Location: Longcross, Surrey, UK
James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe have created a monster
“Today, we are blowing shit up, which is always great,” smiles Paul McGuigan. “But there are more layers to this one. Though it is an action movie no, an adventure movie.”
The nature of said shit and quite how it blows up should remain a mystery until seen on screen, but there’s a sense of scale and grubby spectacle here that is refreshing in the age of green screen. Refreshing as in literally wet, as it’s hammering down on a cold night in Surrey, in a castle-cum-laboratory open to all the elements…
Mcguigan, whose best film probably remains Gangster No. 1 (though he has had great recent success directing Sherlock) wanted to give a practical edge to both the effects and the overall story. “I wanted to feel that it was more tactile than when you have a big name like Frankenstein, Dracula, whatever, and people expect a big CG explosion of impossible things. I wanted to be topical, I want people to feel attached to it.”
Mcguigan talks enthusiastically about Max Landis’ script, which adapts Mary Shelley’s seminal novel about man-made life but also “cherry-picked all the best clips of all the movies. Including the funny ones…” He calls it a “buddy movie” of a sort, in the relationship between Dr. Frankenstein (James McAvoy) and his friend Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), a radically reimagined version of the typical hunchbacked assistant. Here, Igor is rescued from a circus and straightened out by Frankenstein - literally.
“As much as the monster is his creation, Igor is his creation as well,” says McAvoy, in his trailer before he will climb the floors of the castle to wrestle with creation. “That was quite exciting. It’s funny, the script, but also really dark, in a cool way.” For Radcliffe, the story allows him to inhabit an iconic role but with a fresh identity, working as a surrogate for the audience as Frankenstein’s desperate desire to defeat death takes him into dubious ethical territory.
“My role takes on this aspect where Victor just starts going insane and I am the one who is trying to steer him back to morality,” says Radcliffe, who has another, typically thoughtful reason for being involved: “I like it because it’s a script about people finding a chance to not be defined by the most awful part of their life.”
For McGuigan, bundled against the elements, Shelley’s themes of grief, obsession and the desire to create remain prescient. “The metaphor of creating the monster is a bit like making the movie, you know? In terms of creating this monster which sometimes is so hard work, you wonder why you’re doing it, but it becomes an obsession and a passion. I guess we all can share that with Victor Frankenstein a little bit.”
Victor Frankenstein is out September 25th - empireonline.com
ellievsbear
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
