“Face/Off” is one of those perfect movies, made at an incredibly specific time (1997) with an incredibly specific pair of actors (Nic Cage and John Travolta) with a high concept so delicious (a federal agent swaps faces with a comatose terrorist and, surprise, the terrorist wakes up and puts the agent’s face on) that you forgive all of its silliness and the fact that they couldn’t have chosen two actors who look more dissimilar. Wrapped in a velvety blanket of John Woo-orchestrated stylishness, it remains one of the defining moments of action cinema and an endlessly re-watchable gem.
Well, Deadline now reports that Paramount, in an effort to boost their in-house franchises, will be remaking the iconic film, setting Oren Uziel to pen the new screenplay. That’s almost all that is known about this new endeavor, but we just hope they keep the mixture of extreme violence, winking humor and high emotionality of the original (maybe they recruit another eastern filmmaker making a name for him- or herself in Hollywood?)
The “Jiu Jitsu” fight is getting a bunch of new contenders.
Frank Grillo, Rick Yune, Tony Jaa, Marie Avgeropoulos and JuJu Chan are joining the cast of the sci-fi martial arts action movie starring Nicolas Cage and Alain Moussi (“Kickboxer”).
The project comes from writer and director Dimitri Logothetis.
The movie is based on the comic book, which Logothetis also wrote with Jim McGrath. It centers on an ancient order of expert Jiu Jitsu fighters facing a fearsome alien invader called the Brax in a battle for Earth every six years. Cage’s character and his team of Jiu Jitsu fighters band together with Moussi’s character to defeat the Brax.
Grillo starred in DirecTV’s MMA drama “Kingdom” and has appeared as Brock Rumlow/Crossbones in multiple Marvel movies, including “Avengers: Endgame.”
Jaa starred in the “Ong-Bak” movies and appeared in “Furious 7.” Yune has had roles in “Alita: Battle Angel” and “Olympus Has Fallen. Avgeropoulos is a major player on the CW drama “The 100.” Chan appeared in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny.”
Nicolas Cage is going to deploy martial arts to battle aliens.
The actor is set to star in “Jiu Jitsu,” writer/director Dimitri Logothetis’ sci-fi martial arts movie. Joining Cage is Alain Moussi, the star of the last two “Kickboxer” movies (which Logothetis produced).
The movie is based on the comic book, which Logothetis also wrote with Jim McGrath. It centers on an ancient order of expert Jiu Jitsu fighters facing a fearsome alien invader called the Brax in a battle for Earth every six years. Cage’s character and his team of Jiu Jitsu fighters band together with Moussi’s character to defeat the Brax.
“After we successfully reintroduced the ‘Kickboxer’ franchise to a new generation of martial arts fans with the sixth and seventh entries in the series, we set out to up the ante with a sci-fi martial arts franchise that could bring the same kind of intensity and longevity to a new arena,” Logothetis said of the project.
Cage most recently starred in last year’s “Mandy” and voiced a character in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
Gore Verbinski is one of those filmmakers whose name is always floated when there’s some new superhero or tentpole project that is trying to rise out of the ground (he was briefly attached to “Gambit” but like everyone else who flirted with the project, he quickly left). The reasons are clear: he has a technical mastery and has made movies that have earned billions of dollars. But he’s also an auteur, somebody whose point-of-view and personality can be felt in every frame of the films he does. (Those frames, by the way, are cannily constructed.) It’s with this in mind that we go through his entire filmography, delighting in all the darkness and absurdism.
10. ‘Mouse Hunt’ (1997)
DreamWorks
A wacky, gag-a-minute comedy about a pair of bumbling brothers (Nathan Lane and Lee Evans) trying to get rid of a mouse that has taken up residence in their family’s ramshackle mansion, “Mouse Hunt” is more or less a live-action cartoon. (Oddly enough, the least effective moments are when the rudimentary CGI mouse takes center stage; it looks like of ghostly all these years later.) For his debut feature (he was hired off the strength of his Budweiser frog commercial) that doubled as the first “family film” from the nascent DreamWorks (it was only their third film ever; you can tell by the Disney jab), Verbinski really went there. Under Verbinski’s assured vision, what could have easily been reduced to “Home Alone with a mouse,” became something far stranger, far bawdier, and yes, far darker (there’s both a funeral and an accidental death in the first fifteen minutes). While it’s far from his greatest accomplishment, it is a terrific indicator of where he’d go, particularly when crafting supposed all-ages entertainment with a sharply subversive edge. Christopher Walken’s cameo (as a deranged exterminator)? *Chef’s kiss*
9. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ (2006)
Disney
The most profitable film in Verbinski’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy (and, for half a decade, Disney’s most successful film ever) is also the weakest, an opulent, more-is-more mess that is the ultimate example of mid-trilogy wheel-spinning (literally, rascally pirate Jack Sparrow winds up in some sort of wheel twice). How much of this is Verbinski’s fault remains unclear, especially considering they embarked on the production of two back-to-back sequels without a single completed script (this after Disney threatened to cancel both films). Everything that made the first film so charming (Johnny Depp’s off-kilter performance, the sea-chanty-worthy nautical mythology, shout-outs to the original attraction) becomes embellished to the point of overkill in “Dead Man’s Chest.” And while Verbinski does a great job making everything look lush and believable (particularly when it comes to the villainous Davy Jones and his monstrous crew), it’s not enough to make the movie compelling. It was pretty ballsy to kill Depp off in the movie’s final moments, a harbinger of the darkness to come in part 3.
8. ‘The Mexican’ (2001)
DreamWorks
For a while “The Mexican” was the hottest script in Hollywood that nobody could get made. That was before Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts expressed interest. “The Mexican” seems, on paper, like the perfect Verbinski vehicle — it’s a darkly comic fable about a low-level leg-breaker (Pitt) who travels to Mexico to retrieved a cursed pistol for an unscrupulous mob boss. Not only would it allow the filmmaker to engage with his darker inclinations thanks to the movie’s hard-R rating but it’d allow him to indulge in some classic western stylistic flourishes. Unfortunately, the movie is painfully dated (Roberts’ chunky heels and VW Bug, Pitt’s thick necklace and general vibe, plus the movie’s treatment of homosexuality) and often so bleak that it blots out the chance of any actual joy from getting through. It’s worth a single viewing for Verbinski completists, but not much else.
7. ‘The Ring’ (2002)
DreamWorks
Verbinski jump-started the American-remake-of-Asian-horror-movies trend with “The Ring,” an atmospheric remake of the 1998 Japanese film “Ring.” (Just think about how many parodies there were of the movie’s opening sequence alone.) Naomi Watts, wearing some very 2002 lipstick shades, plays a journalist chasing down the story of a haunted videotape that kills whoever watches it seven days later (so many rules!) While this version of the story does present a more linear and “western” narrative, Verbinski still manages to add in some surrealistic flourishes and the big set pieces are, as expected, total gangbusters – particularly the iconic moment where the little ghost girl emerges from the television. (He also wisely cut an entirely subplot about Watts showing the videotape to a child murderer played by Chris Cooper.) Unfortunately, the movie hasn’t aged well, and even though it was first, many of its tropes (rainy Seattle backdrop, preternaturally all-knowing child) have become tiresome clichés in the years since.
6. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’ (2007)
Disney
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” the big Disney release for the summer of 2007 and the sequel to the most profitable movie in the company’s history … begins with a small child being hung. Now that takes guts. This sequence (and, really, the rest of the movie) is a testament to Verbinski’s utter willingness to go there and his absolute disinterest in making a conventional cookie-cutter sequel. From the trippy voyage beyond death to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (those rock/crab guys are great) to the climactic ship versus ship battle in the middle of a mystical typhoon (a set piece he would only get to top, in terms of complexity and visual aplomb, years later), this is Verbinski firing on all cylinders and not living anything behind. He thought this was the end of the series so he went all out; the mediocrity of the films that followed are a testament to how much of himself he put into the franchise.
5. ‘Rango’ (2011)
Paramount
The lone animated feature in his filmography, “Rango” is an ultra-smart western send-up that’s equal parts “Blazing Saddles” and “Chinatown.” Depp (again) plays a chameleon with an identity crisis, who winds up in a dusty western town and assumes the role of a fearsome gunslinger. Verbinski, working with the animation wizards at Industrial Light & Magic (at the time it was their first fully animated feature) and creature designer “Crash” McCreery, is at the top of his game, squeezing the most visual pizzazz out of each and every scene. (The movie’s big sequence, a chase through a canyon with hillbilly varmints riding on the back of bats, while a banjo-embossed “Ride of the Valkyries” plays, is one of the director’s all-time best.) Extra points should be awarded for the filmmaker’s willingness to push out the boundaries of what is considered a conventional, “western” animated film into territories far stranger and more challenging (he ended up winning the Best Animated Feature Oscar for the trouble).
4. ‘The Lone Ranger’ (2013)
Disney
Whereas “Pirates of the Caribbean” was a total surprise, “The Lone Ranger,” which re-teamed many of the people that made those films so successful (Verbinski, Depp, ILM), seemed like a foregone conclusion. This, along with an unprecedented level of media scrutiny (about everything from the questionable nature of Depp playing Native American Tonto to the film’s huge budget), made its box office and critical downfall seem even more spectacular. (Disney wound up with a whopping write-down of around $150 million.) And all this is a real shame, because “The Lone Ranger” is a terrific movie, fearless and artful, wherein the progress of the 20th century is the main villain and fearless tonal shifts can swing from the massacre of an entire Native American tribe to a joke about Armie Hammer getting dragged through horse poop. It’s unfathomable that the movie was given the go-ahead (it was canceled at least once before production began), much less allowed to arrive in theaters with splashes of extreme violence (a main character’s heart gets eaten) and a running time of 149 minutes. It exists in defiance of conventional studio norms, which makes it even more of a treasure. And the climactic train chase might just be the greatest thing Verbinski has ever pulled off, a heart-stopping, virtuosic set piece that makes my jaw drop every time I watch it.
3. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ (2003)
Disney
It’s hard to properly convey what an outlier “Pirates of the Caribbean” was back when it premiered in 2003. It was a pirate movie, in a climate where notorious bomb “Cutthroat Island” was still a sore subject, and it was based on a Disney theme park attraction, a dicey proposition if there ever was one (hello, “The Country Bears!”), hence the awkward subtitle. It was also so dark that Disney chief Michael Eisner left the castle logo off the film — watch it again, it just starts. And yet, it was an absolute phenomenon. People went back again and again. That’s everything to do with Verbinski, who gave a tactile feeling to the supernatural world of pirates and cursed treasure. He was the one who defended Depp’s approach to the Captain Jack Sparrow character when executives got jittery (a performance that would ultimately result in an Oscar nomination). He was also the one whose mastery of visual effects helped ILM pull off the amazing “ghost pirates” stuff. It’s easy to call someone a visionary when they don’t really deserve the title, but Verbinski should totally own it. Nobody could have pulled off “Pirates of the Caribbean.” But he did. It should never have worked. But it did.
2. ‘A Cure for Wellness’ (2016)
New Regency
An almost indescribably odd film, “A Cure for Wellness” was Verbinski’s return to relatively low budget filmmaking. It’s a horror film but doesn’t follow any current tropes. Instead, it’s a throwback to a simpler time, a kind of Hammer movie about a young man (a totally game Dane DeHaan) who goes to a European health spa to retrieve his boss, only to get sucked into a conspiracy involving the occult and an ageless man holding his daughter prisoner and eels (lots and lots of eels). This is Verbinski at his most outrageous. You can feel that he’s an artist who had been shackled by the restrictions of studio filmmaking and big budget obligations for a very long time and was positively liberated by the experience of getting to make a movie on his own terms. The film was divisive and had a dismal box office return, but it’s hard to not feel like, in a few short years, it will be seen as the cult classic that it is.
1. ‘The Weather Man’ (2005)
Paramount
Verbinski’s smallest feature, made in between “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and seen by hardly anyone, is also his most affecting and personal. Nicolas Cage plays the titular weather man, a Chicago screw-up dealing with his overweight daughter, dying father (Michael Caine), contentious ex-wife (Hope Davis) and addict son (a young Nicholas Hoult). Oh and everyone hates him and throws giant sodas at him (it’s a recurring gag and a very good one). Steve Conrad’s meticulous, multilayered script is the perfect basis for Verbinski’s equally obsessive visuals (try counting the number of fast food logos appear throughout the film), embroidered by Hans Zimmer’s delicate electronic score (one of his best ever). Everything in the movie is icy; reflective and shimmery and cracked. As melancholy as it is insightful, “The Weather Man” only hits false notes when engaging in a subplot about a pedophilic mentor (Gil Bellows). It has not aged well. Oh well. Sometimes “The Weather Man” gets it wrong.
The actor will star in Richard Stanley’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella. This is Stanley’s first feature film since 1992’s “Dust Devil” and the first since he was notoriously fired from the 1996 adaptation of “The Island of Dr Moreau.”
“Color Out of Space” revolves around the Gardners, a family who moves to a remote farmstead in rural New England to escape the hustle of the 21st century. A meteorite crashes into their front yard and seems to melt into the earth, infecting both the land and the properties of space-time with a strange, otherworldly color.
To their horror, the Gardner family discover that this alien force is gradually mutating every life form that it touches — including them.
Stanley has kept out of the limelight in the two decades since his attempt to remake “The Island of Dr. Moreau” blew up in his face.
The troubled production was chronicled in a 2014 documentary. The film was a long-standing dream of his, and seemed about to come true after he recruited Marlon Brando to play the titular character.
However, the project fell apart largely due to the mercurial Brando’s absences and chronic lateness, Val Kilmer’s bad behavior, various cast members quitting, and Stanley’s inability to work effectively with New Line studio executives. He was fired and replaced by John Frankenheimer.
“Color Out of Space” will also star Joely Richardson, Tommy Chong, Elliot Knight, Julian Hilliard, and Q’Orianka Kilcher. Production is set to begin next month.
2018 has been a really good year for horror movies.
It probably has to do with the unease we’re all feeling, whether it be political, cultural, or environmental. The filmmakers behind these films have internalized those anxieties, and given them supernatural or mythological weight, to create something as entertaining as it is cathartic. (If anything, the success of “Get Out” has established the tone and tenor for the entire year’s horror output, in new and idiosyncratic ways.)
Quite frankly, the fact that these films scare the pants off of you while also saying something makes them even more miraculous.
‘A Quiet Place’
Paramount
This year’s breakout horror sensation was, undoubtedly, “A Quiet Place,” an unnerving and fiendishly clever take on the alien invasion genre wherein the creatures’ primary motivation is sound. (It shares a lot with a terrific episode of the original “Twilight Zone” series, “The Invaders.”) Co-writer/director/star John Krasinski turned what could have been a gimmicky romp into something profound and unnerving, playing like a single continuously sustained suspense set piece for its entire 90-minute runtime.
But if it was only thrills Krasinksi was after, it wouldn’t have connected the way it did; thankfully, he grounded it with a remarkably human story of a single family living their lives at the end of the world. And Emily Blunt, as the pregnant matriarch struggling to hold her family together, gives one of the greatest performances of the year. She’s a scream queen who can’t make a peep.
‘Veronica’
Netflix
“Veronica” quietly premiered on Netflix in February, unceremoniously dropped on the service despite its high pedigree (it comes from Paco Plaza, co-creator of the wonderful “[rec]” franchise) and catchy, based-on-a-true-story logline (involving a teenage girl, a “spirit board” and demonic possession). But from those inglorious beginnings came something of a word-of-mouth sensation, with many taking to the Internet to proclaim it the scariest movie they’d ever seen.
And while that reaction might be a bit much, it’s not exactly wrong, either, especially since the most vocal Twitter users maybe haven’t seen some of the older classics. “Veronica” is definitely sleep-with-the-lights-on scary, and its supposed basis in fact makes it even more haunting and terrifying. Because stuff like this can’t happen in real life, right?
‘Cargo’
Netflix
Netflix debuted this deeply heartfelt post-apocalyptic chiller, arguably the most thoughtful and emotionally resonant zombie film you’ll see this year.
In “Cargo,” Martin Freeman stars as a man living in the Australian outback after the end of the world. He’s got a small child and, early in the film, loses his wife to the zombie outbreak. He also soon becomes bitten and so it becomes a race against time to get his child in safe hands before he succumbs. The film’s subtle, intricate world-building (people were bracelets that tell them how long they have until they turn, there are medical needles handed out that kill the undead) and nifty additions to preexisting mythology (the honeyed goo that covers the soon-to-be-zombie’s eyes and mouth is a great flourish) do much to pave over some of the more well-worn territory.
‘Hereditary’
A24
The breakout indie horror movie of the year (it wound up being A24’s biggest hit), “Hereditary” is still giving us the heebie-jeebies.
Ari Aster’s assured debut features a tour de force performance by Toni Collette as a woman whose family is coming unglued after the death of her mother, an overpowering matriarch with an incredibly dark secret. The movie unfolds slowly and deliberately, with the audience uncovering the mystery alongside Collette, to profoundly disturbing results. Punctuated by bursts of shocking violence, a spine-tingling score by frequent Arcade Fire confederate Colin Stetson and some of the spookiest moments in recent horror movie memory, “Hereditary” takes hold of you and never, ever lets go. *clucks tongue.
‘Annihilation’
Paramount
To anyone who is thinking, “Isn’t ‘Annihilation’ more of a heady sci-fi movie?”, we’d just like to remind you of the screaming bear creature that brutally murders somebody … or the mutant shark-alligator that puts the big beastie in “The Meg” to shame … or the part where somebody’s stomach is sliced open and eel-like intestines slither underneath. And these are just the parts we can remember off the top of our head.
“Annihilation” is a brutal, brilliant film, that follows a scientist (Natalie Portman) as she journeys into an alien region known as The Shimmer, hunting for answers about what happened to her lost husband (Oscar Isaac) – and how to save him.
Ultimately, the title refers to her own self-destruction, beautifully depicted in the film’s final act with a virtuoso climax as chilling as anything in a straight “horror film” this year.
‘The Ritual’
Chances are, “The Ritual” (now on Netflix) will seem familiar to you. It most closely resembles “The Descent,” in the sense that it’s about a group of friends (this time, they’re male and led by the in-demand Rafe Spall) who go on a hiking trip following a personal tragedy. Of course, like in “The Descent,” that trip soon turns very, very ugly.
But if you let go of its connections to other films, “The Ritual” is strangely rewarding, with a heavy atmosphere of dread that permeates every frame and a handful of finely honed performances (Spall, in particular, haunted by a brutal event, is compelling and cowardly in equal measure). Plus, the creature is one of the strangest, most bewitching designs in the current horror landscape. You’ll be riveted.
‘Mandy’
RLJE
“Mandy” has turned out to be one of the sleeper hits of the year. It was released on VOD and theatrically at the same time and after a few weeks actually expanded into more theaters. And with good reason — it’s not only one of the year’s best horror movies but it’s one of the year’s best movies (period).
As directed by the truly visionary Panos Cosmatos (“Beyond the Black Rainbow“), “Mandy” concerns a lumberjack named Red (Nicolas Cage), who goes on a rampage after his titular girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) is murdered by cultists. It’s weird, for sure (we didn’t even mention the supernatural S&M biker gang), but also profoundly moving and haunting, with one of the all-time greatest Cage performances (seriously).
It’s also arguably the most metal movie ever made.
‘Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich’
Full Moon
Sorry, “The Happytime Murders,” but this is the X-rated puppet movie we’ve all been waiting for. “Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich” is a gore-soaked reboot of the horror franchise that began way back in 1989 and has continued, unabated, to this day. (There was a canonical sequel – the 12th – released in 2017.)
In this entry, written by certifiable genius S. Craig Zahler (“Brawl in Cell Block 99,” “Bone Tomahawk”), the backstory has been rewritten (hello, Udo Kier as a Nazi toymaker!) and a new story has formed around a toy convention where the demonic playthings run amok. The narrative is inspired, in part, by racial, ethnic and homophobic prejudice. So, yes, this isn’t for everyone. But if you’re finding yourself wanting a bloody blast of inappropriate humor, outré horror, and some very, er, “heightened” performances (led by Thomas Lennon), it’s hard to top this.
‘Suspiria’
Amazon Studios
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Luca Guadagino’s “Suspiria” is that it doesn’t try to ape Dario Argento’s peerless original. Instead, he crafted a brand new experience around the same basic framework (a dewy American girl, this time played by Dakota Johnson, travels to a European ballet school run by witches). The remake is incredibly artful and effective in completely different and equally profound ways. (He even stayed away from the primary colors of the original; this one is awash in autumnal hues.)
Guadagino fascinatingly chooses to set the movie in the same year that the original film was released, bringing in elements of socio-political unease that the original steered clear of, broadening the scope but maintaining its emotional intimacy. The cast’s performances (led by Tilda Swinton) are peerless and Thom Yorke’s score is, like the rest of the film, haunting and unforgettable.
If you aren’t moved, puzzled, or enraged by “Suspiria,” you probably had your eyes closed.
‘Halloween‘
Universal/Blumhouse
40 years after John Carpenter’s original, David Gordon Green has crafted a “Halloween” that stands nobly alongside it. In this new movie, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has gone from a terrified babysitter to an embittered survivalist, keenly aware of how prepared she should be if Michael Myers ever breaks free. (Spoiler alert: he does.)
This is a horror movie as much about a homicidal maniac ruthlessly murdering folks on Halloween night as it is about how acts of violence can cause trauma that can course through entire generations. Green’s direction is layered and nuanced, combining Carpenter’s elegance with more down-and-dirty moments, and the script (by Green, Danny McBride, and Jeff Fradley) wisely avoids the muddled mythology that the franchise had built up in the subsequent sequels. Instead, this is a direct follow-up to the original, full of chilly synths, bloody kills, and a female empowerment subtext that makes it the best possible horror sequel for 2018.
‘Ghost Stories‘
IFC
“Ghost Stories” flew under the radar for a lot of people earlier this year, blotted out by the titanic horror movie events of 2018. But you should go back and check it out. It’s a hoot.
Written and directed by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson, based on their stage play, “Ghost Stories” is playful and scary. It is an expert homage to the old British horror anthologies that Amicus would put out in the 1960s (oftentimes employing down-on-their-luck horror icons) that still feels fresh and relevantly today.
Nyman plays a professional debunker who is assigned three seemingly unexplainable cases by an aging mentor — in one, a night security guard is menaced by an otherworldly force; in another, a young motorist encounters a forest-dwelling beast. The third and final story yet focuses on a successful businessman (“Sherlock’s” Martin Freeman) who is plagued by strangeness while waiting for the birth of his child. All of the stories will chill your blood, and the wraparound segments create their own kind of messed-up story.
Creepy, twisty, and oddly mournful, “Ghost Tales” (which is now out on home video) is worth spending a sleepless night with.
‘Apostle‘
Netflix
Gareth Evans, who had previously directed the two “Raid” movies, moved into far spookier territory with his epic follow-up, a folkloric mind-f*ck that makes “The Wicker Man” look like “Hotel Transylvania.”
In 1905, a restless man (Dan Stevens) travels to a remote British island to rescue his sister from a dangerous cult, led by a charismatic madman (Michael Sheen). That’s pretty much all you can say about “Apostle” without giving way some of its myriad, blood-splattered surprises, but just know this … it’s going to mess you up and it’s going to mess you up good.
Evans, known for his visceral fight sequences, plays things more atmospheric here, instead settling into the sorrowful presence of the island, and how broken people are able to build a society that is just as broken. It’s beautiful and compelling, with an ending you will not believe, and since it arrived on Netflix, there’s no excuse for you to not watch right now. Like, go!
‘Revenge‘
NEON
2018 seems like the perfect time for a feminist rape-revenge movie and whew boy did French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat deliver. In “Revenge,” Jen (Matilda Lutz, star earrings dangling from each lobe) is invited to a lavish weekend getaway by her rich (and married) boyfriend. Things take a turn for the worse when one of his buddies rapes her, and then her said boyfriend attempts to kill her. Thankfully, she’s got a will to live and a locket full of high-powered hallucinogens.
While some of the make-up effects are wildly over-the-top (so much gushing blood), they are all in service of putting the viewer in Jen’s position, as the claws her way to vengeance. She is a survivor. And while this is sounding more like a thesis project than a thrilling piece of entertainment, let me assure you that it is. The subtext is all there, and Fargeat (in her very first film!) delicately balances the message of the movie with the thrill of watching very bad people get dispatched in appropriately nasty ways. (Lutz is a revelation.)
Think of it as the first drive-in classic of the #MeToo era.
Watching “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (or, hell, even watching the trailer for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”), it’s clear that it took a colossal effort to bring to the big screen.
Quite simply, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before — a living comic book brought to life with all of the medium’s visual hallmarks (“emanata,” thought bubbles, and the like) as well as its emotional ones (easily established familial dynamics, soap opera-like plot twists). When comic books are translated to animation, they usually just feel like illustrations that move, but “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” transports you into a living comic book, in ways that were previously never possible.
Much of this fell on the shoulders of the movie’s three visionary directors: Bob Perscichetti (a longtime animator, who began animating in 2D during the Disney Renaissance and more recently served as head of story on films like “Puss in Boots” and “The Little Prince“), Peter Ramsey (a veteran storyboard artist and director of the criminally underrated “Rise of the Guardians“), and Rodney Rothman (whose background in comedy makes him ideally suited for the tonal tightrope of this film). They oversaw the project that was conceived by Phil Lord and Chris Miller back in 2014. (The project was first leaked during Sony’s infamous email hack and formally announced in 2015.) It says something about the size and scope of the production that it required three filmmakers to wrangle it.
Sony
Rothman describes the three of them directing together as a “relatively organic” process, with the directors splitting up duties for the day (“Peter might be in a record with an actor, Bob might be in animation”) that centralized in the edit bay. That’s where all three filmmakers could review footage and see how the movie was progressing. Bob described it as “base camp.” “We all have areas of expertise, but the overlap in between all those areas is where the movie came together,” Ramsey explained.
Not that this was an easy movie to put together. Perscichetti said that it took a year-and-a-half to get “a couple seconds of the movie made.” He went on: “We were like, “Okay! That’s what it should look like! Now, we’ve got another year-and-a-half to make the other 116 minutes! Let’s go!’”
Even amongst the team, it wasn’t clear how they were going to pull off the movie’s living comic book aesthetic. “It was floating around up there, but none of us could put our hands on it,” Ramsey said. “I remember thinking: ‘F**k, how is that going to work? How are they technically going to do that without making it look like the A-Ha video?’ And they started working on it bit by bit. That first year… the pieces started clicking into place.”
Sony/Marvel
And click into place, it did. The production started out with 60 animators, but by August 2018, the number had grown to 142 animators. This was the largest animation crew Sony Pictures Imageworks had ever assembled for a film, and what makes this accomplishment even more impressive is that the studio released two other animated movies this year alone (“Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation” and for Warner Bros, “Smallfoot“). During the production period, they had released four other animated features for themselves and other studios. (In their capacity as a visual effects house, they’d also contributed to “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”)
Fine-tuning that animation took finesse and a set of established guidelines. As Perscichetti explained, “There was a ramp to it. You start the movie and you’re with an existing Spider-Man, and then you have everything that comes with that in that opening sequence. And then you meet Miles and all that stuff disappears. And then you slowly ramp back into it.”
As for all of those visual flourishes, Ramsey said: “There was a lot of experimentation as to how much and where.” Persichetti also revealed that, as an exercise late in the game, they said, “Let’s just throw in anything [that’s] visually different.” This applied to any kind of crazy embellishments or embroidery — text on screen, explosions, pretty much anything. The experience, he said, was, “Whoa, too much.” They started pulling things out.
And key to how they were whittling down the visuals, and where, was the experience of the movie’s central Spider-Man, Miles Morales (voiced brilliantly by Shameik Moore). “Whatever bells and whistles and tools were developed for this movie should be in service of the audience getting engaged in something and feeling something. So we did have to be careful,” Rothman explained. He cited a scene where Miles is walking down the hallway and word boxes appear, expressing his innermost thoughts. The boxes were “choreographed,” moving both in space and in relation to Miles. “It’s more of an emotional state than to be text on screen or a legible way to understand Miles’ thoughts. It’s more how those thought bubbles move than what they say,” Rothman said (this is his first animated project). “That was a new idea to me that I got really jazzed on.”
Later on, Rothman elaborated on his philosophy when it came to the stylization (and how it connected to Miles): “That’s why certain ideas stuck in this movie, like using color separation or Ben-Day dots as part of the visual language — or using different characters who appear to be from different artists in the same shot or making Miles an artist who is looking for a way to express himself. All of these things ended up sticking to the movie because they connected to a core idea at the center of it.”
Of course, with a name like “Into the Spider-Verse,” the movie was also going to be supplying Miles with backup in the form of a cadre of other Spider-folk from alternate dimensions, including Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), a schlubby, sweatpants-wearing Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), a black-and-white Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and her giant robot, and Spider-Ham (John Mulaney). Now, having all these characters together is one thing, but each of them is animated in a completely different style. Peter Parker and Gwen are more of Miles’ world, but Spider-Man Noir is stylized and black-and-white, Peni is pure anime, and Spider-Ham resembles classic 2D animation from the heyday of Warner Bros. or Disney.
Somewhat surprisingly, Perscichetti said that, “Every Spidey that showed up was in the first treatment three years ago. Even then, it wasn’t like ‘oh, he’s in here because he’s black and white and he’s in here to do fluid animation with squash-and-stretch,’ it was just diversity and it was what they brought to Miles, how they helped Miles become Spider-Man.” Of course, once they got the characters together, the possibilities opened up.
Perscichetti continued: “Once we started to see the potential with what we could do visually with Noir and Peni and the pig, it was like, ‘Oh my god.’” Audiences will have the same reaction, of course. When we saw the movie, there was a long car-ride-home-length discussion about which Spidey was our favorite. It’s that kind of movie.
Beyond the distinguishing characteristics of the visuals, the tone of the movie sets it apart, offering up a more mature, nuanced narrative than most western animated films, which often rely on sight gags, immature humor, and Broadway-style musical numbers. Ramsey admits that they were trying to go for a more “operatic” feeling than you would normally get while reading the comics, with their heightened emotionality and subversive plot twists. Doing that in western animation was really the breakthrough since, Ramsey admits, “anime does it all the time.” Rothman added: “Phil Lord and Chris Miller had a fundamental guideline that was drilled into everybody’s head, which was, ‘Can you go further?’ That was the approach.”
This kind of wild experimentation in tone and form, by the way, wasn’t simply confined to the animators. I spoke with the film’s composer, Daniel Pemberton, who admitted that he “didn’t want to do superhero movies because they’re all kind of the same and musically quite boring.” Then they showed him footage and his response was, “Holy crap.”
Taking his cue from Miles’ love of hip hop and street art, Pemberton came up with an idea: “We talked early on about recording the score with an orchestra and then re-scratch it back in as part of the score. So we ended up doing that. It was horribly complicated but I would write and score something with an orchestra, mix it, and then put it on vinyl and then I got a scratch DJ to re-scratch it in. I’d never seen anyone do anything like it.”
It seems like the kind of experimentation has paid off, in ways they couldn’t have possibly expected. Perscichetti explained that “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” served as something of a “Trojan Horse of how can we get super creative in this studio and define it as not having one house style but instead has a house philosophy.” He went on: “So there can be diversity in looks and storytelling.” Considering the studio has, amongst other things in the pipeline, an R-rated comedy, a mature action movie, and a sequel to “The Angry Birds Movie,” this new philosophical approach checks out.
And with Sony quietly plotting the future of the Spider-Verse, with a sequel to Miles Morales’ story as well as a spin-off focused on the female Spider-folk (including, potentially, Gwen Stacy), I wondered if these three would be back, in a supervisory capacity or otherwise. While Perscichetti brushed it off as “a 2019 question” and Ramsey joked that his ideal sequel would be set “on the beach,” Rothman answered that “We’re super stoked on being able to push things as far as we can. The exciting thing is to wonder, Where else can we push?
Hopefully, the movie does well enough where we can answer that question.” Judging by the way audiences are already responding to this film, and Sony’s bullish attitude towards the properties, it looks like we’ll all be finding out sooner rather than later. THWIP!
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” swings into theaters everywhere on December 14th.
“Into the Spider-Verse” is unlike any “Spider-Man” movie or almost any superhero movie you’ve ever seen.
Rendered like a four-color comic book and featuring spectacle that unfolds like the most abstract and boldest splash pages you’ve ever seen, and produced by “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and “The LEGO Movie” filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, their latest feels like a celebration — and perhaps overdue reminder — of all of the things that made them such an refreshing, inventive presence to both animated and live-action filmmaking.
Bolstered by voice performances from a uniquely eclectic cast against a backdrop that defies description (and may possibly induce a few seizures), “Spider-Verse” offers a welcome new chapter that intersects and beautifully expands the series — and cinematic mythology — of existing Spider-films.
Shameik Moore plays Miles Morales, a mild-mannered teen reluctantly shuttled to a new high school for academically gifted teens after demonstrating an exceptional aptitude for science and math. His dad Jefferson (Bryan Tyree Henry), a police officer, doesn’t know quite how to connect with him, choosing rigid discipline over gentle encouragement. But Miles ne’er-do-well uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) encourages his artistic impulses, even when they manifest themselves through graffiti and decidedly less legally suitable means of expression. After being bitten by a radioactive spider, Miles unexpectedly develops superhuman abilities, which he fails roundly to control, much less understand. But after his universe’s Spider-Man dies trying to save New York from Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), Miles decides to take up the hero’s alter ego and finish the task that he failed to complete.
What Miles soon learns, however, is that Kingpin’s mysterious plan has brought multiple universes crashing together — including multiple versions of the superhero whose shoes he aspires to fill. There’s Spider-Man (Jake Johnson), a dumpy unmotivated divorcee; Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), a spunky teenage musician; Spider-Noir (Nic Cage), a hard-boiled detective; Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a Japanese orphan with a mech-suit possessed by her father’s spirit; and Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a spider who was bit by a radioactive pig.
As Kingpin gets closer to achieving his fiendish goals, this unexpected and unwitting team of Spider-People reluctantly decide to team up to stop him before his device unlocks their parallel universes, crashing them down upon one another and destroying reality as everyone in each of them knows it.
Sony
“Spider-Verse” feels like it takes place inside a comic book — so much so, in fact, that the colors and shading of the artist’s pens feel like a part of each character’s personality. But writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman do more than pay homage to the storytellers and artists who brought their own unique spin to on generation of Spider-Man comics after another: They deconstruct the very nature of continuity, of multiple universes and storylines that create the cinematic continuities we slavishly examine as moviegoers and fans. There are no fewer than six different origin stories, one for each universe’s Spider-Man, and they’re all different only by a matter of degrees. These speak to the universality not only of the character’s journey, but to the elements that motivate their choices as heroes. That the movie acknowledges this openly only further enriches its smart, sophisticated look at timelines and connective tissue between not just various Spider-People but heroes in general — it’s that sameness that we recognize and which resonates when their stories hit individual speed bumps.
At the same time, there’s a very specific and unique story at the heart of “Spider-Verse” between Miles, his father, and eventually, his uncle Aaron, two viewpoints that don’t seem equally appealing to a rule-breaking teenager, but he doesn’t yet recognize want the same things for him. He’s thrilled by the prospect of becoming a superhero, and recognizes the responsibility he’s inherited; but from whom does he learn how to use his powers? He soon discovers that it takes a village — a village of Spider-People, no less — as well as the values instilled by his family, and eventually, his own innate goodness and altruism. This reflexively gets rediscovered by some of his Spider-counterparts, in particular Johnson’s middle-aged Spider-Man, whose failed marriage and loneliness led him away from the sense of simple do-gooding that made him such an effective and beloved hero.
All of this adds up to much more than a conventional comic book movie. Though it’s aimed at kids, the complexity of “Spider-Verse’s” world-building makes it enormously appealing to grown-up fans of superheroes, especially those familiar with even a few of the variations that pop up. The film’s animated format — which seems like the best way to describe it, given its live-action adjacent mythology, which references almost all of the Spider-films that preceded it — creates a canvas that not only afford the filmmakers unique visual opportunities, but virtually reimagines the language used for Spider-Man himself. That two different Spider-Men can have a discussion down one side of a building and up the adjacent one, filmed vertically, and have it not only make sense but communicate details about each’s abilities and personality — is no small artistic triumph.
But what eventually works best (and resonates most) about this superhero story is its deepest message –namely, that in the right circumstances, anyone could be Spider-Man. Though it sounds superficial, in a cinematic world where heroes are black, white, Asian, female, young, old and yes, even porcine, there’s something powerfully empowering about seeing them achieve on their own, and work together towards a common goal.
That’s what makes “Into the Spider-Verse” so special — it recognizes that with great power comes great responsibility, and the filmmakers are able to wield both with sensitivity and precision.
Nicolas Cage is known to be a massive Superman fan. He named one of his sons Kal-El, in honor of Superman’s birth name. He sold a copy of Superan’s debut comic for a record $2.1 million. He was supposed to play Clark Kent in Tim Burton’s “Superman Lives.” He finally did get to voice Superman in “Teen Titans GO! to the Movies,” which opened this past summer. But, at age 54, he has yet to play the superhero on screen.
Henry Cavill is possibly out at as the DCEU’s Superman, but Nicolas Cage isn’t interested in picking up his cape. Not anymore.
Cage just talked to The Guardian while promoting his new film “Mandy,” and the reporter mentioned an online campaign to make him the next Superman:
“Oh, I think my Superman days are long gone,” he laughs with a little pat of his belly. He would be an amazing villain in it, I reply. His eyes light up. “Oh, that would be GREAT! I’d make a great Lex Luthor!”
Yes. He could go Full Cage as Lex Luthor.
When he was announced to voice “Teen Titans” we floated the idea of Nic as the DC world’s next Lex Luthor. Crazy minds think alike. There’s no saying DC *has* to go younger with the new Man of Steel (if there is one) so it’s still possible Cage could be an older Superman. If not in the DC Extended Universe, maybe under the same separate banner that is turning Joaquin Phoenix into the “Joker.”
Imagine Joaquin Phoenix and Nicolas Cage hamming it up in the same supervillain film. We don’t even deserve it.
