TERMINAL
Margot Robbie and Simon Pegg enter a dark, surreal world in writer/director Vaughn Stein’s twisty-turny thriller, Total Film meets the trio to talk about influences, breaking rules and Harley Quinn.
Margot Robbie gets trippy in a film noir fairytale unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
Movie junkets too often take place in generic, airless hotel rooms with very little in common with the setting of the film. So, it’s something of a twist to discover that the marketing team behind crime thriller Terminal – written and directed by first-timer Vaughn Stein – got creative and used the dark, dilapidated and bizarre world of Hollywood’s Escape Room Hotel to help illustrate the twisted drama.
A neon-hued modern fairytale, Terminal stars Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg and Mike Myers as the key components in a surreal and sprawling mystery. But before we get a chance to speak to Robbie, Pegg and Stein about the project that Robbie cheerfully describes as “bonkers”, TF is thrown into the latest horror/ entertainment craze, and must defeat the office-set escape challenge, with only 30 minutes to find clues and crack combination locks, all while the film’s chilling score is piped in.
When we finally join them on an overstuffed brown leather couch in the hotel’s spooky lobby, sheepishly admitting that we ran out of time and didn’t actually escape the room, Simon Pegg looks amused. “I just have this image of all these hard-working journalists locked in a room saying, ‘What the fuck? I just wanted to talk to Margot Robbie for Christ’s sake!’” A more sympathetic-looking Robbie is eager for details and then confesses, “I haven’t done this Terminal one but I love escape rooms and do them in my spare time,” causing Pegg to immediately tease, “That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard you say!” Escape rooms might not be for everyone, and the same might prove true for Terminal. “I think it’s going to be quite divisive,” says Pegg of the film. “It’s quite challenging in some respects, but I really enjoyed doing it.” Time to head down the rabbit hole…
How did you come up with the premise for this movie?
VaugHn STein It was born out of three unhealthy obsessions. I love film noir, dystopian literature and dark fairytales. I loved the idea of entwining symbols and totems from children’s literature into the film, particularly those of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, which figures prevalently. I wanted to create a film and a look that is totally different; a unique, colourful world that’s also a sexy urban jungle full of new world, film noir-esque characters who are vibrant, funny and dangerous.
And how did you find your cast?
VS I got incredibly lucky, I still can’t believe it. SiMon Pegg Vaughn had some pictures of me! What could I do? [laughs]
What about you, Margot?
MaRgoT Robbie I was living at the time with my producing partners and good friends in London and they had done AD [assistant director] work with Vaughn and known him for years, and his script literally turned up on my kitchen bench one morning. I read it and said, “This is weird, I love it, we should do it.” And we did!
VS It was just bizarre that Margot’s friends, Josey McNamara and Tom Ackerley [Robbie’s husband], and I were all runners on film sets together and then assistant directors. And we all talked about this script and Margot helped develop it and make it much better.
MR People need to take a chance on first-time writerdirectors and we knew if we didn’t all band together and jump in, it wasn’t going to happen. Then wonderful people like Simon Pegg came along and put their faith in us as well.
Simon, why did you want to make this film?
SP Well, what appealed to me when I first read it was the fact it was dialogue-heavy and it was character-led and it felt like a play. I just really liked giving myself over to a director that has a specific vision. But one of the main reasons I signed on was that this was a really interesting, strange idea. These people had just decided that they were going to make the film and Margot was attached – which means a) I got to work with Margot, who I very much admire, but b) also it will probably get made because Margot is attached!
Is this film more feminist than it might appear from the trailer?
VS It’s interesting because classic noir has a lot of really feminist tropes and there are a lot of really strong women
in noir who use their charm and are alternative and dynamic women. But that faded away after the height of the classic noir era and it was something I wanted to bring back, having Annie [Robbie’s character] be at the centre of the web, utilising all the conventions and tropes of noir. Whatever she needed to be, she could be all things to all men and so it’s very much her decisions and actions that set the whole film in motion.
What films inspired the look of Terminal?
VS I had an idea of this sort of ‘neon trench noir’ look. SP He loves that phrase!
VS But we had a lot of touchstones and Blade Runner is a film we all loved and really wanted to tip our cap to. We wanted it to have that sense of Britain to it that was reminiscent but not recognisable, so we also borrowed from 1984 – if you watch carefully there are a few nods to that film in particular. And Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Brazil were big inspirations in different ways too. We really wanted to look at different genres and styles and feels and amazing visionaries like Tarantino and Wong Kar-wai, and utilise a collage of them all to create something unique and new. We basically just stole a shitload of stuff! [all laugh]
Margot, did you look at Harley Quinn as inspiration for your crazy character?
MR A couple of people have asked that and I don’t know why that never occurred to me. I never thought of them in the same world or sentence at all, until someone doing interviews asked that. The film aesthetic was just beautiful in its absurdity so it was so much fun creating an internal palette for everyone to enhance and build on. But for my character, there was not one specific character that I looked at imitating, not at all.
VS Margot does have an amazing eye for detail, working with a designer and the classic noir look, and many of the ideas for the look came from her specifically.
MR There’s lots of stuff in the film that probably no one is going to notice but I loved. Even with the make-up looks: my favourite was using black eyeliner to do black lips and then this sickly, sparkly green eyeliner thing on top of her lips that I wanted to look like poison bleeding out of her mouth. As if everything she said was poison, but you were not realising it. So aesthetically, it was cool to help me act the character. I never speak flippantly about costume, hair and make-up, because they are all hugely crucial for the characters I play.
Did you guys have a favourite persona that Margot played?
SP My favourite is obviously the waitress Annie, who I spend most of my time with in the story. I love how she adjusts herself to get what she needs and wants. Without drifting into spoiler territory, there were decisions that Margot made as an actress that you won’t notice until you watch the film the second time and you realise exactly what is going on. It’s one of those films that deserves to be watched more than once, just so you can get the full knowledge of what is going on, for every character.
How did you get Mike Myers to come out of retirement after seven years?
MR I don’t think any of us truly believed that we would get him. It was a crazy idea after we spoke about finding a character actor, someone who really utilises their physicality in their characters, and that eventually led to speaking about Mike Myers, and, “Where the hell is he these days and would he do this?” He spoke to Vaughn for five hours and was very prepared and had notes written on paper because he took it all very seriously. A minute after the call ended, we heard that he was in and we were like, “Hallelujah!” I never thought I would even meet the guy, let alone work with him!
VS Mike is hilarious and brilliant and so precise with everything. He works so hard with his characterisation and his physicality and the look. He pours his heart into it, so he really elevated the character so far above the words on the page. You will be really surprised what he’s able to pull off in this film.
And so Margot, besides ‘weird’, what else are you looking for in a film choice?
MR I love being surprised. I obviously read so many scripts and a lot of them follow the same formulaic structure and I am bored and disengaged. When I find scripts like I, Tonya and Terminal that seem to be breaking rules, I get a real thrill out of that. I felt that way when I read Terminal. I knew right away this was not normal and I loved it. I love feeling a little scared, like not knowing if I can pull it off: that’s thrilling!
Terminal opens in cinemas on 6 July, and is available on dvd, blu-ray, digiTal and on-demand from 6 augusT.