Moviefone Editorial

Tag: joe-wright

  • Movie Review: ‘Cyrano’

    (L to R) Haley Bennett and Peter Dinklage in 'Cyrano'
    (L to R) Haley Bennett and Peter Dinklage in
    ‘Cyrano’

    After a one-week run in Los Angeles beginning December 17th, the new musical comedy ‘Cyrano,’ which is based on the 2018 stage musical of the same name, will open in wide release on January 28th. Directed by Joe Wright (‘Darkest Hour’), the musical is loosely based on the 1897 play ‘Cyrano de Bergerac,’ and stars Peter Dinklage (‘Avengers: Infinity War’) in the title role as a man unable of telling his true love how he really feels and instead helps another man win her love. In addition to Dinklage, the film also stars Haley Bennett (‘The Magnificent Seven’), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (‘Ender’s Game’), and Ben Mendelsohn (‘Captain Marvel’). The result is a really fun, entertaining and romantic musical comedy with unforgettable songs and a powerful performance from Peter Dinklage.

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    Just like the original play, the film is set in 1640 Paris and begins with the introduction of the beautiful Roxane (Bennet), who attends a play with De Guiche (Mendelsohn), an officer in the French Army. The play is quickly interrupted by Cyrano de Bergerac (Dinklage), a cadet who is hopelessly in love with Roxane and trying to impress her. However, Roxane soon meets another cadet named Christian (Harrison Jr.) and falls instantly in love. She asks her Cyrano to introduce her to Christian and he reluctantly agrees. Christian has feelings for Roxanne too, but is too shy to talk to her. Eventually, Christian asks Cyrano for help winning Roxane’s love by writing romantic letters to her on his behalf. Fearing that Roxane could never love him because of his diminutive size, which has made him an outcast, Cyrano reluctantly agrees even though it breaks his heart. Meanwhile, De Guiche also has his eye on Roxane as well and threatens her new romance when he sends the cadets to the frontlines of the war. Roxane asks Cyrano to watch over Christian, but when he discovers Cyrano’s true feelings for her, it will threaten both of their lives.

    Full disclosure, I had no idea this film was a musical when I saw it, I only knew that it was based on the classic literary character. I was pleasantly surprised at what a wonderful, fun and entertaining film this turned out to be. Joe Wright, who is best known for his movies like ‘Atonement’ and ‘The Darkest Hour,’ creates a large and colorful world with beautiful camera movements and an impressive production design. What really stuck with me is how unforgettable the music in the film is, which was composed by members of The National, Aaron and Bryce Dessner. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the songs from the film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song this year. One of the best numbers in the film comes toward the middle of the third act and features Cyrano, Christian and their fellow soldiers signing as they prepare for war. The music is haunting and the way the sequence is cut together really highlights the significance of the moment. Also, keep an eye in this scene for ‘Once’ star Glen Hansard who plays one of the soldiers. The film’s opening number, “Someone to Say,” is also a show-stopper and a fun start to the movie.

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    One of the clever concepts of the film, and the musical that it is based on, is that Cyrano is not an outcast because he has a large nose, but rather because of his size. This works exceedingly well, obviously because of the actor playing the role, but also because the old concept for making Cyrano an outcast seems so silly now. But Peter Dinklage plays the role beautifully giving his character other reasons for the way he is treated besides his size, such as his attitude and crass demeanor. But Cyrano is also kind of a badass in this version, with Dinklage’s character being a master fighter and marksman, and someone others would not want to cross. He also plays the character like he’s the smartest person in the room, which he usually is, and adds to his elitist attitude. The actor gives an absolutely brilliant performance and is definitely a frontrunner for an Academy Award nomination. I was also impressed with his singing ability, as the actor can carry quite a tune and is really terrific in all the musical numbers.

    Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Ben Mendelsohn who has very strong acting scenes but struggles with his one musical number. The character is really the heavy in the film, a role the actor portrays well, so he really didn’t really need to have a song at all. That being said, no one plays a villain better than Mendelsohn and he is clearly having fun in his menacing role. In any retelling of this story, Christian is kind of a thankless role and Kelvin Harrison Jr. imbues the character with an innocence and naivety that makes him both vulnerable and relatable to the audience. Who hasn’t felt insecure around someone they are attracted to? As the attention of everyone’s affection, actress Haley Bennet is very sweet and charming, as well as a bit devious in the role. She is believable as a woman desired by several different suiters, but also totally believable as a woman who wants to choose her own destiny and find independence of her own. The actress is a very impressive singer and has great chemistry with Dinklage and Harrison.

    Obviously, the Cyrano de Bergerac story has been adapted to film several times before, probably most memorably in Steve Martin’s 1987 comedy classic ‘Roxanne.’ While that was a modern-day adaption, oddly, ‘Cyrano’ seems like a more relatable film in 2021, even though it is set in 1640. The important issues the film tackles, the performances and the music give the movie a relatable feeling for today’s audience. The screenplay by Erica Schmidt is smart and funny and translates the material superbly. The film itself is gorgeous to watch, thanks to Seamus McGarvey’s sweeping cinematography. In the end, director Joe Wright delivered a fantastic rom-com musical based on the most unlikely source material, with wonderful songs and a career-highlight performance form Peter Dinklage.

    ‘Cyrano’ receives 4 out of 5 stars.

  • 8 Movies That Made Keira Knightley the Historic Romance Queen

    8 Movies That Made Keira Knightley the Historic Romance Queen

  • Joe Wright Teams Up With Tom Hanks for World War II Drama ‘In the Garden’

    Joe Wright Teams Up With Tom Hanks for World War II Drama ‘In the Garden’

    Focus Features

    Director Joe Wright is heading back to World War II, this time in partnership with Tom Hanks.

    The director of “Atonement” and “Darkest Hour” is set to helm an adaptation of “In the Garden of Beasts” for StudioCanal and Hanks’ Playtone Productions.

    The project is based on Erik Larson’s nonfiction bestseller. It centers on William Dodd, a mild-mannered Chicago professor who is named U.S. ambassador to Germany in 1933, on the cusp of the second World War.

    At first, he and his family embrace life in Berlin, but soon, Dodd learns of Hitler and the government’s violent treatment of Jews. His concerns are ignored by the State Department, even as Dodd realizes the scope of the Nazis’ horrific plans.

    Wright helped shepherd Gary Oldman to a Best Actor Oscar win for playing Winston Churchill in “The Darkest Hour.” And Hanks is no stranger to WWII projects, having starred in and/or produced “Saving Private Ryan,” “Band of Brothers,” and “The Pacific.”

  • Julianne Moore to Join Amy Adams for Thriller ‘The Woman in the Window’

    Julianne Moore to Join Amy Adams for Thriller ‘The Woman in the Window’

    Amy Adams, Julianne Moore
    HBO/20th Century Fox

    You had us at Julianne Moore and Amy Adams.

    The ginger goddesses are teaming up for “The Woman in the Window,” a thriller based on the A.J. Finn book and directed by Joe Wright (“The Darkest Hour,” “Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice”).

    According to The Hollywood Reporter, Julianne Moore is in “negotiations” to join Amy Adams, who is already on board as “a child psychologist with severe agoraphobia (and a penchant for mixing alcohol with her medication) who hasn’t left her house in months. The woman believes she witnessed a horrible crime involving a new neighboring family but no one, including the police, will believe her.” Moore would play the mother of a mysterious young boy who moves in across the street.

    It sounds a lot like “The Girl on the Train,” but apparently the story is a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” Maybe it’s a mix of both, as well as just a classic thriller. Actor/playwright/screenwriter Tracy Letts (“August: Osage County”) wrote the script.

    Amy Adams is on a troubled-but-fascinating protagonist streak, currently heating up HBO’s Sunday night lineup with “Sharp Objects.” We’re looking forward to seeing her in “The Woman in the Window,” but it doesn’t have release date quite yet.

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  • Why Bryce Dallas Howard Isn’t Afraid to Go ‘Weird’ & ‘Extreme’

    Bryce Dallas Howard‘s star rating just keeps going up.

    After an increasingly high-profile movie career that includes standouts like M. Night Shyamalan‘s “The Village” and “Lady in the Water,” “Spider-Man 3,” the “Twilight,” saga and “The Help,” in 2015 Howard appeared in “Jurassic World,” which became the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time and solidified her status as a full-fledged movie star.

    This year, the actress demonstrated her continuing appeal, first headlining Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon,” the engaging, critically praised reimagining of its ’70s-era live-action/animation hybrid (the new film debuts on Blu-ray and DVD on Nov. 29), as the kind-hearted small town sheriff confronted with an orphaned child apparently raised in the wilderness alongside a not-so-imaginary friend in the form of a dragon.

    Howard then followed it up with a downright bravura performance in the not-too-far-futuristic “Black Mirror” episode “Nosedive,” playing a woman whose increasingly consuming obsession with her own popularity rating on her society’s dominant — and sometimes domineering — social media platform threatens to take it — and her — on a precipitous plunge.

    The actress joined Moviefone to reflect on her recent string of successes, consider the evolution of her career, and even look back on what it’s meant to her to see performances by her acting dynasty family — including her father, actor and filmmaker Ron Howard — captured on film and video forever.

    Moviefone: You’ve had an unabashed love of the source material, Disney’s 1977 film “Pete’s Dragon,” since you were little. It must have been especially cool to reinvent it so dramatically and have people fall in love with this version.

    Bryce Dallas Howard: Yeah. Whenever you do anything where there is a source material like an original film or a novel, or it’s a sequel of something, there’s always that element of pressure. But even more so, when it’s something that meant something to you personally as a child, I don’t know why I keep putting myself in these situations. I’m very lucky too, honestly.

    But yeah, what I loved about it when I read the script — and I’m so happy that people have seemed to have similar reactions to this — is that it didn’t step on the toes of the original movie. We’re not doing the same music.

    It’s taking the central idea of that first film and keeping that intact, that it’s a story of a boy and his best friend who’s a dragon. And it’s a live-action film with an animated character, and it’s a Disney film. But other than that, there were so many different things, new storylines. I was nervous about that, but I appreciate that as well. So I’m glad that folks seem to appreciate that.

    I met you when you were first starting out doing this, and I was first starting out in my field. Now you have this amazing body of work that you’ve been able to build. When we met, you were, I’m sure, an actress that was just excited to have opportunities.

    Exactly, yeah!

    Now, you’ve got these great collection of films that you’ve made, films that people love and have embraced. Tell me what that aspect of your professional life means to you.

    Thank you. It’s really amazing. I think because I’m a third-generation actor, I really knew to not expect success at all. I knew the statistics. I knew how difficult it is. When I was a teenager, my grandparents — my dad’s parents — brought me to Vegas when I was 16 years old, because I could walk the floor, and my grandmother loved to play the nickel slot machine. And she knew I was doing high school plays, I was going to apply to NYU. They knew that I was definitely going to pursue it in some capacity.

    And my grandmother said to me, “Do you know what the rate of the average working actor in SAG is, in terms of how many auditions it takes for them to get a job?” The average working actor, which means they’re making a living as an actor. I thought maybe one in 10. It was one in every 64 auditions.

    So, going into my career that way, knowing the very real odds, having seen the ups and downs with my family, and also knowing that theirs was actually a success story, I hedged my bets like crazy. I was always working side jobs and saving as much as I could. When I first started working in theater, but in particular when I got my first break in film with M. Night Shyamalan, and that being my first movie, I was like, “Oh my goodness — this is crazy!”

    Then getting to continue to work — while also I’ve had times away, during pregnancies and after giving birth, and all of that — and the fact that I’ve been able to continue to work is really a serious privilege, and exciting, and moving to me. It’s incredible. It’s really, really incredible.

    Yeah, to get to be in a movie like a Disney film, that I know that my kids enjoy and that they’ll grow up with, and providing those memories for my kids — as well as the same experience that I had growing up on film sets, that they’re able to do that, it’s really something that I don’t think I’ll ever take for granted.

    Potentially your work is, like so much of your dad’s work, immortal. It’s with us for generations now.

    When it works, when it’s working, it’s a euphoric experience in so many different levels. Because, like you said, there is that thing. That’s not the goal for any of us: immortality. But I know what it means having been a child and being able to watch my dad as a kid in “The Andy Griffith Show.” I know what that meant to me. I know what it means to me getting to see my dad at different ages of his life, and what his work was like, and what he sounded like.

    So, for me, all of my family who have worked in creative fields, I have that forever, and that’s something that’s priceless. So to think that that’s something that my kids could, when I’m long gone, that my relatives — even relatives that I don’t meet down the road — could maybe see that, that’s wild and surreal! I actually have never thought about that specifically until you just mentioned that. That my great grandkids and stuff … Oh, I’ve got to stay on my game!

    You are most certainly on your game in your episode of “Black Mirror,” “Nosedive.” Let’s talk about the response to that. People are just going nuts for that, and deservedly so.

    Thank you. Oh man — that job was amazing. I said yes to that without there even being a script. It was just Joe Wright, “Black Mirror”? “Yes, please!”

    It was just one of those really freeing, collaborative, sort of idyllic working experiences. It was great because it was also weird, and we were allowed to be weird — and I gained 30 pounds for it. I felt that the nature of the piece, and the subject matter of the piece, it was an extreme circumstance. Therefore, I felt like I had permission to go to extreme places.

    That isn’t always the case. I feel like sometimes with films, you not only want to look smaller, you feel like you need to act smaller, you feel like you need to not step on certain things within the scene. Whereas, that story was this person. It was like bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And to get to be that was really awesome.

    That concept — once I got what was happening in this episode, I realized it’s something that you, as an actress, have lived in — “How big is your following? What do you bring to a movie as far as audience numbers?” But now we’re all doing it with our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

    Absolutely.

    Tell me about your thoughts on just seeing that culture go from your occupation specifically to include everyone, around the world?

    That’s another thing that I only kind of recently realized. I think it was just in talking about “Black Mirror.” When I first started doing social media, which was only not even a year ago, I was like, “What should my line be? Who am I? What kinds of photos do I post?” People are like, “Just be yourself.” I’m like, there’s folks who are going to be seeing this. I need to keep that in mind.

    And I think that there’s a certain amount of awareness of self that as someone who has any kind of a public life, you fight it a little bit, you accept it a little bit, you don’t want to be aware of it, but then you are aware of it, and you don’t want to be weird about it. That is something that I think has been very specific to folks in a public life, and that now everyone experiences.

    Everybody now is like, there’s that filter for everyone. Or there’s no filter, but there’s consequences, in a way that there wasn’t consequences before. So in a way, in talking about social media, I feel like everyone can relate a little bit to that experience of being like, “Whoops, I said something.” And it’s not just a one-on-one thing now, or just in your work place, or in your family. It’s global. Your words, your images, for everybody, are global.

    And, as of right now, even more relevant than ever.

    Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re seeing how technology is rapidly affecting our lives. “Black Mirror” in a way, each episode is a cautionary tale. We’re definitely seeing how fast our world is changing and what can result from that.

  • Directors Dish: Actor Tried to Punch Joe Wright, David Fincher Once Did 107 Takes

    This one is for the real cinephiles. Empire asked Bond director Sam Mendes to guest edit the “Spectre” issue and he launched a massive Q&A with fellow A-ist directors, talking to Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, Ang Lee, Edgar Wright, Alfonso Cuaron, Joe Wright, Paul Greengrass, Joss Whedon, Rob Marshall, Sofia Coppola, Susanne Bier, George Clooney, Alexander Payne, Roger Michell, and Christopher Nolan. He got those famous names to candidly (and often hilariously) answer questions including…

    • “Have you ever walked off a set in a temper?”
    • “What is the most common phrase you use on set?”
    • “Music or no music on set?”
    • “What’s the most takes you’ve ever done?”
    • “How many cups of coffee a day?”
    • “What’s your best-ever day on set?”

    Here are the “most takes” responses:

    Spielberg: I did 50 takes on Robert Shaw assembling the Greener Gun on Jaws. The shark wasn’t working, so I just kept shooting to make the production report look like we were accomplishing something and to keep cast and crew from going crazy from boredom. It was a strategic indulgence.

    Soderbergh: 48.

    Fincher: 107.

    Clooney: 18.

    Nolan: I never pay attention to the number of takes.

    Edgar Wright: I don’t think I have ever gone Kubrick crazy. So maybe 20 or so… But it’s usually six or seven takes.

    Payne: Probably around 26. I’m normally a four-to- seven kind of guy, but every so often, when the actors, the operator, the dolly grip and the assistant cameramen must all work in sync, it might take a while to get right.

    Marshall: I try not to do more than seven or eight. It can become counterproductive.

    Cuarón: The long takes process doesn’t allow for that many takes. In the past I have shot over 50 takes of different shots. Sometimes you end up using take 64, sometimes take four.

    Michell: Like current Australian batsmen… Very rarely double figures.

    Lee: For acting, 13. For action, 36.

    Bier: Twenty-five, I think. Which, if you’re trying to get the best performance, is way, way too much.

    Joe Wright: Thirty-seven maybe, can’t really remember. I’m usually in the range of 12 to 16 unless it’s a very technically challenging shot.

    Coppola: I can’t remember, nothing too crazy, because we never have that much time in the schedule.

    Whedon: On an elaborate shot, 30. On a bit of dialogue, I’ve seldom gone into double digits.

    Greengrass: I don’t count over ten.

    The hard copy issue had more questions, and Collider shared the responses for “What’s your worst-ever day on set?”

    Joe Wright: The day an actor tried to punch me. I’ll say no more.

    Whedon: Buffy presentation. My first gig. Whole thing was a nightmare. At one point there was pure chaos and a total lack of confidence from all involved. I stood outside the set, wanting to slink off home and realising that if I did, if I didn’t walk in there and somehow take control, I was going to be an increasingly miserable script doctor forever. So I walked in. Worst day ended up not so bad.

    Edgar Wright: Too many. I can remember a low point on every shoot. Shaun, it was in the pub finale; we were up against it and had to cut action. Hot Fuzz, we were rained off, lost the light or night shoots went abysmally slow. Scott Pilgrim, I think there was a complicated, disastrous day of effect cues that sent me into a deep funk, and then on World’s End I remember a day where nothing went right where we ditched an entire sequence. Cue my transformation into The Sulk.

    Payne: I abhor when the actors don’t know their dialogue cold. When I have to spoon-feed dialogue to a lazy actor, I think of all the great Russian novels I could be reading instead of wasting my time. It makes me want to turn exclusively to documentaries — no hair and make-up, no second takes, and everyone knows his or her dialogue.

    Read more at Empire. Who tried to punch Joe Wright, director of the new “Pan,” “Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice,” and “Hanna”? And do you think Fincher was just joking with the 107 or was that the exact highest number? The “Fight Club,” “Gone Girl,” “Seven,” “Benjamin Button,” “Social Network” and “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” director is known for being a perfectionist, so it wouldn’t be a shock if the real number were even higher.


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  • 7 Reasons Why ‘Pan’ Bombed at the Box Office

    “Pan” was supposed to be a treasure chest for Warner Bros. A year ago, the $150 million reboot of the familiar children’s tale, with a cast led by Hugh Jackman, looked like the launch of a new summer franchise.

    Now, however, it appears that no amount of pixie dust could have lifted the movie’s box office prospects, and that no amount of clapping will keep the studio’s sequel hopes alive.

    “Pan” sailed into theaters on a wave of bad buzz, only some of which came from negative reviews. Pundits had revised their predictions downward, expecting the movie to open in the range of $17 to $20 million. But it didn’t even meet that low bar, debuting instead with just an estimated $15.5 million, premiering in third place.

    So why didn’t “Pan” fly? Here are seven reasons.

    1. The Rescheduling

    Initially, “Pan” was scheduled to open July 24. But in April, Warner Bros. decided to push it back to October 9 – citing the need for more time to finish the film’s complicated special effects, and to avoid getting lost among all the other potential July blockbusters. But the rumored real reason to bump “Pan” was that the studio knew they were in trouble and needed time to do reshoots.

    But delaying the release of a film, especially a big-budget, effects-driven spectacle like “Pan,” always looks fishy. Industry analysts see it as a sign of trouble, that something is wrong with the film, or that the studio has lost faith in it. That speculation and skepticism usually filters down to the public, and then the movie’s failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t always happen that way — few remember now that pundits expected “Titanic” to be a flop because its initial summer release date got pushed back six months — but it happens often enough to have generated suspicious buzz over the delay.
    2. The Competition

    Warner was smart enough to pick an October date, free of other wide releases. As it turns out, however, the studio might have done better just leaving it in July. The movie might still have faced stiff competition from “Minions,” and more modest competition from Marvel’s “Ant-Man,” but the only new wide releases on July 24 were “Pixels,” “Southpaw,” and “Paper Towns” — all of which underwhelmed at the box office.

    This weekend, however, “Pan” had to contend with still-strong holdovers “The Martian” and “Hotel Transylvania 2.” The Matt Damon sci-fi adventure was down just 32 percent from its debut last weekend, finishing atop the chart again with another estimated $37.0 million, more that twice what “Pan” made. In its third weekend, “Transylvania” finished second with an estimated $20.3 million. It’s doing 14 percent better than the original “Hotel Transylvania” did at this point in its run three years ago. Plus, next week’s “Goosebumps” will probably siphon off the rest of the family audience. Oh, and about that family audience…

    3. The Kid Appeal

    There wasn’t much. Studio exit polling suggested that some 52 percent of “Pan” viewers were over 25. The movie may have been too dark for kids. Or, with its numerous old-school historical, literary, and musical references, it may have sailed over kids’ heads. Grown-ups may have chuckled to hear “Pan” characters singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but does anyone under the age of 12 know who Nirvana was?

    4. The Format

    Maybe “Pan” would have done better if more viewers could have seen it in its full 3D glory. It might have generated better word-of-mouth and benefited from the surcharge. As this column noted last week, however, there’s still a scarcity among theaters equipped for premium-format viewing. So “Pan” had to struggle for available 3D theaters against not just “The Martian” and “Transylvania,” but also “The Walk,” which opened wide this week after its limited IMAX release. So most “Pan” viewers had to settle for 2D screenings.
    5. The Casting

    Was it wrong for Wright to cast Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, princess of an imaginary Indian tribe? It seems odd that there were complaints that the film didn’t cast a Native-American actress to play a role that was a patronizing racial-fantasy stereotype to begin with. Indeed, according to his own explanation, Wright seems to have made the decision in order to avoid stereotyping by making no pretense to authenticity and rooting the character firmly in fantasy. Nonetheless, this decision seems to have backfired. Whether the moviegoing public cares about any of this is another story, but it certainly didn’t help generate positive buzz for the movie.

    6. The Reviews

    The release delay and Tiger Lily controversy may have tainted the film for reviewers, but it’s not like critics didn’t have high hopes for this film. After all, Wright is an acclaimed art-house director (“Atonement”), and star Jackman is known for his versatility. Even so, judging by the film’s dismal 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, reviewers were sorely disappointed. According to many of the pans of “Pan,” critics found the movie overstuffed but under-thought. Aside from Jackman’s hammy performance, they found it bleak, grim, and no fun — not qualities you want in a story about a place where childhood playtime lasts forever. To the extent that older audiences (in this case, parents) still care about reviews, these really had to hurt.
    7. The Concept

    Are audiences really clamoring for Peter Pan retellings? Movies inspired by J.M. Barrie’s characters have a hit-or-miss record at the box office. (See Steven Spielberg’s “Hook,” which grossed $119.7 million domestically despite tepid reviews.) The 2003 live-action “Peter Pan” earned raves but grossed just $48.5 million in North America, less than half its $100 million budget.

    Given that mixed track record, it was a risk for Warner Bros. to go ahead with “Pan” in the first place, especially in creating a new backstory for a character that never needed one. No doubt the studio hoped to launch a new series of Peter Pan adventures. That might still happen, if foreign grosses are good enough. After all, overseas viewers tend to be more appreciative of movies that offer more visual spectacle than narrative coherence. So far, however, foreign grosses have been weak (just $3.8 million).

    So it’s looking like Warners gambled $150 million on an awfully big misadventure.
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  • Rooney Mara ‘Felt Really Bad’ About White Tiger Lily Casting Criticism

    Rooney Mara gets why some people shook their heads at the casting of a white actress as Tiger Lily in the new movie “Pan.” Some cried “whitewashing” — like Emma Stone in “Aloha” — to give the role to a white actress instead of a Native American one, since so few roles are given to Native actresses and here’s a part that was written as non-white from the start.

    Rooney Mara addressed the criticism while promoting the movie at the NYC premiere:

    “It wasn’t great, I felt really bad about it,” she told People. “It was something that I thought about before I met with [director Joe Wright]. When I met with Joe and heard what his plans for it were, it was something I really wanted to be a part of. But I totally sympathize with why people were upset and feel really bad about it.”
    Director Joe Wright also addressed the decision:

    “I thought about the idea of having a Native American tribe, and that worried me actually,” he told the New York Daily News. “What would I be saying with that choice? So then I thought, ‘Well, where should they be from?’ And I couldn’t decide, so I felt like picking just one race would be an unwise choice. So then I thought about the potential of them being the indigenous people of the [entire] planet.” He wanted to avoid alienating any culture with stereotypes from the original story, so he used a mix of ethnicities to populate the Native village, and Rooney Mara as the Native American princess. “It felt like Rooney had this kind of beautiful princess, kick-ass character.”

    Changing a character’s race is always a touchy subject — just ask Michael B. Jordan in “Fantastic Four” — but Tiger Lily’s casting probably won’t affect how “Pan” performs, for better or worse. The real problem is that if the studio wanted both a famous name and a Native American actress for “Pan” they’d be out of luck, since most of Hollywood’s famous film starlets are white and many viewers would be hard-pressed to name even one Native American actress. This is why they could use more casting. You can’t become as known and respected as Rooney Mara if no one gives you a chance to begin with.

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  • Hugh Jackman Struggles With a Sword in ‘Pan’ Blooper

    Hugh Jackman Struggles With a Sword in ‘Pan’ Blooper

    The sword is not mightier than the adamantium claw.

    It’s a lesson Hugh Jackman learned while filming a scene in “Pan” that saw his sword-wielding pirate Blackbeard struggle to slice through a cloth screen in a new blooper clip from the forthcoming Disney movie he shared Monday on Instagram.

    “Was gifted with bloopers from the making of @panmovie,” he captioned the outtake clip. “There’s a treasure chest of these sensationally embarrassing moments! Joe Wright you are genius! #PanMovie #DiscoverYourNeverland”

    Known to slice through any object like a knife to warm butter with his Wolverine character’s indestructible set of metal claws, as pirate Blackbeard his rusty weapon falls short.

    “Pan,” the live-action, very grim re-imagining of Disney’s 1953 animated film stars youngster Levi Miller in the titular role–fulfilling a prophecy as the boy leader who will bring the downfall of Jackman’s villain Blackbeard. Costarring Garrett Hedlund as Hook and Rooney Mara as Tiger Lilly, the action-adventure, opens Oct. 9.

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  • 15 Things We Learned From the Massive Set of ‘Pan’

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    We’ve been to big movie sets before — huge productions with sprawling casts and countless extras and the kind of sets that seem to go on forever – but we’ve never seen anything like the sets for “Pan,” the new adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” constructed, with whimsical delight, by “Hanna” and “Pride & Prejudice” director Joe Wright. This thing was massive.

    The movie stars Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, and Hugh Jackman (more on all of them in a minute), plus young Levi Miller as Peter, and the sets were so insanely massive that many of them had to be constructed in what was described as the largest freestanding structure in Europe, a hanger where blimps were built during the second World War. Like we said: massive.

    And if this movie is flying under people’s radar, mostly due to the glut of flashier, more super-heroic fare bombarding multiplexes this summer, then that should change soon. There’s a brand new poster out now (below) and a trailer premiering later this week — and if that doesn’t do it for you, then there are 15 more things that we learned from the amazing set of “Pan.”

    1. Think of It as ‘Peter Pan Begins’
    As part of our tour, we were ushered into a production office and shown, very roughly, the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie. And what we saw was incredible. The movie is basically the story of how Peter (Miller) gets to Neverland. It’s during World War II and Blackbeard’s pirates, in flying ships, swoop into London and scoop up orphans. It’s equal parts magical and terrifying and Peter is spirited away by this fearsome crew. As the pirate ships sail away (through the sky), they dodge German fire. It’s really, really cool.

    2. This Hook Has Both Hands…
    We got to chat with Hedlund a little bit, as he was shooting a second unit shot involving his character escaping from one of Blackbeard’s mines, and he explained a little bit about where his character was: “What [screenwriter Jason Fuchs] managed to do within the origin narrative is that Hook is still very selfish and has his best intentions at hand, his priorities first and foremost,” Hedlund explained. “But he’s a little maniacal. He’s crazy in this one, which is fun. Very energetic, quite adventurous. We’ll see, knock on wood, about the future. But it’s a very fun place to start with Hook in this, especially working together with Peter to find their way off this island. That’s where we’re at in this story. There is some fun stuff in there.” If you’ve seen the first teaser and heard his old timey movie star delivery of his dialogue, you can tell how much fun he’s having.

    3. …But He’s Still Hook
    But just because he’s got both hands, that doesn’t mean he’s not the Hook we know and love (and loathe). Let’s throw it back to Hedlund: “It is Hook. Actually, Hook’s name was James Hook. It is interesting to go back. I looked and there is hearsay here and there of what J. M. Barrie based Hook on. There is a sea captain, Captain James Cook. There are some other ones — it came down to a possible classmate of Barrie’s that he was fashioned after. But it always has been James Hook. I was doing ADR with Angelina Jolie, and she asked, ‘But how is he named Hook already if he doesn’t have the . . . ?’ I said, ‘Well actually, it has always been James Hook.’ A little foreshadowing…”

    4. Miller Was Very Excited to Get the Title Role
    We got to talk to the young Miller, who is making his big screen debut in “Pan,” about what it was like to get the call that, after scouring the globe, the production had decided that he would be Peter Pan. Miller, who was absolutely adorable and very sweet, and said that getting the call was pretty unbelievable. “Well, when I got the phone call that I was told I was Peter Pan, I freaked out, because I was like, Wow! How does that happen?” Adorable, right?

    5. They Built Everything for Real
    As opposed to many blockbusters that partially build sets and then fill the rest in courtesy of computer generated trickery, “Pan” built almost everything for real — those massive, blimp-making-hangers housed an entire Neverland forest, as well as three huge, fully automated pirate ships that had the ability to pitch and yaw like an actual seafaring vessel. It was hard to look at these sets and not have your jaw drop from all of the wonder.

    6. Technology From the ‘Harry Potter’ Theme Park Brought the Mermaids to Life
    This is an aside (and an incredibly nerdy aside), but something that some might find interesting: the mermaids in the movie (including one essayed by “Paper Towns” star Cara Delevingne) were created partially by using a technology called the Kuka arm, a robotic arm that many will know from having ridden the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride at Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando, Florida. (For a time Disney was courting the German company to use the technology for an “Incredibles”-inspired attraction for Tomorrowland in Orlando; so far, the only Kuka in the parks is part of The Seas with Nemo and Friends ride.) The actresses were strapped into a harness and attached to the arm, which gave them unparalleled motion and simulated their watery surroundings.

    7. The Pirates of Neverland Are Insane
    We happened to reach the Neverland set right as they were breaking to eat lunch, so we got to watch as an entire forest’s worth of pirates filed in to grab a bite. And they were insane. It’s hard to properly describe the level of detail and embellishment that each character, some of them merely background players, had, but they were truly astounding. They were equal parts Burning Man and “Mad Max,” some with crazy flourishes like angel wings (they all had great make-up). This is very much a rococo, heightened version of the story and it seems to fully embrace the wildness of the source material that other adaptations have merely flirted with.

    8. The Casting of Tiger Lily Really Isn’t Racist
    There was initial outrage across the internet when “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” star Rooney Mara was cast as Tiger Lily, a character who, at least in the Disney cartoon, was categorized as a Native American girl. Except that this was an invention of Disney’s, really, and everyone on set (everyone) stressed that the Neverland natives aren’t natives of a single tribe or ethnicity but simply meant to embrace the craziness of Neverland. (And you can see this by the eclectic mixture of styles and cultural influences, found throughout the production.) Quite frankly, it was a good enough explanation for us. But why don’t we let Tiger Lily herself speak to the matter? “It will be fine,” Mara said of the reaction to her character. “They will go see it and they’ll either still feel that way or they will feel better about it. I just remember when we were shooting in the native village, which was so amazing, I mean, this set is amazing too but that was the most incredible set I have ever seen in my life. There were over 150 extras and they were there every day and they were so amazing, they were so passionate, they loved being there. We’re like every different part of the world and it was amazing.”

    9. No, Really
    Wright continued: “It’s just the idea that, I couldn’t know because in the book the natives are described as being redskins which is a term I don’t really recognize so I couldn’t work out where they were natives of. So I thought, well, should they be Native American or should they be African, or should they be Mongolian and then I thought well better if they are just sort of from everywhere and that they are all natives of planet Earth and so that’s what we did. We chose, it was a bit of a gamble really because they still needed to feel like a cohesive community, so I was a bit worried about whether that was going to work but the supporting artists that we had were an amazing group of people and they did become their own little community really and really inhabited that space and worked in that scene and so yea it felt like on that last day it really worked, didn’t it? It was great. It was lovely.”

    10. When Neverland Natives Die They Turn Into Colorful Dust
    Like everything else in the movie, the battle sequences are huge (Tiger Lily herself, as Mara explained, wields a “boomerang ax”), and when the Natives get killed, instead of bleeding or falling to the ground, they turn into an explosion of colorful dust. It’s brilliant and makes perfect sense and when people see it, they are going to die (although probably not turn into colored dust themselves).

    11. Hugh Jackman Is the Nicest Person in the World
    This just bears repeating, although we’re sure you’ve heard it a thousand times, but Hugh Jackman really is the nicest person in the entire world. He had a busy day shooting some kind of complicated battle sequence and he wasn’t even supposed to sit down and talk to us, but he still made time to swing by our little tent (where we were watching a monitor) and say hello. We know that he’s supposed to be larger than life and super scary as Blackbeard, a villainous pirate who abducts children and forces them into slavery and makes life a living hell for most of Neverland, but how can you not love Hugh?

    12. Wright’s On-Set Playlist Is Killer
    If you’ve seen one of Joe Wright’s movies, you know that he really loves music, whether it be the romantic compositions of frequent collaborator Dario Marianelli (who will be back for “Pan”) or the block-rocking beats of the Chemical Brothers (who he used for “Hanna”). But what you might not know is that he plays music on the set to create mood and atmosphere. As we were exiting the giant hanger we saw Jackman get lifted up on wires while the entire stage was flooded with the sounds of South African rap group Die Antwoord. Yes indeed, this is a very different Neveralnd.

    13. The Famous Crocodile Is Here and Gets a New Look
    The crocodile that famously haunts Captain Hook is indeed a part of “Pan” and points to the fact that he might be short a hand by the time the credits roll. Instead of the traditional crocodile (with the ticking clock in its belly), this is a monstrous behemoth, an albino alligator whose back sports a spiny collection of the various arrows and spears that have been hurled at its direction in a futile attempt to kill it. This thing looks mean and totally awesome.

    14. There Will Be a ‘Wizard of Oz’-Style Shift From 2D to 3D
    “Pan” will be exhibited in 3D when it premieres later this summer, and of course this was just another technological and visual flourish that Wright couldn’t help but play around with. When describing how the color palette of the film gets progressively warmer and bolder as the story moves away from war-torn Europe and becomes fully entrenched in the Neverland portion of the story, he also admitted that, seemingly in a nod to the great transition of “Wizard of Oz,” “I’m thinking the opening sequence of the film would be mainly 2D, and the 3D stuff will kick in when we exit to Neverland.” We love stuff like this (more recently “TRON Legacy” featured a similar split) and can’t wait to see how Wright handles it.

    15. This Film Is For Wright’s Son
    Amazingly, Wright said that most of his filmography (and general style) has been a push and pull between British realism and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”-style fantasy, but that “Pan” will be firmly placed in the latter. “The films are often kind of pulling between those two poles and this was an opportunity to really go into the fantasy area,” Wright said with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s kind of getting back to my childhood and maybe taking, maybe expressing that to my son as well. This is for my son, he’s not really into British Realism. He’s 3.”pan 2015 posterpan set visit