Exclusive interview: February 4th 2008 |
Neil Marshall Director - Doomsday, Dog Soldiers, The Descent. IMDb |
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After the runaway
success of his remarkable The
Descent, Neil Marshall will soon be unleashing his biggest and
boldest film yet. Promising action galore and a cast including Bob Hoskins and
Malcolm McDowell, Doomsday is set
in a future
How long have you been planning to make an apocalyptic film like Doomsday? Has it always been something you have wanted to do? I think I always had the idea of doing a post-apocalyptic movie in the back of my mind since watching those great movies from the early 80's - Escape from New York, Mad Max 2, The Warriors, even things like Spacehunter and Battletruck. It just took a long time for a really solid storyline to come together... How long have you been working directly on the project? I came up with the story about 5 years ago, and it sat on a shelf gathering dust until I pitched it to Rogue Pictures in the wake of The Descent being released in the US, and they commissioned a script with the intention of making the movie. So, full time, I've working on this for just over 2 years now. Like my other movies, it's very much a labour of love. Were there any problems persuading the distributors that this type of film could be successful? No, it just so happened that Benedict Carver, who produced the movie and Andrew Rona who runs Rogue are both huge fans of the same kind of movies that inspired me and they just really wanted to see this film. Because they are a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, distribution (in the US at least) was never really in doubt. Most people mention 28 Days Later and Escape From New York when previewing Doomsday, but its quite apparent from the trailer that you are drawing from a much wider supply of apocalyptic films. What other films have influenced you, both before working on Doomsday and during? To be honest, films like 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead, as brilliant as they are, were farthest from my mind when making this movie. Because Doomsday also features a viral outbreak, it was too close, so I wanted to avoid any connections or comparisons. When people catch the Reaper virus in Doomsday, they die, horribly. Where they had 'the infected' or zombies, we have the 'cannibal marauders', survivors of the outbreak, who are very much alive and kicking and hungry for human flesh! Certainly Escape from New York and Snake Plissken are huge inspirations, and as I said, The Warriors and Mad Max 1 & 2, but also Aliens, The Omega Man, even Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I was also hugely inspired by what I was seeing on the news - the SARS and Avian Flu outbreaks around the world, the use of physical walls to divide or isolate people from Berlin to the West Bank.  Were there any typical genre conventions that you were trying to avoid? Was there a plan to be totally original or did you intend to take the best of what had been done before and build on it? The current genre convention that I wanted to avoid was that VIRUS somehow equals ZOMBIES (or some variation on the theme)! Every movie recently that features a virus has it's victims turning into crazed zombies. Since my virus was just the background to the story, I was far more concerned by the constant Avian Flu reports on the news. That's a real virus, and if you catch it, chances are you're going to die. Now, to me, that's scary. We all know how easy it is to catch a cold... So I wanted to depict a more realistic outbreak scenario that sets the scene for the outrageous lunacy that follows. Aside from that, I wanted to revisit so many elements from so many of my favourite post apocalyptic movies, but not simply copy them, I wanted to give them a fresh spin for an audience who hasn't seen anything like this before. So yeah, we have scavengers living in the deserted Glasgow, taking whatever fuel and clothing they can find. They've formed a tribe, they have a leader, Sol who's a complete psycho, but they're far nastier bunch than anything Mad Max or Snake Plissken ever encountered. These guys will catch you, cook you and eat you! I think the idea that it's set in a futuristic Britain is something we don't see very often in movies, so that in itself is a fresh spin.   "These guys will catch you, cook you and eat you!"
As fans of the genre are there any set-pieces or particular scenes that you think we should specifically look out for? Any homage’s to other films or literature? We have several breathless action sequences throughout the movie, including a ten minute running battle when our heroes are first attacked by the marauders in Glasgow's empty streets, that's seriously impressive. We got a couple of great chase scenes as the team run to catch a train out of the city with the marauders in hot pursuit, and the action finally is a car chase unlike anything I've seen before. It takes it's cue from Mad Max 2, and I make no apology for that, but then it veers wildly off in a completely different direction, becoming a brutal two way life or death fight within the multiple vehicle demolition derby! We also have a medieval 'trial by combat' as our heroine Eden Sinclair squares off against a 7ft tall knight in armour! So there.s bit of all sorts in there. I guess with the medieval elements I was hugely inspired by Terry Gilliam and Ridley Scott.    Personally I think the effect in Escape from New York stand up pretty well today, and as such I took a leave out of Carpenter's book and created as much of my future world as possible in camera. There's certainly some CGI enhancement in the movie, more than either of my previous movies, and Double Negative have done some beautiful work with matte paintings of the deserted Glasgow and burning London, but for the most part I prefer to use CGI to expand upon the worlds that I've created for real than replace them altogether. Reality is always going to look better. What will the audience take away from Doomsday? What kind of feeling do you want people to walk out of the cinema with? Hopefully they'll get a big rush from it. Hopefully they'll be so breathless they take in a big gulp of air and say "Wow!". I just want people to have a great time watching this movie. It's a lot of fun. It's packed full of great characters, great action, loads of sick humour and even more outrageous and gruesome violence! If you love the kind of movies that inspired this then I think you'll leave the cinema with a big grin on your face. Would you ever consider making a truly post-apocalyptic film, Mad Max 2 style? Maybe a British road warrior? I guess this is as close to Mad Max as anyone's done in the UK before.  This is more of a personal question really, but one the regulars here would be interested in. Have you ever seen many of the post-apocalyptic films we tend to review? Are there any that stand out? Would you admit to being a fan of any? I'm trying to get hold of After The Fall of New York at the moment. I love the genre but haven't fully explored it yet. So aside from the more obvious movies, I'm still trying to catch up. But they're so much fun, how can anyone NOT like them?! Our thanks go out to Neil for taking the time to talk to us. Doomsday is due to be released in the US on 14th March and hopefully not long after in the UK. |