dthy r65 hy

THE SUICIDE SQUAD INDIANA JONES AT 40 James Gunn and cast interviewed!

Revisiting Raiders Of The Lost Ark

342

WE HAVE THE POWER! EXCLUSIVE COACSCMESSI!C

OLD WAR OF THE WORLDS Aliens among us in the HG Wells remix THE BOX OF DELIGHTS The wolves are Bending time with M Night Shyamalan

running again Kevin Smith controls Eternia in the ultimate battle for the universe TIME BANDITS | STARGIRL | CHEYENNE JACKSON | SCHMIGADOON! AVENGERS CAMPUS | MARVEL PRIDE | JUNGLE CRUISE | SPACE JAM 2

PLUS!

SFX 342 CONTENTS

54

FEATURES

24 MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE He-Man is back! Please respect his pronoun choices.

SUBSCRIBE NOW & SAVE! Head to page 22 for details

34 THE SUICIDE SQUAD 50 OLD It’s a King Sharknado as James M Night Shyamalan says life’s Gunn cuts loose in the DCEU.

a beach and then you die.

42 THE BOX 54 RAIDERS OF OF DELIGHTS THE LOST ARK The wolves are running again… Throw us the idol, we’ll throw wait, is it Christmas already?

you the feature!

46 WAR OF 62 TIME BANDITS THE WORLDS Terry Gilliam gives us the long The chances of season two were and the short of his bonkers a million to one, they said…

46

fantasy classic.

24

RED ALERT 8FireSTARGIRL up the Cosmic Staff – the not-so-average teen is back.

34 76 THE TOMORROW WAR As if time travel wasn’t dangerous enough, you had to bring guns!

86 NOTES FROMAGE 10 JUNGLE CRUISE THE BURNING Not so much a blockbuster, Claire North’s latest novel: more a Rockbuster, right?

required reading for the G7.

Have we got a treat for you!

Sounds like a Funko aPOPalypse to us…

12 SPACE JAM 92 HEROES REBORN Hate sport? Despise cartoons? A world without the Avengers?

16 AVENGERS CAMPUS The greatest holiday

destination this side of an Airbnb in Wakanda.

18 MARVEL PRIDE Diversity assembles as the MCU explores LGBTQ.

REVIEWS

70 BLACK WIDOW Marvel! On the big screen!

What strange novelty is this?

It’ll never catch on.

94 DUNGEONS DRAGONS: DARK& ALLIANCE The tabletop classic, now in table-free videogame form.

REGULARS

96 BLASTERMIND It’s not the messiah, it’s a very naughty quiz.

98 TOTAL RECALL Hop aboard a Doom Buggy as

we ride the Haunted Mansion.

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

3

GET IN TOUCH!

FirstContact Hailing Frequencies Open!

“I can’t help but feel you’re cheating a bit.”

LOST LEGACY

Seb Jowett, email Re: Jupiter’s Legacy. Well, what a shame.

Such promise squandered through the act of doing precisely nothing. The production values shone through, the cast were excellent when they were given something to do, but unfortunately they were given so little to do other than be cardboard stereotypes.

The source material is excellent but the choices here were odd: taking the whole run to get the cast their powers when that could have been done in two to three episodes.

So slow, a waste of a show. It’s no surprise they cancelled it.

SFX: We’re promised a live-action adaptation of Supercrooks, which is set in the same universe as Jupiter’s Legacy. So hopefully lessons will have been learned in Netflix Towers.

Hope Short Round is back in Indy 5. Though by now, he’s probably Tall Round.

Kevin O’Connor

A Quiet Place Part II is brilliant, and does Keith Tudor, email I have really enjoyed the latest series of something that sequels Inside No. 9. Each episode has been a puzzle to solve that rarely do – it surpasses has kept me guessing to the end. I especially enjoyed Adrian the original. @BigTallLoud Dunbar and Derek Jacobi’s guest turns in their episode. The dark sense of humour in each episode makes them a highlight of my Monday nights.

I DO LIKE MONDAYS

INTERGALACTIC? CERTAINLY AM

Rob Graham, email Very pleasantly surprised by British series

Intergalactic. I started it with low expectations but it’s the old school sci-fi that we just don’t make in the UK any more, apart from Doctor Who and Red Dwarf. It’s like an updated version of ’70s sci-fi classic Blake’s 7 with better effects.

SFX: We asked trusty onboard computer Zen if he agreed and he said +CONFIRMED++.

Orac quibbled with your assessment but then he’s a testy old bit of Perspex.

4 | SFX MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2021

Get in touch!

Email sfx@futurenet.com Facebook facebook.com/ SFXmagazine Twitter/Instagram Follow @sfxmagazine and tag us!

August 2021 | Issue 342

Future PLC, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA

Editor Darren Scott (DS)

Deputy Editor

darren.scott@futurenet.com

Ian Berriman (IB) ian.berriman@ futurenet.com

Art Editor

Production Editor

jonathan.coates@ futurenet.com

ed.ricketts@ futurenet.com

Jonathan Coates

Editor-at-large

US Editor

Ed Ricketts

Nick Setchfield (NS) Tara Bennett (TB) Contributors Sam Ashurst, Calvin Baxter, Saxon Bullock, Bryan Cairns (BC), Sarah Dobbs, Rhian Drinkwater, Richard Edwards, Rosie Fletcher, Dave Golder, Stephen Jewell (SJ), Andy Kelly, Jess Kinghorn, Catherine Kirkpatrick (Art Editor), Miriam McDonald, James Mottram (JM), Jayne Nelson, Steve O’Brien, Andrew Osmond, Andrew Price, Eddie Robson, Will Salmon, Luke Smith, James White, Josh Winning, Jonathan Wright Film Group, London Group Editor-in-Chief Jane Crowther Deputy Editor Matt Maytum Art Editor Mike Brennan Reviews Editor Matthew Leyland News Editor Jordan Farley Production Editor Erlingur Einarsson Cover images Masters Of The Universe: Revelation © Netflix/Mattel.

Indiana Jones © Lucasfilm/Alamy.

All copyrights and trademarks are recognised and respected Printed in the UK by William Gibbons & Sons on behalf of Future Distributed by Marketforce, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5HU marketforce.co.uk Tel: 0203 787 9001 ISSN 1358-5959

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All contents © 2021 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.

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“He could get Judi Dench in a headlock”

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Chief Executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Non-Executive Chairman Richard Huntingford Chief Financial Officer Rachel Addison Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244

WELCOME

Rants & Raves Inside the SFX hive mind

DARREN SCOTT EDITOR

RAVES Revisiting Star Trek: Enterprise – who said it was boring? I’m really enjoying it!

Why did I think the Fear Street movies were made for kids? They’re definitely not.

Masters Of The Universe: Revelation is a great continuation of the series, but also takes the franchise to new heights.

RANTS Afraid Loki really just hasn’t grabbed me.

Wake me up when Power Pack or Dazzler get a show. Okay, maybe She-Hulk.

“Fabulous secrets were revealed to me…”

Captain’s Log

IAN BERRIMAN DEPUTY EDITOR

RAVES Chose A Quiet Place Part II for my first visit to the local Odeon in forever. Entertaining, if not exactly essential.

If you haven’t seen Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor yet – maybe my favourite film of the last year – it’s now streaming on Shudder.

RANTS The animation of the missing episode of “The Web Of Fear” for the upcoming Special Edition Blu-ray looks absolutely hideous. What were they thinking?

JONATHAN COATES ART EDITOR

RAVES Thinking Belloq: The Series would be a great idea for a Disney+ spin-off.

The Mysterious Benedict Society is really good fun. Wondering what they put in US school dinners to churn out so many amazing child actors!

ED RICKETTS PRODUCTION EDITOR

RANTS When the first episode of Blake’s 7 was on telly, I missed it as I was in hospital having my tonsils out, aged seven. I’ve seen it now, and god, is it boring…

RAVES …but! In my rewatch I can look forward to Gan being crushed, Orac, Servalan basically being a dominatrix, the headless robot that gave me nightmares – and the final scene.

NICK SETCHFIELD EDITOR-AT-LARGE

RAVES Check out The Great Jonny Quest Documentary on YouTube, a wonderful fan-made celebration of Hanna-Barbera’s spy-fi series from the ’60s. Never saw the original show growing up – thanks, schedulers!

– so this was a genuine education.

Just read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Not as immersive as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell but possibly more haunting.

TARA BENNETT US EDITOR

Y M ALA ©

RAVES Wellington Paranormal is finally showing in the US. It expands the What We Do In The Shadows-verse into the more local and quirkier NZ landscape. Keep adding spin-offs!

RANTS Was hoping the dramedy Kevin Can F**k Himself would be a black comedy with some sci-fi elements to it. Instead, it’s just bad comedy and bad choices. Where’s a demon or parallel universe trope when you need it?

As a child of the ’80s – let’s say very late ’80s, ahem – there are several animated series, sorry, cartoons, that hold a very special place in my eternally nostalgic heart. Heck, I even have a ThunderCats tattoo, but you’d need to buy me several drinks before you can see it. Unsurprisingly, Masters Of The Universe is high on that list, so I was very excited to hear that Kevin Smith would helm a continuation of the original show while still slightly concerned that it may go down the route of other recent reboots. Any such concerns were blown out of the window – this series is truly epic, while still managing to embrace and update the legacy. And yes, there’s even a nod to the 1987 live action movie, which I’m a huge fan of.

Another slice of childhood nostalgia landed in my lap this month in the form of Big Finish’s new adaptation of The Box Of Delights. I’m such a stickler for tradition that it feels weird even talking about this much-loved festive book in the summer, but these aren’t exactly traditional times. That said, I did speak to the cast during recording in December, so my twitch isn’t quite so bad.

Elsewhere, Nick Setchfield gets to reunite cast members from Raiders Of The Lost Ark – his all-time favourite movie.

So maybe looking back – particularly now – isn’t such a bad thing. After all, it’s the past that made us what we are today, and probably a large part of why you’re reading this very magazine. Do us a favour and help spread the word – tell your friends about SFX. Check out the subscription offers.

Magazines have been going through a difficult time during the pandemic and we want to keep sharing that love. We have the power!

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

5

NEWS //// INTERVIEWS //// INSIGHT //// GIANT PRETZELS

AUGUST 2021

Jungle Cruise 10

Disney sends us up the river with its new theme park ride movie

8

STARGIRL

You just can’t get the staff. Or can she?

Read on for season two teasers and a new Big Bad.

12

SPACE JAM

There’s a new player in town – and he happens to be the world’s greatest at basketball…

18

MARVEL PRIDE The comic books still lead the way as two new queer characters are introduced.

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

7

Eclipso first possessed Bruce Gordon in 1963’s House Of Secrets #61.

Darkness Rising SHOWRUNNER EXCLUSIVE

A new big bad threatens the Stargirl universe in season two

BY THE END OF Stargirl’s first season, the titular character and the Justice Society of America – including Hourman, Wildcat and Dr Mid-Nite – had prevailed over the Injustice Society of America and saved the day. So surely the team of teenagers should now be taking a well-deserved break and returning to their normal lives. But that’s not the case. When the DC series returns, Stargirl, aka Courtney, remains vigilant in scoping out trouble and embracing her destiny.

“Courtney believes her cosmic staff still lights up,” showrunner Geoff Johns tells Red Alert.

“There’s still work to do. For her, it’s a real calling. In the first episode, Courtney tells her stepfather Pat, ‘The staff chose me when my own father didn’t’. It really is at the root of a lot of her drive, that she feels worthy with the staff. She feels she has purpose and belongs and is accepted. She lays a lot of that within the identity of being Stargirl.

“That said, as much as her teammates like Rick, Yolanda, Beth and even Pat are all about the JSA, there is nothing to do in Blue Valley,” says Johns. “This is a small town. They defeated the ISA and Courtney is still on patrol every

8 | SFX MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2021

single night. She’s still out there and enthusiastic about it. The rest of the team is a little less enthusiastic about going out every single night.

“At the same time, Pat really wants Courtney to focus on being a kid while things are quiet,” he continues. “It’s good that she has some downtime. Yes, maybe something else will happen.

Maybe a villain will pop up, but you can’t spend your life waiting

“Shade was involved in the battle when the Justice Society was killed,” Johns notes. “We saw his black shadow hand as it attacked Dr Mid-Nite. Yet he wasn’t part of the Injustice Society throughout season one. He had left at some point. We get into that a little bit in season two. Why he comes to town, and what his desires are, I don’t want to completely spoil, but he comes into conflict with the Justice Society fairly quickly.”

Meanwhile, this year’s big bad is Eclipso. An evil being known for possessing individuals that come into contact with shards of his black diamond, Eclipso represents corruption, hatred and vengeance.

But his true gift lies in exploiting people’s weaknesses and deep-seated pain. for it, searching for it and “Eclipso is pretty formidable neglecting everything else in your and all about darkness, which is life, including your family, your great to go up against somebody friends, your future. And yet who is all about light, like Courtney only sees her future Courtney and the Justice Society,” as being Stargirl.”

Johns explains. “There’s these Courtney’s overzealousness colliding ideologies and powers unfortunately pays off. The JSA’s and drives that really help old foe, the Shade, emerges once generate strong emotional again. The show established the stories, that challenge each of our master manipulator of shadows as characters individually. They each one of the founding members of go through something that is really the Injustice Society… but then personal to them. That’s what he disappeared.

Eclipso does best. He makes things very personal. He turns over rocks “It’s got that you might not want him to three modes, turn over.” including It’s not all bad news. Courtney high-beam.” and the Justice Society will bump into some potential new allies… even if they start off on the wrong foot. There’s Jade, the daughter of Green Lantern Alan Scott, speedster Jay Garrick and the magical pink imp, Thunderbolt.

“Season two gives us a chance to deal with the other two artefacts that Courtney stole: Alan Scott’s lantern and Johnny Thunder’s pink pen,” explains Johns. “Those

We haven’t seen a character wield the power of Green Lantern for a long time

“This was before he tried the hyaluronic acid…”

two elements play into the story pretty early on. And where Jade is, her brother Obsidian surely can’t be far behind...

“We haven’t seen a character wield the power of Green Lantern for a long, long time on TV. And the Thunderbolt has never been on the screen before in live-action.

That was also a great challenge.

“And, again, it was trying to introduce them slowly,” he adds.

“It took some episodes for the Justice Society to even become a team. It basically took half the first season. What I didn’t want was to just put a bunch of people in costume up on the screen immediately and then you have to learn backwards who they are and where they are from. The goal for this was always to introduce the characters first and watch them become superheroes. So we do get into Jade/Jen Hayden’s backstory and even Thunderbolt and Johnny Thunder.”

Comic book aficionados familiar with Eclipso can attest to his sadistic nature. In his own monthly title, Eclipso brutally slaughtered Wildcat and Dr Mid-Nite. Could the series’ versions of those fan-favourites suffer the same tragic fate? Johns declines to comment, but promises the stakes have never been higher.

“Look, Eclipso is a very real threat and not everybody is getting to survive their encounter with him,” he concludes. “But our heroes are strong. We will see how the season unfolds.” BC In the US, Stargirl season two premieres on DC Universe on 10 August. UK details are TBC.

“Oi! Er, hello?

We’re talking to you… just rude.”

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

9

Carry On Up The Amazon DIRECTOR EXCLUSIVE

Jaume Collet-Serra takes us on an epic Disney ride in Jungle Cruise WHEN DIRECTOR JAUME Collet-Serra (The Shallows) first got involved with Jungle Cruise, he had no real attachment to the classic Disney theme park ride that has inspired this summer blockbuster. “Maybe I had been on it many, many years ago when I was a kid,” he shrugs, “but I didn’t have any personal memories of it.

It was not special to me in any way.”

Nevertheless it soon was, after he began talking to the Imagineers, the so-called Disney brains trust behind the theme park rides.

“They told me about the history – it was one of the original rides at Disneyland designed by Walt Disney himself, where he was the first skipper – and the evolution of it. How it was first intended to be a ride with actual live animals on it.”

A pleasure cruise down some of the world’s most famous rivers, the Jungle Cruise ride eventually boasted animatronic creatures for tourists to marvel at. Collet-Serra’s film goes one step further, with expertly designed CGI beasts (including a jaguar named Proxima) littering this Amazon-set adventure, as grumpy boat captain Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) takes Emily Blunt and Jack Whitehall’s siblings on a hunt for the magical Tree of Life.

The film’s been in development since Disney scored a huge hit with 2003’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl – proof positive that theme park rides can spawn huge franchises. Collet-Serra was determined to capture the same fun-packed thrills as the attraction, which launched in 1955 at Disneyland –particularly Frank’s groanworthy puns that he trots out to punters.

“For us that was very important, so the fans felt like they were going on the ride, as we were watching the movie.”

Much like Pirates, Jungle Cruise mixes high adventure with fantasy – not least a Spanish conquistador (played by Édgar Ramírez) who has been trapped in the jungle for half a millennium. A good friend of the actor, Collet-Serra was desperate to work with Ramírez. “His performance is so

10 | SFX MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2021

One of these was in The Bad Education Movie.

One of these is the world’s highest-paid film star.

powerful it really transcends all the visual effects,” he says. “And I think people are really going to talk about that character.”

Ramirez isn’t the only plum character actor on board, with the film also starring Paul Giamatti as a rival tour operator to Frank, and Jesse Plemons as the moustache-twirling villain Prince Joachim. “He is on a competing expedition with Emily’s character to find the Tree of Life. He gave the character an edge and a lot of life and I really appreciate it. He doesn’t have a lot of visual effects. Other characters – even Emily and Dwayne – are surrounded by visual effects but Jesse’s character was always in a very grounded environment.”

ALL THE BANTZ

He has all of the qualities of a leading man and he stepped into it very naturally

Films like the Indiana Jones series, which featured the supernatural (from the Ark of the Covenant to the Holy Grail), also served as a blueprint for Jungle Cruise’s vibe. “All of these movies have myths and legends and at some point in the movie, they kind of come to life and put our characters in danger. It’s scary, but it’s scary to a point where you enjoy it. This movie is for all audiences, for kids from eight to 80. Everybody can see it. It’s not the darkest.

It’s on a fun family level.”

It’s his first movie with Johnson – they are currently shooting DC’s Black Adam – and Collet-Serra was excited by the chance to turn the star into a romantic lead. “He has all of the qualities of a leading man and he just stepped into it very naturally. And obviously, with Emily Blunt, they just make the perfect couple.

They’re such different people, and yet they have this intense and great chemistry.”

Blunt’s character Lily Houghton is every bit as intrepid as her male counterpart, though one of the film’s pleasures is watching the two gradually fall in love (The African Queen and Romancing The Stone were key touchstones).

“Jungle Cruise is a movie that takes place, essentially, on one set,” explains the director.

“It’s on a boat. I mean, they’re travelling down a river. And we’re seeing different places, but essentially it’s two people – or three people, with Jack Whitehall – in that boat.”

In other words, a lot of the fun relies on Johnson and Blunt bantering and bickering all the way through the Amazon. “They just kept going and going. You could be shooting this argument for, like, hours and hours, and they would just keep upping each other.” On set, it was sheer entertainment. “There’s no egos attached to anything. They allow the other person to make fun of them, and vice versa. It was great to watch.” An old-fashioned romantic swashbuckler? Sign us up right now. JM Jungle Cruise is in cinemas and on Disney+ Premium Access from 30 July.

INFORMATION Cowabunga!

Seth Rogen producing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles CG reboot.

Aquasequel due December ’22 titled Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom.

Aaron TaylorJohnson toplining solo film for Spidey villain Kraven the Hunter.

Gerard Butler back in disaster mode for Greenland 2.

A Quiet Place: Part III targeting 31 March 2023 release, directed

by Jeff Nichols.

Kevin Bacon is the villain in Troma’s Toxic Avenger reboot.

Bryan Fuller helming new version of Stephen King’s Christine for Blumhouse.

Warner Bros Animation and New Line Cinema teaming on Lord Of The Rings anime prequel The War Of The Rohirrim.

MGM remaking 1972’s blaxploitation horror Blacula.

Rob Zombie directing new version of The Munsters.

Christina Ricci joining The Matrix 4.

Alexander Skarsgård cast in Brandon Cronenberg’s SF tale Infinity Pool.

Todd Phillips co-writing Joker sequel. We always knew it would happen.

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

YTTEG

Inspirations for the ride included The African Queen and 1955 Disney doc “The African Lion”.

NEWS WARP HIGH-SPEED

11

The original website for the 1996 movie, one of the internet’s first movie sites, is still online at spacejam.com/1996.

Holding Court

CAST AND CREW INTERVIEWS

A fresh take on an iconic movie, Space Jam: A New Legacy has balls

IT’S BEEN 25 YEARS since the original Space Jam, starring Michael Jordan, hit screens and broke records. Now the Looney Tunes are back – and they haven’t aged a day… But while the Tunes cast may not have had any work done, director Malcolm D Lee has reimagined the franchise to embrace the different world we live in.

“This is more than Space Jam, this is like Cyberspace Jam,” he explains. “We’re in an era where everything is digital and electronic and on the web, you know?

12 | SFX MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2021

Everything’s about videogames and virtual reality, and so our characters – LeBron James and his son – go into a videogame. It’s a great way to reintroduce Looney Tunes to the big screen, with the help of one of the greatest basketball players to ever play.”

LeBron James is that man, one of the best NBA players in history.

For someone who’s usually got his eye – literally – on the ball, his new co-stars proved a little tricky.

“It’s challenging when you’re doing a scene and you have to visualise a lot of the Tunes being there,” he says. “It becomes about

The one thing we were really passionate about was making these Tunes feel real

Devin Crane, who serves as animation supervisor and animation production designer alongside Spike Brandt, explains the process of bringing Looney Tunes back to the big screen.

“I think it was important for us to capture the essence of each of these Tunes,” he says. “These being able to use your imagination. characters have been around for I think as adults we sometimes a long time now, some of them 80 lose our imaginations as we get years plus, so it was important for older. So I’m just bringing that me – almost as an ambassador for back into my life right now, just these characters – to make sure trying to be able to spice that that we upheld the legacy. I grew imagination back up, which is up with all these characters as a a pretty cool thing as well.” little kid. It was important for me

Sufferin’ succotash, it’s the whole lot of ’em.

“If that Porky looks at me like that one more time…”

as well as traditional hand-drawn 2D animation.

“The one thing we were really passionate about was making these Tunes feel real,” says Crane.

“I think that all of these Tunes are real to us. Audiences have grown up with these characters – Bugs Bunny and Daffy and Porky… you know who they are.

“I think the insurmountable Daffy Duck: responsibility of that is making best animated sure you don’t lose those character personalities. It’s how they ever? Discuss. behave, how they stand, how they move. And then also making them just to make sure that you could characters from throughout the feel real to each other, knowing feel the history.”

Looney Tunes history and the that these aren’t just CGI In order to achieve this, Crane H&B [Hanna-Barbera] legacy, and characters or 2D. For them, they says the process took “tons of there’s just stuff you’ve never got are real, and they’re living.” research”. “You start getting into to work with before, like King “We have everything,” says your research and getting specific Kong, Iron Giant, the Gremlins, LeBron James. “It’s live action about things. You’re always the Flintstones… That makes it all here, it’s CG animation there, looking for something new, trying the more fun.” there’s 2D in this sequence… to find stuff that hasn’t been done The There’s so much going on in the before. I think that’s the most fun filmmakers movie. I think it’s going to keep part. You start doing paintings and have been able the audience of kids and working with your art teams and to update the their families offjust throwing stuff out there, just characters, making balance. I think that’s to see what could be interesting, them cutting-edge one of the greatest what could be new. We’re looking while still retaining parts of the at the shots and trying to pepper in their classic values whole movie.” all these Easter eggs and fun using CG technology Producer

Ryan Coogler agrees. “Malcolm and the whole team really take advantage of all of the cuttingedge filmmaking technology.

Like LeBron says, we have motion capture, we have traditional 2D animation, and we have some of the craziest techniques that actually had to be developed for this film.”

Lee summarises: “As filmmakers, as entertainers, what we hope for this film is that it will have a very broad reach so far as the global audience – both because of all the touchstones of Warner Bros properties, like the Tunes and the other fun elements we dropped in, and also because it’s infinitely relatable. It’s a family movie at its heart, featuring a legendary sports figure in LeBron James, and with universal themes that everyone can relate to.

“Everybody has family, and everybody struggles with the differences within their family, but at the end of the day there’s love, there’s care, there’s acceptance.”

DS

Space Jam: A New Legacy is in cinemas from 16 July.

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

13

Numb Game WRITER EXCLUSIVE

Richard James on adapting Gerry Anderson’s unmade space opus Five Star Five into a new novel

as Star Wars and its main protagonists are a grizzled space freighter captain, John Lovell, and his talking chimpanzee sidekick, Clarence B Bond. We don’t have to look too far to see who they might be based on, nor the assembled forces of the evil Zargon Empire.”

Best known for playing Officer Hubble DEVELOPED IN THE WAKE OF Orrin in Space Precinct, James has rekindled Star Wars’ huge success, Five Star Five his association with the short-lived 1990s could have been Gerry Anderson’s future police procedural in recent years. He answer to George Lucas’s classic intergalactic co-hosted the Gerry Anderson podcast epic. That is, if it had actually reached the big alongside Gerry’s son and managing director of screen... It has now finally been brought to life Anderson Entertainment, Jamie Anderson, and – on the printed page at least – after penned both 2019’s prose adaptation of lost languishing in creative limbo for four decades. episode “Demeter City” and short story Anderson and co-writer Tony Barwick’s collection Space Precinct: Revisited. “A couple original screenplay has now been turned into a of years ago, Jamie told me of his discovery of novel by Richard James (subtitled John Lovell the Five Star Five script and asked me if And The Zargon Threat) and accompanying I would be interested in providing a audiobook read by Terrahawks’ Robbie Stevens. novelisation,” recalls James. “Naturally, “George Lucas has got a lot to answer for!” I jumped at the chance!” laughs James. “The late ’70s are littered with With Anderson working on Five Star Five films that were attempting to cash in on Star around 1977/1978, it would have followed soon Wars, from Star Trek: The Motion Picture to after Space: 1999, although its more colourful Disney’s The Black Hole. Five Star Five tone was very different to the doomed voyage certainly follows many of the same story beats of John Koenig and his crew. “Although it

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Its protagonists are a grizzled space freighter captain and his talking chimpanzee sidekick

came immediately after Space: 1999, the universe in which it is set is far removed from the sterile interiors of Moonbase Alpha,” says James. “Five Star Five is grittier and grungier, with a kind of real world feel to the craft and locations. It seems geared more to a family audience than Space: 1999, with none of that series’ more existential qualities. It’s more action-based, which is thrilling to write.”

Five Star Five has also been compared to Thunderbirds, as the camaraderie between Lovell and his shipmates is similar to the Tracy family’s deep bond. “The Thunderbirds

NEWS WARP HIGH-SPEED

INFORMATION

A B156 Transporter, again by Thompson.

Chris Thompson’s design for the planet Kestra.

Thompson’s design idea for the film’s logo. connection was a theme that Gerry returned to again and again in his various series,” says James. “A gang of specialist agents fighting a common foe, whether it be the Tracy brothers against the Hood or Spectrum against the Mysterons. It’s a simple formula but it works.”

James has attempted to remain as faithful as possible to Anderson and Barwick’s original vision. “I was conscious that this was to be a novelisation, not a reimagining or expansion of the story,” he explains. “I viewed it almost as an historical document and I wanted to preserve as much as possible, although that’s not to say I didn’t change things.

“I was struck by the dry humour – which undoubtedly came from Tony – particularly between Lovell and Clarence. I embellished that where I could. In a film you can convey a lot just by a look, but in a book it needs to be vocalised somehow, with a quip or a snide remark. There were physical descriptions of the characters in the script, so I didn’t have to work too hard on that, and many of them play on familiar archetypes, such as Sumara the

mystic monk, Jhy the precocious young boy and my favourite, Rudy the marauding robot with a conscience.”

Along with a poster and a few concept study models of a couple of spaceships and a gun from the 1970s, James was also able to refer to some lavish illustrations that artist Chris Thompson drew in 2013. “Chris’s designs are fantastic, and I certainly bore them in mind as I wrote – particularly Lovell’s hammerhead space freighter and the sleek troop carrier from the opening chapter,” says James. “Having those images to hand was really useful, maybe even more so than the art from the original.”

James would be interested in writing more.

“Certainly, if there’s a market for it, I would be happy to document the further adventures of John Lovell,” he says, admitting that he would like to take on the role of Lovell’s trusted co-pilot in any future film. “Who knows, I might even be able to fit into a chimp suit!” SJ Five Star Five: John Lovell And The Zargon Threat is out now: shop.gerryanderson.co.uk

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

YTTEG

The Towering Inferno director John Guillermin was set to direct the movie, until funding fell through.

J-Lo set to battle AI in Netflix SF future war thriller Atlas.

The Good Place’s Jameela Jamil joining Marvel’s SheHulk as the villainous Titania.

Forest Whitaker reprising Rogue One’s Saw Gerrera for Star Wars: Andor.

Die Hard’s Jeb Stuart writing live-action Assassin’s Creed series for Netflix.

Luke Evans and Josh Gad returning for Disney+ prequel series to 2017’s Beauty And The Beast.

NBC grounding missing plane mystery Manifest after three seasons.

Stephen and Robbie Amell selling Code 8 sequel to Netflix.

Todd McFarlane developing liveaction Spawn spin-off based on ’tecs Sam and Twitch.

John Reddick playing Big Bad Albert Wesker in Netflix’s Resident Evil adap.

Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. returning for a second season on Amazon, with David Tennant and Michael Sheen on-board.

Neal McDonough joining Macaulay Culkin and Frances Conroy in tenth season of American Horror Story.

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Tony Stark’s Arc Reactor is embedded into the floor of the front entrance of Avengers Campus. At night, it glows that familiar blue.

Avengers Re-Assembled ON LOCATION EXCLUSIVE

The MCU playground finally opens for recruits to assemble in Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure Park

Y TTEG/SEMIT AL ,YRRET LUAP ,DLROW YENSID :SERUTCIP

THE YEAR 2020 MIGHT have ended up as a black hole for new Marvel Studios content due to the global pandemic, but the MCU is definitely healing this year with three original Disney+ series already released, the theatrical films back on track and in Anaheim, California, the opening of the much-anticipated Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure Park.

The brand new area folds the already existing Guardians Of The Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! ride into a space that’s entirely dedicated to all of the Marvel Studios mythology and characters.

Essentially existing out of time, this Campus is where you can still see Tony Stark’s Iron Man, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow and T’Challa/Black Panther walking beside Loki in his new TVA (Time Variance Authority) jumpsuit, and Sam Wilson’s Captain America.

The whole space also offers guests – or new recruits – the chance to wander an Avengers Campus (aka Centralised Assembly Mobilised to Prepare, Unite, and Safeguard) area which was built on Stark Industries

Meet Doctor Strange in the old sanctum.

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get out of hand. In a 3D ride, you then fling your own arms to “throw” virtual webs to stop the critters and gain points for bragging rights at the end of the mission. And if you’re lucky enough to get to ride multiple property. Formerly an innovation times (be wary, the lines are long), lab tied to Howard Stark’s there are even Web Shooters you top-secret projects in the Captain can buy for your wrists that imbue America: The First Avenger era your virtual web-flings with the (think flying vehicles), the grounds powers of favourite characters like are now a mix of old and new.

Iron Man, Rescue, Spider-Man There are plenty of Stark-era and Ghost Spider. Yes, the ride is Easter eggs that remain that smart. everywhere, especially in the ASSEMBLY TIME Tony Stark supported WEB Aside from Mission: BREAKOUT!, program building (Worldwide which is a gravity-dropping ride Engineering Brigade), which highlights the work of brilliant up- featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers Campus also and-coming scientists like Peter offers random outdoor appearances and assemblies with characters from the MCU. The Avengers HQ building, which will eventually be a state-of-the-art interior ride featuring the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, is now the exterior stage for a battle that takes place under the full-sized Quinjet between Black Widow, Black Panther and Parker (Tom Holland). In fact, his tech screw-up of enabling the newly minted MCU baddie Taskmaster. On the grounds, replication of his signature Spider-Bot invention is at the core Wakanda’s Dora Milaje, led by General Okoye, protect the area, of the new premium ride, WEB stopping several times a day to SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure. As the bots take over identify potential new warriors based on their bravery and the complex during the Open House event, Parker asks recruits compassion. They even teach to help him “web-sling” the robot observers some fierce moves.

Near the HQ, Doctor Strange crawlies to stop them before they portals into the West Coast Sanctum to get help from mystical recruits. He reveals the magical elements of his powers with some sacred objects and then portals away to finish his mission. And on top of the WEB building, Spider-Man shows up to talk to his peers, do some death-defying aerials and then come down to earth to take selfies with recruits.

The other big pursuit right now is eating the variety of bespoke food only found within the

A lot of the fun comes from studying every ride queue for tons of visuals

Campus boundaries. The Pym Test Kitchen is the creation of Hank and Hope Pym, who have experimented with food in their Quantum Tunnel. They’ve messed with breakfast, lunch and dinner, so you can get items like the Ever-Expanding Cinna-Pym Toast, a massive 453.8g Quantum Pretzel, or size-morphed full meals like a Not So Little Chicken Sandwich or a mega meatball Impossible Spoonful pasta dish that’s like an optical illusion for your stomach.

There are even two shawarma food carts “owned” by the guy who served up that famous meal after the battle of New York in the end credits of The Avengers. Plus, there’s booze for the adults, with an array of unique beer-based concoctions only found in the Pym Tasting Lab. For hardcore MCU fans, a lot of the fun of being in the Campus comes from studying every ride queue for tons of visuals that tie together all of the various characters and films. If you look in an alcove, you might see Peggy Carter’s old SSR parking spot, or happen upon a random tree that’s been feeding on gamma residue.

There’s space goo baked into the concrete now from when the BREAKOUT! ride “landed” on the property from Knowhere, and old school maps that Howard Stark left behind for his old compound and his inventions.

With the intention being to expand within the California Campus, and more coming to Disneyland Paris and other parks, the endeavour is meant to be a globally connected playground for everyone who loves the MCU. TB Avengers Campus is open now.

Clearly the main event: it’s the cafeteria.

Six-hour queues not pictured.

Hey, this bloke looks like Benedict Cumberbatch.

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

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Despite a ban on such characters, JM DeMatteis introduced Steve Rogers’s gay friend Arnie Roth in 1982’s Captain America #270.

They must manufacture these shields in bulk now.

Rainbow Warriors

like for Cap?’ To me, the answer was immediately obvious and grounded and not needing any alternate realities, as the setting in the book is very much real-world America.

They all become part of the main narrative, and by the end of the book, we have a real super-team of these people.”

Appearing in #1, Aaron is a LGBTQ+ activist who stands up for the oppressed and the forgotten. “It was important to me that Aaron looked out for the most vulnerable people in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as addressing real-world issues in a superhero world, because if he were a real hero in the world today, those are the issues he would be fighting,” reasons writer Josh Trujillo, who is joined by artist Jan Bazaldua. “To me, the most interesting part of the project is Captain America reimagined by different creators. Nichelle, Joe and Ari are all wildly different characters, but they share

WHILE LGBTQ+ CHARACTERS have long been a vital part of the Marvel Universe, two new ones are now being added to those rainbow ranks.

While merry mutant Somnus debuted in the recent Marvel Voices: Pride anthology, queer teen Aaron Fischer is one of several new Captain Americas from different social backgrounds who debut in The United States Of Captain America.

Written by Christopher Cantwell and drawn

by Dale Eaglesham, the five-issue mini-series finds Steve Rogers embarking upon a road trip across America after his shield is stolen, running into a number of local heroes who have taken up the Sentinel of Liberty’s mantle in a bid to protect their own communities. Showcased in a sequence of back-ups, as well as Aaron Fischer’s Cap of the Railways they also include Nichelle Wright, the Captain America of Harrisburg; Filipino-American Cap Ari Agbayani; and Joe Gomez, native Americans the Kickapoo Tribe’s very own star-spangled Avenger.

“It felt important to get a real snapshot of the breadth and depth of the American populace today, as there are so many types of Americans,” says Cantwell, who credits the idea of establishing a network of Caps to editor Alanna Smith. “The question she posed was, ‘What would a Spider-Verse look

something in common with Steve Rogers, which is that they’re all fearless and selflessly devoted to ideals greater than themselves.”

With writer Steve Orlando acknowledging that “mutants have long been an allegory for marginalised folks,” the Children of the Atom’s current status as virtually immortal gods residing on the living island Krakoa played a crucial role in Somnus’s development. “The advent of Krakoa has allowed them to move past many aspects of that,” says Orlando, who is joined by artist Luciano Vecchio.

“By making Somnus a mutant, we created a way to speak on that moment of relative victory and wish fulfilment, one that previous generations of mutants likely never thought would come, and created an equity that actual marginalised folks are still fighting for every day.” SJ Marvel Voices: Pride and The United States Of Captain America #1 are both out now.

WRITER EXCLUSIVE

New LGBTQ+ heroes Somnus and the Captain America of the Railways are standing proud in the Marvel Universe

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A film adaptation of The Upper World for Netflix is in the works. Daniel Kaluuya will play Esso.

Schmigadoon! is the musical/comedy/parody/ mystery you never knew you wanted

Alan Cumming hamming it up? The very thought.

FEMI FADUGBA MEET THE FORMER INVESTMENT ASSOCIATE BEHIND YA SCI-FI THRILLER THE UPPER WORLD

SNOMIS TSENRE

IF YOU’VE BEEN THINKING there’s a lack of episodic musical theatre/fantasy satire in the world, then Schmigadoon! is made for you. One of the weirdest hybrid series to hit screens this summer, the musical comedy stars KeeganMichael Key (Key & Peele) and Cecily Strong (Ghostbusters). They’re a couple trying to repair their rocky relationship on a retreat, only to get lost in the woods and find a magical town that functions like it’s in the midst of a 1940s-style musical every day. And once they enter, they can’t leave.

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black), Schmigadoon! is the creation of Cinco Paul (Despicable Me). Paul tells Red Alert that he dreamed up the premise 20 years ago but had no idea how to shape it into something back then. But as the TV landscape expanded, Paul was ready to move out of animation film screenwriting, and that long-percolating idea became his live-action passion project.

“It had always been two guys stumbling upon a musical,” Paul explains about the original premise. “But then when I said, ‘Let’s make it a couple, and they’re stuck there until

they can find true love,’ that’s when it really clicked for me.”

Paul explains that the title is an homage to the classic Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical Brigadoon, about a man who stumbles upon a Scottish town that only appears every 100 years. “It encapsulates that it’s a parody, and that it’s this funny look at musicals. I think it’ll work really well for people who are familiar with Oklahoma! and Carousel and The Music Man, but I think it’ll work just as well for people who don’t know those musicals, because it’s an introduction.

Everybody understands, basically, what a musical is, and it has fun with all those tropes.

And then Keegan’s character, Josh, hates musicals and wants nothing to do with them and doesn’t know anything about them,” he laughs.

Along with the musically inclined leads, the show is brimming with an array of musical theatre superstars, talented support actors and dancers that bring to life stunning live performances for the bemused couple. “We wanted people to sing live on the set and dance, so we really wanted to get a wide variety of real musical theatre talent,” Paul explains. “That’s why, in addition to Tony winners like Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and Jane Krakowski, we have Aaron Tveit and Ariana DeBose. We were able to get the best of the best, because unfortunately there wasn’t much else for them to do with Broadway shuttered.”

With only six episodes in the first season, Paul says they stay very focused on the Golden Age musicals in terms of tone, style and original numbers. “It is a love letter to Golden Age musicals from start to finish, but ultimately maybe there is a movement into other musicals like Bye Bye Birdie or further on,” he teases. TB Schmigadoon! episodes one and two hit Apple TV+ on 16 July. New ones then follow weekly.

ROHTUA WEN

A Right Song And Dance CREATOR EXCLUSIVE

Tell us about your protagonists.

My first is a class clown named Esso.

He’s managed to get himself in a postcode beef, then receives an unexpected gift: the ability to see through time. Fifteen years later, we meet football prodigy Rhia, who’s dying to find a way back to the parents she never got to meet. When their paths collide, a race against the clock becomes a race against time itself.

You have a science background – did that feed into the book much?

I have to admit, before I even thought about plot, my first step was figuring out the physics and how to explain it! The novel is ultimately about teenagers, though. We see them worrying about exams and whether they remembered to put deodorant on, while also overcoming impossible situations.

How long did it take to write?

Two and a half years in total. The first draft only took a few months but was pretty rubbish, since it was just me telling the story to myself. The later drafts evolved and improved as I started learning more about the craft and got outside feedback.

Any advice for would-be novelists?

The only two words that matter in your first draft are “The End”. My other advice would be to ask: “If I read my own book fresh, would I dig it?” If the answer’s an honest “Yes”, you’ve created something with intrinsic value and the rest is gravy. IB The Upper World is out on 19 August, published by Penguin.

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

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Clarke is rumoured to be playing green-haired S.W.O.R.D. Commander Abigail Brand in Secret Invasion.

Do you ever want to talk like you’re in a comic book?

“I wanted to approach this material in a comic book world because I love superheroes and comics as the freedom, the WRITER EXCLUSIVE imagination and creativity you have in them has no boundaries,” says Clarke, who is joined on the three-issue miniseries from Image Comics by co-writer Marguerite Bennett and artist Leila Leiz.

With main character Maya’s powers tied to her menstrual cycle, Clarke also hopes to shine a light on what is often a seldomdiscussed topic. “It’s a huge deal Emilia Clarke is when it happens to a woman, but breaking down I also feel that men don’t know barriers in her anything about it because we don’t much about it either,” she debut Image Comics know says. “We’re not allowed to talk series M.O.M. about it, so I’m hoping to educate women, girls and boys about this phenomena that happens to a CENTRING UPON female body.” a single mother who Clarke declares that “Deadpool somehow juggles is my favourite movie!”, and Maya being both a top scientist and emulates the Merc With the a superhero, actor Emilia Clarke’s Mouth’s metafictional approach, debut comic book series M.O.M. constantly breaking the fourth compares the matriarchal ability wall to chat to the reader. to juggle an apparently infinite “Deadpool is so good, and I really number of tasks to actually having want to be Ryan Reynolds so a superpower. badly!” she says.

M.O.M’s The Word

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“You also have Fleabag, House Of Cards and, dare I say it, Shakespeare [doing this]. It’s quite fun having Maya talk to the person who is actually reading the book; it gets to live outside of time, which I really like.”

Soon to star in the upcoming Secret Invasion television series, Clarke also intends M.O.M. to be a wry commentary on the proliferation of superheroes in mainstream media over the past decade. “That’s my usual nine to five, so I’ve witnessed how the blockbuster has become only about that,” she reasons. “Back in the day, you’d have blockbusters that were about heists and other crazy shit, but now it’s all about superheroes and comic book worlds. It seems that it’s

something that people want, but the popularity of that genre is being amplified through these huge, record-breaking movies. It’s also a space where you can do anything and make everything, which was confusing to me, as you can let your imagination run as wild as possible, and yet it all looks the darn same. Deadpool was the first time where it was like, ‘Oh my god, this is really different!’”

Short for Mother Of Madness, M.O.M. ironically plays on Clarke’s iconic role as Daenerys Targaryen in Game Of Thrones, in addition to exploring various ideas of insanity. “That obviously comes from me being the Mother of Dragons,” laughs Clarke.

“I do feel like this goes across everything, as we can all feel mad and crazy, perhaps from a frustration point of view, such as ‘What’s the world coming to?’

Everyone goes through many moments in their life – even their day – where they feel like they’ve lost their minds, and in this series, you’re in a world where that’s entirely possible.” SJ M.O.M. #1 is out on 21 July.

Marvel is also reprinting Moon Knight’s first appearance in 1975’s Werewolf By Night in a new facsimile edition.

THE FINAL

FRONTIER

NED BEATTY

1937-2021

SFX salutes Superman’s unforgettable Otis Never destined for leading man status, Ned Beatty carved out an enviable niche as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand character actors. Making his screen debut in 1972’s Deliverance, he was Oscarnominated for an incendiary performance in Network (1976). 1978’s Superman saw him as the perfect comic stooge, Otis, dim-witted henchman to Gene Hackman’s eternally exasperated criminal genius Lex Luthor. As Beatty recalled, director Richard Donner “had more fun with my character than even I did. He loved that character for some reason… That was a special experience.” Kentucky-born Beatty reprised the role in 1980’s Superman II. Other genre credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1990’s Captain America and the voice of Lotso, the menacing teddy bear in Toy Story 3.

Lunar Cycles WRITER EXCLUSIVE

It’s a fresh start for Moon Knight in his new comic series, ahead of the TV show

Ned Beatty with Gene Hackman in Superman II.

DAMARIS HAYMAN 1929-2021 She only appeared in five episodes of Y M A L A , C D / S O R B R E NRAW

Doctor Who, but as white witch Olive Hawthorne, Damaris Hayman became one of the most beloved and enduring characters in the show’s history.

Specialising in a deeply English strain of dottiness, Hayman began her career on the stage and once played eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. The screen soon made use of her comic talent and she was a reliably daffy foil for such popular performers as Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson and Morecambe and Wise. 1971 Who story “The Daemons” found her battling seemingly Satanic forces in the village

of Devil’s End. “I found in Miss Hawthorne quite a lot of what there is in me anyway,” Hayman recalled. “I do certainly believe in the supernatural.”

In fact she advised the production on its occult elements while fighting to make the character more formidable than the “fuddy-duddy” the director wanted. “I was allowed to do what I knew was right.”

JOANNE LINVILLE 1928-2021

Actor who memorably played the Romulan Commander in 1968 Star Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident” and had parts in The Invaders and The Twilight Zone. NS

WITH OSCAR ISAAC POISED TO BRING HIM to life on the small screen next year, Moon Knight is also returning to comics. Described as “a new start” by writer Jed MacKay, the new monthly follows on from the lunar crimefighter’s appearance in Avengers arc “The Age Of Khonshu”, which culminated in him parting company with his fallen god.

“That’s what we’re going to find out – What is the Fist Of Khonshu without Khonshu?” says MacKay, who is joined by artist Alessandro Cappuccio. “Moon Knight is dealing with a lot of stuff – his history hasn’t been particularly kind, as we saw in Avengers, so he’s trying something new.”

Having previously assumed several different identities including Marc Spector, he takes on the guise of the mysterious Mr Knight, who establishes a new base of operations in the Midnight Mission. “He’s putting himself out there, making himself accessible to the people who need his help, claiming his territory to defend,” explains MacKay. “It’s frightening to him, as it ties him to actual people rather than being a grim avenger of the night – though he is still that! But if the people who need his help against the weirdness of the night can find him, so can those who wish him harm…”

MacKay promises to elaborate on his relationship with estranged partner Marlene and their daughter Diatrice. “We’re exploring what a new support system for Moon Knight can look like,” he says. “As we go on, I plan to look further back in Moon Knight’s history and see what some of his old foes are up to.” SJ Moon Knight #1 is out on 21 July.

AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

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AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

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MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

KEVIN

SMITH

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MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

AND W

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MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

“…and I’m telling you, Mallrats was rubbish!”

EVIN SMITH IS EXCITED. “I’ve been waiting to talk about this fucking show for, like, two years!” he bawls.

This, ahem, show is the long-awaited continuation of 1983 Filmation classic He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe. A Netflix animation, Masters Of The Universe: Revelation is aimed at adults who grew up loving the show but also a new, modern audience.

Since it was announced at He-Man convention Power-Con in 2019, filmmaker Smith has had difficulty keeping the secrets of Eternia. “I give everything away. I’m not like M Night Shyamalan, where you can’t know the ending. I’ll tell you the ending of fucking Clerks III before it fucking happens and shit.”

meeting where they explained they had three different He-Man projects happening: a liveaction version, a kids’ version “which reinvents it and it’s CG and stuff” and a third which “spiritually sequelises the classic series from the ’80s.”

It turns out that Rob David – executive producer of the series and Vice President, Content Creative at Mattel Television – was a fan of Smith’s comic book work on Daredevil.

But, he asked, did Smith think he could handle the most powerful man in the universe?

“So I came up with a story, which is pretty much the story you see. Back then it was called The End Of The Universe. They were like, ‘That’s a little too spoilery.’

“They took me in to Ted Biaselli who is our boss at Netflix [Director of Original Series] and who was the passion behind this project. Ted MEETING OF MINDS grew up with MOTU, has every toy, still has Before he does that, let’s nip back to prethem all displayed in his home. He’s like, Power-Con, to ask how it came to pass that ‘Look, I love Star Wars. I love Batman.

Smith landed the dream job.

But MOTU has always been my “By accident,” he admits. “And by total laze.” religion. When I watched that show as Smith’s agent called to say Mattel – the toy a kid, I thought He-Man was gonna get company behind MOTU – wanted a meeting. killed by Skeletor in every episode, I “He said, ‘They’re in Santa Monica’. And I was thought there was danger. like, ‘Oh, fuck Santa Monica, that’s like 45 “And then I grew up and realised minutes away. I ain’t going there.’” that was never going to happen.

Fortunately, his agent called back and said What I’m looking for from they’d be happy to come to him. It was at this this is the same feeling I had

26 | SFX MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2021

when I was a kid. I want to feel there’s danger.

I want to feel stakes. And I was like, ‘I think I could do that.’”

Biaselli was right alongside Smith “every step of the way”, giving him “immortal words” that made all the difference to how he approached the project. Namely: don’t mock it.

“He said, ‘Just treat it like Shakespeare for once,’” says Smith, who jumped at the chance.

“I could put lofty dialogue in the mouths of characters like Skeletor. He gives these ornate monologues, man… Words that I can’t normally write for Jay and Silent Bob and stuff.”

Alongside Biaselli and David, Smith says they became “a three-headed brain trust”.

“I’ve never had a better time creating something,” he says with emotion. “Generally, I don’t work in the studio system or the corporate system, I’m kind of off by myself.

Usually the people who are your bosses are nice, but give you stupid notes and shit.

They’re people you have to get through, you feel like, in order to make something good. Not this time. If I could have these execs on everything, I’d go work in a corporate culture every day, and I’d wear a suit if they made me, if I could work with people who are as creative as the talent here.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

THE BONES OF IT Mark Hamill is Skeletor

What attracted you to the role of Skeletor?

I love challenges, and Skeletor is an iconic villain. I thought, “Boy, this is the kind of part that doesn’t get thrown your way that often.” And I have some history with Kevin Smith.

Aside from being a fan of his, we did a film together in 2001 called Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, and we just hit it off. I laughed non-stop filming that movie. Kevin is so easy to talk to. We’re both nerd boys, both fanboys, and so we had an instant bond. We’ve been friends ever since. I felt that if anybody could find a way to reinvent this material, it would be him.

You also voice the Joker, one of the most famous pop culture villains of all time. Do you think you have more fun playing the bad guy?

I think so. I do like playing heroes because the audience is rooting for you, but it’s really fun to play the opposite. Villains create chaos and uncertainty and they usually have really colourful backstories and interesting lines. In a way, hatred is as desirable an emotion from an

audience as adoration, as long as you’re doing your job right. If you get to either end of that spectrum, you’re in the zone. And lucky me, I’ve been able to play both sides of that spectrum.

The Joker doesn’t really think of himself as a villain.

He’s a genius and he’s sort of shocked that people don’t recognise his greatness. Skeletor’s story is imbued with mystic elements and magic. But the interesting thing has been to try and find a way to voice Skeletor that is distinct from Joker. I can slip a little and I think, “Oh, that’s a little Joker-y, let’s go back and do it again,” because you try not to repeat yourself.

Were you a fan of the original He-Man series when it came out in 1983?

My boys, Nathan and Griffin, were little kids back then and they used to watch the show on television, so I would watch with them all the time. I got my son Nathan a big Castle Grayskull toy for Christmas

with Battle Cat and all the figures.

And I took them to New York to see the movie when it came out. This franchise has a significance in our lives, for sure.

What do you think long-time Masters Of The Universe fans will love about this show?

This show elicits the same sort of feelings you had for the original series, but the people working on it were kids then, so now they’re grown. This show is a little harderedged. They’re writing up to the audience and stretching the demographics. When I watched the original, I could clearly see it was for kids. This iteration is more adventurous, it pushes the boundaries a little more, and will hopefully attract an audience of fans both old and new.

“Oi, you! Yes, you. Wanna buy a used motor?”

“What is this ‘Smile Direct Club’?”

If I could have these execs on everything, I’d go work in a corporate culture every day Y T T EG ,XILFTEN/LETTAM © SERUTCIP

Cringer’s been at the catnip again.

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HERITAGE ACT Tiffany Smith is Andra

Before Revelation, what was your experience of MOTU? I grew up watching the show.

I watched a ton of Saturday morning cartoons and He-Man was one of them. When this opportunity came up, I was so excited because I knew the people involved were also fans of the original property.

Getting to bring it to “now” is so cool. I love watching adult animation stuff now too. So doing a MOTU version of that, I was like, “Sign me up. Where do I sign up?

Can I be a part of this?” I loved it.

What was your equivalent toy range when you were growing up?

I used to run around in Underoos [children’s underwear] yelling that I was every character. So it was like, “I’m He-Man, Wonder Woman, Princess of Power She-Ra, Jem And The Holograms, Storm!”

Andra’s only been seen in comics, so how did you find her voice?

Any different genre you step into, it’s finding a new way to approach it as an actor. For voiceover in particular, you can’t quite use your body in the same way as you can when you’re on camera. You don’t have to worry about how your face looks. Because I would make ridiculous faces! There are times where I would run around because it would help me to be more out of breath when I got up to the mic.

The cool part is having great people – the biggest fanboy is helming the show. So having those

people at the head of the show with the writers, the creators, reading the list of casts involved, that took a lot of pressure off. But for me, being the new character put a lot of pressure on too, because it’s kind of like, “Okay, how do I bring this character into this world?”

What direction did Kevin Smith give you for Andra?

The first day I went into the studio to record for Andra, Kevin was just like, “Andra is you, Tiffany, but amplified, and maybe a little bit more excitable.” In moments she’s also, I would say, maybe just a little bit more badass than me in real life. Everybody who worked on this project wanted people who were excited about the property.

That already puts you in a great position because you walk into the studio and people are superexcited about the character that they get to bring to the screen.

Chris Wood (He-Man) says your dog is a fan of the series…

It sounds silly but I got a dog during quarantine and he wouldn’t sit still to watch anything, and I put on Masters Of The Universe: Revelation. He literally watched the episodes with me. I’ve got a video of it! Usually he doesn’t pay attention, he doesn’t care. The only thing he’s into was Masters Of The Universe and then Cruella – when the Dalmatians were on the screen he ran up to the TV.

The Spice Girls were finally back together again.

“I’m not the guy people hand popular IP to,” he laughs. “Remember, I did a Superman script years ago and people were like, ‘That’s enough, we don’t need anything more from you.’ I get to go play in the world of comics, but nobody ever gives me a TV show or movie to do. Giving me this was a real-life show of faith, particularly for a guy who the one cartoon I’d worked on was the Clerks cartoon, and they cancelled it after two episodes!”

FAN SERVICE

While this new series moves the story on from the 1985 finale, it also takes the opportunity to play with heritage toys and characters from the mini-comics that never quite made it to the screen. Fan favourites like Scare Glow, Andra and Stinkor (“I got to give that to Jason Muse to play, like typecasting to the highest degree”) finally become part of the animated adventures.

Fans will also get to see the much-coveted 1986 Eternia playset become cartoon canon.

“There’s this one glorious moment where you see it for the first time and it literally looks like the picture on the old box, man, like the toy that kids never really got to have. Putting in those big Easter egg moments like the Land Shark, including the Orlax, which is the thing on the sticker that was in the dungeon of Castle Grayskull, this tentacle thing who actually becomes a part of our storyline.

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MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE “And you can wipe that expression off your… eyes.”

WOMAN AT ARMS Sarah Michelle Gellar is Teela

Chris Wood says we should ask you to do your Skeletor laugh.

You can ask… it won’t get you anywhere, though. Actually it’s more just like me laughing at Chris, is really what it sounds like.

Before Revelation, what was your experience of MOTU? I’ve definitely seen the cartoon, I was aware of it. But growing up, He-Man was just aimed so specifically at boys. That always frustrated me. I know there was She-Ra later, but that was sort of an afterthought and it never felt like women were part of that world. What I love so much about being part of Revelation is it’s paying homage and honour to the original and yet at the same time bringing in all of these new characters – whether it’s ethnicity, or whether it’s female, male, it’s bringing it so that it’s open to everybody.

I think that’s really special about what we’ve done with this.

“I love it when I go see a Marvel movie and they throw in an Easter egg where I’m like, ‘Holy crap, I know that, that’s from the books’, so we felt like we would do that as well. They were our lodestar, man, Marvel and how they approach the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That was what me and the writers took our cues from. We’re like, ‘Let’s do what they do.’

“They take your childhood, and they re-serve it to you in a really appetising way.

They don’t ruin it. They don’t break your childhood, they give it back to you. They just grow the characters up a little bit and give them more nuances and stuff. So we kind of tried to Marvel Cinematic Universe this thing.”

“…and then if I do this…

I tend to fall over.”

What was your equivalent toy range when you were growing up?

I loved Jem And The Holograms. In fact, I was so excited that I bought the boxed DVD when it came out and I tried to get my kids into it. No dice. But I watched it. Jem and her earrings! I was super into Jem And The Holograms.

How did you go about finding the voice for Teela?

I don’t think so much about finding a voice. I think that’s sort of a misconception about animated work, that you look at it any differently than if you were doing live-action. I think that any actor will tell you that they look at the character and what the character’s journey is, and I don’t know many voice actors that voice their jobs sitting down. You stand up, there’s physicality to it, there’s every aspect. For most people, that’s where the voice comes from, from the actual experience. That’s a very actor-y answer isn’t it? Sorry!

I don’t usually give actor-y answers.

Growing up, He-Man was just aimed so specifically at boys – that always frustrated me What direction did Kevin Smith give you for Teela in this new version?

I think he wanted it real.

Even though it’s a heightened reality, I think he wanted it to be grounded in something that felt real and true to these characters, and which was accessible for the audience.

This version puts Teela, Evil Lynn and Andra at the forefront of the action, which is a great development.

Well, I think that’s the world that we live in today. I think that what worked in the ’80s, that “This is for boys, this is for girls” – we’re past that as a culture and as a race. It should be for everyone, it should be where there should be bits of every character that each person can relate to. And I think that’s how Kevin and everyone does such a great job with this.

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“Yep – pretty awesome, aren’t I? Ignore these.”

Speaking of cinematic universes – look, we can dream, right? – fans can even expect nods to the 1987 live-action Masters movie.

“A lot of people in the writers’ room, their cultural touchstone point with Masters was the Dolph Lundgren movie,” Smith reveals.

“Episode one, Skeletor says the line: ‘Let this be our final battle’, which is the line that Skeletor says in the movie. Believe me, when I wrote that I was so happy, and I’ll be honest with you: he will say it again in part two. So yes, there were definitely moments. Later on in part two, there’s another visual reference, another character – it’s not Gwildor, don’t get excited kids! But there’s somebody else you’ll recognise from the movie…”

Part two of the series – a further five episodes – will follow at a later date. But what about the chances of a second series? Frankly, we want more already.

“You and me both!” Smith laughs “I want as many as possible. I mean look, Teddy is our boss. I can’t imagine that they’re not thinking about [another] season. He’s been talking about it since we started season one. There’s a thing at the end of the last episode of part two that lets you know what would happen if we get to go forward. I have a story that I love for season two that we could go with…

“It just grew deeper and deeper into my heart. It started as like, ‘Oh this’ll be a fun job, I

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can handle this’ and became one of my most passionate projects I’ve ever worked on.

I hope when I drop dead they’re like, ‘He made Clerks and one time he got to play with He-Man’ because I do feel like it’s standout work – and that’s not me going, ‘I’m a stand-out’ because again, I had a ton of fucking help with it.”

The love shows on screen, from the opening credits through to it being a full-blown drama with real heart and consequences. NB: spoiler ahead, so skip to the next para if you need to!

“Isn’t it crazy?” he grins. “Like when you get to the Scare Glow confrontation? Suddenly you’re in this world where you’re like, ‘What?

Is this the show they’re making?’ And not in a bad way. I love it when people are like, ‘I got crazy emotional during that episode.’

“That one does it for me, and the Roboto moment really does it for me. Justin’s performance is absolutely wonderful.

It’s very Data-esque to some degree,” Smith says. “You weren’t gonna ever get these moments in the old version of He-Man.”

Smith can trace that all back to another much-loved ’80s toy range. “Imagine Mattel came over and said, ‘Here, what would you do?’ and we had all the toys and you’re playing the best version that you can play, putting in a heart, emotion. I had a lot of training, growing up with Star Wars figures… you can only re-enact the movie so many times, then you start creating your own adventures. And that’s, like, the genesis of being creative. I’m probably a writer in this business today because I did so much action-figure playtime back in the day. So it translates.”

There’s another part of childhood magic that Smith is trying to pay forward with Revelation.

He recalls a special day with his late father.

“My father took me to see Raiders Of The Lost Ark back in 1981. I had never met that version of my father before. He’d always been my dad: he’s in charge and shit, don’t get in trouble, dad’ll be mad. But in the theatre that day watching Raiders, I saw the child, because he was beside himself. He was overcome with childhood passion. He was telling me, just blabbing to me in a way he never did, ‘I used to see a movie like this all

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

DOOM PATROL Tony Todd is Scare Glow

How did you get involved with MOTU: Revelation?

Kevin Smith called me one day and said, “Could you come voice a character?” And I said, “Which one?” and he goes, “Well, he was never seen in the original series.” So I said, “Well why do you need me?”

He says, “Because I’m going to amp you up!” And next thing, you know, I get scripts, and I got to play this wonderful Scare Glow character – who’s always been known, but this is the first time you’re gonna see him in action. Which is great.

With Kevin being such a big fan, did he have an idea of what Scare Glow would sound like?

Between him and the showrunner, they knew. Once they heard my voice, it’s like turning knobs on a stereo. Little volume here, a little tone there. More bass, until you get it right. Kevin kept pushing me and we finally found the right register.

Hopefully the fans respond as much as the biggest fanboy I know in the world – Kevin Smith – did. I’ve been doing voiceover now for maybe five years, something like that, and I’ve gotten to voice a lot of iconic

characters. For someone that never even dreamed, watching cartoons as a kid, that I would one day be on that side of the microphone it’s still amazing to me.

Did you draw from your experience in horror films?

The key to playing a villain is to not play it as a villain – to find the joy in the villain’s world, whatever it is that fascinates them. Some people, it’s about how much power a certain character requires – and Scare Glow needs somebody to turn on the lights, right? So once you can figure that out, then you just go for it, and you’re supported by the dialogue.

What toys did you collect when you were a kid?

I was into the Hot Wheels stuff, collecting cars. And then Transformers. And then ultimately, I got to be a Transformer a couple of times. So be careful what you wish for, kids, because you might end up getting a call. I remember

the first time I finally got Star Trek – I grew up watching the original Star Trek – when I finally got cast as Kurn [The Next Generation, “Sins Of The Father”]. My very first scene was onboard the Enterprise. And I had to take a moment, a fan moment – “I am on the Enterprise.”

No you’re not, there’s some guys that are sliding the doors open and closed, okay? But in that moment of belief, I was on the Enterprise, okay? So how do you compartmentalise all that?

As a fan there are things like that you think you’ll never get to do.

Well, you hope. There’s always hope. That’s the beauty of the world, right? We always hope.

I think the best directors and the best writers start as fans, and that’s why with this show, one of the main reasons why it’s going to be so popular is Kevin Smith.

“It’s not much of a maze, to be honest.”

I’m probably a writer in this business today because I did so much action-figure playtime

“No wait, come back!

It’s a skin condition!”

“You know, I’m feeling distinctly odd today.”

“I thought you said it was sherbet?”

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THE MASTERS PLAN Rob David, Executive Producer and Vice President, Content Creative, Mattel Television Can you talk us through what’s happening/coming up with Masters and Netflix right now, aside from Revelation?

Yes! Beyond Revelation, Mattel TV is producing an original Netflix CG animated series, called He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe. Look for it in fall of 2021. I developed the series for television and serve as executive producer and showrunner, working with my amazing partner, co-exec producer Jeff Matsuda, and an outstanding team of writers, producers, actors and animators. While Revelation is a direct follow-up to the classic ’80s storyline, paying off plot points adult fans have waited decades to see, He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe is for a whole new generation of fans. It presents an all-new Prince Adam from day one. The very first time he holds aloft his magic sword and says, “By the Power of Grayskull, I have the power!”, we invite kids to go with him on his journey. It’s epic, thrilling and just plain fun. It has everything that makes Masters Of The Universe great – the iconic heroes and villains, the empowering themes, the signature mash-up of science and magic – and reimagines the tale in a way that’s fresh and relevant for kids today.

What can you tease about He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe?

It’s a coming-of-age, team ensemble story. We’re going to

“Leave it, Jeremy, he’s just not worth it!”

watch Adam and his friends unlock all kinds of fabulous new powers, and earn their title as Masters Of The Universe. The show is really funny, but never at the expense of the action, characters and stakes.

And I don’t think the world is ready for how absolutely gorgeous the show is. The animation is provided

by House of Cool and CGCG, the same studios behind Netflix’s Troll Hunters. CGCG also produced the animation for Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels. He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe is just as dazzling; its CG animation is cutting-edge, best in class.

Will there be any crossover from Revelation and other MOTU series/projects?

Absolutely! I see MOTU as a multiverse! Both shows, both worlds and storylines, co-exist in parallel dimensions. That goes for every incarnation of MOTU past, present and future, too. The two shows both nod to each other in subtle ways, so be on the lookout for Easter eggs, especially in later episodes, not to mention in some of the publishing tie-ins.

The reaction to Revelation has been extremely positive. Might there be scope for this iteration of MOTU to continue?

If fans love Revelation as much as we hope they will, you can count on us propelling the storyline to the next level, and keeping it going.

the time when I was a kid. Every weekend, we’d go to the theatres, and then it’d be just called a cliffhanger. And then you’d go back the next week to get the continuation. That’s what they’re doing here.’ He didn’t even know, going into Raiders, what it was. But once he discovered what it was, he was like, ‘This is my gift to you. This is the shit that I grew up on.’

And I got to see who he really was, I saw him as a person with passions and fandom.

We know that parents are going to be like, ‘Sit down and watch this with me’

“So we know that’s going to happen with this, we know that parents are going to be like, ‘Sit down and watch this with me because this was what powered my youth.’ We wanted to make sure that that was going to be a wonderful experience for both parent and child. We don’t want the kids to be sitting there like, ‘This blows.’ We want the kids to be as engaged.

“Let me tell you something: the way my father talked about the cliffhangers and opened up about him going to the movies as a kid and shit like that, that made all the difference. I got

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MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

SECRET DEFENDER Chris Wood is Prince Adam/He-Man

“AAARGH Jesus, I nearly fell off then.

Careful.” to know my dad better. It’s not unfair to say that I truly fell in love with my father that day.

“So it gives the person you’re watching with a chance to see who you are at heart, man, because this is going to appeal to the sentimental heart of anybody who knew this franchise back in the early ’80s. And they’re going to want to share that, it’s too good to not pass it on. We felt like that was the way to do it, know that we’re fan-servicing a very specific audience, but knowing that that audience is going to bring people to the table with them, particularly their kids, the next generation.”

Masters Of The Universe: Revelation Part One is on Netflix from 23 July.

How did you feel about coming into something that’s so iconic?

I think there’s always, at least for me, a little bit of added pressure of sorts when it is such a big property.

Playing He-Man, specifically, I think there’s probably a pretty big comparison club that will happen when the show comes on and everyone sees it. Everyone’s got their idea of what every character should sound like, and who the voice should be and who the voice shouldn’t be. But the good news is, one of the greatest fanboys of all is making the show, and he only picked people that he felt fit the show. Watching it, it all just feels very cohesive. I think people will really enjoy the nostalgic trip and for new fans, I think they’ll enjoy it too. Because there really is something for everybody.

How did you bring your representation of the character to this project?

Actually, I found myself working myself into a sweat during every session, specifically when they’re like, “Okay, for four minutes just wildly record fight sounds.” You’re just standing there just grunting and screaming and yelling yourself hoarse. Animation is surprisingly

physical work for performers. But I do think you find the characters have sense not just in thinking about what you want it to sound like, but finding what it feels like to stand in a certain way or to move in a certain way. The show and the character, you can really picture what’s happening when you’re portraying the moments. That helps a lot with this, because there is that history to the property when you’re voicing it. You know what He-Man raising a sword yelling, “I have the power!” looks like. So you can sort of channel that.

What direction did Kevin Smith give you for playing He-Man? Kevin is everyone’s best cheerleader. That’s why I think you see so many of the same people working with him time and time again, because he is just a joy to be around. He creates an environment where you feel like you can really play and you can take risks.

With this, you just felt like you had somebody standing on the other side who is rooting for you so hard, harder than anyone could ever root for you, to nail the moment – and then celebrating it vocally and screaming and clapping. He creates a space where you feel like you’re being championed by somebody, and I think it helps you embody a champion in some ways. You can write that one down!

His main direction was finding truth in the performance and not trying to make it sound like anything but making this story feel real and relatable. And I think there’s a lot of heart in Revelation.

The original didn’t necessarily have that, it had a lot of other things going for it. But I think this show has heart and that’s kind of cool.

And Tiffany’s dog frickin’ loves it!

“The Co-op?

Just down there, on the left.”

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THE SUICIDE SQUAD

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THE SUICIDE SQUAD

WAR! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? WE TALK TO DIRECTOR JAMES GUNN AND THE CAST OF

THE SUICIDE SQUAD TO FIND OUT… WORDS: WILL SALMON

C

HANCES ARE YOU ALREADY know the story of how James Gunn landed the gig as director of The Suicide Squad, but for those who missed what was briefly the Twitter “scandal” of 2018, here’s the TL;DR. Gunn’s left-wing politics aggravated a bunch of online trolls who dug up a clutch of offensive tweets with some (admittedly pretty rotten) jokes that he had already apologised for, but had left undeleted.

The resultant storm in a teacup ended with the director fired by Marvel from the in-development Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. A campaign led by the cast of that film – and a general sense that things had been deliberately blown wildly out of proportion by some of the worst people on Earth – meant that, by March the following year, he had been rehired. In that time, however, the company’s Distinguished Competition had stepped in and made Gunn an offer. Effectively: here’s the DC universe. What do you want to do with it?

His answer was surprising, but typically Gunnish. “I turned them all down except for AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

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BORN TO BE BAD Some of the massive cast tell all…

Suicide Squad, I guess,” he laughs when SFX asks if he’d consider tackling any other characters. “There were various ideas that excited me and as opposed to just saying yes to one of them, I took a month or so and I just started to write. Every day, I wrote a different idea and I kept writing and it just so happened that I was very excited about Suicide Squad, because I loved the comics as a kid.”

You’re all playing villains in some sense, but how bad are your characters really?

MARGOT ROBBIE I don’t think they see themselves as bad – well, maybe some of them do. Everyone draws the line at something different, so what Amanda Waller is willing to do is very different to what Ratcatcher 2 might do, or what Harley might do. To kind of watch all those different moral codes kind of play out simultaneously is where a lot of the fun conflict comes from. And it’s about watching bad people do good things. It’s an interesting kind of internal conflict to watch play out.

RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

Another Suicide Squad movie was to be expected, of course. David Ayer’s 2016 film starred Will Smith and Jared Leto, introduced Margot Robbie’s franchise-stealing Harley Quinn and took a tasty $746.8 million worldwide. But it was also widely criticised, with almost unanimously poor reviews and a mostly negative fan reaction.

Ayer himself has since suggested that studio cuts

I was very excited about Suicide Squad, because I loved the comics as a kid

turned it into a very different film from the one he had shot, though calls for the alleged “Ayer Cut” to be released have been, so far, ignored.

The Suicide Squad, then, is a fresh start, neither a straight-up sequel nor a reboot. Smith and Leto are both out. Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney and Viola Davis are back, reprising their roles. And Idris Elba plays a new lead, conflicted assassin Bloodsport.

Gunn says that he wanted to make something that stood apart from other superhero films, something that would hark back to the comic’s late ’80s John Ostrander-penned glory years – and that meant looking to another genre for inspiration.

“I loved the idea of making a supervillain war caper film,” explains Gunn. “Films like The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare, those are

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Have you been a victim of an accident at work?

IDRIS ELBA I was really keen to follow James’s ambition to turn machismo on its head. The throughline from our first meeting was he said, “I really want to spin the action hero on his head, I want to show flaws, and show fears.

THE SUICIDE SQUAD

I want to figure out who these [people] are underneath.” So for me that was the key to turning a bad guy into a person.

JOHN CENA It takes a very rare breed of human to be 100% bad.

James does such a good job in allowing characters to have their moments and every character has meaning. So you connect with them. I believe there is a shred of good in all of us. For me it was trying to ride the razor’s edge of the conflict between evil and good – when to show the fact that you do have a beating heart and when to be cold as

fuck and kill everything that moves.

SYLVESTER STALLONE I just want to get along, I want to be part of a group because you know, a shark is the loneliest apex predator.

Who wants to hang out with a 9,000-pound shark? King Shark is always pursuing that, yet his table manners are really bad – he keeps eating people. So he’s got four, four or five really nasty personality traits, but he has a couple of great ones that offset it.

MICHAEL ROOKER Savant is just a total antisocial individual, who doesn’t want to talk to people, doesn’t want to deal with people, he’s doing the

job simply for his own good. He just needs a little escapism from his everyday prison affair, right? But James wrote it in a way there’s this little bit of vulnerability that’s in all the characters that he’s writing. The guy’s a genius. To be able to corral all of us in one place, it’s just nuts.

I don’t know how I did it, I’m just glad I was in it.

You share some skills with your character, don’t you Michael?

ROOKER Yeah… James told me about the role and I go, “Oh, kinda sounds like someone I know…” and he goes “Yeah, I wrote it for you!” Because the

character has these special abilities, like bouncing a ball without looking, throwing the ball and hitting targets. I’m very good at shooting, I don’t even really have to look to hit a target. I can throw axes and stuff blindfolded, I’ve just got to know kind of where it’s at.

It’s a weird thing that I have. And so I think that kind of inspired him in some of the stuff that Savant is able to do.

Tell us about the action…

ROBBIE Some crazy shit happens in this movie! I definitely have the best couple minutes of action I’ve ever gotten to do in a film, about midway through, and it was very fun to shoot. There’s also a sequence that I’m very envious that Harley wasn’t in, that both John and Idris were in. There’s very creative ways to have blood splatter every day!

ELBA My character has this suit of armour that basically every piece of it is a weapon, and so there are some incredible moments of action that allow my suit to play in a way.

Bloodsport’s not like a superhero, he’s a guy that’s very good at using his tools.

CENA Peacemaker’s a weird dude. There’s a tonne of action, some of it below the belt, a lot of it above the line – and there’s lots of human bodily fluids involved.

Sylvester, how exactly do you get into the frame of mind to play a shark?

STALLONE You try to kind of attack the scene. If you’re a shark, don’t act like you’re a shark. Try to act like a big baby or this or that or, you know, a guy who feels remorse. Try to add another dimension.

You’re just constantly adding different spices to the sauce. That’s why usually when you have a lot of time on rehearsal on a movie, you get that character, but usually we don’t have that time any more.

But I’m giving credit to all the production staff and James, it was easy for me. It was all laid out.

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“Escaped from the jaws of defeat.” “Oi, watch it, son.” sort of the two prime ones. They just have a lot of different elements from the backdrop of war and the caper heist element, to the sneaking around, the high stakes, the adventure.”

Partly this was also down to his growing antipathy with the superhero genre. “They’re mostly boring to me right now!” he laughs. “I loved them at the beginning and there are still people trying to do different things [with them], so it’s not a 100% rule, but a lot of them are boring. So I think it’s about bringing in other elements from different genres.”

And so The Suicide Squad finds Task Force X dispatched to the jungle to destroy a Nazi-era laboratory hiding a terrible secret. “It gave me a great excuse to be able to create a film

And I think the practical effects and enormous practical sets helped bring out these naturalistic performances.”

Taking on the film came at a point when Gunn was feeling, if not exactly burnt out, then ready for a change of tone. “I’d just made the two Guardians movies, I was going to make a third and [this] really came at a time when I needed to be creatively reinvigorated in terms of getting back to what made making movies exciting.” For Gunn, part of that meant taking on a project that could play a little bit rougher than his more recent films.

“If you read the comics, you’ll know that DC is no more hard-edged than Marvel, really,” he

says. “In some ways when I was growing up, I thought of Marvel as having the harder-edged characters… I think that the difference, for me, between the Guardians movies and The Suicide Squad is that as much as the Guardians are kind of rogues, at the end of the day, we know that they’re good.”

The members of Task Force X, however, are altogether more complicated. “We might find that some of the characters we think of as good aren’t so good. Some are bad, but they might end up being a little better than we thought.

And other characters are as bad as we thought from the beginning.” He’s also clear that the film lives up to the grim implication of its title.

We’re also using more practical special effects than I’ve ever used in a movie in a genre I’ve loved since I was a little kid, and do it in a big way and not have to hold back.”

Big it certainly is, with a sprawling cast (including the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Peter Capaldi, Nathan Fillion, Daniela Melchior, Michael Rooker and many more) and the largest number of sets in Warner Bros’ long history.

“We’re also using more practical special effects than I’ve ever used in a movie,” Gunn laughs. “It’s more fun to shoot when I’m actually blowing things up as opposed to having sillylooking CGI explosions. But it’s also about trying to bring these characters down to Earth. They do some superheroic – well, not exactly heroic, just super – things, but I was influenced by Dave Gibbons’s art in Watchmen, where the costumes didn’t fit them perfectly, the superheroes had a little bit of a paunch, they weren’t all beautiful. This was being able to take some of that and kind of keep these characters as grounded as possible.

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At least one of these people really doesn’t like cosplay.

“Alright, no need to bite my head off AAAAARGH.”

THE SUICIDE SQUAD

THE GENIUS AND THE MAD MAN Peter Capaldi and David Dastmalchian on the Thinker and Polka-Dot Man

How does it feel to be a part of this film?

DD I’ve been collecting comic books since I was a little boy and escaping through my imagination and dreaming of a moment like this.

So to be getting to work with James Gunn and actors of the calibre of Peter Capaldi, and so many others… I’m just trying to breathe, take it in, enjoy the moment. It’s a pretty exceptional moment in my life.

PC I woke up one morning and there was an email asking if I wanted to play the Thinker in a film with James Gunn and I just thought, “This can’t be real?” I think we’re all very grateful to have found ourselves in this movie, because it’s such a fabulous cast. It’s a big fat superhero movie, that’s great fun and full of heart.

Peter is the Thinker in this film in a way that couldn’t be more perfect

Were you previously aware of your characters?

DD I pride myself in that, if you said to me, “You are such and such…” I could say, “From which run? Which writer?” But James says “Polka-Dot Man” and I go, “Um, I’m not completely sure…?” Fortunately James gave me all that I needed.

PC I have to say his performance… I love it so much, because he is kind of the lamest superhero ever, but he’s so heartbroken and so sad. He’s a great character and he does it beautifully.

DD I was very familiar with the Thinker, because I’m a big reader of The Flash. Peter is the Thinker in this film in a way that couldn’t be more perfect. It’s chilling, man, it’s really chilling.

Do you have a favourite moment from filming?

DD It’s not from the film, but I did a small appearance at a local comic book store in Atlanta to sign some comics that I had worked on, and I looked up and my new friend Peter Capaldi had come down to support me and we ended up spending the afternoon together with Steve Agee, who plays John Economos. Once everyone stopped freaking out because Doctor Who was in their comic shop, we just got to look at comics together and explore toys. It was really magical.

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the Cupid of Crime enter a new phase in her life. “I just love the character. She’s maybe my favourite comic book character of all time and Margot’s one of my favourite living actors,” “For the last says Gunn. “So I just wanted to really give time, it’s not Harley the life that I think she deserves on film a swallow, it’s and make her everything that I thought she a dove!” could be.”

Robbie agrees, when we catch up with her These guys are on a suicide mission and not all later: “She really stepped out of Mr J’s shadow – if any! – of them will make it to the end in this film. It’s really fun to discover who she credits. “People can and do die. It makes the is when she’s her own woman.” stakes higher and it was one of the reasons why After this, of course, Gunn it was really fun for me to deal with these is heading back to space to characters, because anything could happen.” complete his Guardians Of The This grittier tone also allowed Gunn to explore some real-world issues. “It is a little bit about the United States and about the way we treat human beings and how we treat other countries,” he muses. “That’s a part of what the Suicide Squad was from the beginning.

But what interests me more is the politics of the film in terms of the characters.”

He’s talking particularly of Idris Elba’s Robert DuBois – aka Bloodsport. When we meet the character, he’s been imprisoned in Belle Reve Penitentiary for hospitalising Superman with a Kryptonite bullet (a nod, perhaps, to the fact that Bloodsport was introduced to the comics specifically as an antagonist for the Big Blue Boy Scout). He’s coerced into joining this mission by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis)

Galaxy trilogy. But while the brighter, more colourful tone of those films is quite different to The Suicide Squad’s blood, bullets and banter, he says that ultimately, they have similar themes.

“This movie is about what every movie I make is about: characters who have a lot of issues and a lot of trauma, trying to find something good within themselves. Some of them fail and some of them succeed. There’s less sentimentality in this film, but I think there’s an equal amount of emotion, if that makes sense.”

The Suicide Squad is in cinemas from 30 July.

Welcome to Cardio Training With Harley Quinn.

I just wanted to really give Harley Quinn the life that I think she deserves on film and because of a threat to his daughter, but the film is also about forcing him to confront his upbringing and some ugly ingrained attitudes.

“Bloodsport is an overly macho character, coming to terms with what this world is and what it means to be a man, y’know? How is he able to survive in this life when he has been taught by a father who is the worst person alive?

And now he’s around incredibly powerful people of different genders – Amanda Waller, Ratcatcher 2 and Harley Quinn – how does he deal with that?”

Ah yes, Dr Harleen Quinzel. The Suicide Squad marks Margot Robbie’s third time in a role that she has rapidly made entirely her own. After being under the thrall of the Joker, or should we say Mr J, in the first film, then finding her emancipation in the far superior Birds Of Prey, this movie sees

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The Pulp Fiction remake was getting a bit odd.

FLAG SMASHER

THE SUICIDE SQUAD

Joel Kinnaman on playing a subtly different Rick Flag

What was it like coming back to the role of Rick Flag?

It’s really interesting, because I don’t really feel bound by what I did in the first film, but there’s still some traces of the character that you know. This script just had such a different feeling to it and the same thing went for my character.

I was a bit of a plot donkey [in the first film] but here I’m more of a free agent. I get room to play around and James wrote me a bunch of funny lines.

The film has such a pace and a flow that there’s really not a dull second in it

Is it a lot of pressure staying focused on a big film like this?

When you have this sort of grand scale it kind of demands even more focus from you. Because on smaller films you don’t have all these moving parts. When you have 100 extras, rain towers and a car exploding in the background, you’ve got to be on point and deliver when you need to deliver.

You’ve seen the film now… what did you think?

Yeah, I saw the movie last night.

And in many ways, it was the film that I expected to see, because the vision was so clear. The film has such a pace and a flow that there’s really not a dull second in the film.

But what really surprised me was these moments of emotional depth and also these moments of poetry and visual poetry that I felt really made the film transcend this kind of big-budget spectacle. I think it’s a remarkable movie.

“It’s a bit too much, isn’t it? Be honest with me.”

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THE BOX OF DELIGHTS

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Christmas In July THE BOX OF DELIGHTS

WHAT THE MASEFIELD? THE BOX OF DELIGHTS IS NOW THE FESTIVE SOUNDTRACK TO SUMMER THANKS TO A NEW BIG FINISH ADAPTATION WORDS: DARREN SCOTT

Y T T E G , H S I NIF G IB ©

HE WOLVES, TRADITIONALLY, don’t run until December – or late November, if you’re a stickler for original transmission dates – but John Masefield’s festive tale The Box Of Delights has been opened a few months earlier this year as an ambitious new audio drama.

First published in 1935, The Box Of Delights is actually a sequel to the 1927 novel The Midnight Folk. Both feature schoolboy Kay Harker, who finds himself caught up in magical adventures. In The Box Of Delights, Kay is returning home for the Christmas holidays when he encounters an old Punch and Judy man named Cole Hawlings. He entrusts Kay with a magical box – that allows him to go small, swift and travel back in time – because “the wolves” are on his trail, intent on stealing his powers.

Box has become the more recognisable of the two stories, with adaptations over the decades including six different radio versions, an opera, a stage production and, most memorably, a six-part BBC television series in 1984. Now it’s the turn of audio drama producer Big Finish, with a mammoth five hour, star-studded version recorded – when else – at Christmas.

“This project is very, very special to me,” explains director Barnaby Edwards. “I really, really loved the book when I was a kid and I love the TV series. I have tried to assemble my favourite ever cast for it and I have achieved it.” The cast includes Mark Gatiss as Abner Brown, Sir Derek

PACKING ASir PUNCH Derek Jacobi is Cole Hawlings

You played Cole at Christmas time. Do you think that had an effect on the recording?

Oh yes, I’m sure. I love Christmas. I’ve always liked Christmas. It’s a very gentle time. I’ve never done pantomime, although I’ve been in Christmassy plays. But I’ve never been able to give my Dame or my wicked sisters or any of that. I would love to have a go at a Dame.

Christmas I love. As a child, we had family Christmases at home. Because I’m a war baby, Christmas was very strange for my early years, up until really the age of six. But when the war ended that’s really when proper Christmas started.

How do you approach a script like this?

I read the script and perform that role in that version of the script, which is what I think makes it so special. I think that’s what most actors do. The script is like a meal, a hearty meal, and we chomp our way through it and relish all the different tastes. And it was a very lovely script, it was a very “sayable” script.

Do you have a preference for whether you play heroes or villains?

Not really. I don’t really distinguish between the good and the bad. But both the goodies and the baddies, they’re both enjoyable to do.

I think possibly the easiest for me are the goodies. I’ve got that look about me. Yes, I’m basically a goodie who loves to be bad.

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THE BOX OF DELIGHTS

BOX ON THE BOX The BBC drama that’s yet to be bettered

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UNDER HISMarkHAND Gatiss is Abner Brown

When did you first discover The Box Of Delights?

The TV version in 1984. I don’t know why I’d never heard of it before. But I know now, it’s got a very venerable history, particularly on radio.

Is there something about this that lends itself to audio?

Even if you don’t know it very well, it’s a very English, traditional folk tale. There’s something special about it. The Victor Hely-Hutchinson music is so beautiful, it makes your hair stand on end. It’s a really weird mixture of paganism and the old times and magic and snow.

Were there any challenges in playing the role?

Robert Stevens looms very large, I love the classiness of that casting.

It’s amazing to see him in a kids’ show like that. But it’s a great part. We’ve just literally done a scene; I said, “That’s my favourite scene of anything I’ve ever done”, because he sort of had everything I love, it was weird and mystical, and then also very villainous. It’s a gorgeous part. It’s why you do it, really.

Jacobi as Cole Hawlings, Louise Jameson as Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, David Warner as Arnold of Todi and Annette Badland as the White Lady. Kay Harker is played by 13-year-old Mack Keith-Roach.

“I’ve just come off the back of directing a two year project for Audible, where I cast Mack as the lead. So I’m really, really lucky to have just nicked him from that and put him in this. Mack is incredible. He’s just brilliant.”

We’ve tried to create a proper Christmas full-blooded adaptation of the novel

Over the years there has been talk of a new big screen version of the story – but the sheer scale of magic and effects lends itself perfectly to the team at Big Finish.

“The advantage of having an audio adaptation of it is that we can absolutely create those cinematic sound designs and soundscapes and really take the listener, whether they be a child or whether they be an adult, into this weird and magical paganistic world of John Masefield.

“Obviously, the BBC version does loom large.

I think it would be such a mistake to arbitrarily go

Y T T E G , H S I NIF G IB ©

SDRAWDE YBANRAB YB NOITARTSULLI , CBB ©

First broadcast on 21 November 1984, the sixepisode series concluded two days early to allow the final episode to air on Christmas Eve – when the action in the story takes place.

The story was adapted for television by Alan Seymour, directed by Renny Rye and produced by Paul Stone. At the time, it was the most expensive children’s programme ever made, with a budget of £1m.

The series was groundbreaking for using new technology to achieve special effects, including the then-state of the art Quantel Paintbox graphics system and chroma key (CSO), which saw the production win numerous awards.

Robert Stephens, who played Abner Brown, requested that the programme retained the theme music he remembered from the 1948 Children’s Hour radio production. An orchestral arrangement of “The First Nowell” extracted from the third movement of the Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, it has become synonymous with The Box Of Delights and is also used on the Big Finish version.

A soundtrack of the music by Roger Limb was released by Silva Screen in 2018.

THE BOX OF DELIGHTS

David Warner plays Arnold of Todi on the desert island. hopefully, we’ve tried to keep it in keeping with the writing and with most people’s original vision.”

But for those most faithful of Box devotees, those that embrace the running of the wolves A scene from with an annual rewatch of the BBC series – the animated just as a certain member of SFX does – can trailer for the we expect any sneakily hidden nods to the production. festive favourite?

“We are recording a whole series of little against everything that that one did in order to prequels, so we are expanding upon the world be different. It would be a mistake to copy it of both the novel and the TV version,” Edwards and do everything the same. The BBC one was smiles. “There’s one in-joke and that’s in one of impeccably cast. I’m not trying to cast replicas the prequels, so you’ll have to just listen…” of anyone who did the BBC one.”

There is, of course, one thing that long-time But in addition to staying faithful to its fans will recognise. The famous theme has most known adaptation, this new version gave been reorchestrated by Joe Kraemer (Mission: Edwards the chance to reinstate material that Impossible – Rogue Nation, Jack Reacher) but the BBC was forced to abandon due to the Edwards reveals there’s more in store. “He’s constraints of time. written special songs for it. There’s a rat song “There are a lot more scenes that people in it and he’ll be orchestrating all of the carols won’t know about,” he explains. “Huge as well. subplots people don’t know about from the “So everything that you sort of remember TV version, or indeed the original BBC Radio and associate with The Box Of Delights version. We’ve tried to create a proper musically we’ll be doing, but we’ll also be Christmas full-blooded adaptation of the novel. seeding the score with a whole load of sort of We have strayed away from some of the novel’s quotes from carols and stuff like that. So it will timelines, we do expand the novel, but be the most Christmassy!”

Could there be more adventures for Kay Abner, played Harker and co? Edwards is hopeful that he’ll by a young also get to revisit The Midnight Folk.

Sam Neill, “Well, that is very much my hope. I have apparently. tweaked the script so that it is compatible with that existing. So there are various little nods in it about Sylvia Daisy Pouncer being Kay’s governess and things like that, a little bit of past history between Caroline Louisa and Abner and stuff like that.

“So the possibility is open. Hopefully this will go very well – and if it’s a big success, I would absolutely love to reassemble the cast for Midnight Folk.”

The Box Of Delights is available now on CD and as a download from bigfinish.com.

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH Louise Jameson is Sylvia Daisy Pouncer

When did you first discover The Box Of Delights?

It passed me by in the ’80s – I really don’t know why, because my children were the right age then. Maybe I was in Jersey [filming Bergerac] or something. So in preparation for this, I watched the kids’ TV series and it’s so innovative for its time, you’re completely taken in and taken on the journey with them. I mean, my heartbeat went up reading the scripts and also watching the series. It really grabbed me. I love it. I’m so thrilled to be in it.

Audio gives you the opportunity to be more ambitious, doesn’t it?

There’s no censorship between the writer’s brain and the page, it seems to me. I often have a voice: “No, that won’t work, can’t do that. That won’t be acceptable.” And yet, this just does, it just dares. The best films are in the mind. I know it’s a cliché, but the imagination can just give you the most wonderful visuals.

Were there any challenges in playing the role?

I think the biggest challenge is filling the footsteps that have gone before, trying to blot out somebody else’s performance and come in with something that you’re personally connecting with, without going so over the top with it that it’s not going to sound believable.

So it’s just treading that fine line of being as large as the writing, without going over the top as a performer.

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MORE ACTION AND BIGGER MORAL QUESTIONS IN THE SECOND SEASON OF THE GRITTIEST (AND MOST UNRECOGNISABLE) VERSION OF

WAR OF THE WORLDS YET SEEN WORDS: DAVE GOLDER

ORE ACTION,” SAYS Ty Tennant. “Yeah, more action!” says Bayo Gbadamosi. “Lots of shoot outs,” says Pearl Chanda. The younger cast members of War Of The Worlds taking part in this Zoom press conference for season two present a united front when asked what’s the biggest difference about the show this time round.

Of course, the creatives behind the show, writer Howard Overman and executive producer Julian Murphy, offer a more cerebral overview of the way the series progresses in season two: “To us, it’s about taking these characters on deeper journeys,” says Murphy.

“We always think, ‘If we meet aliens, what are they going to do to us?’ Another way to look at it is, if we find aliens, what are we going to do to them?” adds Overman.

So, deep. And intriguing. And amping up the intense human drama that made season one a success. But hey – more action. Can’t be a bad thing, can it?

JUSTIFIED AND ANCIENT

This latest version of War Of The Worlds – a US/French co-production from the creators of Misfits (Overman) and Merlin (Murphy and his co-executive producer Johnny Capps) – immediately made an impact with its first season for two main reasons: its grim, gritty, at times near-cinema verité approach to the alien invasion genre, and its almost complete lack of anything to do with HG Wells’s novel.

Initial confusion over the expectations raised by its title soon died away as the series doggedly ploughed its own bleak but compelling furrow.

It all started with the aliens spearheading their invasion with a signal that kills most of the humans on Earth, before sending in robot dogs to deal with the survivors. The series follows the struggle of various survivors in both France and England, including scientist Bill Ward (Gabriel Byrne) who is attempting to create a virus to kill the aliens, and French astrophysicist Catherine Durand (Léa Drucker). In another major divergence from the Wells novel, the climax of season one revealed the aliens to be human in appearance.

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This has become a crucial plot element in season two.

“That’s very much a story I was always interested in,” says Overman, “and one of the things we answer is why they’re so similar to us. We wanted to show there’s two sides to every story – just as in war, there’s two sides to every war, and people on both sides think they’re doing the right thing. We wanted this idea that the aliens think what they’re doing is totally justified; it makes total sense to them. So yeah, the similarity between the two sides is one of the main things that we explore throughout this series. We make characters hold a mirror up to themselves, and they start to see how similar they are to some of the people they thought were the enemy.”

And while the younger actors were having a whale of a time running about with guns, they too appreciate the drama and conflict provided by humanoid enemies.

“Yeah, I think it’s great that they look the same as humans because it addresses question of what it is to be an alien,” says Pearl Chanda, who plays a new character, resistance leader Zoe. “If we were dealing with a, I don’t know, green alien thing, it would just seem like a clearer, cleaner argument, whereas the fact that they look like us means that the audience has to think a little bit more deeply about the kind of moral implications of what the characters are doing.”

Bayo Gbadamosi, who plays Kariem Gat Wich Machar, agrees. “From an acting perspective it’s really interesting to play in a world where your enemies look like you, because it inevitably adds to the tension and that sense of mistrust around people. You can’t be certain if the person you’re looking at is an ally or an enemy. You’re always on high alert.”

BUT STILL, THEY COME

However, this subtle change in tone from a survivalist show with an amorphous, characterless, en masse enemy in the vein of The Walking Dead to a series more like V – with the aliens as fully fledged characters – does not signify a conscious change in direction, says Overman.

“It’s not a deliberate ploy to change the show,” he says. “It’s always tricky with second seasons or third seasons – you’ve got to change things up enough to keep the audience interested, because if you just do more of the same, it’s not particularly interesting.

But you don’t want to change things too much, because then it’s not the show that people bought into the first time around. I think probably the first

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Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world… oh. episode of season two, we wanted to do a slightly different story. And we felt we couldn’t just have our characters locked away on their own, still discussing the aliens in the same way as they were. So we wanted to show that things have slightly changed in the six-month gap.

And in the initial fight-back things actually go badly wrong.

“But it’s more the world has changed than the storytelling has changed. And it’s still very much about using our characters to tell the big global story that we’re facing. Such as Bill, you know, and what he’s prepared to do and what he’s prepared to sacrifice to defeat the aliens.”

It’s also a big season for Emily, exploring her links with the aliens, especially after she’s taken away in a spaceship for six months.

When she reappears, who can be sure which side she’s on?

“It’s very much her story that we set up in series two,” says Overman. “These questions about her connection to the aliens, about who she is, how she identifies with them. A big part of series two is answering those questions.”

And, he promises, there will be answers.

“One of the other journalists asked me about Lost. I was really conscious of not wanting to set up endless questions and not provide the audience with any answers. So yes, there will be answers.”

On the other hand, he’s not averse to changing his masterplan. “I always have an idea how the series will end.

But I would call it my current idea. If we get to do another series, it might well have changed, because I might come up with a better idea, or the idea idea might develop.”

Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world… oh.

Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world… oh.

WAR OF THE WORLDS Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world… oh.

THE FRENCH DISCONNECTION War Of The Worlds may be a multilingual show, but writer Howard Overman needs some help in translation…

As a US/French co-production, War Of The Worlds features dialogue in both English and French. But writer Howard Overman admits that he had to send out a m’aidez when it came to his Gallic dialogue.

“God, I don’t know about you,” he confides, “but when I went to school, French teaching wasn’t the best so my French is pretty limited. Pathetic, actually, to my shame. I was once at a motorway service station, and I wanted an apple tart, and I accidentally asked for a potato. So that’s the level of idiot you’re dealing with here. I have to write all the French scenes in English and then they get translated.”

Not that the translators always hit the right note first time. “It’s difficult because they’ve been asked to translate, and they want to do it precisely. And they don’t necessarily translate it into the sort of colloquial spoken French you’d hear people use. So you do have some strange expressions, which then have to be modified. Luckily, we’ve got a script editor this year who did French for her degree.”

Never mind, at least the photocopier’s still working.

The original The War Of The Worlds ended with the Martian invaders being defeated by a virus. This series nearly saw its second season derailed by a global virus. But both the cast and crew admit that while shooting a lavish TV drama during a pandemic had its stresses and strains, lockdown may have actually had its advantages when it came to creating a fictional post-apocalypse.

“I think that the scenario of being in the pandemic weirdly made it easier to actually be in a scenario where we’re in a post-apocalyptic world,” says Ty Tennant, who plays Tom. “We don’t really know exactly what we’re doing, you know. It’s like High School Musical – we’re all in this together!”

“I live in London,” remembers Pearl Chanda, weird that in, obviously, your day-to-day “and there was a time in lockdown when I rode practical stuff in terms of keeping the cast and my bicycle into town, and it was just empty, no the crew safe, that’s a lot of work. But it also lent some really interesting opportunities in that we could film in places we wouldn’t usually be able to.”

Meanwhile the young cast was having fun with the action. Chanda teases Gbadamosi about the day he first got to practise shooting his gun. “And then the stunt guy came up to him and was like, ‘Yeah, that was great. That one to be seen. And then, four months later, was great. Just don’t smile’.” you’re shooting in London and they’ve They’re not sure the show has honed their completely made all of the streets empty. So survivalist skills, though. “I think I’d be so I could kind of draw on that kind of emotional rubbish,” says Chanda. “But I have learnt I recall for those moments, constantly seeing the should always carry matches. Or always have parallels between the script and what was a torch. And wear good shoes.” happening in the world.”

“I don’t think I have very useful skills,” says While Overman admits that all the testing Tennant. “I can play guitar. I’d be great for and PPE was “an exhausting process” for the morale. We’d sit down and sing campfire songs, cast and crew, there was “an upside – we could but not around a campfire, because then we’d hire out whole shopping centres and cinemas be spotted and killed.” and go film in places we wouldn’t usually be Maybe something from High School Musical filming. And we didn’t have to close streets or instead, then? paint out people with CGI – they were empty.

War Of The Worlds season two is on Star on There were no planes going overhead, so we Disney+ from 16 July. didn’t have to worry about noise. So it was

I was really conscious of not wanting to set up endless questions and not providing answers

Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world… oh.

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OLD

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OLD

WELCOME TO THE ULTIMATE TOURIST TRAP… M NIGHT SHYAMALAN CONFRONTS MORTALITY IN OLD WORDS: NICK SETCHFIELD

S E R U T C I P L A S R E V I NU © S E R U T C I P

ATER IS RARELY ALL that it seems in the universe of M Night Shyamalan.

In Unbreakable it’s liquid Kryptonite to Bruce Willis’s blue-collar Superman. In Signs tumblers of the stuff prove an unlikely defence against cosmic invaders. Now, in existential suspenser Old, it surrounds an uncanny beach where time itself is lethally accelerated and corpses bob on the tide.

So when SFX chats with Shyamalan via Zoom we keep our own tumbler of tap water discreetly out of view. Even a crafty swig feels potentially loaded with symbolism.

Old is an adaptation of Sandcastle, a haunting 2010 graphic novel by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters. Shyamalan received the book as a Father’s Days gift and optioned it soon after. The idea of mortality on fast-forward chimed with some recent anxiety on his part.

“It’s something I’ve become more cognizant of in the last five years,” he shares, “watching my parents be in their eighties. Physically and mentally they’re not in the place that they were, even just a few years ago. Taking care of them, it’s like the roles have flipped. The care

taker has now become the child. The profundity of that cycle of life, how literal it is…

“And then seeing my children – you blink and you turn around and they’re older. We talk about what life would be like in a few years and it just blows your mind, because that one will be driving and that one will be out of college and that one will be having children and on and on… It keeps on moving. And it never stops. Seeing these two aspects happening made me think a lot about this subject, this relationship to time. And then when this graphic novel came to me it was a twisted, Twilight Zone-y, Black Mirror-y kind of version of time. And I thought, ‘This is exactly what I’m feeling right now’.”

It proved to be unexpectedly timely, too.

“With the pandemic we were forced to stop and recalibrate and as a result take stock of our relationship to time,” Shyamalan says. “What’s it like when all of the things that we do, all the dinner parties, are taken away, just like that? We’re stopping, and our hearts are still going, and we’re left with ourselves for a second. Some of us, luckily, were with our

OLD “Group hug!

No, not you Eric – get out of it.”

I always felt that speaking in a different way is the way for me to be happiest

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Shyamalan’s rehabilitation is helped by him keeping a close eye on the dollars. “I’m like, ‘I don’t take your money, and we’re going to make it for as little money as possible, so that I can do whatever I want.’ That’s why I’m doing it. And therefore I’m going to protect myself in that manner, and make something really weird and different and unique, and it grabs you and wakes you. And I’m going to be able to do that because I made it responsibly, and I made it for a small number.

“As we go into this summer Old is going up against every giant tentpole movie you could imagine. It’s a small little movie! And we’re going out there and doing our thing. But that process of protecting myself, that’s nonnegotiable now. Just non-negotiable.”

So it’s the inverse of that old cliché of money buying freedom, then? “It’s exactly the inverse of that. Make the movie for the least amount, so you can be free. The beauty of that freedom, it’s priceless. You want to feel like you are always at the beginning of your career.”

And while Shyamalan has directed TV in recent years, helming episodes of personal projects Wayward Pines and Servant, the theatrical experience remains vital.

“That is the artform,” he says, simply.

“We are different human beings when we are together. We become this group id. We have an extremely high EQ – emotional IQ – as a group.

The 14-year-old girl who’s giggling at that line is informing the 50-year-old guy over there and vice versa. It’s a quilt. Everyone is affecting everyone else, unconsciously, tacitly, and we become this other thing. And that’s who the artform is bouncing off.

“I truly enjoy the experience of watching the audience at my movies. I am riveted to their emotions. Almost no one goes to the bathroom.

That’s what you’re aiming for! But if they do go, they run, and they’re looking back at the screen as they go…”

After two decades of filmmaking you suspect he has a watchmaker’s eye for how to construct scares and suspense. Can he still surrender to someone else’s movie or does he just see all those moving parts up on the screen? Can the power of cinema still make M Night Shyamalan jump?

“I’m the best audience member!” he insists.

“Whatever part of my brain, that doesn’t exist when I go watch other people’s movies, or even when I’m testing my own movies. I can let go of that. I’ll be jumping and squirming and very emotional. I love being taken away.

I find no joy in protecting myself.”

Shyamalan laughs. “That’s probably true of me in every aspect, by the way!”

Old is in cinemas from 23 July.

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everybody’s very high-strung. That’s what I felt when I was looking at those illustrations.”

Shyamalan’s career path has been a long, wild slalom, corkscrewing between triumph and debacle. 1999’s The Sixth Sense established him as the Twist King, charismatic ticketmaster for a cinematic ghost train ride. families, and got to be with the people that Nominated for two Oscars, he was the heir were most important to us. Or we couldn’t apparent to Hitchcock and Spielberg, a reborn be with those people and then realised how Rod Serling for the new millennium. important they were. It was a beautiful Unbreakable (2000) and Signs (2002) followed, moment of rethinking our priorities because masterful, idiosyncratic riffs on the superhero of our relationship to time. and alien invasion genres.

“This movie makes you think those same By 2006’s Lady In The Water, the crowd things. People who have seen it say it’s as if began to turn. Where people had seen I’ve made it because of the pandemic, because self-belief, a singular voice, they now detected those thoughts are so salient. In fact the hubris, ego. His powers appeared to falter, as if characters sometimes say things that would the audience itself had become his Kryptonite be completely appropriate as a result of the – or the water that imperilled Unbreakable’s pandemic. It’s really interesting.”

David Dunn. He made the deeply generic After Old may resonate with the age of Covid but Earth in 2013 and saw his name concealed it also feels pure Shyamalan, for all that it’s an from the marketing. The wunderkind had adaptation. At its heart is the kind of highbecome a punchline. concept trapdoor he adores: a secluded cove But Hollywood has always loved a that ensnares a group of holidaymakers (Gael redemption arc. 2016’s Split saw Shyamalan Garcia Bernal and Phantom Thread break-out clawing back his reputation, delivering a star Vicky Krieps among them), forcing their genuine crowd-pleaser again by leaning into bodies to rapidly age, their lives to race to dust. his instincts, matching that unique voice to his The location of the beach was crucial. essential skills as a filmmaker.

Shyamalan needed somewhere suitably photogenic and dramatic – but also viable for JUST A NUMBER a shoot. “It was very tricky,” he says. “It had to He’s 50 now. Given that Old deals with the be accessible to hotels and roads and it had to ageing process, you wonder how it’s changing be practical. These are small movies. It’s not a him as a storyteller.

“Big, big question!” he laughs. “I would say zillion people with a zillion resources. I just I’m trying to be the person that I’ve always need to be able to get from a place where we can sleep to the beach and back, every day for been aspiring to be. I remember hearing this story: the Beatles were in this hotel waiting 40 days, to make this movie. area and Bob Dylan came in. And the Beatles “Where is the place on the planet that we can do this? Turns out that it’s the Dominican got quiet. And they looked at him with Republic. It’s just the loveliest country and the reverence, just because he walked his own walk. He doesn’t sound like anyone else, he’s people there are so warm, and it’s just a just doing his own thing. beautiful place. It still has that kind of untouched quality about it, and that connection “I remember reading that and getting what they were feeling about him. And this is the to nature. And this particular beach, it had Beatles, right? This is the most successful band most of what we needed right there. We of all time, the most popular band of all time, enhanced it a bit, but it was mostly there.”

As Shyamalan reveals, the jagged cliffs that and they’re in awe of this man, and I’m in awe of him as well. Whether it’s Dylan or Picasso or loom over the beach are inspired by one of whoever, everyone that we adore or love, they cinema’s most iconic post-apocalyptic were courageous enough to be different. landscapes: “The end of Planet Of The Apes, “I think I’m stronger now than I was when with all that rock, was very much in my head I was younger. I always felt that – ‘Okay, where can I find that on a beach? speaking in a different way is Those kind of rocks?’” the way for me to be happiest.

Did he take visual inspiration from the original graphic novel too? “That’s a question To be okay with not fitting that almost deserves me going page by page to in with the system, whatever that means. And answer,” he grins, miming leafing through Sandcastle. “It was probably very subconscious. so as I’m getting older I feel I’m becoming a tiny bit But it was illustrated with a kind of wit to it, more courageous to be, almost a garish wit, and that tone I tried to represent in this movie – that kind of slightly ‘Okay. I don’t fit in. It’s bigger-than-life, slightly buoyant, higher tone. all good. That’s part of me’.”

And so it has higher-pitched comedy, and

OLD

“Crap, I’ve forgotten a twist. Or is that the twist?”

The “freshly dead” look is very much in this summer.

It was a small gig, but the lighters still came out.

“Oh great, 14 days isolation?

Now they tell me!”

“Um, love, have we got any suncream at all?”

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RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

AS HITS 40, STARS KAREN ALLEN AND PAUL FREEMAN EXCAVATE BLOCKBUSTER HISTORY WORDS: NICK SETCHFIELD

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RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

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They really do make a lovely couple, don’t they?

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go, which were wonderful. It was a witty script from the outset, and that was what was so attractive about it.

The film has such a brilliant light touch but it’s played with sincerity. Did you get the spirit of the piece right away?

KA I don’t think I really did, to tell you the truth! In my own mind – and maybe this works well for the piece, in a sense – when I read it I thought Casablanca. That’s what I saw. I saw a film like that. I didn’t have a reference point for that kind of Saturday matinee adventure serial.

I was a little bit younger than Steven and George and I had kind of missed that in my youth. So I didn’t have a very clear picture of the style of film that they had in their heads.

It’s such a physical film. Did that come as a culture shock to you?

KA No, I’ve lived a pretty physical life. I was an actor living in New York but I’ve always loved adventure and I had travelled a lot in my early twenties. I felt it was right in my wheelhouse when I read the script. At first I was only given that scene in the bar. It’s just a great introduction to a character, to have somebody knocking back shots and drinking a huge mountain man under the table! You just kind of think, “Wow, who is this woman?” [laughs] Was it satisfying to play such a selfpossessed character?

KA Oh, it definitely was. I was always looking for those kinds of roles, so the fact that quite a few of them came my way was very satisfying.

Those are the kinds of characters that I really wanted to play, characters that really empower

“Should get a few quid on Cash In The Attic.” women and don’t make women either objects or victims or not an important part of a story but are telling a major role in the story. When she says to him, “I’m your goddamn partner!” she just takes everything by the scruff of the neck, and I really appreciate that in a script.

Steven and I talked about Marion, and we talked about other people who embodied things about her, and he got very interested in me looking at a lot of Patricia Neal’s work. He told me to look at Hud. He felt there was some sort of weight and almost mystical quality that she had in that film that he really wanted me to study. So that gave me a nice direction for her.

There were times, the way the script had been written, where it veered away from that, where it wanted to use Marion as more of a comic foil and put her more in the damsel in distress role. I tended to fight against that, and tried to suggest that we keep her more consistent, instead of her having moments feeling helpless and not knowing what to do.

She was a very resourceful person, and she was always going to look for the way to protect herself or help somebody else find a way out of a situation. She was not somebody who needed someone else to swoop in and save her.

The film implies a history between Indy and Belloq, but there’s no real

Y T TEG ,YMALA ,DTL MLIFSACUL © SERUTCIP

T’S AN ASTONISHING 40 YEARS since Indiana Jones first snapped a bullwhip in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, the Spielberg-Lucas joint that reinvigorated big-screen adventure by chasing the breathless, bare-knuckle spirit of all those cliffhanging serials of Hollywood’s youth.

But as the redoubtable Dr Jones reminded us, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. And there’s been plenty of mileage in this treasure-hunting archaeologist: three sequels – with another film underway, complete with a match-fit, near-octogenerian Harrison Ford – and enough books, toys, comics, theme park rides and stunt shows to fill a secret government warehouse.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of where it all began, SFX searched the globe for two of Raiders’ leading players: Karen Allen, alias the tenacious Marion Ravenwood, and Paul Freeman, aka Indy’s longstanding nemesis Belloq. Freeman is in France now and our conversation is cut off no less than three times by reception issues: there are fierce storms, apparently. Seems the wrath of God still bears a grudge against Monsieur Belloq for disturbing the Ark… Raiders was inspired by the Saturday morning serials that Spielberg and Lucas loved. Did you share those reference points?

PF Oh yeah, I was a devotee of Saturday morning pictures… in Barnet! Often sneaking in through the back door, I seem to remember.

And also because of the script. The script was so good. It didn’t change very much, apart from the witticisms that Harrison made up on the

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

“Of all the gin joints in all the world…”

“Dollies…

Why’d it have to be camera dollies?”

Not pictured: crippling dysentery.

And in Raiders Indy is a slightly shadier character, as Belloq points out…

PF That’s right. And the only thing we know about his past is his relationship with Marion, in which he doesn’t seem to have behaved too well!

Karen, did you ever ask for more detail of Marion’s backstory?

KA Before I started working, I wrote out a backstory that goes back to her childhood, how she ended up in Nepal and what happened to backstory for your character, Paul. her mother, what happened when she met What sense did you have of who he was Indy. I wrote out eight or 10 pages just from my and where he came from? own imagination. All we know is something PF I didn’t do any research for what life would happened when she was 16, that she was in be like for that sort of archaeologist. Plainly the love with him or they were in love with each film has that aspect of them being two sides of other… and that he somehow vanished and just the same coin. I just took it that he was the left. We don’t know the particulars, but French version. Slightly more soigné, a wine whatever it was it’s left her wounded and drinker and so forth. maybe still in love. I think the way that they did it is kind of fascinating, because we don’t really You play him with a gleam in the eye have many details and yet we somehow have that seems just on the verge of insanity. enough that we get the picture.

Do you think he was genuinely crazy or just really committed?

Everyone talks about Spielberg’s PF Oh, I don’t think he was crazy, just driven brilliance in terms of spectacle and thrills, but what did he give you, as – but no more driven than Indiana. Not an actor? villainous, but he’s certainly an amoral PF He taught me something about filmwork, character, a collaborator with the Nazis in order to get this [treasure]. But then Indiana is something about the freedom that one can have after it too for his own sake, his own university. in filming. I was very thrown, first of all, by the And for the cause of research, of course. fact that he would direct you while the scene

“No, I think you’ll find my hat’s cooler.”

Karen Allen, queen of strip poker.

Indy tries to trick an early self-scan.

Cancel this Nazi monkey immediately! was going on. So you’d be in the middle of a scene – probably not a dialogue scene – and he’d suddenly say, “Paul, turn left!” or, “Climb that hill!” I was really thrown. I thought, “But I’m acting!” And I suddenly realised well, that’s how it is, that’s how he operates. It’s much freer and more open than I imagined.

And what did Harrison give you as a co-star?

PF Harrison was really part of this whole thing about it being very casual and laid-back. When we were doing the snake pit, which was several days of a lot of hard work for him, dealing with the heat and this business with the snakes… some of those snakes were dangerous. The pythons had bitten members of the crew!

And then, when we were talking to him, we were in a hole in the roof of the studio in Elstree, hanging on by belts up there to make sure we were safe. And in the middle of the afternoon one day he said, “Paul! Can you give me a bit more down here because I’m losing it!” His concentration was going, working so many hours in this atmosphere.

And I just thought that was remarkable, that an actor of his stature would ask a fellow actor for a helping hand. It was great.

So when you’re reading the script, and you turn the page and you suddenly see that there’s a scene with 7,000 snakes, does that give you pause?

“Relax, you’re not in the next one.”

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RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

KA [Laughs] It’s so funny. I just don’t remember really thinking about it much, one way or the other! You just think, “Oh, well, that’s interesting…” It didn’t say 7,000 snakes but it said that there were a lot of snakes in the bottom of this pit. I certainly never imagined 7,000 snakes. I imagined maybe 20 or something like that!

Can the human brain even imagine 7,000 snakes?

KA I just thought, “Oh, that’s colourful…” But then when you get there and you’re actually doing it… To tell you the truth, Steven originally thought most of the snakes would be these mechanical snakes that they’d build at the bottom of the thing. And it just didn’t work. It looked terrible. So they decided to get rid of that and bring in all these snakes. Then we had to deal with 7,000 snakes!

“Ow ow ow hot hot CLAP THE DAMN BOARD!”

The ancient and noble art of snakewrangling.

or even knowing what we were doing. It was a question of trusting and going along with it. We had no idea until we saw the movie what was happening to us, with our heads and so on. I can’t remember what image I was visualising.

There must have been an image, but now I’ve seen the film so many times I can’t separate the one from the other.

What was it like seeing your own head explode?

PF Well, you know, it’s… watching your head explode! But the correlative of that question is when people say, “What was it like when your head exploded?” What do you not understand about this…?

How bored are you talking about the fly?

PF [Laughs] I’m not bored with talking about Was it a challenge to play that final the fly. It’s very odd that nobody seems to take scene, the opening of the Ark, knowing it upon themselves to really look at it and see the effects would need to be added in that you can see a clip has been removed, post-production? where the fly obviously flew away. Mind you, PF You had nothing to work with. It was a there were a lot of flies around! One didn’t take primitive type of greenscreen behind us – I very much notice of them. I’m sure I would think it was blue, actually – and that was the have known if I’d eaten it. And I got a very first time I’d come across that. Again, Steven good review from Pauline Kael in The New just yelled at us – “Look into the Ark! Look up Yorker, for eating a fly. above it! It’s frightening! Now it’s beautiful!

Can you remember the first time you Now it’s not! Look right! Look left!” We just reacted as we were told. So it wasn’t a question saw the film play with an audience? of having any control over what we were doing, KA The first time I saw the film it was maybe Are you good with snakes?

KA I’m not good with them… I’m not wildly afraid of snakes, fortunately for me. But 7,000…

I don’t know that anybody could be really comfortable with 7,000 snakes.

We were in there for maybe two full weeks, shooting those scenes. I think I got more and more comfortable with them. I grew to understand that most of them were pretty harmless. And those that weren’t harmless I learned to keep at a distance. If a python started coming towards me I’d walk right out of the shot!

I was not going to get bitten by a snake. But most of the snakes didn’t bite. You could put your finger right into their mouths and they wouldn’t bite you.

“And cue fly in three, two, one…”

It was a very unusual hen party.

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60 or 70 people, mostly executives from Paramount and people who had worked on the film. Steven was there, I think George Lucas was there. And that is the screening that had the real impact on me, because I was seeing it for the first time and I was so extraordinarily amazed and surprised by the film that Steven had made. The first time I saw it period, that’s the one that left a big impression.

PF I think there was a crew showing in Leicester Square. That’s when I first saw it.

But there wasn’t a British premiere. They had a small premiere in California, on Catalina Island. I suppose partly it was the result of 1941 [Spielberg’s previous film]. They didn’t want to make too big a splash about it. There wasn’t the sense of, “Hey, this is the start of a big franchise!” – or an enormous follow-up to 1941, which had been something of a flop.

“Is this really how you play One Potato?”

Belloq, always lurking within tent.

S OF THE LOST ARK

“…and you’ll both stay there till you get it right.”

How Jurassic Park would have looked in 1981.

Most of the snakes didn’t bite. You could put your finger right into their mouths and they wouldn’t bite you Y T TEG ,YMALA ,DTL MLIFSACUL © SERUTCIP

Were you surprised by just how much of a crowdpleaser it was?

KA Oh, I was, I was. I knew it was George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and they were both filmmakers who had done extraordinary things with film up to that point. Right before I was cast I had seen Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, which I had just loved. I wasn’t imagining that somehow it wasn’t going to be this film that reached a lot of people, but you just never know until you actually see the film.

PF The surprise was seeing the finished product and then realising how good it was.

You forget, when you’re working on the thing, your initial reaction, what got you into it in the

Belloq’s dress-down Fridays were embarrassing. first place. But then to see it… I think it’s the humour that makes it, actually. It’s witty, not just in the writing but also in the speed of the storytelling. That wonderful opening scene, which is breathtaking. Spielberg does pretty much the same thing with the opening of Saving Private Ryan.

When it was announced that Temple of Doom would be a prequel some people assumed we’d see Belloq aqain. Was that ever a possibility?

PF Yeah, there was some talk about it. I was quite excited about it too. And then it all went very quiet, as these things do. There you are.

But Temple wasn’t as good as Raiders. I do think Raiders is the best of them. Something to do with the freshness of that idea, and the wit of it. And I don’t think that was carried on in the rest of the films.

Were there other sides of Belloq you would have liked to have shown?

PF I’ve never thought about it, but I’m sure he must have been a fascinating character and we could have had a whole Belloq franchise! Why not? I meet groups of archaeologists and they tell me they became archaeologists because of Indiana Jones and Belloq. Mind you, they only dress as him. They never dress as me!

The Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection is available now on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray.

Face-melting nightmares ahoy!

The quest for Indiana Jones Harrison Ford was famously a last-minute choice for Indy, reportedly cast only three weeks before filming began.

“I didn’t test with Tom Selleck,” reveals Karen Allen, remembering the most talked-about near-miss for the starmaking role. “By the time I met Steven and he wanted me to come out to Los Angeles and do a screen test, Tom Selleck had fallen out of the picture. I guess they picked up his option for Magnum PI and they wouldn’t let him out to do the film.

“And so they had no Indy and no Marion.

They brought me out and I tested with Tim Matheson, who had been in Animal House with me, and with an actor named John Shea, who I knew a little bit just from the New York acting world. I’ve come to know that Sam Elliott tested, Jeff Bridges tested.

“At a certain point I was cast as Marion and we had no Indy, and they were meeting with and looking at an awful lot of actors. I’m sure that Harrison had occurred to them but I think they were probably thinking well, he’s playing Han Solo, and maybe for him to be doing two of those multi-film roles was not going to be a good thing. But of course it turned out okay!

Turned out he was really good as both Han Solo and Indiana Jones.”

Tom Selleck’s screen test for Indy.

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Close Encounters FACE TO FACE WITH THE BIGGEST STARS

CHEYENNE JACKSON

A

The American Horror Story veteran talks about his new movie

s SFX hooks up with actor Cheyenne Jackson over Zoom, he’s coming to the end of a 14-day quarantine, ahead of filming a new comedy that he’s under strict instructions not to talk about.

“I can’t even leave the hotel,” he tells us. “So I’ve been memorising my lines, exercising, FaceTiming with my kids [Willow and Ethan] and watching a bunch of TV that I don’t normally have time to watch.”

Quarantine aside, life is good now for the 45-yearold actor and singer. He’s a regular fixture on RuPaul’s Drag Race, he’s a four-season veteran of American Horror Story and he has a lead role in the US version of our own Miranda, Call Me Kat. Not only that, but he’s one of the stars of the new horror comedy Werewolves Within.

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BIODATA

From Oldtown, Idaho.

Greatest Hits 9/11 victim Mark Bingham in United 93, Danny Baker (not that one) in 30 Rock, various roles in American Horror Story, Hooded Justice in Watchmen.

Random Fact Aside from being an actor, Jackson is also an accomplished singer and has released three albums to date: The Power Of Two; I’m Blue, Skies; and Renaissance.

matters to me when I’m choosing a part. I just want to know that I can bring him to life. With this character Devon, being gay was the least interesting part of him to me.

You were in four seasons of American Horror Story, but you’ve sat the last couple out. Will you ever go back for another season?

I never say never. I’ve worked with Ryan on three separate occasions and he creates this really fantastical, perverse, sexy, out of this world universe. I’ve had really fascinating and interesting times on those sets.

Did you know on that first series that you were going to be part of the AHS rep company for quite a while?

I didn’t. I mean, I had hope. I met Ryan [Murphy] years ago when he saw me in a show on Broadway and after that he wrote me into Glee. I think once he sees something in you, he tries to find something for you. But yeah, I didn’t expect to be in four seasons of that. It is kind of like an old-time theatre troupe in that every season, it’s exciting to see like, what’s Kathy Bates going to do? What’s Sarah going to pull out this year?

And what about RuPaul’s Drag Race? Have you any more of that lined up?

Yeah, I shot them about a year ago as they do them about a year in advance. I love Ru, he’s been a friend for maybe nine years. He’s one of my mentors, and anytime he asks me to come on and play, it’s always such a fun thing. It’s one of my favourite shows, I love it. The UK version too.

Would you do the British one?

Sure. Of course, I would do any of them! I loved the UK version because the British sensibility is so much drier and so many of the queens are naturally comedy queens.

So what’s next for you? Apart from this new project you can’t tell us about?

I’m just getting ready to do season two of Call Me Kat. They’re revamping, and we have a new showrunner. Shows always take a second to find their legs and I really love the six of us. Apart from that, I just want to keep working and creating new, diverse characters and keep providing for my family. It’s just all chugging along. I’m very, very happy.

Werewolves Within is available on DVD and digital platforms from 19 July.

Y T T E G / A I D E M XOF : O T O H P

We thought the movie was very funny. While you’re filming, can you always tell when a movie’s going to turn out well?

You do get a sense that things are working, but you just never know if that special sauce that’s happening on the set is going to translate in the finished product because there’s editing, there’s timing, there’s special effects. But [director] Josh Rubin created such an amazing playground for us to bounce off each other and improvise that I thought, ‘Surely they’re getting some good stuff.’

Josh Rubin is also an actor. Does it make a difference being directed by somebody who knows what it’s like to be in front of the camera?

100%. He knows exactly what we need. If you’re coming in for your close-up, he knows to give you time – it’s not just about knocking off the shots. Josh is one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with. And he’s just beginning, and that’s an exciting prospect.

Your character in this film is gay. Do you think that LGBT+ representation has improved over the years?

We’re talking a lot more about diversity, but do you actually see real change?

Oh yeah. I’ve been a working actor since I was 27 and it’s just grown exponentially, from being the token gay character in a sitcom to now not having it be an issue anymore. There’s such a wonderfully diverse array of juicy characters. Queer, not queer, bisexual, none of that stuff

Words by Steve O’Brien

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS CHEYENNE JACKSON

With this character Devon, being gay was the least interesting part of him to me

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TIME BANDITS TERRY GILLIAM REMAINS ONE OF CINEMA’S MOST RENOWNED AUTEURS. FORTY YEARS AGO, TIME BANDITS GRANTED THE AMBITIOUS DIRECTOR HIS FIRST SUCCESS, AND ENABLED AN ESCAPE FROM THE SHADOW OF MONTY PYTHON WORDS: ANDREW PRICE

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TIME BANDITS

DON’T LIKE FANTASY!” CHUCKLES a typically mischievous Terry Gilliam.

“I always want the audience to feel like they’re witnessing amazing things going on in the real world.” It’s an eyebrowraising admission from a master of the outlandish. Throughout Gilliam’s much-lionised body of work, a central conflict between imagination and reality constantly echoes. “My wife keeps telling me that I’m always making the same film – I just change the costumes,” quips the now 80-year-old director.

Forty years ago, Gilliam was best known as the reclusive, quiet member of Monty Python, injecting his surrealist sensibilities into its iconic animations. After co-directing Python’s big-screen romp Monty Python And The Holy Grail, and helming 1977’s Michael Palinstarring Jabberwocky solo, he was keen to fly the Python coop.

“George Harrison and his manager Denis O’Brien created HandMade Films to fund The Life of Brian. That was – in theory – then going to give us all the chance to make what we’d always wanted to make,” explains Gilliam. “I’d been writing the first few drafts of Brazil, but then Denis told me he had absolutely no interest in making it.”

This roadblock sent Gilliam down a new avenue. “Over the space of one weekend I came up with the idea of a group of very small helpers of God deciding that life in Heaven was boring and that they should go on a robbing rampage through history. The idea was that a crime could be committed, and these ‘time bandits’ could leap back through history and couldn’t be traced – because the crime hadn’t happened yet.”

DWARF STARS

Y TTEG ,YMALA ,SMLIF EDAMDNAH © SERUTCIP

Gilliam’s wild concept was carved into shape with the assistance of Michael Palin. “I had the overall idea and a rough shape of the plot, but Mike created those characters. In my plan I’d just said ‘some little guys’ but Mike fleshed them out and came up with all their names.”

O’Brien was thrilled with this more family-friendly idea, and after a period of unsuccessful studio pitches, HandMade raised a $5 million budget by mortgaging its office.

The role of the film’s lead, the 11-year-old Kevin, was awarded to Craig Warnock, who had innocently accompanied his older brother to a casting call. The boy’s shy demeanour piqued Gilliam’s interest. The titular roles were awarded to several well-known little people actors, including Kenny Baker as Fidgit and David Rappaport as their overbearing leader, Randall.

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TIME BANDITS Michael Palin, as Vincent: not very “butch”.

THE HEIGHT OF INGENUITY The visual effects were almost entirely practical

“We didn’t use bluescreen at all,” Gilliam says, sharing some of the film’s tricks. “The giant in the Time of Legends, for example, is very simple. You get a short wrestler who’s more horizontal than vertical, then you put a wide angle down at his ankle, and voila! You’ve got a giant. He’s actually running, but we shot it at 94FPS. Once you slow down a man running with all that meat you get a real sense of power.

“When the gang push through Kevin’s bedroom at the start of the film, we just built a long corridor.

When they fall over the edge of it, they’re just small cloth maquettes that we filmed falling. It was all basic, old-fashioned, hands-on filmmaking!”

reputation at the time, so I thought he’d be a good fit for Randall,” Gilliam remembers. “But he was such a bossy boots, he was always keen to get across to the others that he was a ‘proper’ actor.”

O’Brien and Gilliam butted heads over the film’s tone. “Denis got so excited about this project and said, ‘Oh it’ll be like Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, and we can have all the Pythons in there’. The last thing I wanted at that stage was to have any excess Pythons involved. We compromised on John – we figured he’d be great as Robin Hood.” They were right: Cleese’s upper-class take on Nottingham’s fabled outlaw stands as one of the film’s most hilarious scenes.

Perhaps Gilliam’s biggest coup was casting Sean Connery as Agamemnon. “We put into the script, ‘And the Greek warrior removes his helmet, revealing himself to be Sean Connery or an actor of equal – but cheaper! – stature’.

Neither me or Michael imagined that he’d want to be in it,” laughs Gilliam. “We caught Sean when he was in an interesting mood. He liked the idea of Agamemnon being a surrogate father to Kevin. I get the sense that he maybe had a bit of guilt about sidelining his own children when he was off being James Bond and roaming the world.”

The film begins with the suburban ordinariness of Kevin’s home. His parents sit transfixed by television and modern appliances, oblivious to the boy’s enthusiasm for history. “The idea was that the parents were so trapped in a world of consumerism,” explains Gilliam. “All this stuff is tied to their idea of ‘modern living’. Kevin reads, and his parents think something is wrong with him.”

Craig Warnock only made one other film.

Neither me or Michael imagined that Sean Connery would want to be in it

Wars, a Medieval-era Sherwood Forest, Ancient Greece and even a cruise aboard the Titanic. A detour into the Time of Legends leads to an epic showdown with Evil himself (David Warner).

Gilliam and his team sourced a range of locations to represent the film’s historical eras.

Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire was used for the Battle of Castiglione, where our anti-heroes win favour with a height-fixated Napoleon (Ian Holm). Recreating Ancient Greece, meanwhile, resulted in Gilliam, Connery and the crew jetting off to Morocco. “We filmed at a place called Aït Benhaddou,” he remembers. “Sean was already familiar with the place, after filming The Man Who Would Be King there in the mid–’70s. He had so many great stories that he’d share with us, about filming there, or his numerous Bond anecdotes.”

The shoot wasn’t all plain sailing, however.

“During the first day, we were on top of this plateau above Aït Benhaddou and it was 135 degrees [57 degrees C, which is impossible].

It was unbearable and horrible. Our stomachs

David Warner as Evil: not very nice.

Y TTEG ,YMALA ,SMLIF EDAMDNAH © SERUTCIP

Ian Holm as Napoleon: not very tall.

“And how long have you been a robber?”

The central idea of Kevin escaping – literally or otherwise – into his imagination is critical to the film. “Kevin is the only one that can see the truth in this world, where everyone is obsessed with the same empty, meaningless stuff. The parents are trapped by their fear of not toeing the line and having the latest appliances.”

That night, Kevin’s sleep is interrupted by the sudden arrival of the time-hopping thieves, who emerge – Narnia-like – from his wardrobe, whisking him away via a series of time portals to various periods in history. “I’m not all that interested in the mechanics of time travel,” Gilliam says. “I just wanted to do it so – ‘whoop! – ’ a portal opens up. My idea with it is that fundamentally the universe is structurally flawed. It has these holes, these cracks in the system. It all reflects my underlying philosophy of life. I just love that it works like that. God, in his best efforts, still fucked up.”

Navigating these portals via a map stolen from the Supreme Being himself, the gang’s exploits take them through the Napoleonic

TIME BANDITS

Katherine Helmond and Peter Vaughan as the Ogres. were all a bit wobbly too. We got through it – and in no small part due to Sean. He was the experienced one in the bunch.”

For the young Craig Warnock, interacting with a cinematic hero was a little too much.

“He froze!” recalls Gilliam. “Sean said, ‘Okay, well just get my shots, then I can get out of here and you can get the shots of Craig later.’ That’s what we did. We were only in Morocco less than a week, and got everything we needed.”

Following the climactic battle, the film’s ambiguous ending finds Kevin waking up in his own bed, to realise his house is ablaze. He is stunned to see that a rescuing fireman has the reassuring face of Connery’s King Agamemnon.

Meanwhile, his ever-oblivious parents touch a still-smoking shard of Evil, resulting in them both exploding – a dark subversion of the typical fairy tale ending. “Denis really didn’t like that ending, he told me we couldn’t have it,” Gilliam remembers. “I stuck to my guns and said, ‘Well, that’s what we wrote’, and we shot it.”

Connery’s late appearance wasn’t actually scripted. “Agamemnon was supposed to return for the big final battle with Evil,” says Gilliam.

“Sean couldn’t do it, because we’d run out of time with him. But I remembered that he’d suggested the idea of him as the fireman the first time we met. Originally I’d planned for Agamemnon to be the character that died during that battle. But because he wasn’t available we had to rework the script. We

were lucky enough to get Sean back for one hour, on a day that he’d come to London to sort out some tax returns. It wraps up the ending better than our original plan. He’s like a guardian angel, and he’ll look out for Kevin.”

Time Bandits was released on 10 July 1981 in the UK and 6 November in the US. “We released it through a company called AVCO Embassy – they hadn’t had a successful film in 10 years. But they had the machinery.”

It was a surprise smash hit, reaping a vastly higher sum than its relatively tiny budget, and establishing Gilliam as a filmmaker with a singular vision. Forty years on, the subversive magic of his breakthrough feature still casts a spell. “Fairy tales have always been central to the way I look at the world. They are all moral tales, in one form or another. That’s really what I wanted to create here,” Gilliam says. “I love the fact that people who are 40 or 50 years old tell me that the film had an effect on them.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted, really.”

Time Bandits is out on Blu-ray from Arrow.

TAIKA’S TAKE Wh at’s the latest on the new TV version?

In 2019, a television adaptation of Time Bandits for Apple+, with a pilot directed by Taika Waitit was announced. “All I know is thati, there was supposed to be a script finished last year but I being worked on at thisthink it’s” still says Gilliam, when askedstage, where the project currently stands. “I’m so glad Taika Waititi is involv ed. When I saw Jojo Rabbit I was blown away.

I thought, ‘Yeah, this guy do it’.

I just think Taika is wondecan rful.

I’m an executive producer, so I’m currently just trying to define what it is that I’m meant to be . The series has got to maintaindoing the same spirit as the original, but it doesn ’t want to depend on it. That’s my function, to be the judge of that.”

Sean Connery as Agamemnon.

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SFX AUTHOR ToBook Brought THEINTERVIEW

GRADY HENDRIX

The horror author taking on the survivors of iconic slasher movies

H

Words by Rosie Fletcher /// Photography by Albert Mitchell

OW DO YOU LIVE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE after the biggest thing that’s ever gonna happen to you happened when you were 17?” This was the jumping-off point for Grady Hendrix’s new novel The Final Girl Support Group, a love letter to the young survivors of classic slasher movies and the actresses who embodied them. It’s a real-world take, which imagines that genre classics in the mould of Friday The 13th, Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre were based on real people, and that those survivors are still attempting to come to terms with their ordeal 16 years on.

“These franchises in particular have transcended their franchise-ness and really become part of the popular unconscious,” Hendrix explains. “We all know the summer camp killer. We all know the prom night killer. We all know the dream killer, the redneck cannibal family, the brother who’s always trying to kill his sister. Each of these franchises has spiralled off so many copycat franchises, so each one has become almost a little mini-genre.”

Hendrix knows his horror. His first novel, Horrorstör, saw a worker get trapped in a nightmarish version of Ikea; My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a heartfelt take on the possession subgenre; We Sold Our Souls tackled Satanism; and last year’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires saw middle-aged mums pitted against his version of Dracula. But Hendrix says he’s found a new love of slasher movies through his research. “I really love slashers now – one of the things I realised when I wrote the book is, man, they’re such good metaphors! You run and you run and death is right behind you. You know it’s coming, slow and implacable, and it’s going to get you in the end, and it will take everyone you know, and then you.”

FUNNY PECULIAR Dark. But as with Hendrix’s previous works, there’s a vein of black humour running throughout Final Girl. When asked how he’d describe his particular brand of horror, Hendrix hesitates. “I’m just writing about what I see, and people think it’s funny. That’s great, but to me it’s just how life looks. The phone call you get telling you your best friend is dead probably comes right after you’ve heard the funniest joke of your life.”

Hendrix is also known for how he writes women: each of his novels has a female lead, and The Final Girl Support Group is, of course, no different. These characters are

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BIODATA

From Charleston, South Carolina Greatest Hits As well as his novels, Hendrix also wrote Paperbacks From Hell, a non-fiction celebration of ’70s and ’80s horror fiction.

Random Fact Hendrix became friends with Friday The 13th final girl Adrienne King through the novel – she’s the narrator of the UK audiobook.

fictional, but there are nods throughout to some of horror’s most famous scream queens. “These women, I really think they’re amazing and they’ve had a really tough row to hoe in terms of being these horror icons,” he says. “It is physically intense and gruelling. Often a slasher takes place in 24 hours, so every day you’re wearing the same dirty costume, you’re getting subjected to intense stress, you’re holding onto rooftops, you’re running, you’re getting stabbed – it’s a really rough way to make a living. The characters are named in honour of these women, because I think they’re incredible.”

SOLE BROTHER Hendrix grew up in Charleston, with three older sisters. His love of writing women, he says, comes partly from a desire to separate himself from his characters, but also just because he knows a lot of women. And soon we’ll see some of those creations come to the screen: Hendrix is currently working on the screenplay for Horrorstör.

“That’s been bizarre and educational about what a bad writer I was in 2014,” he says, self-deprecatingly.

“Screenplays and books are so different, and so much of what you can do in a book is interior. Screenplays are all exterior – if you can’t show it in action it doesn’t exist. The big moment for Amy in Horrorstör is when she’s trapped in a chair, having this dark night of the soul. You know what that looks like on screen? Like a woman sitting in a chair.”

Meanwhile, My Best Friend’s Exorcism is currently in production, starring Eighth Grade’s Elsie Fisher as the lead.

Hendrix hasn’t been involved since seeing a very early draft of the screenplay, but he’s over the moon with the casting choice. Southern Book Club has been optioned by Prime Video as a TV show, and it looks like The Final Girl Support Group is also coming to the small screen. Hendrix is a busy guy – he’s also knee-deep in his next novel, a story about a brother and sister which has meant he’s had to work on a lot of backstory. “In a family, minor things become mythic, so I’ve had to basically write the history of this entire family, going back to the grandparents. It’s nuts.”

Oh, and it’ll involve puppets. Even so, Hendrix likes to write with a basis in reality. “Fiction about here and now can often be, to me, really boring,” he laughs. “Horror is like: it’s here and now, but also with giant ants!”

The Final Girl Support Group is published by Titan Books on 13 July.

BROUGHT TO BOOK GRADY HENDRIX

You run and run and death is right behind you. You know it’s coming

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AUG 2021

CINEMA 70

TV 74

HOME ENTERTAINMENT 76

edited by Ian Berriman

BOOKS 86

COMICS 92

GAMES & STUFF 94

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BLACK WIDOW Nat’s Life

66 THIS ISSUE REVIEWS

72 THE FOREVER

76 THE

86 NOTES

The killing spree is no longer restricted to a 12-hour period in the fifth movie.

Chris Pratt jumps to the future to scrap alien invaders.

Claire North’s latest is a dystopian post-apocalypse.

PURGE

RATINGS EXPLAINED

SUPERB

TOMORROW WAR

GOOD

AVERAGE

FROM THE BURNING AGE

POOR

TERRIBLE AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

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BLACKWIDOW CINEMA

From Russia With Grudge RELEASED OUT NOW!

12A | 134 mins Director Cate Shortland Cast Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, Rachel Weisz

Marvel kicks off Phase Four of its cinematic activities in a surprisingly low-key manner. Not that Black Widow isn’t without Marvel’s trademark spectacular superhero action, but it is an odd choice for the first post-Avengersera MCU movie in a number of ways.

First, it’s a film many thought should have happened at least two phases ago – as one of the original Avengers, Black Widow deserved her own movie long before now, surely? Certainly before she died.

Secondly, it’s essentially a massive flashback, mostly set between Civil War and Infinity War, that feels a little like an i-dotting/t-crossing exercise – more of an addendum to the Infinity Stones saga.

Thirdly, it’s a movie that’s not scared to be talky: arguably, among all the fireworks, the standout scene is an extended family reunion. Fourthly, you kinda forget it’s supposed to be Scarlett Johansson’s headline gig for large sections, because

Florence Pugh dominates almost every scene she’s in as Yelena Belova, a character who’ll almost be certainly be taking over the mantle of Black Widow. Perhaps she’s the key to Black Widow’s place in the MCU release chronology? Will she become the MCU’s new MVP? That will probably only become clear as Phase Four – and possibly Phases Five and Six – unfurl.

None of which should detract, however, from the fact that Black Widow is a refreshingly differentfeeling Marvel movie. It’s closest to the international spy thriller vibe of Winter Soldier, and there are various, on-the-nose nods to James Bond (including a clip of Moonraker and a mighty, John Barry-esque score by Lorne Balfe).

But underpinning all that is a compelling, small-scale, characterled story about family – which is surprising for a film that, technically, doesn’t even feature one.

It opens with scenes of what looks like an idyllic life for a mother, father and two young daughters in Ohio, 1995. They’re actually a faux family: two Russian spies with unrelated, press-ganged children, posing as the perfect family on a mission to extract top secret information from SHIELD

“I’ll use my elite training to bravely hide here.” (which is actually controlled by

“Stop, or HYDRA at this point – keep up!). neither of you Mission complete, the family gets sweets.” makes a hasty exit, with Natasha

the most reluctant to abandon the USA; tellingly, she leaves the country with blue-dyed hair, a white T-shirt and red sneakers – the colours of the US flag. Once back in Russia, “dad” – a former Soviet superhero called Red Guardian (David Harbour) – is slung in prison, while his “daughters”, Natasha and Yelena, are inducted into the Widow programme overseen by the unscrupulous Dreykov (Ray

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Winstone), and “mum” Melina (Rachel Weisz) goes off to experiment on pigs (no, really).

Fast-forward to the postSokovia Accords superhero witch hunts, and Natasha is on the run from the US authorities. When Yelena manages to break from her

In true ’70s James Bond style, a threadbare plot is dressed up in globetrotting

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RED STAR BRIGADE

Four more superpowered Russians COLOSSUS

Alias Piotr Rasputin – and yes, he is a relation.

Founding member of the second generation of X-Men, this mighty Siberian mutant has the power to transform his flesh into a steel-like substance. Once brainwashed into becoming collectivist champion the Proletarian.

KGBEAST

Batman foe and cybernetically-enhanced super-assassin created by a black ops branch of Russian Intelligence.

Anatoli Knyazev is a martial arts expert and the master of every known weapon – even his left hand is a gun. Essentially the Cold War in human form.

THE ABOMINATION

be proud of. But the film really finds its groove when the “family” reunites; Red Guardian and Melina feel a little like comedy characters from Despicable Me, but there’s a real warmth and charm here, with Johansson and Pugh both selling the idea that they need to believe that their faux family is real.

Winstone is wonderfully loathsome as Dreykov, but his henchman, a reimagining of the comics supervillain Taskmaster, is a pointless add-on, with a “mimicking others’ fight styles” gimmick that never makes an

impact and a plot twist reveal that gets lost in the mix. And while complaining about a lax attitude to the laws of physics in a superhero film is a tad pointless, some of the action scenes do sit on the border between “Wow!” and “WTF?” But Pugh is a force of nature throughout, and she’s what you’ll remember most about the film.

Not least her response to Red Guardian asking if it’s her time of the month…

Dave Golder

At one point Yelena mistakenly calls Alexei Crimson Dynamo, the name of another Russian Marvel comics supervillain.

SUPERMAN

Truth, justice and the American way? Nyet! This Stalinist incarnation of the Man of Steel appeared in Elseworlds tale Red Son, which saw baby Kal-El’s rocket touch down in the Ukraine instead of Kansas.

C D / L EVRAM ©

Widow programming, she and her sister reluctantly team up to try to destroy the Red Room where Dreykov creates his Widows.

This takes them around the world (Norway, Morocco, Budapest, Siberia, a pig farm somewhere near Saint Petersburg), and to a reunion with their “parents”.

In true ’70s James Bond style, a threadbare plot is dressed up in globetrotting and a lot of frantic jumping between storylines in the early sections. This is all good fun, and the action is top notch, especially a car chase in the Hungarian capital that 007 would

This long-time Hulktangler is Emil Blonsky, a KGB agent bombarded by the same pesky Gamma Rays that transformed Bruce Banner.

Stronger, scalier and, let’s face it, fuglier than the American original, he’s out to give capitalism a damned good thrashing.

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CINEMA

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DEERSKIN

No Jacket Required RELEASED 16 JULY

15 | 77 minutes Director Quentin Dupieux Cast Jean Dujardin, Adèle Haenel

The Artist’s Jean Dujardin suffers the mother of all mid-life crises in Quentin Depieux’s offbeat, deadpan horror-comedy, in which the man who previously brought us a killer tyre this time delivers a deadly jacket.

Well, a killer in a deadly jacket – a naff, tasselled deerskin number – at least. Georges talks to his prized possession, and is acting on its behalf when he sets out on a mission, crudely documented via a digital camera: disposing of every Triple other jacket in the world (no mean deerskin: even feat, given the existence of 7.9 worse than billion jacket-wearers). But he’s double denim. clearly completely round the twist.

THE FOREVER PURGE

The results are dryly amusing.

Georges is a comically bad liar, and his plans laughably absurd; when he digs a huge hole, you assume it’s to dispose of the bodies. Nope: the coats…

What’s it all about? A waitress/ budding editor whose help he enlists offers a theory: how “we all hide behind a shell”. Maybe, given the way she demands “more blood” from Georges’s footage, it’s a satire on reality TV and media exploitation. But imposing a weighty interpretation upon something so slight seems like reading too much into a badtaste joke.

So what’s it about? Well, it’s about 74 minutes before the credits roll. Ian Berriman Dupieux’s latest film Mandibules sees two idiot friends acquire a gigantic fly, then try to train it to carry out robberies.

What they don’t know is that he’s a ventriloquist.

Endless Night RELEASED 16 JULY

15 | 103 minutes Director Everardo Gout Cast Josh Lucas, Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Cassidy Freeman

By now we know what to expect from a Purge movie, a franchise that has long since moved from the claustrophobic horror thriller of James DeMonaco’s 2013 original to explore the political themes that bubbled as subtext in that film.

The creepy aspects (one or two throwaway jump scares aside) have been replaced by creeping dread that the whole notion of an annual violence “release” is getting closer by the day, both in America and elsewhere. Made before the traumatic events of the 6 January US Capitol attack, The

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Forever Purge takes the concept to the natural next level, as many decide that one night is simply not enough, and that the bloodshed must continue even after the concluding sirens have sounded.

The political focus here is on immigration (you do have to wonder why anyone would still want to risk crossing into the nightmare United States on display here…) and showing the consequences of the New Founding Fathers’ actions as Characters are secondary, they quickly start to lose control. though the likes of Ana de la Reguera’s Adela and Tenoch Huerta’s Juan do break through, escaping Mexico’s cartels only to discover that the grass is not only less green on the other side, but often on fire.

DeMonaco hands off the directorial reins again, this time to Everardo Gout, who handles

Many decide that one night is not enough and the bloodshed must continue

the issues and requisite hazardous survival story ably, even if the result feels more factory-produced than groundbreaking.

Will this be the final Purge film?

It’s unlikely, but if so it’s a solid end to the series.

James White

A road rage accident inspired The Purge; afterwards, DeMonaco’s wife said it’d be great if you got “one free one a year”.

THE CROODS 2: A NEW AGE RELEASED 16 JULY

U | 96 minutes Director Joel Crawford Cast Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Nicolas Cage, Peter Dinklage

2013 feels like millennia ago, which, fittingly, is when DreamWorks first debuted The Croods, which followed the titular cave brood trying to survive a hostile world bristling with mortal threats and weird hybrid creatures. The action was frenetic, and the big theme was family staying together.

After a few years in development (during which time it was cancelled, before being revived), the sequel arrives with a similar energy, but not an awful lot that feels fresh. Returning as the voices of the clan are Emma Stone, Nicolas Cage and Catherine Keener; also back is Guy, the more developed human they met last time, exuberantly brought to life by Ryan Reynolds. They stumble upon the farmland paradise cultivated by the Betterman clan (Peter Dinklage, Leslie Mann and Kelly Marie Tran), who have constructed gadgetry that would make the Flintstones envious.

There are several new beast mash-ups sprinkled here and there, such as Chicken Seals and Wolf Spiders, and even more psychedelic landscapes.

But the various story challenges which the family face along the way are so well-used they’re practically prehistoric themselves. Still, at least some of the over-the-top set-pieces (one word: monkeys) are lively enough. James White

DON’T MISS ews TOTAL FILM’S WEEKLY FREE PODCAST MOONBOUND RELEASED 6 AUGUST

TBC | 84 minutes

This breathless adaptation of a 1915 German children’s book starts at a gallop and continues at Grand Nationalwinner speed, without pausing to gasp for air once.

Peter and his sister head to the moon to help a bug named Mr Zoomzeman find both his missing arm and his wife: they encounter Moon Poodles, a giant bear (aka Ursa Major) and a Phantom Menace-style pod race in space. Mostly, though, it’s just lots of yelling and people being flung around, which gets dull very fast.

Jayne Nelson

ALSO OUT So many films, so few advance screenings… so here’s a quick summary of what else is coming to the big screen this month. On 16 July: LeBron James gets trapped in a virtual realm in SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY, while horror sequel ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS (above) sees several groups of survivors brought together. On 23 July: a family find themselves rapidly ageing in M Night Shyamalan’s OLD. Finally, 30 July brings both the Disney attraction adventure JUNGLE CRUISE and a mission to destroy a Nazi-era lab for THE SUICIDE SQUAD.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS AND SECRETS OF MAKING A MAGAZINE

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SCHMIGADOON! Season One TV

Do-Re-Mi-Farce-So-La-Ti-Do

musical, albeit with a few nods to its TV nature (flashbacks at the start of each instalment). The plot is a shameless melange of Brigadoon, Casablanca and Carousel, with nods to pretty much every other classic La La EPISODES 1.01-1.06 If music be the Land musical you could name, food of love then Cupid’s going to and then some; writers Cinco Paul be piling on the pounds (who also wrote all the songs) and bingewatching Schmigadoon! This Ken Daurio (of Despicable Me fantasy whimsy is not so much a fame) clearly know and love the pastiche of Hollywood’s Golden source material.

Era musicals as a loving homage.

Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Sure, it takes the mick out of their Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) are dodgier tropes with a woke 21st trying to put the spark back in century eye, but it also knows the their relationship on a hiking rules of musicals and plays by holiday when they stumble into them, with intoxicating results.

Schmigadoon, a Technicolor With six (roughly) half-hour Western town that looks like it’s episodes, its running time is been built on a soundstage, with around the same as The Sound Of matte-painted horizons and Music, so if you watch it in one go residents who burst into song at it even feels like watching a movie the drop of a stetson. MusicalUK/US Apple+, 16 July Creators Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio Cast Cecily Strong, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Ariana DeBose, Fred Armisen

Seen here: the only two valid reactions to musicals.

loathing Josh wants to take the Deadwood stage right outta there.

One problem: they’re trapped in Schmigadoon until they find true love, and apparently their own strained relationship doesn’t cut the mustard.

This is TV so feel-good that it’s in danger of rotting your teeth, and as unapologetically camp as RuPaul’s Drag Race, but there’s real wit and heart here too. Okay, it’s not exactly subtle – practically any mention of food is an innuendo for sex, and if you don’t guess Mayor Menlove’s secret from his name alone, you really shouldn’t attempt cryptic crosswords – but that’s just part of the meta-referencing merriment.

And how they reinvent “Do-Re-

This is so feelgood that it’s in danger of rotting your teeth

Mi” (sing along now: “Vagina is where the penis goes”) is genius.

Most of the musical set-pieces are funny and brilliantly staged, with director Barry (The Addams Family) Sonnenfeld reuniting with his A Series Of Unfortunate Events production designer Bo Welch to create another cartoon-coloured heightened reality. An impressive supporting cast includes Kristin Chenoweth, whose scary, God-bothering Mildred Layton is clearly named that so she can be rhymed with Satan.

You’ll need at least some love for musicals to even think about watching; Schmigadoon!’s simplistic moralising, theatrical acting and constant singing won’t win over any converts. But if for you “You’ll Never Walk Alone” means Carousel and not football, you’ll have heaps of fun. Dave Golder Cinco Paul was partly inspired by An American Werewolf In London: originally, two guys stumbled upon the weirdness.

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TRESE Season One

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Showrunner Jay Oliva Cast Shay Mitchell, Matt Yang King, Griffin Puatu, Carlos Alazraqui EPISODES 1.01-1.06 Contrary to Netflix’s marketing, this action-horror series isn’t, strictly speaking, anime, as it was animated in America and Korea, not Japan – it’s based on a Filipino comic book.

In Manila, Trese is a young woman mediating between the human and supernatural realms. She helps the police when monsters and phantoms gorily break into our world, and also works with mushroom men and horse lords. Often she fights alongside them as well, as the show’s worst evils often come from the human side.

Unfortunately, Trese herself is terribly colourless. We only get a perfunctory sense of how she relates to the other characters, most of whom are pretty colourless themselves, and even a slowly disclosed family backstory doesn’t enliven her.

The worldbuilding is lively, incorporating some real-life issues such as police brutality and monstrous politicians, but it’s generally hard to care about the actual stories.

The standout exception is the third episode, featuring a monstrous baby with echoes of the 1974 horror film It’s Alive, but with an exceptionally brutal twist. Sadly, the final battle descends into a throwaway brawl.

So while it’s always good to see more adult animation that isn’t anime, comedy or spun-off from superheroes, this is disappointingly thin fare.

Andrew Osmond

ews RESIDENT EVIL: INFINITE DARKNESS Season One

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Director Eiichir Hasumi Cast Nick Apostolides, Stephanie Panisello, Jona Xiao, Ray Chase EPISODES 1.01-1.04 There’s no denying it, Infinite Darkness looks exactly like a PlayStation cutscene. That statement would have been insulting in the ’90s, when Resident Evil first groaned into gamers’ glazed eyeballs. But with modern tech allowing filler sequences to feel cinematic, it’s actually a compliment. Infinite Darkness looks fantastic, easily more aesthetically pleasing than Army Of The Dead.

That’s not a random reference: there are curious crossovers with Zack Snyder’s epic, including a military mission opening, and some early refugee camp exposition.

The parallels are surely accidental, but fitting given the series’ roots. The franchise has always been a strange brew, mixing movie homages with puzzle plots. In that context, cinematic styling for a four-part show makes sense.

Sadly, the vocals don’t match the visuals. Still, the plot’s fast-paced enough to carry the actors. It’s basically Resident Evil: 24, with fan favourites Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield protecting America from insurgent zombies. If you can resist the urge to pick up a DualSense controller while streaming, you’ll enjoy yourself right up to the brilliant final episode. Sam Ashurst

GODZILLA SINGULAR POINT Season One

KATLA Season One

“Alright, who was controlling the sunbed?”

Rising from the ashes

who looks exactly as she did 25 years ago – which is weird, because there’s an older Gunhild still living nearby...

Katla feels like a more folkloric cousin of French drama The Returned, with perhaps a dash of Solaris too. Quite how these EPISODES 1.01-1.08 There’s smoke people have come back is less in the air and ash on the ground in important than the impact their this brooding Icelandic drama. sudden appearance has on the A year after the nearby volcano townsfolk, many of whom had began its slow eruption, few never got over the tragedies in remain in the town of Vik. When their past. The mystery is an a woman wanders into town intriguing one, and the show has encrusted in ash, however, life is atmosphere to spare: beautifully thrown into turmoil, as Ása (Íris shot, with a touch of Wes Tanja Flygenring) vanished a Anderson fussiness in the set year ago. design that really sells Vik as a Her sister Gríma (Guðrún Ýr town thoroughly cut off from the Eyfjörð) starts to investigate, but rest of the world. it’s not long before more people It’s incredibly slow, though, show up. There’s Mikael (Hlynur with the slight plot feeling Atli Harðarson) a young boy who stretched out over eight episodes. definitely died – didn’t he? Then Things pick up in the second half, there’s Gunhild (Aliette Opheim), with some satisfying answers to the central mystery, but Katla relies on you caring about the characters without ever giving you enough reason to do so. Will Salmon

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Showrunners Sigurjón Kjartansson, Baltasar Kormákur Cast Guðrún Ýr Eyfjörð, Íris Tanja Flygenring, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Aliette Opheim

The slight plot feels stretched out over eight episodes

Guðrún Ýr Eyfjörð, who plays Gríma, is a multi-award-winning pop star in Iceland, performing under the name GDRN.

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Showrunner Atsushi Takahashi Cast Yume Miyamoto, Shoya Ishige, Yôhei Azakami, Johnny Yong Bosch

EPISODES 1.01-1.13 Some Godzilla geeks believe every kaiju flick should be a dialogue-free installation piece featuring the titular creature blasting atomic breath at a succession of increasingly bizarre monsters on a mostly unpopulated planet.

Those fans should brace themselves for disappointment.

This anime states its mission early, with dialogue referring to the Showa era – a clear indicator that this is going to be a human-heavy tale.

And so it goes, with our main protagonists split between a set of goofy scientists (utilising Jet Jaguar, who has a pretty major character arc), and Mei Kamino, a young student specialising in imaginary creatures, investigating an invading flock of Rodans that may be a harbinger of bigger things… Basically doing for theoretical science what Shin Godzilla did for politics, this is more cerebral than any of the Godzilla movies that have roared out of Hollywood over the last couple of decades, and it’s better for it. The animation style is smart, too. Mixing traditional hand-drawn art for the humans with monsters rendered in 3D CGI, it blends more seamlessly than you might expect.

Godzilla arrives late, but he’s worth the wait – just like this show will be for old-school fans. Sam Ashurst

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THE TOMORROW WAR

HOME ENTERTAINMENT “I think it’s a… yes, marsh harrier! Tick it off the list.”

Fight The Future

nearby). It’s losing. Badly. The solution? Have thousands of troops “jump” 30 years ahead to 2021 | TBC | SVOD join the fight. Then, when they’re Director Chris McKay slaughtered, start drafting selected Cast Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, civilians. (The criteria: will you JK Simmons, Betty Gilpin, have died by the year 2052?)

Sam Richardson, Edwin Hodge Let’s pause to consider this PRIME If The Tomorrow War’s premise for a moment, which sees high-concept sounds faintly middle-aged civvies given a week’s Tenet-y, don’t worry: you’re only training (if they’re lucky) before going to be making use of about being sent on a week-long suicide half the IQ points that Christopher mission (after 168 hours, a Nolan’s film required. high-tech cuff catapults them Initially lined up for a back). Wouldn’t it make more Christmas 2020 theatrical release sense to spend the time until

by Paramount, then flogged to the aliens’ mysterious arrival Amazon, this likeably ludicrous manufacturing military hardware, sci-fi actioner puts a time travel training the population, and spin on the alien invasion. In 2022, devising bioweapons? troops from the future arrive with Well, yes – but then The 28-Year bad news: Earth is at war with Research Programme isn’t quite as ferocious, human-munching sexy a title. And we’d miss out on monsters nicknamed the White seeing Chris Pratt’s be-cardiganed Spikes (so-called because of their science teacher, Dan Forester, penchant for firing off said sink or swim as he’s dumped in at projectiles – so long as there are the deep end. Smaller details can no high-value cast members be just as head-scratching.

Another “But surely…” plot point sees Pratt creasing his brow over “DAN! This how to transport an important is no time scientific discovery to the future. for poleAnyone who watched Blue Peter dancing.” burying boxes in the garden could answer that one. But just as everyone here seems blithely unconcerned about the butterfly effect, no one seems to have considered the possibility of altering the timeline.

Then there’s a sequence where they try to capture a boss-level White Spike queen by pulling it into a cage, with ropes. No one seems to have thought of trying to RELEASED OUT NOW!

E MIRP ©

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tranquilise it first. Unsurprisingly, this uneven game of tug of war has a high body count. We could go on, but hopefully we’ve made the point: The Tomorrow War is a deeply silly movie. Thankfully, it’s also an entertaining one. The early stretches of Dan’s foray into the future, tasked with rescuing a team of lab staff, are horribly tense, thanks to the decision to keep the monsters in the margins, only half-glimpsed amidst smoke and shadow. And when the White Spikes do emerge into the light they’re impressively nasty – mashups of tentacled Lovecraftian

ews

A CLASS APART

Five more teachers whose heroism deserves an apple

IAN CHESTERTON AND BARBARA WRIGHT

Doctor Who’s first companions taught science and history, until their curiosity about pupil Susan sent them stumbling into the TARDIS. Fifty years later, Clara Oswald taught at Coal Hill School too.

ELIZABETH M’BONDO The Tomorrow People’s Elizabeth “broke out” rather belatedly. A student teacher, she was doing her teaching practice at Stephen’s school (subject: art) when he discovered she was a fellow “Homo superior”.

JAIME SOMMERS

horror and bounding hound that you’d struggle to sketch, but leave an abiding impression of ferocity and power. As the film barrels towards a finale which shamelessly rips off both Alien and The Thing From Another World, the set-pieces ramp up to include all the exploding helicopters, leaping snowmobiles and heroic self-sacrifice an action movie fan could wish for.

Divided up in a highly episodic manner, it’s a videogame of a movie – specifically a first-person shooter, thanks to numerous shots of our heroes emptying lead into

the skulls of charging beasties.

There are emotional interludes, but you may find yourself wishing you could treat them like cut scenes, hitting X to progress to the next mission.

You can practically feel your brain cells withering as you watch.

But the pace is adrenalising, and the likeability of key characters keeps you invested. Pratt is all bemused affability as the Good Dad/former special forces dude at the centre of the madness. And Sam Richardson nearly steals the show as Charlie, prone to nervous babbling, or yelling “Shit shit shit

shit shit!” as he blasts an alien in the face. He gets a fair share of the zingers with which Zach Dean’s script is peppered.

It’s a crying shame no one’s going to get to experience The Tomorrow War the way it was meant to be seen: through beer goggles, while shovelling popcorn into your face, surrounded by an audience alternately gasping, hooting and scoffing. Maybe you can get a loved one to kick the back of your sofa? Ian Berriman The script was originally titled Ghost Draft.

Others brainstormed included World War A, Destiny War and Saving Tomorrow.

Just think how fast the Bionic Woman could hurl a piece of chalk! Jaime Sommers got her teaching qualifications before being horribly injured in a skydiving accident. Postcybernetic rebuild, she taught the kids at an airbase in-between her secret missions.

AUDREY CAROLINE

Lupita Nyong’o’s kindergarten teacher proved to be a real trooper in horror-comedy Little Monsters, protecting her young charges during a zombie outbreak on a farm, and entertaining them with ukelele renditions of Taylor Swift.

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LUCA

HOME ENTERTAINMENT

Boys From The Blue Stuff doing Luca a disservice (and they do admit to naming the film’s town, Portorosso, after Porco 2021 | 6+ | SVOD Rosso). It would be hard for this Director Enrico Casarosa film not to feel Ghibli-esque, Cast Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Maya Rudolph given how it’s a family-friendly, uncomplicated feelgood tale about DISNEY+ Take out 50% of the kids coming of age. And heck, it’s dialogue, dub the remainder into not just Ghibli-esque: it also riffs Japanese and throw in a few more heavily on The Little Mermaid shots of nature looking pretty and and Splash.

Pixar’s latest could very well be a When we first meet the titular Studio Ghibli film. There are Luca (Jacob Tremblay), he’s a sea boat-loads of similarities to Hayao monster pining for the world Miyazaki’s work here: from the above the waves, which he only story, which is reminiscent of his experiences through human items fish-out-of-water tale Ponyo; to that drop into the water. Rather the little boys who, in a dream than singing a song about how he sequence, get to fly on makeshift wants to be “part of that world” planes (Miyazaki does love his before doing a dodgy deal with a aviation); to an expressive cat who sea witch, Luca simply decides to almost steals the whole film. wander onto land, where he rather But to accuse the filmmakers of handily turns human as soon as sneakily channelling Miyazaki is he’s dried off.

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“FOR GOD’S SAKE SOMEONE HELP, WE’RE STRANDED!”

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There he meets fellow sea-monster-turned-human-boy Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) and, in keeping with the film’s 1960s Italy setting, they both decide they want to own a Vespa. They need money to get one, so they team up with a local girl named Giulia (Emma Berman) to win a race that involves swimming, eating pasta and cycling, all the while fending off the local bully and trying to hide the fact that they turn back into sea monsters if they get wet.

The script’s full of sweet touches that make you smile; for example, whenever Giulia is shocked she mentions cheese (“Santa mozzarella!”) – and there’s a pleasing lack of fuss around a character only having one arm. In

The script does feel rather flimsy, which is unusual for Pixar

lieu of The Little Mermaid’s songs we get delightfully surreal dream sequences, and the film’s gorgeous, sunny production design will make you want to hop on a plane to the coast of northern Italy, pandemic be damned.

As a whole, however, the script does feel rather flimsy, which is unusual for Pixar. If you want a deeper message than “accept everyone, even if they’re sea monsters” you’ll have to look elsewhere, and you won’t be surprised by any of the plot twists.

Plus, despite its wholeheartedly Italian world-building, the kids overuse Americanisms such as “Whoa!” over and over again.

But these are petty quibbles with what is a beautiful, cockleswarming exploration of friendship, fun and fins.

Jayne Nelson

Vespa means “wasp” in Italian. On seeing the prototype, the president of makers Piaggio said it looked like one.

RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON RELEASED OUT NOW!

1952 | U | DVD (renownfilms.co.uk) Director Fred C Brannon Cast George Wallace, Aline Towne, Roy Barcroft, Clayton Moore

Released in the twilight of the serial era, just as TV began to usurp cinema as the delivery point for weekly thrill-fixes, Radar Men From The Moon is nothing if not cost-effective.

For all that it hypes its hero, Commando Cody, as “a new character”, this 12-part Republic Pictures chapter-play endlessly recycles flying effects footage from 1949’s King Of The Rocket Men. In fact, Cody is near-identical to that serial’s protagonist, complete with helmet, jet-pack and leather air ace jacket. Later on Radar Men even cannibalises itself, serving up chunks of earlier chapters under the guise of flashbacks.

The story finds Earth under fire from dastardly lunar forces, in cahoots with fedora-wearing hoods. A rocketship journey to the Moon – looking just like the American West – is pure Flash Gordon, while the terrestrial action feels more classic cops ‘n’ robbers, with just a whiff of ’50s invasion paranoia.

In truth the plot is simply there to stitch together the spectacle: cars careen, planes plummet, molten floods spell certain doom. Saturday matinee warhorse Fred C Brannon directs with absolute gusto, keeping the energy levels in the red. You’ll even forgive the death-defying cheats on the cliffhanger recaps (where did that parachute come from?).

Extras None.

Nick Setchfield

BAD HAIR

Tressed To Kill RELEASED OUT NOW!

2020 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Justin Simien Cast Elle Lorraine, Jay Pharoah, Lena Waithe, Kelly Rowland

“Oh god no, not that Boyz II Men track again.”

What is it with hair-themed SF and fantasy lately? What with hairdresser horror The Stylist, Intergalactic’s deadly dreadlocks and this campy effort, quite a clump has accumulated in the media plughole.

The work of Dear White People creator Justin Simien, Bad Hair works rather better when it’s operating as a character study/ historical snapshot than it does as a scare engine. Set in 1989, it follows Anna (Elle Lorraine), an employee at an MTV-style African-American music network, who’s pressurised into having an expensive weave to get ahead (pun

ews intended). Unfortunately, the hair she’s had stitched in has a taste for human blood…

Considerable care is taken in establishing Anna and her world, and viewers of the Caucasian persuasion may glean valuable insights into the dismaying extent to which simply having a natural afro look could damage someone’s employment prospects. It feels fresh for horror to address the pressure to conform to European beauty standards. But while long hair can inspire chills – think of Sadako in Ring – the sight of it shooting out to attack people is pretty risible, and the script also fails to satisfactorily address issues like why such tonsorial terror has never previously been observed.

Extras None. Ian Berriman Anna is named after Justin Simien’s mother, and three other characters (Zora, Edna and Virgie) after his late aunts.

OCCUPATION: RAINFALL

VICIOUS FUN

WITCH HUNT

AWAKE

2021 | TBC | SVOD

2021 | 15 | DVD/download

2021 | 15 | SVOD

2021 | 15 | Download

SHUDDER A horror mag writer stumbles upon a serial killer support group in this horrorcomedy, set in 1983. Luckily for him, one participant is really a serial killer hunter…

Cute premise, but it’s one the script can’t rationalise (psychopaths ain’t big on company). Supporting performances are weak. And the period isn’t convincingly evoked; expect modern-day electro, consent lectures and pre-Gulf War use of the term “collateral damage”. Main issue, though: it’s just not sufficiently witty. Ian Berriman

An America where witchcraft is outlawed by the 11th Amendment; a country of internment camps where potential sorceresses are “on the list”.... There’s a timely counterfactual punch to this supernatural indie, with some resonant worldbuilding that reconfigures the horrors of the 17th century for the 21st.

Naturalistic performances and an authentic female voice lift the earnest tone, and if the storytelling occasionally lacks energy, the real-world echoes provide welcome bite.

Extras None. Nick Setchfield

NETFLIX Welcome to the insomniapocalypse: a pesky solar flare fritzes the world’s power grids and leaves humanity incapable of sleep.

Gina Rodriguez is the mother of a child who may hold the secret to rebooting everyone’s brains. She brings an emotional authenticity that helps ground an otherwise rote survival story that never makes the most of its premise. Brief, inexplicable moments – a congregation of ageing, naked sun-worshippers at the roadside – hint at a weirder, more Nigel Knealeindebted tale. Nick Setchfield

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This alien invasion sequel plays like a mix-tape of bigger, better Hollywood movies, as it plunders everything from Independence Day to Star Wars.

You can’t fault the ambition of the city-flattening postapocalyptic story, but it’s writing cheques the visuals can’t cash – the prosthetic faces of the aliens look like they’re recycled Space Precinct rejects.

Still, there’s something refreshingly weird about an alien defector named Gary.

Richard Edwards

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HOME ENTERTAINMENT

WEREWOLVES WITHIN A hairy situation

Ned Flanders-style old-timey vocabulary (“Heavens to betsy!”).

Postal worker Cecily (Milana 2021 | 15 | DVD/download Vayntrub) is rather more modern Director Josh Ruben (“heteronormative” is in her Cast Sam Richardson, Milana lexicon). The budding romance Vayntrub, George Basil, Sarah Burns between the pair is super-cute.

In this videogame adaptat…

Compare Werewolves Within to, no wait, keep reading, because say, Tremors, though and it falls zero knowledge of Ubisoft’s some way short: the supporting little-known 2016 VR game is characters are too cartoonish, required to enjoy this werewolf and the speed with which they whodunnit horror-comedy. The violently turn on one another is two are very different anyway: the completely implausible. Sadly, game’s set in a medieval village, unlike in 1974’s The Beast Must while this takes place in the Die, there’s no “werewolf break” modern day, in a dysfunctional where the film pauses for you to small town cut off by a snowstorm. take a guess, but you could always In both, the goal is to identify make your own by pausing which of the locals is secretly a proceedings at 79 minutes and lycanthrope. playing the Countdown theme…

Extras None. Ian Berriman The film’s a goofily charming affair, thanks mostly to Sam The motivational speaker Finn listens to Richardson as Finn, a newly in his car is voiced by Rhea Perlman, who played cynical waitress Carla in Cheers. arrived forest ranger with a RELEASED 19 JULY

Avoiding trick-ortreaters is always tricky.

SON

RIVER

ALONE

PLURALITY

2021 | TBC | SVOD

2021 | TBC | VOD

2020 | 15 | Blu-ray/download

2021 | TBC | Download

SHUDDER “How far would would you go for your child?” is the big question of this horror, in which the only medicine for eight-year-old David’s mystery life-threatening condition turns out to be… human flesh.

Halloween’s Andi Matichak is convincingly desperate as the single mother who has repressed ritual abuse, and director Ivan Kavanagh has a flair for quirky details, like a sex doll in a motel pool. Frequently lit in infernal red and green, it gets grim, but the sweetness of the mother/son bond keeps you invested. Ian Berriman

When her mother dies, young River Allen finds her headspace impacted by more than grief: missing time, bizarre visions and a question at the very core of her identity.

Emily Skye’s psychologically driven SF tale has a gauzy, pastoral appeal, but is agonisingly slow to pull the threads of its own strangeness.

The emotional trauma is well-observed, but an opaque ending may persuade you that the film had no compelling secrets up its sleeve in the first place.

Universal Soldier vet John Hyams helmed this remake of a Swedish thriller. It melds Duel with what we can surely call the “chased through the woods” subgenre, as a woman driving alone is stalked and abducted.

Deliberately spare, it’s a taut, tense exercise, and Marc Menchaca excels as the outwardly unremarkable Man. But some of the plotting prompts an eye-roll. (The paper key-retrieval trick? Really?).

And you couldn’t exactly call it innovative.

Extras Commentary; director interview; promo. Ian Berriman

Plurality certainly doesn’t want for an intriguing set-up: after a fatal bus crash, investigators implant the consciousnesses of all those who perished into the mind of a man simply known as Case 193 (Tony Yang Yo-ning) in order to find out who’s responsible for a spate of child kidnappings.

Sadly, there are plot holes aplenty in this Taiwanese blend of Split and Source Code, though kudos is due to Yo-ning for giving such vivid life to his various personalities.

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Nick Setchfield

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Steve O’Brien

ews 4K X FOUR LAPSIS

RELEASED OUT NOW!

2020 | PG | Download Director Noah Hutton Cast Dean Imperial, Madeline Wise, James McDaniel, Babe Howard

The dark side of the gig economy is effectively skewered in this engaging indie satire. Ray (the magnificently named Dean Imperial) is a low-paid everyman in the US, struggling to afford the medical treatment his sickly brother desperately needs. An opportunity to make good money as a “cabler” comes up, a job that involves hauling miles of wiring through the woods, on foot, every day. Making things more complicated are the automated drones that would steal his share of the pay – a particularly nasty “incentive” to keep working – and the attentions of Anna (Madeline Wise), another cabler with insights into the dark truth behind this industry.

Noah Hutton’s directorial debut is smart and striking low-budget filmmaking; a slyly funny collision of futurist technology and the everyday, with a seam of righteous anger at its core. Although the SF elements are low key (ultimately, much of the film is a guy dragging a cart through a wood, while tapping at an app), there’s a strong vein of absurdity and some neat ideas.

There’s a lot going on here, and there are moments where Lapsis starts to creak under the weight of its worldbuilding.

A few key elements, like a workers’ revolution, don’t feel sufficiently developed. But it’s got bags of charm, and Imperial makes for an eccentric and amusing lead. Will Salmon

HELL NIGHT

Hasn’t the poor lass been through enough?

Gored of the manor RELEASED 26 JULY

1981 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Tom DeSimone Cast Linda Blair, Vincent Van Patten, Peter Barton, Kevin Brophy BLU-RAY DEBUT On the face of it, this is a textbook ’80s slasher. It has an “event” title and a group of college kids violently killed one by one, and isn’t shy of ogling a girl in suspenders. In other respects it’s a little more classy.

The set-up sees four “pledges” initiated into a fraternity by staying the night in a deserted mansion whose last owner killed all his “hideously deformed” offspring – or did he? Once the scares progress from sound effect screams and skeletons popping out of wardrobes to corpses, they realise the danger is real…

Groundbreaking? No. But the kids are decently individualised.

The dynamic between Linda Blair’s Marti, a blue-collar gal who gets a chance to show off her car mechanic skills, and Osmondshaired rich boy Jeff (Peter Barton) works rather well. Gothic exteriors, period fancy dress and use of candlelight lend the film

some of the ambience of an earlier era of horror. At the same time, expect decapitation. The film has its moments beyond simply the set-piece kills though, with Steadicam dashes through hidden tunnels especially effective.

Extras 101 Films reuses the bonuses shot for the 2018 US release. Interviews with stars Linda Blair and Peter Barton, the director, the writer, a producer, and the production designer total 146 minutes. Only Blair’s rather vague, rambling contribution disappoints; director Tom DeSimone has particularly sharp recall.

Pleasingly, these different accounts don’t have a wearying amount of overlap. Four more cast are paired up for “conversation” pieces (52 minutes) and, charmingly, seem delighted to be reunited. More pieces explore the mechanics of the kills (22 minutes) and location filming (seven minutes). A 1999 DVD commentary by the director/ two producers/Blair is carried over. Plus: trailer; TV/radio spots; a gallery drawing on the crew’s collections; booklet. Ian Berriman According to actor Vincent Van Patten, a pre-fame Kevin Costner was part of the crew, working as one of the grips.

It’s a busy month for Ultra HD releases! Here are four highlights, all out now.

GHOST IN THE SHELL, the classic 1995 anime about a cyborg agent hunting a mysterious hacker, is the only one with new bonuses: a four-voice commentary and two featurettes running about half an hour. The Steelbook Collector’s Edition comes with six art cards and a poster. We said: “A cyberpunk thriller infused with existential angst… Transforms hardware, combat and cityscapes into painted poetry.” Rian Johnson’s time travel thriller LOOPER centres on a hired killer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who terminates people sent back from the future. But when Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis) lands on his killing mat, he gets away…

We said: “Along the way there’s glorious action, grisly surrealism, and some quotably hardboiled dialogue.” Edgar Wright’s SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD adapts Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comic about a slacker who must battle the evil exes of the girl of his dreams. We said: “Matrix cinematographer Bill Pope’s visuals are astounding, with the clashes erupting in neon madness and wellexecuted choreography that will have your blood pumping.” Finally, Lamberto Bava’s OTT 1985 horror DEMONS – co-written by Dario Argento – sees a demonic infection breaking out in a cinema screening a horror flick. We said: “The opening half-hour is the most effective, and blasts of heavy metal are annoying, but Demons’ mix of metatextuality and wince-inducing extreme gore remains hugely entertaining”.

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THE DAIMAJIN TRILOGY HOME ENTERTAINMENT

The Stone Rises RELEASED 26 JULY

1966 | TBC | Blu-ray/SVOD (films only) Directors Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Kenji Misumi, Kazuo Mori Cast Miwa Takada, Kôjirô Hongô, Hideki Ninomiya BLU-RAY DEBUT The latest obscurity to be plucked from the archives of Japanese studio Daiei

by Arrow Video is this trio of period tales. Inspired by the Golem legend, each sees peasants struggling under the yoke of a wicked lord, until an angry mountain god – a majin – awakes, in the form of a towering living statue, to dispense stompy justice.

Sounds very Godzilla, but if you’re expecting non-stop kaiju-style action you’ll be disappointed. They’re essentially samurai drama – until the last 15

minutes or so, when Daimajin finally rocks up.

Though billed as a trilogy, they’re only thematically linked.

Daimajin sets the template: black and white good vs evil, with the children of a murdered lord pitted against his usurper – a man prone to maniacal laughter. Return Of Daimajin recycles key elements, simply placing them in a different setting: the dishy young principals, the demonstratively wicked villain, bursts of chaotic swordplay, punishment by crucifixion, a priestess’s tears affecting the majin… So many elements, in fact, that it feels a little redundant.

Wrath Of Daimajin mixes things up with cutesy boys’ adventure, as four lads trek across the majin’s mountain to free enslaved relatives. Accidentally they do,

“Need to lose a couple of stone. I crack myself up.”

by waking you-know-who.

Strikingly, one drowns, but very little is made of it; this remains a franchise more aimed at adults.

Of the three, Return is the most visually striking: Kenji Misumi (later to helm Lone Wolf And Cub) conjures some attractive images, like a funeral at dusk, the mourners in silhouette. But it’s in the final act that all three films really impress, thanks to effective compositing of live action and model work. The majin itself cuts a majestic figure as it strides about, juxtaposed with ominous purplish clouds or swirling snow, glaring sternly at its next set of stompees.

Extras Substantial, if at times dry. About 40 minutes of an epic 87-minute interview with cinematographer Fujio Morita sees him watching footage from the trilogy and passing comment.

It’s in the final act that all three films really impress

It can get rather technical. A video essay (17 minutes) also discusses the special effects. A rather baffling 34-minute chat with a professor who had a high school summer job working on Return has many observations, but little insight.

In accordance with the Blu-ray Talking Heads Act of 2008, there’s a Kim Newman intro (15 minutes).

Each film has expert commentary; hat doffed to Stuart Galbraith IV, whose Wrath track combines insights into Japanese culture with some very witty mockery. Plus: four minutes of storyboard to scene comparisons; US titles for the first two films; trailers; galleries. You also get a 100-page book, three postcards and a poster.

Ian Berriman

The location filming for Wrath had to be completely redone, after all the footage got scratched during processing.

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KILLING BITES RELEASED 19 JULY

2018 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Yasuto Nishikata Cast Sora Amamiya, Wataru Hatano, Maaya Uchida, Sumire Uesaka

Today, anime is often treated as respectable. This 12-episode series promises something trashier and more disreputable, though anyone wanting something really extreme will be let down.

A wimpy male college student discovers that human-animal hybrids fight to the death in contests orchestrated by Japan’s secret rulers. He ends up as the “handler” for a razor-clawed girl called Hitomi who’s halfratel (honey badger). She enters a battle royale on a wooded island, where other fighters are spliced with hippos, gorillas and crocodiles.

The fighters are fundamentally human; an Island Of Dr Moreau-style scenario where they were fundamentally animals could have been more disturbing. As a fight show, it’s fun if you’re okay with the goofy conventions of battle anime, with an announcer shouting relevant animal facts like a crazed David Attenborough. As for sex: it’s mostly torrents of underwear shots, plus a shamefully funny sapphic interlude.

There are far nastier moments of sexual assault, though the males usually come out worst. The later episodes up their game with some strong scenes, while the ambiguous ending points to later developments in the source manga, unlikely to be animated.

Extras None. Andrew Osmond

SETTLERS

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Dome On The Range RELEASED 30 JULY

2021 | TBC | Download/some cinemas Director Wyatt Rockefeller Cast Sofia Boutella, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Brooklynn Prince, Nell Tiger Free

FEAR STREET Parts One & Two

“And they said we could work, rest and play.”

Mars might have been an equally appropriate title, as this chamber piece has echoes of Duncan Jones’s Moon: a small cast of characters (never more than three); a character discovering the true nature of their world; an anthropomorphised robot. There’s a dash of Z For Zachariah too.

A family are living on an isolated Martian homestead. After “LEAVE” is daubed on a window, it emerges that they’re not the original owners… The film hands out tiny scraps of information in miserly fashion, with the bigger picture never spelled out. It takes

even longer before the shoe finally drops: there’s an analogy for coercive control here, the way abusers can cause a victim’s horizons to shrink. It’s an original subject for a sci-fi film to tackle.

Key performances are strong: Ismael Cruz Córdova maintains the ambiguity needed to make his newcomer more than simply an obvious hate figure, and as the nine-year-old Remmy, Brooklynn Prince effortlessly takes the weight of having much of the film framed from her perspective.

Add plausible production design, and a guitar-heavy Nitin Sawhney score which evokes a suitably Western vibe, and you have an effective, if perhaps overly slow-burn, mood piece.

Ian Berriman

Vioolsdrif, an area in the north-west of South Africa near the border with Namibia, stood in for the Red Planet.

“Yeah, I’ve cut out all carbs.

It’s working wonders.”

Tales From The Shadyside RELEASED OUT NOW!

2021 | 18 | SVOD Director Leigh Janiak Cast Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Julia Rehwald NETFLIX This ambitious and gleefully entertaining horror trilogy (of which at press time only the first two films were available for review) may be based on a book series from the ’90s, but that doesn’t stop it feeling 100% fresh.

Set across three distinct time periods – 1994, 1978 and 1666 – the films follow the teenage residents of Shadyside, Ohio as they attempt to take down a bunch of serial killers. Meanwhile, they uncover

the history of a witch’s curse that could be the reason behind the history-spanning sprees.

A pop culture mash-up peppered with meta moments, this is a series that loves old-school horror movies as much as it does the RL Stine novels upon which it’s loosely based. Part One: 1994 delivers nods to the likes of Scream and The Blair Witch Project, not to mention AOL chatrooms, My So-Called Life and Sophie B Hawkins. Part Two: 1978 goes full Friday The 13th with a summer camp screamer that neatly ups the ante – and the gore.

It’s pretty complex: older and younger versions of characters appear in different timelines, while repeated imagery (blood-

stained shirts, nosebleeds, buzzing flies) echoes across the ages. At its bleeding heart, this is a story of straight white entitlement vs queer and non-white oppression.

The films are laudably diverse and, for the most part, writer/director Leigh Janiak handles her big horror melting pot with skill.

The mythology-setting nature of Part One means its first act is somewhat dizzying and heavy-

handed, but by the time Part Two rolls around, the series has become as engaging, emotionally affecting and thrillingly bonkers as the likes of American Horror Story.

Assuming Part Three (due 16 July) doesn’t fumble the ball, this could be your new favourite horror trilogy. Josh Winning Stranger Things showrunner Ross Duffer is thanked in the credits – he’s the husband of director Leigh Janiak.

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HOME ENTERTAINMENT “Could flog this at the farmers’ market…”

THE UNHOLY

There’s Something About Mary than a general sleazebag. Cricket Brown is Alice, aged up from the 2021 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download/VOD book’s 11-year-old – a deaf/mute girl who acquires both speech and Director Evan Spiliotopoulos miraculous healing powers after Cast Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Cricket visions of the Virgin Mary. But Brown, William Sadler, Katie Aselton Mary is – of course – not what By rights this Catholic horror she seems… should have come out about 35 One suspects an ’80s take might years ago, being based on a minor have been rather less reminiscent James Herbert novel from 1983. of J-Horror – whenever the evil Debutant director Evan force shows its true nature, it Spiliotopoulos is a fan, which moves in a familiarly herky-jerky explains its belated resurrection. fashion. It would probably be He transplants the tale from gorier, too; The Unholy is too a sleepy English village to tasteful to be truly faithful. It has Massachusetts, and grafts on the some effective moments, like a New England tradition of “kern statue of Mary crumbling via CGI, babies” (dolls buried by farmers but is too by the (holy) book to for good luck). inspire adoration.

Extras None. Calvin Baxter He also makes journalist hero Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kern babies were typically woven from doing his best “cool uncle” or wheat, but The Unholy used 19th century Queen Anne dolls as reference. routine) a disgraced fabulist rather corn RELEASED 2 AUGUST

THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN Trouble and squeak RELEASED 26 JULY

1973 | PG | Blu-ray Director Mike Nichols Cast George C Scott, Trish Van Devere, Paul Sorvino, Fritz Weaver BLU-RAY DEBUT Based on Robert Merle’s 1967 novel, this tale of weaponised dolphins collides two signature ’70s concerns: burgeoning ecological awareness and the Nixon-era paranoia that drove such nervy thrillers as The Parallax View.

It’s an unlikely brew, and an even more improbable fit for helmer Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry, who had found an urbane chemistry

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with The Graduate. In fact, this film was a contractual obligation for Nichols, and it shows. While the marketing pushed the thriller elements – a plot to kill the President, barely present in the actual movie – he brings precious little tension or energy, preferring to craft what’s essentially a lyrical tone poem, more Jonathan Livingston Seagull than Seven Days In May. Still, the dolphins themselves are never less than captivating, and if the movie tips into the mawkish, star George C Scott’s irascible rasp is never far away.

Extras Entertaining, in-depth reminiscence from co-star Jon Korkes (44 minutes), telling tales

“Should I free Willy now?”

“No, George, no!” out of school about George C Scott; second assistant director Michael Haley is equally frank, especially when it comes to sharing his predilection for on-set mooning…

There are archival interviews with a wry Buck Henry (12 minutes) and actors Leslie Charleson (seven minutes) and Edward Herrmann (13 minutes). A commentary on selected scenes (32 minutes) finds film historian Sheldon Hall

mounting a persuasive, clearly heartfelt defence of a film essentially disowned by its own director. This limited edition Blu-ray also includes the trailer (plus commentary), TV and radio spots, a gallery and a 36-page booklet with essays and interview extracts. Nick Setchfield Roman Polanski was originally intended to direct. He was working on the project at the time of the Manson murders.

ews ROUND UP MY HEART CAN’T ARCHIVE BEAT UNLESS YOU TELL IT TO

RELEASED OUT NOW!

RELEASED OUT NOW!

2021 | TBC | Download Director Jonathan Cuartas Cast Patrick Fugit, Ingrid Sophie Schram, Owen Campbell

Question: when is a vampire movie not a vampire movie? Jonathan Cuartas’s low-key debut may play with some of the tropes of vampire fiction, yet the word itself is never uttered. And though Owen Campbell’s Thomas is apparently allergic to daylight and craves human blood for food, there’s an ever-present question mark over whether there’s a supernatural element at play here.

Certainly Cuartas’s focus is less on Thomas and more on his siblings, Dwight (an understated Patrick Fugit) and Jessie (a fabulously icy Ingrid Sophie Schram), who are tasked with procuring human victims for their frail, pallid-skinned brother. Cuartas, directing from his own script, keeps the story tight on the main three characters, aided by his brother Michael’s intimate, Academyratio cinematography and Andrew Rease Shaw’s throbbing, doomy score.

There’s a little of George Romero’s Martin in here, and a soupçon of Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In, but for the most part, My Heart Can’t Beat is its own rare thing.

Cuartas’s movie may be too reticent and ambiguous for some horror fans, but those seeking something more elliptical will find much to love here. Steve O’Brien

IREZUMI

RELEASED OUT NOW!

2020 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Director Gavin Rothery Cast Theo James, Stacy Martin, Rhona Mitra, Toby Jones

1966 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Yasuzô Masumura Cast Ayako Wakao, Akio Hasegawa, Gaku Yamamoto, Kei Satô

1927’s Metropolis gave us one of the primal SF icons in Maria, the machine goddess aspiring to humanity. There’s an echo of Fritz Lang’s silent classic in this, the directorial debut of Moon’s Gavin Rothery.

Divided by almost a century, they share the striking central visual of an elegant artificial woman, and a concern with the implications of technological resurrection.

But Archive is also wired into a very contemporary conversation about the rise of AI, the possibilities of existence beyond the flesh. Theo James is George Almore, a robotics specialist seeking to upload the lingering consciousness of his dead wife into a new, mechanical body. He’s not a wholly sympathetic figure. In fact he’s a bit of a tech bro, and the film finds its emotional power as we witness the moral impact of his work, not least on his own creations.

Given Rothery’s background as a concept artist it’s no surprise that this is an impeccably designed world, with visuals that punch above budget. Archive is steeped in the functional aesthetic of ’70s SF cinema, with a clear nod to Silent Running in its delightfully boxy robot prototypes.

But Rothery also captures the existential shudder of that decade’s output: the complexity of human emotion that transcends the tech; the heart beyond the chrome and cables.

Extras None. Nick Setchfield

BLU-RAY DEBUT In this Japanese period drama, adapted from a 1910 short story by the director who went on to make the even more perverse Blind Beast, a young woman is kidnapped and sold into geisha life, then takes cold-blooded revenge – largely by manipulating male admirers.

Why is this our concern?

Because she’s also tattooed on the back (“irezumi” is Japanese for tattoo) with a giant spider.

Its malign influence may explain her actions. Although she isn’t exactly an angel to begin with…

As is often the case with tales of avenging women, Irezumi has its cake and eats it. On the one hand, it’s a tale of female empowerment. On the other, scenes like the ones where Otsuya (Ayako Wakao) receives her tattoo, or is beaten with a stick, seem distinctly erotically charged, with much nearorgasmic gasping. It’s a film with a nice line in sharply tart dialogue (“You’ll make me vomit if you touch me!”), and atmospheric sequences of misty or snowy environments – doubly impressive given that it was all shot in a studio.

Extras A 10-minute intro and 13-minute video essay by two Japanese cinema experts provide further context; the latter, which makes use of the cinematographer’s script notations, is rather dry fare.

A third film scholar provides commentary. Plus: gallery; trailer; booklet.

Ian Berriman

The latest take on the videogame franchise, MORTAL KOMBAT (4K/ Blu-ray/DVD/download/ VOD, out now) features Lewis Tan as an MMA fighter training to battle the forces of Outworld.

We said: “The editing is so quick that it wastes a lot of the raw talent, and for all the battles here, there is no actual competition… a gigantic tease with little pay-off.” Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes, a Making Of, and pieces on fan-favourite characters, Easter eggs and fight choreography. Shot-oniPhones indie flick THRESHOLD (Blu-ray, out now) follows a brother and sister on a road trip after a cult ritually bind her to a stranger so they experience the same sensations. We said: “Their (largely improvised) bonding sessions eventually become a bore… What passes for a dramatic climax is perfunctory and risible.”

The extensive extras include a feature-length Making Of. Finally, the reissues of Reeltime Pictures’ “Myth Makers” Doctor Who interviews continue, with a new range focused on production staff. THE JON PERTWEE YEARS Volume One (DVD, out now) includes vintage chats with producer Barry Letts, script editor Terrance Dicks, writer Don Houghton, and directors Christopher Barry and Paul Bernard. Finally: the latest TV box set deluge includes a complete set of the Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg-produced time travel comedy FUTURE MAN (DVD), What We Do In The Shadows spinoff WELLINGTON PARANORMAL season one (Blu-ray/DVD) and WYNONNA EARP season four (Blu-ray/DVD).

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BOOKS

from Princess Mononoke; others summoning visions of Cthulhu) are worshipped as gods. Being kind to the planet is now a religion, and anybody who doesn’t make eco-amends for cutting down a tree is a social pariah.

Into this post-apocalyptic landscape steps our narrator, Ven, a former monk who finds himself working for a rich gangster, Georg, in order to spy on him. Georg’s disdain for the kakuy’s message of eco-friendly living, and his sacrilegious drive for money and power, inevitably leads to a war across the shattered cities of future Europe. So the stage is set, Avatar-style, for a battle between peace-loving, tree-hugging types and a cavalcade of machinery designed to destroy everything that dares to be leafy and green.

As usual with North’s work, this sounds pretty grim – and it is, particularly as poor Ven is constantly finding himself in terrible, often painful trouble.

But North has a keen wit – Ven’s wisecracks tend to come from nowhere to lighten otherwise unbearable scenes – and she’s adept at skewering politicians and their lust for glory. Despite and slaughtering, they unleash a the novel’s far-future setting, she’s fiery Hell as a punishment for also able to squeeze in some RELEASED 22 JULY recognisably contemporary satire: 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook our wrongdoings, flattening everything in sight. As illogical as the remnants of England, for Author Claire North that may sound – shades of the example, are now walled-off from Publisher Orbit infamous US military line “We had the rest of Europe – a BrexitIt can’t have escaped to destroy the village in order to related theme the author also anybody’s attention that humans save it” – it’s certainly effective, played with in her 2018 novel 84K. are bad news for planet Earth. Our and the kakuy are able to go back Notes has a solid-gold premise. species is causing so much havoc to a nice, comfy sleep with our Unfortunately there’s just a tad too that we’re hurtling towards an pesky desecration stamped out. much in the way of politics. utterly preventable destruction – A little disappointingly, perhaps, Different governments bicker and a destruction that, sadly, we’re we don’t get to enjoy the carnage fight; representatives bitch and sharing with every other species first-hand, as the book picks up double-cross each other; backs are at the same time. many years after the kakuy have stabbed and Georg’s machinations According to Notes From The smited humanity with their become, after a while, rather Burning Age, however, we’re righteous fury. Instead, we follow tedious. Despite its importance, heading for a well-deserved the pockets of society that have Ven’s spy mission is the least comeuppance. That’s because, managed to survive in the ruins – interesting aspect of the book; his contrary to what we’ve thought all most of whom are utterly terrified search for a fellow undercover spy these years, we’re not the alpha of waking the kakuy for a second is a little lacklustre. The real species on dear old Mother Earth time. So the giant creatures (some fascination here lies in discovering after all. Like Godzilla waking reminiscent of the forest spirit what these future humans value from centuries of slumber rather from our own time – and the miffed to have reached the occasional glimpses of the kakuy, Nuclear Age, the “kakuy” of Claire who are surely worthy of a book North’s world are prodded awake all to themselves. Jayne Nelson by our disregard for the In May, North stood for the Green Party environment. After setting eyes on during council by-elections in Islington under her real name, Catherine Webb. humanity’s polluting, plundering

NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE Green chide monsters

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As usual with North’s work, this sounds pretty grim – and it is

THREE BULLETS RELEASED OUT NOW!

240 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Melvin Burgess Publisher Andersen Press

Three Bullets is the first of a triptych of YA novels collectively known as Ruled Britannia: three stories by different authors set in the same nightmarish, near-future UK. It’ll be followed by Pete Kalu’s One Drop and Tariq Mehmood’s The Second Coming. Both are going to have to work hard to match Melvin Burgess’s opening volley.

Although there’s a huge sci-fi concept at its heart – a process that reprograms minds – essentially Three Bullets is a literary road movie. In an England rapidly falling to the far right, Marti Kalu pretty much has all the cards stacked against her: she’s black and she’s trans.

With her sister and baby brother she reluctantly undertakes a journey from the relative haven of Manchester to the Bloods heartland of the south to save their dad from being brain-rewired into a good little slave of the homophobic, racist state.

Selfish, cowardly and opportunist (her own selfappraisal), Marti is an utterly compelling, unreliable narrator, and Burgess gives her a strong, witty voice to tell this uncompromising tale. She encounters horrors and undergoes hardships that will make your stomach churn, but the book is never without hope.

And while the narrative meanders at times, it never runs out of memorable setpieces painted in gutsy, playful prose.

Dave Golder

ews THE MOTHER FAULT

WHEN THE SPARROW FALLS

368 pages | Hardback/ebook/ audiobook Author Kate Mildenhall Publisher HarperCollins

376 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Neil Sharpson Publisher Solaris Books

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The descent of a troubled country into fascism is something we’re unfortunately all too familiar with; in Kate Mildenhall’s novel it’s driven by climate change. As the Australian landscape becomes ever more unviable, the Department takes ever more control over people’s lives, encouraging them to inform on their neighbours and moving those who don’t fit into “BestLife” estates.

Making her way through this new reality is Mim, mother of two young children and wife to Ben, an engineer who’d been working at an Indonesian mine but has just gone missing – and the Department now seems very keen to ensure Mim doesn’t go anywhere. She’s desperate to find him, heading first to her childhood home and then further afield, kids in tow, unsure if he’s even alive.

A lot of themes are explored, some more successfully than others. It’s hard to ignore the children’s questions about why their parents’ generation didn’t do more to protect the planet, while Australia’s treatment of refugees also resonates. But despite its billing as a “literary thriller with a dystopian twist”, the plot is never that gripping.

Where it succeeds is in its portrayal of the reality of families, with children who need feeding and entertaining even while running for their lives. Rhian Drinkwater

RELEASED OUT NOW!

TOMORROW

Life, the universe and everything and being a character in a novel, you’ve got to choose the latter, haven’t you?”

294 pages | Hardback/ebook Throughout Tomorrow, the idea Author Chris Beckett of overcoming a creative block – Publisher Corvus or, at the very least, uncertainty After a “period of not writing about what to do next – recurs. at all”, notes Chris Beckett in his As to whether it’s important to acknowledgements, his first draft overcome such a block, this seems of Tomorrow was completed in six to be something on which Beckett weeks. He began work during has mixed thoughts. Ironically, lockdown, and it shows. There’s there’s a sense his narrator’s a fever-dream quality to a book obsession with writing in a new about a would-be author who way about the human condition wants to write a novel that comes at the expense of encompasses everything. meaningful connections.

Within a few pages, it’s clear Like Beckett’s flawed this plan has taken an unexpected meditation on Brexit, Two Tribes, turn as, in a narrative that jumps this is fiction that’s far removed across time and space, we see our from the SF that made his name – author in captivity, caged by and spends rather too long picking guerrillas. It’s not conducive at themes of class, hypocrisy and to writing a metaphysical authenticity/inauthenticity, masterpiece – although when is it without ever reaching any ever the right time to craft such a particular conclusions. book? As Beckett’s protagonist Stylistically, it sees Beckett notes during happier days, spent working towards a kind of in splendid isolation in a remote slipstream magical realism. It’s cabin by a river, “If you have a as if writing the book were a choice between writing a novel sustained effort by Beckett to get somewhere new, something he achieves in the latter pages. As a result, Tomorrow lingers long in the mind. Jonathan Wright RELEASED OUT NOW!

This is fiction far removed from the SF that made his name

The first line, “Tomorrow I’m going to begin my novel”, is something Beckett said – his wife noted it’d make a good opening.

In the future, the world is governed by three regional super-AIs, and humans can abandon their birth bodies to exist instead as digital downloads: either in a virtual world online where anything is possible, or in new, “created” bodies if they need to return to the real world. But one country holds out. Caspian (the renamed Azerbaijan) is the stronghold of the New Humanists, who live a life free of anything resembling AI. Nikolai South is an unambitious security officer there, who tries to keep his head down. He unwittingly places himself on his superiors’ radar after investigating the murder of a notorious Caspian journalist, who, it’s discovered during his autopsy, is actually an AI. Can opened, worms everywhere. International incident threatened. And South finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy he’s been trying to turn a blind eye to for decades.

More film noir than The Matrix, Neil Sharpson’s debut is a witty, playfully philosophical exploration of what it means to be human in a digital age. South is a hugely entertaining narrator with an individual voice, giving credence to every outlandish plot turn, and the worldbuilding is vibrant and detailed. Sharpson even pulls off a cheeky literary sleight of hand that’s fully justified both in terms of plot and the book’s themes. Dave Golder AUGUST 2021 | SFX MAGAZINE |

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BULLET TIME A BOOK IN BULLET POINTS

ASSASSIN’S ORBIT

RELEASED 22 JULY

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP Talk and slash RELEASED OUT NOW!

400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Grady Hendrix Publisher Titan Books

Imagine the most famous slasher movie franchises were all actually based on true cases.

Imagine what those teenage survivors would look like as grown women trying to come to terms with their ordeal. That’s the kicking off point for the latest from Grady Hendrix, author of My Best Friend’s Exorcism and The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires, who’s now taking on this ’80s horror genre.

Focusing on the group therapy sessions attended by six “final girls”, its narrator is Lynette, the survivor of a Silent Night, Deadly Night-style massacre. The group has been meeting for 16 years and its members are frankly sick to death of each other and on the verge of disbanding, when some shocking news shakes them to the core: once again, someone is trying to pick them off one by one.

The Final Girl Support Group might be the most meta of Hendrix’s books yet – which is

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saying something given his first novel, Horrorstör, was designed to look like an Ikea catalogue and involved his lead getting trapped in a nightmarish version of the furniture shop. With each character’s backstory based loosely on a real franchise – Halloween, Friday The 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and so on – and characters named in reference to the actresses, it’s a novel about slasher films, reimagined as true crime, which is itself structured like a slasher.

Packed with peril, full of twists, and zipping along at a pace, reading it almost replicates the experience of watching one of the classics. If it’s perhaps not as emotional as some of his other work, that’s largely because of the subject matter – but fortunately Hendrix’s skill at writing believable female characters hasn’t waned.

Rammed with Easter eggs, this is a must read for stalk ‘n’ slash fans and another hit from a horror writer at the top of his game.

Rosie Fletcher

Those character names include Marilyn, Heather and Adrienne (after Marilyn Burns, Heather Langenkamp and Adrienne King).

428 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook Author John Appel Publisher Solaris Books

The publicity blurb describes Assassin’s Orbit as “The Golden Girls meets The Expanse”. Which is half-right.

It reads so much like an Expanse tribute act it may as well be called Nextpanse. But The Golden Girls? Well, the one refreshing element is does offer is a number of mature, powerful women in all the main roles.

But what’s the point, when they’re all so blandly written they could easily be swapped for men? Oh, and there aren’t many gags.

From its generic title onwards, this is a workmanlike space opera. In the far future, humanity has abandoned Earth following a mind-altering plague, and now exists as a number of fractious deep space colonies. The planet Ileri is on the verge of voting whether to enter a commonwealth of planets, when a multiple murder sparks an inter-world incident that could snowball into all-out war. The ensuing inquiry brings together investigators – private and military – from various planets and uncovers, you guessed it, a conspiracy involving that dreaded plague.

If you desperately need a new space opera to fill a gap, Assassin’s Orbit just about fulfils its function in terms of plot twists and action. But, to be honest, you’d be better off re-reading a dog-eared copy of Leviathan Wakes. Dave Golder

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST 80 YEARS RELEASED OUT NOW!

192 pages | Hardback Authors Fabio Licari, Marco Rizzo Publisher Titan Books A flag-saluting celebration of Marvel’s star-spangled Avenger.

Cap’s story is told decade by decade, from ’40s birth to ’60s resurrection and more recent incarnation as a post-9/11 icon.

Select comic covers, pages and panels bring colour and vibrancy – plus there’s the occasional cool piece of ephemera, like a brass Sentinels of Liberty badge from the ’40s.

Key creators are profiled: Kirby, Steranko, Englehart and so on – but only up until the ’90s.

The focus is strictly on the comics, all but ignoring Cap’s existence in other media. So this isn’t quite the definitive history the character deserves.

Geek out over the double-page spread of Cap’s multiple shields!

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REISSUES THIS POISON HEART

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400 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook Author Kalynn Bayron Publisher Bloomsbury

Gifted with gorgeous cover art and bursting with evocative worldbuilding, This Poison Heart is a feast – and with its luxurious descriptions of leafy green things, it’ll make plant-lovers crave a trip to the garden centre.

Starting off in New York, its cast of characters rotate around Briseis, an orphan who can make plants thrive wherever she goes; for instance, when she walks down a tree-lined avenue, all the branches lean towards her. An unexpected inheritance sees Briseis move to the countryside to live in a mysterious mansion. There she discovers a hidden garden full of deadly plants, an enigmatic rich girl with a Big Secret, and a history no kid from Brooklyn would ever expect.

The first three-quarters of the book are fabulous: rich prose, convincing characters, fizzing dialogue (Briseis’s adoptive mums are adorable).

What’s tragic is that the final act is rushed. It’s a firework display of twists, action and revelations, all perfectly thought-out but delivered with the finesse of a gender-reveal party that starts a wildfire.

There’s no time to consider any of the surprises before there’s another and another and another. It’s exhausting. At least there’ll be breathing space before the sequel, which hopefully won’t suffer the same unsubtle climax. Jayne Nelson

SCORPION

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326 pages | Hardback/ebook/ audiobook Author Christian Cantrell Publisher Michael Joseph

In most of its chapters, Scorpion functions as a gripping real-world espionage thriller.

Okay, it’s set in the near-future, with some super-advanced technology, but the cat-andmouse dynamic between a CIA analyst and a sophisticated, maths-literate serial killer owes as much to The Silence Of The Lambs and Homeland as it does to science fiction.

The SF in Scorpion goes way beyond a few fancy gadgets and futurist predictions, however.

Author Christian Cantrell (who works for software company Adobe in his day job) clearly has a similar non-fiction reading list to Christopher Nolan, and his novel shares plenty of time-bending DNA with Tenet.

The book’s biggest strength is the way its big ideas are seamlessly integrated with its fast-paced plot. Shifting points of view between broken-butbrilliant agent Quinn Mitchell and the high-living assassin she’s chasing, Scorpion isn’t so much a whodunit as a whydunit, constantly keeping you guessing about its morally ambiguous characters’ motives.

And – aside from some slightly clumsy descriptions of female characters’ appearances – Cantrell’s worldbuilding is spot-on; this post-oil civilisation walks that fine line between feeling familiar and intriguing. It’s enough to keep you guessing all the way up to an ending few will predict.

Richard Edwards

THE 22 MURDERS OF MADISON MAY RELEASED OUT NOW!

336 pages | Hardback/ebook/ audiobook Author Max Barry Publisher Hodder & Stoughton

Why did Quantum Leap’s Dr Sam Beckett never find his way home? This multiversehopping sci-fi novel offers an answer: because travellers can only jump between universes where everything they take with them already exists. And in their original dimension?

Well, they don’t exist there any more.

While investigating the gruesome murder of estate agent Maddie May, wannabe crime reporter Felicity accidentally slides into another dimension where everything’s mostly the same, except for the bits that aren’t. In that dimension, Maddie hasn’t yet been murdered – but she soon will be, and then her killer will jump into yet another dimension to hunt down another version of her, and another, and another.

Then the brain-melting stuff begins. How much does one individual Maddie matter, if there are uncountable millions more out there? Does it count as cheating if Felicity moves in with another version of her boyfriend from back home?

And what happens to each dimension’s original Felicity when she arrives, anyway?

The crime procedural bit of the book is its least interesting element, and the killer turns out to have a depressingly familiar misogynist motive. But the multiverse stuff might keep you up at night. Sarah Dobbs

Pick of the paperbacks: THE CITY WE BECAME , 29 July, Orbit) (

by NK Jemisin. First in a trilogy, it posits that great cities can achieve sentience, with their personality embodied in an avatar. New York has six: one overall avatar, plus five for the boroughs.

Now an extradimensional entity wants to destroy the city, to usurp its space in the multiverse.

We said: “The best urban fantasy to have come along in years… Hugely entertaining, packed with brilliantly realised set-pieces, sharply drawn characters and sly jokes.”

Expect zombies, giant wolves and Fey creatures in Garth Nix’s latest, THE LEFT-HANDED BOOKSELLERS OF , out LONDON ( now, Gollancz). Set in an alternate 1983, it follows a woman who moves to the capital to search for her missing father.

Soon she’s running for her life, aided

by Merlin, one of the magical booksellers who police the mythic Old World when it intrudes on the modern world. We said: “A book bursting with imagination, but also showcasing a cheeky sense of humour and a knowing nod-andwink to our British foibles.” Finally, LIGHT , OF THE JEDI ( out now, Del Rey) is the first High Republic book, set 200 years before The Phantom Menace. After a hyperspace accident creates super-fast debris with the potential to wipe out entire star systems, the Jedi must work to avert disaster and work out what happened.

We said: “An ambitious attempt to embrace the harder SF edges of that galaxy far, far away.”

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BOOKS

SHE WHO THE STRANDING COME WITH ME BECAME THE SUN RELEASED OUT NOW!

RELEASED 22 JULY

416 pages | Hardback/ebook/ audiobook Author Shelley Parker-Chan Publisher Tor Books

Gender-swapping has become commonplace in science fiction and fantasy, but rarely is it applied to real people – and even less rarely to one as historically important as the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Yet that’s what Shelley Parker-Chan does here, and makes it work.

She’s taken the facts of the early life of the real Zhu Yuanzhang – an astonishing progression from starving peasant to monk to rebel leader – and placed a girl in his place, disguised as a boy and reliant on quick thinking and iron will.

She also does it without glossing over what life for women would have been like in Henan at the time. More liberties are taken with the Yuan protagonists, the Temur family and fictional eunuch general Ouyang, who serves a mirror of sorts to Zhu, spurring her on as he opposes her.

Aside from the genderswapping, the fantasy elements are kept to a minimum. Even the incredible feats of martial arts found in wuxia novels aren’t present here. Zhu and a few other characters can see ghosts, and rulers literally light up with the Mandate Of Heaven, a coloured fire that reveals their right to rule.

Nonetheless, if you enjoy the zero-to-hero aspect of genre fantasy and the setting of Imperial China, this is a winner.

Miriam McDonald

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352 pages | Hardback/ebook/ audiobook Author Kate Sawyer Publisher Coronet

Post-apocalyptic novels may not have quite the shine they used to after the last couple of years, but Kate Sawyer’s debut is an assured and intriguing character drama, set across two very different parts of its protagonist’s life.

In the present, Ruth meets, falls head over heels for and quickly moves in with a new boyfriend, the seemingly perfect (and perfectly awful) Alex. It’s not long, however, before their relationship sours.

In the aftermath, Ruth struggles to survive in a post-apocalyptic New Zealand, with only a stranger, Nik, for company.

Slowly, their grapple with the elements turns into a new and very different life together.

The precise details of Sawyer’s apocalypse are mostly sketched in – the odd line of dialogue here, an overheard reference there – but it doesn’t matter. These chapters have a fairy tale quality, while the contemporary sequences focus instead on Ruth’s inner life, pain and frustration.

There’s a melancholy in knowing from the start that most of the supporting characters, all vividly drawn, end up incinerated, but The Stranding is a surprisingly hopeful novel nonetheless.

Ruth is full of contradictions but an always sympathetic lead, and there’s a joy in seeing her find a strange kind of happiness – even if it takes the end of the world to get there.

Will Salmon

RELEASED 20 JULY

400 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Ronald Malfi Publisher Titan Books

Grief was the initial inspiration for Ronald Malfi’s latest novel, which sees unexpectedly widowed translator Aaron Decker discovering that his wife Allison had been hiding a secret life from him, after she’s killed in a random mall shooting.

Malfi is a Bram Stoker Award finalist for his novel Floating Staircase, and has a background in both horror and thrillers.

Despite Come With Me being touted as being for fans of Paul Tremblay and Stephen King, this sits very much in the thriller camp – a zippy crime novel with an amateur sleuth following in his late wife’s footsteps to track down an apparent serial killer.

Malfi paints Aaron’s sense of loss and his redemptive arc in sensitive strokes as his obsession with his wife’s research overtakes him, while the sense that Aaron may not be tracking a killer as much as hunting down the person that his wife thought was a killer adds a pleasing uncertainty to the trail of breadcrumbs he painstakingly follows.

This is a page-turner, without question, but hints that it might turn out to be a supernatural horror prove to be red herrings, despite the existential final coda and a couple of chapters which take on the local legend of “Gas Head”. Instead it’s a compelling, literary killerthriller that grips to the end but never feels especially original or new.

Rosie Fletcher

ALSO OUT Miles Cameron switches from fantasy to space opera for ARTIFACT SPACE (out now, Gollancz), which centres on a vast merchant vessel.

When on-the-run orphan Marca poses as a midshipman on the Greatship Athens, she gets caught up in a plot to destroy the ship. The protagonists of Catriona Silvey’s debut MEET ME IN ANOTHER LIFE (out now, HarperVoyager) keep meeting over and over – but in different lives. First time, sparks fly in a bar.

Other times they’re teacher and student, or colleagues, or father and daughter. But why? A hero with OCD is the USP of YA tale RORY HOBBLE AND THE VOYAGE TO HALIGOGEN (out now, Unbound). When his mother is abducted by the shadowy Whiffetsnatcher, 11-year-old Rory goes in pursuit, encountering alien whales and a breakaway human civilisation on a Martian moon along the way. Brian Staveley’s epic fantasy THE EMPIRE’S RUIN (out now, Tor) opens the Ashes Of The Unhewn Throne trilogy. It’s set in a world where elite soldiers ride war hawks; with their numbers dwindling, soldier Gwenna must voyage to the nesting grounds. We loved Mike Brooks’s The Black Coast, awarding it . Sequel THE SPLINTER KING (15 July, Orbit) features all manner of goodies: a palace coup, assassins, dragon riders and demonic forces.

Finally, Helene Wecker’s THE HIDDEN PALACE (22 July, Harper) revisits Chava and Ahmad of The Golem And The Jinni – magical beings passing as human – and their lives from the early 1900s to the First World War.

THE SFX AUTHOR QUESTIONNAIRE

Describe the room in which you typically write.

I prefer to write in a café or a bar or pub. I need people around me, plenty of noise, conversations. The pandemic has obviously prevented any of that, which has affected my writing habits. The routine’s been out the window.

Do you find it helpful to listen to music?

I used to listen to music all the time, but only music with lyrics, and the lyrics have to be decent.

The only exceptions related to the soundtrack to the film Black Hawk Down, where the instrumental pieces are just sublime. Then I

You might see the Malazan author down the pub…

stopped listening to music, except when the café’s own music was rubbish, in which case on went the headphones again. I find bad music more distracting than people noise, actually. Weird.

Which of your books was the most difficult to write?

Fall Of Light was a beast. The climactic event was breaking all the rules, so everything leading up to it involved a balancing act. I battled everything in that book, since I just couldn’t be sure I’d be able to pull off the ending. For me, being sure of my ending is what gives my writing momentum in the lead-up to that ending. I didn’t have that for Fall Of Light.

Is there anything about one of your books which you wish you could “fix”?

Mostly minor stuff, like getting the gender of a character wrong.

But in general, I don’t view my previous works as ongoing entities. The version of me who wrote each one is long gone. I don’t even mind the screw-ups and mistakes: they were honest.

NALLIMCAM

An early favourite was Before Adam. I loved that book

TLOH SIRHC

Steven Erikson

Were you a keen reader as a child?

I started reading novels a bit late, maybe 11 or 12. Hardy Boys mysteries, and then onto Edgar Rice Burroughs – primarily because of the Frank Frazetta cover illustrations, since I thought I was going to be an illustrator – and then RE Howard (for the same reason). An early favourite was Before Adam, by Jack London.

I loved that book.

Is there any author whose ability makes you envious?

Iain M Banks. His Culture novels continue to floor me on re-reads, and I hardly ever re-read books.

If you could recommend one book you love that’s not well known, what would it be?

Jerusalem Fire, an SF novel by Rebecca M Meluch.

What’s the strangest reader feedback you’ve ever received?

I once received a four-page single-spaced email from someone describing how much they hated my books, and all the things I did wrong. On a more positive side, I get sent pics of tattoos and character illustrations. Or notes informing me that a new child has come into the world bearing a name from one of my characters (no, not Iskaral Pust, thankfully!)

I’ve received as gifts all of Carlos Castaneda’s books, which was wonderful. And crocheted plush dolls of various characters.

What’s the biggest misconception that people have about being an author?

That we have personal assistants, and make millions – when the truth is, most of us are just stumbling along on our lonesome, and everything is hard work and nothing comes easily. Which is not really a complaint. I love what I do and wouldn’t trade it for anything else. But time management is challenging to say the least!

Steven Erikson’s latest Malazan novel, The God Is Not Willing, is out now, from Bantam Press.

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HEROES REBORN

COMICS

The other team

Spectrum, a team originally created in the ’70s as blatant pastiches of DC’s Justice League.

Publisher Marvel Comics Now, in the seven-issue miniseries Writer Jason Aaron that acts as the core of the Heroes Artists Various Reborn event, they’re suddenly the ISSUES 1-7 The best event comics best-known heroes of a drastically from Marvel usually have a clear, altered Marvel universe. This has easily grasped narrative hook, all happened thanks to the whether it’s the inter-hero conflict Avengers never having been of Civil War, or the paranoid formed, and the world has a intrigue of Secret Invasion. So new, darker status quo that only it’s strange that the latest event, a handful of characters seem to Heroes Reborn, features the be aware of. muddy central hook of “Hey, Marvel has used the “rewritten what if history was rewritten and history” gambit plenty of times the Avengers were replaced by before, so the warped world of characters that you’ve barely Heroes Reborn isn’t exactly fresh, heard of?” but writer Jason Aaron does try The characters in question to inject some variety and are the Squadron Supreme experimentation into the structure – Hyperion, Nighthawk, Power of this series. After introducing the Princess, The Blur and Doctor setup in issue one, the following RELEASED OUT NOW!

Hyperion’s power is being able to speak in headlines.

issues each focus exclusively on a different member of the Squadron, giving the story a broader scope, and highlighting the scale of this world where virtually every traditional Marvel hero is either dead, powerless or defeated. He also uses this structure to make knowing nods to the Squadron’s origins as DC pastiches – especially when dealing with the sun-powered Hyperion.

Unfortunately, having every issue feel more self-contained than usual also results in a deeply uneven read, one that’s emphasised by each issue also having a different artist.

Sometimes this works, like in issue four, where we get some brilliantly trippy cosmic visuals from James Stokoe – but more often than not it just creates a choppy, slightly disjointed tone.

A world where virtually every traditional Marvel hero is dead, powerless or defeated

Combine this with the rambling structure, and too much of the story feels like an extended prologue to the climactic issue seven, where the Squadron finally confront a plucky band of “rebel” Avengers – a status quo-restoring showdown that has its fun moments, but doesn’t feel like adequate pay-off for the build-up.

Ultimately, Heroes Reborn only really achieves lift-off when it embraces its weirder impulses; otherwise, its somewhat flat central concept and overblown melodramatic style leave this as a lower-tier Marvel event.

Saxon Bullock

This is actually the second Heroes Reborn event – the first was an unrelated reboot of the Marvel Universe back in 1996.

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BRZRKR

RELEASED OUT NOW!

Publisher BOOM! Studios Writer Keanu Reeves, Matt Kindt Artist Ron Garney ISSUES 1-3 Any Keanu Reeves fans unwilling to wait for the next John Wick instalment now have another option, as everyone’s favourite taciturn action star has branched out into the world of comics.

BRZRKR is an ongoing series created and co-written by Reeves (for the time being, anyway), and basically plays like a mash-up of John Wick, Wolverine and Highlander.

It’s the story of Berserker, an ageless warrior who’s capable of immense battle rages (and bears an unsurprising resemblance to Reeves himself). After 80,000 years of fighting, he’s now working for the US government in exchange for them researching the secret of his immortality – and hopefully also finding a way for him to finally die.

These first three issues feature some modern-day action but are largely concerned with Berserker’s early years in the Stone Age, depicted in lengthy flashbacks with plenty of primal, axe-swinging violence. BRZRKR is also ferociously gory, with artist Ron Garney bringing a hint of Frank Miller’s energy and heft to the splatter-soaked combat scenes.

There’s little here that’s revolutionary, and it’s hard to tell whether Reeves contributed much beyond some basic ideas, but what could have been a paper-thin concept is instead a pulpy thrill-ride that’s ideal for those who like their action big, bold and extremely brutal.

Saxon Bullock

ews THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN

THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN

RELEASED OUT NOW!

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Hibernia Books Writer Scott Goodall Artist Jesús Blasco

First published in the short-lived Jag from 1968-1969, The Indestructible Man has much in common with The Steel Claw, which Jesús Blasco also drew.

An ancient Egyptian soldier is entombed for a thousand years before waking up in the 20th century. The seemingly immortal Mark Dangerfield then uses his newfound superpowers to battle miscreants such as Jasper Shackleton, the so-called “most evil man in London”. However, he isn’t as invincible as his name suggests, needing to regularly renew himself in flames, while his ability to render himself invisible only lasts for a short time.

Scott Goodall’s scripts verge on the melodramatic, but he packs a lot of plot into each one-page episode, leavening the action with affectionate humour. Displaying his usual deft linework and impeccable storytelling skills, Blasco’s art never seems too busy, despite being based around a grid layout composed of an average of 15 panels (the strip benefits from more room to breathe when it switches to two-page segments for the last storyline).

Produced in association with Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics, it’s a great second salvo from Hibernia’s Fleetway Files range, which promises more lost gems to come. Stephen Jewell COLLECTION

The infamous result of eating Space Dust and Coke.

GEIGER

Nuke kid on the block

and he may be the only hope for a couple of runaway children seeking a place of safety.

Publisher Image Comics Three issues in, Geiger is Writer Geoff Johns showcasing lots of pulpy B-movie Artist Gary Frank concepts, some of which are more ISSUES 1-3 The seemingly successful than others – from giant impossible has happened: Geoff insect attacks to feudal gangs Johns has written a comic that ruling a post-apocalyptic Las isn’t published by DC. After two Vegas à la Fallout: New Vegas. decades as one of the main Johns isn’t exactly treading in creative forces behind the DC fresh territory here, and he’s also Universe, Johns has jumped ship the kind of blatantly unsubtle to Image for a new creator-owned writer who’ll have an already series with his Doomsday Clock obvious villain shoot a defenceless collaborator Gary Frank. dog just to make it absolutely clear It’s the story of Tariq Geiger, they’re evil. However, plenty of his an ordinary man with terminal strengths are also on display, from cancer who is bizarrely strong pacing to eye-catching transformed after being trapped set-pieces, while artist Gary Frank outside a shelter during a nuclear is on his usual top form. attack (maybe he should have Frank leans fully into the atomic hidden in an old fridge…). Two Western vibe with bold, striking decades later, he’s able to channel page layouts and spectacular radioactive power as well as live in splash pages. Combined with the the irradiated wastelands of corny but satisfying storytelling, it America without protection – adds up to a flawed but inventive retro sci-fi adventure that’s already heading in some potentially intriguing directions.

RELEASED OUT NOW!

Gary Frank leans fully into the atomic Western vibe

Saxon Bullock

One of the biggest influences on the writing was True Grit, the classic 1969 Western starring John Wayne.

Publisher Magma Comix/ Heavy Metal Writer Paul Cornell Artist Emma Viecelli

ISSUES 1-3 While the scientist in Mary Shelley’s classic novel has often been confused with his creation, you have to wonder who the real monster is in this compelling modern-day medical thriller.

In this case, the titular doctor is James Frankenstein, a ruthless surgeon who refuses to allow any moral questions to get in the way of achieving groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs. James remains a remote presence, with the story told from the perspective of Elizabeth Cleave, a promising young student, who inevitably falls in love with the doctor after being taken under his wing. Happy to serve up even her own sick mother to their dubious experiments, Elizabeth is a little hard to sympathise with as she completely buys into Frankenstein’s programme, showing little conscience.

After ratcheting up the tension in the first two issues, things go badly awry in #3, resulting in a heavy body count, while an intriguing final page revelation means it’s about to get personal for the duo. While recent events lend extra weight to ethical debate, writer Paul Cornell wisely minimises any reference to the ongoing pandemic. Aided by Emma Viecelli’s vibrant art and Pippa Bowland’s atmospheric colours, this is a timeless cautionary tale that would hit home at any time. Stephen Jewell

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DUNGEONS &DARK DRAGONS: ALLIANCE

GAMES & STUFF

choose to play as, the combat feels very different. Dark elf Drizzt, one of D&D’s most beloved characters, is fast, acrobatic and deals a huge amount of damage with his twin scimitars. Bruenor the dwarven king is the tank of the party, able to soak up huge amounts of damage and taunt enemies so they come after him.

Wulfgar is a hammer-swinging barbarian who can fly into a berserker rage, boosting his damage. And Catti-brie is a nimble archer who prefers to attack from afar. All four characters are incredibly fun to play, whether you’re wading into the goblin for brutal, fast-paced combat. The hordes with an axe, or taking a fighting is relentless, and by the more strategic approach and RELEASED OUT NOW! time you reach the end you’ll have focusing on defence and healing.

Reviewed on PC slain an entire bestiary of classic Our heroes are in Icewind Dale Also on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, D&D monsters, including goblins, to find the Shard, a magical Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S beholders, duergar and dragons. MacGuffin that seemingly every Publisher Wizards Of The Coast Based on RA Salvatore’s Legend villain in Faerûn wants to get their VIDEOGAME Dark Alliance is Of Drizzt novels, Dark Alliance hands on. In reality the story is Dungeons & Dragons without the sees you playing as the pretty lightweight, and soon fades dice rolls. Set in the frosty realm of Companions of the Hall, a team Icewind Dale, this action RPG of adventurers led by legendary sidelines stats, character sheets, ranger Drizzt Do’Urden. And and other role-playing standards depending on which hero you

Puttin’ On The Drizzt

“Seriously, mate, lay off the Ginsters for a bit.”

By the end you’ll have slain an entire bestiary of classic D&D monsters

into the background – which is for the best, because the battles are so frequent that it would be difficult to focus on anything more complicated.

It’s entirely possible to play and enjoy Dark Alliance solo; the difficulty level is adjusted to reflect the number of people in your party. But it’s clear the game was designed with co-op in mind.

Playing with a full party of four really brings the combat to life, enabling you to combine the heroes’ abilities and perform special team attacks.

Dark Alliance might be a little too battle-focused for some RPG fans, but the chunky combat, beautiful environments, and the developer’s obvious passion for D&D’s world and characters make it a joy to play.

Andy Kelly

Dark Alliance’s story takes place immediately following the events of RA Salvatore’s 1988 novel The Crystal Shard.

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WARHAMMER: AGE OF SIGMAR – DOMINION RELEASED OUT NOW!

Two players Publisher Games Workshop

TABLETOP GAME Age Of Sigmar’s third edition sees the tabletop fantasy game reach maturity, with a re-thought ruleset and a stronger focus on the game’s rich lore. As with last year’s Warhammer 40,000: Indomitus set, this is a big box full of plastic miniatures and a gorgeous core book. It’s a limited edition, but the book and most of the miniatures will be available separately.

The changes to the rules are smart and impactful. The magic system has had a bit of a rethink. So have Command Points, which now play a larger role. Controversially for some, the Unit Coherency rules have also changed, in an effort to eliminate players from cheekily stretching squads across the board in “conga lines”.

Meanwhile, the simple decision to number the rules makes getting to grips with the book easier than before.

The two armies included here both offer new twists on old favourites. The Stormcast Eternals have a more athletic look, led by the fantastic, angel-winged hunter Yndrasta, while the Kruleboyz – a new Orruk sub-faction – are leaner and altogether meaner than we’re used to from Games Workshop’s greenskins. The effect is two forces that look subtly darker and “realer”, and an increasingly nuanced game that now feels like the jewel in GW’s crown. Will Salmon

ews

ALSO OUT SCARLET NEXUS RELEASED OUT NOW!

Format PlayStation 5 Also on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC Publisher Bandai Namco VIDEOGAME Dual psychic protagonists fight for the fate of the world here, in a post-apocalypse drenched in anime stylings. Both battle alongside similarly gifted allies against the brain-hungry monsters known simply as Others.

Combat against these creeps is a frenetic dance of blades.

Borrowing your squadmates’ powers offers a variety of advantages, such as adding an elemental smack to attacks or making you supernaturally fleet-footed.

It’s a fun mix-and-match system that keeps fights entertaining for many hours of dungeon crawling. You can also hurl debris at enemies, but this mechanic ends up feeling nowhere near as dynamic in execution as in 2019’s similarly telekinetically themed Control.

While the fights are breezy encounters, the story drags.

The plot’s kitchen-sink approach may make for a fun drinking game but, given just how trope-laden this tale is, it feels almost irresponsible to even joke about. Worst of all, it takes little joy in piling on the clichés, playing things wearyingly straight.

Strong art direction and flashy combat may trick you into thinking there’s life in this one yet, and a talented voice cast do their best to inject some life back into proceedings, but a clunky, exposition-heavy script is the final death knell.

Jess Kinghorn

DOCTORWHO: TIME FRACTURE

Wouldn’t a Who-themed nightclub be great? (No.)

Time waster

RELEASED Running until 17 APRIL 2022

Approx 90 minutes Producers Immersive Everywhere IMMERSIVE THEATRE The Doctor’s greatest enemy here isn’t the Daleks – it’s continuity. That’s what drags down this immersive theatre experience. (The Daleks, sadly, are hardly to be seen.)

Arguably arriving 10 years late to capitalise on the show’s truly zeitgeisty success, it catapults you into UNIT’s Black Site, where scientists will shout at you for 30 minutes about what’s happening.

There’s some sort of bomb that’s causing a fracture in time – a handy plotline that allows visitors to experience various elements linked to the series.

It’s in trying to please all the different sectors of fandom that Time Fracture goes awry – there are several plotlines, and hidden rooms with different characters.

But if you’re in the wrong place at

the wrong time, you just end up going on a historical story where you meet Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci. And while the actors are great, for a show based on Doctor Who we’d like a few more monsters for our buck.

For the final scene, the immersive element goes out of the window. You’re stuck in rows watching Time Lords shouting continuity jargon for what feels like 40 minutes, in an underground room that isn’t air-conditioned. When Rassilon finally emerges, something – who knows what, exactly; as with so much of Time Fracture, it just isn’t clear – happens, and then various voices of the Doctors start shouting in sentences that have been annoyingly edited so that one starts and another finishes.

Ultimately it’s a baffling missed opportunity. Luke Smith Keep an eye out for Doctor-esque Time Lord Guides and you might get the chance to meet Davros in the flesh.

There’s loads of listenin’ stuff to tell you about.

BBC Audio’s THE QUANDERHORN COLLEXION collects all 12 episodes of The Quanderhorn Xperimentations/ Quanderhorn 2, Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall’s nerdy sci-fi comedy about a morally dubious scientist stuck in a time-loop 1952 (played by James Fleet, pictured). As we write this, they’re still available on iPlayer – but buy the download and you do get deleted scenes and interviews. Running now until 10 July, KNOT: A TRILOGY is season two of “immersive audio experience” Darkfield Radio. Revolving around “a traumatic event”, its three 20-30 minute instalments are designed to be listened to via an app, on a park bench/in a car/in a room in your house, and a blindfold is recommended (!). Visit darkfield.org/radio for more info. Lucifer fans: all eight songs featured in season 5B’s musical episode are now available to download individually, or as digital album BLOODY CELESTIAL KARAOKE JAM. Expect to pay 99p a track for the likes of Tom Ellis belting out Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”. Alan Moore’s 1996 novel VOICE OF THE FIRE, which follows 12 different characters in the Northampton region across 6,000 years, is now an audiobook, available via Audible. The narrator line-up includes Maxine Peake, Toby Jones, Mark Gatiss and Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson. Finally, podcast lovers may already know of Realm (recently rebranded from Serial Box); its slate includes Orphan Black: The Next Chapter. It has now teamed up with Apple Podcasts for REALM+; subscribe for $2.99 a month and you get early access to episodes for bingeing, plus bonus content like roundtable discussions.

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Blastermind The SFX quiz

MONTY PYTHON

And now for something completely different, as we test your knowledge of the Python team’s SF and fantasy connections Quizmaster Ian Berriman, Deputy Editor

QUESTION 1

How is Sir Nicholas de MimsyPorpington, John Cleese’s Harry Potter character, better known?

QUESTION 2

Which short was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys?

QUESTION 3

In which movie did Eric Idle play the role of Merlin?

QUESTION 4 Picture Question

QUESTION 4

QUESTION 8

QUESTION 12

QUESTION 16

Which film does this science fiction sequence come from?

QUESTION 5

Terry Jones wrote the original screenplay for Labyrinth. But who starred in the film, as Sarah?

QUESTION 6

Name any of the actors who took on Heath Ledger’s role in Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus after the star’s death.

QUESTION 7

The Palin/Jones series Ripping Yarns had an episode about an object that curses those who possesses it. What kind of object?

QUESTION 8 Picture Question S E R U T C I P O I D A R OKR , S N O I T C U D O R P A I B M U L O C © S E R U T C I P

Which TV series is John Cleese making an appearance in here?

QUESTION 9

In Gilliam’s Brazil, who played heating engineer Harry Tuttle?

QUESTION 10

Which member of the Python team recorded a Torchwood audio for Big Finish?

QUESTION 11

For which ’90s Douglas Adams project did Terry Jones write the novelisation?

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QUESTION 12 Picture Question

Supply the title missing from this movie poster.

QUESTION 13

QUESTION 17

In 2004, John Cleese was credited as the co-writer of a one-off superhero comic, True Brit.

Which superhero does it feature?

Michael Palin played a frail elderly man in a 2014 supernatural drama. QUESTION 18 Can you remember its title?

What role did Michael Palin play in Mackenzie Crook’s recent QUESTION 14 revival of Worzel Gummidge?

John Cleese appeared in two James Bond films as Q’s assistant/ QUESTION 19 the new Q. Which two?

Which actor played the title role in Terry Jones’s fantasy-comedy QUESTION 15 Erik The Viking?

Terry Gilliam got his first feature QUESTION 20 credit for the title sequence of a Vincent Price horror film. Name it. Which ’70s Doctor Who story features a guest appearance by QUESTION 16 Picture Question John Cleese, as a man who Name this magically-gifted mistakes the TARDIS for a work Python character. of modern art?

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How did you do?

Which Python character are you?

0-5 6-10 Cardinal Biggles 11-15 Mr Praline 16-19 Sir Edward Ross 20 Professor RJ Canning Gumby

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TITANS ARE BACK, BITCHES! Things aren’t looking great for Team Nightwing now that Red Hood’s in town

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TotalRecall

Personal recollections of cherished sci-fi

TheHauntedMansion

Darren Scott, Editor

Fancy an unofficial virtual visit to The Haunted Mansion? Then check out bit.ly/thmsfx and settle in for an hour of spookiness.

98 | SFX MAGAZINE | AUGUST 2021

this brings me, as someone who’s been into ghost stories and haunted houses since I was a kid, is hard to describe. When I first visited Magic Kingdom, Florida in 2000, I had no idea it was going to resonate so strongly with me.

Jump forward 20 years and I’ve since frequented both American Haunted Mansions, as well as Disneyland Paris’s Phantom Manor several times. Yes, I’m now the kind of person who has a favourite theme park ride and no, I didn’t see it coming. I have been known to use up all my Fast Pass access on any given day to come out of the ride and simply go straight back in again.

Imagine my delight when, on one of the many times I went round, the ride temporarily stopped and I got to sit and gaze at the then-recently reinstated Hatbox Ghost –

People have been known to scatter the ashes of their loved ones on the ride. Bear in mind, though, that this is very much not allowed.

Fact Attack!

The original Mansion was designed to look run-down, but Walt Disney didn’t want a dilapidated building in his theme park.

a character who’d been removed from the ride shortly after 1969, as they’d been unable to get the effect of his disappearing head to work. Oh, didn’t I mention that once you have a favourite theme park ride, there’s homework? That’s why we’re fans, after all.

Negotiations are currently under way for a new, darker movie based on the ride. Though there was a comedic Eddie Murphy film in 2003, and comic books and novels have sporadically appeared – and Muppets Haunted Mansion is coming this year – I’ve always been surprised at how little cross-over there’s been given that the ride’s been around 50 years and is a huge part of Disney lore. Maybe I should take another ride, to refresh my memory…

Darren wouldn’t mind a hitch-hiking ghost.

The 1969 LP The Story And Song From The Haunted Mansion includes references to scenes that didn’t make the final attraction.

From Halloween to Christmas each year, California and Tokyo update the ride to include The Nightmare Before Christmas.

T R O S E R D N A L Y E N S I D / K C O D U S AUH SOJ ©

While most of the world has been desperate to get outdoors since March 2020, I’ve been counting down the days until I can get back inside. One abode in particular, that is – Disney’s The Haunted Mansion. A “dark ride” (ie indoors) located in five different Walt Disney theme parks, the Mansion debuted in California’s Disneyland in 1969. It takes guests on a ghostly journey via “Doom Buggies” through the house and grounds of a manor occupied by 999 ghosts.

But there’s always room for one more…

“Foolish Mortals” are guided through the experience by their “Ghost Host”, touring the corridors, attic and graveyard, via a seance and a party of the undead in the grand hall. The joy

ZZ Top embarks on one last world tour.