Constantine Behind the Scenes | Two Decades of Damnation | Warner Bros. Entertainment

Why do I love Constantine? I mean, I love his anger. I love his humor. I mean, he's not the nicest guy. He was very film noir. And every day was this wonderful mixture of production design and cinematography and writing and performance. It was the best of what you hope for in making a movie. It was Francis Lawrence's first movie. The fact that it was his first feature was a benefit for the film because of his enthusiasm. It's so skillful and precise. The sequences work beautifully. The movie is very much about singular vision. It was a huge learning experience. A huge opportunity to be able to do a movie. You had no pressure, right? No pressure. No pressure whatsoever. It took me nine months to get the job. I had done primarily music videos. And I had to convince all these different people that I was responsible and had a vision. And my last meeting was going to be Keanu. Yeah. But he had said, no music video directors. And so I was like, oh my God. But luckily, I passed the test. Your take on the film, I liked it so much. I felt very confident in a way. It was just like, let's go. Behind every wall, every window. The world behind the world. What I think interested me in Akiva and Keanu was this idea of the world behind the world. There is a verisimilitude to the world, despite it being a magical world. It's a very, very grounded world. Constantine is a guy who deals with archetypal good and evil represented in Judeo-Christian blah, blah, blah. But he's a total curmudgeon. He just ******* hates it. That was the hook. So everything gets really visceral, really gritty, and really cranky. And it led me into the world of off, off Hollywood LA. What I really wanted to do was to try and avoid anything that had been overshot, that we'd seen a bunch before. Let's steer clear and stay fresh. So let's go to the back of a bowling alley. The sets were just stunning. This unbelievable craftsmanship and design and work that went into those sets. That amazing mausoleum, do you remember that? For Midnight's Reliquary? Oh, yeah. It was like in Watts or something. Like, I'd never seen that before. I really liked just how every set had a personality, but also how connected it was to the drama and the story. I think John's apartment was pretty cool. I just liked the steel shutters. His apartment was almost a world behind the world. The patterns on the floor and the tiling. And the markings in the doorway. There's a neo-noir feel, despite the color palette. And that's part of the cleverness and part of what is special about the movie. It's a saturated noir, if there is such a thing. You'll notice in the film, the blacks are super saturated. So that gives a heavy bottom note to everything. Playing the green heavily gives you a quality that's a little bit underwater. It lends itself to feeling like you're rolling around in the gutter on a gray day. Heaven and hell are right here. When you cross over, time stops. In the original version of the script that I read, hell was like a black void. It was like sort of oily floors and piles of garbage and things like that. We had to find fresh ways into things like Satan, hell. And so in discussions with Akiva early on, wouldn't it be interesting if there was a hell version of where you are and a heaven version of where you are? If you were in Brooklyn, New York, and then you transitioned, you would be in Brooklyn hell. And that liberated us. The hardest thing about any kind of fully imagined world is it could be anything. So once you give yourself some rules, it's a little bit more like coloring inside the lines. We studied those original sort of nuclear tests. There's just this intense, hot, searing wind that's blowing all the time and breaking things apart. Suddenly, the idea of hell kind of came alive. We had a big, long section of highway. A bunch of cars that we made to look burnt out. And it took us a long time to figure out how to create that kind of ropey, overgrown drape that's covering all of the cars. It looked pretty good in person and better with the effects. I love all that stuff. But then also the wind machine and then the tie and trying to fix the coat. All of that gives you behavioral detail, which connects to all of the effects that are kind of combined. And we had the cool creatures, too. The creature design was great, and we used Stan Winston's company. Scoop out the soul. We designed the demons to have the tops of their head missing. These kind of brainless, eyeless creatures. They could smell. Yeah. So good. I love the cinematography. It's absolutely beautiful. It's stunningly beautiful. I always thought of it as being a very graphic movie. So there was no handheld in it. Everything was on dollies. And a lot of what I was trying to do was sort of create symmetry in frames. Francis, he's very specific. And that works beautifully when he has the kind of collaborator that Philippe is with him. Philippe Rousselot, the cinematographer I'd worked with previously. Philippe, who obviously was quite the veteran already, was supportive and collaborative on that front and wasn't annoyed by me picking the shots. And primarily focused on the lighting, which is what I think he's really, truly brilliant at. China balls on booms. And it was this beautiful sort of soft light that was really perfect. And I think he really loves and understands human faces. I love the chiaroscuro that Philippe did with the faces emerging out of shadow. There's like the intimate shots where you see that noir stylization. Then you have crazy action shots like when the character Isabelle leaps and comes flying into the pool. It's like every shot is so composed. There's a lot of water in the movie. The drip out of the spout in the tub. When Rachel walks through the door, her hair. And then you did some cool top shots right out of the gate. You get this almost objective, subjective dance in each sequence. There's something that's presentational. But then there's also something that's got style but intimacy. One of my favorite shots is actually the one of your watch after you slit your wrists. Going down into the watch and seeing time slow down as the blood is curling around through the water and the broken glass. That was a nice one. I guess God has a plan for all of us. The cast was stellar, top to bottom. Every performance is just unique and surprising and wonderful. Last is these gods of cinema now. The more extreme the subject matter and the characterization, angel, demon, etc. The more grounded the acting has to be. We were really fortunate to have extraordinary actors anchoring the movie. Much obliged, thank you. Djimon was a first choice. Pruitt was a first choice too. Tilda was also my first choice for Gabriel. And luckily all these people said yes. We had a lot of fun. Humor me. Don't I always? Shia was great. One of my favorite shots and moments is with Djimon. With Midnight. He blesses Jazz. Then he turns to John. And John's just like, come on. And he just walks away. But he keeps going. I love that. We're just making stuff up and it's just so fun. What is it exactly with you and Bugs? I just like them. Yeah. Who doesn't? Keanu, he trusted me. So the trust of that relationship I felt was the foundation. Then you just sort of play the scene. On the house. We were trying to find somebody that was believable as an LAPD detective. But also felt like they could inhabit this kind of supernatural, magical world. But it was really hard to find somebody that had kind of the combination of all of that. And then when we met with Rachel, I was like, okay, she could really do it. Plus she's an amazing actress. Just before my sister was committed, she started talking about demons. I think they brainwashed her into stepping off that roof. Sounds like a theory detective. Satan. This was one of the hardest kind of nuts to crack in the movie. We've seen Satan so many ways. You've seen the sort of seductress. You've seen the child. You've seen the horned beast. What's the new way? How can we present Satan in a way that's really interesting? Hello, John. John. Francis said to all of us, I have found my Satan. We're thinking of some version of Tim Curry endlessly. Or some monster. And Francis brings in Peter Stormare. He just in that very steadfast, determined, but kindly unyielding way said, I really believe in this. And we all went, okay, just be right. And he was. Extraordinarily so. John Constantine. John! Your son truly belongs in hell. This is Constantine. John Constantine. Asshole. Let's remaster it so that new people can experience it for themselves. The idea that there's a generation of people now watching, having a connection to something that they weren't alive for when it was being made, I think that's fabulous. What's important is that folks get to see the movie the way Francis imagined it. And really enjoy a singularly cinematic experience. Like riding a bike. It's been an interesting journey emotionally, I think, with this movie. We got by box office wise. We didn't get the best reviews. You have this mixed, strange feeling when the movie comes out. And then it's just weird over the last 20 years. I would travel around the world and everybody would have Constantine DVDs. And you're like, wow, there's a lot of Constantine fans. And you just feel that sort of growing love for this movie. Rotten Tomatoes even put out articles on movies that Rotten Tomatoes got wrong. Oh yeah? Yeah, and Constantine's on there. And to just sort of feel that kind of change of perception of a movie is gratifying. The fact that maybe we can get some new audiences in or just have a higher resolution version for the fans that have been loving this movie for the last 20 years. I think it's all really exciting. It's a beautiful film to look at. It's superbly acted. It's wonderfully written. And we had a really fun time making it. And it's against all odds too, right? It's against all odds, keeping going. Sure about this? No.