| Devin Warner |
Hot Fuzz plays in glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, June 14th, through Tuesday, June 16th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org
There’s something really special about the homage film. It wasn’t until rewatching Hot Fuzz for my Perisphere article on Shakedown that I realized a lot of my favorite movies growing up were the homage films. That genre is something that I feel taps into that sweet spot for the Trylon faithful because they’re movies about loving movies. After the cultural phenomenon of Scream, there was an influx of homage movies during the late 90s/early 00s which competed against the huge wave of parody films like Scary Movie, Superhero Movie or Meet the Spartans. While most of the parody films have largely been forgotten to time, the homage films such as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Kung Fu Hustle, and Galaxy Quest have not only stood the test of time but in my opinion are some of the best examples of their respective genres. Hot Fuzz, obviously, and Kung Fu Hustle are my top two favorites. I could spend a lot of time writing about how great their storylines are but we don’t have time or space for that so we’re gonna keep it to what these types of films specifically do that few others can.
The magic of these films isn’t necessarily that they are trying to invent something new. Quite the opposite, in fact. They take the best of all the films that came before them and synthesize them into a film that contains the best of the best ideas. It plays on what we know and serves as the culmination of greatest hits of everything that came before it while also serving as a gateway for the audience to discover new works. One of the things that Edgar Wright does better than anybody else is taking the best aspects from the main genre but then bringing in elements from other genres to give everything a fresh spin. In Shaun of the Dead, he took the classic tropes of the zombie film, especially the works of George A. Romero, and introduced some of the more somber tones of the zombie film and added that to the romcom. With Hot Fuzz, Wright uses the same formula but this time takes the excess of the American action film and mixes it with ideas from the British folk horror movement of the 1970s. It largely uses the main plot of The Wicker Man (1973), but when you really get down to it a lot of this film is basically built on the question of “what if Sergeant Howie was a badass who, when his back is against a wall, would utilize every action move in the book to put a stop to Christopher Lee and his evil eerie cult-like town?”
Casting is also important and the cast of Hot Fuzz just works on so many levels that Wright utilizes it to give more depth to jokes and references to other media. Wright teams up once again with his Spaced stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but the rest of the cast in this film is absolutely stacked. Now many of them are classic British actors such as Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, and a surprise cameo appearance by Cate Blanchett, but then when you have a film that takes many of its influences from the British folk horror subgenre, casting an actor like Edward Woodward, who plays the lead role of Sergeant Howie in Wicker Man, as head of the neighborhood watch, adds an extra layer of fun.
Now, when I wrote my piece for the Perisphere on buddy cop films, I did talk extensively about Hot Fuzz and then, to my surprise, Hot Fuzz was announced as one of the films during the next slate. Now I want to see if I can pull it off again by talking about another homage film that, in my opinion, is the perfect martial arts film—Stephen Chow’s 2004 masterpiece Kung Fu Hustle. Kung Fu Hustle also uses casting to make references as it is filled with actors who were mainstays during the classic era of kung fu films in the 1970s such as Yuen Wah, but none more so than Bruce Leung. He was one of the more popular Bruce Lee clones that followed after Lee’s death, and was one of the idols of director Stephen Chow who managed to coax Leung out of his retirement of more than 15 years. He wanted to use his film to introduce Leung to a new generation of film goers by making him the main villain of the film. But in doing so, he also gave longtime fans of Leung a different version of him, as he typically played the gallant hero during his heyday.
”We’re always adamant that they’re not spoofs,” Pegg says of Shaun and Hot Fuzz. ”They lack the sneer that a lot of parodies have that look down on their source material. Because we’re looking up to it.”
This quote from Pegg illustrates what sets these types of films apart from lampooning parodies. Hot Fuzz takes all of the tropes of the action genre and celebrates it, rather than making fun of it. Wright plays with tropes such as intense quick action cuts only to show Pegg’s uptight character pull out a pen and write a ticket, which then leads into one the most over the top final action sequences I have ever seen. Wright is even a master at taking specific filming techniques for his films to make references. Now the quick cuts is a common style for a lot of action films, but he will take that even further with incredibly specific shots. *Spoiler Alert* In the sequence in which the masked killer kills Leslie Tiller in the greenhouse and is then chased by Nicholas Angel, Wright copies the same frenetic handheld camerawork that Brian De Palma would utilize when the Phantom is running through the Paradise in Phantom of the Paradise. *End Spoiler* He further utilizes small references in simple behaviors of his character. If you watch the way in which Nicholas Angel chases after anyone on foot, the way he moves is identical to the way in which Robert Patrick runs as the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It’s fun and allows Wright to flesh out new characters, by giving them characteristics of things the audience already knows.
Chow does something similar in Kung Fu Hustle by taking the action and story seriously even if you’re going to include goofy stuff. Another popular parody film Kung Pow: Enter the Fist was released around the same time. There, everything was a joke—even the action, which I personally found grating. With Kung Fu Hustle, Chow ensures that every fight scene can be both comedic as well as thrilling. He hired master choreographer Yuen Woo Ping of Drunken Master and The Matrix fame to make all of the action sequences both impressive (particularly in one on one fights) but also cartoonish for big fights. This arguably makes the audience laugh but inspires them to seek out other kung fu films as well.
Now, I was not aware of all of these details upon my first viewing of these films in my teenage years; I think that’s one of the most important things about these homage films. If you present these tropes and references to a new audience who is unfamiliar with the original work, both Hot Fuzz and Kung Fu Hustle managed to engross me regardless of prior knowledge. Lampooning parodies like Scary Movie only work if you are familiar with the films they are referencing but the homage films serve as a guide for their audience to further explore other works. Edgar Wright, in an interview, stated that he wants the film to stand on its own. He doesn’t want the audience to feel like they need to do homework beforehand to enjoy them, but rather, wants to help film fans discover more after the fact. At the time of Kung Fu Hustle’s release, I would have been 14 and only been aware of American Jackie Chan films and Enter the Dragon, so this was my first taste of what true Hong Kong cinema could offer. It opened a door for me to discover the works of the Shaw Bros and the vast amount of martial arts cinema I had missed out on. Now, with Hot Fuzz, I certainly was more familiar with a lot of the American action films it’s riffing on but there were still holes in my film watching—such as Point Break. As soon as I saw Hot Fuzz in theaters with my friends I checked out the Point Break DVD from the library so I could see for myself what made Frost’s Danny Butterman so insistent on showing Pegg’s Nicholas Angel.
So yeah, the homage film is kind of the best of all worlds. Hot Fuzz and Kung Fu Hustle amongst others manage to take everything you love from their respective genres and squeeze them into the perfect combination of all of them. Without worrying about establishing something completely new they remix everything to give the familiar a fresh spin while also giving the audience the opportunity to further explore different works. At the end of the day, these are all just filmmakers who love movies and want to share that love with us too—and that’s pretty great.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon