After extensive research, and contact with numerous insiders on both sides of The Atlantic, I can reveal exclusively on layscience.net the real reason that the film Creation failed to secure U.S. distribution. Jeremy Thomas, the film's producer whined that:
"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up."
And this party line was immediately bought hook, line and sinker by an army of disgruntled bloggers; none of whom thought to look at the pattern of distribution in other countries like the UK. Because it's only when you try and see the film that you realise that you'd be hard-pressed to find two cinemas showing it within sixty miles of each other. Why? Because it's utter, utter crap.
Any great biopic of Darwin should naturally lavish a great deal of attention on the Voyage of the Beagle. After all, if Peter Jackson can make a nine-hour trilogy about some vertically-challenged morons walking in New Zealand, getting something visually pleasing out of nature in the Galapagos Islands should be a doddle.
But no. The producers left out the voyage, as indeed they left out the theory itself, and most of the science. In fact they skipped over most of the interesting parts of Darwin's life, like a dumb kid skipping over questions on an exam paper they don't really understand, and turned the story of one of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind into Yet Another Romantic Period Drama.
Which brings us on to Paul Bettany. Bettany is a solid enough actor, but it's hard to bring credibility to a romantic role when you're being over-shadowed by a giant latex bald cap. Once I'd locked eyes on it, I found myself unable to focus on any other part of the screen as its mesmeric pink latex form displayed an emotional range that its occupant just couldn't quite match. It frowned, it wrinkled in laughter, it cocked a bit of latexy forehead in puzzlement; at one point I even thought I saw it cry.
In fact, as what seemed like days passed, it increasingly looked like the make-up department were waging a sick and twisted vendetta against the male stars of the film. This reached a nadir of sorts when Huxley appeared on screen as a sort of angry and disgruntled dwarf, tormenting a clearly unhappy Bettany with his visions of militant atheism.
Saying that Bettany looked unhappy doesn't really do justice to a film that explores misery like a suicidal emo teen explores the insides of their wrists. The message of the film is quite clear: evolution makes you miserable, kills children and makes you have arguments with your wife in a curiously stilted "British" accent. Evolution sucks.
As David Cox has mentioned at The Guardian, the misery is almost unrelenting: "Reel after reel, Darwin languishes in wearisome despond." He's miserable, the bald cap is miserable, the wife is concerned, angry-dwarf Huxley is agitated, the daughter is sick and eventually dies; at which point, rather than feeling any sympathy, you begin to realise that she's probably the lucky one in this film. Well before the end I gave up and walked out, wishing Darwin would just give up and be a sodding creationist.
In short then, this film is about as entertaining as a night in Butlins with my Gran, and probably the best argument for creationism I've ever seen. Here's the trailer. See if you can watch it without shooting yourself.
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Martin, Martin, Martin. I love layscience.net, but what a misearable cynic you are!
Although a trip round S.America would have made (he went to more places than just the f-ing Galapagoes) a very lovely and nice National-Geographic-podcast of a film, and likewise if they'd spent a long time on the science (actually I thought they did nice little riffs on the key inspirations for his ideas), they could have made a more expensive version of a BBC4 docu, but they would have, like you, totally missed the point of what they were trying to do: make a film about the human drama of Darwin's reaction to the loss of his daughter.
They clearly set out to make a film about one specific part of the man, not to cram his whole life, works and consequences into 100 mins. If you keep that in mind I think they made a brilliant, moving film that doesn't try too hard to present Darwin the legend. For enthusiasts, I thought they did an admirable job of slipping in a few visual nods to the sort of thoughts he had that led him to crystallise his theory. I am pretty well versed in evolutonary theory in both its Victorian and New Synthesis incarnations, and I did not find myself shaking my pedantic head at any point. As far as I'm concerned, thats got to be worth something.
I'll by you a pint later & harangue you a bit more ;)
And how am I meant to see this film without laughing, now you've alluded to the laughing latex?
Bastard.
I agree with AntibodyBoy, whilst I'd love to see a dramatisation of 'This thing of darkness', which details yet another aspect of Darwin's life, that of his relationship with Captain Robert Fitzroy, you can't cover anything in one biopic. A thorough big-budget dramatisation of his voyage of discovery would be quite a feat, but to be honest, I'd prefer that as a national history series by Attenborough (which has already been done in several guises).
Question is, do we remember Darwin only for his theory, or do we accept that he was a human, with vulnerabilities and a rather significant personal battle of whether he should write up his book?
Don't get me wrong, the film wasn't particularly memorable, it was overly sentimental and not a little depressing, but there was some good photography and, once you get past laughing at the bald cap, not a little emotive too.
There was nothing inherently incorrect with the small amount of factual matter that was presented, and there was more than a sneer directed at mindless religiosity, enough to erect the hackles of puritanical US viewers for sure.
Sure it was over-hyped, but then we've all had long discussions about PR, haven't we? ;-)
I should say there's two things that massively affect how I see this film:
1) I have a 2yr old daughter, so a massive part of my life is this amazing adventure watching her grow up and being a huge figure in her education (& entertainment!), but a chord is defintely struck when I think about how many times I've had the inevitable parent what-if-she dies-or worse internal freak-out.
2) I totally blub at the last paragraph of The Origin; it gets me every time!
I am so glad AntiBody Boy mentioned The Origin.
An awful lot of Darwin's life was taken up with what seems to be depression. I haven't seen Creation and it may well be a rotten film, but we do seem to have a pretty one-dimensional view of Darwin, so a different perspective will be welcome.
Martin, how can you post a credible film review if you left 'well before the end' ? For all you know Doc Brown could have arrived in his DeLorean and whisked Darwin off to modern day for a fist fight with Ken Ham.
But the trailer includes a chimpanzee wearing pyjamas (1:30). That's a film I've got to see.
Weol: "Martin, how can you post a credible film review if you left 'well before the end' ?"
Oh I can't. I know my limits!
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Idea for the inevitable Darwin 'reboot': a steampunk action flick inspired "by Darwin's guns n sportsmanship notebooks" - he's a pistol-packing adventurer who comes across a mystical artifact at the centre of an ancient Galapagos temple (actually a 3000-year old Mayan nuclear fusion reactor) and has to battle Richard Owen's re-animated "terrible lizard" minions to keep it from falling into the hands of the victorian mad man, hell-bent on using it to establish his South Kensington base as the throne of a new creationist empire.
...and it culminates in a glass-shattering fight in the atrium of the NHM between Darwin and Owen's Mayan-energy-infused re-animated zombie Jesus.
Wow, Martin! You really have it in for this movie, don't you?! I know you were not happy with the way the US distribution issues were picked up in the media and blogosphere (including by me) and kept predicting that this movie would suck. In fact, going by your tweets the past few weeks, you had already made up your mind about the movie without even seeing it - and I'm sorry to read that your partial viewing did nothing to change your mind... or reduce your bile over it! Why such extreme cynicism, mate?.
I too have been apprehensive about the movie ever since I heard about it, especially with mentions of "Annie's ghost" on the website, but most of what I've read/heard about the finished film has only allayed my fears. Except this rant of yours! I notice that the UK reviews are generally positive even if not entirely laudatory (62% freshness rating on the tomatometer), and several reviews by evolutionary biologists are positive as well. I haven't heard of any major errors about evolution either. You obviously wanted a completely different biopic than the one they chose to make - and that's fine - but you can't blame them for not fulfilling your vision, can you? Doesn't seem fair for you to not even give them a chance to tell a part of the rich story of Darwin's life. As others have written here, it would be too much to expect a complete biopic covering all of his life, from a small-budget film (unlike what Jackson had for his blockbuster which you apparently also hate!). In fact, I think the Beagle voyage is fairly well known to most people, but this later more quiet phase of his creativity and reluctance to publish are not, so its a bold choice for the filmmakers to focus on that. Further, the misery (physical and psychological) of that part of Darwin's life is also much written about, even if the filmmakers may have overdone it.
Besides, I find your contention that US distributors balked at picking this film up because of its poor quality laughable: have you seen the kind of dreck they routinely saturate the market with?! If the film is really as sympathetic to the creationist cause as you suggest, there'd be an even bigger market over here, surely! Yes, of course, any film about a Victorian scientist agonizing over serious issues is not likely to be shown on thousands of screens like a summer blockbuster, but to dump on this because its not being shown in theaters around every corner seems silly.
Like AntibodyBoy, I too am a father to young daughters, and am therefore looking forward to seeing this depiction of the great man's relationship with his young daughter. Whenever the film does turn up here in the US. And in the meantime, I'll try to forget your rant here... :-)
Why would they not show "Creation", but they are showing "The Invention of Lying" which is about as blatantly atheist as any movie I've seen (puts The Life of Brian to shame in that regard, although, it's not as funny...)
Indeed, and of course they showed Religulous. So sorry, but the atheist excuse is wrong. It didn't get picked up for the same reason that actually very few British cinemas are showing it - it's not very good.
Now, I take Madhusudan's point - what I'd call the Transformers 2 Gambit (there are shitter films released), but my response to that is that I'm talking "Hollywood good", not "good good". Transformers II will appeal to horny teenage boys with attention deficits and will, like many other trashy films, make money. It knows it's shit, but it also knows its audience. Creation on the other hand is aimed at a niche market - evolution geeks and atheists - and yet decides to mawkishly dwell on the importance of religion, feature a ghost as a major character, and glosses over most of the interesting bits of science. I don't see any evidence that the producers understood the audience they were going for.
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In what way does it gloss over the interesting bits of the science? IMHO the film absolutely nailed Darwin's major major major mind-blowing contribution (as far as the person on the street is concerned) - namely that all the brutal & shitty parts of life (starvation, parasitisation, predation & 'senseless' loss) are absolutely necessary and central to the emergence of intelligence, beauty and love.
For my mass-market reboot, I'm thinking Vin Diesel as Charles, Megan Fox as Emma. Too much?
Well, I can't comment on whether the film nails or glosses over the science since I haven't seen it yet. I know a number of biologists had no complaints about the science: Richard Dawkins spoke about it in passing on the Daily Mayo last week, complaining about historical accuracy and the portrayal of Huxley, but not the science. Likewise, Eugenie Scott, who, as the director of the National Center for Science Education, is at the forefront of the creationism battle in the US, liked the movie for its scientific accuracy while quibbling about it taking liberties with history. But both Dawkins and Scott felt the historical inaccuracies were probably alright since it made for good storytelling! And as for the storytelling itself, my current favorite movie critic, your own Mark Kermode, liked it also (that link to the BBC review works only in the UK!), recommending it as movie of the week! That's enough to make me want to see it, so I'm glad the film did get a distributor in the US.