Showing posts with label grant morrison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grant morrison. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Movie Minesweeper - The I'm Half Watching The Tele Edition

- Soundtrack dot Net have some pictures from the scoring sessions for American Gangster. Looks like it's going to sound good.

- Yes, yes, there are pictures of Stallone as Rambo online, I know, I know.

- A clip from the Caveman pilot is now up for your viewing... pleasure? A thought provoking commentary on modern day race relations. Apparently.

- Mischa Barton is in the new St. Trinian's. Confirmation also comes that Russell Brand is playing Flash Harry, and that some filming has taken place in Hawaii. For some reason.

- Almodovar's El Deseo have commenced production of a documentary about El Senor de Sipan, "the ruler of ancient Peru's ruins".

- John Turturro is remaking Theo van Gogh's 1-900.

- The Playstation 3 version of Stranglehold will come with John Woo's Hard Boiled also on the disc. Of course, buying a Wii and a Blu-Ray player, something like Eledees and then also a copy of Hard Boiled on its own would be more satisfying at the end of the day. In related news, Sony are losing money - lots of money - because of the PS3.

- Today's second Rob Schmidt story: ThinkFilm are selling his film Bad Meat at Cannes. I met Schmidt at the London Film Festival years and years ago - at the time, Daniel Waters was a close friend of his. Wonder if they're still chums?

- Grant Morrison gives a very good interview to Wired. It's all Area 51, no mention of We3 - shame.

- VH1 have previewed their top 10 blockbusters of 2008. Maybe I'll try and rustle up a list for 2009 at some point, go one step beyond.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Script Review: We3 - Part 3

Grant Morrison has adapted his own comic book We3 into a feature film script, and it's even better than the comic which was already pretty amazing. In fact, I'll say it again: this is the greatest unproduced script I have ever read.

I've already published two long review pieces on the film - the first a kind of overview, the second looking at the action sequences. There were a few bits and pieces that I didn't get to address so far, and that's all I'm looking to do now - tie things up, fill in a few blanks. There's alos a few more excerpts from the pages I'd like to share.

So, what is We3 about? Well, everytime I get a new student, in our first class together, I essentially ask that question about a little list of films. Jurassic Park, for example - that's about dinosaurs, yes, but also a theme park, cloning, hubris, chases, natural order and so on. So what would I expect my students to tell me We3 is about?

About animal rights and animal cruelty. About feeling alone. About the military. About chases. About guilt. About grief. About hope and freedom. About fighting back. About instinct. About the cruelty of the natural world. About hubris, once again. About living things feeling a connection to one another - and why we need that.

Doesn't sound like the most uplifiting film, does it? Well, that's where you'd be wrong. Not only does We3 end on a very clear up-swing, there are plenty of scenes where, like fans rooting for their team in a particularly tight championship final, I can see the audience on the edge of their seats, ready to punch the air as the underdog, undercat and underrabbit overcome another obstacle. There aren't any cheap victories - for every brutal knockback our characters experience their breaks feel all the more deserved. This isn't a film of somebody kicking a dog while it's down, this is a film of that dog standing up, with it's own odd, slightly alien dignity, and getting the hell out of there - and promising itslef it's not going to lie down and be kicked ever again.

These animals don't need some kryptonite contrivance for us to consider their weaknesses - those are readily apparent. This is the rare kind of action film where the weaknesses are already obvious on page one, but where the resilience, tenacity and sheer will to survive become more and more clear the further the story proceeds. This is the I Will Survive of cybernetic animal slaughter chase films.

In a nutshell: you'll care about the We3, and that will make everything about the film work that much better.

Well, assuming that a decent director signs, not somebody who will drop the ball. I've no idea who's being lined up for this film, and I am cautious about the end result only in that respect. Let's discuss some candidates:

Michael Bay? Well, I suppose he's recently worked with producer Don Murphy on Transformers, and he seems to be a bankable option in view of all of the action. I don't think he'd do the film justice - he's not interested enough in the subtleties that elevate this from, say, Hard Boiled to something more like Bladerunner, Alien, Robocop or Terminator 2. And, frankly, there are better action directors than Bay anyway.

So how about James Cameron? Well, he'd be perfect in many respects, but it's moot. He's rather busy - and he originates his own material, too.

Ridley Scott then. Well, again, I can see that working out brilliantly. I'd have very few questions if Scott signed up to this one. It's never going to happen - he's signed up until the year 3000, I think - but if it did...

A young-ish upstart-y type is more probable. I've racked my brains, and I'm stuck. There are plenty I'd begrudgingly recommend, and who I'd think would make a pretty good job of things, but nobody seems to be the perfect choice. Pretty good choices, in one way or another, would be Florent Siri, John Fawcett, Brad Bird or Alex Proyas. My preferred option, when all is said and done, would be Vincenzo Natali. He's certainly capable of doing a sterling job on this film - but he's doing Splice, and in some ways the two are a little similar, so it wouldn't be as good a choice for him, necessarily, as it would be the film.

Perhaps I'm too in love with the script, terrified or some detail getting lost, some great beat getting missed. The ideas are all there, they just need to be respected.

Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and Braindead/Dead Alive might appear to be less competent than Heavenly Creatures, say, or The Frighteners, The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, but I don't believe that's the case at all. The issue is simply budgetary - with a crew, and some resources, and then the order that a good producer brings, Jackson really hit a string of home runs.

Some directors have had much higher budgets on their second, sometimes first, films than Jackson did on Heavenly Creatures and did a much worse job. Indeed, if you look past the production values that dollars bring in, past the sheen, they've done a worse job that Jackson did on Bad Taste. These are the directors who've had so-so hits with middle of the road genre fare, supposedly alternative indies and comic book adaptations. These are the directors likely to be offered a film like We3. These are the directors likely to fudge it. I'm not naming any names, but I hope you know the sort I mean.


Let's take a look at a couple of scenes from the script, to wrap things up.

Early in the film, a huge swarm of biorg rats are shown, building an engine from it's tiny component parts. I discussed this scene in the first part of the review, but only briefly. Here's a good hard look at it.

Doctor Senjei Honda is demonsrating the rats to Senator Dan Washington, and they're accompanied by Major Marvin Samson - "a tall man, uncomfortable in his skin, who stands stiffly and formally at all times and lives haunted with the memory of whatever mistake he made years ago that saw him wind up here at the head of this no-hope project"

SENATOR WASHINGTON
It’s just astonishing. I mean, look at that, they’re just like little cartoon creatures, don’t you think?

He nods approvingly at the Major.

SENATOR WASHINGTON
I had no idea what you’d been getting up to all these years, Marvin.

The rats go about their task industriously.

SENATOR WASHINGTON [BLUFF]
Animal slaves. What are the ethical implications?

Honda stops. He is matter of fact and direct.

HONDA
Fortunately, rats have no ethics. There’s no doubt, Senator, that we can replace a very expensive and increasingly obsolete human workforce with a super-efficient animal alternatives like these... but that is only one limited application of our Research & Development program here.

SENATOR WASHINGTON
So, let me get something clear. The technology’s a little outta my reach but am I right in thinking you’ve trained your animals to build machines? Is that correct, Doctor Honda?

HONDA
Trained? No, not at all. We steer them, like cars. Denise?

Honda’s assistant, DENISE (24), appears and hands the Doctor a remote games console joypad, like the ones the operators were using earlier.

HONDA
If you’ll allow me to demonstrate.

Honda demonstrates the ergonomically-designed control pad in his hands. Two joysticks for his thumbs.It’s the same device the Operators were using earlier.

HONDA
You speak, quite rightly of course, of ethics. With your commitment assured, Senator, our intention is to save the lives of countless men and women in our armed services. Ethics on a plate.

Honda is trying to control his genuine excitement which causes him to tremble beneath the veneer of cool.

HONDA
I’ll show you.

He holds the joypad up in front of his face.

HONDA
THIS is the GUN of the future.

A scene of rats working on the machine.

HONDA
It is my conviction that the wars of tomorrow will be fought by remote-controlled animals, like these.

This is an incredible scene, really. First of all, there's the visual component - the construction zone, the movement of the rats in it, the engine coming together. Then, as this unfolds before our eyes (like some old Art Attack, or Tony Hart or Rolf Harris painting) the conversation tells us all we need to know about these three men. And the We3 project can only exist because of a skewed ethical argument, and that is raised here, and there's a certain amount of off-kilter sense to it - even though it gets ripped apart quite comprehensively by future events. Morrison has scripted a perfect expositional scene - there's a lot more going on than meets the eye, but not a word of the surface text is wasted either.

The 'cartoon creatures' line has always reminded me of Morrison's Animal Man story The Coyote Gospel, very possibly the single greatest issue of an ongoing series that DC ever published outside of their Vertigo imprint, and certainly the high-water mark of Animal Man.

Honda goes on to be the (human) character in We3 that we can respect the most. This is where he begins, his starting position, and the escape of the animals leads him to undergo some important changes.

Note that, Denise aside, the cast of characters here is a rather unstarry. That's also true throughout the entire script - the animals take the spotlight, character actors are required for every other role. This will probably filled with "Hey! It's that one guy" and "Look! It's her" moments, but again, that's likely to benefit viewers overall.

I didn't find the script flawless, of course. Here's a section that needs a little fix, I think. Bandit has just picked up a familiar scent...

EXT. CONSTRUCTION SITE - DAY

BANDIT
IS HOME.

But whatever was once here, it’s gone now, replaced by a development site and these partially-constructed modern homes.

Bandit urgently sniffs the wind and for a moment, his superb sense of smell creates a strange POV image of the warehouse buildings that once stood on this site and where he once lived - walls and windows made of streaming vapor appear and disappear in ghostly fashion as Bandit snuffles and catches faint scent echoes of the past. A door opens, a man made of mist emerges and then its all gone, blown away by a following rotor wind.

The animals look down on a lifeless wasteland of scaffolding and cement with the sprawling city beyond. They’re fur begins to ruffle int he wind.

They’re beat and exhausted...but it’s not over yet as a bullet smacks hard into the dirt beside Bandit and makes him jump.

This visual conceit doesn't really work for me. Rendering scents as a vapoury image seems like a sensible thing to do if you're trying to ape animal senses, but it won't work 100%, and some of the audience will be lost a little. This is the kind of formal error, like zooming and jump cutting, that shatters a film's diegesis - and at this moment, we really need to be with Bandit - not least because of the shock that ends this passage, starts the next sequence. The idea that we can CG an emulation of a dog's POV is a fallacy - we need to construct a sympathy with the dog that works on our human pyshcology instead.

The answer is audio. The soundtrack needs to go down low, and Bandit needs to start recalling in audio. We're pulled into it, the surround sound traces of his memory taking him back. And as we are forced to imagine his remembered home, we can focus our attention on his face, his expression and experience and then... whap! The sudden noise of the shot hitting...

Of course, there's more to it than that, I've oversimplified. But, frankly, I think visually rendering this memory this way would be a mistake - and would miss an opportunity to really connect the audience to Bandit, to his experience, to the duality of his memory and the sad sight he sees now. "You can never go home" indeed.

That's just an example, but there's a couple of little shifts to be made, I think. They are all visual conceits, really - when it comes to the sequence of events, and the dialogue, and the structure of the plot and the relationships, Morrison has aced it.

So, that was the third and final part of my We3 review, wrapping up a few loose ends. To cut a long story short: with the right director, this film will become an instant classic, the kind of film that only builds its reputation as the years go by. It's accessible, it has a clear emotional throughline, a strong plot and more intellectual ideas buzzing around than a whole wall of Art House DVDs in Tower Records. What's not to like? Only the wrong choice of director could knacker this one. I'm hoping the producers take the right risks.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Wolverine Script Review

First of all, let me stress that in my review of the Wolverine script I expressed a very, very strong opinion. A very, very stongly negative opinion. If you were to ask me what I thought of the Wolverine script, I'd have shaken my head, told you how bad I felt X-Men 3 was and then expressed how Wolverine was another, even bigger, step down in quality for the franchise. I'd tell you how it seemed to me that the thing just didn't hang together at all well.

To appease a couple of other folks involved in film ick, I have temporarily removed the Wolverine review that once existed at this URL. We know that Fox didn't have a leg to stand on, but some folks didn't want to spend the time necessary to prove it. Until these people's relationship with film ick is over, the review will be removed - at least, from this page. I might be the most active film ick person, but look at the list of contributors: I'm not the only one. And why would I want to upset my friends? If they say remove it, I'll do so, until restoring it could no longer effect them.

It doesn't matter anyway. The review lives on elsewhere. And in an increasing number of places too. And it will reach many, many more - and Fox will never have a chance to stem it. The thing will spread like a virus - partly to teach them a lesson, perhaps.

If you have the review and you want to post it anywhere, anywhere at all, feel free to put a link in the comments below. Get yourself some extra traffic, maybe. And if you have the script itself, I certainly wouldn't discourage you from mailing that around either. The more reviews the merrier, I say.

And just remember: the full review at least told you why I didn't like the script, gave you more of a chance to disagree. All that remains now is a simple statement: I read the Wolverine script and I absolutely hated it.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

We3 Script Review - Part Two

[EDIT: This is Part Two of the script review. You may wish to read Part One first]

One of the more marketable, appealing and adrenalising elements of the We3 script is the incredible potential for innovative action sequences. For this second look at the pages, I thought we'd concentrate on just a few of those.

So, adressing scenes in chronological order as we progress through the story, we will begin with the We3's escape from the military compound that has been their base of operations. This isn't the first action set-piece - the film begins with one, touched upon in the previous installment of this review - but it is a particularly interesting one.

On Page 34 we're introduced to a bank of surveillance monitors, monitoring the base from virually every angle:

Pull back to see a bank of CCTV camera scenes show the life of the base unfolding from multi-angles. The almost silent hiss of calm machinery.

Sentry at the front gate. (GATE CAM)
Soldiers patrolling the grounds. (EXTERIOR CAM)
The commissionaire at the front desk. (FOYER CAM)
The coats hanging up in an empty locker room. (CLOAKROOM CAM)
Guards posted outside the We3 home bay. (CORRIDOR CAM 5)
Black Ops security door (CORRIDOR CAM 4)
Electric buggy going to Rat Lab (CORRIDOR CAM 3)
Cleaners mopping the floor (CORRIDOR CAM 2)
Soldiers walking through the halls. (CORRIDOR CAM 1)
Honda talking on his cell phone in the elevator. (ELEVATOR CAM)
Roseanne’s workstation. (WE3 BAY CAM 1)
We3 sitting in their posts. (WE3 BAY CAM 2)
General scene of the WE3 Bay (WE3 BAY CAM 3)

The (cubist) stage is set. This entire place is about to explode into action. Going from the perspective of one CCTV camera to another we see, without the relevant audio, the build up to the animal's escape. Roseanne Berry is walking away from the lab, leaving the animals free to exit their stations; the euthenasia team are coming to put the We3 down; the rest of the bay stirs, unaware, then:

Something has gone wrong. There is wild movement as the animals break out of their unlocked harnesses.

Close on Bandit’s snarling muzzle, teeth bared. A loud roar. The sound of gunfire. The sound of breaking glass and choked off screams.

Things are being tossed around. It’s hard to see what’s happening on the little CCTV image.

Cutting rapidly between CCTV footage and flashes of the We3 as they hurtle through the base, the scene is described as a dazzling mosaic of action, of different perspectives that catch every moment in the most dynamic fashion possible. With a decent director, this is going to knock audiences so far back into their seats the cracking of vertebrae will be deafening.

Imagine something like the shower sequence in Psycho, or the dress ripping in Disney's Cinderella, spliced with the kinetics of a super-ramped up chase-and-escape action scene. The potential is incredible...

...as is the potential to foul it up miserably. But on the page? Electrifying.

Most of the great leaps forward in action staging recently have revolved around the fluid movement of virtual cameras, doing impossible pans and tracks as characters pretty much dance around one another - from Blade 2 onto Spider-Man 3. This sequence in We3 requires an utterly different approach - a great deal of the shots presented here require no camera movement at all, let alone CG enhanced, stitched-together swoops. This is all about different, perfectly chosen, moments, sequence to build one after the other. This takes us back to the approach most famously exemplified in Battleship Potemkin's Odessa Steps sequence - or, more accurately, a very modern evolution of this. I can see it now - and it is incredible.

So, as you'll know if you read the basic plot outline in the first part of this review, the We3 escape the compound and set off in search of home. Can a group of deadly bioweapons be allowed to roam unchecked?

Honda has a plan to prevent any human casualties:

INT. RAT LAB - DAY

HONDA hurries into the rat enclosure.

The Operator center is filled with geek gamer guys operating rats with control pads. These are the soldiers of the future, pasty, overweight and munching on potato chips as they guide rats into battle.
Honda takes the control pad from one of them.

HONDA
We trained them to kill.
If you threaten them with any kind of weapon they will KILL.

Everyone stops what they’re doing and looks at him.

HONDA
There’s no need for human beings to die.

They all go back to what they were doing, heads nodding in time to the music on their MP3 players.

GEEK
Right on.

And as Honda says of the rats a few pages later:

HONDA
NO-ONE has to die when we have soldiers like these.

So, an army of Rats are engaged to chase down and stop one Dog, one Cat and one Rabbit:

All the geeks sit with their control pads at the ready.

As if synchronized, they operate their joysticks simultaneously. The rats sit up, then skitter eerily into place, arranging themselves into strict lines and columns, like well-drilled soldiers. The geeks munch candy bars, dip into bowls of popcorn and chips.

The geeks manipulate the buttons on their pads and, in response, the rats flow together out of the room in a creepy procession.

Amazing images.

I don't want to spoil any details of the conflict between the We3 and the rat-allions, but it begins when Bandit, Tinker and Pirate aren't exactly ready. Pirate gets the line 'Uh-oh', spoken with her synthesised voice - and that moment is going to bring everybody in the auditorium forward in their seats. There will be laughter - the kind that can only come from nervous, anxious energy, as well as the odd voice delivering such a line - and then the whole audience will fall silent as slowly, steadily, the full extent of the danger the We3 are in comes clear.

Here are a couple of non-consecutive teaser lines from this sequence, out of context:

Dozens of rats are chopped down in the spray of bullets.

Rats are thrown in every direction, spilling into the water far below, or thudding with broken backs against the bridge supports. The noise is horrendous, like a thousand ragged nails dragged across a thousand slate blackboards.

The culmination of the scene is incredible - a great dramatisation of some of the script's great ideas. Human lives are lost, after a scared animal acts in self defense; many animal lives are lost because of human intervention. That's the genius of We3, as I said before - big ideas, rendered in big, dramatic scenes.

The supposedly fail-safe plan to stop the We3 is Weapon 4, another cybernetically enhanced beast. This one appears very late in the script and while the set piece isn't quite as astonishing as the battle with the rats, it is still pretty darn special. We're getting to material that comes very late in the script now, so you may choose not to read on.

But I bet you do read on. I feel okay doing this because there's a source, the comic book, that is freely available.

On page 79, of 114, the Weapon 4 is first unveiled:

Then a slamming weight of muscled flesh hammers against the bars of its cage, making the whole thing shudder.
Slobbering, red-eyed, the beast within bludgeons its head against the bars, then draws itself up and bellows a soul-chilling roar of sheer destruction. Now we finally see the next generation Animal Weapon 4 in all its terrifying, primal glory - a giant black mastiff in a matt black heavy duty version of the We3 armor. Savage, awe-inspiring and utterly terrifying, the dog slams against the bars once more, teeth bared, eyes rolling, bloodshot. And HOWLS.

At this time, the We3 are hiding out in a rail shed together. Frank - the homeless chap mentioned in part one of the review - comes along:

His eyes slowly adjust to the damp gloom. He raises the burger to his lips, then freezes. There are eyes staring at him avidly following every move of his burger. There are shapes in here, light gleams off polished armor. Snuffling, shuffling sounds.

The animals are here, huddled together in this rail shed, hiding from pursuit. Tinker is looking and hunched, coughing occasionally. Bandit, part-pleading, part-on the defensive. Pirate is pawing at his wounded head.

Frank does a double take, blearily trying to deal with what he’s seeing.

He lifts the burger. All the eyes move at once. He lowers it and they follow. He raises, stops...and the eyes do the same.

FRANK
What the hell?

Bandit stares with red-rimmed eyes.

BANDIT
MAN GET!

Frank sways a little drunkenly on his heels. He tosses his bun down in front of the dog, Bandit greedily scoffs it up.

FRANK
There y’go.

Frank heads off to get 'liquor and tools', apparently planning to remove the We3's armoured casing and Wernicke's boxes. This is when the cops and military show up:

We see flashing lights, and hear the rumble of truck wheels and rotors. There are grim-faced policemen and soldiers up ahead, as we follow Frank down the alley towards what appears to be a police and military blockade of the entire area.

SOLDIER
Hey! You! Out!

COP
Get a light on this guy!

Frank lifts his hand to shield his face against the glare. Cops surround him as he emerges from the alley into a street filled with busy military personnel, including Boxer and his team.

COP 2
You shouldn’t be here, buddy. Seriously. Didn’t you hear there’s dangerous animals loose?

BOXER [no, not a Boxer dog, the leader of a 'hard-core Black-Ops team']
Ask him if he saw anything.

COP
There’s a big reward.

COP 2
I’m betting that’s the sorta money you could use.

Does Frank sell the animals out? Or what else could happen? The answer is in the comic, if you're desperate to know.

Weapon 4 is unleased on page 86:

OPERATOR
Animal Weapon 4 engaged.

The mastiff roars.

OPERATOR
Releasing restraint harness.

The cage locks spring open and the cage grille falls down.

OPERATOR
Stand well clear of the jaws!

Red eyes, steaming breath. A rumbling, doom-laden growl. Then the Rooooarrr. Weapon 4 lumbers out of its cage, remote-controlled. Its great head swaying from side to side. Strings of bloody drool hang in loops from the jagged mantrap of its mouth.

So, the We3 go head to head with the Weapon 4. It is written as it should be: three animals with strange, in-animal tools (if you pardon the expression) wired into their systems, fighting like animals with weapons would - against a giant, crushingly powerful animal restrained by the over-riding controls of the operator.

It is bloody and brutal and fatal. Recall how, for example, the two Terminators in Terminator 2 actually fought like robots, and not big tough men? They targetted one another's weaknesses and understood their 'robotness' in the way they battled? Well, this scene deserves the comparable approach - this is 3 animals with altered, tank-ified bodies fighting a tank-animal hybrid (tank winning out) with the body of a tank-animal hybrid (animal winning out this time). There's never been anything like it on screen before.

The epic struggle against Weapon 4 is to be the big action climax to the film - though there is one more, very suspenseful, sequence to follow when a tactical team try to corner the We3. It is pure Hitchcock, and ripe for a very tense rendition. To go into more detail would be to spoil everything...

But I think it spoils nothing to reveal that the We3 don't make it to the end of their journey unscathed. There have been consequences for the trio, and they have been painful. For all of the amped-up action that I've touched on, the heart of the film remains these animals, their desire to reach home, their attempts to understand the world around them, and the cruel, strange oddness of their plight. But the natural world - of which we are part - is not a peaceful place, and chaos, fear and the will to survive can take us to some dangerous places. We3 works because it shows us these places in a real way, even amongst the sci-fi trappings, and because the script is underpinned with a smart, and honest, perspective on survival and on the desire to be safe, be where you can be left alone, where the pain and the guilt and the fear should just drop away.

To be home.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Michael Bay's Hourglass Figure (Go Figure...)

IESB have 'confirmed' that Michael Bay will direct the Prince of Persia film once he's done with Transformers - and presumably just before he does a second Transformers.

That should keep him away from Grant Morrison's incredible We3 script for a good while anyway, eh? I was secretly frightened he might end with that one.

Who will write this Prince of Persia film? Kurzman and Orci? Elliott and Rossio? Wibberley and Wibberley?

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Script Review: Grant Morrison's We3

Grant Morrison has adapted his comicbook miniseries We3 into a feature script for New Line, and I've been lucky enough to read a copy. Luckier still, it's amazing. It's even better than the source material. In fact, this is the single best unproduced script I have ever read. Yep. And I really mean it.

What's so great? The answer to that, if I'm really going to cover it, is very long. I'll do my best, though, and I'll share whatever I think is fair to share from the script - so expect some minor spoilers, certainly as regards the first two thirds of the plot.

This is going to take more than one installment to do justice, so to start off with, tonight, I'm going to tell you the basics of what's going on, introduce the characters and some of the big ideas and give you a general overview of the story. Then, in further installments, we'll look at some of the scenes, set-pieces and sequences in more detail, and cover some of the really good stuff that I won't be able to boil down to just a few lines.

In a nutshell, We3 is the story of a cruel and inhumane military weapons research project and it's victims. It just so happens that the three characters at the forefront of this story, those who suffer the most, are a trinity of household pets. Well, at least, they used to be household pets but now Bandit the dog, Tinker the cat and Pirate the rabbit have been transformed into the flesh components of an incredible team of cyborg weapons.

In armoured shells and equipped with an array of very powerful weapons, these animals, the We3 are being used by the US military in the kinds of covert operations where no witnesses remain.

From the first page of the script:

A squadron of US troops, together with insurgent guerrilla soldiers, is making an attempt to retreat across the grounds through a hail of crossfire which comes from the shabby Presidential palace.

It's a sweltering Central American night and bullets zip through the air. This night raid on Guerrera's stronghold is going badly for the rebel forces.

Zip, spang of tracer fire. Men drop. US troops and insurgent forces crouch behind statuary and parked trucks.

It is amidst this carnage that we first meet the We3, the animal weapons. In heavy armour and under the remote influence of a joystick-wielding control team, they enter the palace and assassinate the dictator. It's a stunning opening, plunging the reader (and eventually the viewer) into a brilliantly orchestrated action and suspense sequence. Obviously, it's utterly unique as the We3 are nothing like anything we've seen before. Armoured animals, loaded with weapons, agile and able to navigate the palace like no soldier ever could.

It's also in this sequence that Morrison first starts to impress a political viewpoint - but more on that in a future installment.

Also very important at this stage, however, is establishing the nature of the We3 project - defining what the armoured animals look like, how they move, what they do in the heat of action. All of these details will be recalled, or counterpointed later.

With no dry, spoken exposition but a whole truckload of action, much of the essential information we need to garner in act one is related to us.

After the military mission, and the titles, we're off to someplace completely different: the kitchen of Roseanne Berry, a recently bereaved animal communication scientest. Morrison notes that she 'tends to emphasise the plain, studious aspect of her appearance and carries a weight of sorrow and guilt'. I have imagined Anglea Bettis in the role, or Maggie Gyllenhaal - though Bryce Dallas Howard would perhaps be more likely. Either way, it's a truly plum part - ladies, call your agents now.

After a short series of clean, clear and unobtrusive character-setting scenes, Roseanne is on her way to work. En route, she stops and purchases a newspaper - headlines SENATOR DAN WASHINGTON AHEAD IN THE POLLS’ and ‘GUERRERA REGIME COLLAPSES IN NIGHT OF VIOLENCE...’, the secondly more obviously relevant now - and crosses paths with a homeless beggar. This beggar is Frank. He's going to return later.

And then, Roseanne arrives at her workplace and, surprise surprise, she's a key part of the We3 project. The animals arrive too - still in their armoured shells, and wheeled on gurneys, back from the wars.

Today's an important day for the project. Senator Dan Washington is visiting, and being shown around by Major Samson, with whom he has a history (Samson is described as 'a tall man, uncomfortable in his skin who stands stiffly and formally at all times and lives haunted with the memory of whatever mistake he made years ago that saw him wind up here at the head of this no-hope project') and Dr. Senjei Honda ('a dishevelled, stout Japanese man in a lab coat').

Washington is given a stunning demonstration of the animal control technology:

...a group of rats are running around in an unnaturally purposeful way. In fact, stranger still, many of the rats are carrying TOOLS in their nimble little fingers.

Let’s follow a rat carrying a screw. It hands the screw to a second rat who lines it up with a hole in a piece of metal.

Then a new and more grotesque creature lumbers into view - a surgically-altered rat whose entire head has been replaced by a spinning drill bit. As one rat carefully holds the screw in place, the drill-head aggressively screws it in with a series of devastating headbutts.

The rats are bulding an engine.

Now, while Washington is still stunned, he's taken to meet the Weapon 3, or We3. Roseanne unlocks the animal's helmets and we see what's inside for the first time...

...a scared dog, an angry cat and a confused rabbit. These are Bandit, Tinker and Pirate and they used to be pets. Now, they're hardwired into weapons systems and sent to kill or be killed.

Each animal has a device attached to it's head - into it's head - that enables them to communicate verbally though electronic voiceboxes. As Roseanne explains "Humans have a part of the brain known as Wernicke’s Area, which allows us to process our feelings into language. This apparatus works as an artificial Wernicke’s, augmenting the animals’ natural abilities. Feelings are assigned to words, which are then processed through speakers in the armor." This is a brilliant conceit that really makes the script fly. The exchanges between the animals, or between the animals and humans, are limited to a very small vocabulary of little more than a dozen different words between the three creatures. The range of expression, however is huge.

Like most good drama, the emotions in play during the We3 script are big and... well.. dramatic. A small vocabulary, when applied directly to the emotional subtext, is a powerful way of stripping the drama down and hitting it home hard.

So, onwards. The Senator continues his tour, off to meet Weapon 4, a newer and more brutal 'biorg' that is being developed, while Roseanne receives bad news: the We3 are to be decommissioned. It seems that Weapon 4 is to supercede them immediately.

A key scene:

HONDA
These animals are test specimens. Laboratory rats. As scientists, you and I both understand the protocols.

ROSEANNE
I’d like to take a memento.

HONDA
I remember a rather long discussion about the dangers of sentimentality when you came to work for me.

She gives him a hard stare,

ROSEANNE
I remember too.

He relents a little, becomes softer.

HONDA
But please, there’s absolutely no need for you to be here when it happens. Say the necessary good-byes to the animals today. I’ll instruct the Euthanasia Team to wait until you’ve cleared your locker.

He thinks he’s being kind, she can’t believe he’s so cold.

HONDA
We are about to become politically fashionable, Roseanne. Your contribution will not be neglected.

He makes a tense tiny nod.

HONDA
Please. Take anything you like as a keepsake.

Something in Roseanne snaps. Her eyes burn.

So, guess what? Now you've got the set-up, I won't need to spell it out. Roseanne releases the animals and they flee the compound. Bandit has a longing for 'home' and leads the others off looking for it. But what is 'home'? As they understand it, home is somewhere they won't have to run anymore. I can understand that.

Much of the film is a long chase, a blend between one of Disney's Fantastic Journey films and, perhaps, The Iron Giant by way of Robocop or another hard, gristle-strewn actionaer. It is also a brilliant and incisive exploration of freedom, instinct, will the universe's natural orders... and the desire to identify yourself as an individual.

There is an absolutely incredible series of action sequences - which we will look at individually, and in more detail, at a later time. They are brutal, harsh, imaginative and, most importantly, always relevant.

Roseanne would appear, from this set-up, to be the film's human heroine though this isn't truthfully the case. Things aren't so simple. As noted, she is recently bereaved, and she feels immense guilt about her relationship with her deceased father as well as with the We3 animals. Remember the phenomenon of 'suicide-by-cop' that got talked about a lot a few years ago? The idea was that depressed people would do ridiculous things - hold up liquor stores, go on shooting sprees - so that they might be executed by the police. Roseanne's release of the We3 animals back at the beginning of their journey has an undercurrent of this kind of tragic feeling. She certainly expects to die, at least for a moment, in the melee that ensues. She even say "Kill me", as though under her breath and to herself but seemingly meaning that the animals should kill her, plough right through her, as they escape the labs in a blaze of violence.

The possibility of Roseanne's redemption is a key part of the story; the animal's perspective on her need for redemption, or possibly lack thereof, makes it even more interesting.

Throughout We3 the animals are just what they are. Bandit is a dog, Tinker is a cat and Pirate is a rabbit. I've spent plenty of time with each of these species and was absolutely convinced by their portrayal here. They haven't in anyway been subject to daft anthropomorphism. It's crucial, really, that they are real animals with real animal attitudes, personalities and psychology. I also believe it is essential that they are rendered as realistically as possible in the film, also. Where possible, a real dog, cat and rabbit could be used - no doubt adorned in mo-cap ping-pong balls so that their armour might be CG-created from the neck down.

Having said that... Weta's King Kong was so convincing that while I know exactly how they faked him I still can't see anything but a real animal.

It is on page 43 that the animals are clear of the compound; there is a total of 114 pages in the script. It's as soon as page 44 that the We3 having their first conversation. Bear in mind as you read this excerpt that the voices are synthesized, the language a product of their surrogate Wernicke's.

Bandit ignores the cat as she gnaws halfheartedly at her prey. He’s thinking, considering his next move very carefully. He inclines his head, sniffs. Sniffs. Stops. Faces east, into the light wind.

BANDIT
HOME.

He addresses the others, clearly their leader.

BANDIT
DANGER HERE. We3 HOME NOW.

He starts down the hill, purposefully.

PIRATE
?HOME? EAT. ?HOME? EAT.

Pirate looks to Tinker, chomping at her bird.

PIRATE
2! COME 2!

Tinker looks around.

TINKER
2 WHERE?

Pirate bounds down the hill after Bandit.
PIRATE
2 HOME! 2 HOME!

Tinker sneers. Tightens her claw around the dead bird.

TINKER
2 STAY.

She lifts the bird to her mouth but her eyes are following the others.

TINKER
EAT.

The others vanish into the trees.

Tinker drops the bird and it falls to the forest floor, uneaten. Her stealthy hiss of a voice gives her words the weight of prophecy.

TINKER
We3 NO HOME WHERE.

Then she calculates her best chances...and runs after the others, disappearing down into the dappled shadows, descending into a valley.

That will be the largest extract I'm going to take from the script at any time, but I really wanted to indicate the relationship between the animals. I think that page pretty much speaks for itself (if you pardon the expression).

So, we're ve just got started. I wanted to impress upon you the premise of the script, the approach to the animals' interrelationships and some idea of who Roseanne Berry is. These are all important things if you are to understand just what this film is trying to do.

If you've read the comics you'll know a lot about the plot that I haven't shared. But there's plenty you won't know too.

Next time, we'll talk about Weapon 4, about what becomes of all of those rats, about some elements of the visual style implied on the page and, maybe, unless I can resist it, I'll talk you through a big pile of notes I made while reading the script.

You see, reading We3 it was obvious to me how to approach this film, what I would do if I were the director. It all leaped out at me: details of sound, of design, of approach to character, concepts that determined how camera would be used, how the film would be lit. And on and on. I chewed it all over, like I do when preparing for a shoot that I'm actually going to get to do. I began the very beginning of the preproduction process, perversely for a film I haven't a hope in hell of ever being any more involved in than I am now. But I think my thoughts will be interesting, and will reveal even more about the ideas in We3.

More soon.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Numbers Game

Grant Morrison now has two screenplays in development: We3, from his own comic, is set up at New Line; Area 51, extrapolated from the videogame of the same name, is on the slate at Paramount.

Though both feature powerful inhuman characters fighting to escape containment in a scientific facility, the similarities stop there. Area 51 is relatively straight-up - or at least it was, until Morrison got involved - and We3 is brilliantly esoteric and eccentric.

The premise of We3 is brilliant: a dog, a cat and a rabbit escape from a lab where they have been experimented upon and transformed into prototype animal weapons. They've had their congitive abilities boosted significantly, though they remain relatively unsophisticated, intellectually speaking, and they've been surrounded by armoured suits equipped with ridiculous weapons.

Morrison uses this set-up to explore a whole range of ideas, and does so superbly. Animal rights are obviously a key concern, but there's a lot more wrestling with evolution, existential ideas of 'purpose' and natural order.

If We3 does go into production, I promise that I'll follow it very, very closely. And I'll also be very, very jealous - if there's one comic book adaptation I'd like to direct, I think this is the one.