Normally, I would bring up “Blade Runner” as a perfect sci-fi thriller analogue, but they’re making a sequel to it.
Right. Instinctually, even on a rational level, I didn’t feel— it wasn’t quite right [making a sequel to “Ex Machina”]. I also think it’s probably worth instinctively wanting to push back against that. It has problems embedded within it, that particularly paradigm. It’s dangerous.
I don’t want to sound overly judgmental about it, because it’s very easy to get precious about this stuff and I don’t feel that way. But I think the convention of expecting and needing more of a narrative has built-in issues. Because most stuff doesn’t stand up to being repeated.
It just doesn’t. Some stuff does, and that’s great. Actually, some of the most visceral, kind of exciting stuff can. The film I’m looking forward to most at the moment, probably have been all year, is “Mad Max Fury Road.” And that’s a sequel of sorts. I don’t know, maybe it is. Until I’ve seen it I can’t tell.
And look, I’ve actually, in some respects, been half involved in one, in a floating way, with a zombie.
Right, “28 Weeks Later.” I was about to say, but you didn’t write that one.
No. Sequels are generally done in a rush. They’re done with a sense of urgency. The first time, you spend a long time developing to get it over the line. The second time, you don’t. Your expectations are different and your motivations are different.
My motivations, to the extent I was motivated, on ‘28 Weeks’ were wholly different from “28 Days Later.” And I think that’s why none of us involved then tried to make [a third] one, at least for a long time. We could have — on a financial basis it made sense. ‘28 Weeks’ made plenty of cash, but that raison d’être existed. Anyway, I’m talking bullshit, as usual.
[Editor’s note: You can read our full digression about the third ‘28 Months Later’ film here. Yes, they are planning another, though Garland won’t be actively involved.]
Sometimes, though not often, sequels-after-the-fact can be better insofar as time has passed, and sometimes organic ideas just come up years later.
Well, the [“28 Months Later”] idea definitely was organic; it comes from the right place. The thing about the first one was that it was a reaction. If I was being very honest about it, probably more honest than I should be, “28 Days Later” was a reaction to “The Beach” in some ways because I felt it lacked, a kind of aggression in it. I guess, enough time has passed, I can probably say [that].
[iw-blockquote]”I don’t think [Danny Boyle and I] will make more films. But I learned an enormous amount from him and I respect him hugely. He’s a real film director.”[/iw-blockquote]
So “28 Days Later” was a compensation then? “The Beach” is pretty different from the book, right?
Certainly less aggressive, yeah. ‘28 Days’ has tons of action, and there’s something subversive about it. “The Beach” novel, in my mind was, in some respects, subversive. I don’t want to make great claims for it, but I think ‘28 Days’ overdid that. In my mind, it was this sort of punk film. It had a punk sensibility.
Well, sensibility is definitely what’s on screen even via the sort of DIY, lo-fi aesthetic.
That was the intention. The kind of aggression in subversion, basically. I thought ‘28 Weeks’ didn’t have, it was not subversive. The idea for ‘28 Months’ is subversive. That was the key, “what is this thing?” In my mind, it’s something about aggressive and subversive.
What were you trying to subvert exactly?
It gets into the sort of territory that I try to avoid talking about. What happens is I allude to these things and then I suddenly get elliptical, and I can imagine how irritating that is.
OK, I see you’re trying to not spoil the next one a little.
The “28 Months Later” idea also came out of a trip to another country. In fact, there’s a scene in the original film where the character looks up and sees a plane flying above, and he’s in this completely desolate place. And the character in the movie suddenly sees the rest of the world is just carrying on while this virus is decimating the U.K. People may be going on holiday, right? And that’s exactly the experience I’ve had with this new idea. I think what I was trying to do, was bring some aspect of a foreign culture with a lot of trouble in it to the U.K. and just say, “Stop fucking whining about stuff.” It can be way worse out there.