Has God foresaken us?
The comments that really suggest a different film are del Toro’s endless religious references and the “Has God foresaken us?” motif running through the film. After all, the engineered bugs were referred to as the Judas Breed. Yet, while it is definitely noticeable at times — the “Jesus Saves” sign at the beginning — for the most part what he was going for is pretty much gone.
This religious theme would have had its climactic moment in the alternate ending as well featuring Giancarlo Gianni’s character encountering the “cluster fuck” of insects del Toro described in the previous note:
Giancarlo finds Chuy (Alexander Goodwin) and that’s where we discover the giant wall of fuck, the male fucking all the females, the female attached to his penis… it was an absolutely nightmarish moment and the character of Giancarlo sees the creatures coming for him and he uses his razor blade to cut his own throat saying, “God cannot see this.”
I really liked that because I felt he could bring the religious angle to the movie. He could say, “What if God has abandoned us? What if he has made us not his favorite creatures anymore? What if these things are taking over?” And all of that is lost in the movie and those are things I truly missed.
Del Toro described one way of looking at the events in the film saying it was a “desecration of whatever we hold holy, and whatever gives us our place in the evolutionary chain and spiritual chain.”
Second unit crap
The one point del Toro hammers home more than any other is how much he apparently despises second unit work on his films. Among the second unit directors on Mimic, IMDb lists Jeff J.J. Authors and Rick Bota, but based on del Toro’s comments it would seem Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Desperado) did most of the second unit filming.
However, in this director’s cut he is convinced he was finally able to excise the majority of the second unit work saying, “So what you’re seeing now is almost completely free — is 95% free — of second unit crap according to me. No fake scares, no false screams to get the people jumping, no unnecessary explanation scenes and so on and so forth.”
His comments don’t end there though:
The first duty in this director’s cut, for me, was to remove all the crap. To remove all the crap that was shot by second unit, either by one, two or three, whichever. There were three different directors of second unit — some of which I got rid of, some of which Miramax kindly suggested at some point — and most of the stuff they shot was stuff that I was refusing to shoot. Unfortunately, for me, they also shot one of the scenes that is my favorite piece of writing that we did…
This movie is what left me with the complete conviction that there should be no second unit.
[The following comment comes during the scene where two kids and dog are killed by the mimic]
Out of one of the units that was directed by Robert Rodriguez, he shot seven days I think, or eight days, and we had to reshoot — I had to reshoot — most of it and I was able to salvage my storyboards for these particular scenes and shoot it exactly as I wanted. So not a single shot remains from second unit and it’s one of my favorite scenes I ever shot.
The only thing I could think of while listening to this is just how did he plan on shooting something the size of The Hobbit without second unit? Peter Jackson has Andy Serkis shooting a ton of second unit scenes for him right now.
There is one scene, however, where it keeps cutting back and forth and he keeps saying, “That’s me. That’s Robert. That’s me. That’s Robert.” He definitely doesn’t forget a shot.
The Title Sequence
If you watch the title sequence for Mimic it shouldn’t take you long to think of another title sequence from two years earlier that it (pun intended) mimics. Give the Mimic sequence a watch to the right and then read on.
When we were planning Mimic — early, early on — I, unfortunately, went to see a movie that was using exactly the same look we were looking for that was called Se7en by David Fincher.
I was shocked that now I had to lose a lot of the ideas we had for the look of the film, but the one thing that stuck, in my mind, was how great the title sequence of that movie was. The title sequence of Se7en was impeccable and it opened a whole new era. So we became obsessed with hiring the same designers, Kyle Cooper and Imaginary Forces.
The idea was to make a subtle joke about what the experience was to shoot this movie by putting a bug with a pin through it being dragged over my credit “directed by”. It can finally be revealed why that image is there.
If you need a refresher, here are the far superior opening titles from Se7en:
And with that I come to a close, but I haven’t included everything from this little gem. Even the introductory prologue features some great comments on what is and isn’t suspenseful when it comes to giving the audience too much information.
Del Toro says, “They [the audience] don’t need to understand a movie, they need to live the movie. Correct? I mean, when was the last time you understood [a movie] and said it was great because you understood it? I say fuck that shit.”
I’m sure anyone that’s spent hours discussing and pondering the ins and outs of Memento, Mulholland Dr., Inception, The Fountain, 2001, Persona, Donnie Darko, Solaris, Last Year at Marienbad and countless others are standing up and cheering right about now.
There are few discs I would ever recommend because the features are more impressive than the film itself, but for anyone that enjoyed this article and what del Toro is saying this is a disc for you.
