Geek Magazine - Free Access Issue - 34
DAVID LEITCH LOVES A GOOD FIGHT
scene. Given his two decades as a stunt
man, the fact that he served as an
uncredited co-director of John Wick and
is credited as the director of July's Atomic
Blonde and Deadpool 2 - the shooting
of which he stepped away from to talk to
Geek - that love is reassuring.
"The reason fight scenes are so
important to film is that they're personal
and they bring the characters together," he
says. "They bring you face to face and they
can be very emotional. Sometimes with
these big CG-set piece movies, you're so
detached from the characters that it loses
something. It's great for spectacle, but it
really isn't emotional and isn't as rewarding
as when you watch a great fight scene -
which, by the way, is a fraction of the cost
to produce. And they're more visceral."
Atomic Blonde has got visceral written
all over it. Inspired by the graphic novel
The Coldest City, the film's setting is Berlin
in 1989, on the eve of the collapse of the
Berlin Wall. The expected shift in alliances
between the world's superpowers is in
danger from a spy ring intent on triggering
World War III. Enter Charlize Theron's British
agent Lorraine Broughton, who teams up
with James McAvoy's David Percival, Berlin
station chief. They attempt to keep things
on track.
Says Leitch, "When I read it, I thought
about the city of Berlin, where I've done six
movies and I was, like, 'But Berlin is nothing
like this. Berlin is punk rock. Berlin is graffiti.
Berlin is gray on one side and colorful on
the other. How do I make this rock and
roll?' I started to deconstruct what was on
the page and tried to make it what I call a
punk-rock spy thriller. As we started to add
music and set-piece ideas, it became its
own beast. I made an outline and I pitched
it to Charlize Theron and said, 'This is the
movie I would like to make this into.' She
was, like, 'That sounds cool. Let's do that.'"
Leitch looked at the film as a wishfulfillment retrospective on the '80s,
34
ISSUE 01
by Edward Gross
DIRECTOR DAVID LEITCH GOES
ATOMIC
■ GLAM SLAM:
Charlize Theron
opens up a can
of substantial
hurt in Atomic
Blonde.
aggregating the vibe of that period's action
films as well as the music video motif.
"I guess I'm nostalgic for it, because it's
definitely the era I grew up in," he reflects.
"But I think those movies really defined the
everyman, empathetic action character,
like John McClane in Die Hard. He's got
problems, but we like him. We worry
about his family. The bigger solve is the
relationship problem, but it's all wrapped
up in crazy action. He's a little underserved.
His villains are a little bit stronger and
tougher, and he's got to rise to the occasion
and you've got to beat him up to see him
succeed. I just don't think you could do it
better than they did it; ever since I saw
that movie, I've been striving to achieve
that with the characters that I design in
action films."
Part of that design regarding Atomic
Blonde is to not dwell on the fact that the
lead character is a woman.
"I just wasn't going to address it," he
says matter-of-factly. "They're not going
to say, 'She's the best female spy we
have.' They're just going to say, 'She's one
of our best agents.' We're going to put a
female character in there and treat her
like a quintessential male character in one
of these movies. By doing that, it feels
provocative to some people, but at the
end of the day it's really satisfying. It's real;
there are spies in the world that are taking
the same risks and going through the same
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