The Avengers (Jeremiah Chechik, 1998)

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Saw my first 2012 release today, The Avengers Assemble as it's called over here (to avoid confusion with the Diana Rigg series).

And the awful remake!

[cdnchris]

Saw my first 2012 release today, The Avengers Assemble as it's called over here (to avoid confusion with the Diana Rigg series).

And the awful remake!

I would actually love to see the original cut to that film. It was a bad idea right from casting but I get a sense from the disaster that remains after some obvious reediting that the original cut was at least trying to capture the spirit of the show. (And mild praise, but some of the photography was gorgeous.)

[knives]

I actually like the movie. It was what got me into the show and I think at worst it is a fascinatingly ambitious failure.

[cdnchris]

I liked the show, wasn’t a super fan by any means, but I liked it and was curious about the film. When it came out and I saw it I thought it was terrible but oddly I became fixated on it, actually seeing it again and buying the DVD when it came out. I think it was because you could tell it had been hacked away, more than likely by the studio, and seemed to be missing a whole section since it barely builds up everything and then goes into climax mode immediately. If you watch the trailer you’ll see half of it is made up of footage that’s not even in the movie. What got me most, though, was despite how bland it was you could see flashes of the show’s tone come through.

This is off topic but I can’t bring myself to give a Jeremiah Chechik film its own thread and do feel a need to defend The Avengers, even if I find what we get pretty bad. I was actually so fascinated by it I read up a lot about it over the years and I absolutely find it one of the more intriguing disaster stories to come out of Hollywood in the past couple of decades. This is mostly from memory (a lot of it coming from a book called “The Gross” about the 1998 box office) but as I recall Jerry Weintraub had been looking to make a movie from the series for years and Warner Bros. gave him the greenlight hoping for a spy flick they could market as a summer blockbuster, thinking the British spies were a good bet, the success of the Austin Powers movie possibly aiding in this belief. I can only guess they never read the script (and never saw an episode of the show) because the studio let the crew have at it and didn’t interfere. They did feel good about the project because of the cast they were able to get, including the surprise of getting Connery as the villain.

When the suits saw a rough edit of the film (running 115-minutes) they were horrified. They were apparently expecting an American friendly action flick with plenty of ‘splosions, more James Bond-ish one could say, and instead they got an arty, tongue-in-cheek spy flick that was too British (at least for American tastes) and “supposedly” too close in tone to the series (or they at least tried, who knows how close they actually got.) They test screened it to a group of working class Americans, since that was who they were hoping to market to, who hated it. The studio freaked, delayed the release by two months (dumping it in August) and then went to work. They cut out 30-40 minutes of the film, performed reshoots to get more action in it, added in some awful CGI effects (the tornados that appear in the film for one, though the bees that appear in one scene were apparently always there) and then completely reworked the story with the material they had, dumping much of the plot and concentrating on the weather machine story, making the film incomprehensible but, in their eyes, more “summer movie” friendly. And to top it all off, after the “finished” version got a PG rating, they had Eddie Izzard dub a “fuck” over his final scene so the film could appear “edgy” with a PG-13 rating. That last bit is actually odd because it appears Connery’s character was far more sadistic in the original version, and his creepy fixation on Emma Peel was explained a bit better. Leaving in any of this would have more than likely guaranteed a PG-13 rating if not worse—I recall he actually impales someone with his cane! Michael Kamen was also working on the score for the film, which is suggested to have been inspired by the show’s, but he eventually dropped out after the studio’s constant re-editing made it hard for him to complete it. In the end the film got a generic score by John McNeely (funny enough, if you look at the trailer credits, Kamen’s name still appears.) All this lead to the film becoming incredibly schizophrenic, trying to appear as a fairly generic popcorn movie but with some of the more cheeky elements left intact, like the teddy bears, the invisible detective, and the tea fetish (admittedly all three of these may have still seemed out of place even if the film did stick to the show’s tone.) Also, because much of the storyline was cut out, including a lot about the Emma clone, the film made absolutely no sense.

Since Chechik’s resume isn’t overly impressive, his only decent film probably being Christmas Vacation and his Diabolique remake being unbearable, it’s possible the original cut was pretty bad itself, but the story elements I had come across suggest a much better, far more coherent film that was closer to the series in heart, even if it was Hollywooded up a bit. Based on that and the fact I see remnants that they were attempting to recreate the show in the finished product (including some great photography) I would love to see the original cut just to see how much the editing changed the film, as well as to see if it actually did have a hope in hell of actually being pretty good.

[colinr0380]

The big problem for me was that Uma Thurman just did not capture Diana Rigg's sexiness as Emma Peel (or Linda Thorson's aborable quirkiness, even if the portrayal of Tara King as a wide eyed innocent seemed to rub people used to Peel's feistiness up the wrong way), to the extent that I wondered exactly why they needed to keep her as "Emma Peel" despite the TV series going through some (quite moving) heroine changes. Perhaps Emma Peel was the most familiar female character name, but that needlessly placed Thurman's character into competition with Rigg's. Luckily Thurman had Tarantino around to turn her into her own heroine later on, rather than a faded copy of a previous one.

I suppose it means that Armageddon gets away with not being the worst film of 1998! No wonder Connery retired from acting after rather difficult roles in poorly received films such as this and League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Although this was also a period of bad luck for Thurman too, given that she had been Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin the year before, though at least she was in Gattaca in between.

[J Wilson]

Other problems aside, the major problem to me was that Fiennes was badly miscast in a role that required a certain jocular, carefree attitude (if they wanted to duplicate the feel of the TV Steed), something he seems genetically incapable of, and that Thurman, similarly miscast, had no chemistry with Fiennes. I still recall the scene where Connery shoots the darts into Fiennes' bowler hat and Fiennes snarls "You'll pay for that," and thinking how utterly unlike the TV show that was.

[cdnchris]

And Chechik gets his own thread.

The casting is one of the things I still see as not working, even if any other version of the film proved to be better. I remember having a "wha!?" moment when I heard Thurman was being cast as Peel but I had faith in Fiennes as Steed. I wasn't as annoyed with him as I was with Thurman but even if he was just trying to do his own thing with the character it clearly didn't work with Thurman.

I liked Connery, though. I know he got grief because all he did was basically scowl and scream most of his lines, but he was fun when he was on screen. Plus I was impressed he could keep a straight face through that whole scene with the teddy bear suits.

[JamesF]

Since Chechik’s resume isn’t overly impressive, his only decent film probably being Christmas Vacation and his Diabolique remake being unbearable, it’s possible the original cut was pretty bad itself

Highly possible - this is the sort of studio hack who, when attached to direct Seven, was instrumental in having the "head in a box" ending replaced with a generic shootout in a church before being replaced by Fincher (who accidentally found an early script and demanded the pre-Chechik drafts be used). Nonetheless, I can't help but be drawn to stories of films mutilated by their studios and wanting to see the original cuts as a result.

I suppose it means that Armageddon gets away with not being the worst film of 1998!

Didn't the Lost In Space reboot and Emmerich's version of Godzilla come out that same summer as well? I'd argue those are both worse than Armageddon (though possibly not The Avengers). Man, it's a wonder my young burgeoning love of cinema survived...

[flyonthewall2983]

What's really sad to consider is that only a few years before this, Connery turned down the chance to play the villain in Die Hard With A Vengeance because he didn't want to play a villain.

[knives]

I prefer who we got in that case though.

[cdnchris]

I remember hearing that, though prefer Irons since he was probably the best thing in it.

I actually don't remember how Connery came to take the villain role in The Avengers and find it curious if he had objected to playing villains before. Maybe he saw that film and regretted his decision? I think I remember reading that he regretted turning down roles he was offered in the Matrix and Lord of the Ring films after seeing them, and that led him to doing the Extraordinary Gentlemen.

(ugh, it makes me weep that was his last film. Avengers was better.)

[knives]

Fortunately it isn't his last film. He's doing crappy British animation now.

[flyonthewall2983]

Die Hard With A Vengeance spoilers

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What I liked about the possibility of Connery taking the role is that he obviously would have been cast as Gruber's father, as opposed to his brother. It would have given more weight to that aspect of the plot, especially the reveal in the van that lead to the brief flashback of the first film. But otherwise I agree that Irons did a spectacular job, and was dynamite on screen with Bruce.

[colinr0380]

Fortunately it isn't his last film. He's doing crappy British animation now.

Correction: crappy Scottish animation.

[cdnchris]

Talking about the film made me want to go back and watch it again and I was disturbed to see I didn't own the DVD anymore! Thankfully (I guess) Netflix has it in their streaming catalogue. I watched it again, with maybe 10 years between my last viewing (possibly more) and I found quite a bit more to like about it and this viewing is the one where I actually caught myself enjoying the movie for what it is, rather than being fascinated by the bad decisions and how obviously it was messed with. If they released it on Blu-ray I would actually pick it up.

I found the giant robot bees bothered me less this time around, and if the show could have done it I'm pretty sure they would have done something similiar (I mean, how many times did the two fight robots?) I also can't believe I forgot about the rather ingenious moment where Mrs. Peel gets stuck in a set of rooms that do nothing but go into one another, and there's a great above shot where she goes down a set of "infinite" stairs I guess you could call them. Why the villain would have something like this, who knows, but again the show would have done something similar, and possibly did. There were also a lot of great nods to the show and even shows like "The Prisoner" and I still think the photography looks great. I also still like Connery who does nothing but snarl really, but forgot how amusing both Jim Broadbent and Fiona Shaw were in their respective roles. Eddie Izzard looks the part of a thug but he's pretty much wasted otherwise.

I actually liked the banter between Peel and Steed more but alas Fiennes and Thurman are still wrong for the roles. Getting into other things that still bother me: I still don't think the teddy bear meeting scene works at all but I do get what they were trying to do. Maybe in more capable hands it would have worked? Same with Invisible Jones, which is just awkwardly placed. The plot is also still incomprehensible and how things tie in or lead to the next are never clear. Plus the obvious cuts to the film give it the most awkward narrative structure, and it seems to go from Act I to Act III almost immediately: Everything gets set up and then we immediately get to the climax.

Another thing I forgot about was the lack of people. It seems as though no one lives in London other than the main characters. We never see anybody else unless they're required in the story. I'm sure the film didn't have a lack of a budget, or at least for extras, so I can only assume this was a stylistic choice. Maybe to imitate the original show's lack of a budget and its own lack of extras? I don't know, but it seems odd. Because of this there isn't much conflict during the climax when de Wynter's weather machine is tearing up London; it only appears to be an issue for the two heroes and not of much concern to anyone else. And maybe this has to do with tinkering (like the odd narrative structure) but it seems odd that during shots of the city from afar the machine is causing total destruction and mayhem (through bad CGI), but on the ground the only thing it's really doing to Steed and Peel is snowing on them. The final fight between Steed and de Wynter is also much more awkward than I remember, and is staged poorly

SpoilerShow

but de Wynter's death by lightening bolt is still super awesome.

But for all its problems it was fun revisiting it. If the other cut is closer to the story I came across online I think the film would work better but the main problem is probably still Thurman and Fiennes, which is a shame since I do like the two. There's just no spark between them in what we get here, nothing remotely close to what we got with Rigg and Macnee, and that is a serious problem since the film relies heavily on the two. Like Knives said at worst it's still a "fascinatingly ambitious failure."

[swo17]

[cdnchris]

The best praise the film has ever received I'm sure.

[colinr0380]

I've often wondered if the weather machine was inspired by that localised weather machine being used to kill people in the "Surfeit of H2O" episode.