Clayface Is A Standalone DC Movie, And Its Stars Think That's Perfect [Exclusive]
by Bill Bria · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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The era of the comic book movie, more specifically the films adapted from Marvel and DC superhero comics, might be dwindling, but it's far from over. After all, we're only 26 years away from the time when comic book movies became big business for Hollywood, with the early '00s proving that superheroes who weren't Batman or Superman could attract audiences. However, while "Lanterns" has garnered acclaim and "Avengers: Doomsday" has pre-sold out theaters before it premieres in December, there's no doubt that the comic book movie is in a state of flux. The shared cinematic universe approach that's been all the rage for the last decade or so has proven to be more of a hindrance than a help lately, causing fatigue in audiences who don't want to feel pressured to wade through mediocre films and streaming series in order to keep up with future plot lines.
This is why James Gunn and Peter Safran were so adamant about taking their stewardship of DC Studios in a different direction, putting an emphasis on prioritizing individual scripts and story over multi-year crossover plans. Their first few efforts, the aforementioned "Lanterns" series as well as last year's "Superman" and this summer's "Supergirl," have appeared to support this ethos, but only obliquely, and with mixed results.
It's their latest film, this week's "Clayface," which really feels like the proof of concept. The movie is a body horror tragic thriller which is fully focused on its small cast of characters, and there are no awkwardly shoehorned in cameos or endless post-credit scenes in sight. I recently had the chance to speak to the film's stars, Tom Rhys Harris and Naomi Ackie, and they told me how refreshing and freeing it was to make a film set in the DC universe that never feels beholden to it.
The drama of Clayface resonates because it's allowed to stand alone
In "Clayface," Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a fictional up and coming A-list actor. After a night of celebratory debauchery with the wrong woman leads to him receive a debilitating facial disfigurement, he seeks out scientist Caitlyn Coor (Naomi Ackie), whose cutting-edge work could be applied to fixing Matt's face. As with so many mad science body horror tragedies, the experiment does not go smoothly.
As you can see, none of that premise involves super-powered people punching each other, or taking over the city, or any of the usual comic book movie trappings. Though the film does have a larger-than-life genre quality to it, it isn't beholden to a house style, nor does it need to make space for cameos. Ackie explained how she thinks all the film needs to be special is the larger context of the DC Universe, and the rest takes care of itself:
"I think the beauty of this film is that it's a contained story. I think I just love a contained story in a very well-known universe. So people know the context that everyone is in. And yet this film is about these two characters who take something too far romantically and also physically and medically and ... murder-ly, if that's not a real word. Not 'if' — that is not a real word. [laughs] So I think that it was something really special about being in such a vast universe and focusing on this one relationship and keeping it quite contained and small."
Harries backed Ackie up, exclaiming, "There's something epic in the intimacy of being able to exist in Gotham and tell the story of this pocket of Gotham that we get to see in the film."
The standalone nature of Clayface allowed Tom Rhys Harries to dig deeper into his character
One element of any genre movie that's tricky to get right is creating richly developed characters. Many genre movies stumble when attempting this, if for no better excuse than there being too many distractions like visual effects, action, and so on. "Clayface" is an outlier in that way, for while the movie certainly has a lot of effects and even some action setpieces, it never loses sight of its characters or its story. This is likely why Naomi Ackie and Tom Rhys Harries believe it was perfect to work on a comic book movie whose emphasis isn't on spectacle.
For his part, Harries had to keep an eye on not getting too introspective, as the character of Matt (aka Clayface) lends itself to poking at an actor's insecurities and anxieties. As he explained, building the character had to also come from external sources, not just from within himself:
"I think inevitably any project that you do becomes somewhat introspective. I mean, you can't get too lost in the weeds of ... there's more to be found outside there than there is inside there. [...] I think that there's that thing as well of [there] being your own self-perception and what people think of you, and how the distance between those two things is often far wider than any of us would like to maybe admit or look at."
Indeed, one of the central themes of "Clayface" is how Matt is both victim and monster, a mixture which makes the film hew closer to classic Universal horror movies than traditional superhero films. It's just another example of how "Clayface" is unique in the landscape of comic book movies.
"Clayface" is in theaters now.