W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K |^105
COMPLETE GUIDE
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
conformist mentality of the military.
Another 15 years on The Invasion struck
- the fourth and (to date) most recent
adaptation of Finney’s story, which shifts
events to Washington and removes the ‘body
snatching’ and duplicating element by having
it involve an alien infection that changes
people’s brains instead of their bodies. Helmed
by Downfall’s Oliver Hirschbiegel and starring
Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, it was a
troubled production plagued by reshoots that
were scripted by the Wachowskis and directed
by V For Vendetta’s James McTeigue.
Veronica Cartwright returned for a scene-
stealing cameo as an angst-ridden patient
of Kidman’s therapist, where she nervously
explains that her husband is no longer her
husband. However, as originally shot and
conceived, the scene was to have more
of an overt reference to Cartwright’s
previous role from Kaufman’s Invasion
Of The Body Snatchers.
“Oliver requested meeting me because I had
been in the [other] one and so I met with him
and my character could’ve survived and taken
on a whole new identity and so here it was, it
was happening all over again!” she recalls.
A year later, Cartwright had her scene
reshot by McTeigue, and as a result her
character lost that instrumental connection with
the 1978 fi lm. “It was different. [Originally]
I was more paranoid about things that were
happening and it made it more like I’d been
through this before and I knew something really
wasn’t good,” she continues.
“I thought Oliver was doing a great job.
He was bringing great eeriness to the whole
thing... he had his own cinematographer,
which he had worked with for a long time
and he really added a sort of grunginess
to it which made it much more interesting.
Then McTeigue came in... it just looks like
an entirely different movie; it sort of got
nicer. It was odd. I don’t think it melds very
well together.”
Indeed, the extensive reshoots resulted in
a tonally imbalanced movie, one that builds
slowly and suspensefully but is compromised
by a sudden jarring frenetic pace, a gutless
optimistic ending, along with a questionable
overall message that seems to suggest only
mindless drones are capable of enacting
world peace.
Surely, if the next instalment draws on our
current threatening totalitarian climate, where
we are already trying desperately to hold
onto our humanity, it will have enough real-life
substance for subtle yet snappier allegory,
where humans once again face the threat of
depersonalisation and must fi ght, and thus stay
awake, to survive.Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is
available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.“WHY DO WE
ALWAYS TH I N K
THESE THINGS
COME IN METAL
SHIPS?”
VERONICA CARTWRIGHTThere’s never going to be
a way out...The most recent version
misfi red spectacularly.COMPLETE GUIDE
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K |^105
conformist mentality of the military.
Another 15 years on The InvasionThe InvasionThe Invasion struck struck
- the fourth and (to date) most recent
adaptation of Finney’s story, which shifts
events to Washington and removes the ‘body
snatching’ and duplicating element by having
it involve an alien infection that changes
people’s brains instead of their bodies. Helmed
by Downfall’sDownfall’sDownfall’s Oliver Hirschbiegel and starring Oliver Hirschbiegel and starring
Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, it was a
troubled production plagued by reshoots that
were scripted by the Wachowskis and directed
by V For Vendetta’sV For Vendetta’sV For Vendetta’s James McTeigue. James McTeigue.
Veronica Cartwright returned for a scene-
stealing cameo as an angst-ridden patient
of Kidman’s therapist, where she nervously
explains that her husband is no longer her
husband. However, as originally shot and
conceived, the scene was to have more
of an overt reference to Cartwright’s
previous role from Kaufman’s Invasion
Of The Body Snatchers.
“Oliver requested meeting me because I had
been in the [other] one and so I met with him
and my character could’ve survived and taken
on a whole new identity and so here it was, it
was happening all over again!” she recalls.
A year later, Cartwright had her scene
reshot by McTeigue, and as a result her
character lost that instrumental connection with
the 1978 fi lm. “It was different. [Originally]
I was more paranoid about things that were
happening and it made it more like I’d been
through this before and I knew something really
wasn’t good,” she continues.
“I thought Oliver was doing a great job.
He was bringing great eeriness to the whole
thing... he had his own cinematographer,
which he had worked with for a long time
and he really added a sort of grunginess
to it which made it much more interesting.
Then McTeigue came in... it just looks like
an entirely different movie; it sort of got
nicer. It was odd. I don’t think it melds very
well together.”
Indeed, the extensive reshoots resulted in
a tonally imbalanced movie, one that builds
slowly and suspensefully but is compromised
by a sudden jarring frenetic pace, a gutless
optimistic ending, along with a questionable
overall message that seems to suggest only
mindless drones are capable of enacting
world peace.
Surely, if the next instalment draws on our
current threatening totalitarian climate, where
we are already trying desperately to hold
onto our humanity, it will have enough real-life
substance for subtle yet snappier allegory,
where humans once again face the threat of
depersonalisation and must fi ght, and thus stay
awake, to survive.Invasion Of The Body SnatchersInvasion Of The Body SnatchersInvasion Of The Body Snatchers is is
available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.“WHY DO WE “WHY DO WE “WHY DO WE
ALWAYS TH I N K ALWAYS TH I N K ALWAYS TH I N K
THESE THINGS THESE THINGS THESE THINGS
COME IN METAL COME IN METAL COME IN METAL
SHIPS?”
VERONICA CARTWRIGHTVERONICA CARTWRIGHTThere’s never going to be
a way out...The most recent version
misfi red spectacularly.happening and it made it more like I’d been