A way into the Addams family
NOSTAGIA FACTOR: ANIMATED MOVIE BREATHES NEW LIFE
This quirky clan represents what family means in a subversively delightful way.
For co-directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan, one of the keys to making a fresh Addams Family film was to go back to the main source: Charles Addams’ creepy, spooky, and altogether kooky New Yorker comics. Starting in the 1930s, his shadowy line drawings delivered a subversive pleasure: dark themes, genius chiaroscuro, and zippy one-liners.
The approach was unique, for sure – there have been two shortlived animated TV series but never an animated feature film. But what do you do when you’ve got an established property that people know and love that has been turned into live action movies and a TV show and even a Broadway musical? “There’s a nostalgia factor, but it’s not a reboot,” says producer Gail Berman. “I saw it as another way into this world of the Addams Family.”
“We went back to the original cartoons to start at the beginning, when he first came up with these characters,” says Vernon.
Tiernan agrees: “Nobody ever really went into, how did Gomez and Morticia meet and how did they end up in the house? And that immediately set it apart from other Addams material that had come before.”
Added to the brilliant idea to make this an animated film, the team had all the necessary ingredients to breathe new life into this beloved family. “With animation right now, you have more of a believable way to tell stories about things that aren’t necessarily in our world,” says Vernon. “For the Addams Family we started creating moving trees and talking envelopes and at one point, we had tables moving around and shrunken heads that jump up and down and sing. We took all these things the TV show and the live-action movie talked about and we actually brought them in visually and let people see this world.”
But medium aside, ultimately, a great story is a great story.
“I don’t think there’s any difference between telling a story in a live-action film and a story in an animated film,” says Vernon.
“But the story itself,” says Tiernan, “Like any good story, has got to have heart, it’s got to have something that people can connect to. And this one definitely does.” With the vibe of this new film in place, the creative team set about figuring out how to adapt the original Addams-verse to the screen. “They don’t look exactly like Charles Addams’ original cartoons, but they’re very much inspired by them and they’re in the same mould, so they do have an original look for our movie,” says Tiernan.
Ask anyone involved in this project why they wanted to be a part of it, and they will all offer some variation of: “Well, it’s the Addams Family.” Like some kind of nostalgia mantra, this sentence drives the sentiment of not only everyone on the creative team, but also audiences who line up for every iteration of this family’s life and legacy.
Charlize Theron, who voices Morticia, was drawn to the enduring legacy of this quirky clan that, in a subversively delightful way, represents what family really means.
“I think at the core, why people really respond to the Addams Family, is because ultimately they will always be Addams and they take pride in that and never try to change themselves for anybody,” she says. “This is a family that lives to the extreme. But there is something that is very grounded, because even though they’re trying to kill each other, they love each other, and you really see that.” – Citizen reporter