Angels & Demons (film)

In 2003, Sony Pictures acquired the film rights to Angels & Demons along with The Da Vinci Code in a deal with author Dan Brown. In May 2006, following the release of the 2006 film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, Sony Pictures hired screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, to adapt Angels & Demons.[4] Filming was originally to begin in February 2008 and was originally going to be released on December 19, 2008,[5] but because of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, the film was pushed back for May 15, 2009.[6] David Koepp rewrote the script before shooting began.[7]

Director Ron Howard chose to treat Angels & Demons as a sequel to the previous film, rather than a prequel, since many had read the novel after The Da Vinci Code. He liked the idea that Langdon had been through one adventure and become a more confident character.[8] Howard was also more comfortable taking liberties in adapting the story because the novel is less popular than The Da Vinci Code.[9] Producer Brian Grazer said they were too "reverential" when adapting The Da Vinci Code, which resulted in it being "a little long and stagey." This time, "Langdon doesn't stop and give a speech. When he speaks, he's in motion."[10] Howard concurred "it's very much about modernity clashing with antiquity and technology vs. faith, so these themes, these ideas are much more active whereas the other one lived so much in the past. The tones are just innately so different between the two stories."[9]

• In the novel, the papal conclave attracts relatively little public attention. In the wake of the huge international interest in the 2005 election of Pope Benedict XVI, this was judged to be out of date.[11]
• The character of CERN Director Maximillian Kohler does not appear in the film.
• The Italian Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is changed to the Irish Patrick McKenna, portrayed by Ewan McGregor.
• The Boeing X-33 that takes Langdon from the United States to Geneva and then to Rome is absent in the film.
• In the novel, Commander Olivetti is the commander of Swiss Guard, and his second in command is Captain Rocher, whereas in the film, Richter is the head of the Swiss Guard.
• In the novel, the Assassin contacts members of the BBC in order to influence how they present the story of his activities, but this does not happen in the film.
• The character Leonardo Vetra is named Silvano Bentivoglio in the film, is not related to Vittoria and his death scene is changed.
• Vittoria is a love interest for Langdon in the novel while there is no attraction present in the film.
• In the novel Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is revealed to be the late pope's biological son, while in the film he is his adoptive son.[12]
• In the film, the Camerlengo briefly acknowledges Langdon's involvement in some events of the previous film when in the book it does not, as the events in The Da Vinci Code are yet to take place. This is due to the fact the first novel in the film series was adapted to film after the second book rather than in the order of first-to-last.
• In the book, the assassin has Middle Eastern looks whereas in the movie he is portrayed by a Danish actor. In the film, he is killed by a car bomb, whereas in the book he falls from a balcony at the top of the Castel Sant Angelo and breaks his back on a pile of marble cannonballs which eventually kills him.
• In the novel, Vittoria is kidnapped, whereas, in the film, she accompanies Langdon almost everywhere.
• In the book, all four preferiti are killed by the assassin and eventually the high elector, Cardinal Saverio Mortati, is elected as the new pope, whereas in the film, the fourth preferito, Cardinal Baggia, is saved by Langdon and is elected the new pope. The high elector, renamed Cardinal Strauss, becomes the Camerlengo to the new pope.
• In the book, the fifth brand is one that incorporates all four words from the previous four, whereas in the film, the fifth brand is the crossed keys, symbolic of the Papacy.
• The means by which the heroes discover the location of the bomb is significantly different. In the book, the Camerlengo feigns a religious vision from God, telling him where to find the bomb. In the film, he feeds Langdon a clue to the bomb's location by branding himself with an upside-down version of the papal keys, which Langdon successfully deduces is a metaphor for Saint Peter, the first pope, who was crucified upside-down.
• In the book, Langdon stows away on the Camerlengo's helicopter, and just before the antimatter explosion, jumps out using a makeshift parachute, and lands on Isola Tiberina, whose mythical healing powers heal the injuries he incurs from the fall. In the film, Langdon does not get on the helicopter.
• In the book's closing scenes, a Swiss Guard hands Langdon the fifth brand, the Illuminati diamond, as a gift. In the film, the new Camerlengo hands over Galileo's book to Langdon.

Shooting began on June 4, 2008, in Rome under the fake working title Obelisk.[13] The filmmakers scheduled three weeks of exterior location filming because of a predicted 2008 Screen Actors Guild strike on June 30. The rest of the film would be shot at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California, to allow for this halt.[14] Roman Catholic Church officials found The Da Vinci Code offensive and forbade filming in their churches, so these scenes were shot at Sony.[13] The Caserta Palace doubled for the inside of the Vatican,[13] and the Biblioteca Angelica was used for the Vatican Library.[15] Filming took place at the University of California, Los Angeles in July.[16] Sony and Imagine Entertainment organized an eco-friendly shoot, selecting when to shoot locations based on how much time and fuel it would save, using cargo containers to support set walls or greenscreens, as well as storing props for future productions or donating them to charity.[17]

Ayelet Zurer and Tom Hanks outside the Pantheon

Howard hated that the Writers Guild strike forced him to delay shooting the film until summer. However, the quick shoot allowed him to refine the naturalism he had employed on his previous film Frost/Nixon, often using handheld cameras to lend an additional energy to the scenes.

Hanks interrupted filming of one scene in order to help Australian bride Natalia Dearnley get through the crowds to her wedding on time.[18] McGregor said the Pope's funeral was the dullest sequence to film, as they were just walking across staircases. Then, "Someone started singing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' [and] it became the funeral theme tune."[8]

When recreating the interior of St. Peter's Basilica, production designer Allan Cameron and visual effects supervisor Angus Bickerton recognized the 80 ft (24 m) tall soundstages were only half the size of the real church. They rebuilt the area around and the crypts beneath St. Peter's baldachin, including the bottoms of the columns and Saint Peter's statue, and surrounded it with a 360 degree greenscreen so the rest could be built digitally. Cameron had twenty crew members, posing as members of the public, photograph as much as they could inside the Sistine Chapel, and had artists sketch, photograph and enlarge recreations of the paintings and mosaics from the photographs. Cameron chose to present the Sistine Chapel as it was before the restoration of its frescoes, as he preferred the contrast which the formerly smoky, muted colours would present against the vivid red of the Cardinal's vestments. Although the chapel was built to full size, the Sala Regia was made smaller to fit inside the stage.[19]

The Saint Peter's Square and the Piazza Navona sets were built on the same backlot; after completion of scenes at the former, six weeks were spent converting the set, knocking down the Basilica side and excavating 3 ¹⁄₂ ft (1 m) of tarmac to build the fountain. As there had been filming at the real Piazza Navona, the transition between it and the replica had to be seamless. To present the Santa Maria del Popolo undergoing renovation, a police station in Rome opposite the real church was used for the exterior; the scaffolding would hide that it was not the church. Cameron built the interior of Santa Maria del Popolo on the same set as the recreated Santa Maria della Vittoria to save money; the scaffolding also disguised this. The film's version of Santa Maria della Vittoria was larger than the real one, so it would accommodate the cranes used to film the scene. To film the Pantheon's interior, two aediculae and the tomb of Raphael were rebuilt to scale at a height of 30 ft (9 m), while the rest was greenscreen. Because of the building's symmetrical layout, the filmmakers were able to shoot the whole scene over two days and redress the real side to pretend it was another.[19] The second unit took photographs of the Large Hadron Collider and pasted these in scenes set at CERN.[20]

Overseas, Angels & Demons maintained the #1 position for the second weekend as well even with the release of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which opened at #2. The film opened with $46 million at the US and Canada box office. The Da Vinci Code had opened in the US and Canada to $77.1 million, but the sequel's opening met Columbia's $40–50 million prediction, since the film's source material was not as popular as its predecessor's. Within more than a month, the film grossed $478,869,160 worldwide, making it the largest-grossing film of 2009 until it was surpassed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.[22][23] Of this $478 million, just over 27% of it is from venues in the US and Canada, giving the film high worldwide totals, with over $30 million in the UK, $21 million in Spain, $13 million in Brazil, $13 million in Russia, $34 million in Japan, and $47 million in Germany.[24] Angels & Demons was the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2009, with box-office figures of $485,930,810 worldwide.[25]

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 36% of 258 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.1/10. The site's general consensus is that "Angels & Demons is a fast-paced thrill ride, and an improvement on the last Dan Brown adaptation, but the storyline too often wavers between implausible and ridiculous, and does not translate effectively to the big screen."[26] Metacritic has a rating score of 48 out of 100 based on 36 reviews.[27] BBC critic Mark Kermode criticised the film's "silliness", saying "Whereas the original movie featured Hanks standing around in darkened rooms explaining the plot to anyone who was still awake, this second salvo cranks up the action by having Tom explain the plot while running—a major breakthrough."[28]

Richard Corliss of Time gave the film a positive review, stating that "Angels & Demons has elemental satisfactions in its blend of movie genre that could appeal to wide segments of the audience."[29] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three stars, praising Howard's direction as an "even-handed job of balancing the scales" and claiming "[the film] promises to entertain."[30] The Christian Science Monitor gave the film a positive review, claiming the movie is "an OK action film."[31] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars claiming "the movie can be enjoyed for the hell-raising hooey it is."[32] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal gave the film a mixed review, claiming it "manages to keep you partially engaged even at its most esoteric or absurd."[33]

Neil Smith from Total Film gave the film four out of five stars, saying "some of the author's crazier embellishments are jettisoned in a film that atones for The Da Vinci Code's cardinal sin — thou shalt not bore."[34] Kim Newman awarded it three out of five stars, stating "every supporting character acts like an unhelpful idiot to keep the plot stirring, while yet again a seemingly all-powerful conspiracy seems to consist of two whole evil guys."[35]

CBS News interviewed a priest working in Santa Susanna, who stated the Church did not want their churches to be associated with scenes of murder. A tour guide also stated most priests do not object to tourists who visit out of interest after reading the book, a trend which will continue after people see the film. "I think they are aware that it's... a work of fiction and that it's bringing people into their churches."[36] Grazer deemed it odd that although The Da Vinci Code was a more controversial novel, they had more freedom shooting its film adaptation in London and France.[10] Italian authorities hoped the filmmakers corrected the location errors in the novel, to limit the amount of explaining they will have to do for confused tourists.[13]

William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League, did not call for a boycott, but requested that Catholics inform others about anti-Catholic sentiments in the story. "My goal... is to give the public a big FYI: Enjoy the movie, but know that it is a fable. It is based on malicious myths, intentionally advanced by Ron Howard." A Sony executive responded that they were disappointed Donohue had not created attention for the film closer to its release date.[37] Howard criticised Donohue for prejudging the film, responding that it could not be called anti-Catholic since Langdon protects the Church, and because of its depiction of priests who support science.[38]

The official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called the film "harmless entertainment", giving it a positive review and acknowledging that "the theme is always the same: a sect versus the Church, [but] this time, the Church is on the side of the good guys."[39][40] Beforehand, it had stated it would not approve the film, while La Stampa reported the Vatican would boycott it. However, it also quoted Archbishop Velasio De Paolis as saying a boycott would probably just have the "boomerang effect" of drawing more attention to Angels & Demons and making it more popular.[41]

In Samoa, the film was banned by film censor Lei'ataua Olo'apu. Olo'apu stated that he was banning the film because it was "critical of the Catholic Church" and so as to "avoid any religious discrimination by other denominations and faiths against the Church." The Samoa Observer remarked that Olo'apu himself is Catholic.[42] The Censorship Board had previously banned the film The Da Vinci Code for being "contradictory to Christian beliefs."[43][44]

In response to the portrayal of CERN and the work performed by CERN, and antimatter; CERN set up a website to explain what it does and what antimatter is.[45]