Interviews
The Mind Behind ‘The Guardians of Justice’: An Interview With Adi Shankar – Part 1
Adi Shankar is a remixer of media. While the producer/showrunner/storyteller has had his name attached to several films, it is that of his Bootleg Universe that stands out among his work. In taking iconic characters throughout pop culture, Shankar crafts narratives around them that subvert their source material. His Power/Rangers short, one of his most prominent releases, looks at the darker side of the franchise – specifically its weaponizing of youth. Fan fiction is nothing new to geek culture, but Shankar’s work both honors established characters, while peeling back the layers to their source material’s psychology.
Following up on his wildly successful Castlevania anime on Netflix, he eagerly anticipates the release of his new show, The Guardians of Justice (GoJ). On GoJ, Shankar is the creator, producer, a writer, and director. With several nods towards classic comic book characters, GoJ is so much more. It surpasses the realm of media remix Shankar has created in the past, playing out as an adrenaline inducing acid trip of violence and style. A murder mystery meets superheroes meets political satire that takes place in a warped reality reflecting our world – resulting in pure chaos and intrigue.
While the show won’t be out on Netflix until early next year, GoJ makes its premier at Cannes this week. In a two-part interview with Bloody Disgusting, I spoke with Adi Shankar about GoJ. In part one, we discuss the origins behind the show – the influences that helped to shape the show and what the work personally means to Shankar. We also discuss comic book cynicism and his personal relationship with comics growing up, as well some of his favorite characters from GoJ.
Michael Pementel: In a way, is GoJ a reaction to how overpopulated the mainstream has become with superhero stories?
Adi Shankar: I don’t think it’s a reaction to the superhero genre becoming hyper mainstream. In a way it’s just a love letter to the superhero genre. Superhero films aren’t even a genre anymore; GoJ is a love letter to the motifs, the world, and style that is the literary device of superhero stories.
MP: If the show is a love letter, why lean into a cynical atmosphere?
AS: I feel like comic books – the superhero genre in particular, at least the era I grew up reading – existed in a cynical paradigm. They felt authentic to the superhero genre. […] They themselves were cynical of superheroes. Superheroes have been around for a long time – they’ve always been popular – but you effectively had two companies, for all intents and purposes, that controlled two superhero universes. So, when you talk late 80s, early to mid-90s, the comics started getting alt-fictiony [sic], cynical, and existential about their own existence as a genre.
MP: What are the comic book stories from your youth that hit home for you?
AS: I really didn’t understand what I was reading content wise when I was young. We’re talking early to mid-90s at this time, but I had no idea what I was reading because of all the back stories that took place years ago – without that context, a lot of it felt confusing and overwhelming. So my entry point to superheroes were actually these trading cards; you could look at a character, be like, “That character looks cool,” then you could read the back, and in a paragraph, learn about who this character is. Through these trading cards I came to understand what was going on in the stories.
At this point in my life, I was more drawn to the artwork than I was to the stories. Because at this time I’m a blank canvas; I hadn’t read a superhero story, so I don’t know what’s a cliché and what’s new or innovative.
As I began to get more into reading comics, I was really drawn into cross over events. Someone once handed me a stack of random comic books, and among them was one called Maximum Carnage, where you had all these different characters and it was centered around an apocalyptic type of event. There was also the Fatal Attractions mini-series where Wolverine famously lost his Adamantium. It was cool because [the X-Men were on] a space station and had this Buzz Aldrin vibe to their spacesuits.
MP: What are some other works of media and/or artists that aided in influencing GoJ and that you wanted to pay homage to?
AS: John motherfucking Carpenter. There’s absolutely no one more responsible for revolutionizing genre cinema than John Carpenter. There was a fusionairy [sic] impulse that Carpenter had that is at the heart of what I wanted to do with The Guardians of Justice. Now obviously we’re fusing different things; Carpenter was fusing Tales From The Crypt with Howard Hawks, I’m melding a filmation [sic] style to like, darkness and global chaos.
Another influence, Natural Born Killers, the Oliver Stone film. Now I’ll be clear, I did not like Natural Born Killers, I did not like the plot, the story. Though, what I watched it for was the visual ingenuity Oliver Stone achieved. The film shifts wildly between different formats, from sitcom to outlaw animation. I don’t want to say it unlocked a world of potential in my mind, because I was already speaking those terms – I was wondering why movies didn’t do that [regarding varying stylization]. The film proved to me that the format of a scene could shift depending on the creative necessities at the moment.
Regarding other inspirations and homages: Mortal Kombat. There are major fight scenes that literally become Mortal Kombat [regarding] the onscreen text and announcer. Another influence is Kung Fury. I watched Kung Fury and I thought it was absolutely genius. I thought that shit should be winning awards everywhere.
There’s also Paul Verhoeven. I mean, I think this is a cheat one, because to say that Paul Verhoeven was an inspiration – he is an inspiration for 90% of movies that come out now. Also Saturday morning cartoons. Ultimately the show is a Saturday morning cartoon, just done partially in live action. Lastly, though there are more influences, the Animatrix.
MP: What is your favorite character from GoJ and who was your favorite character to write?
AS: There’s a superhero panda in the show; the fuckin’ panda is sick. His name is Teen Justice Panda. So that’s cool.
Regarding favorite character to write, the President. I wrote him as how I felt what people outside America hear when the American President speaks. As someone who straddles both worlds [being an immigrant] – I’m very American, but I’m also not – I’m able to thread this needle that was easy for me to do because of this unique background that I have.
MP: On a personal level, what does GoJ represent to you?
AS: One way to kind of view this project is that, this is a love letter to everything I loved about America growing up. Both good and bad. There’s really two geneses to this. The first, I was walking around a Wal Mart the year I moved to America by myself full time which was 2001. It was September, a few days before 9/11, and I thought, “Man you know what would be really cool? If someone made a DVD of different takes on superheroes.” The second genesis, months before this project began, I was experiencing some pretty intense sadness and depression. Which, I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who reads this or who hasn’t watched the show yet, but that [depression is reflective within GoJ]. But that’s when this project came up. As the project progressed though – and the execution of this idea – so much of my life has been America. American comic books, American TV shows, American pop culture, American propaganda, etc. In a lot of ways, GoJ is a remix of everything that has influenced me. […] There’s a lot in there that are homages to video games, cartoons, literary stuff, and cinema.
MP What is it you wanted to say through GoJ?
AS: I was just trying to explore the intersection between mythology, power, and fascism, and how logos plays to that. The show is as much Wag The Dog and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – it’s more that than a superhero story. I wasn’t trying to make a superhero show. I like superheroes as a concept, but I don’t care about them on a cellular level because they are just constructs. This project is how I see America. This is like an outsider’s view of America.
Keep a look out for later this week when we publish part-two of my interview with Adi Shankar, where we discuss more on The Guardians of Justice, as well as dig into his creative background.
Eli Roth is a formative name in the “Splat Pack” of ultraviolent filmmakers who first came to fame during the 2000s.
Roth’s Cabin Fever was a great statement piece, but he’s managed to continually top himself with gory gems like Hostel, The Green Inferno, and Thanksgiving. Roth has always been a filmmaker who strives to push boundaries and embrace a passion for genre cinema.
His latest movie, Ice Cream Man, is a project that’s been 20 years in the making. It’s a twisted take on the Pied Piper parable that’s arguably the most gruesome film from Roth’s career and an exciting turning point.
To celebrate the gory film’s summer release, Eli Roth opens up about the luxury of shooting a horror film with hundreds of enthusiastic kids, bypassing the MPAA to deliver the most outrageous kills of his career, and why he intentionally avoided Weapons before filming.
BLOODY DISGUSTING: You’ve described Ice Cream Man as “The Birds but with children” and cited Who Can Kill a Child? as a reference point. Were there other “killer kid” movies that you’re pulling from for inspiration like Children of the Corn, the French film Them, or even Weapons?
ELI ROTH: Well, Weapons I purposely didn’t watch until after I was done with my cut because I had people on the crew that went to see it because I wanted to make sure that there was no crossover. I didn’t watch it until after I was done with the film, but The Children from 1980 was a big influence. That trailer scared me as a kid, watching the kids on the bus go through the gas and then turn into killer kids. When the girl killed her mom in the original Night of the Living Dead was a big reference point. But definitely The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but also other movies like Bad News Bears and those early Amblin movies. Those coming-of-age films. There’s also a lot of references to Bird with the Crystal Plumage in there, too. It’s kind of a Pied Piper story, so that was really the starting point for it.
There must have been serious hurdles to not just filming a movie that involves so many children, but also in terms of its rating and censorship. Was there anything you shot that had to be cut or toned down?
ER: The whole reason I started The Horror Section was to completely bypass that system and go directly to the theaters. Now that Terrifier 3 kicked the door open for the rest of us and you can have an unrated movie go out in 2000 theaters, you know that fans want to go see those movies in theaters. Before, you could never release an unrated movie like this, but now after what Damien Leone did, you can. So I set up an independent studio, I went right to the theaters, I’m self-releasing it, and I didn’t even deal with the MPAA. I just made the movie the way I wanted to make it. We shot it, cut it, and we’re putting it out in the theaters raw and unfiltered.
Every movie I’ve ever made, at some point someone has said, “You have to take this out, or we’re not releasing the movie.” I just didn’t want to deal with that anymore. I’m just tired of it. I think they’re wrong. I think Terrifier 3 proved that they are all strong. In the past, I’ve been like, “I shouldn’t have taken that out. I shouldn’t have cut that down,” but you’re dealing with a corporation in a studio. That’s what they do. They’re so afraid, and it’s an abstract argument. There’s no proof that they’re right or that you’re right, but that’s where I know great horror lives. It’s got that bit of danger to it. You go, “You’re not supposed to do that,” “Should I be watching this?”
Even Evil Dead II, Faces of Death, or whatever it was when you get a tape. Whenever you’re going, “I shouldn’t watch this,” it becomes the most exciting kind of horror. Even The Ring. It’s got to be great. It’s got to be original. There has to be an incredible story that people have never seen before, but I faced no issues whatsoever other than my own budget. The whole purpose of starting my own studio is that I could take an idea like Ice Cream Man, that I’ve always wanted to do and that everyone told me I couldn’t, and just go for it.
On that note, there are so many amazing kills in this movie. What’s your favorite and which was the most challenging to pull off?
ER: There are a few, yeah. My original idea was the mother waking up and seeing her daughter just standing over her; she picks up a hacksaw and just cuts her head off. The dad wakes up, looks over, and the daughter is just smiling and cutting the head off and like, “Hi, Daddy.” Then the kid bashes his face in. So actually doing all that was extremely satisfying. There were a couple other ones that I don’t want to give away that really turned out great. I was just really lucky. I sat down with Steve Newburn at Applied Arts FX Studio. They’re incredible. I told them, “I want to do more kills. I want to basically beat every kill I’ve ever done and do more kills in this movie than all my other movies combined.” Adrian Moreau was incredibly genius. We did Thanksgiving together, and she did some very specific effects for me on this one. She won the Oscar for The Whale, so we had an incredibly talented team and just went for it. The kids in the movie, their parents are all horror movie fans, so we talked to them about everything.
Once you put the kids in the gore and in the makeup, they go right into it. They get it. They understand that this is like Halloween and pretend. There’s the bit where they’re pulling apart a body — they call it a “taffy pull” — we did this fake trailer, “The Piano Killer,” with Hailey Kittle. I also worked with her in Trick VR Treat, and she was in Thanksgiving. I said, “I’m going to drop a piano on you,” so we had her fake body and thought, “Let’s kill Hailey, and then we can use the body from “The Piano Killer” and pull it apart in Ice Cream Man. I recycled the same body parts.
It was unreal doing it all with the kids, though. You can’t believe what you’re watching, and the kids were having a great time. It was Christmas morning for them. Justin Harding, who was my Second Unit Director, his son Bowen is a baseball player. So it made sense to give Bowen the axe so that he could really give a good swing to cut Hailey in half. He is so good and so athletic, so he could really go for it. He’s just gleefully swinging the bat, and we’re just on the ground pumping blood at him. The kids were just laughing and having the time of their lives.
The main actors are so good, too. I really didn’t want “kid acting.” I wanted the same acting as when you’re watching Stranger Things or the ’70s Bad News Bears. These kids are real kids, and I didn’t want it to feel like movie dialogue. I wanted the kids to swear and talk the way that real 12-year-olds talk to each other and the way that bullies talked to me in the ’80s. I verified it with all the kids to know that this is exactly what the bullying in schools sounds like. This is how they’d talk and what they say when the adults, parents, and teachers aren’t around. I wanted it to feel naturalistic, and like you’ve just been dropped into this small town that has all this drama. Then you’re just with these kids, trying to survive this “kidpocalypse,” and trying to figure out why this is happening and how to get out of it.
I’m a huge fan of the Clint Howard Ice Cream Man from 1995. There’s also a great Tales from the Crypt episode with Bill Pullman and Brad Dourif that plays in this space. Why do you think there’s this ongoing connection between ice cream men and horror?
ER: It’s interesting; I’ve never seen the Clint Howard film. I’m certainly aware of it. But this all came about from just watching this ice cream man handing out ice cream. It was during the Cabin Fever press tour in 2003. I was just watching this ice cream man and thinking, “We just trust them.” It could be a serial killer, you know? What if they just rolled into town and poisoned the kids? I thought that might be too fucked up, but then I thought of it as if it’s the Pied Piper. There’s something with the music. Kids just want to run out into the street and buy ice cream when they hear that ice cream man music. It’s such deep programming. So what if that was used to turn the kids against their parents?
Having a new daughter myself — having a baby — all you want to do is protect them. And you know that no matter what you do, you can’t. The outside world is going to get to them somehow. You can prepare them, but you can’t fully protect them. Some evil force will get into their head, and so what if that was turned against you? This thing that you loved and put everything into now wants to kill you. It’s the most horrible thought as a parent. After 20 years, it was kind of great to go in and re-approach it from that direction.
But I think ice cream men just have this inherent trust behind them. You see them, and you trust them. They come into the neighborhood, feed the kids, and then they leave, and you have no idea who they really were. Sure, they were an ice cream man, but what were they like? They were wearing a white hat, and they drove an ice cream truck, but anyone can do that. It was such a perverse, sick thought. Like, “What if you turn Thanksgiving into something awful?”, “What if backpacking in Europe became a nightmare?”
That’s where great horror lives. It’s when you take something that’s seemingly innocent and then make it dark. “What if the kids are playing jump rope, but then they get turned, and they’re playing jump rope with guts?” At the beginning of the film, they’re playing “Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” but then it’s “Pin the Knife in the Teacher.” Or you’re playing little league baseball, but now you’re bashing your dad’s head in with the bat. It’s taking all the fun, innocent things from childhood and then twisting them with a horror spin.
Ice Cream Man is in theaters on August 7.
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