UPDATED: I need to add something else to my reluctance towards this film. The credited writer for “Emancipation” is Bill Collage whose writing credits don’t inspire much confidence (“Exodus: Gods and Kings,” “The Transporter Refueled,” “Allegiant,” “Assassin’s Creed.”)
EARLIER: A trailer has been released for Antoine Fuqua’s “Emancipation.” I am more and more leaning towards the belief that “Emancipation” probably won’t be a good movie. Not because of Will Smith, whom I’ve always thought to be a talented actor, but more due to the fact that Fuqua is directing the slavery epic.
Can we honestly have high hopes for a movie whose director’s best movie was “Training Day”? I’ll let you answer that.
What this movie needs is a good narrative, the Academy loves that , in order to have skeptical voters actual attend screenings of “Emancipation” instead of boycotting it, like some are claiming they will do.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Fuqua seems to have a bright shiny narrative that he might continue to spew in the forthcoming months:
“The film to me is bigger than that moment (Smith slapping Chris Rock). Four hundred years of slavery is bigger than one moment. ‘Isn’t 400 years of slavery, of brutality, more important than one bad moment?’ We were in Hollywood, and there’s been some really ugly things that have taken place, and we’ve seen a lot of people get awards that have done some really nasty things.”
The slap is bad but you know what else is worse, slavery! He’s not wrong, but I chuckled when I read that quote. In all honestly, I couldn’t care anymore about what happened during the last Oscars . Smith apologized for assaulting Rock, he was punished for it, and he seems genuinely embarrassed by what he did, let’s all move on.
Later in the interview, Fuqua implies that Smith’s behavior at the last Oscars may have had to do with his coming off the brutal “Emancipation” film shoot at the time. The filmmaker says it might have taken its toll emotionally on the actor. CUE THE NARRATIVE ENGINEERING.
His reasoning is simple: Cregger sees himself first and foremost as a writer, and he has little interest in shaping stories around the predetermined “data points” that come with established IP.