Oh so slowly, the MCU is beginning to offer things it has shied away from in the past with “Eternals,” “She-Hulk,” “Loki” and “Thor: Ragnarok” boasted indications of sexuality and brief nudity.
The upcoming “Werewolf By Night” special is now set to incorporate something we also haven’t seen much of in the MCU – blood and gore.
The throwback to early 20th century monster movies boasts laughs and screams, and a surprising amount of bloodletting. The film’s director Michael Giacchino spoke recently with IGN and revealed that no one ever questioned the inclusion of bloody violence whilst he was making it:
“Well, it was one of those things where no one said no. I just kept pushing. I knew that we were going to balance that with heart and humor and humanity and empathy and all of that. And as long as we kept that balance in tow that I felt like we had some leeway to push on the horror side.
And look, we’re dealing with monsters, monster movies, and I felt like we needed to just go into that realm, just not be afraid of it. And if that meant, ‘Sorry, you’re going to have to edit this,’ somebody came into my room. And if that meant that we were going to try some new things, we were going to try some new things.”
The director’s intent to add more gore reportedly became a running joke amongst the crew who would start saying “Let me guess more blood. You want more blood, right?”. Even so, everyone had a little trepidation as they were concerned with how much they could get away with:
“I think there was an air around the production of, ‘What’s going to happen? Are they going to let us do this while we come back with all this footage that is so violent? What’s going to happen?’ But I knew in my heart that what we were doing was not sadistic. We weren’t creating a film that was all about just indiscriminate killing. It was about the people. And I feel like if you keep it about the characters and the people, then you’ll have some leeway to do some other things that you normally wouldn’t get to do… and being in black and white didn’t hurt us either.”
Gael Garcia Bernal, Laura Donnelly, Harriet Sansom Harris, Al Hamacher, Eugenie Bondurant, Kirk Thatcher, Leonardo Nam, Jaycob Maya and Daniel J. Watts star in the one-off which will premiere Friday, October 7th on the Disney+ service.
