2 CABIN 2 WOODS
Without getting too heavily into the dreaded spoiler territory, The Cabin in the Woods didn’t exactly end with a big set up for a sequel. It was however, acclaimed and successful, which inevitably means studio Lionsgate bursting in, techno-gun in hand, to tell Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon “guys, you’re not going to believe this!”
Speaking to Den of Geek, Goddard said that the studio has approached him and Whedon about a sequel, and when it was put to him that the film didn’t have many open ends, said:
“It doesn’t. But that being said, the fun thing about Cabin is, the rules are pretty crazy. We get away with a lot of crazy stuff. So, I’m sure we could figure it out if we got inspired to. I know Joss and I both feel like we don’t want to tarnish what we did with the first one. With a sequel, we’d only do it if it made us laugh hard enough, I suppose.”
If a sequel makes Goddard and Whedon laugh hard enough, you’ll hear it hear first. Well maybe not first, but you know. It’ll come up.
SHOCKING NEWS AS TEST AUDIENCES CONFUSED BY SOMETHING
When a big studio wants to make absolutely sure a movie they’re going to put out is going to make money, they might screen it for a test audience. The audience is then asked what they thought about the movie, and the studio might make changes depending on their feedback. It’s not exactly an approach to film making with great conviction, and basically by design test audiences are meant to be comprised not of discerning cinephiles but the average Joe Popcorn who walks into a cinema not necessarily knowing what they wanted to watch. That people like this might find even the most straightforward blockbusters “confusing” isn’t that surprising, but in all fairness, if there’s one blockbuster you can justifiably be confused by, it’s the teetering Jenga tower of stuff that was Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Fan-favourite Loki was originally supposed to make an appearance in AoU, during brother Thor’s Scarlet Witch induced dream sequence. But as revealed by actor Tom Hiddleston in an interview with Digital Spy, Loki was cut when test audiences got the idea that his presence meant that he was the real villain of the movie, controlling Ultron. Sayeth Hiddleston:
“I was part of the dream sequence for the character of Thor, and I shot for a day, enjoyed it very much. Then I received a phone call from Kevin Feige, actually Joss emailed me, basically Kevin said… in test screenings, audiences had overemphasized Loki’s role, so they thought that because I was in it, I was controlling Ultron, and it was actually imbalancing people’s expectations. So Joss and Kevin were like, “Let’s cut it, because it’s confusing people.”
Again, that doesn’t sound like an audience that’s very good at following a story, but it’s also not a wrong decision. The film was undeniably stuffed with characters, and if Loki was in there as well and gave any hint of muddling the narrative, it could have been the wafer-thin mint that blew up the whole thing. Hiddleston it seems, it just too good at playing the bad guy, to the point where 30 seconds of screen time was in danger of stealing the limelight from Robo James Spader.