MING-NA WEN
The Mulan and Mandalorian star is embracing the action in her life
Chatting to a SHIELD agent requires the highest level of clearance, y’know.
In her three-decade-long acting career, Ming-Na Wen has embodied, or given voice to, a broad spectrum of female characters that have often changed the pop culture landscape. In Mulan (1998), she voiced the eponymous warrior right into modern legend as the first Asian Disney princess. On the small screen, she has also consistently lent her dulcet tones to high-profile animated series like The Batman, Spawn and Guardians Of The Galaxy. Arguably, her seven seasons playing Agent Melinda May in Agents Of SHIELD has helped create a new template for the mature superheroine. It has actually been a year since Ming-Na said goodbye to the show – and she tells SFX that her life has been anything but sedate.
We get a new May in this final season, and one that gets to time travel to the past…
Yes, Marvel created this timeline with us going back to Agent Carter, so it was really fun to travel through time and pick up a very special guest character, with Enver Gjokaj playing Daniel Sousa.
Did that invigorate the show for the core cast?
It was exciting because nine times out of 10, we’re always in a dark room environment and in an apocalyptic environment where we wear one outfit pretty much throughout the entire season. It was really refreshing to be able to see each other in different outfits. That alone brings a new element to the characters, just because you have to deal with that time period and the different types of clothing that we’re wearing. We really loved it.
How did it feel to say goodbye to the series?
It felt great to feel like we can move on to other projects or do other things, but at the same time it’s incredibly sad to be leaving people that we’ve worked with and have known. It’s our family. I remember shooting that last scene for the last episode and when everybody showed up and applauded and cheered, it was very emotional because it’s not only leaving a family that you’ve been with for seven years, but it’s also leaving a character that you’ve embodied for the same amount of hours as you lived your own life.
After playing such a rigorous role for so long, did you want to avoid the genre path for a while?
Well, I shot a pilot where I played a mom, and that was one of the things that I wanted – just to be at a dining table, eating regular food and having regular conversations – not dealing with aliens or time travel or any insane ideas that are in the Marvel world. The show didn’t get picked up. And then of course, lo and behold, I’m like, “Okay, I’m not going to do any more action.” And I get The Mandalorian!
How did you come to play Fennec Shand?
Well, it was amazing because, first of all, it was for one episode. I knew how my character ends. And then, it was just having a conversation with [executive producers] Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau about the character, becoming very intrigued with her and talking to them for 45 minutes.
I was like, “Okay, these are my people.” They spoke my language. They were both such Star Wars fans and it was like, “Well, why wouldn’t I want to do something like this? This is my dream.”
Did you have a goosebumps moment on set?
The first day we get on set, and it’s this digital background screen. At first, I’m like, “Okay, interesting.” I knew from the script where I was, but it just felt like the normal thing. You have a rock, you pretend and then they CGI stuff in later. But when they turned on the lights and it was the two sunsets of the Tatooine landscape, I was blown away. My favourite scene in Star Wars is when Luke Skywalker approaches the binary suns during the sunset and the theme plays, and he just believes that there is so much more for him. And when I saw that, I’m like, “Holy shit, I’m here!”
What are you most proud of about the role of Mulan?
What Mulan means to me is how much it’s impacted so many people. When I go to these conventions, I’m always astounded that as many fans there are for SHIELD, there are so many fans from Mulan. And also just by the mere fact that she had to dress up as a boy, it’s also helped the trans community by having a Disney character, especially, represent them in some way. They’ll be crying because it had that much of an impact in elevating their own selfconfidence and their own self-worth. For me, that has been the biggest impact.
The final season of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. is airing on Wednesdays on ABC in the US. UK details are still TBC.
wHO HASN’T experienced that unshakable feeling that forces are somehow conspiring against you? There’s a dark inevitability underpinning human existence that’s hard to ignore. Perhaps that’s what gives good horror films their relatable dread-inducing power. To a significant degree this is what Final Destination, which emerged in 2000 as the postmodern slasher horror film resurgence was reaching overkill, capitalised on. Concerning a teenager’s scary premonition of a plane crash that subsequently prevents him and a group of students from dying, only for death to claim their lives one by one later in gruesome fashion, Final Destination had a bleak preordained sensibility that suggested you can never cheat death even if you disrupt its design. It was the perfect antidote to the relentless killer-in-a-mask antagonist, precisely because the Grim Reaper wasn’t depicted. Instead, death was hidden behind the morbid possibilities of the everyday. “The studio was having a hard time getting their head around not having a physical killer,” writer Jeffrey Reddick, who created the story, tells SFX. “They were like, ‘We don’t understand it; you can’t fight it, you can’t see it!’ We were like, ‘That’s the point – it’s death.’” Reddick came up with the concept for Final Destination (which was originally called “Flight 180” and written as a spec script for The X-Files) while he was working as a marketing intern at New Line Cinema. He had read an article about a woman on vacation whose mother called to warn her not to take her scheduled flight. “She said, ‘Don’t take the flight you’re on tomorrow, I have a bad feeling about it,’” says Reddick. “So she changed flights and the flight she was meant to take crashed, and that kind of sparked the idea. However, creatively I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with it until I decided I wanted to use it as an X-Files episode.” Fortuitously, some colleague friends at New Line foresaw the feature film potential of Reddick’s idea and suggested he submit it to Warren Zide and fellow producer Craig Perry, who were fishing for horror stories. Reddick sent it, along with pages of various other horror ideas, but the producers focused in on the “preordained death” premise of “Flight 180”. “It was interesting to me because it’s something that everybody is afraid of,” he reflects. “Instead of running away from death, the whole idea was that it’s inevitable and you don’t know when or where it’s going to happen. If somebody cheats death, that’s a really cool set-up.” To realise his vision, New Line originally sought horror maestro Clive Barker to direct, but ultimately two talents closely connected to the show the story was originally written for took the reins. “At one point [New Line chairman] Bob Shaye came to me and said, ‘What do you think about James Wong and Glen Morgan from The X-Files?’” Reddick recalls. “I was a big X-Files fan and thought they’d done some of the best episodes, so I was very happy.” James Wong undertook directorial duties. He and co-writer Glen Morgan were also instrumental in bringing another inventive element to the table. “They came up with the Rube Goldberg device that death uses everyday things around us to kill us. I think that was a really masterful thing to do because then it had people looking for death all around them,” Reddick says. “In my original take it was more that death played psychological tricks on the victims to drive them to commit suicide, which was kind of a little dark, so I’m really happy that they came up with that whole angle. I think it settles things in reality.” Indeed, the tension-generating terror of Final Destination hinges on this suspense factor that keeps audiences imaginatively anticipating characters’ demises, only for expectations to be subverted when the gasp-inducing deaths play out differently. Perhaps the most gruesomely inventive demise remains a bathroom strangulation sequence that involves autonomous water and a clothes wire. “It’s really fun… Of course, people know that a character’s going to die, but then it’s like you can fake them out three or four times and really build suspense upon suspense, which I think is part of the film’s charm.” For lead clairvoyant character Alex Browning, Reddick always envisioned someone relatable in the role who wasn’t a traditional Hollywood pretty boy. “It’s funny… I worked at New Line and they were like, ‘Who’s your wish list for this?’, so I wrote Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst for the leads and then they went on to do Spider-Man,” he laughs. “But I always believe the right people end up getting cast, and I was really happy with who they cast and now can’t imagine anybody else playing those roles.” Devon Sawa and Ali Larter (playing Clear Rivers) would embody those leads, with the likes of Seann William Scott and Kerr Smith rounding out the doomed teen ensemble – while in a scene-stealing cameo, as the intentionally nebulous mortician Bludworth, was the Candyman himself, Tony Todd. Incidentally, the majority of the characters’ surnames were nods to classic horror film directors: the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Tod Browning, Lon Chaney, Val Lewton and FW Murnau are referenced.
Death is inevitable and you don’t know when or where it’s going to happen
Along with refusing to personify death as a character (it was ominously represented by a shadowy vapour) and in order to strengthen the film’s universal appeal, Reddick purposely refused to tie death to any specific religion or culture. “I think that made it scarier for people who don’t believe in the afterlife or have specific religious or cultural beliefs, as they could project whatever they wanted to on the death. So it was very important to me that we didn’t show [a death figure],” he continues. “I think that’s part of the reason the movie did really well internationally – it crosses over any cultural boundaries.” Following initial test screenings, however, an element that was altered was the original sentimental ending, which saw Alex sacrificially die by fiery electrocution, Clear give birth to their child (demonstrating by producing life you can, in a way, beat death) and Kerr Smith’s character Carter surviving to lament by the graveside. “[Audiences] wanted it to end on more of a bang, and I’m really glad they did,” says Reddick, whose own originally scripted denouement had Alex surviving, but suggested that a pregnant Clear would ultimately meet her doom after giving birth. “Alex was still alive to kind of carry on the fight… When you work at a studio you’re kind of taught to think franchise, and my plan was always to make sure that Alex, or one of the characters, stayed alive to carry the movie forward.” By doing this, Reddick was also attempting to subvert the “final girl” trope established by the likes of Halloween. “I love final girls in horror, but I wanted to kind of turn that on its head and give it a smart, sensitive final guy lead, which hadn’t been done a lot in the genre,” he explains. Alas, despite the new ending that suggests only Carter meets his maker, when the inevitable sequel came around Alex Browning was conspicuous by his absence, having been unceremoniously killed off-screen between instalments. “There was some trouble scheduling Devon for the sequel. I don’t care for how things were handled with that,” says Reddick. Nevertheless, he hasn’t completely ruled out the character returning in a future instalment. “It will be interesting to see because in my mind especially, because we never saw Alex die and we also never saw [Clear] and the Sheriff die from the sequel… in my mind, in the canon of the films they’re not necessarily dead, so I’d certainly love to bring them back at some point,” he teases.
FATE IN THE FUTURE
After five instalments (see right), which culminated with the superior Final Destination 5 in 2011, where does the franchise go from here? There’s been talk of the inevitable reboot, and Reddick – who hasn’t been officially involved in the franchise since the first sequel – is enthusiastic about the prospects, if they bring something fresh to the franchise. “I think there’s so many ways for death to come and get you. So I’d be interested in coming back if there was a really fresh spin on it. I would love for it to specifically work on the mythology of the first film and bring back an original character. Don’t just redo it over and over again. If there was a way to really expand the world where death has a new design and kind of revamp the franchise a little bit, I would definitely love to do that.” The writer doesn’t believe in death having a design himself; however, he doesn’t wholly rule out the part that fate can play in life. “I don’t think that our whole lives are plotted out for us, but I’ve had a lot of serendipitous things happen in my life which were fateful,” he reflects. “It’s that idea that there’s something out there bigger than us guiding our lives…”