While Gareth Evans made a sizeable impact with his third feature film The Raid , it's The Raid 2: Berandal that's bound to get Hollywood calling.
Its impressive mastery of martial arts choreography, character work and imacculate pacing impressed us hugely at Sundance 2014 , and so when we sat down with the director, we quizzed him on whether, given the chance, he'd want to apply those skills to bigger, more mainstream blockbusters.
And considering the popularity of comic book movies right now, we couldn't resist quizzing him on whether he'd be interested in Marvel's most popular martial-arts-based character Iron Fist (who himself has just been selected to spearhead Netflix's impending Marvel TV series ).
Total Film: So there's a popular martial-arts comic book character called Iron Fist…
Gareth Evans: Ah yeah, a few people have mentioned that to me before.
TF: Would you be interested in doing a comic book movie like that if it had a style and a concept you'd be interested in?
GE: Totally, yeah. I'm not averse to it. My big thing right now is figuring out how to do that action style - and would someone like Marvel let me do a R-rated movie?
This isn't me going against PG-13 movies, it's just that the way I shoot action, it doesn't need to be bloody or aggressive or 'stabby stabby' with knives, but it's about when someone swings a punch and there's a connection there, I'm not going to hide that with a camera. I get involved with the guys in that choreography design so I can understand the intricacies of what they've done, so that when I shoot it, what the camera angles should be and the editing should be, it's doing justice to all the work they've put into it.
In PG-13 action, you hide the chaos and fill it with sound. That's something I can't do. So [if I made a comic book movie], it'd have to be an R.
For more Evans goodness, watch our chat with him below as we discuss cult movie classics (like Troll 2! ), as well as all things T he Raid 2.
