An alien entity has landed on Earth and is slowly devouring our planet piece by piece in the new science-fiction thriller Annihilation.
After government attempts at communication and understanding lead nowhere, a different agenda is put into place by sending five female scientists into the unknown structure to investigate for answers. As created by writer-director Alex Garland, the film stays true to the mind-bending roots of the book it’s based on (part of a trilogy) and is also creatively in line with his previous cinematic effort Ex Machina.
Before jumping into the director’s chair for his last two features, Garland was primarily known as a screenwriter. His penned films include 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Dredd, and Never Let Me Go, a wide array of genre and storytelling. Annihilation is his biggest filmmaking canvas to date, mixing grand visual effects with an all-star cast led by Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac.
The prolific filmmaker is definitely not shy. He is willing to talk about any part of his process, from false inspirations to fighting for the final cut of his film with studio executives. We recently sat down with Garland to talk about all that and more. This is a transcription of that conversation.
Q: Your film at its core has five tough scientists going into the unknown…
Alex Garland: Tough but also smart. One of them, the physicist, pretty much figures out what’s going on in this strange environment. They’re not all tough; some of them are scared shitless and one of them goes crazy. I think toughness is overrated.
Q: How did you get your actresses into that mindset of dealing with the unknown on set?
Garland: I approach film in a particular kind of way. I’m not interested in the pyramid structure with the director at the top; that has no interest for me at all. I see it as collective, a group of people making a film and all the different people in the film are very autonomous. In loose terms it’s an anarchy-based way of making a film. Meaning that the anarchy is not chaos but the people involved are all working toward a collective goal.
Q: How were you able to balance the expectations from fans of the book this film is based on with your own creative sensitivities?
Garland: It’s a mixture because you feel anxiety that you don’t want to let down the readers of the book. It’s also being pleased and excited to be part of such a strange, interesting and original project. The two things that struck me about the book were the originality and the atmosphere. That’s how I thought I would orient the stuff that is my responsibility; I would try to be true to the book’s originality and atmosphere. In a literal sense, I didn’t know how I could do a beat-for-beat adaptation of the book because the book is a dream-like and trippy experience to read and in that respect is subjective. For the screenplay I wanted to write my interpretation of the book and Jeff Vandermeer, the writer of the book, is a pretty relaxed and generous guy. He basically gave me permission to do that.
Related: Annihilation review: Atmospheric tension at its most beautiful and horrific
Q: With so many behind-the-scenes post-production battles that have leaked out about this film, how much of your original version has survived the final cut of the film?
Garland: That’s it. The final cut is the final cut.
Q: Was that an easy decision for the studio to make or was there a lot of back-and-forth?
Garland: I don’t know about the studio’s part, but it was an easy decision on my part. There’s always a contract between a writer and a reader, and I see that similarly with a script. What I do is shoot the script; if you don’t like the script, don’t finance the film.
Q: The visual style is one of the biggest draws of this film. What were some of your creative influences to capture that onscreen?
Garland: Whenever you ask people about influences, I’d be wary of their answers because usually what they say is stuff that they like rather than what actually influenced them. They say it unconsciously; it’s not like they’re trying to mislead you. But the actual influences are often not what they seem to be. Basically what I’m saying is don’t trust my answer. That said, where we consciously drew our influences from was from nature.
Q: Annihilation is part of a trilogy of books that encompass a single story. Do you have any plans to work on any of the others books should this first film be successful?
Garland: Definitely not. That’s not a judgment of any sort; I’m just not a franchise guy. A film takes three years to make and at the end of it I want to do something different. Broadly speaking, all of the films I make are a reaction to the film I’ve previously done.
Q: Judging from your body of work it seems you gravitate more toward genre material.
Garland: I love genre material.
Q: Why?
Garland: I love genre because you’ve got limited bandwidth in a story. What genre allows you to do is use shorthand in a lot of areas. Then you’ve got extra space to do something strange, something unsettling. If you’re given a bunch of paradigms, which genre does, then that gives you a bunch of things you can break or use accordingly.
Q: What are some of the limitations of working in the genre space?
Garland: If there are limitations, they’re not limitations that concern me or I’m aware of. I guess one of the limitations is perception. Genre is seen as less worthy than other stuff, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m just doing the stuff I’m interested in for as long as I’m allowed to do it.
Annihilation is now playing in theaters nationwide.
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