A annotation of the film in the style of Melbourne Cinémathèque’s, from a cyberpunk program festival I curated.
Upgrade (Leigh Whannell, 2018) is a dramatic exploration of the anxieties of having one’s life taken over by technology – quite literally in this case. A mid-budget movie of a meager five million USD – thus able to raise the middle-finger to the four holy quadrants of the Hollywood blockbusteri and revel in its genre blend of science fiction, action and body horror. Its an intentional callback to the practical effects driven, low-to-mid budget cyberpunk action movies of the ’80s; specifically The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987) and Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981).
This marks Whannell’s second outing as director. Jason Blum, of Blumhouse Productions, pushed him behind the camera on Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) after James Wan, Whannell’s collaborator since film school and director of the first two Insidious movies, left to take the wheel of the seventh instalment of the blockbuster Fast and Furious franchise. Wan went on to make the DC movie Aquaman (2018)at the Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland at the same time Upgrade was in production at Melbourne’s Dockland Studios, causing them to compete for crew.
It was Blum again that pushed Upgrade to be made in Australia. Focused on mid-budget movies, Blumhouse Productions knew they could stretch their budget even further by filming in Melbourne. “Making champagne on a beer budget,” as Whannell calls it, was aided by the local talent pool he could dip into – those that weren’t busy diving after Wan’s Aquaman or working on other big budget productions. The Steadicam operator worked on Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015), another crew member had just worked with Scorsese. Enlisting Christ Anderson, legendary Australian stuntmen, enabled them to get the biggest bang, smash and crash for their bucks too. On top of that, Whannell brought the same energy and practices from low-budget horror film-making to truly maximise the production value and deliver a film belying its smaller stature to be weighed against a monstrous blockbuster like Venom (Ruben Fleischer, 2018)iiiii, made for over twenty times more.
The Terminator served as a model for minimal viable science-fiction world building. Its economical use of practical effects and sparing use of early CGI – to create its trademark Terminator Vision – was a model Whannell’s production design team followed. “Future Noir” was the aesthetic aimiv; achieving it on a limited budget was helped by using the same ‘stepping slowly into the future’ model that Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012) used to great effect in its world building; that just because there’s future tech on display doesn’t mean that the past isn’t still… present. That some people are still quite happy to get their hands dirty, rather than just “print a pizza” for dinner.
Upgrade‘s central protagonist, Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is immediately recognisable to today’s audiences. The epitome of the ‘everyman’ so favoured by Philip K. Dick – a major literary influence on the cyberpunk genrev – he’s a perfect stand-in for an audience uncertain of what the future has lying in wait for them. A stay-at-home mechanic, fixing up classic cars on commission, while his wife Asha (criminally under-used Melanie Vallejo – the only real fault in the film) rides in a self-driving car to her job with a megacorporation manufacturing artificial limbs. The inciting incident occurs after she tags along as he drops off a car to a client revealed to be her company’s major competitor. During their ride back her technomagical car malfunctions, ultimately crashing on ‘the wrong side of town’. She’s pulled from the vehicle by masked miscreants and murdered in front of Grey – who, left paralysed, can only watch helplessly. Cue the slow build to a brutal revenge mission, as Grey makes the most unlikely of alliances; the analog man becomes a host for STEM, an experimental AI on a chip, courtesy of his custom car client, that not only restores his physical capabilities… it upgrades them.
What elevates this largely derivative film – aptly described as The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) meets Death Wish (Michael Winner, 1974)vi – are the incredible (and incredibly brutal) fight scenes – a testament to the commitment Logan Marshall-Green made to the production, that massively increased its largely word-of-mouth, cult following. The Terminator was enhanced by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lack of acting ability to deliver a truly robotic performance. For the role of Robocop, Peter Weller worked with famous mime Moni Yakim to bring the cyborg to lifevii. In preparing for his fight scenes, Logan Marshall-Green worked with a movement coach from Cirque du Soleil on “neutralising his body” so that he had the effect of appearing like “a passenger” as something else piloted his bodyviii.
It’s a step up from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000), for example, which showed western audiences that an actor can truly act within a fight, not just repeat rehearsed motions. Grey Trace appears once more to be completely helpless as his body, operated by STEM, becomes an effortless killing machine. It’s an incredible performance by Logan Marshall-Green, who executed every fight scene, elevating the art to a whole new level. Whannell’s team gave the scenes an additional “strange and stilted” effect by locking the camera onto an iPhone hidden under Marshall-Green’s clothing ix – a truly low-tech solution in an age of blockbuster CGI post-production.
“I think a lot of things that were sci-fi concepts even ten, fifteen years ago are now ubiquitous,” Whannell said, discussing his subsequent film, The Invisible Man (2020)x – which built upon the aesthetic and themes he explored in Upgrade. What’s more mind-blowing than the plot device of Scanners is that on the other side of Melbourne from Dockland Studios, a research project is already well underway at Melbourne University to build – ninja fighting skills not included – STEM for realxi.
Last reports have Whannell working with Blumhouse on adaptation of Upgrade for the small screenxii. He’s certainly hit on a rich vein to explore, as the future continues rushing towards the every-men, -women and -thems on our truly cyberpunk planet. You might even detect his influence on this upcoming game:
i Myers, Scott. 2020. “Hollywood’s New Four-Quadrant Movie Model.” Medium. October 29, 2020. https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/hollywoods-new-four-quadrant-movie-model-e7cf94a2e3b8.
ii Schwartz, Dana. 2018. “No Need to See ‘Upgrade’ When You’ve Already Seen It 1,000 Times: EW Review.” EW.com. May 21, 2018. https://ew.com/movies/2018/05/21/upgrade-movie-review/.
iii Bullard, Benjamin. 2023. “‘Upgrade’: This 2018 Sci-Fi Flick Did the ‘Venom’ Thing Better than ‘Venom’ – Stream It on Peacock.” SYFY Official Site. February 13, 2023. https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/upgrade-movie-at-peacock-revisiting-leigh-whannell-2018-film.
iv Anon. 2018. “FUTURE NOIR: BEHIND the CURTAIN of LEIGH WHANNELL’S UPGRADE.” Ausfilm. April 25, 2018. https://www.ausfilm.com.au/news/future-noir-inside-the-making-of-upgrade/.
v Woods, Alexander V. 2020. “The Influence of Philip K. Dick on Film.” Cyberpunk Matrix. February 22, 2020. https://cyberpunkmatrix.com/2020/02/22/the-influence-of-philip-k-dick-on-film/.
vi Osborne, Kyle. 2018. “Interview: James Whannell, Creator of ‘Saw’ and ‘Insidious’ Makes Cool New Movie Kyle Osborne’s EntertainmentOrDie.com.” Kyle Osborne’s EntertainmentOrDie.com. June 4, 2018. http://www.entertainmentordie.com/2018/06/whannell/.
vii AICN. 2013. “Peter Weller Talks Robocop’s Suit.” Www.youtube.com. May 12, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66uduSIp-3k.
viii BUILD series. 2018. “Leigh Whannell & Logan Marshall-Green Speak on the Film, ‘Upgrade.’” Www.youtube.com. May 22, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEqZipI7eyc.
ix Miraudo, Simon. 2018. “Https://Studentedge.org/Article/Heres-How-They-Filmed-Those-Crazy-Fight-Scenes-In-Upgrade.” Student Edge. June 15, 2018. https://studentedge.org/article/heres-how-they-filmed-those-crazy-fight-scenes-in-upgrade.
x BUILD series. 2020. “Leigh Whannell on the Invisible Man and the Filmmaking Challenges after Saw Trilogies.” Www.youtube.com. March 29, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TlPv9lxXAs.
xi Ahveninen, Anna. 2023. “Synchron: Helping People with Paralysis Regain Mobility.” Research. March 28, 2023. https://research.unimelb.edu.au/strengths/updates/news/synchron-helping-people-with-paralysis-regain-mobility.
xii Oosthuizen, Megan. 2022. “An Exciting New Sci-Fi TV Series Based on Upgrade Is Coming.” Fortress of Solitude. September 21, 2022. https://www.fortressofsolitude.co.za/upgrade-tv-series/.
Featured image source https://fanart.tv/api/imagedata2.php?section=3&image=223455
Journal of a Cosmic Anthropologist 