Director Adam Wingard’s upcoming Face/Off sequel will reportedly fix the body swapping mistake from the original film. Released in 1997, Nicolas Cage and John Travolta went head-to-head in John Woo’s high-octane action thriller, Face/Off. In the film, Travolta’s FBI agent, Sean Archer, is forced to swap faces with Cage’s infamous terrorist, John Castor, the only person who can divulge information of where a bomb has been hidden.
Face/Off is often considered Woo’s most popular Hollywood film, grossing more than $245 million worldwide off of the $80 million production. At the date of release, Cage and Travolta were at the peak of their action hero status. Travolta starred in the Woo action film, Broken Arrow, the year before Face/Off made its premiere, while Cage led an ensemble cast in the Simon West helmed and Jerry Bruckheimer produced action thriller, Con Air, also released in 1997. The newest iteration of Face/Off has been in the works at Paramount Pictures since 2019, but Wingard was tapped only recently to direct, perhaps because of the studio’s confidence in Wingard following his involvement with Godzilla vs. Kong.
In an interview with Uproxx, Wingard recently spoke about the sequel (definitely not a remake) and about his intention to fix the body swapping mistake from the original movie. When asked about the main characters swapping faces, yet keeping the same bodies, Wingard says:
We try to address that in this film, because also this is over 20 years later from the first movie. So technology in terms of what in the Face/Off world they can do has advanced, and those kinds of things. So we try to make sure that when the stuff comes up, that we’re checking those boxes and making sure that’s addressed. But at the end of the day, it’s like… Yeah, that’s all I’ll say about that, because it’s one of the things. I don’t want to give anything too much away, too early.
It is obvious that Wingard is keeping his cards close to his chest, but fans of the original film may feel some relief that the director acknowledges such a glaring inconsistency. When Archer initially swaps faces with Troy, it is apparent that Travolta’s face remained on his body and the same with Cage. This is a glaring issue within the film, but one that the discerning fan chooses to ignore for the sake of suspending disbelief. It is possible that Wingard and his frequent writing partner, Simon Barrett, will address and fix this for the sequel in their script.
Though Face/Off ended with Castor Troy being shot by a spear gun, it is possible that in Wingard’s sequel he never died. Both Travolta and Cage have been rumored to be in talks to return for Face/Off 2 if they are happy with the script, and that they would have script approval, meaning that the actors will need to approve of the storyline and their respective parts within Wingard and Barrett’s script before agreeing to return.
Source: Uproxx
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April 01, 2021 at 05:07AM
