James Cameron (Avatar, Aliens, The Abyss) recently spoke to Wired and got onto the subject of the adaption of H P Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness that he is producing. Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) is directing it and it is in 3D.
“It’s going to be an epically scaled horror film and we haven’t seen anything like that in a really long time — I guess since Aliens.”
Like the novella on which it’s based, the film will take place in the Antarctic, where humans encounter a race called the Ancient Ones. “The thing about Lovecraft is that he left a lot to the imagination,” Cameron said. “He never told you what they looked like. He managed to create a sense of creeping horror without specifics.”
“Guillermo brings an eye for design that is so original and so quirky and so steeped in the lore of movie design and horror design, but always fresh and unexpected. Frankly, I just want to see what he comes up with and I want to enable the nuts and bolts of the production so he doesn’t have to worry about that. I want to help him how to work in 3-D.”
Meanwhile an early draft of the script has been seen and it sounds good and bad.
Dejan Ognjanovic read it and said it was like “a Hellboy movie without Hellboy, with a light dose of Carpenter’s The Thing.”
It’s not as bleak as Lovecraft’s novel or Carpenter’s film which was vaguely inspired by the spirit of this same novel, although based on J. W. Campbell’s novella. With the kind of budget this film will require one cannot reasonably expect it to go too far into the unconventional and risqué territory. I guess we should be content with the fact that this is most definitely a script for an R-rated monster-fest and there’s no way of cutting it down to a PG-13 or some such shit without throwing more than a half away. However, with all the monster-mayhem, this still remains a Lovecraft-lite project.
There’s plenty to like and a few things to dislike in this script.”
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, as written by Del Toro and Robbins, is definitely aimed at those who “know” their Lovecraft from second- or third-hand: not directly from his stories, but from the way his work was re-imagined and grotesquely dumbed-down by the pop-culture. by this I mean his genre fiction “followers” (in name only, mostly), comics, video-games, RPG, heavy metal songs and the like. Those who perceive Lovecraft merely as an eccentric who wrote about some cool mega-monsters with lots of tentacles and slimy orifices are in for a treat here. Because that’s ALL of Lovecraft they’re gonna get. Those who expect a certain meaning and symbolism behind those “monsters” – those who expect philosophy – cosmic horror – loads of atmosphere, suspense, build-up… Well, not much of that, sadly.
It is a period piece: the frame story takes place in 1939, at the very beginning of World War 2 (quite unnecessary and silly parallel!), but the bulk of the film is made up of a flashback narration by the last survivor of the previous expedition to the South Pole from 1930. Of course, it is told to the chief of the new expedition going there… This being a classic, I guess there’s no need for going too much into details, you know the plot. Scientists go to Antarctica, find remnants of primaeval, alien creatures, reveal terrible things about the (pre)human history. In this version, it is somewhat simplified into: Scientists go to Antarctica, resurrect primaeval monsters, mayhem ensues.”
As mentioned it is an early draft and things have changed although there does seem to be an emphasis on action rather than atmosphere which is a bit of a shame considering it is the atmosphere in the Lovercraft’s stories that make them so good. Still Del Toro can make things very spooky.
It is early days on this so things could still change. We shall see. There will definitely be lots of Shoggoths though.
I will still definitely be going to see it when it comes out as I do love anything Lovecraft related.
What are your thoughts on the film? What should be in it and what shouldn’t?
Source: Blastr, Propnomicon
