[Movie] Silent Hill 2

Confirmed:

Taken from Bloody-Disgusting.com: (which the context was taken and translated from a French website)

Quote:

"Okay, since this is a very long interview, I tried my best to give you the important details. I'm sorry in advance for the spelling mistakes or if something is not well said and I hope others will help me completing it.

Gans worked on the Silent Hill movie for a long time. In fact, he ended it 10 days after its US release which why they didn't have time to do bonus scenes (alternate endings, etc.).

He doesn't want people to buy x different versions of a SH collector so he is going to make one after completing his Onimusha movie.

The 1 hour making-of present on DVD was made by Sony and talks only about the creatures and the architecture. According to him, this making of is incomplete.

Another reason he wants to release the collector so late is to have the opportunity to work with DVD and DVD-HD.

He considers the DVD Zone 1 cover and compression to be a total disaster. He then used his relations with producer Samuel Hadida to personnally give the Zone 2 DVD a better shape. Also, the features in both zones are apparently the same.

The SH collector should contain more information about game/movie translation and his workteam with Akira Yamaoka. He wants to rebuild the road he took to make the movie the way it is. He also confesses that during the making he stayed as an "illustrator" and focused more on the visual aspect of the game. Akira also wanted the movie to be released before the announcement of the 5th game to convince Konami to financially validate it.

For Gans, SH is a popular franchise in Anglo-saxon countries (US/UK) and Germany but is not loved a lot in countries like Japan and France (so why do they get all the goodies? )

Commercial success ---> Silent Hill got crushed both in Japan and Germany (because of Mission Impossible 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean). However, he says the movie achieved its 100M$ and did better than Resident Evil. The country where Silent Hill did best however is the US. (50M in theatres, 30M DVD rent and 30M DVD sales)

There will be a Silent Hill 2. Avary returns after adapting the VG Driver

Gans is happy because Silent Hill is one of the biggest horror success of 2006 in terme of box-office. He arrives 3rd after Saw 3 and an american haunting.

Sean Bean ---> The husband was supposed to appear only in the beginning and the end. The executives were afraid to make a movie without a man. Gans confesses he never found his scenes to be useful. These scenes created a problem in the movie: they affected the "subjective" time of the movie by the alternance of day/night. The movie worked as a Twilight Zone episode but the husband scenes messed things up. Gans realized he should have kept Sean Bean's scenes for the DVD only. The movie testing wasn't done with people coming from outside the studios.

Gans also confesses that his movie shouldn't have lasted 2 hours. for a horror movie. With Sean Bean, Gans had to work faster and had to replace some long scenes with something "smaller".

One of the causes he was forced to add Christopher is because he says the studio have a "quantity" reasonning. They want each character to be analysed in function of a particular audience (in this case, Christopher for the men). Considering the freedom he had on his project, Gans doesn't consider it to be a big sacrifice. Also, the studios didn't add any other comments on the movie since it cost them only 14 M$ to acquire and they wanted the movie to be released.

Censorship was blank. As long as the story was fiction and guns were useless it was fine with studios. Plus it is the story of a loving mother. Studios didn't care about the rest. A reason why Gans finds censorship to be absurd and useless.

Cut scenes ---> There is only one scene that didn't made it in the movie: a church scene with Christabella. As for the lying figure scene attacking Anna, it is more complicated. The Lying figure was supposed to be injured and it was trying to slither on the road and go hide in the sewers. This scene was filmed but the crew had only 60 shooting days to do it. So the producers wanted to save money and told Roberto Campanella (the monster supervisor) to stay home. So the crew tried to make the lying figure scene without him but the result was way too bad. Gans and the producers had a fight about making this scene but due to budget limits, the scene didn't made it.

Gans had also a different idea about the end (where alessa appears and slices the cult members). When Christabella stabs Rose, a black smoke comes from the woman and 6 pyramid heads appear, each one holding a different weapon. The 6 PH will then cut, dice, slice the cult members to create a Dante's inferno hommage. Again due to budget and time, Gans had only one day and half to film this scene. Many wanted this scene but the people from the insurance asked something that could be done in one day and half.

The scene with Alessa killing the cult is inspired from the Japanese animation Legend Of The Overfiend. Plans from this anime were also used to complete the editing. Compare the first OVA of Legend Of The Overfiend to see the similarities.

Gans used what critics said about his last movie Brotherhood of the wolf to correct the mistakes in Silent hill. One of them was to put less references to movies, paintings in the SH movie. Being a former movie critique, he says that he always read what people think of his work, good or bad, to improve his next movie.

After watching Silent Hill, Gans regrets that he didn't create fear effects. He didn,t want things like "door closing with high sounds". He wanted a fantasy movie more than horror. His goal was not to take the audience for idiots. The idea that Silent Hill is more of a literary horror pushed him to ignore the usual ideas of slashers and high tension.

Although he tried to create a scary movie where it is more of disturbance than of jump scares just for the audience, he feels bad about the fact that many didn't find silent Hill scary. He doesn't want to consider an audience better than another. Although he likes to hear that Silent hill is nowhere near a slasher.

One of his goals for Silent Hill 2 is to correct mistakes he made with the 1st one which cost him a lot of energy. However, he wonders if he can truly come back for a 2nd movie because of Onimusha. He says that if he doesn't come back, producers agree with him that the 2nd movie should keep the visual aspect of the 1st one. There is no way they are bringing a whole new vision of the town's design. He doesn't want a hollywoodian movie. If he doesn't come back as a director, he strongly suggest an European (and even a French) one. He will however stay close to this movie."

I REALLY enjoyed the first movie, as I believe it hit more than enough marks of the game to make it not suffer from the traditional "Video Game + movie = suck".

There's also a little tidbit article in the Silent Hill: Origins PSP preview in PSM that confirms Silent Hill 2 in the works.

My best guess is that it'll be based around Silent Hill 2 completely, since that was Gans favorite of the series. Avery is also on-board to write again as well.

IMDB has a release date of 2008.

2008 doubt it. Also why the fuck did they mess up the ending of the movie and not stick to the games story? I wish he would have mentioned this.

Also I agree about the scare factor. I had hopes from the playing the insanely scary games that it could be the most scary movie ever. But not being in control of the character made it not scary at all. =( Must be able to do something about that.

Originally Posted by BZ

Also I agree about the scare factor. I had hopes from the playing the insanely scary games that it could be the most scary movie ever. But not being in control of the character made it not scary at all. =( Must be able to do something about that.

I don't really think that it was about being in control or not; the "scary scenes" just weren't in the movie at all.

Even when I watch someone play the games, I get creeped out during some parts. At the beginning of SH3 for example, while I was watching my brother play it, I got the heebie-jeebies seeing blood-soaked amusement park rabbits chasing after the girl. It was just freaky.

But in the movie, what was there? The stupid midget monster things? Pyramid Head (sparingly)? There should have been crazy monster-on-monster sex and mutilation! That's what makes Silent Hill so scary, it's the creepiest game series in existence. The movie was so toned down I felt like I wasn't even watching a Silent Hill story at all, but a typical "scary movie".

If it wasn't for PH ripping off some skin and throwing it at the church doorway, I doubt I would have been able to watch it until the end.

Quote:

Gans had also a different idea about the end (where alessa appears and slices the cult members). When Christabella stabs Rose, a black smoke comes from the woman and 6 pyramid heads appear, each one holding a different weapon. The 6 PH will then cut, dice, slice the cult members to create a Dante's inferno hommage.

That would have been so much better than Alessa's barb wire tentacle fury. Stupid insurance people and their time restraints...

That pyramid head ending sounded awesome

if the second movie is base on SH2 I pretty sure they'll use that finish XD

I really hope they will be able to translate the sh2 feeling in the movie.

Since Silent Hill was the best movie base on a game I'm pretty sure second one will be as good (well let's hope so XD)

Quote:

Sean Bean ---> The husband was supposed to appear only in the beginning and the end. The executives were afraid to make a movie without a man. Gans confesses he never found his scenes to be useful.

The guy was the most pointless part of the movie. Not related to the story one bit.

Quote:

Gans had also a different idea about the end (where alessa appears and slices the cult members). When Christabella stabs Rose, a black smoke comes from the woman and 6 pyramid heads appear, each one holding a different weapon. The 6 PH will then cut, dice, slice the cult members to create a Dante's inferno hommage. Again due to budget and time, Gans had only one day and half to film this scene. Many wanted this scene but the people from the insurance asked something that could be done in one day and half.

THAT SCENE WOULD'VE BEEN FUCKING INSTANT WIN!!!!!!... but we got the weak sauce barbwire scene...

Those ideas that were cut out are goooood. SH can be a bigger hit if they don't keep screwing up like that.

I always thought the ending would've been better if just 1 pyramid head showed up, nevermind 6. The first film had a lot of potential, but it just went in a shit direction with the whole cult thing - it took the scare factor away since I felt the most uncomfortable when Rose was completely isolated in the town.

I wouldn't mind a Silent Hill 2. Question is, since they pretty much did an amaglam of 1 & 2, does that mean we'll have some stuff from 3 or "The Room" thrown in?

Also, "Legend of the Overfiend" might be more familiar to people under its japanese title: Urotsukidoji.

What they need here is more of the impossible physical elements of the town from SH2 and SH4. Things like unnaturally long hallways (SH4 hospital), reality-defying architecture (SH2 prison), imagery that betrays a character's perception of his situation (SH2 Maria's prison cell, with the "who's really behind bars?" look).

The only part of the movie that seemed really mind-bending was the transitions from normal Silent Hill to otherworld Silent Hill. We need more things that jerk the viewer out of their comfort zone and shatter established perceptions of reality.

Things like that are going to be the real trick when it comes to making a non-interactive medium as scary as an interactive one. Because there's a degree of dissociation, you need to make people uncomfortable before you can start really scaring them.

Gans got the aesthetic of Silent Hill down to a science, but I don't know if he quite grokked all the things that make it Silent Hill. More impossible architecture and movement, and maybe more of a slow-paced and dreamlike atmosphere.

Originally Posted by CelticWhisper

What they need here is more of the impossible physical elements of the town from SH2 and SH4. Things like unnaturally long hallways (SH4 hospital), reality-defying architecture (SH2 prison), imagery that betrays a character's perception of his situation (SH2 Maria's prison cell, with the "who's really behind bars?" look).

The only part of the movie that seemed really mind-bending was the transitions from normal Silent Hill to otherworld Silent Hill. We need more things that jerk the viewer out of their comfort zone and shatter established perceptions of reality.

Things like that are going to be the real trick when it comes to making a non-interactive medium as scary as an interactive one. Because there's a degree of dissociation, you need to make people uncomfortable before you can start really scaring them.

Gans got the aesthetic of Silent Hill down to a science, but I don't know if he quite grokked all the things that make it Silent Hill. More impossible architecture and movement, and maybe more of a slow-paced and dreamlike atmosphere.

Agree. I think the town itself needed to come alive more -- to have a personality all it's own. While the monsters and atmosphere were practically perfect, I think he missed some of the other things that make playing in Silent Hill so memorable.

But that can always be fixed in the sequel, which I hope he or a like-minded director can work on. I absolutely hated Brotherhood of the Wolf, but Silent Hill stands as one of my [guilty] faves.