2017-11-01+SciFiNow

star st ar wars: wars: the th e last la st jedi je di LUKE RETURNS RETURNS.. REY RISES. KYLO STRIKES STRIKES BACK.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Can The Rock reboot  you  y ourr ch chil ildh dhoo ood? d? Charlie Brooker reveals new series nightmares

Hoff, KITT & a true 80s classic

 Just  Justic ice e Leag League ue prizes inside!  Will Sm  Will Smit ith h fights magic in cop SF Bright

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GUILLERMO DEL DEL TORO TORO // DARK HELLRAISER  /  /// TAKA AKASH SHII MI MIIIKE   HUMANS // ANDY WEIR

Ranking the genre’s best follow-up flicks

A new Folio collector’s edition H. P. LO LOVECRAFT VECRAFT

THE CALL OF

CTHULHU & OTHER WEIRD ST STORIES ORIES

Introduced by

Alan Moore With illustrations by

Dan Hillier ‘The twentiethcentury horror story’s dark and baroque prince’ STEPHEN KING ALSO AVAILABLE

l print signed by Dan Hillier.

Available exclusively from www.foliosociety.com

SFN 139 Welcome

It’s hard to believe it’s only been two years since Star Wars  returned to our screens with The Force Awakens, and it’s just as remarkable how, in such a relatively short space of time, we have gone from cautious optimism to expecting excellence. With the first chapter in the new trilogy and Rogue One, we have become accustomed to a certain standard, and that’s wonderful. But no series can simply sit back and coast. Nostalgia is all very well and good and having it catered to is as joyful an experience as treating  yourself to a box of Weetos, but it’s vital that our movie franchises continue to push themselves and push us as an audience. There can be a danger when it comes to films like this that we as fans feel that we have the right to dictate story, and it’s interesting that Mark Hamill says in our interview that he was taken aback by where writer-director Rian  Johnson wanted to take Luke. Now, while there’s the instinctive ‘who knows better than Mark Hamill?’ response, the star himself acknowledges that Star Wars  needs to take risks. We don’t just go to the movies to bask in the warm glow of comfort, we go to be challenged, to be shocked, to be excited. That seems to be the mission statement for a lot of the films and shows we’re covering this issue, from Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror  to Netflix’s new horror series Dark , not to mention an interview with Japan’s most dangerous director, Takashi Miike. Oh, and Will Smith buddies up  with an Orc in Bright . And if you are in the market for pure nostalgia, we hope you enjoy our complete guide to Knight Rider.

 Jonathan Hatfull Editor

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GET EXCITED ABOUT TOMB RAIDER  Yes, we’ve been burned by video game adaptations before. So many times. But this really could be the one to buck the trend. For a start, there’s an excellent cast, including Walton Goggins, Dominic West, Kristin Scott Thomas and Daniel Wu, with the brilliant Alicia  Vikander in the lead role. And if they do stick as closely to the recent reboot game as they seem to be, there’s no reason why this couldn’t be the Lara Croft movie we’ve been waiting for.

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SCIFINOW 139 Contents

PORTAL 08 The Shape Of Water

Guillermo del Toro tells us about his simply incredible monster love story.

12 Matt Reeves

One-on-one with the War For The Planet Of The Apes  and The Batman director.

FEATURES 20 Star Wars: The Last Jedi

We sit down with the cast to talk secrets, shocks and Luke in our massive The Last Jedi   special.

36 The Greatest Sequels Ever Made

From Superman II  to Wrath of Khan… who said sequels were bad?

42 Black Mirror

Charlie Brooker tells us what nightmares we can expect from Season Four of Black Mirror .

48 Jumanji

We decide to roll the dice, trust The Rock and head into the star-studded sequel.

54 Dark

Forget Stranger Things , never mind The Returned … meet your new favourite mystery series.

60 Most Beautiful Island

20

We talk to the writer-director-star of the chiller you won’t be able to stop talking about.

STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI

66 Bright

David Ayer reveals what we can expect from Will Smith’s gritty fantasy cop movie.

Plus:

Takashi Miike, Lu Over The Wall 

REVIEWS

12

72 Thor: Ragnarok

Did Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi bring the comedy gold?

73 Jigsaw

The Saw  franchise was back for Halloween but was it worth the wait?

80 The Punisher

Frank Castle’s solo series is finally here.

81 Stranger Things 2

Back to Hawkins and the Upside Down.

Plus:

Creep 2, Happy Death Day, Geostorm, Carn ival Of Souls, Valerian, The Snowman…

BOOK CLUB 88 Andy Weir

The author of The Martian heads to the moon with Artemis .

92 David Wong

Catching up with the man behind John Dies At The End .

Plus:

All the latest book and graphic novel reviews.

TIMEWARP 94 Knight Rider

The complete guide to the Hoff’s classic series.

102 Stephen Volk

The Ghostwatch writer on his career in genre.

Plus:

Hellraiser, The Princess Bride  006

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JUSTICE LEAGUE Prizes on page 111

MEET THE TEAM Q. What’s your favourite sequel?

Jonathan Hatfull

Editor  A. Evil Dead 2 Best sequel. Best Evil Dead  film. And the best film ever made. Yeah, I said it. Who’s laughing now?

Abigail Chandler

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Deputy Editor  A. Addams Family  Values Wednesday and Pugsley at summer camp - it’s just pure genius.

Poppy-Jay Palmer

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News Editor  A. Back To The Future Part III Would it be dramatic to say it’s also my all-time favourite Western? It is.

Marcus Faint

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112SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscribe to the magazine and save money today.

114 NEXT ISSUE Your first sneak-peek at the next issue of SciFiNow .

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Art Editor  A. Mad Max: Fury Road Showcasing Miller’s incredible talents, it plunged us back in to the rich, vibrant world of Max Rockatansky.

Rachael Harper

Sub Editor  A. Terminator 2:  Judgement Day  It’s better than the original and that park scene still haunts me… | 007

PORTAL

Your essential, trustworthy and unrivalled guide to the latest genre happenings

CREATURE COMFORTS Guillermo del Toro tells us about loving the monster with The Shape Of Water WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL

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NEW MUTANTS

Breaking down the X-Men’s first horror movie

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MATT REEVES

Looking back on Apes and ahead to The Batman

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RUTH BRADLEY

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CAPTAIN MARVEL

Talking SF, Philip K Dick and heroines with the star of Humans

Everything we know about Carol Danvers’ solo film

WHAT’S NEXT FOR DEL TORO? His break had better not be too long… FANTASTIC VOYAGE Del Toro is still attached to direct the remake of the 1965 classic with James Cameron as a producer, and it looks like it’ll be his next project when he wants to come back to it.

CARNIVAL ROW The eight-part fantasy series is set up at Amazon with Cara Delevingne and Orlando Bloom in the lead roles. Del Toro will produce but he has been too busy to direct the pilot as originally reported.

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING Del Toro’s producing Steven S DeKnight’s sequel to his massive sci-fi spectacle, which is hitting cinemas in March next year. John Boyega leads humanity in its new battle against the kaiju.

Michael Shannon’s Strickland is the heartless villain.

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he latest film from genre master Guillermo del Toro doesn’t land in the UK until next February but, having seen it at the London Film Festival, we feel confident that it’s the most beautiful fantasy love story you’ll see all year.  Wonderfully performed, incredibly sensitive and fiercely timely, The Shape Of Water  is absolutely lovely and so full of heart and soul. The most excellent Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Paddington ) stars as Elisa Esposito, a mute woman who  works as a cleaner in a top-secret government laboratory in 1962. Her days spent mopping floors and cleaning toilets are forever changed when a tank is brought in containing an aquatic creature from the Amazon (played, of course, by Doug Jones).  As heartless government agent Strickland (a terse Michael Shannon) tortures the creature endlessly in the hopes of gaining whatever secrets are inside, Elisa sees a kindred lonely spirit and decides that she needs to help him escape. Can she and her neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins on wonderful form) sneak him out, and is theirs a love

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story that can cross the divide? It’s a fairy tale with incredible production design, but The Shape Of Water  is first and foremost a love story between Elisa and the Amphibian Man. The romance between the two characters is presented very much as a beautiful thing, with no judgements and no commentary, which stands in stark contrast to the attitudes of the time. We see throughout the course of the film what the prevailing behaviour

IT IS IN A STRANGE WAY MY FIRST LIFEAFFIRMING MOVIE GUILLERMO DEL TORO

and opinions are, from the casual racism and misogyny of Strickland to the struggles that Giles endures while trying to woo the young man behind the counter at the local pie shop. There’s so much repression in this era, so much pain that is being carried by so many,

and the possibilities that the Amphibian Man represents to Elisa are so beautiful. “It is in a strange way my first adult movie and in a strange way also my first life-affirming movie,” del Toro tells us. “All the others have a tinge of nostalgia and loss and they are all centred around paraphrasing my childhood, and with this movie I wanted very much to make it a movie that shows in an incredibly natural and not perverse way that love can take any shape. That love can take many, many forms” It’s also a very sharp commentary on the world we live in today. The production design is absolutely gorgeous, from the adverts to the incredible cars, but the atmosphere of mistrust and hatred that defined the Cold  War era is right back with us right now. Del Toro tells us that his decision to set The Shape Of Water  in 1962 wasn’t just to pay homage to creature features and B-movies past, but to hold a mirror up to our society. “I knew I wanted to make it about now,” he tells us. “I thought: ‘What is the most cherished time in recent American history? 1962. But this is if you were a WASP. If you were a minority the problems were horrible.’

PINOCCHIO This has been in the works for years now, and it doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon as Del Toro revealed that studios balked at the prospect of a fairy tale movie that takes place under Mussolini’s dictatorship.

TROLLHUNTERS The delightful animated Netflix series that del Toro created will return to the streaming service later this year with its second season. We can’t wait.

 What the movie shows is that the ‘other’ can be many things to many people.” Del Toro has recently announced that he’s going to be taking a break from directing, which presumably means that his remake of The Fantastic Voyage will be put on the back burner, and what that means is that he’s going to have plenty of time to figure out how to follow up The Shape Of Water. Which is just as well, because it might just be the best film he’s ever made. The Shape Of Water  is released on 16 February 2018.

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PORTAL RIP PADDY

RUSSELL 1928-2017 We say farewell to one of Doctor Who’s greatest directors WORDS MARTIN PARSONS

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print, SciFiNow received news of the death of beloved director Paddy Russell. Born in 1928, Russell trained as an actress and worked as a stage manager before making the move to television. She worked as a production assistant for director Rudolph Cartier on Nigel Kneale’s adaptation of Orwell’s 1984  starring Peter Cushing, and his groundbreaking Quatermass  serials. Although only a relatively small part of her long career, Russell is perhaps best known for her work on Doctor Who . She first worked on the series early in her directorial career, in the 1966 William Hartnell adventure ‘The Massacre Of St Bartholomew’s Eve’. An unusually bleak and serious outing, Russell was integral in drawing out a different performance from Hartnell in his role as Doctor lookalike the Abbot of Amboise. Russell returned to the show in  Jon Pertwee’s era, corralling the plasticine beasts of ‘Invasion Of The Dinosaurs’ in 1974. 28 years before 28 Days Later , the scenes of a deserted London are brilliantly realised, a sense of unseen horror

ZACH ATTACK

pervading every shot. The next year, Russell worked with Tom Baker in his second season. ‘Pyramids Of Mars’ is widely regarded as a classic, and Russell’s direction plays no small part in this. Whether it is the shots of giant Egyptian mummies stalking through a leafy glen or the villain’s chest exploding as he gets pumped full of lead, Pyramids is a beautiful and haunting experience. Equally, if not more terrifying is Russell’s final work on the show, 1977’s ‘Horror Of Fang Rock’. Made under rather difficult circumstances, the polish of the finished episodes is a credit to Russell’s skill. Paddy Russell’s career in television spanned four decades before she retired in the early Eighties. She lived until recently in a cottage on the Yorkshire moors and died peacefully in a care home in late October 2017. ‘Pyramids Of Mars’ is a great.

The Chuck  star is heading to DC.

DC’s Shazam! finds its leading man has felt like DC’s Shazam!  film was never going to get made. Not fully a part of the Justice League, the hero seemed to just sit on the back burners with just Dwayne  Johnson as Black Adam to keep him company. Then it was announced that Black Adam would be getting his own solo adventure, and Shazam was still left sitting there. Now, it looks like the wheels are in motion, as the film has finally cast its leading man: Zachary Levi. And  we dig it. He’s a solid actor who has proven he can bring both the drama and the comedy. He’s also already

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something of a geek icon after starring in the likes of Chuck, Heroes Reborn, Thor: The Dark World and Disney animated hit Tangled . “Honoured and greatly humbled to be a part of the DC Universe by bringing the original Captain Marvel to life,” he wrote on his Instagram. “I am beside myself  with gratitude not only for this opportunity, but also the incredible outpouring of love and support from so many of you out there in the  world. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in the gym for the rest of forever.” Shazam!  is due to be in cinemas on 5 April 2019.

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HOT NEWS New Mutants Trailer Breakdown

THE SIX CREEPIEST BITS IN THE NEW MUTANTS TRAILER The latest X-Men spin-off promises horrors...

WORDS ABIGAIL CHANDLER

surveillance Flame on! Patient X  The unsettling opening shot tells you everything you The flaming hand against the washing machine Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) is positioned as the 1needUnder 2 3 to know about this film – it’s a creepy teen horror. door is the first glimpse we get of superpowers mixing hero of this trailer, and if the film is indeed based on Until the voiceover asks: ‘Do you know what mutants are?’ OH SNAP IT’S AN X-MEN  FILM!

 with horror – an interesting genre mash-up that looks like it’ll work.

the Demon Bear comic arc, we can expect her to be the film’s main character.

Remember to smile “This isn’t a hospital – it’s a haunted house!” 4 Cannonball (Charlie Heaton) proclaims, just before

for scares Scream and scream again There are evil miners here too – what is going on The trailer shows little of the characters’ powers 5in thisMining 6 weird hospital?! At least two of the characters (we don’t see Maisie Williams’ Wolfsbane in her

this creepy dude turns up. Could they be dealing with hostile humans as well as paranormal elements?

in have the ability to create supernatural goings-on – could they be behind this?

 wolf form), instead choosing to focus on the horror – making it unlike any other superhero film we’ve seen.

“GREAT BOOK AND  WOULD MAKE A  FANTASTIC CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR ANY  CAPTAIN SCARLET FAN.”  AMAZON.CO.UK CUSTOMER REVIEW

 W W W . H A Y N E S . C O M

AVA IL AB L E F R

M ALL GOOD BOOK SHOPS

PORTAL

WE WERE ABLE TO DO THINGS YOU COULD NOT DO IN A SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER Matt Reeves talks Apes and what he’s bringing to The Batman… WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

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t’s kind of strange to remember that War For The Planet Of The Apes  was a summer movie. Looking back at a blockbuster season that seemed to have taken ‘bright, colourful fun!’ as its mission statement with Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2  and Wonder Woman storming the box office, the final film in the Apes  trilogy feels like something different. It was dark, emotionally intense, political and profoundly moving, and Matt Reeves and his team made something special. We talked to Reeves about his experience with the series, finding a way to make audiences connect with CG characters, working in the studio system, and the qualities of Apes  he wants to bring to The Batman…

It’s kind of amazing that you only really notice about halfway through Apes  that you’re watching a story where the humans are the secondary characters. What I wanted to do was tell an exclusively ape point-of-view movie. I wanted the audience to go on a journey where they became Caesar and they were aligned emotionally with the journey he was on. So, it became personal for you and you would want the revenge that Caesar wants, and you could see how someone would be drawn to those feelings and identify with them. It calls into question this whole idea of what the extremities of war can do to a person and actually how war comes from our inability to empathise with each other and the desperation that we feel in crises.

And I felt from the beginning that the spectacle of this franchise is that you’re going to recognise yourself in the face of an ape and that’s a very uncanny, strange experience because the most human character is Caesar. Did you feel that you had the freedom to do make such a strong political statement because it’s the apes’ story? Sure, yeah. There’s just enough distance that you can explore things in a way that you couldn’t probably do, certainly not in a summer blockbuster, right? There’s an experience I think the audience will go with because you’re watching all of this through the eyes of apes and it’s deliberately meant to provoke questions and make you think about those things, so yeah, we were able to do things that we definitely could not do in a summer movie, all because they’re photoreal apes. Did the studio every have any qualms about that? The studio, on both of the films that I did, gave me a remarkably free rein in terms of story. Not that they weren’t engaged in terms of questions. I can’t say it was ‘hey, whatever you want, we’ll see you later!’ but when I came in, I’d never done a big studio film. I’d always said no to the ones that had been offered to me because the way that I need to work is that I need to have an emotional connection to what I’m doing to understand it. It’s

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HOT NEWS Matt Reeves

MAGIC MATT Charting Reeves’ career so far…

THE PALLBEARER (1996) We all have to start somewhere, but this David Schwimmer/  Gwyneth Paltrow rom-com is best forgotten.

CLOVERFIELD (2008)  12 years after his feature debut, Reeves returned with a bang with the secretive blockbuster that launched a franchise.

like an emotional compass, I know where the camera goes, I know how to talk to the actors, I know what’s going on in the scene if I can connect to it emotionally. And if I can’t, then I’m useless. They pursued me for this and I was like: ‘Wow this is exciting because I love this franchise,’ and I then learned what the story was that they wanted to do and I did say no. I said that it wasn’t the movie I would make. And to my surprise they said: “Well, tell us the movie you would make.” I was very skeptical, I thought: ‘Here’s what’s going to happen, I’ll tell you the movie I wanna make and you’re going to try to make me some Faustian bargain where you give me 30 per cent of my movie and then I have to do some giant showdown from your outline about Candlestick Park or something, and I don’t want to do any of that.’ And they said: “No, no, trust us.” So I did, I pitched that story and I expected the Faustian bargain to come but it didn’t, they said okay! So that’s what happened and the same thing happened on this.

LET ME IN (2010)  There’s nothing exactly wrong with Reeves’ sweet-hearted and faithful remake of Let The Right One In. It’s just kind of pointless.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2014)  Reeves stepped into the Apes  franchise and took it to a new level, making Caesar the focus.

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (2017)  This is still one of the best films we’ve seen all year, and it’s the perfect send-off to a great trilogy.

Is there anything in particular that you learned on the Apes  films that you’ll bring to The Batman?  I never imagined myself being a genre filmmaker even though I was obsessed with Planet Of The Apes  as a kid and I was obsessed with Batman. But it was my experience doing genre stuff, like I did Cloverfield  and I did a television pilot years ago that was a horror story, and it started clicking for me that you could use the metaphors of the genre to explore things that were personal and relevant to your experience and what you felt was going on in the world around you in a way that you couldn’t otherwise because the studios are not making those movies. And so, I’ve had a chance to work on a canvas that’s much larger than I ever would have imagined and tell a story that I never thought I’d be able to tell and in other franchises wouldn’t have been able to tell because of the gift of what you can do in genre and that is absolutely how I will approach Batman. War For The Planet Of The Apes  is available on Blu-ray and DVD on 27 November, from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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PORTAL

S ome of t he    i nal  cas t w il l  be  or ig back .

TOWELS ARE BACK IN STYLE Don’t panic! A new Hitchhiker’s Guide radio series in on the way WORDS POPPY-JAY PALMER

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t’s been 12 years since the last instalment, but Arthur Dent’s trip across the universe isn’t over yet: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy  radio series is back and set to hit BBC Radio 4 some time next year. Following on from the previous five, the new (and probably final) series will be based on Artemis Fowl  author Eoin Colfer’s 2009 Hitchhiker’s Guide  sequel And Another Thing…, and titled The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase. The revival is to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the radio debut of the late Douglas Adams’ sci-fi comedy mash-up, and will incorporate some previously unpublished material from Adams himself, sourced from notebooks and writings that have been preserved in library at St John’s

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College in Cambridge. In true Hitchhiker’s Guide  spirit, a handful of stars from the radio and TV series are getting back into the recording booths for the new adventure. Simon Jones is back as clueless protagonist Arthur Dent, along with Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Sandra Dickinson as Trillian. The original cast members are being joined by special guest stars  Jane Horrocks as Fenchurch, Jim Broadbent as Marvin the Paranoid Android, Lenny Henry as the Consultant, Ed Byrne as Hillman Hunter, and Douglas Adams’ friend, co-author and former flatmate John Lloyd as the voice of The Book. The series will be produced by Season Three, Four and Five writer Dirk Maggs, who’s sure to bring the

magic back for six new episodes. “It seems extraordinary that it’s been 40 years since we recorded the first pilot episode for BBC Radio,” said Simon Jones in a press release. “How modest were our expectations then, and how amazing a worldwide phenomenon it became, and continues to be. I never expected to still be searching for a decent cup of tea and some kind of answer to Life, the Universe and Everything almost a lifetime later. Still, the dressing-gown and towel may be a little threadbare, like my hair, but my voice, much to my surprise, hasn’t changed a decibel, and despite years in America, I can still talk Arthur’s ‘indignant-posh’.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase  will air in 2018.

AND ANOTHER THING

That’s not all from BBC Radio 4… If you like your radio sci-fi series funny and weird, you might well be interested in tuning into Rob Grant (the co-creator of Red Dwarf ) and Andrew Marshall’s upcoming project The Quanderhorn Xperimentations  for adventure, thrills, romance and mind-warping technology. The premise is pretty intriguing: set in 1952, reality is trapped in a time loop following a series of bizarre and sinister experiments performed by Professor Darius Quanderhorn, with his team of scientists facing threats and terrors beyond human understanding. In a press release, Grant and Marshall said: “For far too long, the facts about Professor Quanderhorn have been kept from the public. We felt it was high time to expose them. The facts, not the public. They can expose themselves.”

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HOT NEWS Ruth Bradley

RUTH BRADLEY The Electric Dreams and Humans star on Philip K Dick, synths and Ellen Ripley  WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

Together in Electric Dreams Ruth Bradley is no stranger to sci-fi, having starred in Channel 4’s brilliant SF series Humans , and she’s part of the incredible ensemble cast of anthology series Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams.  “I wasn’t familiar with the short stories at all, and  what’s great is some of them are like six pages long but there’s so much other story to mine,” she says. “He just had an endless wealth of stories to tell inside him and they all start somewhere and you could go in any direction with them which I think is what’s really cool about the show.”

Breaking SF with Bryan Cranston She stars in the episode ‘Human Is’ alongside Essie Davis and the great Bryan Cranston, who was pulling double duty as the show’s producer. However, she tells us that it was easy to forget that the star had an extra responsibility. “Actually, he’s such a warm and open creative artist I kind of forgot sometimes he was a producer,” she laughs. “One day he wasn’t shooting and he  was sitting on one of the monitor chairs and I wondered: ‘What’s he doing? Oh God he’s producing the whole show.’ He’s so involved with the play of it all, I never felt like he had his producer’s hat on and then he’s acting, he’s just such a consummate professional.”

More human than Humans Bradley is probably best known to genre audiences for her role as Karen Voss in Humans , and the second series of the show found her character aggressively pursuing her goal of finding her humanity with tragic results. “She just took it too far in the second series and ended up losing the most important thing to her, which she didn’t realise until it was gone,” she remembers. “I’m going: ‘Oh God you had it all and now it’s gone’, which is so human for all of us.” And Series Three? “Well I know about it because we’re doing it but that’s all I can say! God, I’m a terrible interviewee, I can’t say anything!” she laughs. “But it’s good, very exciting.”

The cult of Grabbers It’s not all been po-faced sci-fi for Bradley, however, as she was hilarious in cult favourite horror SF comedy Grabbers  as the straight-laced Garda who must get absolutely hammered drunk to survive. “That was some of the most fun I’ve ever had on a job,” she enthuses. “Obviously it’s her first time getting drunk and she happens to be an adult, so wondering  what kind of a drunk you are and how it would affect you trying to save everybody’s life and how everything seems funny when it shouldn’t. Your reactions would be so wrong! I’ve heard there’s a drinking game too which is absolutely hilarious!”

It’s all about Ripley   When it comes to formative sci-fi movies, Bradley doesn’t hesitate to name two out-andout classics. “I think definitely Alien  was one and Terminator, probably because they had two women as the focal point,” she tells us. “And I hadn’t quite realised that but in hindsight it might be that, which wasn’t that common in other genres when I was a kid, I suppose. I suppose with sci-fi there’s so many great female roles. I’m really blown away by Alien , particularly Sigourney Weaver. Ripley is always there somewhere in my heart.” Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams  is airing on Channel 4 and available to watch online on All4.

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THINGS WE KNOW ABOUT CAPTAIN MARVEL Carol Danvers is here to save the day… in 2019 WORDS POPPY-JAY PALMER

BRIE LARSON IS CAROL DANVERS

Sure, we’ve known about this for ages (even before the casting was officially announced, to be honest), but  we’re still pumped that Larson is taking on the role of the MCU’s first female headliner. She’s a wonderful actor with a great career both behind and ahead of her.

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BEN MENDELSOHN  AS THE VILLAIN

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 At the time of writing, the Rogue One  actor was only in talks to be playing the villain, but he’ll have probably signed the deal by the time  you read this, right? Who doesn’t love Ben Mendelsohn? The villain he will be playing is yet to be confirmed.

SKRULL!

It was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con this year that destructive, green-skinned alien race the Skrull would be making its first MCU appearance in Captain Marvel, which is interesting due to the fact that they’re primarily Fantastic Four  villains in the comics.

BACK TO THE 90S

 WRITER

The greatest Captain Marvel  news nugget so far is the one that revealed the film  will be set during the Nineties. That means big shoulder pads, Nineties music, and Nick Fury (Samuel L  Jackson) still having both his eyes and maybe even some hair…

RESHUFFLE

Inside Out’s  Meg LeFauve and Nicole Perlman were originally signed up to write the screenplay, but LeFauve was called on to co-direct Disney’s nowcancelled animation Gigantic , being replaced by Geneva Robertson-Dworet. DIRECTORS’ CHAIRS

It took a while, but the film has finally lined up its director, or rather, directors; Half Nelson duo  Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. The reason for the delay was that Marvel wanted to make sure the film had a solid script first. 016

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Captain Marvel  is in cinemas on 8 March 2019.

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THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS A new art book takes us behind the scenes of The Devil’s Backbone… WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

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Guillermo del Toro recovered from the nightmarish production of his first Hollywood movie Mimic  with an intimate, chilling and personal ghost story. Set in a Spanish orphanage during the Civil War, The Devil’s Backbone  followed a young boy named Carlos (Fernando Tielve) as he uncovered a dark secret, haunted and aided by the spectre of one of the school’s former pupils. There are images in the film that rank among the most striking and unforgettable of del Toro’s

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career, from the face of Santi with its blood that flows like smoke from the wound in his head, to the unexploded bomb that represents that cataclysm to come. Now, a new book from Titan by Matt Zoller Seitz and Simon Abrams takes you inside the incredible world of The Devil’s Backbone  and shows del Toro’s legendary preparation and concept art. Here’s a little taste… Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone  by Matt Zoller Seitz and

Simon Abrams is available now from Titan Books.

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COVER FEATURE Star Wars: The Last Jedi

THE CAST AND DIRECTOR OF STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI GIVE US THE LOWDOWN ON NEW CREATURES, NEW CAST MEMBERS AND WHO MIGHT BE GOING TO THE DARK SIDE WORDS ABIGAIL CHANDLER ADDITIONAL INTERVIEWS JOANNA OZDOBINSKA, JONATHAN HATFULL 

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STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI The Dark Side Awaits

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ost film franchises like to play their cards close to their chests, but Star Wars  is in another league. It’s understandable that the franchise known for pulling off one of the greatest shock twists in movie history wants to keep plotlines on the down low, but by goodness it makes it hard to write about them. So here’s what we know about Star Wars: The Last  Jedi  – Rey goes to Luke Skywalker to seek Jedi training while Finn, Poe Dameron and General Leia’s Resistance continues to fight against the First Order, led by Kylo Ren, General Hux, Captain Phasma and the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke. So, basically, exactly where The Force Awakens  left off. There are hints and suggestions at where the story may go. We know that Finn and new character Rose end

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up at a giant casino, and we know that Benicio del Toro and Laura Dern have joined the cast. But other than that, everything is tightly under wraps. And, as far as del Toro is concerned, that’s exactly how it should be: “The fans want that wrapping paper around that Christmas gift,” he says. “Don’t give it to them without the paper. They don’t want to see it when they walk in the room. They don’t want to know.” For Kelly Marie Tran, a newcomer to both Star Wars  and movies in general, who plays Rose, her casting in The Last Jedi  came with mind-boggling levels of secrecy. She wasn’t even allowed to tell her family that she’d got the part, or even that she was filming in London, in case they put two and two together. “I told everyone… I was doing a small indie movie in Canada. I would send pictures of Toronto that I got from Google to my friends saying ‘this is where I am!’. It was a weird time.” Security was similarly tight on set. “Everyone is in these tinted-window cars, transported from one part

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COVER FEATURE Star Wars: The Last Jedi

of the set to another,” Tran explains. “And you’re wearing these like black robes. They’re like secrecy robes, so no one can tell who you are. It’s insane the amount of security there is.” Tran’s Rose is a mechanic in the Resistance. “She’s kind of this nobody. And she gets pulled into this adventure, is sort of forced into this thing and spends a lot of the movie with Finn. And they get to go on a lot of cool adventures together.” As for Benicio del Toro’s character, apparently named DJ, he’s even more of a myster y. “Maybe  you could find him in a Bob Dylan song or a Tom Waits song,” del Toro says, typically enigmatic. “Or maybe in a Dostoyevsky novel. You’ll find DJ in one of those stories. You don’t know what he is. But that’s the idea… You don’t know if he’s good or bad.” For John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, who play Finn and Rey, it was time to jump back into the deep end. “I think I left doing The Force Awakens  feeling like a better actor,” Ridley says. “And then I went into [The Last Jedi ] and felt like it was all beginning again and I was like, holy crap, I’ve learned nothing!” Boyega, meanwhile, went into The Last Jedi 

“RIAN HAS THE CHALLENGE OF MAKING IT DIFFERENT AND UNIQUE... HE’S TAKING RISKS”  JOHN BOYEGA  with very clear ideas of what he wanted to do with Finn, who, he says, remained a bit of an enigma throughout The Force Awakens . “You’ve got your foundation for the character,” he says of Finn in The Force Awakens . “Now you’re moving onto the next project and you’re trying to, you know, make more of the character. You can’t make more of someone you don’t really know. And so for me the fear that I did have going into VIII  was that I hope that we get more of a sense of where [Finn] belongs… The story for him in this movie is him making that decision himself as to where he will belong. Where he wants to identify himself. And I think that’s very important.” While the lead cast remain the same, the director has changed. JJ Abrams, who directed The Force Awakens, has handed the reins to Looper  director, Rian Johnson. Boyega was quickly won over by Johnson’s approach: “Rian is kind of blessed with the challenge of trying to make it different and trying to make it unique and expanding the universe. And so for me that was something that I found very interesting that Rian was doing. There were a lot of LucasFilm officials on set. Sometimes I would see in their eyes that they would be like [Boyega affects the look of a worried studio exec]. And I’d be like, yes, that’s 022

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STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI The Dark Side Awaits

Rey’s training finally begins...

good. Because it means that [Rian’s] taking risks.” LucasFilm producer Kathleen Kennedy approached Johnson about directing The Last Jedi  while The Force Awakens  was still filming. He tells us that after reading The Force Awakens’  script and watching Abrams’ dailies, he realised that there was a follow-up story that he wanted to tell: “It makes me very happy that [ The Last Jedi ] felt unexpected to the actors,” Johnson says. “That to me is a compliment, but I don’t think it would ever be good to start a storytelling process by saying ‘let’s be unexpected, what will they never see coming?’ That’s never where you want to begin. I think, to me, unexpectedness is a byproduct of telling a story honestly. So I started with the characters and I said: ‘Where does it make sense for these characters to go in my mind?’ And that’s going to lead you in unexpected places if you let it. But hopefully, when it leads you to unexpected places, it’s the sort of thing like in life where  you never could have predicted it but it seems inevitable after it happens.” He says that there was no set-in-stone story for him to follow when he came on board, which may come as a surprise given the recent kerfuffle with Star Wars  directors. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were removed from the Han Solo movie (now titled Solo: A Star Wars Story ) midway through shooting because LucasFilm and Disney weren’t happy with their work, and Colin Trevorrow dropped out of Episode IX , to be replaced by JJ Abrams. You might think LucasFilm wants to keep tight control of their directors, but that doesn’t seem to have been  Johnson’s experience. “No, there isn’t an outline somewhere on a piece of paper that says ‘this, WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

TO ABSENT FRIENDS

The cast and director pay tribute to Carrie Fisher  Tragically, The Last Jedi  marks Carrie Fisher’s – and General Leia Organa’s – final hurrah in the Star Wars  universe, following the actress’ death last  year. For Gwendoline Christie, Leia was the reason she wanted the role of Captain Phasma: “When I was six years old I absolutely loved the films so passionately. I loved that character of Princess Leia. She spoke to me. She felt different. She felt new. She was smart and she was strong.”  A big part of that was Fisher herself, who Benicio del Toro describes as “a ball of fire”, and  who director Rian Johnson can’t praise highly enough: “Obviously there’s no way we could have known that this was going to be her last Star Wars  performance but I think there are scenes that she has and her performance as a whole, I think it’s going to be really powerful – I know it’s powerful for me watching it, yeah, even more so now. But no, we had the complete performance. I think it’s a really beautiful one.” Mark Hamill, who knew her better than anyone else on The Last Jedi , is still grieving her loss: “She is irreplaceable and it’s so bittersweet because it adds an element of melancholy that the film doesn’t deserve. Her timing was usually perfect, except in this case because she should be here for the Emmy, she should be here for VIII, she should be here for IX, I’m so mad at her in a way but... that’s just something that we have to accept. It doesn’t make me any less sad. But you know she wouldn’t want us to be sad. If she were here right now she’d be behind you flipping me the bird with her dog.”

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COVER FEATURE Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“FINN HAS CHOSEN TO DO A CRAZY MISSION”  John Boyega on Finn, fire and the Force in Star Wars: The Last Jedi… WORDS ADAM TANSWELL 

 JOHN BOYEGA WAS ARGUABLY THE BREAKOUT STAR OF THE FORCE AWAKENS,  WINNING PRAISE FOR HIS CHARMING PERFORMANCE. BUT, WITH FINN IN A BAD  WAY AT THE END OF THE PREVIOUS FILM, IS HE STILL GOING TO BE THE SAME CHARMING RELUCTANT REBEL THAT WE FELL IN LOVE WITH? HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE FINN’S ROLE IN STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI? Finn got a back injury [in The Force Awakens ]

and the Resistance is at its lowest point. However, Finn has chosen to do a crazy mission and Poe has trusted him to do service for the cause. That’s  why he feels like he has to go off with Rose [Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran] and BB-8. HOW DOES THE FORCE AWAKENS’ DIRECTOR JJ ABRAMS COMPARE TO THE LAST JEDI’S DIRECTOR RIAN JOHNSON?

It was very evident what JJ was doing in terms of trying to make sure that VII  didn’t feel too alien to  what fans were used to… Rian has been given the challenge to make this story different. He’s been asked to make it unique and expand the Star Wars  universe. They are both very collaborative as directors and they are articulate, smart dudes.  AS A FAN, DID YOU HAVE ANY WORRIES  WHEN IT CAME TO THE LAST JEDI? It would be a concern to me if Star Wars  played it

safe to the point where the new generation didn’t get to have their Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader moment, or a shocking reveal. I feel like that’s part of the culture of Star Wars  and Rian’s in line with that… I speak to a lot of Star Wars  fans. A lot of them are friends, but everyone says to me: ‘Okay, Rey is the Jedi. Eventually, she is going to defeat Kylo Ren. Finn is a Rebel. Together, they are going to win and they are all going to have a nice day.’  With that in mind, I feel like we have to be, super careful to not fall into the line of what the other films have done. We have to take a risk, and I really do believe that that is what Rian is doing.  WERE YOU SURPRISED WHEN YOU READ THE SCRIPT TO THE LAST JEDI?

I was really surprised. First of all, I was thinking: ‘Who is going to be doing all these stunts? I am not training for that!’ [laughs] but yeah, it’s full of twists and turns. It’s hard to speak about a film  when you can’t talk about it, but I think the fans are going to be very happy. 024 |

THERE ARE LOTS OF STUNTS IN THE LAST JEDI. WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST  ADRENALINE RUSH DURING FILMING?

 Adrenaline is going to rush when you see Captain Phasma running towards you! Any scenes with explosions also make me shaky. When fire is roaring around you, I tend to think, ‘I like my face. I’d like to keep it’ [laughs] it’s fun.  WHAT HELPS YOU GET INTO CHARACTER?

I love music. Hans Zimmer is my favourite composer, so I listen to him when I’m travelling to and from set. When you watch our movies, you watch it in the context of the timeline the movie gives you – but  when I’m working on it, it’s not filmed in order.  When I watch the finished film, I go: ‘I remember that scene. It was 3.30am and I had a belly ache, but I am still trying to keep composure.’ Sometimes it’s hard to get that inspiration for the day, so I listen to score music to get me into the mood.  AS A YOUNGSTER, YOU PROBABLY NEVER DREAMED YOU’D BE IN A STAR  WARS MOVIE – BUT HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE PART OF THIS ICONIC UNIVERSE? I didn’t imagine I was going to be in a Star Wars 

movie, but I did imagine that I was going to be in a movie of significance. It feels nice. For me, the reality is that this is not a shock or a surprise; I just feel a sense of relief. I didn’t know when or how it was going to happen, but I am happy that it happened now and I am happy that it’s Star Wars.  WHAT DO YOU ENJOY THE MOST ABOUT BEING PART OF THIS UNIVERSE?

 hasma  t face P  inn mus  F e.   im  t one more

There is a lot of protection when you’re part of this universe and there is a family environment on set. That keeps your feet on the ground, which I’m grateful for. HOW HAS STAR WARS CHANGED YOUR LIFE?

It’s hard for me to accept that anybody could change because of two years of their life; especially when you’ve already lived two decades. I’m still getting used to  whatever this is, but I haven’t changed. Your schedule changes and your relationship to sleep changes, but that’s it… I always thought it was going to be interesting to see how things changed, but it’s been great. I  wouldn’t change it for the world. WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI The Dark Side Awaits

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COVER FEATURE Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“EVERYTHING IS SO REAL  AND VISCERAL” KELLY MARIE TRAN

and this, and this’. To me, that means that as we create these movies… there aren’t bases that we have to tag. We can find our way forward chapter by chapter. And it’s going to come to a satisfying conclusion, but it’s going to get there through an organic process of going forward in a way that makes sense at each step; which I think is really exciting for a movie like this.” Benicio del Toro was, like many of the other actors, surprised by just how flexible Johnson’s approach was, especially considering it was the biggest of big budget films. “I had ideas and comments and suggestions of how I think what the story was trying to tell could be sharper… And so when I sat down with Rian, who had written the script, I was amazed that he didn’t hesitate to explore changes in the story. Or things about my character. Usually, in my experience, when I have worked with writer-directors, they protect their writing. They’re 026

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really rigid with the writing… So when I saw Rian was really open to first of all listen and then to engage in conversation and to make decisions quick, I was like: ‘Wow, is this for real? Is this like a trap?’ But he sustained that through the whole shooting.” Star Wars  is a big departure for Johnson, who isn’t used to handling films that are so special effects-heavy. The team on The Last Jedi  have been keen to keep as much as they can physically real, rather than being overly reliant on digital effects. Why make a CGI creature when you can give the actors an amazing puppet to act opposite on set? Johnson admits that he found the CGI-heavy elements the most tricky. “Honestly, the most technically challenging stuff are the space battles because those are the ones where, aside from the cockpits, nothing is real,” Johnson says. “The practical effects, and especially the creature workshop, was much more fun.” He tells us that, rather than letting him see the creatures as a work-in-progress, Neil

Scanlan and his team would only allow Johnson to see them in full flow. “They would put on music and they would have all of the creatures interacting with actors in like a little scene… And I would walk through this scene, and that’s how I reviewed the creatures. That’s how I saw them for the first time. It was incredible.” Kelly Marie Tran was similarly blown away by the creatures. “Everything is so real and visceral. I remember acting with an animatronic creature and getting emotional because it was so real! I was like, ‘man I think that creature might have stolen the whole film from me...’” she laughs. But creating the creatures wasn’t straight-forward.  Johnson points out that “you’re trying to do the work of evolution in a month with a design team, it’s not easy”. He talks about designing the Fathiers, horse-like creatures that he described in the script as “graceful creatures, very wiselooking and sympathetic; kind of like horses, kind of like greyhounds”, but which, at one point in the process, ended up looking like “a koala bear with horse ears”. While most of the storyline and set-pieces are kept tightly under wraps, John Boyega did hint at an effects-heavy action sequence he WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI The Dark Side Awaits

took part in. “There’s a really a big whole chase sequence, kind of like in the mirror of what happened with Finn and Ray when they went into the Falcon. But now it’s Finn and Rose. And that whole sequence, it took two weeks to film, in which both of us were on a rig for two weeks. And that was… Yeah, that was excruciating,” he laughs. “Excruciating pain. But the excitement and the adrenaline and the kind of fear that you have to show when the cameras are rolling… It makes it really, really fun.” Finn seems to have a lot of action lined up in The Last Jedi, as Boyega talks about “loads of Stormtroopers flying around on rigs getting blown up” and Finn’s reunion with Captain Phasma, who he left for dead in the last film. “That’s the last time he saw his ex-boss,” Boyega says of Phasma. “And unfortunately he has to go back to work in this film. And they do meet. It’s not the best reunion in the world.” Boyega describes Finn as being on the First Order’s “no-breathe list”. “Finn is now a known kind of space terrorist,” he says. “They see him as a rogue. So that Poe Dameron is back in the cockpit.

causes a lot of tension. He can’t just go through space the way he used to.” For the returning cast, the action is something they have become used to, and Daisy Ridley was surprised by how much stronger she was this time around. “First time around, it was the first time I ever physically trained for anything,” she says. “And I thought I’d reached my limit of what I could do. And then second time around,  you’re like: ‘Oh… okay, I think I can do a bit more than that.’ So physically I felt much stronger and my stamina was higher on everything.” But while action is, and will always be, one of the main cornerstones of Star Wars , the cast frequently talk about how Johnson is doing something a little different this time round. Gwendoline Christie, the woman beneath Captain Phasma’s helmet, explains a little about  Johnson’s approach on The Last Jedi : “Rian was creating something in terms of tone that is slightly different from what we’ve had before. It’s driven by story and by character. And relationships. That’s not to say that you won’t get everything

THE LAST JEDI FAN THEORIES

Hey, some of these might turn out to be true  WHAT WOULD MAJOR MOVIE FRANCHISES BE WITHOUT RAMPANT THEORISING ABOUT  WHERE THE PLOT MIGHT GO NEXT? THE LAST  JEDI HAS GENERATED SOME CRACKING FAN THEORIES, SOME MORE PLAUSIBLE THAN OTHERS. HERE ARE SOME OF THE BEST…  WHO IS THE LAST JEDI?

 According to the opening scroll of The Force  Awakens, Luke Skywalker is the last Jedi. But will that still be the case by the end of this film? Current theories revolve around Luke dying or going to the Dark Side, leaving Rey as the last Jedi, or Luke – as is suggested in the trailer – disbanding the Jedi altogether, making him the last ever one. REY AND KYLO REN END UP ON THE SAME SIDE

Some suggest he will join the light, others think she’ll join the dark. Or maybe they’ll meet somewhere in the middle. Or maybe one of them  will be a double agent? SO MANY MAYBES.  WHERE DID REY COME FROM?

Tonnes  of theories here. Some reckon she could

be a clone of Luke, created from his severed hand. Others think she could be Obi-Wan’s granddaughter, or another daughter of Han and Leia, sent away for her own safety, or else believed to be dead. Of course, she could just be a nobody who happens to have a strong connection to the Force.  WHAT IS SNOKE UP TO?

Emperor Palpatine hinted at a Force user so powerful that they created Anakin Skywalker out of thin air, resulting in his immaculate conception. Could that have been Snoke? And could Rey have been created the same way? And while Snoke might be powerful, he appears frail – some suspect he’s training Kylo Ren with the intention of taking over his body (personally, we like the theory that Snoke’s actually tiny in the flesh).

 We’re promised more of Captain Phasma.

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COVER FEATURE Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“IT’S TOTALLY UNEXPECTED!” Daisy Ridley speaks out about Star Wars: The Last Jedi… WORDS ADAM TANSWELL 

DAISY RIDLEY’S REY WAS THE BIG QUESTION MARK HANGING OVER THE FORCE AWAKENS.  WHO IS SHE? WHERE DID SHE COME FROM? MOST OF THOSE REMAIN UNANSWERED AS  WE GO INTO THE LAST JEDI, SO WE DECIDED TO SEE WHAT RIDLEY HERSELF COULD TELL US.

DOES WORKING ON A STAR WARS MOVIE FEEL LIKE A FAMILY UNIT?

It’s great. Before we started filming The Last Jedi, Mark and I went to dinner together to get to know each other more. That was nice. It’s always  wonderful to see the others, too. There’s always so much joy when we’re all together. So much joy!

 WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND  WHEN YOU FIRST READ THE SCRIPT FOR STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI?

The first time I read the script, I was surprised. I had ideas about what would happen in the stor y, but I was taken aback by what does happen. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE STORY OF THE LAST JEDI?

Rian has written a story that’s unexpected but right. Some of the story will really surprise you. Even though everyone knows it’s the second in the trilogy, it feels like its own thing. It’s pretty epic.  WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT THE SCRIPT FOR THE LAST JEDI?

Lots of people had been saying how much they loved to watch John [Boyega] and me on screen together in The Force Awakens  – but I suddenly thought: ‘How are people going to react to me being with Mark [Hamill]?’ As soon as I read it, I talked to Rian about it and I loved what he said. It made everything seem great. THERE IS A LOT OF ACTION IN THE L AST  JEDI. WHICH OF THE STUNTS WAS THE

 WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT REY?

I like the way that Rey is open to everything that’s going on, even though there are doubts holding her back. As a normal girl from London, I can see myself in that. Rey can be strong, but she can also be vulnerable. She can be angry when things go  wrong, and sad when things are sad. I like that all of those nuances are represented in the character. HOW MANY STAR WARS SOUVENIRS DO YOU HAVE AT HOME?

There’s none of that. I have nothing from the first movie. The second time around, I was given a prop lightsaber. I got it and I couldn’t believe I’d been given it. I sat in the car on my way home and I remember thinking: ‘This is amazing.’ DO YOU STILL PINCH YOURSELF AT THE THOUGHT OF BEING IN STAR WARS?

It’s incredible. I still can’t believe it. People who have  worked on other big films have said they didn’t feel like they were working on a big film at the time of the shoot. I felt the same. I was working with people  who are at the top of their game, so it only started feeling bigger after we finished The Force Awakens.

TOUGHEST FOR YOU?

The dive into the water was the scariest and most thrilling. The lightsaber stuff was great because I felt like I was stronger and I could push myself further than I could the first time around. I felt like I was mirroring the story. But the dive was my favourite. HOW NERVOUS WERE YOU ABOUT THE DIVE?

It was scary, but it was also frickin’ awesome! I did a skydive once, but I’ve never done a bungee jump. For the dive, I was stood on a platform 30 feet up. I had to launch myself down and supposedly survive.  WAS THE DIVE AS TERRIFYING AS GOING FACE-TO-FACE WITH KYLO REN?

Facing up against Kylo was intense. Adam Driver is big and strong and it was intense. I was thinking: ‘Can I genuinely survive this fire? I don’t know how long I can last because he’s so strong.’ 028

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HAVE YOU VISITED ANY OF THE SETS FROM THE OTHER STAR WARS MOVIES?

I’m friends with Alden [Ehrenreich], who is playing Han Solo. I visited that set, which was exciting.  We went in to shoot something else and basically all the crew from The Last Jedi  are working on the Han Solo  movie. So we went and saw what was going on. It was pretty surreal.  WAS THAT THE FIRST STAR WARS STORY SET YOU’D VISITED?

I’d gone to the Rogue One  set, but that was before The Force Awakens  came out, so it was a weird time. We were ramping up for the release of our first movie but nobody had seen anything. When I visited the set of the Han Solo  movie, I felt more part of it – even though they are taking a different journey from the one we’re taking. It looked awesome from what I saw. I can’t wait to see it. WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

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COVER FEATURE Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Finn was in a bad way at the end of VII .

Could we see Kylo turning to the light?

“I THINK REY AND KYLO  ARE ALMOST LIKE A DUAL PROTAGONIST” RIAN JOHNSON else you want in terms of an incredible Star Wars film. But, that is where I feel the focus is. “What we’re demanding as an audience is more interesting and more evolved storytelling, which involves seeing people exploring humanity in a way that transcends good or evil.” This takes us to what seems to be The Last Jedi’s  key theme, which pops up again and again while we talk to the actors and director: the thin line between good and evil.  Johnson sees all Star Wars  movies as coming-of-age tales. However, while it is normally the hero who’s coming of age, The Last Jedi  is slightly different. “In this story,” Johnson says, “I think 030

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Rey and Kylo are almost like a dual protagonist. You identify with Rey, but also you identify with Kylo in a way that you never did with Vader. I know I do. Because if these movies are about adolescence, Kylo is that anger of adolescence and that rejection of the parents, and wanting to screw your dad; and that’s something that all of us, to some degree, can identify with. And the idea of there being a bad guy who  you identify with as much as you do the protagonist in some way, that’s really interesting.” The next question, of course, is who’s to say who the bad guy is? It’s a question that Daisy Ridley finds interesting. “It’s funny how Adam [Driver, who plays Kylo Ren] talks about it. WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

THE LAST JEDI The Dark Side Awaits

The Dark Side only grows stronger...

Can Luke be the mentor Rey needs?

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COVER FEATURE Star Wars: The Last Jedi

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STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI The Dark Side Awaits

“IT’S NOT LIKE ANY OF THE ONES THAT I’VE BEEN IN”  We talk to Mark Hamill about bringing Luke Skywalker back… INTERVIEW JONATHAN HATFULL WORDS ABIGAIL CHANDLER

FROM THE COMING-OF-AGE HERO IN THE FIRST FILM TO THE WISE MENTOR IN THE LATEST, MARK HAMILL HAS TAKEN LUKE SKYWALKER ON QUITE A JOURNEY IN THE LAST 40 YEARS. AFTER MAKING ONLY A BRIEF, SILENT APPEARANCE IN THE FORCE AWAKENS, LUKE IS BACK PROPERLY IN THE LAST JEDI.  WE TALKED TO THE ACTOR ABOUT LUKE’S EVOLUTION, THE LEGACY OF THE FRANCHISE, NEW DIRECTOR RIAN JOHNSON, AND THE CRUELTY OF THE FANS. SO, MARK – WAS IT EASY GETTING BACK INTO THE CHARACTER OF LUKE?

No, it wasn’t easy because there was such a long gap of unexplained activity. And then of course in VII  it’s so enigmatic, when he turns around is he happy, is he suspicious, is he angry? When I read the screenplay I was shocked at how Rian decided to use Luke because I never expected that. Without giving anything away, in the trailer he says it’s time for the Jedi to end and that was a shock to me! Because Luke was always the most optimistic of all the characters, he believed so strongly and was so devoted to becoming a Jedi and following all the tenets that Obi-Wan and Yoda taught him, so it was difficult because it’s not Luke’s story anymore, it’s about Rey and the other new characters. So, it’s not important to the story or to the audience what went on, but for myself I had to make a backstory myself.  And sometimes I talked to Rian about it but so much  was left to the audience to make up for themselves.  WHY IS RIAN JOHNSON SUCH A GOOD FIT FOR THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE?

First of all, all his films prior to this are so different from each other. Brick  is so different from Looper   which is so different from Brothers Bloom  so he’s got that versatility and he’s so amiable, he’s not someone who curses or gets angry, he’s just a genuinely nice person. He’s also highly collaborative, he’ll listen to all of my terrible ideas and maybe find one or two that he likes, and he reshot an entire scene because of something that I suggested but I think even though I thought ‘how would he think I would do this? This is not something I’d do or say’, in a way that’s a good thing because he’s doing something that’s unexpected. And if I were just another variation of Obi-Wan, we’ve seen it before. If I were a benign, elderly wizardly type, it would be fine but it would be something that we’ve seen before and I think that this film has an identity all of its own. WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

 Yes, there are the elements that we all love in a Star Wars  film; there’s action, adventure, humour, suspense and so forth, creatures and fantastic situations, but it doesn’t feel… people say ‘oh, it’s like Empire, it’s darker, right, and it’s the middle part so it can end tragically?’ I said, you know, it’s not like any of the ones that I’ve been in and I that’s a good thing. You have to try and keep it fresh! IT DOES FEEL IMPORTANT THAT STAR  WARS TRY NEW THINGS…

Exactly, yeah. And I think you should take risks.  You can’t please everybody. God knows, I thought they were way too critical of the prequels and a lot of it was because it wasn’t what they wanted. And people become very possessive of it. It’s their story so God forbid you do something that doesn’t fit the preconceived notion of what they want. I thought they were just so cruel to Jake Lloyd who did a fine job but they were mad because they didn’t want to see Darth Vader being an adorable little child.  And I thought that was one of the things that was important, that at that age he could have been a  young Luke Skywalker! But I thought that was one of the remarkable things about the prequels. That if you take the wrong path, this could happen to anyone… I will never forgive some of the cruelty that they inflicted on that poor child when he did exactly what George wanted him to do.  WAS IT NICE SEEING A WHOLE NEW GENERATION FALL IN LOVE WITH NEW STAR WARS CHARACTERS LIKE REY?

 Yeah, and it’s generational. Those original tiny tots are now grown up, they have their own children and they pass on the stories, just the way it should be. It made sense when I found out that Disney was buying it. Not only because they have an 80-year history of marketing family films but the Star Wars  films to me are fairy tales. Even more than they are science fiction. They have a pirate and a wizard and a farm boy and a princess. When I read the original screenplay for the very first one I thought it was so Wizard of Oz!  I remember, we were riding George hard, because, I’ll tell you something,  when he’s making a movie, at least when we were making Star Wars, he was so miserable! Not a miserable person but just depressed! He suffered so desperately that when we’d see him smile it was an accomplishment. And now he’s happier than he’s ever been! He’s married with a young child and he doesn’t have the burden of making these epic movies. It’s a win-win for him. | 033

 WHO’S GOING TO SWITCH SIDES IN THE LAST JEDI?

Rose and Finn team up for a dangerous mission.

There are lots of hints that a big character is going to switch between the light and the dark side in The Last Jedi – but who’s the most likely? Let’s look at our options… REY 

 A lot has been made of just how much raw power she has, unusual even for a Jedi. You know who else was unusually powerful? Anakin Skywalker. Didn’t work out well for him, did it? Chances of switching?  FINN

Finn’s already switched sides once – is he really going to do it again so soon? That said, Boyega has talked a lot about Finn choosing his side in this instalment. Chances of switching?  KYLO REN

He might have an evil new face scar, but we’ve already seen him come close to wavering in The Force Awakens. He screams ‘redemption arc’, but fans will never forgive him for killing Han. Chances of switching? LUKE SKYWALKER 

He says it’s time for the Jedi to end, but come on – this is Luke Skywalker we’re talking about here! He’ll pull himself together and get back to business, won’t he? Chances of switching?  CAPTAIN PHASMA

Phasma seems to enjoy barking orders and beating up the good guys more than anyone else. Surely she’s only going to get more  evil, not less? Chances of switching? GENERAL LEIA ORGANA

Literally no other character in the whole franchise has been as dedicated to the Resistance as Leia – she’s as heroic as you can get. Chances of switching? 

He said it’s not the difference between good and bad, it’s the difference between good and right. Like his character thinks what he’s doing is right. He doesn’t think he’s the big baddie. So the lines get blurred anyway. Good people make bad decisions. Bad people make good decisions. What Rian has done is this wonderful thing of morally questioning people in a way that makes  you see them in a more three dimensional way, or just in a way that you haven’t seen before.” Boyega agrees, and it’s clearly a topic he finds fascinating. “You know, in war, you’re not always going to be on the side of the good guys,” he says. “If the good guys are getting killed off, I’d probably be like: ‘You know what? I’m going to go get a job at the Empire base and just have a peaceful life.’ So the characters are challenged right now. They have to make these decisions as to where they stand. Even General Leia and Poe Dameron. If they’re going to stand for the Resistance, it has to be for a significant

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI The Dark Side Awaits

admits. But he’s keen not to resort to pure homage in the telling of his Star Wars  movie. “I guess I’d be hesitant to use the word ‘homage’ because that makes it sound like it’s just kind of turning the crank and replaying an old tune because we all like it. But telling a story that brings new things and pushes everything forward in an interesting way, that is in this world that we all recognise, there’s something very powerful about that.” The nostalgia and the pressure to live up to that nostalgia is something everyone involved feels. Even Benicio del Toro felt the pressure: “I better not drop the ball. I mean everybody here is on their A-game. It makes you go for it.” Fellow Star Wars  newcomer Kelly Marie Tran feels similarly strongly: “Everybody involved wants to do this franchise justice because Star Wars  is its own world. And so many generations have grown up with it and so many people love it. And we want to continue to make something that’s important, that’s different, but that has all the elements that people loved from before.” Both del Toro and Tran tell us that they were surprised and impressed by how diverse the movie is. “I feel very emotional about it,” Tran

“THE CHARACTERS HAVE TO MAKE DECISIONS  ABOUT WHERE THEY STAND”  JOHN BOYEGA 

reason. Rian came and made this really challenging. And that’s what I really love.” But whatever the storyline, everyone involved still had one main responsibility: They had to make a Star Wars  film. “We’ve had lots of long conversations trying to define what makes something feel ‘Star Wars’,” Johnson explains. “At the end of the day, I think you have to just trust your internal compass. And for me, because Star Wars  was my life when I was a little kid, I’ve had this world in my head since I was four years old. It’s not to say that I have the right version in my head. But I have a version that is mine.” The Force Awakens  received some criticism for cleaving a little too close to the A New Hope  template but Johnson recognises the pull of wanting to recreate something you loved. “It’s very interesting, the idea of the inescapable draw of nostalgia, because it’s there and it’s impossible to deny the emotional reaction that I have walking onto the interior of the Falcon,” he WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

says. “Because I know what it was like growing up not seeing anyone that looks like me in movies.” Gwendoline Christie talks about the importance of a female character like Phasma who’s not only a villain, but also not remotely defined by her femininity or sexuality.  John Boyega praises the film’s ethnic diversity, but is also thrilled that the cautious Finn doesn’t fit the traditional male hero mould. “I would like to see the redefining of what a leading man is,” he says. “Why does he always have to be fearless and can take bullet wounds like it’s nothing?” And for anyone complaining that this diversity is making a statement, or pushing an ‘agenda’, Tran makes a point that’s been there since the very birth of Star Wars . “I think it’s such a special thing that Star Wars  gets to do. We are elevated out of [our] world, we’re more than just our skin and what we look like and what we associate ourselves with. We’re all just human beings trying to make the world a better place.” So regardless of where the characters’ moralities are going, we can still be sure that Star Wars , as a whole, is on the side of the good guys. Star Wars: The Last Jedi  is released on 14 December. |

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EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN

 A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET III: DREAM  WARRIORS

 YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM:

Six.  YEARS SINCE MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: The

essential set-up is the same right down to the plot, but this time there’s a prophecy about a man who came from the skies to save the world from evil. 5/10 ORIGINAL CAST:

 Just Bruce Campbell as Ash, but how much more do  you need? 10/10 NEW CHARACTERS: To

be honest, they’re mostly Deadite fodder. Annie Knowby’s canny and spirited, Jake is sweaty and ripe for punishment, but the best value is the possessed granny in the fruit cellar. 6/10

ORIGINAL FILM:

Three. MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION:

12 ALIENS  YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL: Seven. MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: The world of Alien expands massively, meeting colonial marines, seeing inside Weyland-Yutani and tackling a whole other genre.  7/10

ORIGINAL CAST ORIGINAL CAST: Basically just Sigourney Weaver – and Jones the cat. But Weaver got an Oscar nomination for her role, so she’s clearly the MVP in the cast.  5/10 NEW CAST: The colonial marines are classic characters, and Lance Henriksen’s Bishop added a whole new level to the film universe’s androids. 8/10 BIG TWISTS: If Bishop not  being a villain is a twist, then maybe that counts. But it’s not really a film that relies on twists. 4/10 BEST LINE: “Get away from her you BITCH!” 8/10 BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? Hard to say, given that one is a horror film and the other is a balls-to-the-

wall action movie. But if you think of Ripley, this is the movie you’re picturing her in.

32/50

BIG TWISTS: Oh,

I don’t know? How does Ash being sucked through time to the middle ages grab you? Does the possessed hand count? 3/10 BEST LINE: Ash

cackling: “Who’s laughing now?!?” as he carves off his own possessed hand is pretty special. 8/10 BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL:

This will be controversial, but  yes. It’s less savage and frightening but it’s just incredible.

32/50

Loads. There’s the idea of shared dreaming and we discover that Freddy was the son of a nun. 6/10

11 THE ROAD WARRIOR: MAD MAX 2  YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM: Two. MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: God, everything. Everything is expanded. That sense of lawlessness has

been anted up to the extent that we are now in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Law and order’s gone, it’s just about survival now. 10/10 ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: There’s a nice returning role for Max Fairchild who played Benno in the first film and is now strapped to the front of Humungus’ truck. Mostly, though, it’s all about Max. 8/10

RETURNING:

Robert Englund and  John Saxon, but the big get was Heather Langenkamp, who returned to reprise her iconic final girl role of Nancy Thompson. 9/10 NEW CHARACTERS: The

Dream Warriors! There’s Patricia Arquette as Krysten, supported by Jennifer Rubin as Taryn, Ken Sagoes as Kincaid, Rodney Eastman as  Joey and Ira Heiden as Will. Oh, and Laurence Fishburne is in it. 7/10 BIG TWISTS:

Freddy’s parentage is arguably the biggest. 4/10

NEW CHARACTERS: The nice settlers are all very well and good (it’s good to see Farscape’s  Virginia

Hey), Bruce Spence’s pilot is fun, but the main events are the hockey mask wearing villain Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson) and his leather-loving lieutenant Wez, who is played all the way up to 11 by the great Vernon Wells. 8/10

BEST LINE:

BIG TWISTS: No twists. Max is a loner who doesn’t want to help until the baddies kill his dog, at which point he changes his mind. There’s also a stunning chase sequence, as you’d expect. 0/10

BETTER THAN THE

BEST LINE: “You want to get out of here? You talk to me.” 7/10

but it’s the best of the straight sequels.

BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? Yes. The original’s great and an incredible B-movie, but The Road

Warrior  showed what Miller was capable of.

33/50

“Welcome to Prime Time, bitch!” 8/10

ORIGINAL? No,

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DAWN OF THE DEAD

BEST SCI-FI SEQUELS The Greatest Sequels Ever

 YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM: Ten. MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: We don’t

really learn anything new about the zombie outbreak but we certainly see the effect it’s having on the world outside that little farmhouse in Night : Total chaos. 9/10

7

6

ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: None.

 YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM: Seven.

 YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM: Four.

Well, Romero has another cameo, but he’s playing a different character. 1/10 NEW CHARACTERS: There’s Gaylen

Ross and David Emge as newsroom couple Stephen and Francine, Scott Reiniger as hot-headed SWAT team member Roger, but the best of the bunch is the great Ken Foree as Peter Washington with all the best lines. 9/10

TERMINATOR 2:  JUDGEMENT DAY 

MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: We get a new

cybernetic organism, the T-1000, plus more on how the Skynet apocalypse went/will go down. 6/10

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: Not much but we do see more of the Creature’s romantic soul. 6/10 ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: Boris Karloff is

Schwarzenegger and Hamilton are back. 7/10

back as Frankenstein’s Creature, and Colin Clive returns as his creator. 7/10

NEW CHARACTERS: Edward Furlong is a rare

NEW CHARACTERS: Elsa Lanchester created an

BIG TWISTS: It’s not really twist-y, but

example of a kid in an action film who isn’t irritating and Robert Patrick at the T-1000 was great. 7/10

icon with her brief but unforgettable appearance as the Bride. 8/10

the idea that the best place to survive an apocalypse is a prison works great. 6/10

BIG TWISTS: The Terminator is a good guy! 8/10

BIG TWISTS: That the Bride shuns the Creature in such a devastating way is a great tragic twist. 7/10

ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING:

BEST LINE: “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.” 10/10

BEST LINE: “Come with me if you want to live.” 8/10

BEST LINE: “We belong dead.” 9/10

BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? That’s a

BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? It’s a different

BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? We’d say yes.

genre, but it has great action and Robert Patrick.

There’s more depth and tragedy. And The Bride.

really tough one. Without wanting to sound like we’re chickening out, we’ll go with “just as good as the first one”.

36/50

37/50

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HARRY POTTER  AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

 YEARS SINCE THE ORIGINAL: Three. MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: We find out

a lot more about Harry’s parents’ generation, we meet a werewolf, and the Dementors make their first, terrifying appearance. 8/10 ORIGINAL CAST: All of the usual lot

are back, with the exception of Richard Harris, who sadly died between Chamber Of Secret s and Prisoner Of Azkaban. He was replaced by Michael Gambon, who did a darn fine job. 8/10 NEW CAST: Enter the Marauders – Azkaban

introduced us to Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, not to mention Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney. 9/10

5 INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE  YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM: Eight. MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: Indiana’s back story is revealed and dug around in throughout the film via the difficult relationship he has with his father – a fellow historian, albeit a less adventurous one. 7/10 ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: Indy, Marcus Brody and Sallah all return, making The Last Crusade  feel like a direct sequel to Raiders Of The Lost Ark , rather than having Temple Of Doom in between. 7/10 NEW CAST: As always, Indy gets a new love interest/villain, but the most important new addition is Sean Connery’s Henry Jones Snr. River Phoenix also makes for a great young Indy in a flashback. 9/10 BIG TWISTS: Elsa’s a fanatic Nazi! And both of the Jones men slept with her. 6/10 BEST LINE: “We named the DOG Indiana.” 8/10 BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? It’s a tough call but this is a strong contender for best Indiana Jones  film.

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BIG TWISTS: RATTERS WAS PETER

PETTIGREW ALL ALONG! Granted, it’s not much of a twist if you’ve read the books, but it’s still a good one. 7/10 BEST LINE: “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” 3/10 BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? Lots.

Alfonso Cuarón’s darkly magical approach works much better than the overly-glossy first two movies. The real question, though, is whether it’s the best film in the franchise.

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STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 

LIST FEATURE Best Sci-Fi Sequels

 YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL: Three.

4 X-MEN 2  YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM: Three.

3 THE DARK KNIGHT  YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL: Three years (or 19

 years or 42 years depending on how you look at it). MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: We get new

mutants, Wolverine’s back story and the knowledge that the X-gene is carried down the male line. 8/10

MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: There are more

gadgets and more villains, but we don’t learn much more about Batman. 5/10

ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: Just about everyone who survived the first film is back. 9/10

ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: A fair chunk

NEW CHARACTERS: Even if Nightcrawler was

of the originals return, but Katie Holmes’ Rachel is recast as Maggie Gyllenhaal. 8/10

the only new character, that’d be enough. But we also have Striker, Pyro and Lady Deathstrike. 8/10 BIG TWISTS: Magneto and Mystique are now on the same side as the X-Men (sort of). 7/10 BEST LINE: “Have you ever tried... not being a mutant?” 6/10

NEW CAST: Heath Ledger as The Joker. Need we say more? Okay, we get Two-Face too. 10/10 BIG TWISTS: The clever fake-out where we think

Batman is saving Rachel, but he saves Harvey Dent instead was genuinely surprising. 8/10

BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? All the

BEST LINE: “Whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you... stranger.” 8/10

characters get more to do, Striker is a great villain and the action set-pieces are a huge improvement.

BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL? By a country mile.

38/50

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2 STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN  YEARS SINCE ORIGINAL FILM: Three. MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: Nothing too surprising, but there’s some nice worldbuilding stuff. Oh, and bringing a one-off villain from the show back to make one of sci-fi’s best baddies was brilliant. 8/10 ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: The gang’s all here and, of course, Ricardo Montalban as Khan. 10/10 NEW CHARACTERS: Well, given that Khan already existed, there’s not too much in the way of new faces. Kirstie Alley plays Spock’s protégé Saavik and Paul Winfield is the doomed captain of The Reliant. 3/10 BIG TWISTS: At first it looks like Kirk manoeuvring in three dimensions instead of Khan’s two is going to be the big twist, but that’s before we realise that Spock isn’t going to make it out of the engine room… 9/10 BEST LINE: It’s a real toss-up between: “I have been... and always shall be... your friend,” and Shatner’s earth-shattering delivery of “KHAAAAAAAN!!!!” 10/10 BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL: Most definitely, in every way.

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MYTHOLOGY EXPANSION: Luke’s

training with Yoda reveals even more about the Jedis and the Force, and we come to understand more about the Empire and the Rebellion. 9/10 ORIGINAL CAST RETURNING: Pretty much everyone is back. 9/10 NEW CAST: Plenty of classic Star

Wars  characters don’t turn up until Empire  – Yoda, Emperor Palpatine and Lando Calrissian. 10/10 BIG TWISTS: “I am your father” is a pretty big twist, right? 10/10 BEST LINE: “I love you.” “I know.” 6/10 BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL?

While it lacks the simplicity of the original it also adds far more depth and truly great action sequences.

44/50 Sequels have to tread a treacherous path, giving fans both what they think they want, and what they actually need – new characters, an expansion of the world they love, and tougher trials to put the returning characters through. Empire balances it all beautifully, especially the introduction of new characters. After getting us reacquainted with the core three of Luke, Han and Leia, it then takes us out into the wider universe to meet a tiny green Jedi Master, a shifty friend/foe, and Darth Vader’s boss. Yoda could have been lost in A New Hope , but now that initial introductions are out of the way it can spend time enjoying his eccentricities, just as it gives us time to care about Lando’s betrayal and redemption. It also nails the ‘bigger is better’ ethos of sequels, giving us AT-ATs, a proper lightsaber fight, new worlds, new creatures and a top-notch final act. It ends on a dark note that fans of the optimistic A New Hope  simply wouldn’t have seen coming, but which feels like a natural evolution. It’s a coming-ofage series, and Luke’s failure, loss and newfound daddy issues are central to any story about adolescence.

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 WILD CARDS

The sequels that are much better than you think  HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH

Okay, so it’s not technically even a sequel given that it’s an unrelated story about witches, Halloween masks and Stonehenge, but it’s genuinely brilliant and the ending is chilling. Silver Shamrock! RETURN TO OZ

Anyone hoping for an experience as child-friendly and heartwarming as The Wizard Of Oz  was in for a shock when they sat down to watch Walter Murch’s 1985 sequel. It is great, don’t get us wrong, but it is pure pitch black nightmare fuel. GREMLINS II

 Joe Dante’s harebrained sequel has finally got the reappraisal it deserves after years of being maligned. Sure, it’s dark, it’s weird, it’s crazy, and that’s exactly the point. Just go with it and embrace the madness and you’ll see it’s brilliant. BATMAN RETURNS

It remains to be seen whether the age of ‘dark and gritty’ superhero movies is really gone, but we sorely miss the days when Tim Burton got away with making a Batman movie that was so dark and… twisted. It made kids cry and it’s incredible. WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

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EVERYTHING WILL NOT BE OKAY   WE TAKE A LOOK INTO BLACK MIRROR SEASON FOUR WORDS NADIA ATTIA 

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BLACK MIRROR SEASON 4

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MUST-SEE TV  Black Mirror

 WHILE ACCEPTING THE FIRST OF TWO EMMYS FOR BLACK MIRROR SEASON THREE EPISODE SAN JUNIPERO, CO-CREATOR CHARLIE BROOKER QUIPPED “I’VE

heard 2017 described as like being trapped in one long Black Mirror  episode, but if I’d written it it wouldn’t be quite so on-the-nose.” If we are living out a twisted dystopian existence that seems to flow from the prophetic pen of Brooker, then should we be wary of what he has in store for us in Season Four? “It’s like a box of chocolates, you don’t know what’s inside. But you know it’s gonna be dark chocolate,” he tells us, clearly not wanting to ruin the surprise/ dread of our first viewing. “In this season  we do have a lot more comedy though. Having said that, we’ve got ones that are sort of outright horror, we’ve got noir thrillers, an indie parenting-relationship drama, and we’ve got one that’s a bit Tales From The Crypt. All the episodes are very different, different genres, different lengths, different tones, different styles. So in a way, the only thing to expect is the unexpected,  which sounds wanky but it’s accurate!” If Black Mirror  is so polymorphous  what exactly is it? “It’s hard to define  what makes a Black Mirror  story,” admits Brooker, “but I sort of know it when I see it. Generally, there is a thing where we don’t have the supernatural in our universe, we have technological reasons underpinning everything – we don’t tend to have things happening by magic. So the universe does have a few rules.” Drawing from tangible reality, technology and science is perhaps why Brooker’s universes are so chillingly believable. “We always have gizmos in most stories and we’ve got a load in this season,” he says. “I used to think: ‘Oh that’s years away, that’ll never happen,’ and then ten minutes after it’s aired suddenly Google announce they’re doing the same thing! So I was deliberately  writing stuff that was slightly more far flung than in previous seasons, products that are more outlandish. But then I daresay the ideas will catch up because  you’re constantly trying to outflank reality at the moment.”  We’ve had politicians porking pigs, gut wrenching game shows, VR implants and brutal apps that could feasibly appear on  your home screen at any moment; how does Black Mirror  manage to reflect our society so well? “I don’t really know where the ideas come from, they just sort of arrive,” Brooker claims. “What we [he and  Annabel Jones] don’t tend to do is open

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a newspaper and go: ‘Well what can we say about this?’ What usually happens is in the middle of a conversation I’ll suddenly think of something that amuses me, a dilemma or a funny situation, and  you can never quite see them coming. It’s like they suddenly occur and then they start to assert themselves in a slightly Darwinian way.” The success of Black Mirror, which moved from Channel 4 to Netflix last  year, turned our attention to the anthology series, where viewers are treated to standalone stories – in this case, each one directed by a different person. Inside No.9, Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories, American Horror Story  (which reinvents itself each season) and now Electric Dreams  have all proved popular, but the TV anthology series isn’t a new phenomenon, and

Brooker says ‘USS Callister’ is “epic.”  We’re sure there’s nothing to worry about.

‘Black Museum’ will be classic horror.

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BLACK MIRROR

Everything Will Not Be Okay

BROOKER BREAKS IT DOWN USS CALLISTER 

USS Callister is a space epic, quite a romp. That’s a big episode, quite ambitious, and it’s like 74 minutes long.  ARKANGEL

 Arkangel is about a motherdaughter relationship that comes under strain, thanks to something that appears to be ‘progress.’ It has the feel of a down-at-heel indie movie – it’s not a shiny world, it has dents and buckles and dirt and rust. CROCODILE

Crocodile is a gripping, noir thriller shot by John Hillcoat in Iceland. He kept asking me  why it was called ‘Crocodile’ and he worked out a whole theory and I had to tell him it  was just a name I’d thought of for something else. It’s not too huge a reveal to say that it’s not actually about crocodiles. HANG THE DJ

“METALHEAD IS MAXINE PEAK AS  YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HER BEFORE” CHARLIE BROOKER

Hang The DJ is directed by Tim Van Patten, who’s worked on little-known shows like The Sopranos, Game Of Thrones  and Boardwalk Empire. It’s a different tone to what we’ve done before, it’s quite playful. It’s got a dating app at the heart of it and there are lots of relationships going on. METALHEAD

Metalhead is Maxine Peak as  you’ve never seen her before. If Season Four is an album with different types of songs on it, this one is like a punk single. A nail-biting, tense, punch to the gut. It’s a short, sharp shock, under 40 minutes, in black and white. BLACK MUSEUM

Black Museum is Tales From The Crypt  meets Treehouse Of Horror … we did ‘White Christmas’ before which was a portmanteau, like one of those old Amicus horror films, and I was keen to revisit that as a form. It takes place in a crime museum in the middle of nowhere, where a woman is shown around by a man called Rollo Haines, who tells her stories about the grisly artefacts  within. This is one where we’ve gone to town with Easter eggs,  we’ve sketched out extra bits of Black Mirror  mythology in there.

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MUST-SEE TV  Black Mirror

“WE’RE A SHOW  WHERE YOU WANT TO BE SURPRISED. THAT’S THE LIFEBLOOD OF BLACK MIRROR” CHARLIE BROOKER

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BLACK MIRROR

Everything Will Not Be Okay The excellent Maxine Peake in ‘Metalhead’.

PATENT PENDING FOUR BLACK MIRROR INVENTIONS THAT BECAME REALITY 

ROBOTIC BEES

(Hated In The Nation)   Japan’s National Institute of  Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have already created a small drone that can be used to pollinate plants. But  what if the code gets hacked?  And who controls the hive?

SOCIAL CLONING

Brooker draws inspiration from many shows of the past. “Nigel Kneale, the Quatermass  creator is a big influence, if you look at The Stone Tape  that’s quite Black Mirror  in a way,” he says. “And The Year Of The Sex Olympics  had a direct influence on ‘Fifteen Million Merits’ [Season One]; it’s quite clear if you see those two back-toback. There’s also Night Gallery , which  was Rod Serling’s follow up to The Twilight Zone, which delves even more into horror, and quite a lot of weird and wonderful BBC plays from the Seventies and Eighties.  Also, really disturbing things like Threads , a nuclear war drama – if you haven’t seen it don’t ever watch it, it’s the most terrifying thing the BBC has ever broadcast!”  When asked if he’s seen any of Channel 4’s Electric Dreams  series he admits that he hasn’t. “And I have to hold my hands up and say I’ve never read any Philip K Dick. Like everyone, I’ve seen Total Recall, Minority Report  and Blade Runner . But anyway, why would I want to watch a sci-fi anthology show when I’m working on one?” he laughs. “That’s a busman’s holiday if ever there was one!” Like the past few seasons of Black Mirror , number four doesn’t stint on the high-calibre talent bringing Brooker’s sardonic, yet often touching, words to life. “The advantage of

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doing an anthology show like this is that there’s more leeway for directors, because on episodic shows they’ve got to blend in,  whereas with Black Mirror  everything’s got to stand out. So I like to think that’s a much more interesting gig, but also a challenge because you’re starting from scratch every time. That’s why we only do six episodes, it’s a lot of work,” he admits. Brooker is aware that each new voice brings something fresh to the table, and he’s clearly enthusiastic about his collaborators: “You need a director to come in with a strong sense of where they  want to take it and how they see it playing out visually,” he tells us. “A very good example is ‘Metalhead’ – David Slade had a strong visual idea in mind and a tone that we hadn’t quite thought of. Then you look at ‘USS Callister’ and it’s Toby Haynes, who  worked on Doctor Who  and Sherlock , and he was like a kid in a sweet shop because we got to build a giant spaceship and all the rest of it, and he went to town. Then with ‘Arkangel’, Jodie [Foster], you may have noticed, is an actress – so she had lots of thoughts on character and points of view that wouldn’t have occurred to me. And the finished product is always better than what I pictured when I was  writing it. Actually… I think I can say this…

 when we sent Andrea Riseborough the script for ‘Crocodile’ it was for a different part. And we got feedback saying that she really liked the script but she’d be interested in playing the lead, who was a male character, and so we thought about and went ‘yeah, okay’ and re-wrote it.” There are quite a few female leads in this new season, and Brooker certainly doesn’t seem to shy away from writing strong roles for women. “With ‘San  Junipero’ there was a conscious decision to write a female couple,” he says, “and I guess in the first season of Black Mirror all the leads were male, so in the second season I remember making a deliberate decision to not do that. Partly it’s a conscious thing and partly it’s just that  you want the best actors. Sometimes I’m definitely writing a particular ethnicity too, most of the time we tend not to specify but you want to be sure that the world is being reflected in our show. I’m probably thinking more about that these days. And also, we’re a show where you want to be surprised, that’s the lifeblood of Black Mirror  – you need variety and difference, it’s what makes everything interesting.” Black Mirror  Season Four airs on Netflix later this year. Black Mirror Volume 1 is published on 22 February.

(Be Right Back)  Personality detection services like Crystal pull online data about people so users can tailor emails and messages to their personality. Think twice before posting that hilarious selfie…

IN-EYE CAMERAS

(White Christmas/The Entire History Of You)   Artificial eyeballs already have some footing in research that gives retinas to blind mice, all  you’d need to do is download an app like Periscope to record and live stream what you see.

 VR PROJECTIONS

(Nosedive/Men  Against Fire)  Microsoft’s HoloLens appeared in 2016, a virtual reality/‘mixed reality’ headset that projects holograms onto the real world around you. If the tech becomes small enough for a contact lens we could all soon be viewing each other’s social rating, or swapping faces a-la Snapchat.

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BIG MOVIE  Jumanji

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 JUMANJI

Law Of The Jungle

 A FILM FOR THOSE WHO SEEK TO FIND A WAY TO LEAVE THEIR WORLD BEHIND, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE IS BRINGING ROBIN WILLIAMS’ LEAST FAVOURITE GAME INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM. WE TALK TO DIRECTOR JAKE KASDAN ABOUT ADVENTURE MOVIE NOSTALGIA AND REVIVAL ANXIETY… WORDS POPPY-JAY PALMER  YOU MAY REMEMBER  the outrage

surrounding the news of the upcoming Jumanji  reboot. You may have even been outraged yourself. Deemed by many as being unnecessary, kind of insulting, and potentially childhoodruining, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle’s  production has been watched by judging eagle eyes from the start. All remakes can be considered unnecessary, really, but the idea of a new Jumanji  brought with it a particularly strong brand of venom. The fact that the film was confirmed a year after the passing of original Jumanji  star Robin Williams didn’t help matters. But instead of being a flat-out remake, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle  is set to take that basic idea that proved a hit in the Nineties and update it for a new generation. We needn’t worry, says director Jake Kasdan. However, he understands why people might. “I certainly sympathise, I get where that anxiety comes from,” he explains. “We love the original movie a lot, those of us who made it, and the cast, and Robin, who was obviously an enormous influence. He looms large for anybody who works in comedy, which I have most of my career and pretty much everybody involved with the film. He’s just a giant. “We were certainly very conscious of respectfully walking in the footsteps that we were, and then at the same time, I think that we made a very different movie. I think that hopefully some of people’s anxiety will be swayed by the fact that we’re not trying to just redo what they did so well. We’re doing something different, and we’re continuing this legend from a different angle and taking it in a different direction that hopefully won’t invade people’s love of the original movie. I don’t think it does.” Another issue that crops up a lot when a new version of a loved classic is announced — besides the admittedly ridiculous worry of it dismantling the foundations of many childhoods — is the terminology. Is it a reboot? A remake? A sequel? The issue may seem trivial, but those three words each encourage a different expectation. Kasdan has an answer to that one too, as far as Jumani: Welcome To The Jungle  is concerned.

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“I think this sort of defies people’s expectation of what those words mean,” he insists. “It’s a continuation of the story of the game. That was the approach that we took.” Instead of vines, creatures and moustachioed bounty hunters emerging from the board game, the new film will see its characters being sucked into it. And instead of a board game, Jumanji  is an 8-bit video game. It’s an updated variation for a new generation. “It was an idea [writer] Chris McKenna came up with and I thought it was inspired,” Kasdan tells us. “The game has morphed into a video game and it still has the supernatural, mysterious power that draws people to it, but it’s taken a completely different form. The further extension of that is that the kids enter the game, but they enter the game in the bodies of these avatar characters that they’ve chosen. It’s a big comedy idea, but it also still has this really interesting, dramatic notion to it, which is what would you discover about yourself if you could spend a day in somebody else’s skin? I felt like it was a way of expanding that idea in a really fun, funny but also kind of interesting way.” With the inclusion of the 8-bit video game, fantasy action-adventure element and the trailer’s powerful Raiders Of The Lost Ark  vibe, Jumanji  could be heading down that popular route of Eighties nostalgia. The nostalgia wasn’t something Kasdan was purposely going for, but it might have found its way in anyhow: “I think that in some ways, I myself am a product of those [Eighties] movies,” he laughs. “I think the movie is very much informed by the movies that I loved as a kid. I was very focused on trying to make a movie that would be like one of those movies, that could do some of the same things for a new generation. “A lot of the movies that I loved, I was just starting to go to movies, from eight, nine, ten, through to my teen years, you know, a lot of the movies that I loved the most were adventures in that spirit but really funny. They had comedians in them, but they were in situations with real danger and peril, and there was some cleverness to how the story worked, like Ghostbusters  and

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BIG MOVIE

 Jumanji

REBOOTS RANKED

Sometimes reboots do well, sometimes they don’t. Here are the most notable from the last few years…

GODZILLA

ROBOCOP

(2014) 

Release date of original: 1987  Box office: $242,688,965 SciFiNow  rating: HHH

Back To The Future,  those movies that first lit me up. I was very much aspiring to that tradition. It’s tough company to get into, but the movie was certainly informed by those kinds of movies.” Ask anyone, and the main thing the new Jumanji  has going for it is Dwayne ‘The Rock’  Johnson in the leading role. He may have a completely different appeal to him than the late Robin Williams had, but there is no denying that their signature limitless charisma is comparable. With his wide career range and staggering fan following behind him, the Rock is currently one of the hottest entertainment assets on the planet. In the film, Johnson plays a slightly neurotic 16-year-old high school gamer geek Spencer who finds himself in the body of a jacked, 260-pound archaeologist explorer named Dr Smolder Bravestone after being sucked into the video game. The jacked, 260-pound part is obviously very much in line with what we’re used to from  Johnson, but it should be interesting watching his massive frame embody the insecurity and anx iety that usually comes with being a high-schooler. “The fun of it, in terms of working with DJ, is he’s playing at his persona in a way that is

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(2014) 

Release date of original: 1954, 1998 (remake) Box office: $529,076,069 SciFiNow  rating: HHHH

TERMINATOR GENISYS

(2015) 

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

(2015) 

Release date of Release date of original: 1979 original: 1984 Box office: $378,858,340 Box office: $440,603,537  SciFiNow  rating: HHHHH SciFiNow  rating: HH

incredibly generous and free with poking at what people’s expectations of his characters are,” says Kasdan. “What was so much fun doing it is that is he really engaged the challenge of playing a neurotic 16-year-old. It was a total blast working that out with him and then watching him do it. I just think he’s so funny in the movie, and also he’s the biggest action star in the world. Only he can do the things that he can do. He’s a completely unique presence in movies and in the world, and it was a blast doing it with him.” As well as being a 260-pound wrestler-turnedactor and having a prolific social media presence, the Rock is also famous for his outrageously good work ethic. Barely a day goes by that doesn’t include a selfie-mode Instagram video diary of him breaking down his latest film, TV series or business venture and getting pumped for what the future holds. That enviable work ethic also made it to the Jumanji  set. “That’s another way that he’s one-of-a-kind,” explains Kasdan. “He’s doing something every minute of his life: he shows up and he’s there to play. He’s the real thing, you know, and it’s inspiring to everybody.” The Rock aside, Jumanji: Welcome To The 

GHOSTBUSTERS

(2016) 

Release date of original: 1984 Box office: $229,147,506 SciFiNow  rating: HHHH

Jungle  has got itself a pretty sweet cast together. Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan join him in the film’s core cast, with Hart as a burly high school football player in the avatar body of a Kevin Hart-sized zoologist and weapons specialist, Black as a vain cheerleader in the body of a cr yptography professor, and Gillan as a shy bookworm in the body of a high-kicking commando. The four are also joined by Nick Jonas, Bobby Cannavale, Missi Pyle and Rhys Darby. “It was a really nice set to work on, as you would imagine,” says Kasdan. “You really couldn’t ask for a nicer group of people to make a movie like this with, and to have these big stars so generously passing the ball to each other, it was a really cool thing.” Though the set was friendly, filming was far from easy. With the film taking place in the jungles of Jumanji as opposed to the suburban New Hampshire setting of the original, the logical step was to set up camp in an actual jungle and film it on location. As Jumanji obviously doesn’t actually exist, the crew selected the stunning landscapes of Oahu, Hawaii, as a stand-in. But Kasdan explains that the experience was no luau.

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CHOOSE YOUR PLAYER   What kind of video game character are you? DO YOU FIGHT  WITH YOUR FISTS OR  YOUR MIND?

FISTS

MIND

DO YOU LIKE TO GET INVOLVED IN OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS?

Bike. Flamethrower. The Rock.

 ARE YOU A LEADER OR A FOLLOWER?

OBVIOUSLY  A LEADER

NOPE

GOD, YES!

 WHAT DO YOU DO IN YOUR TENT  AT NIGHT?

 JUST TELL ME  WHAT YOU NEED

BROOD

 WHAT’S INSIDE  YOUR RUCKSACK?

SHARPEN MY KNIVES

THE MUMMY

(2017) 

Release date of original: 1932, 1999 (remake) Box office: £409,076,392 SciFiNow  rating: ★★

POWER RANGERS

(2017) 

Release date of original: 1995 Box office: $142,337,240 SciFiNow  rating: ★★★

“It’s a funny thing because it’s spectacularly beautiful and it’s a lovely place to be, as everyone knows,” he tells us. “To work there and to film there is actually much more physical than people would anticipate. We made the movie in remote locations, like deep in the rainforests and jungles of Oahu. It was spectacular and you could see things that you couldn’t find anywhere else. It was surprisingly rigorous; it’s hard to get anywhere with all that stuff but there’s this incredible pleasure that comes from it. It’s a really cool thing to do.” Even with the new approach to the source material that ought not to rip off the original film (which itself was based on the Chris Van Allsburg children’s book of the same name), people are still worried. It’s a big gamble, committing to a project as large as this when there seems to be a lot of potential viewers against it. But with this cast and those fun-filled trailers, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle  might just pull it off. What’s life — and the game itself — without a little risk? Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle  is in cinemas 20 December 2017.

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IS YOUR T-SHIRT  A LITTLE TOO SMALL FOR YOU?

 WHAT T-SHIRT?

KNIVES

DO YOU HAVE A LOVE INTEREST?

 YES

OF COURSE, LOOK AT ME

 ARE YOUR SHORTS TOO SMALL TOO?

BOOKS AND FIELD NOTES

NO

DO YOU HAVE MUCH OF A STORYLINE?

DO YOU HAVE  A FOSSIL COLLECTION?

DUH  YES

THE HERO

Ever the adventurer, this is your story and  you’re always there to save the day.

SADLY NOT

THE MUSCLE

 You don’t have much personality, but it doesn’t matter because  you have knives.

 WTF? NO

THE EYE CANDY 

 Your clothes may be uncomfortably tight, but as least you’re most gamers’ favourite.

 YES, AND  NO SHAME

THE  ACADEMIC

 Who needs looks, brawn and street smarts when you have this many PhDs?

CULT ULT CINEMA INEMA Lu Over The Wall

Surprise! urprise! A mermaid is Kai’s number 1 fan.

“IT’S EASY TO CRITICISE OTHER PEOPLE. UNDERSTANDING OTHER PEOPLE IS MUCH HARDER” MASAAKI YUASA

 Yuasa’s art style is simple but vibrant.

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The goal was to create a film for everyone.

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LU OVER THE WALL Lu u And Behold

 WE E TTALK LK TO MASAAKI S KI YUASA, YU S O ONE E OF ANIME’S I E’S MOST OST EXCITING EXCITI G  VOICES,, ABOUT HIS NEW FILM LU OVER THE WALL  WORDS JOSH SLATER-WILLIAMS

 JAPANESE FILMMAKER ro e out w with t tthee MASAAKI  ASAAKI Yuasa broke Mind n Game  Game.  With offbeat, adult-focused anime M Wt new movie mov e Lu Over The Wall, he’s e’s made a play for a universal audience. We talk to the director about fantastical creatures, Adventure Time, and his is upcoming horror series for Netflix… Yuasa’s background in animation goes back ack decades, but he’s probably best known to international audiences for his debut feature as a director. 2004’s Mind Game  is a psychedelic trip of a mov o movie e tthat at incorporates ncorporates life, e, death, eat , sex and an yakuza ya uza feuds eu s into nto one m mind-bending n - en ng package. pac age. Since then, the filmmaker has mostly directed TV V series, shorts or contributions to anthology movies but 2017 has seen the long-awaited release of two new feature films from the director: comedy The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl  and fantasy Lu Over The Wall. Yuasa’s film and TV output is characterised by y deceptively simple animation that’s prone to expressive outbursts of manic energy. Lu Over The Wall  is no exception, though here it’s filtered into nto mater material a tthat’s at’s a little tte more family-friendly am y- r en y tthan an some some of o hiss prior pr or work. wor . The T e story focuses ocuses on on Kai,, a gloomy student Ka g oomy middle m e school sc oo stu ent in n a small sma seaside town where interests outside of a future in the local businesses are largely discouraged. He reluctantly joins a band with two fellow classmates and they practice in secret. Halfway through the first practice, Kai finds they already have ave a fan: a music-loving mermaid named Lu who wants to sing and dance with them…

THE STORY’S ORIGINS “It’s It’s aabout out a boy oy w who o meets a g girl r an and the t e rites r tes of o T e Wall  Wa . “II just passage,” assage,” Yuasa says of Lu Over The ust wanted to make a story about how everyone is different and how sometimes you like someone but ut that doesn’t mean you always have a chance to get together. But, also, I wanted to create a story from my observation about modern society – social networks and how people tend to say things according to the media they’re talking to people through. We don’t always have to and I tthink act out, an n we we can canget get more more or or better etter understanding un erstan ngbyy being e ng just ust ourselves. ourseves. And An also, not just being you but accepting differences and different people. I think that would make everybody’s lives much easier.”

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SOCIAL MEDIA Social Soc a me mediaa makes ma es up a bigg part part of o the t e story, story, with wt platforms like YouTube or Twitter driving certain narrative events. While the film doesn’t condemn social media’s omnipresence in contemporary culture, Yuasa hopes that people take away an idea of how these networks can sometimes reshape our relationships with people and the world around us to potentially detrimental means. “It’s about understanding other people,” he says, “and I don’t think it’s just about Japan. I tthink n it’s t’s pretty pretty much muc a un universal versa issue ssue at tthee moment. It’s It’s easy to cr criticise t c se other ot er people peop e or think t n and feel bad about other people. Understanding other people is much harder. But I think that’s my wishful thinking that people would be so much better if we could do it well.”  VAMPIRES VS MERMAIDS One of the more unique elements of Lu Over The Wall’s  story is that a bite from a mermaid or merman can transform the recipient into a mercreature, be they a human, another aquatic being, or a dog. og. This T s plot p ot device evce feels ee s likee a holdover o over from rom Yuasa’s or original g na concept for or the t e film: m: that t at itt would involve vampires as the fantastical creature of focus, rather than a mermaid. “It was a vampire girl and a vampire boy,” Yuasa says. “But as we developed the project, we thought we should probably make it more  Japanese, so it was gonna be a mononoke monster in the mountains. But then we wanted something cuter, so, okay, mermaid girl but with some sort of vampire elements in her. The bottom line is we didn’t n’t want to bring r ng in n something somet ng completely comp ete y new or different, erent, because ecause I wanted wante to to make ma e a film m everybody maid.” every o y loves. oves. Everybody Every o y loves oves aa mer merma .”

company. An And I’ I’d worked wor e with w t a US studio stu o before, e ore, so itt wasn’t bad.” a .” Netflix’s approach to television series did present some new challenges, though, as opposed to producing something for a more traditional week-by-week release schedule. “The pressure of the delivery of one batch was high,” he says, “and also it was new and interesting to think about the binge-watchers. I was conscious about people who would just watch everything in one go.”

 ADVENTURE TIME Yuasa ment mentions ons hiss pr prior or wor work w with t an Amer American can studio, which was for directing a sixth season episode of Adventure Time  (‘Food Chain’). “They were doing something that I wanted to do in  Japan,” he says of Adventure Time’s  creators. “That style and process: very simple animation characters but very creative and effective. It was very inspirational and I enjoyed the work.” LIVE-ACTION INSPIRATIONS Conscious of the fact that animation directors will often w o ten bee asked as e which w c artists art sts innthe t e same same field e have ave inspired nsp re them, t em, we decide ec e to throw t row Yuasa a curveball: does he have any key influences when it comes to live-action filmmakers? “So many,” he says with a smile. “I love Steven Spielberg and Akira Kurosawa’s amazing, but I really, really love the camerawork of Brian De Palma. He’s amazing, as is Takeshi Kitano. And [Yasujirō] Ozu – very orthodox but I think [Yasujir think I’ve I’ve taken influence from him. I love Tim Burton and I love Paul Verhoeven. The list is long.” Lu Over The T e Wall  Wa  iss re released ease in n cinemas c nemas on on 6 December. Decem er.

NETFLIX  As well as having two films out this year, Yuasa has also been working on a series for Netflix, due for release on the service in 2018. DEVILMAN: Crybaby  is a new adaptation of Go Nagai’s hit manga, and concerns a demon possessing a boy’s dead body to do evil, only to have a change of heart eart after a ter falling a ng inn love ove with w t a human uman girl. g r. On tthee su subject ect o of wor working ng w with t an American Amer can company on an an anime me series, ser es, Yuasa Yuasa “didn’t n’t see any issues at all. We did the production and there was a liaison between us and Netflix’s Japanese

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NOW IT’S DARK 

THE CREATORS OF THE SUPERNATURAL MYSTERY SERIES TELL US WHY DARK IS YOUR NEW NETFLIX OBSESSION WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

DARK

Now It’s Dark 

PEOPLE KNOW THAT CREEPY STUFF IS DEFINITELY HAPPENING IN SMALL TOWNS,”

With echoes of Twin Peaks  and The Returned , Dark  promises to be a bewitching mystery.

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grins Baran bo Odar, the director and co-creator of Netflix’s new supernatural thriller Dark . From Twin Peaks to Stranger Things, everyone loves a creepy small-town mystery and this tale, the first German Netflix series, promises to blend all your favourite small-town mysteries while bringing something entirely new to the table. When we sit down with Odar and his cocreator/producer Jantje Friese in a London hotel, the show is deep in post-production and the duo has been pulled from the editing bay for an early round of press. “We still have four weeks until picture lock so it’s like the hard phase!” Friese tells us. Having now watched some of the show, we can see why putting the pieces of this puzzle together would have been a lot of hard work. With a large cast of characters and a labyrinthine structure, the story slips between three separate time periods as the mystery surrounding missing children unfolds and, inevitably, prising more secrets out of the duo proves to be tough. To make our job even more difficult, they’re not remotely worried about their ability to keep their mouths shut either. “It’s a mystery show so I think it would be more problematic if it was something else,” laughs Friese. “With this we can just be like: ‘It’s like the Black Box. You don’t know what’s in it and that’s okay’.” However, they’re not entirely pitiless in the face of journalists having to write about a secretive mystery series, and they know that they have an excellent hook for the show. “Dark  takes place in a small fictitious German town called Vinland where a small boy disappears myster iously,” Friese teases. “It centres around four families that live in that town and they are all somehow connected to the disappearance. Also, while everyone is looking for the boy, there are dark sins and secrets coming up to the surface. So, we start to understand that the small town isn’t as nice as you think and there are things going on behind closed doors that you

wouldn’t have imagined at first.” But it’s not your average missing child drama. There are cops, there are suspects, there are innocent bystanders, and then there’s something else… “It kind of works like a puzzle,” Friese continues. “So, with every episode we are giving you pieces and you find out that they are all somehow involved with the disappearance and it doesn’t only take place in 2019, everything goes back to events in the Eighties and the Fifties as well. So, you discover with every new episode that the fates of all those people are intertwined and connected and through time and space, because there is a supernatural twist that bends time and space… and I’m not sure whether I can say anymore!” she laughs. “But those three time zones, the Fifties, the Eighties and 2019, are all connected to each other. It’s a very complex character web.”  “There are two leads in it but it’s actually an ensemble story,” adds Odar. “We have 72 characters, but there are two leads. They don’t have more screen time than any other characters, but one is a teenage boy who is 16 years old and the other is the detective whose son goes missing and they try to understand what happened. So, you start with two leads but soon you realise it’s all about the other characters as well.” As the story begins, we see that the local police are struggling to find any leads in the case of the missing boy… and then the vanishing of young Mikkel sends the already fragile community into a tail spin. But this crime isn’t just bringing up the horrors of the past, it’s actually sending some of its characters there, which means we see several characters at very different stages of their lives. Meanwhile, the time-slipping element is somehow linked to the nuclear power plant that looms over the town, as the thing that’s been keeping this community alive has a dark secret lurking deep underneath it.

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MUST-SEE TV  Dark 

“IT’S A REAL HEAD-SCRATCHER”

The crimes that started TV’s greatest mysteries LAURA PALMER 

“We both grew up in small towns,” Friese tells us. “And I think what interests us very much is why do people become who they are, especially if they do bad things? How did they come to that place to make that choice? We always had that feeling that especially in small towns where everything looks sunny and nice and peaceful. What really happens behind those closed doors? And isn’t being human always that there are two sides of things; you think that there is good and there is evil and they can both be in one person. And when you choose to be on one of those two sides, what made you choose that? I think that’s just what fascinates us. And small towns are such a nice backdrop for that kind of story.” Netflix promised to spend 8 billion dollars on films and TV next year, and while a lot of that will be used to bankroll original films (following in the footsteps of movies like Bright, Okja and War Machine ), they’re pushing their shows further and further. Dark  is their first German-language series, and Odar and Friese had to beat some serious competition for the gig. “They reached out to a lot of people in Germany during almost a year I think,” remembers Friese. “Talking to a lot of filmmakers, producers, asking people for ideas and we were one of them and we won! They liked our idea… hopefully for a reason!” They found themselves in pole position by returning to an idea they had been developing for a while but which still needed an extra element to make it stand out.  “We had this story in mind for a long time but it was just a family saga with a crime show idea,” Odar remembers. “But after Netflix approached us asking if we had an idea for a show, we read that story again and we felt like something was missing. We had spent a lot of time on that idea and put it back into the cupboard and did nothing with it for many years, so we felt like after all those years we should do something to it otherwise we’d feel bored and kill ourselves! And that’s why we added something to it and that’s basically the big hook of the story which Netflix loved and felt was very unique and no one has done that before.” That uniqueness will certainly help Dark  to find an audience beyond its native country. The huge success of series like The Returned, and of course Scandinavian crime series like The Killing , has proved that subtitles are no barrier when it comes to creepy mysteries, and Friese tells us that a damn good story is a damn good story. “I find the idea of local borders ridiculous anyway because movies and stories are basically about human experience,” she explains. “Experiences are the same in Japan and South America and Germany no matter the cultural context. As long as you’re true to that human experience I think it will reach whoever, and I think shows like Narcos  have shown that. It’s perfectly fine to have a local show but it can go global as well.” “All our projects we’ve done so far were always for an international audience,” adds Odar. “Visually, but also story wise. We don’t feel 056

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Twin Peaks 

“She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic.” That was how Laura was found at the start of Twin Peaks, and even the great Special Agent Dale Cooper couldn’t solve it until ABC decided to force David Lynch and Mark Frost to make their big reveal midway through Season Two.  WILL BYERS

Stranger Things 

 Young Will vanishes on his way home from an epic Dungeons And Dragons session, marking the beginning of an adventure involving monsters, alternate dimensions, telekinetic kids and Christmas lights used as Ouija boards. Still, he’s back now, so everything is totally fine… right? SAMANTHA MULDER 

The X-Files 

 Admittedly, Billy Miles is the first puzzle that The X-Files  gave us, but it was the abduction of Mulder’s sister that sent everyone’s favourite deadpan detective on his quest for the truth. True to X-Files  arc-plot form, Samantha kept popping up every now and again with diminishing returns.  VICTOR 

The Returned 

 While the dead return to life to make life extremely awkward for everyone in a picturesque French mountain town in The Returned , the young boy named  Victor is at the centre of everything. He’s kind of adorable and kind of terrifying all at once. PRAIRIE JOHNSON

The OA 

Prairie disappeared seven years ago and now, suddenly, she’s back. She has also mysteriously regained her eyesight, but that’s for damn sure not the only thing that’s mysterious about her. She refers to herself as The OA and she’s determined to recruit a group of teenagers… and what about the movements?

“WE BELIEVE IN STORIES THAT REACH OUT TO EVERYONE” BARAN BO ODAR like just German filmmakers, we watch a lot of international films, I am a big South Korean film geek, we just like good stories and I think there is no border for any story as long as it’s good. We don’t believe in local stuff to be honest, we only believe in stories that reach out to everyone if they’re good. So, when we created Dark  and started writing, we didn’t have the pressure of: ‘Oh my God this has to be global so let’s think about what the Japanese would like’ or whatever, we just tried to tell an interesting, good story. Because something like Studio Ghibli is very  Japanese but it also works here, we love watching those movies. Miyazaki just made good stories I think rather than thinking ‘oh shall we add this element so it also works in Germany?’” Their attitudes to audiences may not have changed, but Odar and Friese did have to adjust to a TV series structure after working primarily in movies. “Yeah, it’s a completely different thing,” nods Friese. “The way you structure your story, the way you treat your characters, how you build the whole narrative that’s completely different. We shot over six months on location and we jumped between episodes, sometimes three times

a day where one character has to play something from episode one and then five and then nine. That was also challenging for the actors I would say but I think after so many shooting days there were able to create a character. Sometimes for a movie they show up twice, then play four scenes and that’s it so they have no time to actually create a character, but you could tell the teenagers literally became those characters after the course of six months which was nice to see and I think they still have those characters in themselves for possible other seasons… or not! We will see!” Dark’s  forest setting is beautiful and atmospheric, but there’s more to it than the possibility of something lurking behind the trees, or the (admittedly very impressive) shots of suddenly deceased livestock. It’s the characters that really bring this story to life, and they’ve all got their secrets, and they’re brilliantly performed by the ensemble cast. “In movies, usually you focus a lot on plot, like something happens to that character at the beginning and then he will either reach it or not and has learned something out of it or not, that’s usually the arc,” explains Odar. “But in the show, you can only create a world with

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DARK

Now It’s Dark 

The hunt for two missing children will take the characters into the past in a very literal way.

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TWIN PEAKS INFLUENCE MUST-SEE TV  TREE

It allDark  comes back to David Lynch’s classic... The X-Files

Fringe

GENRE COP

Sleepy Hollow 

SHOWS

Millennium Hannibal True Detective Desperate Housewives

 Vero  V eronic nicaa Mars Mars “WRAPPED

Pretty Little Liars

Top Of The Lake

IN PLASTIC” MURDER 

The Killing Broadchurch  Americ  Ame rican an Gothic hic

Northern Exposure

Happy Town  Waywa  Wa yward rd Pin Pines es

Eerie, Indiana

SMALL TOWNS WITH

Stranger Things

BIG SECRETS

Picket Fences

Riverdale Bates Motel Pushing Daisies

 Wond  W onderf erfall alls

 AWE  A WESOM SOME E ECCENTRICITY 

 Atlant anta

Fargo

The Returned

Carnivale

COSMIC MYTHOLOGY 

The OA 

Lost  Legion  Wild Palm Palmss Mad Men

BAFFLING DREAM SEQUENCES

The Sopranos 058

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DARK

Odar and Friese promise that Dark  will  will be anything but predictable.

Now It’s Dark 

“I FEEL WE MANAGED TO CREATE A UNIQUE WORLD THAT’S REALLY WEIRD AND DARK”  JA  J ANTJE FRIESE characters by putting them here and there and not even knowing where they will go and that’s the beauty of that open-ended idea of TV series.” “And they can surprise you as well while you write,” adds Friese. “It’s not as formulaic as in features so the characters feel much more real because of that.” t hat.” “Or just letting them do very surprising things, like you can’t do that in movies anymore,

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unfortunately, unfortu nately,”” continues Odar. “I love that in a series when things happen and you’re like: ‘What?!’ Like the Red Wedding, everyone ever yone loves that guy and they kill him! The movie studios would be like: ‘No fucking way, we’re not killing the hero’, but they were like: ‘No, we’re doing that’. Or in Fargo  for  for example, all those characters do weird stuff and make weird decisions which is beautiful I think because it surprises you, it keeps you on the edge of your seat and loving it. I also think that life is the same, it’s not just the journey of a hero, people do weird things.” t hings.” And in a show like Dark , you need to expect the strange, the weird, the unsettling and… well, the dark. “Yeah, it’s very dark,” smiles Odar. “Visually it’s dark but also tonally it’s dark. We like dark stuff.” “It really explores the darkness within every human,” adds Friese. Which brings us, inevitably, to the definitive, archetypal small-town mystery show: Twin Peaks. When we spoke to the duo, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s show was in the middle of its return, and Friese and Odar tell us

that they have always been huge fans. “I was obsessed with Twin Peaks  [as  [as a teenager],” Friese tells us. “I even had a diary like Laura Palmer and I was writing stuff and waiting for someone to answer on the pages! Like really obsessed with it! But it’s not like we watched Twin Peaks  and  and said ‘let’s take this or let’s take that’ th at’.. I think thi nk it’s just something that shaped us in our teenage years, so we kind of carry the atmosphere with us and it’s something that we have expressed in other stuff as well. So, it kind of just flows out but it wasn’t like a one-to-one one-to- one reference.” Indeed, Dark  has  has its own unique quirks and charms, and we can’t wait to see where Odar and Friese are going to take us. One thing is for sure, their plan doesn’t end with the first season finale. “I feel we really managed to create a very unique world that’s really weird and dark with crazy characters so I kind of feel like Season One is the set up for everything else that is going to follow,” Friese teases. tease s. “So, let’s see!” Dark  will  will be available on Netflix on 1 December.

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CULT CINEMA Most Beautiful Island

WRITER-DIRECTOR-STAR ANA ASENSIO TAKES US INSIDE HER GRIPPING AND PROVOCATIVE CHILLER: MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

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MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND Home Of The Brave

 Y 

OU THINK YOU KNOW  WHAT YOU’RE IN FOR  AFTER A FEW MINUTES OF WATCHING ANA

Luciana (Ana Asensio) is in serious trouble.

Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island. With her hand-held camerawork following Spanish illegal immigrant Luciana (also Asensio) around New York City, struggling for money, begging for a doctor’s appointment and being treated awfully by the spoiled brats she nannies, it feels like the kind of close-to-the-bone, painfully relevant social drama that wins awards. Then everything changes, and while it’s still that same thing, it’s got an entirely new personality… It’s well-crafted, beautifully observed, and guttwistingly tense. Most of all, it’s important that you know as little about it as possible going in, as the filmmaker pushes you further to the edge of your seat. We talk to Asensio at the London Film Festival and she tells us that she’s been having a great time watching the audience react to her film. “Absolutely, oh my goodness, I love it so much!” she exclaims. “Eventually it will be out in theatres and you can’t control if people will spoil the whole mystery, but for the time being, the audience is watching this with fresh new eyes and knowing nothing, it’s just fascinating. I hope people will preserve the mystery of the plot because that’s the way it’s supposed to be watched, knowing nothing of what the film is about.”

 A CLEAR VISION Asensio wrote, directed and starred in the film so it’s no surprise that this is something she’s been carrying with her for a long time, but she also tells us that the structure was clear to her from the get-go. “I began just by having the idea in my head, this would be one day in the life of this woman, and then it’s going to have a turn not only in the story, but also in how we’re telling the story and now we’re getting into this other genre,” she explains. “So, this whole concept was my vision from the beginning and actually it was hard to get across when I was pitching the idea. People would say: ‘You have two movies here, why don’t you just do two short films?’ and I would say: ‘No no, you’re not getting it, this is something that is going to work.’ It was hard to convince people that this could work somehow being so radically different.”

PASSION PROJECT It wasn’t just about convincing people that the structure could work. Most Beautiful Island  is Asensio’s first film as a director and she tells us that finding backing for the movie was a struggle. “I had never directed a short film before so I had nothing to prove that I could make a movie. I only had my faith and my enthusiasm,” she remembers. “I did try everything, I tried submitting my script to all the grants, I knocked on doors of production companies, but I was able to find the financing for the film through private investors. I also put all my money into it, all my savings. So, in a way that was extremely hard and it took many years but the good side of that is that I had total creative control. It was a ‘trust in me’ situation, as well as knowing

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that I am not rich, that I put all my money into this, for them they’re just putting a tiny portion of their wealth. I was going to put all my heart and sweat into this project because my life was going into it, so I think that’s how I gained their trust.”

 WHAT’S THE MESSAGE? In the current political climate, it’s easy to read Most Beautiful Island  as a horror film about immigration, the struggle and desperation of people coming to America and trying to survive, and the casual, thoughtless brutality with which they are treated. But while Asensio acknowledges that this reading is valid, she also stresses that she never intended the film to be a message movie. “I didn’t want to make any statement, it just happened to be that this story is about a woman who is an immigrant who happens to be from Spain who is undocumented,” she tells us. “But by no means was I thinking that this story was going to be about immigration. I just wanted the film to be a window that opens and we peek into the life of this woman and then we close the window and her life keeps going. And then you make your own decisions and choices and statements. This was written way before the situation that we’re currently living in. So now it’s, of course, much more relevant and we are all positioning ourselves for the: ‘I am pro or against these regulations that the President is establishing in the US’. But before that it was just another story of a New York person trying to make a dream come true.

[Every character] is struggling with their own lives, whether they are on one side or the other of this event. They are all victims of society and they are all victims of their own lives, trapped. That struggle, it was within all of them.”

THE HORROR, THE HORROR… We’ve tried not give anything away about the plot, but obviously, if we’re featuring it in SciFiNow, you know it’s either going to be a science fiction, fantasy or horror film, and in this case, it’s the latter. But it’s certainly not an easy film to categorise, and Asensio herself was surprised when it was embraced by the horror community. “It was a surprise to me because I didn’t think this film was going to be a horror movie, I thought it was like a hybrid film, difficult to define,” she tells us. “But then the horror community embraced the film and I was like: ‘Really? This is scary to you after you watch all these other horror movies I cannot even watch?’ And they were like: ‘Yeah, your film is so freaking scary’ and I’m loving it! I’m honoured that they’re finding super scariness in my film even though they’re used to seeing scary things. I’m happy that people are debating whether it’s a pure social drama or a thriller or a horror. Heck yeah, if it’s a horror film to you, it’s a horror film for sure!” Most Beautiful Island  is released in cinemas on

1 December.

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INTERVIEW  Blade Of The Immortal

TAKASHI MIIKE TALKS BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL AND MAKING FILMS AT THE MARGINS WORDS ANTON BITEL 

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BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL “I’ve always been an outsider”

P

ROLIFIC BARELY BEGINS TO DESCRIBE TAKASHI MIIKE,

the bad boy of Japanese indie cinema and the man who gave us such shocking visions as Audition, Ichi The Killer  and  and The Happiness Of The Katakuris. Few Katakuris.  Few directors manage to amass over 100 films to their name, even fewer do so in just over a quarter of a century, and fewer still do so with the élan, unpredictability unpredictability and sheer outrageousness of Miike. Working in all manner of genres, and sometimes mixing them together and testing their limits, Miike is often associated with extremes of violence and perversion. As an outsider born in a working-class area of Osaka to Korean parents, the director likes to lionise characters who live on the margins. His latest, the manga adaptation Blade Of The Immortal , is an epic period fantasy about a swordsman kept from dying by parasitic worms. We interviewed him as he presented the film at the London Film Festival.

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL IS BEING MARKETED AS  YOUR  Y OUR 100T 00TH H FEA FEATU TURE. RE. DID  YOU  Y OU CON CONSCI SCIOUS OUSLLY WANT TO CELEBRATE THIS CAREER LANDMARK WITH SOMETHING MONUMENTAL? OR WAS THIS  JUST  JU ST ANO ANOTH THER ER FI FILM LM FOR YOU OU? ?

When I was making it I had no idea that that was the case. I wasn’t aware of it at all. It was only when somebody from one of the film festivals started counting and then told me, when I was nearly finished making the film, that it was my 100th that I became aware of it. So I really didn't care at all.  YOU WER  YOU WERE E MEN MENTO TORED RED EAR EARLLY IN YOUR CAREER BY SHOHEI IMAMURA [THE PROFOUND DESIRE OF THE GODS,  VENGE  VE NGEAN ANCE CE IS MIN MINE] E].. WHA WHAT T LESSONS DID YOU LEARN FROM HIM THAT STILL APPLY TO YOUR  WORK  WO RK TO TODA DAY? Y?

Yes, I admire him greatly. I did my work with him as his assistant. What I learnt from him is that the way you make your film is very reflective of your life. Your character and your experience actually make your film. The way that Imamura made his films was that he had his own production company, he raised his own money to make the films that he wanted to make. That was his passion – and that was a reflection of what he was like. What I learned from him is that you can only make a film based on who you WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

are – and he is so different from me, and I learnt that I could never make films like him. That would just be copying – I could never do that. I could only make films based on me.  WHAT MAK  WHAT MAKES ES A FIL FILM MA ‘MIIKE FILM’?

I don't think there is any particular visual characteristic to my films. I don't think about it at all. I feel that I shouldn't put any intentional aspiration that I might have into any of my films because that’s something that I desire, not necessarily what I have. I don't intend to show off how I want to be seen. I have no desire to project that kind of image of myself. I think I just really enjoy making films – because I lose myself. I so enjoy the process that I’m not thinking about anything but just completely immersing myself in the filmmaking. I think that's with every film. And when you truly lose  yourse  you rselflf,, may maybe be som someth ethin ing g of of you yourr true true nature does come out and get reflected, so maybe that is what you can see in all of my films. But it’s not conscious.  ANOTSU  ANOT SU (S (SOT OTO O FU FUKU KUSHI SHI), ), THE ANTAGONIST IN BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, IS AN OUTSIDER FIGURE TYPICAL OF  YOUR  Y OUR WOR WORKS. KS. WHE WHERE RE DOE DOES S THIS FASCINATION WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF ROOTLESS CHARACTERS COME FROM? IS IT ALL CONNECTED TO THE FACT THAT YOU WERE BORN IN OSAKA TO KOREAN PARENTS?

Yes, I’ve always been an outsider. Even when I was at school, I was the one in the corner rather than the leader of the class. I started off with low-budget films, and then I was doing J-video (straightto-video) films, and I was regarded as a sort-of video film director. There’s a big  Japane  Jap anese se fil filmm mmak akers ers ass associ ociati ation on whi which ch I’ve never been part of. Now, they probably think it’s too late even to ask me. So yes, I have always been away from the mainstream – but that gives me freedom, in a way, to do what I like. There is no pressure, or expectations that I have to fulfil, no obligation. IN THE EARLY NOUGHTIES,  YOU  Y OU BEC BECAME AME THE POS POSTE TER R BO BOY Y FOR TARTAN’S ‘ASIA ‘ASIA EXTREME’ EXTREM E’ LABEL, WHICH IS HOW A LOT OF PEOPLE IN BRITAIN CAME TO KNOW YOUR WORK. DID THIS SEEM A NATURAL FIT OR YOU FIND IT CONSTRAINING?

I don’t mind, I'm just pleased that people find my work. I think whatever they categorise me or label me as, ultimately | 063

INTERVIEW  Blade Of The Immortal

it's up to whoever views my work to decide what it is. I’m just grateful for having been given the opportunity to show it. Jeremy Thomas is a producer Blade Of The Immortal so there was some kind of thought that maybe we’d be showing it in Cannes, but you don't know. There’s nothing I can do to make sure that that happens, and luckily it did happen, and of course it came to London, and it showed last night [at the London Film Festival]. ]. The very fact that people look at my work is great, and looking back, you know, 20 years on, I’d like a new generation to discover my work, and they can decide for themselves. I really don’t mind if they label me. It’s nice to be recognised, whatever that label is. Speaking of categorising, I’ve been invited to Cannes – it’s not that I submit it, I get chosen, my work gets chosen to be shown there. Many people said: ‘That’s so un-Cannes, you know, it’s a film so unlike Cannes.’ But that’s up to the viewers to decide. I really don't mind what they say. My films have been at Cannes six times, twice, I think, in competition, and every time I come, people do say: ‘This is so unlike Cannes.’ I think it gets further and further away from what is regarded as ‘Cannes’. But I think I'll still get chosen to be shown there. It’s a strange feeling.  WHAT FIR  WHAT FIRST ST DRE DREW W YOU YOU TO BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL?  WERE  WER E YOU A FA FAN N OF HIR HIROA OAKI KI SAMURA’S MANGA?

Fan? Probably not an original fan, because it’s been a long series. I think I got to know it first because of the actors that I was working with. Lots of them used to read that, and they are big fans. I haven’t read it from the beginning to the end of the series, but I have seen bits and pieces from my actors, and looking at how popular it was among those men made me see that maybe it was possible to make a period piece film, maybe there’s an audience for that. I think that's how I came across it. THE SCREENPLAY WAS WRITTEN BY TESTSUYA OISHI, AND INDEED YOU HAVE ONLY FOUR SCREENWRITING SCREENWRIT ING CREDITS TO  YOUR  Y OUR OW OWN N NAM NAME E AC ACRO ROSS SS  YOUR  Y OUR EN ENTIR TIRE E OEU OEUVRE VRE,, HOW MUCH INFLUENCE DO YOU HAVE OVER THE SCRIPTS FOR  YOUR  Y OUR FI FILMS LMS? ?

So there are two different ways. The first is a scriptwriter obviously reads an original piece of work and adapts it – and, when I read it, if I can feel that 064 |

 Above: The immortal Manji (Takuya Kimura) charges into battle Opposite page, clockwise from top: Kimura and Takashi Miike on set, Manji protects his employer Rin (Hana Sugisaki) and our hero strides into impossible odds.

“ALL THIS VIOLENCE IS BORN OUT OF MY LOVE FOR THE CHARACTER” TAKASHI TA KASHI MIIKE

the adaptor has shown the original respect and love (even if the way that the adaptor feels about the original is different from the way that I feel about it), then I can tell the adaptor: ‘Ignore whatever the producer said, just go ahead and write the way you feel is loyal to the original source material.’ The second type is, when I read the script, and I don’t feel the respect or the love, I take over, I write, I put what I think is necessary, but he still gets the credit credit,, the other person. I don’t necessarily get the credit. EVERY CHARACTER IN THIS FILM HAS THEIR OWN BACK STORY OF WHICH THEY ARE THE HERO – EVEN THE CHARACTER

OF ANOTSU (SOTO FUKUSHI),  WHO FEE FEELS LS LIK LIKE E HE SHO SHOULD ULD BE  A VIL VILLAIN LAIN,, IS REA REALL LLY Y A HER HERO, O, BUT A HERO IN A DIFFERENT STORY THAT HAPPENS NOT TO HAVE MANJI AT ITS CENTRE. HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT FOR THE DYNAMICS OF YOUR REVENGE NARRATIVE TO MAKE EVERYBODY A HERO?

When I read a script, I personally find the peripheral characters more interesting than the leading roles. Whenever I discover villains who are just tools to make the leading character look good, I feel very sympathetic and a real sort of empathy with whichever actors are playing that – it’s maybe somebody who’s been an actor for a long time and

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BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL “I’ve always been an outsider”

Must-see Miike

 Wheree to sta  Wher start rt wi with th one of cinema’s most provocative and prolific auteurs?

always plays a minor role, even though they’ve been there for a long time doing this sort of work. When I'm filming, I want to [show] my empathy and love for that character and the minor actor who’s playing that character maybe just for one day worth of the filming. It makes me want to have fun. In a way, yes, he gets beaten by the main character, but he gets up again, and in the end he has to get completely smashed by a big rock or something. As a result, he does end up being violently beaten, but I think all this violence is born out of my empathy and my love for that minor character, and that's how it ends up as a result. Blade Of The Immortal

is released on

Influencing the next decade’s torture porn, and making a generation squirm to the  Auditi ition  on   words  wor ds 'kiri 'kiri kiri kir kiri', i', Aud (1999) offers a portrait of a middle-aged widower’s guilt and gynophobia. It is a J-horror like no other, turning one man’s self-torment into a nightmare as much psychological psychologi cal as visceral. The first of a loose trilogy of films linked by having Riki Takeuchi and Show Aikawa in the lead roles (playing different characters in each film, who always die), Dead Or Alive  (1999) sees a Triad boss and a police detective circling each other, but is best remembered for its multi-narrative opening, and for a climax that ramps up to an irrationally apocalyptic showdown. Censor-baiting manga adaptation Ichi The Killer  (2001)  (2001) pits the sadomasochistic sadomasochist ic lieutenant/ lover (Tadanobu Asano) of a missing yakuza boss against a murderous crybaby (Nao Omori) who is being manipulated by a vengeful mesmerist (Shinya Tsukamoto). It’s a riotously shocking exploration of the reversibility of hierarchies and the perversity of power. In the low-budget, straight-to-video Visitor Q  (2001), a stranger knocks some sense into a deeply dysfunctional family (with a rock), reconciling them with a blend of prostitutio prostitution, n, incest, drug-taking, extreme lactation, necrophilia and murder, he also helps them videotape their experiences. The results are hilariously transgressive. Remaking Eiichi Kudo's 1963 film of the same name, but also evoking  Akiraa Kurosaw  Akir Kurosawa’ a’ss The Seven Samurai, Thirteen Assassins 

(2010) is a late Edo period chambara in which a small group of nobles conspire to ambush and kill a psychotic lord (and his 200 followers) before he can ascend to greater power. What follows is a prolonged, phenomenal battle sequence that, as well as being a ‘total massacre’, massacre’, also showcases many different faces of heroism and antiheroism antiheroism..

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BIG MOVIE Bright

DAVID AYER TELLS US HOW HE TURNED THE STREETS OF LA INTO A FANTASY BATTLEGROUND IN BRIGHT WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

David Ayer is making a cop movie with a twist.

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D

 AVID AYER KNOWS LA. THE LAST TWO MOVIES ON THE DIRECTOR’S RESUME may be Suicide Squad 

and Fury  but he’s been telling stories about cops and crooks in the City of Angels for nearly two decades, both as a writer on movies like Training Day  and as the director of End Of Watch and Harsh Times . So, a David Ayer LA cop movie that re-teams him with Squad  star Will Smith makes sense. But riding next to Smith in the cruiser is an Orc in uniform, and the reason these two may not survive the night is because they’re being hunted by Elves, Fairies and dirty cops who want to get their hands on a magic wand. “It was something I hadn’t seen before,” Ayer tells us when we call. “It’s this hardcore cop genre, which I guess in a way is my speciality, but with this fantasy layer, which is a great vehicle to really look at the world today and explore it in an allegorical way, versus hitting the nail on the head. That was the beauty of the script. Max [Landis] created this amazing world.” When we talk to the director he’s in the final stages of editing but he tells us he knew this was in the wheelhouse from the moment he read the screenplay. “My agent sent the script over and said: ‘Read this right now.’ So I did and that was kind of it,” he laughs. “It’s funny, I jumped on to produce initially and I started meeting with directors and through that process my own vision for it came into focus and it was like: ‘Wow, I could do this.’ I didn’t want to hand it over to anybody so I jumped on the grenade.”

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In the world of Bright , humans live side-byside with fairy tale creatures. While Elves are in the highest levels of society, Orcs are looked down upon as gang members and thugs, and magic is regulated by a government body, represented by Elven official Kandomere (Edgar Ramirez). However, despite all of this, LA itself is still the same city we know and love. “Yeah, it’s present day, really modern, really realistic,” stresses Ayer. “There’s Orcs, Elves and Fairies, but in the movie, in that world, nobody knows different, it’s normal. So, sure, magic is real but so are your bills and you have to pay those.” Crime’s still real too, and LAPD officers are still heading out every night and day to keep the city safe, which is where Smith comes in. He’s Officer Daryl Ward, a family man who is thrust into the spotlight when he finds out that he’s going to be partnered with the first ever Orc police officer: Nick Jakoby, played by Joel Edgerton (It Comes At Night, Midnight Special ). There’s plenty of drama for these mismatched buddy cops even before they’re thrown into a life or death chase across the city, as the earnest, big-hearted Jakoby is the focus of mockery, misunderstanding and bigotry from humans on both sides of the law. Think Alien Nation brought into the fantasy genre. Even though he’s just done a giant comic book movie, it’s still a surprise to see a director like Ayer tackle a fantasy film, but he tells us that being able to explore these kinds of themes was a big part of what drew him to a story set in this genre. “In one sense it’s a fairy tale, and in

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BIG MOVIE Bright

Everyone’s hunting for Tikka (Lucy Fry).

allegory or fairy tale or fantasy it’s almost like you have permission to explore difficult topics,” he explains. “I liked the script, it was an opportunity to take a look at some of the things happening now without preaching or being dogmatic. People who go on Jakoby’s journey and experience what he experiences and some of the prejudice, you feel his struggle because he’s just a regular guy. He’s a dude who wants to be a cop, he just wants to help people and everybody’s judging him based upon his appearance. It’s a great mechanism to take an audience through that experience. “There’s a subtleness to it. I think that some people reject the message when it’s transmitted clearly and this is a great opportunity to get people to talk about things. Like ‘Jakoby’s not a bad guy, he’s an Orc but he’s not a bad guy’ [laughs].” However, while the genre provides Ayer with room to play, he was determined that the story and setting remain rooted in a recognisable a reality: “It has everything to do with the look and the feel of the movie, keeping things grounded,” he explains. “But when the fantastical stuff is happening, you ask: if it was real what would it be like? How would people react? And those are kind of the questions that I’m always asking myself as a director. So, even the bad guys have emotional lives. Everyone in the movie is a threedimensional character and it’s that naturalistic honest behaviour that makes the unreal real.” Which leads us to one of the most-discussed elements of any David Ayer film: his process of working with actors. He’s well-known not only for putting his cast through rigorous training, but 068 |

going to great lengths to establish a mutual trust that means he can push them to make the line between knowledge and performance as thin as possible. “Yeah, it started out on Harsh Times  with Christian Bale,” he remembers. “Really immersing the actors in the worlds they’re going to touch. If the character knows something the actor should know it, and physical training and things that get the actor comfortable with their physicality so they can focus on emotional work. I love working with actors. Often it feels like they don’t get the

“YOU ASK ‘IF IT  WAS REAL, HOW  WOULD PEOPLE REACT?’” DAVID AYER nourishment they need from directors, sometimes they just show up and do their thing. I just wanna throw ideas at them and the more I know about them, the more I can put of them into the movie.” Luckily, he already had a great level of trust and experience with Smith after working with him on Suicide Squad:  “It felt like a natural fit,” he says. “I love working with the guy, we have a shorthand together and it speeds up the creative process. Also the trust is there so he let me reinvent him as a cop and it feels like he was born in that uniform. But it’s really the first time he’s played a cop like that.”

Speaking of first times, Edgerton, who’s quietly established himself as one of the best actors currently working, found himself encased in inches of foam and latex to play Jakoby. Put rigorous cop training on top of that, and you’ve got a lot of physical work before you even get to your close-up. “Joel’s a freaking amazing actor, the guy’s ridiculous,” enthuses Ayer. “He’s so methodical and it was just step-by-step building out everything about this character. It was amazing to watch Jakoby come to life. We did a lot of make-up tests and spent time fine-tuning the facial appliances so we could feel his soul, see his eyes, feel his movement, the expression. The guy’s acting with rubber on his face but  Jakoby’s so sympathetic and three dimensional as a character and that’s a testament to Joel’s work. Then combine him with Will and you really get to the fun and the heart of this movie about two people who are very different and in opposition at the beginning but by the end they’re brothers.” The journey to brotherhood isn’t an easy one. The plot kicks into gear when Ward and  Jakoby answer a call and stumble across Tikka (Wolf Creek  star Lucy Fry), a young Elf with a magic wand that no one is supposed to have. Everyone in the city would kill to have the power it contains, from Ward’s crooked colleagues to gang leaders, but the biggest threat comes from the wand’s creator, a witch named Leila played by Noomi Rapace. She’s going to stop at nothing to get her property back, and that’s something that our two heroes need to keep from happening. “Noomi’s unbelievable,” Ayer tells us. “She’s

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BRIGHT Law And Mordor

“IT’S TRAINING DAY MEETS LORD OF THE RINGS”  WILL SMITH TALKS BRIGHT WORDS JOANNA

OZDOBINSKA 

 What brings one of the world’s biggest movie stars to Netflix? We talked to Will Smith about cops and magic…  WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO BRIGHT?

I just loved how bizarre it was. We’ve been trying to figure out how to describe it and it’s like Training Day , right, because it’s down and dirty and rated R, Training Day  cop drama hardcore meets Lord Of The Rings . It was spectacular for me as African American playing a police officer who is racist against Orcs. It’s like the flip of those social concepts and it’s like, as a black dude, you just don’t get a lot of movies where you’re the racist [laughs]: “I don’t want no Orc in my car!” You just never get to say that.  WAS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU TO TALK ABOUT ISSUES OF RACISM, DISCRIMINATION AND POLICE BRUTALITY IN A MOVIE LIKE THIS?

It was inherent in the project. For me it was particularly

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interesting to play with it as a character get my head around being on the other side of it. And there’s a District 9  element, the Orcs in society are struggling with police brutality so there’s a really cool scene – there’s an Orc that’s been beaten by the police and we’re watching the orc being beaten by the police and my character asks him ‘are you an Orc or a cop? I need to know right now.’ There’s those really subtle undertones and it was really interesting for me as an African-American to be on the other side asking that to the next group of people down the social ladder. DOES IT FEEL DIFFERENT WORKING ON A NETFLIX MOVIE?

 Yeah, you know I love being out at the forefront, trying things. At the beginning of my career I used to do that all the time, I love taking a shot at something and seeing  what will happen. I do believe this is the future and to my other colleagues that are considering doing Netflix films I  would just say ‘they pay really well’ [laughs].

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BIG MOVIE Bright It’s really Ward and  Jakoby’s journey.

THE FUTURE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT THESE SF COPS ARE MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN terrifying but she’s one of those actors who is a force of nature as a person. So, all those attributes that are naturally in her, it was exciting to build upon that. Build upon her strengths and who she is and create this troubled character Leila who is almost a religious fanatic serving a myth and darkness and who is broken and needs love just like anybody else.” At this point, discussing a movie on this scale with such a starry cast, you might be forgiven for forgetting that Bright  is a Netflix movie, and that it will hit the streaming service just before Christmas. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that being able to watch it on your flat screen makes it anything other DAVID than a big event movie. “We shot this on the Alexa 65 which is a Cinemascope large format camera,” Ayer says. “We shot it on the same system that they shot Star Wars  on, A+ crew, A+ production design… this is a feature. So, there wasn’t like ‘this is Netflix, let’s do it different’ no, this is a big theatrical movie, let’s shoot it like what it is.” However, Ayer does acknowledge one key difference about being a Netflix movie: there were never any qualms about going for a R rating. “Exactly!” he enthuses. “It was nice. If this movie was done through a studio it would have been

PG13, it’d be campier in order to broaden it. The studios’ business is getting squeezed so they have to make their films appeal to a large audience. So, it’s harder to take creative risks, and this is a bit of a creative risk but you get to the sa me place because it’s a great movie about two buddy cops. It’s Will and Joel in cop car and we love their chemistry. We love their relationship, there’s bit of edge to it.” Swearing and violence wasn’t the only added Bright  bonus for Ayer, who tells us that there’s a lot to be said for the freedom of working on an original idea after taking on a big comic book movie. “That what’s exciting about this because when you touch somebody else’s big IP there’s AYER a lot of rules,” he agrees. “Characters can’t do this or that. In this case, there are no rules. The only rule is to make a movie that an audience is going to connect with and enjoy. It was fun to figure out how to make the unreal real, how to make fantasy real. There are moments where it’s like: ‘Okay, we’re going for it, we’re going to have this beautiful fantastic moment but you’re going to believe in it because of all the hard work we’ve done making these solid city streets.’”

“IT WASN’T LIKE ‘THIS IS NETFLIX, LET’S DO IT DIFFERENT’”

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ROBOCOP CYBORG 

 Alex Murphy may have been shot to bits by Detroit’s baddest but thanks to Omnicorp, what’s left of him has been turned into a cyborg officer. Still, there’s more than a little Alex Murphy in there…

SAM FRANCISCO  ALIEN 

The aliens have landed and they live amongst us, and Sam is one of the  very first to join the police force. Can he convince his human partner to overcome his racism and stop an evil conspiracy?

 JUDGE DREDD CLONE 

Megacity One’s unstoppable killing machine of a police officer is remorseless and fearless, so just think about the fact that he’s the good clone.

NICK KNIGHT VAMPIRE 

It’s just as well there’s a night shift, otherwise Toronto police officer Nick Knight would find it much harder to find redemption for his 800 years of living as a vampire.

ZEKE STONE RESURRECTED 

The hero of Brimstone thought it was all over when he wound up in hell after killing the man who raped his wife, but the Devil sends him back to help him track down 113 escaped souls.

Bright  will be released on Netflix on 22 December.

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Reviews

Our thoughts on the pick of the entertainment releases out this month

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THOR: RAGNAROK

“WAITITI EMBRACES THE OUTLANDISH POSSIBILITIES OF THE MCU” Read all the latest reviews

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CINEMA Add your thoughts regarding the latest blockbuster theatrical releases on the SciFiNow  website. DVD AND BLU-RAY Discover our opinions on the latest film and television releases and add your own comments. TOP 10s Read our lists relating to our favourite genre shows, and give your thoughts on whether  we were right.

72 CINEMA

Theatrical releases 72 Thor: Ragnarok 73 Jigsaw 73 Most Beautiful Island 74 Blade Of The Immortal 74 The Snowman 75 Better Watch Out 75 Geostorm

 AWARD EXPLAINED

THE ‘MUST SEE NOW’ AWARD GOES TO REVIEWS THAT SCORE FOUR OR FIVE…

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76 HOME/FILM

80 HOME/TV

76 Valerian 76 The Thing 76 Daguerrotype 77 George A Romero: Between Night And Dawn 77 Carnival Of Souls 78 Miracle Mile 78 Batman Vs Two Face 78 JD’s Revenge 79 Creep 2 79 War For The Planet Of The Apes 79 The Babysitter

80 The Punisher 81 Stranger Things 2 82 Hammer House Of Horror 82 Daemons

Films on DVD, Blu-ray and more

A SCENE CONFIRMING VALKYRIE’S BISEXUALITY WAS CUT FROM THOR: RAGNAROK.

TV shows on DVD, Blu-ray and more

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review FILM INFO Released Out now Certificate 12A Director Taika Waititi Screenwriters Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost Cast Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Mark Ruffalo, Tessa Thompson Distributor Disney Running Time 130mins

THOR: RAGNAROK Explosively funny space opera Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’

TOP THOR TRIVIA Director, Taika Waititi played music on set all the time which the cast say made it a relaxed and fun environment to work. Cate Blanchett says: “It’s probably the happiest film set I have ever been on.”  Jeff Goldblum wore composer and musician Mark Mothersbaugh’s glasses for his role in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Mothersbaugh also provided the score for that film.

provides a rousing anthem for Taika Waititi’s irreverent, fun and entertaining superhero film. Waititi is best known for his offbeat independent comedies such as What We Do In The Shadows  and Hunt For The Wilderpeople  and he ably transfers his brand of idiosyncratic humour with relish to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s 17th instalment. The action is scattered between the God of Thunder making new acquaintances and battling old colleagues to save Asgard from annihilation. Compared to previous instalments of the Thor  series, there’s only a small amount of time spent on Earth. A meeting with Dr Strange and a brief encounter with some fans who commiserate with the fact that Thor has been dumped by Jane speedily updates the audience. Soon after, Thor and Loki are introduced to their vengeful sister Hela who had been banished by Odin. Cate Blanchett plays Hela as a one-woman army with an appetite for destruction who occasionally screams “SAD!” at her enemies. Her mighty power destroys Thor’s

hammer and sends him to the other side of the universe where he is imprisoned by the ruler of Sakaar: The Grandmaster.  Jeff Goldblum is in his element playing a tyrannical alien leader who throws lavish cocktail parties and pits people against each other for entertainment. Sakaar is where the Hulk enters the picture as The Grandmaster’s most valuable fighter and where galactic scavenger, Valkyrie, captures Thor. Tessa Thompson turns in a winning and memorable performance as a world-weary drunk burying her past and with that encapsulates the essence of the film. She may deliver silly slapstick and quick quips with aplomb but below the surface looms deep tragedy. Mark Mothersbaugh brings the thunder with a synth-heavy score that delivers a wonderful energy and recalls the cosmic style of Styx adding to the fab Seventies vibe of the grand space adventure. The use of ‘Pure Imagination’ from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory  in a trippy scene that introduces the viewer to The Grandmaster’s opulent fortress is a

Fans of Taika Waititi’s body of work will notice some of his regular players appearing throughout the film. Tessa Thompson admits she isn’t familiar with the comic books but is a fan of the Thor  movies. She was interested to see what a director like Kenneth Branagh would do with a superhero film.

wonderful nod to the way Goldblum plays his character. It’s so enjoyable to watch all these big characters interact with one another in such a humorous and human way. The Hulk is seen struggling with his place in both the world and the Avengers and Mark Ruffalo works wonders with this role, brilliantly bickering with Chris Hemsworth. His connection with Valkyrie delivers lots of heart and when Ruffalo eventually makes the transition back to Banner it is cheekily handled. The family dysfunction between Loki and Thor is introduced very early on and is played for laughs throughout. Hemsworth and Hiddleston making biting remarks at one another is pure joy. Waititi embraces the outlandish possibilities of the Marvel universe through the costumes, torture devices and fiery demons that threaten to demolish civilisation. The use of CGI conjures up notable imagery with a demonic army particularly striking and by making the backdrop of Sakaar a colourful playground of junk and luxury. There are pleasing cameos galore and Waititi even inserts himself into the film as a rock warrior called Korg who talks continuously at a breakneck speed about a revolution with a childlike charm. What’s really appealing about Waititi’s entry is the way he and the writers allow the characters room to be ridiculous and aware while also extolling their concern, kindness and courage.

Katherine McLaughlin ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH…

Karl Urban who plays Skurge was greeted by Waititi on the first day of filming with a pair of scissors, so he could cut his hair off for his role.

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Flash Gordon  A football player goes on a wild intergalactic adventure to battle with a merciless leader.

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BIG TROUBLE IN LITTL E CHINA WAS A KEY INFLUENCE FOR TAIKA WAITI TI ON THOR: RAGNAROK .

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REVIEWS CINEMA

JIGSAW

Muest se now!

Let the games begin… again

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Details 18 // 92 mins // Out now Directors Michael and Peter Spierig Screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg Cast Callum Keith Rennie, Matt Passmore, Hannah Emily Anderson, Paul Braunstein, Tobin Bell Distributor Lionsgate

Ten years after the death of the notorious trap-setting Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell), the games have begun again. Mutilated corpses are turning up with jigsaw-shaped pieces cut out of their skin and tape recordings of  John Kramer’s voice embedded in their flesh. Could Jigsaw be back from the g rave? It’s only been seven years since Saw 3D: The Final Chapter,  but the franchise’s comeback feels almost as unbelievable as Kramer’s. Over the course of seven movies, released every Halloween between 2004 and 2010, Saw  gained itself a reputation for being incredibly violent and incredibly convoluted. But after Saw 3D, it seemed li ke every possible trap idea had been exhausted and every loose end tied up. When Paranormal Activity  stole the Ha lloween horror slot, the genre moved on. But directors Michael and Peter Spierig have achieved the impossible: Jigsaw  is both a satisfying addition to the Saw  mythos and a standalone shocker that might just kickstart a new franchise of its own. Whether you’re a die-hard Saw  devotee or only passingly familiar with the first movie, there’s plenty to like here. The story’s satisfyi ngly twist y, the traps are devious, and the new characters – including curious coroners Logan (Matt Passmore) and Eleanor (Hannah Em ily Anderson), and corrupt detective Halloran

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(Callum Keith Rennie) – are intriguingly full of secrets. And, of course, it’s gory. Jigsaw  is the most gr uesome movie you’ll see in cinemas thi s year, with plenty of creatively stomach-churning effects. There’s even a new, hightech take on the iconic reverse bear trap – the Spierigs have clearly done their homework, but their take feels dif ferent, too. Jigsaw  isn’t just retreading old ground; it’s new and old at the same ti me, a complex, tense, and brutal gorefest that feels completely unlike any horror movie of the past half- decade. It even manages to find space to fit in a sense of humour, with Kramer’s trademark wordplay providing an ext ra torment for any poor sod unlucky enough to end up in one of his traps. It’s a ride, and for horror fans, it’s unmissable.  Jigsaw’s back. Happy Halloween!

Sarah Dobbs ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH… Saw 

 James Wan’s original low-budget thriller feels just as striking as it did at the time.

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MOST BEAUTIFUL  Welcome to ISLAND America Details 18 //80 mins // 1 December Director Ana Asensio Screenwriter Ana Asensio Cast Ana Asensio, Natasha Romanova, Larry Fessenden, Caprice Benedetti, Nicholas Tucci Distributor Bulldog Film Distribution

If you’re watching Ana Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island  in a crowded cinema, there will come a point when  you’ll be able to feel the tension in the room. There’s a question that the first-time director will make you ask before withholding the answer, and as the minutes tick by, the sense of not knowing, of needing to know, will become unbearable. It’s very difficult to talk about Asensio’s excellent and highly accomplished debut without ruining the film entirely, but it’s so exciting to see a film with such a firm grip on its audience’s collective throat. In addition to writing and directing, she also stars as Luciana, a Spanish immigrant living in New York who’s doing her best to move on from a terrible tragedy at home. She owes rent, she can’t afford to see the doctor, she works several part-time jobs and the kids she nannies are monstrous spoiled brats. So when her friend Olga (Natasha Romanova) suggests that Luciana take her place at a lucrative gig where all she’s required to do is look pretty, she jumps at the opportunity. Asensio is canny enough to know that we know something’s up from the off, but she is resolute in moving things along at her own pace. For the first half of the film, Most Beautiful Island  feels like a grounded, true-to-life immigration

story with earthy colours and handheld camera work. It even claims to be based on a true story. But there’s a reason why it’s been classified as a horror film. We won’t go into specifics but already the movie has been read in several different ways. It’s very difficult not to interpret as a commentary on the struggle of people coming to America and the system’s savage, uncaring treatment of them, and it also works as a story about the treatment of women. Genre fans should also note the presence of Larry Fessenden both as an actor and producer, and this is another example of ‘if Fessenden’s in it, it’s going to be good’. But most importantly, it’s a tense, stylish and well-acted thriller that will stay with  you, and which marks Asensio as a filmmaker to watch.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

 CHARLIE CLOUSER, WHO WROTE THE ‘HELLO ZEPP’ THEME FOR THE FIRST SAW, ‘REINTERPRETED’ IT FOR JIGSAW.

OR STAY IN AND WATCH… The Invitation

Karyn Kusama delivers one of the most low-key  yet unsettling horror films in recent memory.

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review Muest se now!

stiff THE SNOWMAN Frozen, Details 15 //119 mins // Out now Director Tomas Alfredson Screenwriter Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan Cast Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, JK Simmons, Val Kilmer Distributor Universal

 We didn’t expect a chilly thriller from the director of Let The Right One In and Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy  and producer Martin Scorsese with a cast this strong to be quite so bad, but there can be no question that something has gone terribly wrong with Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s bestseller The Snowman. With the exception of the beautiful photography of the stunning Norwegian landscapes, there doesn’t seem to have been very much that went right. The film’s marketing campaign has branded it as a horror but genre fans hoping for a thrill will be disappointed. There’s a horror element to the ritualistic nature of the crimes but while it’s intermittently gory, it’s more silly than scary, a problem that’s brutally amplified by how seriously the film takes itself. Brilliant alcoholic cop Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender, fine) teams up with Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson, good but wasted), a new arrival to the Oslo police force who is certain that a series of incidents

involving missing women are connected to a string of gruesome murders. Can they find the culprit by the time the next snow falls? It’s clear that something is rotten in Norway from the sheer chaos of the editing in the prologue. The plotting lacks urgency, the construction is messy, the characterisation is nonexistent, and if you haven’t guessed whodunit by the halfway point,  you’re not paying attention. Meanwhile, a great supporting cast floats around with a variety of accents and not much to do: JK Simmons is a rich creepy lech, Toby  Jones pops up, suddenly there’s Chloe Sevigny, and Charlotte Gainsbourg is there to play the ex-wife character. As eccentric and as poorly dubbed as Val Kilmer’s performance as a boozed-up detective is, he does inject a little life into proceedings. While there is a myriad of issues to pick apart, the most disappointing is that there is simply no atmosphere. Alfredson has made us feel the winter chill in LTROI  and the damp grey misery in TT,SS, but The Snowman is such a mess that we didn’t feel anything beyond a desperation to know what the hell happened.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH… The Crimson Rivers

 Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel star in this equally daft but more fun mountain-bound thriller.

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BLADE OF THE Unkillable! He’s IMMORTAL alive, dammit Details 15 // 140 mins // 8 December Director Takashi Miike Screenwriter Tetsuya Oishi Cast Takuya Kimura, Hana Sugisaki, Kazuki Kitamura Distributor Arrow Films

Takashi Miike’s 100th film, adapted from Hiroaki Samura’s Manga, is a riotous bloodbath about a young girl named Rin (Hana Sugisaki turning in a cheeky performance) who strikes up a friendship with immortal samurai Manji (Takuya Kimura). He’s a moody and worn-down character who fights with a sword that ‘smells l ike innards’. There’s shades of Logan in their journey to avenge the murder of Rin’s family by a vicious gang of swordsmen who are intent on shaking up the rigid regime of the dojo schools. The opening sequence alone will blow your socks off, shot in black-andwhite a battle between Manji and a band of violent villagers commences after they threaten his sister. The breathless scene ends with the splatter of blood dripping over the credits as the picture turns to colour. Sweet, sweet fury, a mischievous, knowing sense of humour and the evolving relationship between Rin and Manji ensure a brisk, involving pace. The effects team have a ball with scattered limbs that reattach themselves via sacred bloodworms. The stitching process is a gory and slippery delight. When another immortal swordsman enters the picture his gruesome slaying is ably handled by them. Where it differs quite greatly from Logan is in the character of Rin. She’s introduced at the start as a bit of a

MARTIN SCORSES E WAS ORIGINALLY SET TO DIRECT THE SNOWMAN.

tomboy and a promising warrior who rejects tradition. She’s determined in her quest, yet Manji is in the spotlight for most of the fighting. Rin is a bit bumbling with her throwing blades and her path to revenge is painted as a more psychological and moral journey. She begins to question why she seeks revenge and learns along the way. Blade Of The Immortal  is as charming as it is violent. At one point Manji literally offers his shoulder for Rin to cry on to mourn the death of her family and under his wise leadership she questions the meaning of good and evil. When it comes to the laying down of bloody retribution Miike doesn’t allow his characters to sit on the fence. They show regret, and most importantly they discuss the pain and heartbreak.

Katherine McLaughlin ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH… Zatoichi

Takashi Kitano’s madly entertaining film is a samurai flick that ends  with a dance sequence.

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REVIEWS CINEMA

GEOSTORM

Lost in the storm

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Details  12A // 109 mins // Out now Director Dean Devlin Screenwriters Dean Devlin, Paul Guyot Cast Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris, Andy Garcia, Alexandra Maria LaraDistributor Warner Bros

If you think  you know what you’re getting with Geostorm, well, you’re probably right. It’s big, it’s stupid, it’s got people outrunning enormous weather events, and it’s pretty bad in most of the ways that matter. However, the big surprise is that Dean Devlin’s directorial debut is, for the most part, a ludicrous conspiracy thriller in which our heroes must figure out who’s behind a scheme to turn ‘Dutchboy’, the network of satellites constructed to protect us from megaweather, into ‘a gun’. It’s not until the final 20 minutes that the tornadoes, floods and insta-icing roll out as the Geostorm draws near (a perfect storm of perfect storms that will rewrite Earth’s geography). But that is it as far as the surprises go. Geostorm absolutely exists in the realm of Nineties natural disaster movies, which means that, although you will be rolling your eyes and groaning in disbelief at the quality of the dialogue and the predictability of the plot developments, there is the a strange kind of ‘yesterday’s pizza’ enjoyment to be had. Still, it’s best to approach with caution. If you were sold on ‘Gerard Butler fights weather’, you should probably know that his character, Jake Lawson, does so from the International Space Station, where he primarily tells people how to fix equipment while trying to sniff out that aforementioned conspiracy.

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This means he’s going to have to learn how to communicate with his estranged brother Max (a ludicrously earnest Jim Sturgess), the White House staffer responsible for Dutchboy who’s trying to find out just how high up the conspiracy goes while keeping his relationship with Secret Service agent Sarah (Abbie Cornish) a secret. It’s so hokey that Andy Garcia, playing the President of the United States, at one point shouts “I’m the goddam President of the United States!” in a line that was presumably shot before Keith David did a swearier version on Rick And Morty. There’s bad writing, worse acting, signposted plot twists and huge CGI set-pieces that don’t feel like they’re doing anything particularly new or interesting. However, bad as it is, it’s strangely watchable, particularly if you like watching adorable dogs in disaster movie jeopardy.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH… Lockout

Guy Pearce needs to save the President’s daughter from a space station prison facility.

HAPPY DEATH DAY Scream and scream again Details 15 //96 mins // Out now Director Christopher Landon Screenwriter Scott Lobdell Cast Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Rachel Matthews, Rob Mello, Charles Aitken Distributor Universal

Tree (Jessica Rothe) didn’t have a great birthday. First she woke up hungover in a stranger’s dorm room, then she was late to school, and then her sorority sister ruined her outfit by spilling a drink all over her. Just to put the cherry on the very crappy cake, she got stabbed to death on her way to her party. But it doesn’t end there. Instead of staying dead, Tree wakes up in the same dorm room again, with the same hangover, and a nagging feeling that she has seen all of this before. Trapped in a Groundhog Day -style time loop, Tree’s stuck reliving the worst day of her life over and over again. Her only hope is to unmask her killer and try to survive the day… Directed by Paranormal Activity 3  writer Christopher Landon and written by Uncanny X-Men writer Scott Lobdell, Happy Death Day  is the smartest slasher you’ll see this year. Despite the fact that there’s only one victim, its villain – a cloaked figure in a ghoulish baby mask – pulls off a variety of creative and violent kills. And despite the fact that we know Tree’s going to wake up in bed again every time she dies, the film manages to make her plight feel increasingly urgent as her deaths mount up. With its satisfyingly twisty mystery and its many visual and verbal nods

to other genre films, Happy Death Day  feels like a spiritual successor to Wes Craven’s Scream. Like Scream, it’s got a sharp sense of humour and takes a fresh approach to familiar material. Its box office success might also spark another slasher renaissance, just like Scream did in the late Nineties. But even if that doesn’t happen, it ought to make a star of Jessica Rothe. She manages to sell every step of Tree’s journey, from smartmouthed mean girl to kickass final girl, even making a romantic subplot seem authentic (even sweet!). And she’s got killer comic timing, as a second act montage of stalkingwhile-being-stalked proves. If you’re looking for outright scares, you might be disappointed; for a slasher, Happy Death Day  is also very light on bloodshed. But it’s got real heart – for a film about death, it’s surprisingly life-affirming.

Sarah Dobbs ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH…

 THE MASK IN HAPPY DEATH DAY WAS DESIGNED BY TONY GARDNER, WHO ALSO MADE THE GHOSTFACE MASK FOR SCREAM.

Haunter

 Abigail Breslin plays a dead girl reliving the same day until she can solve her own murder.

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DAGUERROTYPE

THE THING

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Haunting images

Man is still the warmest place to hide

Details N/A // 131 mins // 2016 // VOD // Released Out now Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa Cast Tahar Rahim, Constance Rousseau, Olivier Gourmet, Malik Zidi Distributor Under The Milky Way

// Released Out now Details 18 // 109 mins // 1982 // Director John Carpenter Cast Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat Distributor Arrow Video

Aping the deliberate pace of the icon-making process, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s slow-burning ghost story concerns present absences. The ‘e’ missing from the centre of its title foreshadows the dead subjects mummified in Stéphane’s daguerreotypes, the spectre of Denise, and the not-quite-all-there aloofness of Marie. It is a creepy reflection on the power of images to conserve, fascinate and delude.

“He’s confused photography  and reality for so long, he can no longer tell the living from the dead.” Marie (Constance Rousseau) is talking about her father Stéphane (Olivier Gourmet), whose obsession with daguerreotypy and his late wife Denise has made him turn his back on fashion photography, and keep to his house-cum-workshop, while she must stay still for hours so her image can be captured by the outmoded practice. Into this toxic environment comes new assistant Jean Malassis (Tahar Rahim), who has designs both on Marie and on the profits to be skimmed from selling the house. Yet Stéphane, convinced that Denise still haunts his home, will not be dislodged – and soon Jean will find himself losing his grip on reality.

 Anton Bitel ★★★★★

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 John Carpenter may  claim to not get much from the endless accolades and imitations he now receives, but there’s no way to discuss The Thing  without going into raptures. His ice-cold and perfectly made horror only gets better with age, as its themes of mistrust and paranoia get more relevant. The performances are great, the soundtrack is incredible, and the effects are still absolutely

stunning. It’s flawless. But you know all this, so what about the extras? Well, Arrow Video has kindly ported the excellent Terror Takes Shape  documentary and Carpenter/ Kurt Russell commentary from the previous releases. New stuff includes a lengthy new doc with experts and some cast and crew that takes us from the original short story and Howard Hawks’ original film through to the movie’s release. There’s also a nice if slightly fluffy half-hour look at the incredible movies that came out in 1982. However, most importantly, there’s the 4K restoration supervised by Carpenter and DP Dean Cundey. Let’s be honest, you’ve probably bought this already.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS Out of this world

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// Released 27 November Details 12A //134 mins //2017 // Director Luc Besson Cast Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevigne, Clive Owen, Sam Spruell, Rihanna Distributor Lionsgate •

There’s a scene early on in Luc Besson’s newest sci-fi epic where special operatives Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevigne) visit an interdimensional bazaar. Visitors have to use special headsets to see the market, and then use dedicated machines to bring their purchases out into their reality. It’s a fun set-piece that also feels like a metaphor for the whole film: you might need to put in a bit of work to get into it, but once you’re in,

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you’ll get something out of it, too. Adapted from the French comic series Valérian And Laureline , Besson’s film follows the two agents as they attempt to find out what’s going on in the weird dead zone in the middle of the titular city (actually a giant space station, built over centuries to accommodate more than 3,000 kinds of alien life). Given the film’s structure and use of iconography, it’s not hard to figure out what they’re going to find and who the villain wi ll turn out to be; having a military official wander around flanked by dozens of ominous-looking black robots makes for the easiest game of Spot The Baddie ever. But though the story seems straightforward, there’s more to dig into. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets  is a parable about colonialism, war, and exploitation; it’s also a sweetly earnest fairy tale

about love and personal responsibility. There’s a lot going on, and it stands up to multiple viewings; it takes at least two watches to appreciate all the elaborate visual effects and dozens of gorgeously rendered alien species crammed into every scene. Valerian and Laureline’s adventure sees them run, fly, swim, fall and smash their way through dozens of eye-popping extraterrestrial landscapes, and it’s almost as frustrating as it is exhilarating – there’s never enough time to really see

everything before the action moves on. Imaginative, breathlessly paced, and beautiful, this movie is destined to become a favourite among the kind of people who can’t resist rewatching The Fifth Element every time it’s on TV.

Sarah Dobbs ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY…

THE SPACE CAPTAINS IN THE OPENING MONTAGE WERE PLAYED BY FRENCH DIRECTORS LOUIS LETERRIER, OLIVIER MEGATON, AND BENOÎT JACQUOT.

The Fifth Element Luc Besson’s other space opera starred Milla Jovovich as a supreme being.

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REVIEWS HOME FILM

CARNIVAL OF SOULS ANNABELLE: Ghoul power puppet CREATION Creepy / Released Out now Details 12 //80 mins // 1962 // Director Herk Harvey Cast Candace Hilligoss, Sidney Berger, Frances Feist, Art Ellison, Stan Levitt, Tom McGinnis Distributor Criterion •

If characters in a horror movie are watching an old black and white movie on TV late at night, and it’s not Night Of The Living Dead, it’s almost certainly Carnival Of Souls. So even if you’ve never seen it before, you might have seen bits of it. You’ll definitely recognise some of the imagery, because it’s been borrowed, referenced, and homaged so many times, not least by directors like David Lynch and James Wan. But while familiarity can sometimes lessen the power of well-known horror movies (no-one’s shocked by the shower scene in Psycho  anymore, are they?), Carnival Of Souls  remains a deeply unsettling, deliriously creepy experience, with moments more purely terrifying than any new release could hope to conjure. Shot on a low budget using a variety of quick ‘n’ dirty guerrilla techniques for grabbing footage in locations director Herk Harvey didn’t have permission to film, somehow Carnival Of Souls  turned out to be one of the most frightening films ever made. It follows the sole survivor of a horrible car accident, Mary (Candace Hilligoss), as she leaves her home town to take a job as a church organ player – only to find herself alone and lonely in a community that doesn’t accept her, stalked by a terrifying apparition, and irresistibly drawn to an abandoned

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pavilion on the edge of town… Mary’s a spiky heroine, all sharp edges protecting a deep vein of melancholy. Watching her fending off the advances of a lecherous neighbour is deeply satisfying, even if it leaves her vulnerable to the approach of something even scarier. Her attraction to the pavilion makes sense, too, even though it’s obviously not the kind of place anyone should really want to go to late at night. Like everything about this film, it’s as alluring as it is sinister; the whole thing works as an ode to the seductiveness of melancholy. Criterion’s new 4k Blu-ray restoration only enhances its eerie beauty, so turn down the lights, curl up on the sofa, and prepare to be terrified – in the most nightmarishly gorgeous way possible.

Sarah Dobbs ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH… The City Of The Dead

 Another great Sixties spookfest that recently got a Blu-ray makeover.

// Released 4 December Details 15 // 109 mins // 2017 // Director David F Sandberg Cast Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Anthony LaPaglia, Lulu Wilson Distributor Warner Home Video •

This prequel set in the newly coined ‘The Conjuring  Universe’ from director David F Sandberg is a marked improvement on the original devil doll horror released in 2014 due mainly to the fact that it’s actually scary in places. We are introduced to a dollmaker, his wife and their young daughter who tragically dies in a car accident. A few years later the couple take in some displaced orphans for no apparent reason and that’s about it. Though there’s little plot to speak of and barely any rules to adhere to, the film flings lots of tautly directed horror sequences at the viewer and a few of them really work. A terrifying scarecrow

proves to be one of the highlights. Talitha Bateman and Lulu Wilson (who did superb work in Ouija: Origin Of Evil)  play their sweet orphan roles with a straight face but when the camera is turned on the titular doll it’s executed with a playful menace. Whether Annabelle is in her rocking chair or scuttling through the wall space she is creepy as hell.

Katherine McLaughlin ★★★★★

GEORGE A ROMERO BETWEEN NIGHT AND DAWN  Witches, crazies and lovers // Released Out now Details 18 // Various mins // 1971-1973 // Director George A Romero Cast Raymond Laine, Judith Ridley, Jan White, Will MacMillan, Lane Carroll Distributor Arrow Video

There’s a point during the interview with George A Romero on the There’s Always Vanilla  disc at which the legendary filmmaker seems genuinely agitated by having to discuss his second feature, such is his dislike for and bad memories of making it. As upsetting as it is to see the late and famously kindly icon riled up, this boxset of the three films he made between Night  and Dawn Of The Dead  show a director becoming more confident and experimental. The (non-genre) relationship drama Vanilla  is messy and meandering, but Season Of The Witch is much better; an atmospheric and harsh tale of a repressed middle-aged woman’s

rebellion with an excellent central turn from Jan White. Small town outbreak horror The Crazies  is unquestionably the best of the three, with buckets of satirical humour and some real horror despite being a little overlong. The extras and rarity of the films make this a must for completists, and while it doesn’t show him at his best, it’s a fascinating snapshot of a master on the rise.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

THE GHOUL WHO STALKS MARY IS CREDITED ONLY AS ‘THE MAN’ – AND WAS PLAYED BY DIRECTOR HERK HARVEY.

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MIRACLE MILE Minutes to midnight

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// Released Out now Details 15 //87 mins //1988 // Director Steve De Jarnatt Cast Anthony Edwards, Mare Winningham, John Agar Distributor Arrow Video •

The cutesy opening montage of

desperately tries to get himself and Julie to a place of safety. The film changes gear alarmingly quickly, going from almost-too-frothy comedy to something genuinely terrifying as more and more characters become aware of the apparently impending catastrophe. At times the whole thing t hreatens to collapse under the weight of its premise: one man versus the ticking clock of unimaginable destruction, but De Jarnatt’s commitment to his vision and the strength of the cast just about holds it together. The action is enhanced by Tangerine Dream’s subtle but pervasive score. Harry’s emotional journey is brilliant, a man basically going through the five stages of grief before the tragedy has occurred, and Edwards completely sells the more outlandish moments (and lines) because he’s the everyman we love. Mare Winningham is a n inspired

writer/director Steve De  Jarnatt’s 1988 film sees jazz musician Harry (Anthony Edwards) fall in love with waitress Julie (Mare Winningham) over the course of a day out at the La Brea Tar Pits. Harry’s joy is short-lived, however, when he receives some seriously unwelcome news. Answering a ringing payphone, he is told that nuclear war is imminent. Harry, ‘just a guy who picked up the phone’, believes what he is told, and

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BATMAN VS TWO-FACE Goodnight, Dark Knight

// Released Out now Details 12 // 72 mins // 2017 // Director Rick Morales Cast Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar Distributor Warner Bros Home Entertainment •

Made as a sequel to 2016’s Batman: Return Of The Caped Crusaders, Batman Vs Two-Face  launches right into the action with fight sound bubbles blazing. Batman and Robin (voiced by Adam West and Burt Ward) team up again to attempt to solve a string of crimes that has rocked Gotham to the core. The Dynamic Duo have a mystery on their hands when all signs point to Two-Face (William Shatner) as the culprit, even after his alter ego, Bruce Wayne’s good friend Harvey Dent, had been successfully rehabilitated. The late Adam West’s last outing as the Caped Crusader, Batman Vs Two-Face  represents everything his first outing was. It’s funny, camp and charming, with an exciting

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twist around every corner and cheesy but welcome wordplay in each scene. Everything from the voice work, action scenes and mystery to the increasingly strange dance sequence that plays next to the end credits contributes towards creating a wonderful mix of nonsense and nostalgia, and the perfect send-off for one of Batman’s  most iconic stars.

Poppy-Jay Palmer ★★★★★

match, her journey to realisation slower but equally affecting. The supporting cast are strong too, showing a spectrum of responses to the idea that the world is about to end. Particularly noteworthy is (Next Gen’s  Tasha Yar) Denise Crosby as a level-headed yuppy who deals with the news with cool efficiency. The underlying question throughout the film is whether or not the apocalypse really is coming but also, further down, whether it really matters either way. You get to decide

for yourself whether the human race deserves to survive. Without spoiling it, we can say that the ending is a satisfying and apposite conclusion to a unique, beguiling film which, sadly, still feels entirely relevant today.

Martin Parsons ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… Melancholia

 A planet passes too close to the Earth in Lars  Von Trier’s haunting yet humorous film.

JD’S REVENGE Can’t keep a spirit down // Released Out now Details 18 // 96 mins // 1976// Director Arthur Marks Cast Glynn Turman, Louis Gossett Jr, Joan Pringle, Carl W Crudup Distributor Arrow Video

Isaac (Glynn Turman) is exhausted. He’s studying hard at college and he’s forced to work as a cab driver to pay the bills. Still, he doesn’t know what hard is yet, as he soon finds out when he’s possessed by the spirit of a vengeful pimp, the titular  JD Walker (David McKnight). It starts out innocently enough

with strange urges to buy a hat from a charity store, but the violent, swaggering JD is coming through and he’s going to make Isaac do terrible things to get his revenge.  JD’s Revenge  never really gets away from the essential silliness of its plot, but there’s a strange integrity to it that keeps it from becoming truly ridiculous. This is largely due to the excellent and committed performances from the cast, particularly Turman, who convinces both as a good man struggling to regain control and as his newfound alter-ego, and a strong ending makes up for some earlier missteps. The extras include an excellent documentary with input from the key players who make a convincing case for its rediscovery.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

IN 1983, AMERICAN FILM MAGAZINE VOTED MIRACLE MILE ONE OF THE TEN BEST UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAYS IN HOLLYWOOD.

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REVIEWS HOME FILM

THE BABYSITTER Don’t tell mom the babysitter’s a Satanist // Released Out now Details 15 // 85 mins // 2017 // Director McG Cast Judah Lewis, Samara Weaving, Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Bella Thorne Distributor Netflix

The other kids at school think Cole (Judah Lewis) is a loser – not least because his parents still hire a babysitter to look after him when they’re going out. But at least some of them are also jealous, because Bee (Samara Weaving) is the coolest babysitter  you’ve ever seen. It’s not just that she’s beautiful – she’s also up for discussing the virtues of Captain Kirk and Ellen Ripley, and she’s willing to steal shots from Cole’s parents’ liquor cabinet (and let him drink them, too). But one night Cole decides to find out what Bee gets up to after he goes to sleep, and accidentally stumbles into an occult ritual. Director McG isn’t known for his subtlety, and he certainly doesn’t hold anything back here. Once Bee’s

secret is out, there’s barely a minute that goes by without something exploding or someone dying, messily. It’s gleefully gory in a way that suggests you’re not meant to take any of it seriously. And that’s fun, but its air of ironic detachment means it’s hard to care about its characters, robbing an otherwise kind of sweet finale of any real emotional weight.

Sarah Dobbs ★★★★★

CREEP 2

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It's kiss or kill in Patrick Brice's hilariously unhinged found-footage sequel // Released Out now Details n/a //80 mins // 2017 // Director Patrick Brice Cast Mark Duplass, Desiree Akhavan, Karan Soni Distributor Netflix

“I am what is

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WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES  Ape-pocalyspe now  // Released 27 November Details 12A // 140 mins // 2017 // Director Matt Reeves Cast Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller Distributor 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment •

It’s bleak times for the apes in the third riveting entry in the reboot franchise. Part evocative western and part violent war movie, the apes are imprisoned by a renegade colonel played by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson is an imposing presence as he squares up against Andy Serkis’ emotionally weary Caesar. Interplay between orangutan Maurice (Karin Konoval) and young mute girl, Nova (Amiah Miller) is poignantly handled with Konoval delivering a moving performance under the mo-cap. Steve Zahn as the neurotic little Bad Ape is an adorable addition to the cast who really sells his anguish. Yet his presence adds a lighter note to the tense tone as too

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does an elaborate prison break. Director Matt Reeves explores current and historical political despair by delving deep into Caesar’s mental state. The striking war-torn backdrop is scattered with powerful violent imagery and Michael Giacchino’s score roars with a captivating urgency as the leader of the apes wanders perilously into the heart of darkness.

Katherine McLaughlin ★★★★★

commonly known as a serial killer. I don’t love that nomenclature. I sort of consider myself a murderer, but my numbers are such that I’m classified as a serial killer… I’ve killed 39 people.” So says Aaron (Mark Duplass) when meeting Sara (Desiree Akhavan), hired to film a documentary on him at his remote woodland cabin. It is a statement of intent that marks the (necessary) difference between this sequel and Patrick Brice’s original (un)found-footage psychodrama Creep  (2014). Back then, charismatic oddball Aaron spent considerable time toying with his videographer Buddy before finally revealing to him (and to us) his status as deranged pattern killer – but now the cat is already out of the bag, and for those who have not seen the original, a prologue here shows Aaron’s typical MO with another targeted victim (Karan Soni). With Aaron’s element of surprise gone, and with the unflappable Sara seemingly incapable of being frightened by him, Brice forces himself to take this sequel in a new direction – which, paradoxically, guarantees even more surprises for the viewer. Approaching 40, Aaron is feeling “a little mid-lifey” about the mass-murder game, and is contemplating packing

it in. Meanwhile Sara, too, is losing the will to keep making episodes for her barely viewed male-dating vlog Encounters . Each hopes to find new inspiration in the other, and so what ought to be a horror story unfolds as a twisted romance, even as the initially sceptical Sara slowly starts to realise what we have known all along: this video may be her last. Still present is the first film’s effective blend of hilarity and unease rooted in Aaron’s mercurial character (with Duplass as riveting as ever in the rôle) – while Sara comes with her own idiosyncrasies, including a disarming openness to almost any experience in pursuit of her art. The results may just be the funniest, strangest love story ever.

 Anton Bitel ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH…

CREEP 2'S PATRICK BRICE AND MARK DUPLASS MET BECAUSE BRICE'S WIFE WAS BABYSITTING FOR DUPLASS' CHILDREN.

Man Bites Dog

 A documentary film crew following a killer is forced into complicity  with their subject.

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review INFO Released Out now Certificate 18 Creator Steve Lightfoot Cast  Jon Bernthal, Ebon MossBachrach, Amber Rose Revah, Deborah Ann Woll, Paul Schulze, Jaime Ray Newman Distributor Netflix Format Running Time 540 mins

Season One

THE PUNISHER Frank’s back 

PUNISHER FAQ Burning Frank Castle questions answered... How much does this tie into The Defenders? 

Without wanting to spoil anything, not very much. Karen Page plays a big role but she’s a crusading journalist now. No one’s making any calls to Matt and the gang.  Are there ninjas? No ninjas.

The Marvel universe has form when it comes to excellent casting choices. From Robert Downey Jr through to Krysten Ritter, they’ve hit the nail on the head more often than not. Still, they don’t come much better than getting  Jon Bernthal to play The Punisher. His performance isn’t just compelling, it elevates everything around him. It made the first half of Daredevil  Season Two essential viewing, and it does the exact same thing for his solo series. Which is not to say that The Punisher’s  first season is in dire need of rescue. It would be easy take Frank down the wrong path, but creator Steve Lightfoot and his writers do an impressive job of delivering sensitivity and intelligence as well as the rage, revenge and bullets. Lots and lots of bullets. How well you think the show deals with the question of terrorism vs… whatever it is that Frank does is, to a certain extent, a matter of opinion, but it’s intelligent to address that issue and to regularly force Frank to question what he’s doing. Bernthal clearly has no

problem finding the character’s fury, but he also gives Frank a self-loathing death wish that elevates the character beyond the Cliffs Notes. If anything, the most basic storytelling comes at the start, as the show runs face-first into the evergreen Frank Castle problem of finding him a new target. After an excellent, necessary first episode that pushes the character into saving the life of a well-meaning kid after he gets in over his head with a bunch of goons (via a brutal sledgehammer sequence brilliantly set to Tom Waits’ ‘Hell Broke Luce’), we discover that the man who is actually responsible for murdering his family is the government stooge behind the deeply illegal special ops team Frank was a part of in Afghanistan. Help comes in the form of hacker-inhiding David Lieberman (Ebon MossBachrach), aka Micro, and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) is still keeping an eye out for him. Meanwhile, crusading NSA agent Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah) is trying to follow the same clues. While a crowd-pleasing ‘Frank takes

So, who’s the over-arching bad guy if not The Hand? In this first season? Crooked government agents, the system’s abandonment of returning soldiers and the poison spewed by libertarian ‘truth-tellers’. Damn, that’s heavy. Yeah, it’s not light.  Are there any laughs? One or two. There’s a really good bit where Frank is unhappy about the difference in quality between his and Micro’s packed lunches.

down the mob’ storyline would probably have been a lot of fun, there’s a real effort here to add depth to the world surrounding the ma in character. Revah works hard to add shades of grey to her ‘dogged cop’ character, Micro’s forced abandonment of his own family is powerful dramatic material, and although it is used as a crutch to kill time and/ or add jeopardy a little too often, Moss Bachrach and Jaime Ray Newman (as his wife Sarah) are very good. The former even adds a little much-needed humour thanks to his very-odd-couple routine with Bernthal. Ben Barnes also has a hell of a lot of fun as Frank’s good-lookin’ best friend Billy Russo (yes, fans of the comics, Billy Russo…). However, arguably the most engaging storyline is that of one of the show’s key but relatively minor characters, as Daniel Webber (Lee Harvey Oswald in 11/22/63 ) is excellent as a young soldier struggling to cope with PTSD. Watching his journey is affecting and scary, and it addresses issues that feel more important than ever given recent tragic events. It’s grim stuff that takes itself completely seriously (not a single polar bear is punched in the face), and that does begin to take its toll when the inevitable slow patches arrive. That being said, the direction is consistently excellent, the fight sequences are brutal and gripping, and Bernthal not only delivers the definitive Punisher but one of the best male lead performances we have seen all year. This isn’t flawless but it’s damn strong stuff.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH…

Okay, that sounds good. You take the chuckles where you can find them.

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Luther Idris Elba hunts London’s human monsters in Neil Cross’ graphic novelinspired detective series.

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THE CHARACTER OF MICRO HAS BEEN REFERENCED ON AGENTS OF SHIELD.

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review INFO Released Out now Certificate 15 Creators Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer Cast Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo Distributor Netflix Format Running Time 540 mins

Season Two

STRANGER THINGS Going deeper upside down Given the fact that Stranger Things 

SEASON 2 SCENE STEALERS It’s time to re-rank  your favourites STEVE HARRINGTON What a turnaround. Steve’s gone from arrogant jock to adorable older brother, and his friendship with Dustin was beautiful, man. MAX  Okay, so she’s in the gang now but she makes this list by virtue of her newcomer status and her general awesomeness.

so perfectly hit that zeitgeist-y sweet spot and so clearly enjoyed its pop culture success, we had our concerns about whether Matt and Ross Duffer would be able to perform the same trick twice. But for the most part, Stranger Things 2  is a resounding success as the brothers take us back to Hawkins, Indiana for a more character-focused follow-up. Now, what that means is that the pace is somewhat less breathless for the first half of the season. Rather than plunge us straight in at the deep end, Season Two shows us where everyone’s got to and how they’ve been picking up the pieces. ‘What’s wrong with Will?’ is less dynamic and urgent than ‘Where is Will?’ but it’s to the show’s credit that it’s treated with the same amount of importance, as Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) struggle to balance support and paranoia, and the friendly Dr Owens (Paul Reiser) brings him into the science lab for regular tests that don’t seem to be helping... The Will (Noah Schnap) situation

BOB We didn’t know what to make of Bob the brain at first but a sweethearted turn from Sean Astin made the character a wonderful addition to the cast. CLAUDIA HENDERSON Dustin’s mom seems to care about two things: her son, and her cat. And if she can get photos, that’s all the better.

and thrilling as it ever was. With that being said, if we had to pick a quality to define Season Two, we’d go with heart. The creators really love these characters, and each group greatly benefits from more attention. Joyce is desperately trying to find some kind of stability, Hopper is trying to keep his town together, and the love triangle of  Jonathan-Nancy (Natalia Dyer)-Steve (Joe Keery) is infinitely more interesting now that we know them all better, and the latter’s babysitting storyline is wonderful. As ever, though, it’s Eleven’s show and Mille Bobby Brown continues to prove what an incredible talent she is. Her relationship with Hopper emerged as the show’s real emotional core. There are one or two missteps as a result of the Duffers trying push the edges of their world (Eleven’s big story in episode seven is not handled at all well), and if you found the show’s Eighties trappings self-indulgent in the first season then, one joke aside, you’re not in for a pleasant surprise this time round. The fact that a third and probably fourth season are already underway may also explain some of the less thrilling choices in the season’s final third. But while it may suffer slightly in direct comparison to its predecessor, Stranger Things 2  reaps the rewards from putting in the time a nd the work to make sure Hawkins and its heroes and villains a ren’t just bike-riding meme-machines. There’s real heart and soul here, so… welcome back.

 Jonathan Hatfull

BECKY IVES The excellent Amy Seimetz returned to give Eleven’s journey home a heartbreaking poignancy, realising that there’s so much tragedy she failed to see.

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is very much at the forefront, which obviously results in more screentime for the character, but there’s also more room made for Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), both at home and in their attempts to strike up a relationship with Hawkins newcomer Max (Sadie Sink). While she is a little reminiscent of IT’s  Beverly, her nobullshit attitude, big heart and troubled relationship with her unstable older stepbrother Billy (Dacre Montgomery, going full-tilt for ‘Stephen King bully’) make her a strong character in her own right and an excellent new addition to the cast. Speaking of new additions, the Duffers are clearly giddy at having Eighties genre faces like Reiser and Sean Astin (playing  Joyce’s clueless but sweet new boyfriend) in the cast, and they know what they’re doing by casting them in these roles. If we’re making it sound like Stranger Things 2  is light on the action and horror, all we can really say is: be patient. It’s more of a slow burn, but when the show puts its foot on the gas, it’s just as scary

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★★★★★

OR STAY IN AND WATCH… Eerie, Indiana Because, well, let’s face it – it’s always time to re-watch Eerie, Indiana .

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FINN WOLFHARD’S COMMITMENT TO STAR IN IT MEANT THAT HE NEARLY MISSED OUT ON STRANGER THINGS.

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review

THE DAEMONS OF  Witchy Who DEVIL’S END spin-off // Released Out now Details PG // 300 minutes //  2017 // Creator Keith Barnfather Cast Damaris Hayman Distributor Koch Media

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR The walls ran red // Released Out now Details 15 //702 mins // 1980 // Creator Roy Skeggs Cast Peter Cushing, Brian Cox, Jon Finch, Patricia Quinn, Denholm Elliott, Diana Dors Distributor Network 

Hammer’s shortlived but fondly remembered anthology series has been given a lovely Blu-ray upgrade by Network, bringing the hour-long tales of horror, madness and cars spinning wildly out of control into beautiful high definition. It’s absolutely a mustpurchase for fans, although the only real special feature of note is the widescreen version of ‘Guardians Of The Abyss’. For newcomers, Hammer House Of Horror  is worth a look, but we’d advise proceeding with a little caution. As you’d expect from any anthology series, the level of quality varies dramatical ly, but with one or two exceptions, even the better episodes require patience thanks to erratic pacing and a consistently overlong 55-minute runtime. That being said, there’s a lot to enjoy and plenty of familiar faces. Patricia Quinn has a ball as a time-travelling witch tormenting Jon Finch in ‘Witching Time’, Diana Dors cares for a pack of adorable and hungry young werewolves in ‘Children Of The Full Moon’, and  Julia Foster uncovers the horrifying secret behind a weight loss clinic in ‘The

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Thirteenth Reunion’ (which boasts one of the very best endings of the series). At its best, the series showed a real enthusiasm to stick the knife in and twist it. Denholm Elliott anchors the gleefully saucy ‘Rude Awakening’ as a philandering estate agent who keeps repeating the same day, but there’s a chill behind the giggles, while ‘The House That Bled To Death’ has some real scares. ‘The Mark Of Satan’ is underrated and quite unpleasant, and series highlight ‘The Silent Scream’, in which Peter Cushing’s pet store owner traps Brian Cox’s ex con, flirts with real silliness but offers a surprisingly bleak denouement. It’s probably best not to binge these, are there are several repeated elements (seriously, cars going out of control on country lanes is a series leitmotif) and when it’s bad, it’s painfully dull, but the chilling ‘The Two Faces Of Evil’ alone makes this box-set a solid purchase.

Back in the days when Doctor Who  was off the telly, video spin-offs featuring non-BBC copyright creations were common. Lowbudget adventures for companions and monsters were made with love and launched many an impressive career. Since the show returned they have understandably fizzled out, with the last being Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough a decade ago. This set sees the release of a new spin-off, reaching DVD five  years after it was announced. In White Witch Of Devil’s End, Damaris Hayman reprises her role as Olive Hawthorne, defender of the picturesque but demon-troubled village of Devil’s End from the Jon Pertwee adventure ‘The Daemons’. Divided into six episodes, White Witch tells Olive’s story from her early days through to her twilight  years. Hayman tells the stories in to-camera Talking Heads -style sequences, and her narration is intercut with scenes showing the events from Olive’s perspective. There is a nicely elegiac tone as Olive’s stories are prefaced with her worries for the future of Devil’s End as she faces her

mortality, and the anthology format is a strong one. Hayman is a charming narrator and the ending is unexpectedly affecting. However, the special effects in the cutaways leave a lot to be desired and some (though by no means all) of the acting is am-dram ham. Twas ever thus with Doctor Who  spin-offs, but we had rather hoped things might have moved on a bit by now. This would have made a lovely audio drama, but onscreen it simply doesn’t have the budget to match its ambitions. It’s definitely worth seeking out for Daemons fans, but the lack of gloss will likely be off-putting to newcomers. The set is packed with extras – a making-of, a music video of the catchy song which plays over the end credits of each episode, and more – but the real added value in this release comes with the inclusion of the splendid 1993 documentary Return To Devil’s End , which reunited the main cast of ‘The Daemons’ at the village location, Aldbourne.

Martin Parsons ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… PROBE: The Devil Of  Winterborne

Ghastly goings on…

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… The Frighteners

 Another one-series British horror anthology with some hidden gems.

TERENCE FISHER WAS SET TO DIRECT AN EPISODE OF HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR BEFORE HE PASSED AWAY

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Andy Weir – The author of The Martian on his new SF caper Artemis

084 Book reviews 090 Graphic novel

reviews 092 David Wong interview

BOOK CLUB

La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One

Your 5 childhood favourites you keep returning to TELL US YOUR FIRST KING @SCIFINOW ON TWITTER

1.A Series Of Unfortunate Events “A Series Of Unfortunate Events  - @ lemonysnicket! It remains timeless @Scholastic #BookClub” @djGriF8

2. The Lion Witch  And The  Wardrobe “The Lion Witch And The Wardrobe  series because they never fail to please the inner child, or of course Swallow & Amazons . #BookClub” @johntheboy 

3. Red As Blood “Tanith Lee’s Red As Blood , which I probably should not have been reading as a kid. #BookClub” @mokie

“PULLMAN HAS NEVER TALKED DOWN TO HIS READERS” 4. Tortall “Tamora Pierce’s Tortall  series. A girl as a knight, a wild mage and a lady page. Girls kicking ass medieval style. @TamoraPierce #BookClub” @king_lyd

5. Charlie  And The Chocolate Factory “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory , because it’s fantastical!! Also Chocolate! #BookClub” @BeardedWhovian

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Details Author: Philip Pullman Publisher: Penguin Random House Price: £20 Released: Out now

LA BELLE SAUVAGE:

THE BOOK OF DUST VOLUME ONE Return to Oxford

Philip Pullman’s His  Dark Materials  trilogy is a literary rockstar. It’s a powerful presence, rhapsodised over for both its thrilling story and its brutal takedown of religious fanaticism. Now, 17 years since the original trilogy ended, Pullman is returning us to Lyra’s world with La Belle Sauvage, the first in The Book Of Dust  trilogy, which is set ten years before His Dark Materials. It centres on a young boy, Malcolm Polstead, who takes it upon himself to protect a baby girl from forces that wish her harm. The baby, of course, is Lyra. La Belle Sauvage  is no Northern

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Lights , but it isn’t trying to be. Where Northern Lights  whisked Lyra off on a dangerous tour of her world, La Belle Sauvage  remains in Oxford and focuses more on small-scale corruptions and mundane lives. Malcolm is no brave, semi-magical hero, he’s the son of a couple of pub owners who goes to school. His heroism comes on slowly and consciously – he chooses to take a stand in spite of his own fears, as do all of the book’s heroes. Fans of His Dark Materials  may be surprised by how little crossover there is between this and the original trilogy. Lyra

features heavily, but she’s a baby. Nonetheless, the infant Pantalaimon still manages to steal the show from the book’s other dæmons. Aside from what are essentially cameos from a handful of HDM  characters, La Belle Sauvage  is its own beast, and it’s more interested in sketching out the beginnings of the Magisterium’s control and corruption. It also explores the Magisterium’s opponents, and hints, intriguingly, that these ‘goodies’ are capable of horrors almost equal to those of the villains in order to win. But while a lot is hinted at, little is satisfactorily explored – perhaps because this is the first of a trilogy. Most of what is explored in the first half, including many characters, is forgotten in the second. Most of the fantasy action takes place in the second half, when the book suddenly feels like the magical/ realistic world of HDM , but the two halves could have tied together more smoothly. We’d have also liked to spend more time in the wonderfully weird land of The Flood, which is classic Pullman – he takes something ordinary, and turns it into something fantastical. Pullman has never talked-down to his readers, and he doesn’t start here. La Belle Sauvage  is also a lot more adult than HDM . He’s still the master of simple description, painting Malcolm and his world clearly, and some of the book’s themes and observations will stay with you for days. The book ends with a ‘to be continued’, but it feels less like the first part of a new series than an enjoyable but unnecessary prequel to Lyra’s story, before Pullman gets down to the real meat of The Book Of Dust  in its subsequent instalments.

 Abigail Chandler ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… The Chaos Walking Trilogy  Patrick Ness Two young heroes come of age alongside religious and political corruption.

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BOOK CLUB Artemis // It Devours!

Details Author: Andy Weir Publisher: Del Rey Price: £12.99 Released: Out now

ARTEMIS

The moon mobs up

 After managing to bring

hard, accurate science to the masses with The Martian, Andy Weir cuts loose with a lunar-set heist caper that should both please those who enjoyed his attention to detail and those who fell for his obvious ability to spin an entertaining yarn. Our (slightly anti-) heroine is Jazz Bashara, a resident on the moon’s

ADS E R R YOU

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“WEIR KEEPS THINGS LIGHT...THIS IS A SF THRILLER THAT WANTS YOU TO HAVE FUN AND IT DELIVERS” city of Artemis. For the most part, it’s a tourist attraction, as shuttles bring the curious and the wealthy to step into the vacuum of space and wander the first landing sites. However, lawful employment isn’t cutting it for Jazz and she makes most of her cash as a smuggler, bringing contraband in for the city’s criminal element. She’s smart, but she’s cocky. She knows better than to take on an incredibly lucrative but risky job… but does so anyway. Before long she’s in over her head and everyone’s out to get her. There’s a real sense of an author having fun in Artemis . While it may be set closer to Earth than The Martian, Weir is clearly having a ball creating a world that’s a fair bit more ‘sci-fi’. The city of Artemis is meticulously constructed from the

people who make up its population, the circumstances surrounding how it came to be, the ways in which a criminal element could operate, and the construction of the city itself. It’s a living, breathing place that’s tremendous fun to explore, and Jazz makes for an excellent guide. Weir also does his best to keep things light. The threats facing Jazz are many, but for all the potentially corrupt politicians, definitely corrupt company owners and unstoppable assassins, this is a SF thriller that wants you to have fun and it delivers.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… Off Rock  Kieran Shea  A meteorite miner runs into trouble when he tries to sneak a massive payday off site.

Details Author: Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor Publisher: Orbit Books Price: £16.99 Released: Out now

IT DEVOURS!

A NIGHT VALE NOVEL Something nasty is lurking deep below the desert town of Night Vale. Of course, something nasty is always lurking deep below the desert town of Night Vale. As anyone who has ever listened to  Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s hit podcast Welcome To Night Vale  will know all too well, Night Vale is a town that never heard a conspiracy theory it didn’t wholeheartedly believe. It’s a town where hooded figures roam the forbidden dog park at night, where no-one goes to the library because of the threat of librarians, and where black helicopters monitor absolutely everything that everyone does, on behalf of a vague yet menacing government agency. But this time, the something nasty is starting to drag Night Vale citizens down with it, and it has got something to do with a house that

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Deep, deep trouble

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doesn’t exist, and the joyful devotees of a Smiling God… Fans will be happy to find that the voice of Night Vale Radio, Cecil Palmer, makes several appearances in this book, and his husband Carlos the scientist plays a fairly major role in the plot. Plenty of other fan favourites also crop up, but you don’t need to get all the in-jokes to read this book. It’s both a slightly silly story about enormous monsters and a deeply thoughtful meditation on the necessity of faith (whether that’s in religion, or science, or something else entirely). Consistently cleverer than it seems, written in Welcome To Night Vale’s  distinctly weird voice, It Devours!  is the kind of book that demands to be swallowed whole, in a single sitting. But while it’s a quick read, its ideas will stay with you – both its earnest optimism about the existence of love in the midst of an uncaring universe, and its cheerfully

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What you lot have been reading this month? “I just finished Sleeping Beauties , it was pretty good. About to start the third installment in the John Dies At The End series. #BookClub” @themeatispeople “The Bonehunters  by Steven Erikson. His  writing and imagination often leaves me in awe (and is vastly superior to Esslemont’s). #BookClub” @HamSpanner “The Last Days Of Jack Sparks  by @JasonArnopp  will be interesting to see how the movie turns out cos the book is superb! #BookClub” @Bcallar67 “I’m reading The Chemist by Stephanie Meyer. It’s pretty good. She ropes me in every time. It’s no The Host mind!! That was an epic read! #BookClub” @GaryRenton2 “Trying out new Star Trek Discovery  tie in novel. Been 15 years since I’ve read a ST  novel. Not bad so far. (Only 5 chapters in) #bookclub” @ludex_phil “Firestorm  by Lucy Hounsom (@ silvanhistorian). An excellent end to a really good series. #BookClub #BurnBright” @andyangel44 “Just finished Bands Of Mourning  by @ BrandSanderson (loved it, need more!) and now onto Revenger  by @AquilaRift #BookClub” @spoonofmilk 

sinister insistence that no matter who you are or what you’re doing, something uncanny is hiding in the shadows…

Sarah Dobbs ★★★★★

@SciFiNow

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… Practical Demonkeeping Christopher Moore  An comedy-fantasy about a man who accidentally summons a demon.

/SciFiNow

“Just started Revenger  by Alastair Reynolds. #BookClub” @tom_rhys “Chills  by @ marysangiovanni and absolutely loving it. Dripping with atmospheric dread and the prose is brilliant. First rate horror. #BookClub” @MCM_EnglishGent

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BOOK CLUB

Places In The Darkness // Year One

ITH W S D ON 60 SEC

Details  Author: Chris Brookmyre Publisher: Orbit Price: £18.99 Released: Out now

PLACES IN THE DARKNESS The future’s a cut-throat business  As far as anyone knows, there’s

TRICIA SULLIVAN

never been a murder on board space station Ciudad De Cielo (CDC for short), the Earth orbiting facility/ city in space where scientists and mechanics are hard at work developing the ships that will take humanity far into the stars. Still, there’s a first time for everything, and when a

How did Sweet Dreams come about? I wanted to write a straightforward, slightly comic mystery novel. And it  wasn’t initially intended to have any science fiction element, I thought I could do it as a fantasy, but all of my instincts seemed to go towards a more rational explanation, so then I came up with the idea of the technology that allowed dreamhacking. But the real impulse for this particular one was more the type of story it is, about one protagonist in a kind of contemporary setting and a kind of a straightforward whodunnit, or whatdunit. Charlie’s got this great pitch at the start about what she thinks her job should be…  Well, I think the thing about the character is that she’s very naïve and she’s very innocent but I didn’t really know how it was all going to unfold and I kept doing things to her and being like “Oh God, I really don’t  want to do this, this is horrible!” But I kind of had to because the world is just all nice the way she wants it to be. So yeah, I guess in a way it’s my way of exploring what the world is like and what it will do to you if  you let it. There are parts where it’s very funny, and it also gets very dark, almost to the point of horror. Is it hard juggling those tones? I think in all my work my tone tends to go all over the place. I have trouble keeping things in compartments. I just follow it where it wants to go. I did want it to be a light book, I didn’t want it to be too dark, but with some of the topics that it’s involved with I had no choice but to go dark in places, it just had to go there. I really wanted to write something that  would be fun to read. Sweet Dreams  by

Tricia Sullivan is available now from Gollancz.

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“NIFTY TRICKS ARE PULLED AS TRUST COMES AND GOES” deconstructed human being is found floating in zero G, the city is suddenly under intense scrutiny. Can officious newcomer Alice Blake and crooked cop Nikki Fixx find the culprit before the hammer comes down? Or will they face a similarly gruesome end? Chris Brookmyre is best known for his crime novels and there’s plenty of detective work and excellent hardboiled noir business in Places In The Darkness, but it’s also very clear just how much he enjoys working in sci-fi. The first section of the novel revels in the construction of this particular future, from the technology behind the memory recording (crucial to the plot, as you might imagine), to the careful balance between law and order. As much as Alice bridles at the way in which Nikki seems to have a finger in every crooked pie in CDC, she begins to realise that there is a reason why it’s sometimes important

to turn the other way. However, turning the other way is not an option when there’s murder involved, and Brookmyre has created two compelling investigators. The duo exchange point-of-view chapters, allowing for some nifty tricks to be pulled as balances of power shift and trust comes and goes. The middle section of the book is so breathless, brutal and unpredictable that it’s almost a shame when the big bad behind it all is revealed. There’s so much going on here that it does sometimes feel like the author struggled to fit it all in, but it’s absolutely gripping.

 Jonathan Hatfull ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… Tea From An Empty Cup Pat Cadigan  When artificial reality users start getting killed IRL, a cop uncovers a big conspiracy.

Details  Author: Nora Roberts Publisher: Piatkus Price: £16.99 Released: 5 December

YEAR ONE Flu shot There is always something chilling about a viral pandemic that operates like the flu. When out on a hunting trip, Ross MacLeod shoots a pheasant and takes it home to his vacationing family for supper. They soon return home to the United States, carrying a deadly virus with them. The

“ROBERTS’ OPENING INSTALMENT IS A SLICK AFFAIR” pandemic, dubbed the Doom, sweeps through America and civil society breaks down shortly after. In the wake of the sickness, some survivors discover that they are developing mysterious, magical powers that threaten any new social stability.

Veteran Nora Roberts’ opening instalment to a new series is a slick affair, deftly weaving the stories of her disparate characters together until they meet. Each character is distinct in their personalities, powers, and agendas, which is handy when communities get bigger. Unfortunately, there’s a sense of inevitability with how the story plays out. There’s a big plot twist that feels forecast while before you get to it and a knowledge of the post-apocalyptic genre greats means even the smaller narrative steps feel predictable. The world-building also feels a touch slight; details are often dropped in with little explanation and it can feel alienating as a reader getting to grips with Roberts’ landscape. For anyone familiar with the postapocalyptic genre, there is a lot about Year One  that is familiar, from the way in which disparate characters come together to the way in which some

are corrupted by the new world they find themselves in. However, it packs enough thrills in for it to be an entertaining ride through a new dystopian landscape.

Becky Lea ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… The Stand Stephen King Post-apocalyptic fiction  where survivors must choose between good and evil.

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BOOK CLUB Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View // The Secret of Vesalius Muasdt re now!

Details  Author: Various Publisher: Century Price: £20 Released: Out now

STAR WARS: FROM A CERTAIN POINT  A new OF VIEW perspective The beauty of the Star Wars  universe is that it is so expansive, providing fertile ground for a wealth of stories to grow, as evidenced in the ever-popular material that represents both the Legends  and the new Star Wars  canon. Into this arrives Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View , an anthology crafted to celebrate the saga’s 40th anniversary, one story for each year. The stories work alongside the events of Episode IV, progressing chronologically. Some stories feature characters we’ve come to know and love/loathe as well as those less well-known faces. If you ever wanted to know what happened to the infamous head-bumping stormtrooper, there’s a tale in here for you. It even takes time to check in with characters who weren’t present in A New Hope, but still have an effect on the overall saga. The collection of authors gives

“IT OFFERS UP AN ENRICHING, DELIGHTFUL LOOK AT THE FRINGES OF STAR WARS”

the anthology a wonderful variety. Most are in a short story format, but occasionally, there’s a different style thrown in, including a brilliant cartoon from Jeffrey Brown. It runs the gamut of emotions too, from Ken Liu’s wry tale of Imperial bureaucracy to a melancholy yet hopeful meeting between Jedi, and each story feels lovingly crafted. As with any anthology, some stories will work better for some, but From A Certain Point of View  has enough variety for everyone. It offers up an enriching, delightful look at the fringes of Star Wars  and sheds new light on characters you’d perhaps never thought of before.

Becky Lea ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… Lost Stars Claudia Gray  Two friends find themselves on opposite sides as the Rebel  Alliance takes on the Empire.

Details  Author: Jordi Llobregat Publisher: riverrun Price: £20 Released: Out now

THE SECRET OF  A slice of VESALIUS Spanish gothic Taking the reader into the heart of 19th century Barcelona, The Secret Of Vesalius  tells the tale of Daniel Amat, who is drawn home by the death of his estranged father and returns to a life he had left behind in the wake of a family tragedy. At the same time, a down-on-hisluck journalist is investigating a series of murders across the city, in which  young women are found with their bodies horrifically mutilated. As the 1888 World’s Fair draws closer, the pair collide with each other as it becomes apparent that Daniel’s father had been conducting a murder investigation of his own. What is perhaps most impressive about Jordi Llobregat’s debut novel is how it manages to be a cracking slice of Spanish gothic in its own right as well as wearing its

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influences openly. One can spot Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and the world of penny dreadfuls between its pages alongside the spectre of  Jack the Ripper haunting the text. The translation from Thomas Bunstead gives the prose a fin de siecle feel with a lyricism that ensures even the most violent of descriptions have an uncomfortable beauty to them. The characters are all fascinating, but it is turn-of-the-century Barcelona that is the star of the show. Measured  yet exciting, brutal yet poetic, Llobregat has crafted a great novel.

Becky Lea ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… Beloved Poison: A Jem Flockhart Mystery  ES Thomson  An apprentice apothecary investigates a gruesome find.

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BOOK CLUB Interview

Shoot For The Moon Andy Weir tells us about following The Martian with lunar heist novel Artemis WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

Andy Weir has come a long way since he selfpublished The Martian back in 2011. His debut novel became a critically acclaimed bestseller, and it was turned into a star-studded Oscar-winning film by Ridley Scott. That blend of thriller, humour and incredible attention-to-detail shines through in Weir’s follow-up: Artemis. The story follows Jazz Bashara, one of the permanent residents on the lunar city of Artemis, a tourist resort that doubles as a haven for smugglers and crooks. She’s smart, she’s capable, and she’s broke, so when a ‘too good to be true’ job comes her way, she can’t turn it down… which is a huge mistake. Suddenly she’s in over her head with the law, the mob and the authorities, with nowhere to hide. Was Artemis  an idea that you’d had in your head for a while? For a few years, yes. I like to think about spacerelated technology. So I had been designing a Moon-based city for quite a while. I worked out all the science and economics behind Artemis before I ever came up with the characters or story that takes place in it. Was it exciting to push a bit further into he realms of sci-fi (although a little closer to the Earth!)? Yes, it was. Though, Artemis  is sort of odd in one sense. It takes place considerably further in the future than The Martian (Artemis  is in the 2090s while The Martian was in the 2030s) but it has less speculative science. In other words: The Martian presumed more scientific advancements than Artemis  does. The only necessary invention for The Martian  struck gold  with a global audience.

Artemis  is lower-cost boosters that can get people

to Earth’s orbit. Where did the character of Jazz Bashara come from? In the first story idea I had, Jazz was a very tertiary character. I needed a smuggler so I picked a fairly random country for her to be from (I ended up with Saudi Arabia) and rolled with it. Jazz was kind of a funny side character but that was it. However, that story concept didn’t work out well and I abandoned it. Then I came up with a completely different story idea, and this time Jazz was more prominent. She was still a secondary character, not critical to the plot, but was interesting. That story also fell flat. I realised that the most likeable thing about both of those concepts was Jazz herself. So I took a stab at writing a story that revolved around her personally. And that’s what became Artemis . Obviously with The Martian  you’re using institutions like NASA. How much fun was it to create the lunar city of Artemis from scratch, with all its infrastructure and social structures? It was great! I could just freely speculate as much as I wanted and could make up my own society. Though I did try to be as realistic as possible with it. I researched resort towns and how their economies worked to get a feel for what Artemis would be like. Researching the tech was the most fun for me. I worked out the details of how to manufacture aluminium from lunar rocks, how much energy it would take, etc. I really did a deep-dive. At what stage do you start work on the research element, and how important is it to you to ground these stories in some kind of scientific fact? I did most of the research before I even came up with a story. The science is the basis I work from. Everything has to fit around that. Have you always been drawn to sci-fi? Was there a book or film that had big impact on you growing up?

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I’ve always been a sci-fi fan. I think it comes from my dad, who is a sci-fi dork himself. I was indoctrinated since birth. Also, he had a huge collection of sci-fi paperbacks from his youth. So I had plenty of reading material handy in the house. My main influences are Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke. I can’t pick just one book that had a huge effect – but I did quite like Tunnel In The Sky  and I, Robot.

It’s just been announced that Artemis  will be made into a film by Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Are film adaptations something that you get excited about, or do you see the book and the film as very different entities? I see them as very different entities. And also a film isn’t a done deal until they start shooting it. There are a lot of things that have to go right for Artemis  to actually be greenlighted. Getting an awesome director pair is a great start but we still need a screenplay writer and then a script, and a cast. The reaction to The Martian  and its success were incredible. What was it like seeing that story connect with so many people? I have no idea what I did right. I thought I was writing a story for a tiny niche audience of hardcore science dorks. I never dreamed it would have mainstream appeal. Which authors are you most excited about at the moment? I loved Ready Player One by Ernie Cline. Unfortunately I don’t get to read much these days. It’s a common lament among my peers, I’ve learned. I’d really like there to be another sci-fi guy who writes hard sci-fi like I do. I want to read it without knowing the ending! What’s next for you? It depends on how well Artemis  is received. I would love to make a series out of it. I’d like to make lots of stories with different main characters and maybe even in different genres. When I say ‘genre’ there I mean things like mystery, adventure, action, comedy, etc. I’ve never considered sci-fi to be a genre. To me, it’s just a setting. It’s no more a genre than ‘New York City’ is. That’s just my opinion – I know I’m in the minority there. Anyway, I’d love for Artemis  to become my personal Discworld . Artemis  is on sale 14 November 2017

published by Del Ray, available in hardback for £12.99.

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HOLLYWOOD LOVES ANDY WEIR HERE’S WHAT THE AUTHOR HAS COMING UP ON THE BIG AND SMALL SCREEN  ARTEMIS

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller didn’t  waste any time licking their wounds after leaving the Han Solo  movie, as it was recently announced that the 21 Jump Street  duo would be directing the film based on Weir’s latest novel. We can’t  wait to see what they do with it. MISSION CONTROL

CBS has nabbed the rights to Weir’s TV series pitch. It sounds more grounded than his two novels, telling the story of the astronauts and scientists at NASA who try to maintain a healthy work-life balance  while sending people into space. UNTITLED FILM

There’s been no word on this one since May last year, which is when Weir sold a mystery pitch to 20th Century Fox.  According to reports at the time, he’ll write the script for The Martian  duo of director Ridley Scott and producer Simon Kinberg.

INTERVIEW

Andy Weir

BOOK CLUB Extremity, Vol. 1: Artist

Details Writer: Daniel Warren Johnson Artist: Daniel Warren Johnson Publisher:

Image Comics Price: $16.99 Released: Out now

EXTREMITY, VOL.1: ARTIST Boasting a rather more serious title than his calling-card webcomic, Space-Mullet, Daniel Warren  Johnson’s Extremity  is a dark and thoughtful revenge tale that shows great potential in these opening six issues. The world that Johnson sketches in this first volume is a colourful and creative mish-mash of fantasy and sci-fi. Image’s back-cover blurb name-checks Mad Max  and Studio Ghibli, but there are no easy points of reference for this expansive landscape filled with monsters, machinery and merciless men pushed to the brink. Abba, the head of the Roto Clan, leads his army in a bloodthirsty search for revenge against those who attacked his home and murdered his wife – and he finally has them within his grasp. His children, both marked by grief in their own ways, are along for the ride, although his son, Rollo, isn’t comfortably growing into his role as heir apparent; instead, it is his daughter, Thea, that has more naturally taken up her father’s mantle, acting as his agent, assassin and executioner. Based on the title, it should come as no surprise that Extremity  is an extreme book. Johnson has immense skill at rendering splash pages of gruesome mayhem, and this volume is filled with shocking and detailed scenes of monsters tearing through ranks of men, of battleships waging war in the skies, or simply of Abba’s hulking physical presence bearing down on his prey. His action sequences are dynamic and thrilling – and very effectively coloured by Mike Spicer – but there’s a tightly-wound energy to his linework and page layouts, even in intervening scenes. The book is anchored in the melancholy, futility and inevitability that comes with the urge for revenge. Innocence lost cannot be regained, and the pursuit of retribution – and the horrible acts committed along the way – plumb new depths of the darkness within. Thea, once destined to be the Roto Clan’s great artist, loses her drawing hand in the traumatic attack that turns the family’s existence upside down, and each act of destruction under her father’s

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Muasdt re now!

Blood-drenched revenge

orders takes her further away from her creative calling. A powerful scene – a rare nearsilent page amongst the sound and fury – alternates between past and present: Abba encouraging a young Thea to draw; and Abba compelling the older Thea to torture a captive. Buried trauma and simmering tensions like these threaten to rip the Clan, and the family at its core, apart, even as they edge closer to fulfilling their dreadful task. Many first volumes published by Image Comics read like pilot episodes for your next binge obsession – offering an opening arc that introduces expansive worlds, high concepts and compelling casts of characters. This first volume of Extremity  presents all that and more, but Johnson has a focused, finite vision for this gloomy, philosophical epic – and he’s off to a beguiling, bruising start here.

Michael Leader ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… Birthright, Vol. 1: Homecoming  Joshua Williamson and  Andrei Bressan High fantasy meets family drama in this adventure.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEWS

Misty, Vol. 2 // House Of Women

Details Writer: Sophie Goldstein  Artist: Sophie Goldstein

Details Writer: Malcolm Shaw  Artist: Mario Capaldi, John Richardson Publisher:

Publisher:

Rebellion Price: £13.99 Released: Out now

HOUSE OF WOMEN

MISTY, VOL. 2:

Dark desires bubble to the surface

THE SENTINELS AND THE END OF THE LINE

 After opening a convent in the

Fearsome high rises and haunted tunnels This second volume of two reprinted stories from Misty , the fondly-remembered, but short-lived ‘horror comic for girls’ that was launched by 2000 AD  creator Pat Mills in 1978, continues publisher Rebellion’s efforts to preserve this notable corner of British comics history, and present it to a whole new generation. ‘The Sentinels’ tells of a pair of high-rise apartment blocks – one filled with tenants, the other left mysteriously empty – while ‘The End Of The Line’, published mere months before the opening of the London Underground’s Jubilee Line, centres on peculiar events occurring in the tunnels of the new, deep-level Windsor Line. However, the nightmares of the past encroach on the dreams of the present, and in the shadows of an abandoned flat or in the barely-glimpsed gloom between stations, lurk unseemly and unfathomable horrors. Both stories offer neat spins on familiar tropes, with grounded, soap operatic frameworks that surround their female protagonists. When Jan and her family are evicted, they shack up in the abandoned Sentinel tower, only to find a portal to a Britain that is almost identical but for one distinct difference: the country is under Nazi occupation. Meanwhile, Ann Summerton mourns for her father, an engineer

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Fantagraphics Price: £25.99 Released: Out now

who disappeared while working on the Windsor Line, and clashes with her mother and soon-to-bestepdad – but when she discovers a subterranean, Victorian colony adjacent to the underground network, she finds that she might be able to save not just her dad, but also the family she thought she had lost forever. While both stories are fascinating time capsules of concerns from the late Seventies, Misty’s  stop-start serialised storytelling style – which is told in four-page chunks and simultaneously drawn-out and dense – should be approached with caution. Consider this one for the very curious.

Michael Leader ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY…  Wytches Scott Snyder and Jock  Terrifying and twisted horror comic with family drama at its heart.

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far reaches of the Empire, a murmur of nuns face tension and conflict both with the local population and amongst themselves, exacerbated by their exotic and unfamiliar surroundings, and the unsettling presence of a roguish and charming male agent. Sound familiar? That is the synopsis for the 1947 classic British drama Black Narcissus. Now, imagine that, but in space. That is House Of Women, the new book from graphic novelist Sophie Goldstein, whose last work, The Oven, was a minor marvel that singled her out as a writer/ artist to watch. Initially started as a self-published web-comic, and now collected in a lavish oversized volume by Fantagraphics, House Of Women continues Goldstein’s winning streak, finding new relevance in familiar stories and focusing on communities on the fringes of civilisation. Twenty-five light years from the safety of the Empire, Sarai and her fellow nuns land on Mopu, and set up shop ‘civilising’ the natives, a species of cute, bugeyed aliens. However, as their mission drags on, and they start to fall for the landscape, the locals, and the masculine charms of Mr  Jael Dean (their imperial contact on the planet), the nuns’ quiet, stoic conventions strain under the unexpected pressures and distractions of their new home.

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Muasdt re now! Goldstein’s deceptively simplistic, supple black-and-white artwork sinuously shifts in tone and form throughout, encompassing the exotic and the erotic, the grotesque and the graceful, evoking woodblock prints and Japanese scroll art. As the colony’s order unravels, repressed urges and desires take over the convent, and House Of Women soon develops into a compelling, provocative psychosexual melodrama – an intriguing twist on colonial and religious themes, but with a striking, feminist edge.

Michael Leader ★★★★★

IF YOU LIKE THIS TRY… The Oven Sophie Goldstein  A thought-provoking exploration of freedom in the guise of dystopian sci-fi.

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BOOK CLUB Interview

JOHN LIVES! David Wong tells us about the latest chapter in his John Dies At The End series: What The Hell Did I Just Read? WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

Since it first hit the internet in 2001, the cult reputation of David Wong’s John Dies At The End  has only grown. Blending Lovecraftian horror, unsettling observations and slacker humour, the story of two friends fighting off t ransdimensional monsters of unimaginable terror in their shitty small town is both frightening and hilarious, not to mention compulsively readable. In What The Hell Did I Just Read?, John, Dave and Amy find themselves up against a creature that worms its way into your memories and may just take over our world… How was it returning to the world of John Dies At The End  after taking a break with Futuristic Violence And Fancy Suits ? It was certainly difficult to remember everything that had happened previously, in the way that it’s hard to keep track of what an angry mob says while they are beating you. My solution was to just stop worrying about it and plow ahead. Plot inconsistencies make it scarier! Guess what, reader – this bus has no steering wheel. How easy is the JDATE  world to slip back into? Every time I start a new book I worry about this and every time, it just immediately comes back 092

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the moment I start typing. Though I should say that the tone does change a little with each book because I keep getting older and I can’t help it. Rather than fight that, I just let the narrators get older, too. Behaviour that’s adorable at 20 is pathetic at 30 and tragic at 40, so there’s plenty of horror and comedy both to be explored there as time goes on. These people will all still be ridiculous in their 70s, just in a different way. How important was it to you that Dave and Amy’s relationship keep evolving? Somewhere right now a guy is asking out a girl he met while they were, let’s say, rock climbing. They’ll date and get married and at some point, they’ll both realise rock climbing is stupid. That original thread that connected them will break – so then the question is, have they found other connections? A couple that has been together for 20 years bears no resemblance to the people they were when they met. Well, this is not a series that just defaults back to a status quo every time out; these characters may evolve to a point where you don’t even want them to be together anymore. With a third book, do you feel a certain level of confidence that readers kind of

get the situation with the town and what these characters are about so you can jump straight in? No! Not every reader starts at the first book! They should be able to pick up any book in the series and pretty much figure out what’s going on. I actually work really hard to make that t rue. This is why we often open with David rummaging around his home for something, you should get a pretty clear picture of his situation just by seeing him do that for a page or two. Related: If you’re the type of person who hates books like this, you’ll know it’s not for you really  fast. Finally, what’s the book that scared you the most? Song Of Kali  by Dan Simmons, mostly because of the terrifying portrait of Eighties Calcutta – the atmosphere is enough to give you nightmares, even before any horror occurs. This recommendation should in no way be seen as an endorsement of any political views Simmons may have expressed in the years since.

What The Hell Did I Just Read?  by David Wong is available now from Titan Books.

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Stephen Volk Hellraiser The Princess Bride  JANUARY 1975

THE PREMIER SCI-FI, FANTASY,

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HORROR & CULT TV MAGAZINE

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100% ENTERTAINMENT PURE SCI-FI

COMPLETE GUIDE

 WE TRAVEL BACK TO 1982 TO CELEBRATE HOFF, KITT AND A SF GREAT

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   W    O    Y    L    N    I    H    F    T    I   C    N    S   O   A    M

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO

KNIGHT RIDER  IT’S BEEN 35 YEARS SINCE DAVID HASSELHOFF’S TURBOCHARGED KNIGHT RIDER 2000 FIRST HURTLED TOWARD TELEVISION SCREENS TO STU PHILLIPS’ INDELIBLE TITLE THEME. WE GO UNDER THE HOOD TO EXAMINE THE COMPONENTS THAT MADE GLEN A LARSON’S SERIES SO ICONIC WORDS OLIVER PFEIFFER

 Ah, Eighties action television: a time for catchy musical title themes, cheesy opening credit sequences and performedfor-real action featuring cool protagonists in supped up vehicles saving the day. A lot may have changed in thirty-odd years but the Eighties certainly set a precedent. On the cutting edge sci-fi front Glen A. Larson’s Knight Rider  led the celluloid pack; from its brilliantly synthesised opening title number, the ingenious concept of an indestructible talking car and its streamlined good versus evil storylines. At the forefront of these adventures was a man formerly known as Michael Long who, following a shooting accident, had his face surgically altered and became the crime-fighting hero Michael Knight. Knight worked for the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG) where its ‘one man can make a difference’ motto – uttered by late founder Milton Knight – became the driving force behind the series. “Michael Knight was basically King Arthur in Camelot. It was the Knights of the Round Table,” enthused David Hasselhoff who immortalised the self-assured leather jacket-clad protagonist. “I didn’t want to be the white knight, I wanted to be the black knight because [the] black knight is cool!” But a Knight is nothing without his mount or in this case his car: a suped up Pontiac Trans Am named the Knight 2000 that was in reality built by Michael Scheffe (see interview on page 99) personified by prissy automation KITT (Knight Industry Two Thousand) and voiced by William Daniels. “I thought it was kind of a silly idea actually: a car that talks!” admits the now 90-year-old veteran to SciFiNow. “However, it turns out it was the precursor to several other inanimate objects that are talking on television.” Originally, Knight Rider  creator Glen A Larson wanted a more robotic 2001 HAL sounding voice for KITT, however settled on the pedantic tones of Daniels. “[Glen] said: ‘Bill, will you come over to New 094 |

York? I have a few lines for you to read because I’m going to take [this concept] and show it to producers to see if I can get it accomplished,” continues the actor. “I went over not knowing what the material was. When I looked at it I said: ‘This is the car… a car that talks?’ He said yes, so I started reading and he went: ‘Can you make it sound like a robot?’ I said ‘No I can’t,’ and continued reading. Then he asked: ‘How about that Marv Bell voice?’ I said: ‘Would you just let me read this please!’ And I read it in my own voice and that was it. Three weeks later he said: ‘Well, we sold it to NBC – can you do it?’ And that’s how I started doing KITT.” As seen in the pilot episode, ‘Knight Of The Phoenix’, Michael Knight is initially quite averse to a car that talks back to its driver, which establishes the comedic camaraderie to this unique crime fighter duo. “[There’s] a lot of natural conflict. What hero

“MICHAEL KNIGHT  WAS BASICALLY KING ARTHUR IN CAMELOT” DAVID HASSELHOFF

wants to be dependent on the car?” considered Larson, who passed away in 2014. “Michael had a chance to teach KITT what emotion was, what the human side was,” Hasselhoff said. “So I started calling him buddy… I would say: ‘Hey pal!’ [Essentially] I’m The Lone Ranger and this is Silver; I’m Roy Rogers and this is Trigger.” Surprisingly enough, despite their amusing onscreen chemistry, Daniels and Hasselhoff didn’t meet in person until the show’s Christmas party. “That’s because I was in the studio recording it and he was out on the road filming it,” discloses Daniels. “When we did meet David said: ‘You son of a gun  you just come in to record your voice – how long does it take you to do that?’ And I said: ‘Oh, about 50 minutes!’ He replied: ‘Well, I’m out on a road in the desert where it’s hot and some lady reads  your lines to me, then I read my lines and they put it together. It seems to work!’ And I said: ‘Thank God because I don’t want to go out to the desert!’” Daniels isn’t coy about comparisons between his own personality and the super vehicle. “The character of KITT is very much me. As my wife says that includes my sarcasm!” laughs the actor. “Since I was just in the recording studio and this was going to be done on the road with David, I would sometimes give them two or three readings: one slow, one excited and one determined, so they could fit their choice when they put it together.” The vocal editing was so seamless that some fans still remain convinced that Daniels was present when these conversational scenes were shot. “I was in England doing a signing once and a gentleman came up to me. He was in his mid-30s and said: ‘Excuse me Mr. Daniels. You know when you’re in the car, where are you?’” tells the actor. “I paused and replied: ‘Do you mean am I in the trunk or in the hood?’ and he said yes and he wasn’t kidding. I said: ‘Well, no I’m in a studio when I record it’ and he said ‘oh’ and went away rather disappointed!” Lending an additional touch of class and dignity WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

KNIGHT RIDER COMPLETE GUIDE

David Hasselhoff in his finest role.

KNIGHT RIDER RESURGENCE  AFTER THE ORIGINAL SERIES ENDED THERE WERE VARIOUS INVENTIVE BUT LARGELY UNSUCCESSFUL  ATTEMPTS TO REVIVE GLEN A LARSON’S TALKING CAR CONCEPT.  WE TAKE A LOOK AT THE HAPHAZARD RESULTS…

Designing KITT’s interior was tough.

to these somewhat illusory proceedings was and protective of them – it was really a family distinguished British actor Edward Mulhare, whose feeling between her, David and Devon. She was the clipped tones were perfect for Michael Knight’s one who created all the functions for KITT and all the fatherly boss – FLAG’s director Devon Miles. “He technology for him to be able to fight crime – so she was truly a gentleman in the most wonderful sense was a blast to play!” of the word,” remembers Rebecca Holden who Due to receiving some lead film work abroad, portrayed Devon’s chief technician and right-hand in addition to furthering her singing career, lady April Curtis during the second season. “Poor Holden didn’t return for any subsequent seasons. Edward usually had As a consequence, a lot of exposition her character was dialogue. Sometimes permanently written [he would] get to the out of the series with McPherson reprising very end, get a blip and have to start it all again. her original role He would get frustrated following April Curtis’ but it was comical! He departure. “I was was a fine actor.”  young at the time and  Completing the did what I was told,” FLAG foursome was Holden justifies. “My chief technician and manager decided I  WILLIAM DANIELS potential Knight love should do the films and interest Dr Bonnie Barstow. However, Patricia then I had a lot of concert tours, so they took me McPherson, who portrayed the character, was off the show. But I loved doing Knight Rider  and if it initially dropped following the first season. Rebecca were up to me today I probably wouldn’t have left.” Holden consequently filled in as new chief Despite her relatively brief tenure, Holden has technician April Curtis. “I liked the role because fond memories working on Knight Rider, where she was a good role model for young girls,” the things weren’t always taken too seriously. “David actress tells SciFiNow . “She was intelligent, bright, had a good sense of humour. I can still remember resourceful, creative, fiercely loyal to her colleagues times when we buckled over with laughter and

“THE CHARACTER OF KITT IS VERY MUCH ME. AS MY WIFE SAYS, THAT INCLUDES MY SARCASM!”

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KNIGHT RIDER 2000 (1991) The components that made the original series special are absent from this attempt to relaunch a new series. That includes KITT who spends the runtime operating a Fifties Chevy! He has competition in the form of red rival the Knight 4000, which features a ‘virtual reality mode’ and can turn into a speedboat. If things aren’t bizarre enough, James Doohan turns up in a cameo; playing himself thinking he’s Scotty. Beam us up right now! KNIGHT RIGHT 2010 (1994) Only very loosely based on the television series, this apocalyptic Mad Max -style follow up film doesn’t even feature a Michael Knight character nor a KITT vehicle. Instead the protagonist is a Mexican smuggler who drives a grungy Ford Mustang that has female artificial intelligence. TEAM KNIGHT RIDER  (1997-1998) A decade after the original series ended this revival attempted to forgo the ‘one man can make a difference’ motto and make it a team effort with a fleet of talking super vehicles carrying on the crimefighting crusade. Despite honourable intentions and with involvement from original creator Glen A Larson it lasted just one series. KNIGHT RIDER (2008-2009) This sequel to the classic series features Michael Knight’s son taking over the mantle with Hasselhoff turning up briefly for one episode in an acknowledgement to previous endeavours. Unfortunately, little of the charm carried over with it and the new KITT is a interchangeable beefed-up variation without the personality, (despite being voiced by Val Kilmer). It was abruptly cancelled after just one season.

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COMPLETE GUIDE KNIGHT RIDER

The line-up changed over the seasons.

Michael and KITT always win.

every time we started a take, somebody would explode with laughter again,” she recalls. “It was a wonderful set – very civilian and fun loving. We knew it was work but we had a good time!” Bringing to life the death-defying stunt sequences was future Fast And The Furious  franchise stunt coordinator and second unit director Jack Gill, who had previously worked on hit car TV series The Dukes Of Hazzard . Gill also doubled for Hasselhoff and taught the actor how to maneuver the Knight Rider 2000. “I took David out to parking lots and we’d practice spinning out, doing fast burnouts,

“AFTER KNIGHT RIDER ALL OF THE TV SHOWS GOT AWAY FROM DOING  ANYTHING REAL, THEY WENT CGI”  JACK GILL  sliding sideways and hitting marks – he became a really good driver,” he tells SciFiNow . “We had to hold him back as he wanted to do a lot of it himself and because he’s so valuable we couldn’t afford to get him hurt. If he even sprained a wrist we’d be shut down for however long it took for him to recover.” Fortunately the task of hurtling KITT through the air and colliding with other vehicles was left to the veteran stunt man who meticulously planned the scenes. “With Knight Rider  we were on the ragged edge almost every episode as we were cutting edge 098 |

and doing things we’d never seen before,” admits Gill. “It was a lot more precision-oriented because we weren’t just jumping out into farm locations – we were jumping the car into city landscapes, which meant I was having to jump cars from alley to alley and across main streets. It was a lot tighter than when I was jumping on Dukes Of Hazzard  therefore it became a lot more dangerous. “The two things that you have to fight with  yourself was always: can you survive it and what are the speeds you have to achieve to make it look great on camera?” continues Gill, who also audaciously reversed KITT out of FLAG’s in-motion semi-trailer during every episode. “I was a stunt coordinator, a second unit director, the driver of KITT and I also doubled for Hasselhoff so I couldn’t afford to get hurt. In the end I designed a team to take over, including my brother, who would do a lot of the jumps and I brought in stunt guys I knew and trusted to do most of the big crashes.” Indeed, one of the crucial components of Knight Rider’s  lasting and instantly watchable appeal remains those raw and real action sequences, an aspect that Gill laments was missing in subsequent television: “After Knight Rider  all of the TV shows got away from doing anything real anymore and they went to CGI cars and stunts and I think audiences are too smart for that! They could detect that it wasn’t real anymore and they lost interest in all car shows. The viewing public dropped off drastically.” This was no doubt why producers were unable to replicate the success of Knight Rider  for the reincarnation in 2008 (see Knight Rider Resurgance  box out on page 97), which lasted just one season. Gill was hired to drive the new vehicle for its initial teasers but was told they were going to WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

TOBE HOOPER COMPLETE GUIDE

CONFIGURING KITT  WE TALK TO CONSTRUCTION COORDINATOR MICHAEL SCHEFFE  ABOUT CRAFTING THE SUPER CAR

 What was the design brief for KITT? Glen Larson wanted this to be just a step beyond what people had seen; it had to be believable but not silly looking. I wanted it to be based on what we know so when you look at it, it would seem reasonable to you. How did you design the interior? I learnt how to build planes and there’s a particular way information is ordered for a pilot so the most important stuff is directly within their field of view. KITT’s interior had a lot to do with information display. There were practical considerations and the idea was you’d get the info quickly, which was clear and not distracting. We wanted to dedicate what room we had to give Michael Knight everything he needed.  What were the style considerations? [Back then] it was a dark time for car design: everything was square. But here was this wonderful sculptural shape that wasn’t a caricature of itself. I wanted the lines to have a real flow. In terms of style I wanted to wrap the instruments around the driver because this was The Lone Ranger and this is his horse. I tried to keep the style automotive, as I wanted it to look like this was a factory prototype that would be on a par with any industrial corporation.

 What an op ening sequence!

The dapper Edward Mulhare as Miles.

How did KITT’s speaking graphic and iconic red scanner come about? Glen’s fear was there was going to be a car parked onscreen. It’s not a horse therefore  you can’t see it shuffling its feet… it’s a car! So to address that he felt it should have a light display that went along with the sound of its voice. For the red scanner, Glen wanted to ensure KITT had a heartbeat when it was standing still. He said: ‘What about those scanners like we have on the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica?’  The challenge was to integrate that with the styling in the car.  Why choose the Pontiac Trans Am? I think it’s a car with a muscular aggressive kind of look that isn’t regarded as a midlife crisis purchase! It was a step beyond and made a lot of sense thematically and aesthetically. We really tried to make it as believable as possible because when there’s stuff that you can relate to you can take a jump and extend into the future. It’s gratifying to later see some of the design aspects were picked up by car manufacturers.

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COMPLETE GUIDE KNIGHT RIDER

“THE GOOD GUYS  ALWAYS WON AND CONQUERED EVIL FOR GOOD” REBECCA HOLDEN

 All smiles behind the scenes.

Is there a more iconic 80s TV duo?

take it in an opposing artistic direction. “They were telling me that most of the car work was going to be CGI. I tried to tell them that it wouldn’t work but they didn’t want to listen and thought they knew better,” he reveals. “I think that’s why the show suffered when they tried to reincarnate it.” Perhaps with Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead  at the forefront of small screen genre entertainment, there’s no room for a show that depicts its heroes and villains so conclusively. Despite this there was something appealing about a prime time series geared to family audiences that upheld a wholesome message at the end of each episode. “I think that’s why a lot of shows of the Eighties meant

something to the family viewing public,” reflects Gill. “Nowadays you see the bad guys are sometimes the ones that are portrayed as the good guys and that’s not what we did back [then]. We portrayed the good guys who won out in the end and we always had something good to say.” “Also it was the values of the show and the ‘one man can make a difference’ message,” adds Rebecca Holden. “Glen Larson created a sort of morality play with good versus evil and the good guys always won and conquered evil for good and that was a wonderful message for young people. I also think Knight Rider  didn’t take itself too seriously and there was humour along with the mission.”

At the heart of the show, however, was David Hasselhoff. You can perhaps poke fun at the selfdeprecating actor, but Hasselhoff’s effortless ease and likeability as Michael Knight was undoubtedly a major component to the show’s success. “Who else could’ve played the Knight Rider but David?! He was Michael Knight, he was the Knight Rider!” says Holden. “He was bigger than life. And never took himself too seriously – he was the epitome of the Knight Rider: I couldn’t image anyone else attempting to step into those shoes!” Knight Rider: The Complete Series  is available on Blu-ray now from Fabluous Films Limited.

TOP 10 KNIGHT RIDER EPISODES

KNIGHT OF THE PHOENIX

(SEASON PILOT)  “It looks like Darth Vader’s bathroom!” says Michael Knight upon first sight of the interior to his technologically modified vehicle. Knight’s initially repelled about a car talking back to him too, establishing the comedic double act. The pilot commences, daringly, with our hero shot in the face, setting up the catalyst for the Michael Knight alias and his crime fighting adventures.

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TRUST DON’T RUST (SEASON 1,

EPISODE 9) 

It’s always fun when a worthy adversary is introduced and this one has KARR (voiced by Transformers  veteran Peter Cullen) – an earlier, menacing version of KITT with a grudge to bear. This features a memorable car chase between our two fourwheel opponents that climaxes with a tense game of chicken that puts both turbocharged personalities to the test.

GOLIATH (SEASON

KNIGHTMARES

Utilising the familiar doppelgänger device, you learn Michael Knight’s face was restructured in the image of Milton Knight’s devious son Garthe. He resurfaces as a moustached antagonist who’s in cahoots with Milton’s scheming widow to steal the formula for KITT’s molecular bonded shell design. It results in the construction of a rocket blasting semi-trailer that rams the supercar off the road rendering it immobile.

A case of mistaken identity, Michael Knight knocks his head and thinks he’s actually Michael Long, the police officer he was before he was surgically altered. This episode features an amusing scene where KITT pursues a defensive Knight and attempts to convince him they’re partners, with the detective later having juvenile fun quite literally pushing KITT’s buttons.

2, PREMIERE) 

(SEASON 2, EPISODE 11) 

HALLOWEEN KNIGHT (SEASON 3,

EPISODE 5) 

This homage to Psycho  utilises Universal’s backlot house-turnedamusement attraction to sinister effect. There’s a not too discreet shower scene (utilising Bernard Herrmann’s iconic theme) and a creepy maintenance man called Norman Baines (in case you didn’t grasp the referencing!) but the fact that the plot hinges on a murderer in a gorilla suit makes this episode all the more delightfully zany.

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KNIGHT RIDER COMPLETE GUIDE

KITT VS KARR

(SEASON 3, EPISODE 6)  In this classic episode. the wreckage of KARR (which is now sounding quite a lot like Darth Vader) is discovered and then inadvertently kicked back into gear – but it isn’t too long until our hero KITT is hot on its tail. However, does a head-on collision mean it is finally the end of this turbocharged antagonist? The end shot certainly wouldn’t suggest so…

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KNIGHT IN KNIGHT OF THE DISGRACE (SEASON  JUGGERNAUT

THE SCENT OF ROSES (SEASON 4,

In ‘Knight In Disgrace’ from Season Three, Michael Knight goes rogue after being framed in a drug bust and then a nemesis offers him a financially tempting proposal that appears to sway the former FLAG employee. Allegiances are tested to the very limits in an episode that seems to have a lot fun in shaking up the formula of Knight Rider  a bit.

A near-death experience prompts Michael Knight to leave FLAG and reconsider his career options. Devon does a bit of matchmaking, helping to reignite Knight’s old flame Stevie (Catherine Hickland, Hasselhoff’s real wife at the time). While the romantic interludes are perhaps a little laughable today, the consequences of Knight’s nuptials remain utterly heartbreaking.

3, EPISODE 8)

(SEASON 4 PREMIERE) 

Another doppelgänger episode, this time featuring a double of Devon Miles. With FLAG under threat, Michael Knight on probation and KITT crushed by a battering ram-powered juggernaut the steaks are high. There’s also a new souped up version of KITT that includes a ‘super pursuit mode’ that transforms the car into a jet-powered vehicle!

EPISODE 12) 

KILLER KITT (SEASON

4, EPISODE 13) 

A deadly uncontrollable KITT (with creepy monotone vocals) makes for a fun episode that finds the usually docile supercar developing an attitude, turning on and attacking Knight after being sabotaged by a vengeful computer expert. Watch out for a hilarious cameo from The Goonies’  Mama Fratelli as a lollipop lady on the unfortunate receiving end of a rather disgruntled KITT.

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INTERVIEW  STEPHEN VOLK 

“PEOPLE FEEL LIKE THE BBC IS SOMETHING YOU CAN TRUST. YOU DON’T EXPECT THE BBC TO BE SUBVERSIVE” STEPHEN VOLK 

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INTERVIEW STEPHEN VOLK 

FLASHBACK 

STEPHEN VOLK  STEPHEN VOLK HAS, OVER A 30-YEAR CAREER, MADE A NAME FOR HIMSELF AS ONE OF THE UK’S LEADING PURVEYORS OF SOUL-CHILLING HORROR. WE TALKED TO HIM ABOUT SOME OF HIS CAREER HIGHLIGHTS WORDS STEVE O’BRIEN

GOTHIC (1986)

THE GUARDIAN (1990)

Volk was working as a copywriter in a London advertising firm at the time he penned his first screenplay, a ripe horror about the historic meeting between Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Originally down to be directed by Richard Loncraine, Volk then got a telephone call to tell him Ken Russell was taking over… “He kind of writes for the camera, Ken,” Volk says. “Once he’s on the set that’s when his creative juices get going. He would improvise sometimes, like saying: ‘Get me loads of dwarves!’ There are certain scenes in there like the animatronic belly dancer, that was a complete invention of Ken – he’d just have this mad idea in his head. “He was very open to me going on set – I could have been there every day really. The only thing that put me off is that one day I went along and the actors started changing the lines in a way that didn’t make sense. That put the fear of God into me so I suddenly thought, I’d rather not be here – it’s too soul-destroying!”

Based on a novel by American author Dan Greenburg, The Guardian was originally set to be a horror-comedy directed by Sam Raimi. But after Raimi left the project to work on Darkman, Universal brought The Exorcist’s  William Friedkin on board. “The one thing you know about Friedkin is he’s got no sense of humour,” Volk says. “And that proved to be absolutely true. And it was a complete page one rethink. The first week was entirely Friedkin saying: ‘This is lousy, this is crap, we gotta throw this out,’ etc. It was quite exciting because he is a force of nature but it wears you down after a while because you realise he’s not very trusting as a director. That drove me round the bend because I realised I was being a stenographer, I was just typing up his thoughts and I thought we were going in completely the wrong direction. “When it was over, I had a kind of PTSD

reaction to the whole experience. You know when you hear police helicopters going over, I used to have dreams Friedkin was in one of them with a loud hailer telling me I hadn’t finished the screenplay and had to go back to LA!”

GHOSTWATCH (1992) A BBC Screen One play masquerading as a live factual broadcast, Ghostwatch seized the newspaper headlines the morning after it was broadcast on 31 October 1992. Fronted by Michael Parkinson, it depicted presenters Mike Smith, Sarah Greene, Craig Charles and a camera crew attempting to discover the truth behind ‘the most haunted house in Britain’. It outraged and enthralled and remains the defining fiction of Volk’s career. “The more I’ve thought about it, I think it is all tied up in the fact that it was a BBC production and how people feel about Auntie BBC,” Volk says. “They feel like the BBC is something they can trust. So when it fools you, that pulled the rug out from under people. Somebody asked me recently: ‘How do you think it would have been had it been produced for Channel Four?’ but the fact is, that it was the BBC is integral to it. Compared to Channel Four, it’s more like your respected and genteel auntie, as opposed to a dubious uncle. You expect Channel Four to be subversive, but you don’t expect the BBC to be subversive. It was better coming from the BBC.”

 AFTERLIFE (2005)

 Volk doesn’t remember The Guardian  fondly.

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Headlining a pre-Walking Dead  Andrew Lincoln and the ever-marvellous Lesley Sharp, Afterlife  was a Bristol-set supernatural drama, which lasted two series on ITV1. “Even though it was made in 2005 it was about ten years before that I was starting to think about it,” Volk says. “My agent got me a meeting | 103

“IN MY DAY JOB  YOU’RE IN THE LAP OF THE GODS. WITH STORIES FOR PRINT IT’S JUST: WHAT DO I  WANT TO DO? ” STEPHEN VOLK 

with a production company and they felt that ITV wanted ‘the British X-Files’ . They wanted a duo of supernatural investigators, so I told them about this idea about a psychic medium and a psychologist. “With hindsight, the reason I think it’s engaging is that both the characters have the potential to heal each other if they just allowed themselves to be. Andrew Lincoln is grieving for the loss of his son, and if he would just give her a bit of leeway she could help him because she’s a psychic and in touch with the other world. On the other hand, she’s maybe mentally ill and he’s a psychologist, so if she just allowed him to get close to her she might be able to resolve her problems. But neither of them will meet halfway.”

THE AWAKENING (2011) Originally conceived as a sequel to Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw  (“I’d been watching The Innocents ,” says Volk, “and I wondered what happened to that little girl? I imagined that she might have grown up and blanked out what had happened to her in her childhood and maybe become quite sceptical about ghosts”), The Awakening  was later, at the BBC’s request, remodelled to give it a different backstory. “I do like the film,” Volk says. “I think it is very well directed but I wasn’t involved in the finished script. [Director] Nick Murphy came on board and rewrote it without telling me. It’s about 60-to-65 per cent of the original thing I wrote. Certainly the setup and the first half is very much what I invented. “We’d also had a meeting with Nicolas Winding Refn to direct it. He didn’t take his script out of his bag even to talk about it, he kept going 104 |

on about another script that he’d  written that he thought he could import ideas from. That was the basis on which he wanted to do it, so I wasn’t too keen on that. It somehow involved Aleister Crowley and magic mushrooms which I thought was nothing to do with what I’d got on paper. But he was quite complimentary and I quite liked him, but I couldn’t see these two ideas going together.”

 WHITSTABLE (2013) A finalist for Best Novella at the 2014 British Fantasy Awards, Whitstable  is a tender tale about Peter Cushing and his life shortly after the death of his wife, Helen. “One day I told my wife that I had this idea in my head about Peter Cushing on a beach overlooking Whitstable and this little boy comes up and says: ‘My stepfather’s a vampire,  you have to get rid of him because you’re Van Helsing.’ And my wife said: ‘But he’s not a vampire is he?’ And I thought: ‘Yeah, that’s the story.’ If she hadn’t said that it might have become Fright Night  or something. I really wanted to write about Peter Cushing, being a massive fan, and it had to be that time in 1971 where he’d just lost his wife. I wanted to examine the difference between horror in real life and what those of us who like the genre get out of it. “Increasingly, I’ve really enjoyed it because  you’re in charge really. In my day job you’re in the lap of the gods, or in the lap of producers and every second you’re thinking: ‘What does the producer want? What does the audience want? But with stories for print you’re more or less just thinking: what do I want to do? And there isn’t that financial imperative. I do them purely for fun.”

MIDWINTER OF THE SPIRIT (2015) A three-part supernatural serial broadcast on ITV1 in September 2015, Midwinter Of The Spirit  was adapted by Volk from the second of Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins  series of books. However, despite enthusiastic reviews it got KO-ed by Doctor Foster  in the Wednesday night ratings and wasn’t recommissioned. “When I was sent the book I had misgivings about it because I didn’t want it be to a kind of tub-thumping Christian rabble-rouser,” says Volk, “but what I found to my pleasure was the character [of country vicar Merrily Watkins] is quite sceptical. I thought I can write this character because they’re not at all confident about their faith. “Everything about doing it was great. ITV was great. It was originally for ITV Encore, and then they said, we like this so much we’re going to put it on ITV1. Unfortunately it was up against Doctor Foster, and it just got slaughtered in the ratings. Maybe if it had gone on ITV Encore and got the same ratings they probably would have recommissioned it!”

EXTRASENSORY  Volk’s next film project reunites him with Ghostwatch director Lesley Manning and stars Toby Kebbell as twins in this real-life-inspired SF drama about ESP experiments in Russia in the Eighties: “One of the twins is a cosmonaut and one is a farmer,” Volk says. “The brothers have fallen out but they get roped into this experiment to test ESP in outer space. It’s about outer space, inner space and communication. Toby’s signed up for it, it’s just a question of getting the last piece of the budget together so they can get going.” Ghostwatch, Afterlife , Midwinter Of The Spirit and The Awakening  are available on DVD now. WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

INTERVIEW STEPHEN VOLK 

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY  NOT EVERY PROJECT A WRITER  WORKS ON GETS MADE…

The Chrysalids “In the Nineties I was approached by producers Marc and Peter Samuelson to adapt John Wyndham’s SF novel The Chrysalids , which had just emerged from being tied up in rights limbo. Shamefully, I’d never read it before, and it immediately struck me as a movie on a great theme of prejudice and difference (not far off, in retrospect, from X-Men). I worked on it with Stephen Hopkins, who directed Lost In Space, but, alas, all the studios we went to had worries (pre-Harry Potter ) that all the main characters were children.”

Dolls’ Hospital

Midwinter Of The Spirit sadly lasted one series.

“Working with Clerkenwell Films, who’d produced Afterlife , I came up with a ‘near-future’ TV pilot called Dolls’ Hospital  about a repair shop for androids called ‘syns’, very much in the format of a medical drama like ER. It was probably the best thing I’ve ever written for TV; funny, moving and a little perverse – but every UK channel turned it down as too ‘off-beat’ and ‘out there’ for a British audience. Now we have Humans  from Channel 4, safely based on a Swedish show. So I’m not bitter about that at all!”

Horror Movie “When I met my first agent this was one of the scripts (along with Gothic ) I had under my arm, and she sold it within the first two months I was on her books. It was picked up by Goldcrest for whizz-kid director Marek Kanievska, who had just done Another Country. The company was so high profile their new slate of films (The Mission, Absolute Beginners, etc) was on News At Ten. And so was I! Nevertheless, Goldcrest went under literally the day before principal photography began. So my script is there in the vaults, like that last shot of Indiana Jones.” 

 Volk’s next project is SF Extrasensory .

Parky and Ghostwatch  terrified a generation.

Boys take a break on the set of The Awakening .

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RETRO CLASSIC

Retro Classic Film

HELLRAISER

WORDS JONATHAN HATFULL 

IT’S BEEN 30 YEARS SINCE THE LAMENT CONFIGURATION FIRST OPENED AND SHOWED US ALL THE SIGHTS THAT PINHEAD AND CLIVE BARKER HAD TO OFFER. JOIN US AS WE REVISIT HELLRAISER TO TEAR OUR SOULS APART ALL OVER AGAIN…

HELLRAISER 

Film RUNNING TIME:

94 minutes RELEASE DATE:

11 September 1987 DIRECTOR:

Clive Barker  WRITER:

Clive Barker CAST:

Doug Bradley, Ashley Laurence, Clare Higgins, Andrew Robinson, Sean Chapman

 About  Amiable Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his cold wife Julia (Clare Higgins) move back into his old family home. Julia can’t shake the memories of her infidelity with Larry’s brother Frank (Sean Chapman), and, as fate would have it, Frank’s on his way… from Hell. His body was torn apart after opening the Lament Configuration puzzle box, but he’s somehow managed to claw his way back to our world. He’s going to need blood to put himself back together and Julia doesn’t take much convincing to help. But the Hell-sent Cenobites aren’t going to let him go so easily…

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Given what the Hellraiser  franchise has become, it’s easy to forget where its cinematic life began: in a dirty old attic, clawing its way through the floorboards to shred an unhappy family. The dark heart of the first film isn’t Pinhead, though he was obviously its face. It’s the sordid, sweaty,  violent forbidden love story between Frank and Julia. Later instalments, particularly II, III  and IV,  would explore the Cenobites’ mythology almost to the point of exhaustion, as would the comics and Barker’s recent novel The Scarlet Gospels. But the thing that gives the first film and the source novella The Hellbound Heart  such staying power isn’t the corridors of Hell. It’s the fact that Hell is just upstairs. For all its flesh-ripping and darting meat hooks, Hellraiser  is a fairy tale, complete with a dull-witted benign king, a scheming wicked stepmother and a brave-hearted princess. This would be beautifully hammered home in the first sequel Hellbound , as Julia hisses that she’s risen to the status of evil queen, but it’s somewhat more underplayed here, partly because of that wonderful

“FOR ALL ITS FLESH-RIPPING  AND DARTING MEAT HOOKS, HELLRAISER IS A FAIRY TALE WITH  A WONDERFUL DOMESTICITY” domesticity. The uncertain location is either an irritant or an addition to the uneasy atmosphere depending on how  you look at it (the film was shot in London but can’t quite decide if it’s set in England or the US), but all the best sequences take place inside the home. It’s easy to imagine that this was in some way down to the fact that Barker was working with a limited budget as a result of taking as much creative control as he possibly could, following the terrible response to the films of his screenplays for Underworld  and Rawhead Rex. The author had decided that if he wanted it done right, he’d have to do it himself. However, the idea is an intimate one at its core. Even the Cenobites’ main agenda, exploring the crossover between pain and pleasure by (as it seems) torturing people, is deeply personal. It’s fun watching Pinhead and his cohorts unleashed on massive groups in the later sequels, or the Cenobitten Dr Channard being propelled around his asylum like The Lament Configuration opens the door...

some kind of remote controlled torture hype man, but Barker’s always more effective when he’s dealing with violent forbidden delights and fears that we are scared of talking about. It’s also where his interests lie. Ashley Laurence is great as Kirsty, and would continue to be in Hellbound  (and a cameo in Hellraiser 6 , about which she is the only interesting thing), but she’s hardly the focus for much of the film. She only takes centre stage once she discovers Julia’s skinless secret after the halfway point. Before that, she’s the reminder that poor Larry had a happy family life once, something else to rake nails across the blackboard of Julia’s soul. No, Hellraiser  is mostly the story of the wicked stepmother. We can see that she’s pretty much resigned to this life she doesn’t want as Larry shows her around his childhood home, complaining of damp without much venom but with a sense of weariness and disdain. It’s clear that she has no interest in domestic bliss; a fact that’s confirmed when we see her remembering Larry’s ne’redowell brother, Frank. She’s a different person when she’s around him, and their charged chemistry, both in the flashbacks and beyond, shows us how the real Julia is. The Lament Configuration may unleash the Cenobites but the appearance of Frank, brought back from Hell by the blood of his brother (that nail tearing through the skin of Larry’s hand is somehow still one of the most winceinducing moments in the entire film) unleashes Julia. Her lust for her husband’s brother drives her to kill, to bring men hoping for an easy lay back to her home WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK

HELLRAISER RETRO CLASSIC

CLASSIC QUOTES “WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW YOU!” LEAD CENOBITE

“JESUS WEPT.” FRANK 

“WHAT’S YOUR PLEASURE, SIR?” MERCHANT

“SO MUCH FOR THE CAT AND MOUSE SHIT.” FRANK 

“OH, NO TEARS, PLEASE. IT’S A WASTE OF GOOD SUFFERING!” LEAD CENOBITE

“I HAVEN’T LOOKED. YOU KNOW ME AND BLOOD. I’M GONNA FAINT.” LARRY 

“THE BLOOD BROUGHT ME BACK THIS FAR. I NEED MORE.” FRANK 

“EXPLORERS, IN THE FURTHER REGIONS OF EXPERIENCE. DEMONS TO SOME, ANGELS TO OTHERS.” LEAD CENOBITE

“YOU SOLVED THE BOX. WE CAME. NOW YOU MUST COME WITH US. TASTE OUR PLEASURES.” LEAD CENOBITE

“WE’LL TEAR YOUR SOUL APART!” LEAD CENOBITE

“I USED TO TELL MYSELF THAT. USED TO TRY AND PRETEND I WAS DREAMING ALL THE PAIN. BUT DON’T YOU KID YOURSELF. SOME THINGS HAVE TO BE ENDURED. AND THAT’S WHAT MAKES THE PLEASURES SO SWEET!” FRANK 

“WHAT I CARE  ABOUT IS A NEW SKIN.” FRANK 

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RETRO CLASSIC HELLRAISER

and bludgeon them with a hammer, at which point the monstrous, half-finished figure of Frank emerges to drain them of their life force. It’s a marvellous performance from Clare Higgins, and although she’d be having more obvious fun in the sequel, she’s compelling. And speaking of the way in which Frank pulls himself together, Bob Keen’s virtuoso effects sequence is absolutely stunning. As fluids and goo and, eventually, flesh push up through the floorboards of this filthy room, finding each other and intertwining to finally form something that we can recognise as the inside of a human body, it’s truly revolting and totally fascinating. Which also goes for the design of the Cenobites. Described by costume designer Jane Wildgoose as “repulsive glamour”, their blend of leather, metal and exposed bleeding flesh is something that you can’t look away from as much as  you might want too. The level of detail is

 WATCH FIRST

BLUE VELVET

(1986)

David Lynch’s twisted American nightmare showed that inside the boy next door is a man watching a woman from inside her cupboard.

 WATCH NEXT

NINA FOREVER 

(2015)

A morbid woman finds that her new boyfriend’s dead ex is still very much between them, especially when they’re having sex.

GO DEEPER UNDER THE Top 5 Clive Barker adaptations SKIN 108 |

“FRANK HAS ONE MORE NIGHTMARE TO GIVE. THERE’S  A REASON WHY HE WENT LOOKING FOR IT: HE LIKES THIS” simply wonderful and it’s kind of amazing to believe that all this was going on in a house somewhere in North London. Hellraiser  was Clive Barker’s first film as a director and he has often talked about how unprepared he was, at least on a technical level, but the atmosphere that he manages to conjure is quite unique. The air is thick with dread and fear, but it’s that curiosity that’s key; we can’t look away. As the eerie light plays behind the wooden boards and the jingling of chains begins, we know that something horrifying is on its way, and we’re glued to our seats. The same fascination that drives the characters to open the box, to explore “the further regions of

NIGHTBREED (1990)

1

Barker’s second film as a director was the notoriously troubled cult classic Nightbreed . It’s still messy, but the Cabal cut is a great improvement and David Cronenberg is damn scary.

experience” is the same fascination that keeps us coming back to Hellraiser , and what has made the world and the characters endure in other media. Speaking of those characters, it’s funny to think that Barker was ever in any doubt about the impact that Doug Bradley’s Pinhead (here credited simply as Lead Cenobite) would have on audiences. Like all great horror bogeymen, Pinhead’s impact and essence would be diminished over the course of the sequels, but it’s really a case of less is more. He was intended to be the impartial adjudicator in situations such as these. We never see what he gets up to on the other side, all we know here is that he and his cohorts

CANDYMAN (1992)

2

Bernard Rose’s film of Barker’s short story The Forbidden is one of modern horror cinema’s true masterpieces. It’s still terrifying and its social critique is as sharp and necessary as ever.

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HELLRAISER RETRO CLASSIC

respond to the opening of the box. There’s no malice to it, there are simply rules. That doesn’t mean that he’s benign, as evidenced by his refusal to let Kirsty leave at the end of the film, and by his wonderful line: “No tears, please! It’s a waste of good suffering!” There are one or two flaws in Hellraiser’s  beautiful nightmare, and for the most part they feel like the filmmakers crashing into the end of their budget. For example, there’s The Engineer, one of the more mysterious characters in the novella and a rather ungainly monster with T-Rex arms in the film, which essentially appears to dispel the air of menace during an otherwise excellent scene of Kirsty discovering a world beyond. He also pops up again at the end, but his reappearance is trumped by the pterodactyl-like creature that emerges from the flames to take the puzzle box away at the very end of the film. It’s a shame, although obviously an entirely forgivable one, because the monsters in Hellraiser  are human, or at least they used to be. The nightmare that Kirsty faces at the end of the film is almost like the Little Red Riding Hood  story, except it’s her uncle Frank inside her father’s skin, and he’s not just planning on eating her. The incestuous horror of this revelation, with the truth emerging as Larry’s loose-fitting skin begins to peel from Frank’s face, is so vile that we, like Kirsty, are rooting for the Cenobites to show up and take this thing back to Hell. In come the troops, out come the hooks, tearing into Frank’s flesh so convincingly. It’s so fantastically upsetting that Frank still has one more nightmare to give Kirsty (who’s still in the room despite being told “this is not for your eyes”). There’s a reason why Frank went looking for Hell in the first place: he likes this. He slides his tongue across his lips, grins and utters that immortal line: “Jesus… wept.” Thirty years after its original release, Hellraiser  has lost none of its ability to burrow under your skin. That remake may never happen and, to be honest, it doesn’t need to.

 YOUR TAKE ON THE CLASSIC  WHAT YOU THOUGHT @SCIFINOW 

”I love it, it’s the best horror film! Started my love of all things horror and introduced me to Clive Barker’s books.” @BeardedWhovian

Doug Bradley’s Pinhead  was instantly iconic.

“Fantastically transgressive horror film. Still nothing really like it.” @Afrofilmviewer “A gory classic. The dubbed American accents are still a bit jarring, though.” @HannahChapter1 “Fantastic ketchup-gore/ BDSM horror fest. A classic.” @hunkamunka

Kirsty is smart enough to know how to play the game.

“Brilliant movie, one of those that only gets made by debut directors. Its effectiveness as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis is under-discussed.” @whittertron “It’s even better than the book, eerie vibe, waltzie soundtrack, killer lines... a timeless masterpiece.” @major_rager_uk 

Hellraiser  is available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

LORD OF ILLUSIONS (1995)

3

Barker returned to the director’s chair to adapt his story The Last Illusion about a PI investigating the mysterious death of a magician. It’s his weakest film but it’s still pretty good fun.

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THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (2008)

4

Bradley Cooper stalks Vinnie Jones on the NY subway system as the latter kills passengers with a meat hammer. You need to watch this movie.

 YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE… THE WHIP AND THE BODY (1963)// THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984) // MARTYRS (2008)

DREAD (2009)

5

One of Barker’s nastiest stories from The Books Of Blood  is given a nicely skin-crawling adaptation by Anthony DiBlasi (Last Shift ), as three students push each other to find out what they’re afraid of.

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THE SCIFINOW THE PRINCESS BRIDE QUIZ HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION, OR DO YOU NEED TO GO ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY? FIND OUT WITH OUR QUIZ! ONCE UPON A TIME

7. What does the Man In Black tell Fezzik to

1. Who does Buttercup agree to marry when she

believes Westley is dead? 2. What does ROUS stand for? 3. Who is the six-fingered man that killed Inigo Montoya’s father? 4. Which country is Fezzik originally from? 5. What is Westley’s three-word catchphrase?

HERO TIME 6. What are

dream of after he renders him unconscious? 8. What is the name of the tasteless, odourless poison that kills Vizzini after he consumes it? 9. In which fictional country is The Princess Bride  set? 10. What is the name of Westley’s criminal alter ego?

What is Inigo’s greeting of vengeance to the six-fingered man? 12. Which island is Vizzini from? 13. How much money does Inigo offer Miracle

DIDN’T HE/SHE DO WELL!

THE EPILOGUE 16.

in very heavy makeup? 18. Who played Inigo Montoya? 19. Which singer performed the film’s Academy Award nominated original song ‘Storybook Love’? 20. Who directed The Princess Bride? 

See how you did with our arbitrary scoring system

16-20

11-15

6-10

THE MAN IN BLACK

INIGO MONTOYA 

PRINCESS BUTTERCUP

In a battle of strength, skill and wit,  you have everything you need to come out on top. It’s no wonder everyone wants you on your quiz team. With your brain, brawn and sword, you’re mostly unstoppable.

Spending years in the revenge business would harrow a weaker fighter, but it has just made you stronger. But even with all the hate in your heart, you still have a lot of room left for love, which is why people can’t help but like you.

In which year was The Princess

Bride  released? 17. Which actor appeared as Miracle Max

HAPPILY EVER AFTER 11.

the cliffs Buttercup and the three outlaws climb towards the start of the film more commonly known as?

Max to resurrect Westley? 14. What is an MLT? 15. When Westley is mostly dead, what does he say he was that’s worth living for?

You may be sharp and fearless, but you are also good at getting  yourself into unsavoury situations. It’s okay to need to be rescued from time to time, and you usually play that role in good spirits.

0-5

FEZZIK 

Though you may possess the strength of many men, you’re not as smart as some of your peers. But never fear; they love and respect  you anyway. Some people are cut out for the quiz life, and others thrive while lending a giant helping hand.

  R   E    N  I  E   R  B    O   R .  0   E   L   L I  V   E   D   Y   L   L I    W  I  K    N  I  T    A   P  Y   D    N    A    M   L    A   T   S   Y   R    C   Y   L   L I  B   7   8   9   1 .  6   E   V    O   L  E   U   R   T .  5    H    C  I    W   D    N    A   S   O   T    A    M    O   T  D    N    A   E    C   U   T   T   E   L ,   N    O   T   T  U    M    A .  4   2  .   9   1   N  .  8   1    7  .   1   1   1   1   5   6 .  3   Y   L I   C  I  S .  2  ’ .   E  I  D    O   T  E   R    A   P   E   R   P .  R   E    H   T    A   F  Y    M   D   E   L   L I  K  U    O   Y   A  .   Y    O   T    N    O    M    O    G  I   N  I  S  I  E    M    A    N   Y    M  ,   O   L   L   E    H  ‘ .  1   S   T   R   E   B    O   R  E   T    A   R  I  P  D    A   E   R  D   E    H   T .  0    N  I  R    O   L   F .  9   R   E   D     W    O   P  E    N    A    C    O  I  .  8  :   1   1   1   1     S     R    E        W     S      N      A    N   E    M    O     W   E    G   R    A   L   7   T  I   N    A   S    N  I  F    O   S   F   F  I   C   L   E    H   T .  6  ’ .    H   S  I    W   U    O   Y  S    A  ‘ .  5  D    N    A   L   N   E   E   R    G    N   E    G   U   R  E    N    O   R   Y   T  T    N   U    O    C   E   Z  I  S   L    A   U   S   U    N   U   F    O   S   T    N   E   D    O   R .  2   K    C    N  I  D   R   E   P    M   U    H   E    C    N  I  R   P .  1  .   Y  .  4  .  3

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