As well, Andrea Arnold’s Red Road and Jacques Audiard’s Un Prophète were very influential in terms of their tension, POV and shooting style.įilmmaker: ARQ is working within a much lower budget range than a film like Edge of Tomorrow. As for cinematic influences, I studied Alfonso Cauron’s Children of Men for its emotional authenticity, realistic production design, and dynamic shooting style. The fact that time is looping is almost a backdrop to what’s happening between them. So I kept those incidents to a minimum and just focused on the characters. While that’s fun and pertinent, and I didn’t avoid them entirely, it’s not necessarily story. I wrote to surprise myself, tell a good story, and having something to say.Īs for time loop genre tropes, I didn’t want to overdo the repetition gags where characters experience the same moments over and over. In writing ARQ I didn’t consider genre I considered story and character. What were you trying to do differently in this movie, and what familiar elements of this genre were you looking to avoid? And were there less obvious films that were influences on you here?Įlliott: I wrote the first draft of ARQ a few years before either Source Code or Edge of Tomorrow were made, so the popular time loop reference films I had at the time were Primer, Groundhog’s Day and Back to the Future, all of which are exceptional films but of course are quite different than ARQ. ARQ is hopeful.įilmmaker: From Groundhogs Day to Source Code to Edge of Tomorrow, the time loop movie has become something of a sub-genre of its own. I believe that for myself as I do for humanity. That we will change for the better, as long as we never give up. It’s about believing that we can change, if we keep trying. ARQ is a story about fighting for what matters, no matter the odds or the obstacles. And like them both I know what it’s like to keep trying - yet keep failing. And like the co-lead, Hannah, I know what it’s like to strive to be better. Like the lead character Renton, I know what it’s like to be trapped in a cycle of self-destructive behavior. From the political to the personal we keep making the same choices - and the same mistakes - over and over again. And while we’re in unprecedented territory, history repeats. Some days the world feels frenetic and spiralling out of control. The times we’re in now seem particularly precarious politically, environmentally and socially. So while that’s all cool stuff with great texture, what ultimately matters are the characters and their journeys.ĪRQ is a personal story about hope. So after establishing the temporal angle, I started world-building - extrapolating the world’s current conflicts, issues, and potential outcomes - and saw thematic parallels. Obviously there’s a degree of liberty whenever you explore time manipulation, but I wanted the story to feel as grounded and plausible as possible. Back in 2008, when I first came up with the initial premise of someone caught in a time loop, I wondered how there might be technical and thematic motivations, and if there was a way to unite them in narrative purpose. Tell me about the scientific or perhaps political or philosophical ideas underlying ARQ, your first feature.Įlliott: In my writing I’ve always leaned toward the scientific and rational rather than magical or supernatural. Below, Elliott talks about his various cinematic inspirations, what he learned from writing Orphan Black, and how he made a futuristic science fiction film on a very low budget.įilmmaker: Your short film, Entangled, dealt, in part, with quantum physics. Employing the now venerable time-loop trope, ARQ features a couple trying to figure out why their world is repeating, and what that has to do with the giant multi-national they were both involved with. Orphan Black screenwriter Tony Elliott makes his feature debut with the time-twisting dystopian thriller ARQ, premiering today at the Toronto International Film Festival. ARQ, Netflix, Science Fiction, Tony Elliott
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