The Seven Layers of The Seventh Son
By Rebekah Voss
Imagine you’re at the market buying ingredients to bake a cake. The craving for something sweet has struck, and you traipse along the requisite aisles, halfheartedly placing milk, eggs and flour into your basket. But then, suddenly, inspiration strikes. Your feet move quickly, as if driven by an invisible force, past the chocolate and vanilla, and way beyond the butterscotch. Your hands fly in a creative frenzy. A dash of rosemary. Then nutmeg. Paprika. Wait a second, was that bacon that just landed in your cart? Sriracha? You leave the checkout line, not knowing if your concoction will be delicious or disgusting, but one thing remains clear: this baking experience is going to be very exciting.
Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures are willing to bet millions of dollars that you’re ready for a spiced-up fantasy movie; the kind that, like a bacon-and-Sriracha cake, will leave you sweating, bewildered, and hopefully thrilled in ways you never thought possible.
Back in 2006, Clash of the Titans producer Basil Iwanyk sold Warner Brothers the rights to author Joseph Delaney’s The Spook’s Stories. Since then, Iwanyk has run the gamut of Hollywood writers and directors, trying to concoct the perfect storm of fantasy film ingredients.
“[The film has] been through a lot of iterations. It was Tim Burton’s for a minute, and then it was Kevin Lima’s (director of Enchanted) for a minute. We’ve gone through seven different writers. It’s a classic Hollywood film situation.”
But six years, seven writers, and three directors later, Iwanyk is in his third month of production on what’s sure to be a genre-defying fantasy film. Instead of merely retelling Delaney’s story of a 13-year old boy who is apprenticed to become a witch hunter, Iwanyk, director Sergey Bodrov (Mongol, Prisoner of the Mountains), and Production Designer Dante Ferretti have taken their favorite fantastical elements from the books, and tossed the rest. And surprisingly, author Delaney doesn’t seem to mind one bit. According to Iwanyk,
“[Delaney] was here three weeks ago, and he read the script on the plane from England. When he landed, he was like ‘What the hell is this?’ But he really liked it. The spirit of the book is there and the characters are the same, but yes, it’s much, much, much bigger.”
So what, exactly, is missing from a story about an old witch, a prepubescent boy, and a sleepy town in Northern England? According to this creative team, the seasoning and scope of a whole world of witchy possibilities. Instead of focusing on one main character, the film endeavors to explore the inner workings of four different characters whose lives intersect through war, death, and love.
Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges) is a witch hunter who belongs to an ancient order of knights, trained to protect humans from the incredibly powerful and varied witches that inhabit the world of the film. When his arch nemesis Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore) returns after years of capture, she retaliates against Bridges by killing his apprentice (Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington). Master Gregory must find and train a new apprentice in order to fight Moore and the world’s witches. But there’s a catch; the apprentice must be the seventh son of a seventh son, and he must complete 10 years of training in 30 days.
As luck would have it, there is only one seventh son of a seventh son left in the area and, well, he’s kind of a dork. Played by Ben Barnes (The Chronicles of Narnia), the film’s hero, Tom Ward, “has no real skills, still lives at home, is kind of aimless, and his brother thinks he’s a loser.” However, as the seventh son of a seventh son, Tom Ward is seven times stronger than the average man. Producer Basil Iwanyk credits Ward’s lack of magical powers with setting the film apart from other fantasy movies.
“In pure movie language, [Tom Ward] just knows how to kick some ass. At first, he doesn’t know how to fight. But over the course of time, he learns quicker than most people. He’s more like Batman. When I first read [the script], I felt like this was Batman [set] in the time of Lord of the Rings. [The characters] are incredibly disciplined and incredibly well-trained. They can use every kind of weapon and they’re tough, but they don’t really have any super powers. There is a bit of a magical element, but a subtle magical element that, if we were lucky enough to have additional movies, we would explore more. They’re definitely more Batman than they are Superman.”
While Daniels and Barnes are busy training to fight witches, Julianne Moore has summoned all of the world’s witches from the four corners of the earth to fight an epic battle to the death against the humans. Flanked by her assistants Bony Lizzie (Antje Traue) and Alice (Alicia Vikander), Moore enjoys burning and torturing everyone who persecuted her as a young girl. The love story that is eventually revealed between her and Bridges mirrors the blossoming relationship between Tom Ward and the young witch Alice, and complicates what would otherwise be a one-dimensional conflict.
What makes The Seventh Son so different from other fantasy films is its casting choices and its somewhat bizarre choice of a creative team. Neither Bridges nor Moore has ever done fantasy before. When asked why she decided to jump on the fantasy train now, Moore laughed and responded,
“They asked. I’ve never played a witch before, I’ve never done a fantasy movie, actually. It’s really the first opportunity I had to do something like this. And (director) Sergey was really interesting and articulate about the piece and had a great vision.”
But Sergey Bodrov has never done a fantasy film before either. In fact, when choosing the cast and crew, the producers seem to have almost shied away from collaborating with anyone who does have fantasy experience, hoping to bring fresh blood, talent and ideas to a genre that is thick with competition. Bodrov’s resume boasts epic historical films like Mongol, while Production Designer Dante Ferretti has worked on everything from Shutter Island to last year’s five-time Oscar-winner, Hugo.
The international nature of the cast and crew is mirrored in the global feel of the film’s characters, settings and themes. Supporting star Antje Traue is German, while Alicia Vikander is Swedish. Ben Barnes is British, Daniels is American and Moore is Canadian. Director Bodrov is a Russian of Asian descent while Ferretti answers interview questions in a cadence of soft Italian. There was no way this film was going to be set in England. Drawing from their personal experiences of traveling and working all over the world, Bodrov and Ferretti began to develop sets and characters to reflect the global feel of the movie. Moore explains, “there’s a witch from Brazil, there’s an Amazonian witch, there’s an African witch, there’s a Siberian witch…I’m the Canadian witch.” Each of the witches has different powers, different costumes, and shape shifts into a different animal or creature. Mother Malkin shape shifts into what Moore describes as a “prehistoric bird,” with bat like wings and eerily human eyes. Bony Lizzie turns into an owl while Blood Diamond star Djimon Hounsou shape shifts with his horse into the dragon Radu. In keeping true to form with all of the film’s elements, the other shape shifters infuse the action scenes with the kind of variety only a leopard, a giant bear, and a Vishnu-like deity can provide. Bodrov’s globetrotting work history is to blame for these fresh ingredients:
“It was not in the book, but for me it was important. I used to work [all over] the world, so for me it was important to have witches from different cultures: [A] Siberian witch, African witches, Amazonian witches, Indian witches. For me borders [aren’t there], we live in one world.”
It was important to maintain a global feel by setting the film somewhere placeless and timeless. Producer Basil Iwanyk wanted to move away from the typical dark, European setting that is so often used in fantasy films.
“We felt like for this kind of movie, the UK has been used quite a bit. Budapest [and] Prague have been used quite a bit. I think we wanted a different color palette, a different feel, a different vibe for the movie.”
Mission accomplished. Because of the money saved by shooting in Vancouver, the production will also film in India, China, the Southwestern United States, and Hawaii.
The Seventh Son is working hard to distinguish itself from the myriad of big budget action fantasy films that will continue to saturate the industry into 2013. They are doing this by pairing unexpected elements of time, place, and culture with underlying themes of persecution and tolerance. Instead of pointing the finger at a particular time or culture, each witch in the film represents the darkness and potential for evil that is present in all of us. The common thread of fear and a propensity for evil is what ultimately connects the film’s characters, as they discover the humanity that lies in everyone, even witches. Ben Barnes jokes about the tendency for Legendary Pictures to produce fantasy films that have depth. “They’re sort of famous for making these fanboy movies, but they said ‘We like to make movies that are both tasty and nutritious.’” The Seventh Son is sure to be both.
Be sure to pick up the September issue of L’Ecran Fantastique to read more about the special effects used in the film, its 3D status, and for interviews with Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes, Antje Traue and Djimon Hounsou.
The Seventh Son is currently filming in Vancouver, B.C., and is slated to open in October, 2013.