Manhattan/Jon Osterman appears to be extraordinarily subtle for this kind of film, with his voiceover somehow both monotonous and deeply sad. Snyder noted that Crudup performed all of the Dr. Manhattan footage alone on a motion capture stage. “The animators’ job has been to get Billy’s performance on Manhattan’s face,” he said. “It’s completely abstract on set, he’s basically in white pajamas, covered in dots.”

“To me, he looked like Tron with a bad skin condition,” cracked Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons. “He’s supposed to be a god, but [on set], he looks like a clutz.” More seriously, Gibbons commented on the surreal experience of watching his drawings come to life. “To sit in a darkened theater and see it unfold is a little too much like being in my mind, especially because it’s so precisely what I drew.”

Warner Brothers is obviously banking that the film will be huge, but both Snyder and Gibbons referenced some tension between the creative camp and the corporate side, especially regarding Watchmen ancillaries. For one thing, Snyder has ruled out the possibility of a traditional Watchmen 2, although he says that the video game that’ll accompany the film’s release is “as close to a sequel as you’re gonna get.” Rather than a traditional device game (”Video games take a long time to make, and unless you get a nice long lead, you end up with a crappy game”), the Watchmen game will be downloadable.

But the biggest site of friction has to be over the film’s length. When asked how close the film is to a final cut, Snyder said, “I’m pretty close,” and implied that he’s not going to be happy if the studio insists that the film become much shorter. His point of view seems to be that there are plenty of traditional comic book movies out there, and it would be crazy to get this far only to compromise because the studio is afraid that their audience’s attention spans won’t be able to handle Snyder’s full vision. Snyder seems to have faith that the long cut will sell itself. To anyone uninterested, he says, “You can go see Fantastic Four. If you don’t want to get you mind blown.”

Will Watchmen blow minds? Probably. Personally, if the rest of the film carries even a fraction of the subtelty of the Dr. Manhattan stuff we saw, I’ll be happy.

• Marvel Studios has signed a three-year deal with Raleigh Manhattan Beach Studios to shoot Iron Man 2, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and The Avengers at the Southern California facility’s soundstages. But hopefully it’s only the interiors of the latter two movies that will be filmed there. Despite my support for Hollywood productions to shoot locally in the Los Angeles area, particularly in these hard economic times, The Avengers better be set in New York City or else feature a team led by Hawkeye.
• Steve Carell will officially be back as Maxwell Smart in a Get Smart sequel for Warner Bros., where the actor has just signed a first-look deal to develop projects he’ll produce, write and/or star in under the name Carousel Productions. Partnering with him are a couple of old friends and collaborators, including fellow former Daily Show correspondent Vance DeGeneres.
• For those Americans becoming impatient with the wait for Election Day, the president of Lionsgate suggests they “vote with their box office dollars three weeks before they vote at the actual ballot box” by seeing Oliver Stone’s W when it opens October 17.
• After disappointing at the box office, TV’s episodic continuation of Star Wars: Clone Wars seems to be a hit for Cartoon Network. Yet the viewership for the series was technically less than the amount of people who saw the movie (not taking into account all the multiple tickets purchased by hardcore fanboys) and contrary to what Variety’s headline seems to indicate, it didn’t even give Cartoon Network its best ratings ever.