Take Away the Number You First Thought of

[I'm a bit busy at the moment, so here's something I wrote five years ago which has never been published]

This does look awesome, doesn't it?

I find a continuing source of interest in how little Warner Brothers exploit their vast archives. For a studio which has been in existence since the Great War, it appears odd that the commercial releases of the company’s back catalogue are so, well, commercial. With a wealth of background material at its disposal, I see little obvious reason for the failure of its DVD releases to be totalling comprehensive. It has taken over five years, for example, and a new instalment grossing $360 million to finally push forward “proper” versions of the four Batman films made from 1989 to 1997. The impression was given with the original issues that they were simply VHS re-releases on a new-fangled medium, rather than have them include elementary items such as trailers. Batman wasn’t even in widescreen. Equally, the vanilla [1] release of Superman II does nothing to trade on the film’s popularity or chequered history, with multiple reshoots, rewrites and directors to its name.

On the other hand, I have heard very few other than myself complain about the lack of a full-length edition of The Avengers. Putting my own opinions to one side, this is not especially surprising. This film enjoys an almost unmatched reputation for being terrible. My two siblings, both fans of co-stars Sean Connery and Eddie Izzard, refuse to watch it, despite my repeated exhortations. I even asked a friend to rent and see the film so that I could gather his thoughts as someone coming to the production without preconceptions. His first words to me on the film were, “Isn’t that supposed to be rubbish?”

Simultaneously released in the UK and the USA on 14th August 1998, The Avengers [2] had been in various stages of semi-active development for over a decade, when producer Jerry Weintraub bought the rights in 1987. No solid progress on the production was made until 1993, when screenwriter and Avengers fan Don Macpherson was engaged to write the screenplay. Despite rumours of the likes of Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman taking on the roles of John Steed and Emma Peel, Oscar nominees Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman were cast, with Sean Connery playing the requisite diabolical mastermind [3] for director Jeremiah Chechik. Apart from a fire destroying one of the sets, shooting was apparently uneventful, and the film was completed on schedule for its release in June 1998.

Not that you'll be seeing this on the DVD.

Post-production was the point when problems began to bite. A test screening was arranged in Phoenix, Arizona, to gauge the audience’s reaction to the film, and thus tailor it to for a standard audience. One only needs to think about this concept for a moment to realise how flawed it is. Attempting to focus-group The Avengers, either the TV series or the film, is ridiculous, as it is a concept that in itself should not work. The series, which emphasised humour as well as style over minimal substance, was still able to convey a sense of danger without either of the lead characters seeming concerned by their death-defying antics. The reaction in Phoenix was overwhelmingly poor, and the film was returned to the cutting room with a view to “saving” it. This resulted in a two-month delay in release, and its June slot was occupied, in the USA at least, by A Perfect Murder, the remake of Dial M for Murder starring Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Examining the film’s edits in detail fails to yield an obvious solution why these scenes were cut [4]. My original assumption was that scenes of exposition or of another static nature had been excised to bring the action sequences closer together, but deeper scrutiny disproves this. The climactic fight between Steed and Sir August is trimmed, but most obviously, the entire pre-credits sequence, which runs for eight pages in the published script [5], and is heavily featured in the film’s pre-release trailer. A simpler solution has since arisen, namely that the 90 minute running time [6] was what was wanted, not necessarily a “rescued” film. The Avengers was cut not to make it better, but shorter, and more able to make money.

The film opens with a title sequence that could charitably be described as Bondian, though in fact, it is hard to imagine the designers, a group called Imaginary Forces, not deliberately aping Maurice Binder’s iconic 60s style. Rather more surprising are the matching descriptions Macpherson affords the credits in both the official screenplay and an early draft from 1995. The TV series aimed for simpler style, varying between the leads sharing a glass of champagne and capering about in a field of suits of armour. However, this is not how the script begins.

Panning down from a perfect blue sky to an empty airstrip, we see the only object in sight is a red phone box. An E-type Jaguar speeds towards it, and after coming to smooth stop, disgorges a leather-clad Uma Thurman. Uttering “how now brown cow”, in the phone’s receiver, she is transported to an underground base, in which experiments into the weather are being conducted. Seeing off a few guards along the way, Dr. Emma Peel sets the critical systems into overdrive and escapes, as bolts of lightning strike the requisite antenna and the base explodes. A quick cut later, we are introduced the villain, Sir August de Wynter, played by a tartan-clad Connery [7], hammering away at his enormous organ. As he continues to play, a few tracking shots show him to be of enormous wealth, passionate about the weather, and totally barking, before the camera settles on a romantic painting of Emma dominating the room, and de Wynter gazing at it, rapt with adoration. The importance of the sequence is crucial to the rest of the film – setting up a large part of the plot, and introducing de Wynter as early as possible. The deferment of the latter and the vagueness of the former, which results in characters describing events to one another rather than letting the audience see them for themselves, serve only to damage the story as a whole, and make it look poorly-structured.

Another noteworthy aspect of the trailer is the presence in its concluding “credit block” of Michael Kamen [8] as the composer of the film’s score. An interviewer later that year asked him why he had departed the film. His somewhat evasive answer was that he had “worked on the movie for eight-and-a-half months, it still wasn’t finished, and I had to do Lethal Weapon 4.” [9] It has been speculated elsewhere that the unfinished aspect was the film’s visual effects, though no reason is given why Kamen could not have begun work using existing footage and script pages for reference. It should also be noted that, like The Avengers, Lethal Weapon 4 was a Warner Bros. production, but also a sure-fire hit. In any case, Joel McNeely stepped in to what became the biggest job of his career, and since then his highest profile composing gig was Warners’ science-fiction misfire Soldier.

Has Uma Thurman been in a film were
she hasn't handed someone their arse?

Further sequences were removed from the early section of the film, including the real Mrs. Peel infiltrating a gentlemen’s club to meet a Mr. John Steed (an obstructive porter is thrown down a flight of stairs, rather simply vanishing), and Steed and Emma being briefed by the former’s boss “Mother”, a scruffy-looking man in both late middle age and a wheelchair. A number of agents have been killed in unusual, weather-related circumstances – beaten to death by fish rain, frozen in ice etc. – and security footage from the Prospero Programme shows Mrs. Peel as the only lead. One problem not solved in the script or the novelisation is the readiness of Mother to trust Mrs Peel with assisting the investigation into herself, though one could take the attitude that as Emma is so obviously the culprit, she couldn’t possibly be guilty.

As Steed and Mrs. Peel venture forth, much to the disapproval of Father, Mother’s second-in-command [10], another cut scene shows Sir August torturing a Prospero scientist for information. The scientist is, according to the script book, played by one Christopher Rozycki, although he is not credited on the finished product. Another major flaw occurs, where Steed, seemingly from the air, pulls Sir August’s name as worth investigating, and strikingly, Emma does not appear to know who he is. This is despite the later elaboration that he was in fact the original head of Prospero, before being relieved of office due to his affiliation with BROLLY, an organisation of scientists attempting to protect the Earth’s weather from aliens. That Emma would not have heard of him from that is unlikely, but that they have never met is downright unbelievable. Dialogue either cut or unused from later in the film implies that there was some kind of connection between Sir August and Emma’s missing-presumed-dead husband Peter. The final film states that, as with the series, Peter Peel was a test pilot whose plane was lost over the Amazon, but the original version of the script has him instead portrayed as a colleague at Prospero, headed by his brother, Dr. Valentine Peel. The latter engineers the project’s destruction, which also kills his sibling.

The pair’s visit to the “eccentric” meteorologist, ends when a snooping Steed is shot by Emma’s double – he is saved by a bullet-proof waistcoat – and as he recovers in his partner’s flat, Emma shows him the next piece of the puzzle. A snowglobe labelled “Wonderland Weather” takes the spies to a firm which can deliver personalised weather through a phone line [11]. At the firm’s offices, Sir August addresses a BROLLY meeting, at which all the attendees are dressed as oversized teddy bears. This typically Avengerish touch, which looks marvellous, is not explained, to the detriment of the film’s credibility. During his speech, in which he offers members a chance to leave his scheme without prejudice, he offers any with cold feet a remuneration of $1 million. This is, of course, unless you lip-read, in which case he tenders a more generous £1 million.

I suppose you're wondering why I
called you here. Among other things...

This is not the only example of altered dialogue in The Avengers. After the meeting breaks up less two members, and Steed and Emma pursue one teddy each, the former finds himself in a brawl with Sir August’s henchmen, Bailey, and his men. The script gives the bullyboy, modelled on Malcolm McDowell’s Alex from A Clockwork Orange and played by Izzard, a few lines in which he compares Steed’s immaculate suit to a tailor’s dummy, but this is missing along with almost all his other dialogue. I clearly recall the critic Mark Kermode referring to Izzard’s only line as being unfunny when he reviewed the film at the time of its release, but similarly, it was not until I viewed the DVD that I observed Bailey as having any dialogue at all, namely the film’s single use of the f-word when he meets his demise: a line which, naturally, does not appear in either script or novel.

Steed bests the gang, and pursues Emma in her fight with her quarry, but the teddy is revealed to be another Emma, and she escapes. At a debriefing, Steed is informed that the World Council of Ministers [12] is due to meet on St. Swithin’s Day – the patron saint of weather [13]. The leap to the next sequence of note, as a clearly treacherous Father plays croquet with Sir August, is jarring due to the way in which the scene is presented as though confirming earlier suspicions on the part of the audience. The only previous indication of Father’s double-sidedness is her dressing in black, which given that she is blind may not be deliberate.

Steed and Mrs. Peel attempt to return to Sir August’s home of Hallucinogen Hall (named in stage directions and novel, but not on screen), but what should be a picnic is hampered by a swarm of robot bees directed by Bailey and armed with machine guns. They are quickly dispatched, but not before one holes the tank of Emma’s E-type, and another burning specimen lands in the resulting trail of petrol. Except all this is absent, rendering the explosion of the Jag, once the pair meet elderly agent Alice and set off across the Hall’s grounds, a non-sequiter, while Alice’s comments about Emma being a Gemini provide another example. Trying to reach the house through a hedge maze, Emma drops down a rabbit hole while Steed meets and duels with Sir August, before being knocked unconscious by Bad Emma. This marks a crucial departure from the ‘95 script, in which Steed enticed to kiss her, unaware that her lipstick is poisonous, though clearly not fatal. This places the actual kiss between Steed and Emma in better context, and lends logic to Steed’s less-than-convincing claim that he needed proof that she was the real Mrs. Peel.

Pretty much the barn scene in Goldfinger, except now
he's the villain and allowed to do that sort of thing.

Emma, meanwhile, has also been drugged, and is on the verge of being used by Sir August as an intimate plaything, but makes a woozy getaway when Alice provides a distraction. The sequence of her lost in the recursive and Escher-inspired rooms of the Hall is again baffling without knowledge of its name, or the novel, which describes Bad Emma toying with her counterpart, while dreaming of having her mad master for herself. She manages to make her escape, and in a reversal of earlier, is taken by Steed to his home, where, on the verge of closeness, they are interrupted by Father. The blind spymistress has seized power from her superior, and locks Emma in a padded cell to await interrogation.

As heavy snow begins to fall, Steed manages to talk his way into the Ministry archives, and with the help of Colonel I. “Invislble” Jones [14], uncovers the Gemini cloning project, run by Sir August and Father years earlier, and the existence of a former Ministry facility under the Serpentine, sold off long ago to Wonderland Weather. Though the script rushes the sequence somewhat, it is clear that BROLLY is an umbrella organisation, covertly encompassing Sir August’s interests. Father, however, attempts to make a get-away with both Emmas, but the original fights back, and the hot-air balloon they are travelling in crashes with the villains inside. Steed finds the fallen Emma embedded in a snowdrift, and they experience their afore-mentioned kiss.

Heading for a show-down, the agents venture across the Serpentine to an island at its centre, Emma now clad in the familiar black leather catsuit on which her clone had previously had the monopoly. The conclusion of the film is badly cut, with Sir August’s taunting of Emma and the discovery of the remaining dead teddies removed, though there is still time for the series’ only true catchphrase to make a slightly modified appearance: “Mrs. Peel, you’re needed!” Venturing into the inevitable underground base, Steed engages Sir August in a further duel, while Emma sees off Bailey and attempts to deactivate the villain’s equipment. Impaled on his own staff, De Wynter is struck by lightning and killed, and Steed and Mrs. Peel make good their escape before the whole place explodes and they enjoy a well-deserved glass of champagne with Mother.

The script is surprisingly rich in cultural references, with obvious overtones of The Tempest and Shakespeare in general – Sir August is ultimately, and literally, hoist by his own petard – and the diabolical mastermind’s name recalls Daphne DuMaurier’s story Rebecca, in which Maxim de Winter appears obsessed with his first wife. Blade Runner [15] provides an unlikely source of inspiration, with the line “Time to die” being used by a foe just before the speaker’s death, and the use of clones which are not quite human and not quite robotic. Another unfortunate parallel is the heavy recutting Blade Runner underwent after poor previews, though a Special Edition has been personally prepared by director Ridley Scott for future DVD release [16]. Perhaps strangely, there appear to be few overt references to the original series itself, though a villainous type becoming dangerously and zealously consumed with Mrs. Peel was a recurring storyline.

Both Chechik and Macpherson have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the truncated version of The Avengers. The director referred to the audiences that made the decision to recut the film as the “lowest common denominator”, and said that “the filmmakers’ views…are secondary to the audiences’”. His collaborator flatly stated that it was “certainly not the movie that was in the script” [17]. For such a daring venture as transferring an iconic show like The Avengers to the cinema screen, it is worth applauding the makers for succeeding in getting the project even released. Perhaps spending a mere 86 minutes in the film’s company could persuade an open-minded viewer that their efforts were not in vain after all.

tl;dr

[1] Like the ice cream, this is the most basic type of DVD, with no extra features whatsoever.

2 A little background. The Avengers TV series first aired in the UK in 1961, and starred Ian Hendry as a doctor whose wife is murdered by heroin smugglers, and is assisted in avenging (hence the title) her death by a shadowy secret agent named John Steed, played by Patrick MacNee. Hendry and MacNee would face other criminal type throughout the first season, before the former decided to leave the show. His replacement was one Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, and with time the series moved away from its darker roots and embraced a more freewheeling, almost surrealistic approach to crime-fighting. The villains became more outlandish, their plots more bizarre, the episodes more laced with a terribly English wit, and, by the time Blackman left to be replaced by Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, the show was a global hit. Megalomaniacal cat lovers, seven-foot robot murderers and the like became commonplace. Linda Thorson had taken over from Rigg by the time the series reached 1969, and the series drew to a close after 161 episodes. In the mid 70s, it was revived as The New Avengers, an Anglo-French co-production, with MacNee, whose portrayal of Steed had as time passed became less Humphrey Bogart and more Roger Moore, joined by Gareth Hunt and Joanna Lumley. It was not a great success, and only completed its 26 episodes thanks to additional funding from Canada.

3 There is a pleasing symmetry in Connery starring in an Avengers movie, as both Blackman and Rigg left the TV series to play Bond girls, in Goldfinger and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service respectively.

4 Reports vary over the preview length of the film. Separate sources have cited lengths of 150 and 115 minutes, though this disparity by may be the result of one figure being misheard as another. The released version runs almost exactly 90 minutes, with the commercial home release running at 86, due to the standard difference in frame rates between film and video.

5 The Avengers Original Movie Screenplay by Don Macpherson, Titan Books, 1998.

6 A little mathematics. With the addition of advertisements and trailers, the usual cinema programme for a 90 minute film will run for around 110 minutes. Another ten for the last audience to the leave and the next to enter will yield two hours between performances. If screenings start at 11am, six could be pressed into a single day, with the last ending at 10:50pm. Another five minutes on the running time would delay the last show’s finish to 11:20pm, even assuming the early start. In short, a 90 minute film allows more showings per day than a 95 minute film would.

7 Possibly in case we forget he’s Scottish. There are overt nods to the actor’s background throughout. He is always in tartan, and wears full highland dress when speaking to the World Council of Ministers. He also tees off with a globe, in certain acknowledgement of his love of golf. The filmmakers seem eager to play up the Scottish angle as, although Connery’s character is never seen eating a haggis or drinking malt whisky, he is twice observed starting a fight.

8 Kamen was a prolific composer for both film and television, with credits including Licence to Kill, X-Men and Edge of Darkness, as well as the entire Die Hard and Lethal Weapon series. He died in 2003.

9. www.soundtrack.net/features/article/?id=20

10 An interesting comment on the famously modernised gender politics of the series, that as well as Steed and Emma being equally capable, a wheelchair-bound Mother is superior to a blind Father.

11 Requires broadband.

12 A non-copyright UN.

13 This information, combined with the sight of a tax disc on Steed’s Bentley set to expire in December 1999, places the film’s timescale as July of that year, leading up to the 15^th. This is notably out of style with the series, which strove to achieve a 60s-inflected timelessness. The Avengers might seem less fantastic if one can remember what one was doing as Steed and Mrs. Peel thwarted another villainous plan. The novel foreshadows St. Swithin’s Day as important, with a password to leave the Prospero complex being a traditional rhyme: “St. Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain, for forty days it will remain”.

14 A voice-only cameo by Patrick MacNee. Dame Diana Rigg was apparently offered the role of Alice, but declined.

15 Another Warner production, interestingly.

16 This release, which would also have included the 1982 original and the 1992 “director’s cut”, was shelved due to a legal dispute with one of the film’s bond guarantors over a budget overrun during shooting. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_runner#versions for details.

17 Both quotes taken from an article in EON magazine, cited at www.animus-web.demon.co.uk/elan/toaug2498.htm