Comic-Con 2011: Soderbergh Crunches Bones In Haywire

Saying that Edgar Allen Poe would be at home at Comic-Con is about the biggest stretch I've heard at Comic-Con. This relativity moderator is not as bad as Ubisoft's E3 guy, but he's definitely clowning a bit. Good cast for Haywire: Fassbender, Bill Paxton, Gina Carano, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor...and Channing Tatum.

Trailer time: MPAA rating, this should be hitting soon. Carano takes down Tatum in a cofeeshop, then carjacks a diner. "You got a car?" Carano is a trusted govt agent, sent on dangerous mission. Pairing up with Fassbender, until he betrays her and attempts to kill her in a hotel room. Looks like Fassbender gets his ass kicked too, winds up in the hotel tub. McGregor ordered the hit, calls him, is a bit surprised when she picks up instead. "You can tell me now why you sold me out. Or you can tell me when I have my hands are around your throat." Lots of intense-looking and brutal action in this; closing a sliding door on a guy's torso, cracking knees, jumping around. Last shot? Face camoflage and "You better run!" That looks amazing, super great trailer; the voiceover is a bit generic, though. Carano is an ex-Marine, working for some kind of Blackwater-esque

How'd you discover Carano? Soderbergh says he just saw her on an afternoon MMA fight and wondered "Why hasn't anyone built a movie for this woman?" Wnated to create a female character that performed physically, "for real. No cutting, no doubles." Carano actually knocked someone out in rehearsal in practice. "He asked me to kick him harder! So I did." Sounds like Tatum got the worst of the fight with her; their fight scene in the coffee shop certainly looks pretty brutal. Is there anything more awesome than a fight that ends with someone popping a bullet out the top of a gun to disarm it?

Carano says that it made her appreciate acting more. "It made me realize that it is a skill and not everyone can do it. Just like fighting." Hope she's good in the movie; she seems great in the fight scenes but doesn't get much in the way of dialogue. We're going to get another clip here, the fight scene between Tatum and Fassbender. Everyone was padded, but only lightly; apparently Fassbender really got clocked by Carano in the hotel room scene. Cocktail dress vs. suit and tie. Carano learns that she's going to be framed for a murder, and knows that Fassbender's in on it. You can tell that she knows something's up, but is trying not to reveal anything. Slo walking to the hotel room, Fassbender has a shit-eating grin.

Not much to say about the ensuing scene except that it is fucking BRUTAL. Fassbender immediately clocks Carano in the back of the head, and they get into it. Hotel room is absolutely destroyed, Carano kicks him through a door, he throws her into a TV, they wind up grappling on the bed, she chokes him out with her legs. Absolutely crazy, brutal fight, no music, incredibly raw.

Looks like each fight was separately themed; the Tatum scene is more dancelike, the McGregor scene was on sand on a beach, so it was rougher to cut, and the Fassbender scene? "I loved getting banged into all that stuff." Unwitting double entendre gets people hooting.

Soderbergh's getting questioned about his choice of retirement. "Matt Damon is about as discreet as a 14-year-old girl. I had a drunken conversation that was all over the web four days later. No one wants to hear about someone quitting a good job. It blew up a bit, and that's Matt Damon's fault."

So Fassbender was told not to look at a vase that he takes to the head, they rehearsed for weeks, and of course the first real take he looked directly at the vase and took it to the face. That was the take they wound up using in the film, obviously. Looks like a fun movie with a lot of cracked ribs.