Doug Liman interview: The Wall, Bourne, Edge Of Tomorrow 2 | Den of Geek
Den of Geek has conducted a good lengthy interview with Doug Liman talking about his past movies, his new movie The Wall, Edge of Tomorrow, and its sequel.
At some point during the production of Edge of Tomorrow, the studio actually suggested to remove the time loop element altogether. After reading it and the fact that this challenging movie actually got made is a miracle.
Here are the excerpts talking about Bourne and Live Die Repeat and Repeat.
How did it feel after all that, when you started to see other films take on the stylistic ideas in Bourne? Let's face it, you changed the Bond franchise in a way.
You know, that was the most surreal thing. I always wanted to make a James Bond movie my whole life. I didn't grow up like Quentin Tarantino, watching esoteric art films at the video store. I'd go to the multiplex and see big, mainstream movies, and I'd go, "I want to make one of those one day." I always wanted to make a James Bond film, and they only seemed to hire British directors, and I'd made
Swingers - they were never going to hire me for a James Bond film off
Swingers.
I felt so insecure while I was making
The Bourne Identity that I was making a poor man's spy movie. There was someone on the set who had the
Mission: Impossible ring tone on his phone, and every time his phone rang it drove me nuts because I was afraid my movie was never going to be as good as
Mission: Impossible. It was never going to be as good as James Bond.
So it was really surreal afterwards to go and see the next James Bond film, and be like, "Oh, I did make a James Bond film, because now the James Bond film looks like
The Bourne Identity." So given the emotional insecurity I bring to my craft, that was really surreal. I would still love to direct a James Bond film, but I'm not sure if I have or haven't.
I was wondering about Edge Of Tomorrow, and its title changes. I was wondering what the story was behind the scenes there.
So the book was called
All You Need Is Kill. Japanese. I was making a comedy - an action comedy, and
All You Need Is Kill didn't feel like it was the tone of the movie I had made. The studio wanted to call it
Edge Of Tomorrow, and I wanted to call it
Live Die Repeat. I fought vehemently and lost. And then when the film came out and people loved it but the box-office wasn't as good as it should have been, I really railed into the executive at Warner Bros who'd insisted that
Edge Of Tomorrow was the better title.
I was like, "It clearly is not. You were wrong." I committed the cardinal sin of telling somebody in Hollywood when they're wrong, like, literally - I ended up having to call the person and apologise for pointing out that they were wrong. And they started titling it the title I always thought it should have, which is
Live Die Repeat. But they tiptoed around it, and when we make the sequel, it'll be permanently titled
Live Die Repeat. The sequel will be
Live Die Repeat Repeat.
I can't wait to see you do with this one. Because I know you've said...
It's really original. I mean, that's partly why the title had to be something a little bit more unconventional. And that's why we're even talking about a sequel, because we finished
Live Die Repeat, and nobody wanted to go back to that world. The suits were so heavy and uncomfortable and the story issues with the time travel were so vexing. Like, you don't have to talk to a scientist to find out that humans will never travel through time. Just talk to a filmmakers who's tried to put time travel in a movie. The story paradoxes that crop up are so taxing that at one point the studio suggested we get rid of the whole dying repeating the day [concept].
Oh God.
So, we felt like we got out of that by the skin of our teeth. Like we came through a firestorm and got out the other side and were like, "Okay, nobody's interested in going back into the burning building". But the fan support and affection for the movie has been so extraordinary that we couldn't help but react to that, and start talking about a sequel. This is not a conversation that started at a studio level.
It started with Tom and I working on
American Made, and people came up to Tom and myself to talk about
Edge Of Tomorrow - with such affection that we couldn't... with what was being written about it online, we couldn't help but start talking about a sequel because the fans were talking about it first. Then we came up with an idea that we loved so much and that is so original - it's why the sequel's gotta have an even crazier title, because the idea's so outrageous, and so smart and clever. It feels more original even than the first movie. Tom and I and Emily are talking about going back into the trenches.
This time they want the suits to be made a little lighter. The film was emotionally taxing, because the story was so challenging to work out, but it was physically taxing because those suits are so heavy.
Do you think it'll be made at a similar budget level?
It's my hope that it's smaller. I always have thought that the smart way to make a sequel is at a slightly lower budget, not a bigger budget. Because what people love so much about
Edge Of Tomorrow are the characters, and we have a story that's character-driven. That's the reason to make a sequel, because of the characters and the world. But it'll be a studio film - it won't be on the scale of
The Wall.
It's just really smart. Chris McQuarrie as a close confidant - he's worked on all of Tom's films. I got into a room to talk about the sequel and we got into a creative screaming match that suddenly felt like we were back on the set of
Edge Of Tomorrow. For a moment it felt like we were repeating the experience of the movie - like we're repeating the day. And what was extraordinary was, we got from screaming to brilliant idea, what took six hours before took two hours this time. So we're gonna repeat the process, but do it more efficiently.
It sounds really exciting. I can't wait to see that.
I can't wait to see it either. I pitch the story all the time at dinner tables, to my friends, and that's when I know I want to make the movie, when I'm telling the story of it. At the end of the day, that's who we are as filmmakers: we're storytellers. It can be telling six people at dinner, or putting it on the screen to tell the story to a lot more people. It's the same impulse.