Gadgetory

hello and welcome to the scene at UK podcast this week we're not talking about phones and shiny gadgets as usual but instead we have got a great interview with a particular film man it's not rich but rich you weren't going to tell us all about this interview on you yes that's right I didn't interview with a film man and that film man or the screenwriters Zac pen so he has made a career out of writing movies based on comic books such as the x-men and the Avengers I heard of those that you've heard of those Goods good they're pretty big I hear ya so that's made him the kind of go-to guy for big-budget effects driven blockbusters like he also worked on Pacific Rim uprising and ready player one so that's all we're gonna talk a little bit a little bit about today cool and I do know a ready player one I actually haven't seen it but I really like culture and gaming culture thing is that right absolutely yes so directed by Steven Spielberg it's based on a novel by Ernest Cline and the idea of the novel based on a book it's based on a book and it's about it's about this the future dystopia where people in this kind of like nightmarish world they they live out their fantasies in this virtual reality world called the Oasis where they can be anyone they want to be including their favorite comic book TV movie characters they can drive the car from ghostbusters or the car from Back to the Future they can they can have where the skin of videogame characters sort of Batman or highway no whoever they want to be and that's a girl that's a virtual skip you've made it seem like you've just gone and skinned Batman put it on the skin of Batman that's weird I wonder if the cape is attached but yes so so I had a chapter to Zach pen who who wrote the movie adapted the movie and we talked a little bit about whether we're gonna get bored of superheroes anytime soon with all the superior moves we've got we talked a little bit about where the toxic fandom is poisoning the blockbuster franchises that we all love so much and and what his plans are for rebooting The Matrix sacrilege but first I asked him to take us behind the scenes and talk about how a big-budget blockbuster like ready player one gets made yes so ready player one and it must have been incredible to work on a movie that's kind of like so unlimited in dopers like everything in the kitchen sink is in there that must have been yeah this a lot of fun to do right it was a tremendous amount of fun I mean it's it's a sometimes daunting when you can do anything you're kind of narrowing it down but in this case we you know we had enough guidance and there was enough specificity so that it was kind of like okay we have to generally stick to this but we can use all sorts of different things and it was particularly fun just you know because you don't want the movie to be about the references but it is fun to kind of populate an action scene with all sorts of weapons and characters from other movies and TV shows and comic books just as background noise it's just it's kind of a fun thing to do no it seemed like there were a lot of voices involved does that is climb the Spielberg those kind of the VFX things with that all were those conversations all times happening concurrently with you writing the script like what was the actual kind of the process for you and yeah you know Allen page me Adam and a group of the physical production people as well as people from ILM and Digital Domain we're all at the Emlyn offices in uh in the valley in Los Angeles so we were all working together literally on the same hall for quite a long time for you know close to a year I think so and we had a giant you know board in our hallway that showed us everything that cleared as it cleared so we kind of knew okay well we need a robot who we can eat is we walk out in the hall and take a look at it so video is great that was the best part of it I mean normally you don't the writer doesn't get to collaborate a you know and vice versa that you know that affects people and the production designer don't normally have the writer sitting there at their beck and call so for all of us it was kind of an ideal way to work and that's really due to Steven he kind of Foster's that he's like no you d in every meeting go to everything anything we can get you to go to you got to go to in terms of the actual like your process you sort of collecting this information you should go away and write a full draft or use of the flopping around doing scenes here and there or how does have that - what kind of getting well you know it starts with a full draft that you know you first there's a new draft that went to Stephen to get him on board the movie and then after he signed on he and I sat down and for about six months you know we would be looking at sporadic stuff coming in from people but also just rejiggering the story and you know getting notes back and forth etcetera it sounds like a sort of almost a logistical challenge as well as a creative one it's some of this new stuff is coming in you then have to kind of keep track of like how does this sort of you know send ripple through the rest of the story you don't have to click I can say these other things or that kind of thing well the truth is on most movies it is a huge logistical mess because nobody's really talking to each other so you get a sequence back that has all these changes in it and you then have to you know what I mean there's a lot of back-and-forth where it's like oh I worked on this for two weeks and then you worked on for two weeks because you're all in the same room you know the logistical challenges are completely inside the story you know inside the movie and very little outside you know we would all agree in the room hmm this is what we're doing and then go off to do you know the next morning we'd see everyone again this is the traditional idea of kind of a writer is someone sort of hunched over a typewriter on their own but it sounds like a very collaborative thing is that the way that modern blockbusters are made now and has that changed in those sort of 30 years you've been working as a writer most of them do run this way and I think that's a good thing because you're dealing with creative you're dealing with artists you know and practicalities you're dealing with you know they'll tell you this is something we can't do well so it's so much better when you change the sequence you know it used to be they couldn't do hair well you know like I was a hair and water were a big problem and so you could be stubborn and just not care or you could try to write to that and not have your characters be really Airy if that was our Savior is bull then is that one that is yeah no no although there might be some old you know that's a funny thing is a lot of the things that influence comic books in terms of like why all their costumes or the colors they were it has to do with drawing and printing you know generally does so I wouldn't be surprised if Xavier it was good to have involved because it was easier to draw yeah yeah they were just doing I don't want to speak for anyone I don't want to speak for Jack Kirby or whoever drew near the first x-men talking about about comic book movies and superheroes so when you've got a movie like ready player one which just has like all the heroes in it and they're all side by side from across all different kind of franchises and properties and stuff if that like the the end point of comic book adaptations like is what the comic book stations need to do to keep to keep going the way they are now I remember we would get some people asking how are you going to do all these cameos and I kept saying they're not cameos you know they're just background stuff so so it actually was nowhere near as difficult as some of the x-men movies or some of the Marvel movies in terms of the number of characters but but I think your question is valid for other reasons ruches what do you do when there's 40 Marvel characters and they're all played by actors and they're all you know it's you know I know the guys who wrote them it's hard to give everyone screen time and ready player one it's pretty easy you know because they just have to run past camera right so and they don't have to be true to themselves they're not treated you know what I mean it's like it's like comic-con the movie you know was a bunch of people dressed up like you know Batman and Superman they don't all have to fly none of them should fly you know because gay can't flies I don't so do you think this dummy has been people people like Terry Gilliam and Sousa talked about the chögyam with James Cameron or James Cameron said about you know people might be getting superhero fatigue is that something that you think is going to happen with the genre kind of going to stay fresh well I think you know it's a little bit of a of a generational thing like when they say I do think people might get sick of superheroes but I don't think they're going to get sick of as comic book adaptations that what people forget is a lot of comic books I mean the is not a superhero you don't you don't structure his story like a superhero story you know the x-men aren't superheroes I mean it's much more like a straight science-fiction movie about a persecuted group of unusual people you know they don't like literally go out and fight crime the you know the characters that are like that you know Spider Man Captain America etc and a lot of the DC characters I mean there's a lot of them obviously those stories are getting harder to tell like where someone gets some powers you tell their origin they go out and fight crime of some sort and do the right thing yes it's going to get harder and harder to tell those because there's been too many but you know Marvel I mean you know guardians the galaxy is not a superhero movies just happens to be based on a comic book you know okay I mean it's Star Wars a superhero movie I don't think anyone would define it that way Joe but so that's one of the crucial things is like will people stop making movies based will people get sick of movies that have the Marvel or DC you know logo in front of them I don't think so I think people really underestimate how much material is in that you know I know that when I got to Hollywood and I would tell people it's not just people in tights fighting crime you know this is you know there was a sense of like what do you you know they're just cartoons I was like I think you're thinking of comic books that were different than the ones I grew up on you know right no yeah yeah I like announcements and mom's a comedy and then you got cybergun galaxy like there's all these different genres right within that one so Marvel thing right I mean what's thor ragnarok that's definitely not a superhero movie it's a crazy mythological you know comedy yeah I'm sorry but but look do I I also think there's some just general blockbuster fatigue among some people I mean not among young people because they don't even know about the first round I have some you know I get a little tired of seeing you know of movies where I can predict where the ending is going you know but not if they do something different I I think it just forces people you have to do something different right I really can't just give them the same old same old and I think everybody I know the people at Marvel and DC are acutely aware of that know that's really interesting I loved that he was so involved in the process because my understanding of a lot of Hollywood movies is that the writers of you know reels off this this this concept this idea hands it to a producer and then the writer just goes on holiday or and and then has no more parts in the thing that's what I normally I see yeah absolutely you got this vision of a screenwriter kind of hunched over a typewriter and then they have yeah but but it it seems like especially these days with these kind of movies I think one of things you sort of touched on was the fact that the visual effects people are involved so early on partly out of time I didn't have a lot of time to make these movies I know I didn't interview with Stephen tonight who wrote and directed Pacific Rim uprising and that which that pen also did something on and he talked about how he had very very little time to do it and so the visual effects people brought in very early partly to do pre-visualization which is kind of like a digital storyboard yeah they kind of plan out the story but partly to give ideas and partly just to so they can get started on doing the work it's much more collaborative process yeah exactly and it makes sense to have that collaboration because you what's the point in having the right to come up with something that can't really be done but when everyone is creative in their own section like it makes sense to bring everyone together to to brainstorm these ideas although I suppose you've run the risk of having this one writer's glorious vision you know being destroyed by you know too many team involved yeah yeah well it's I mean it I think that's when you need like a strong hand until that's where your director or your producer comes into if you've got someone like for example Marvel has Kevin five years who's kind of in the Overlord of all all the Marvel movies and there's Jon Favreau he's obviously like a big voice in Marvel movies ready player one obviously had Steven Spielberg and yes Steven Spielberg says go so exactly yeah so I think it's great that I mean it's really cool actually the Steven Spielberg was in charge of ready player one and he had this kind of collaborative atmosphere where that everyone the writer the production designers the effects people were all putting ideas in but there was still this kind of like defining so it's good it's interesting and I think it's interesting as well the term that you know talking about Marvel as well at maja Marvel and DC acutely aware of of how they have to keep superheroes fresh because we've had so many superhero movies yeah I mean this year alone Avengers Black Panther ant-man that's just for Marvel and then you can have Aquaman later from from DC and so so start rebooting ones that they've already done you know so we've had like multiple spider-man's yeah and I I don't know I mean I I don't see a lot of them I just see these constant flow of different movies and then it seems like they're sort of plumbing the depths of oh let's find a some superhero that we haven't really touched on that much and let's give them a story well then let's give them a backstory and then let's give them a collaboration where one superhero meets another one and suddenly their universes colliding ailed it you could you could be in charge of this if you like this you're gonna love another project that's like parents working on it's called ROM space night which is a comic book character and toy that very few people have probably heard of outside of the comic fans but and so so yes so there there is a lot of them a lot them coming up but and one of the interesting things about especially looking like DC and Marvel is is the you know the this idea of like fans getting so so engaged and invested in it that it becomes almost like an online online war so I think it's interesting that that ready player one addresses that directly like it's it's actually a story about fans of stuff yeah and you know you see the last Jedi as well that was a movie that was quite divisive among Star Wars fans because it's in a way it's a movie about being a fan of Star Wars yeah and with the character of kylo Ren who is obsessed with the past and with the legends of the past and the whole movie is about you know setting that aside and moving on and ready player one is it's very similar and there's so it doesn't have that kind of meta message which I think it really improves over the book actually so and the book is is very much about these guys who love all this stuff that they see you know in the Oasis now obsessed with Monty Python and with with you know the movie war games and and it's and and you know all the stuff they're kind of pop-culture ephemera of their childhoods they're just obsessed they've been a very kind of like trivia level and it's interesting that the movie kind of moves that on a little bit and talks a bit about kind of more than just reciting the words but actually kind of learning from them and in fact actually so well it was one of a big scene from the big changes that's in the movie is the in the book there's a scene where the character has to like reenact the movie wargames but in the in the movie they change it to the shining and I'm not sure I entirely how I feel about kind of recreating such a classic movie but they do do something interesting where it's not about re-enacting the movie it's about learning from the movie and sort of moving on from what you've learned from that I don't want to spoil it too much if you haven't seen the movie but yeah it's it's an interesting adaptation so we also they don't just sort of try to interrupt you know they don't just recreate the whole shining there's the characters from the ready play want to go into the the Overlook Hotel in the shining and it's kind of like lovingly recreated but like I say there is kind of an extra twist on it how do you feel about you know this this this this kind of desecration of a classic is isn't up to you but it's it's interesting change they made over the book certainly and but the one thing is that there were various candidates it wasn't the shining was one of the many candidates and so I talked a little bit to Zack penn about what happened there one of the highlights is the shining sequence I was wondering I mean that's changed from from the book I was wondering was it always going to be the shining or whether other options and what were the kind of considerations for what film that was going to be no no though it was there was many considerations and in fact briefly it was going to be I think I wrote a version of Blade Runner in and there's a variety of reasons why we couldn't do it um one of which was they're making a new Blade Runner movie um which actually in retrospect is good because it would have been really weird to have it come out like right on the heels of the other Blade Runner movie but also because we got to do the shining I mean Ernie and I that was not something we collaborated on and you know what he had from the very beginning of when I started writing on it I talked about trying to do a more you know more action-oriented getting sucked into a movie like Last Action Hero which he's a big fan of you know my first script he liked a lot more than I do but but we all I had always wanted to write it as something where you would it wasn't like the movie okie that it was in the book that it was more like a adventure experience and we wrote up a list of their options you know that we're all relevant you know that would have been right which would have been some movie from the 80s we really thought Steven would never go for the shining so when he did and said oh my god I love it we were so thrilled because it's kind of the perfect movie for this because it's so unusual you know it's not it's such a weird movie in so many great ways that and and has so much power to it that it's not just you know just walking into it is a thrill you know in terms of the sort of the the advancing the character through that that set piece what was it somatically that you were looking for that you were looking for in the movies that you you know you considered well you know one thing that we really wanted was something that could cut away at the notion or undercut the notion that it was all about knowing trivia you know that that I you know I always felt that like holiday wouldn't just want someone who could match his knowledge of trivia that's not enough to prove and in fact he'd want one of the challenges to show that the person doing it could be flexible you know you don't want some troll ish fanboy being you know the person who can only who's never learned anything outside of the ASUS that's what he's trying to get away from so I think the idea is what the movie which has some sort of extra power to the idea of violating the Canon of the movie itself and you know there's a lines he's like there's no zombies in the shining and she says maybe that's the point you know Artemis is like maybe that's the point we're supposed to be like if we just stuck with it's got to be what's in the shining they would have been dead but it's they were at that point fluid enough to realize okay maybe that's what holiday is trying to say and it's perfect with the shining because it's based you know the movies nothing like the book and Stephen King hated the movie and you know it's kind of the perfect you know analog for what we were trying to do right so like the argument about how faithful it is becomes literally what the difference in life and death you know we're earlier in the movie they're sequences where it's how well you know trivia might help you get through a sequence this is one where that's actually unhelpful hmm a few reviewers noted this you know like I was excited when people actually caught that it was that's something we worked very hard to put in there is if it weren't for his friends telling him if it weren't for one friend not knowing the movie at all and another friend telling him to stop focusing on exactly what the details of the movie were we wouldn't have gotten through this challenge right so those kind of meta messages is quite interesting I mean I know you're a you're a you you use Twitter and do you think that that kind of message of like to to sort of people who think of themselves as fans but in a very kind of slavishly devoted way you know do you think that's the important thing for sort of fandom to take on I I do I mean you know it's funny Ernie said Here I am the author of this book that's very different from the movie writing a sequence with my character complaining about how different the book is from the movie you know um I do think it's important because I think people on the one hand I think the number of people who are actually trolls are probably overestimated because I've been dealing with them for many many years before the Twitter and before the internet was popular there's always like a very loud group of people you know always joke like you wouldn't these are people who wouldn't be satisfied unless we literally filmed the book and the pages turning you know that's what they want well that's what they think they want and then they get furious that you you know does create the book but um I think it's important for people to realize the difference between someone not caring at all about the fans and just putting out product to get money from them which I understand that provoking a negative reaction and somebody trying to you know interpret the material where you know it doesn't burn up your comic book or your book or your you know the old TV shows I don't disappear when someone makes a new version of them you know and yeah it gets pretty toxic but I also try to but I you know I think it's a larger cultural point it's just in general the idea of like you can you can love things I mean I'm quoting movie but you can love things but if it doesn't bring you together with other people who love them what value does to have whereas if it brings you together with people then it inherently has value you know if you you make your friends nobody would say what are you kids doing a bunch of you playing chess together and then getting together to play chess on the weekends this is terrible you can't like never say that the kids about chess well there's nothing wrong with people becoming fans of something you know together and not bonding them but if it just turns into something to like keep lists of like statistics and sports yeah and you I think you've missed the point absolutely yeah yeah I think that's an important message to get out there I mean we I think we're fairly overt so finally then rich he is we have already touched on working on something else isn't on the space night yes and also the matrix yeah I had no idea this is a thing is that matrices one of the films I have seen I've seen all three of them although only one of them's worth talking about this this is it I mean they they vary so wildly in quality that the idea of rebooting the matrix is it feels like sacrilege but then also the idea of having another crack at the sequels I and I know it's well I'll tell you what why don't we ask the man himself to explain his plans in his own words speaking of films that you're that you're working on as well what's where you up to with the matrix can you say anything about that at all uh in the middle of working on it and literally I'm sitting here at my computer after we talk I'll get back to it okay calm yeah I mean there's there's lots of interesting things surrounding it but they're all everybody's waiting for me to hand in this draft so right um but but it's no longer just a fantasy you know like at one point I didn't have a draft that you know I hadn't even started writing and now I'm right in the middle of it so okay um so I'm excited though at Webster yeah I mean I know there's a little kind of a lot of people asking you like whether it's a reboot or not but what was what it was kind of more interested in is like what are the elements of the first film that you think that you want to continue that still kind of still hold up in in in sort of you know years down the line with different effects and a different world that we live in one of the kind of elements that you want to that that you want to continue well I would say it's more what I don't think I can do is I think the matrix still holds up you know I think when you watch the first movie again it has the same power it did and that to just try to be you can't ape it you know you can't try to one-up it or a bit because I don't know if that's doable you know I would say the same like you couldn't do well there's a lot of movies there's like that but that's a pretty I guess a lot of them also you can know the the key for me is I just think it's a great mythology and going back into the mythology that they already established that the Wachowski is established there's all these great stories that are you know in in the Canon if you will that have never even been touched on they you know they created all this ancillary material you know the comic books and the and the Animatrix and there's so much in there and you know I just happen to have a take on one part of that world and how we would get through it but I'm not going to I'm not going to pitch you you know it you'll have to read it or see it you know because if I told you how I think it's such a tough you know to say oh yeah I'll just do better than the matrix in terms of the effects in action is a pretty hard claim to make so yeah yeah always I've actually delivered sounds cool so when are we gonna see it well it's gonna be a little while before we can re-enter the matrix so to speak Zak Penn as he said he's still working on writing it so we'll we'll see that in coming years yeah yeah years and years but in the meantime you can see ready player one is coming to blu-ray digital online all the rest of it very soon cool well thanks rich for the interview thank Thank You Zack of course rich why don't you tell us where people can find you online at twitter.com at rich Knight well at rich Knight well I am at battery HQ and you can of course get in touch with the show with seen at UK podcast at CBS i.com you can tweet at senior too you can follow us on Instagram all the other stuff please do like subscribe and comments on the show the comment box is below you know it's nice if it's nice yeah don't just say Andi why are you wearing that shirt with a space cat on I was wondering actually it's because it's a scene at summer party so I was told to dress brightly and as you know most of my clothes are black this is my only one that's got some color and it's got a it's got a cat it's gonna gasps I mean that just answers the question they're like a thank you and we will see you in two weeks time