Newsday Avengers Article

June 1998

'The Avengers' Keeps Its British Accent
By David Gritten

SHEPPERTON, England

TODAY ON THE SET, the heroine is encased in a stunning faux-leather body suit, while the hero's body is draped in a dashing chalk-striped Savile Row suit, set off by an umbrella and a bowler hat.

It can mean only one thing: The Avengers are back. More than three decades after the British cult TV series made its debut, a star-powered, big-screen adaptation is set for release in August.

Fans of "The Avengers" unquestionably have mixed feelings about this news. But the folks behind the film version of "The Avengers" -- while broadening the TV series and making a movie with high production values and spectacular action sequences -- say they are trying to retain as much of the original show's flavor as possible.

"I was concerned with keeping the quintessentially English background and characters of the TV show," notes producer Jerry Weintraub, an American. "When you're making a big action-adventure movie, your natural tendency is to Americanize it. I didn't want to. I knew... [the TV show] had a worldwide audience, and I didn't want to bastardize these characters. You know that saying, `If it ain't broke, don't fix it'? Well, these characters are certainly not broke."

The characters he refers to are John Steed, the unruffled, elegantly clad British gentleman with bowler and brolly who works undercover as a British intelligence agent, and Emma Peel, his alluring, stylish and often leather-clad accomplice. Ralph Fiennes, the English actor renowned for heavy dramatic roles in films such as "The English Patient" and "Schindler's List," ventures into the fields of action-adventure and light comedy for the first time as Steed, while Uma Thurman ("Batman & Robin," "Les Miserables") plays Emma. Sean Connery, making his first appearance as a screen villain, plays Sir August de Wynter, a deranged meteorologist who lusts after Emma Peel and hopes to control the world by manipulating the weather.

It helps that director Jeremiah Chechik is a longtime "Avengers" fan. "I grew up in Montreal, where the series played on. . . [the Canadian Broadcasting Co.]," he recalls while standing on the platform of a crane inside a sound stage. "I literally grew up watching that show. I was a major `Avengers' fan early in my boyhood, which is a good time to have discovered Emma Peel. So with this film, I wanted to make it more of what it really was."

So what was it?

"Its strength was its lightness, its wit," offers Fiennes. Says Thurman: "I love that there's something cheap and charming about them, compared to today's TV. But it doesn't matter -- they're more than enough. I was impressed by the sophistication of them." Eddie Izzard, one of Britain's most popular stand-up comics, who has a minor role in the film as a villain called Bailey, adds: "I loved `The Avengers.' It was very sexy and very English, and there isn't much you can say that about."

VIEWING SOME of those old TV episodes, one is struck by the modest budget of the series; many scenes take place against a backdrop devoid of features or extras. Yet the wit of the writing is delicious; there are understated yet palpable sexual sparks in the badinage between Steed (played by Patrick Macnee) and Emma (Diana Rigg). He always refers to her courteously as "Mrs. Peel." It's a whimsical show, played tongue-in-cheek. Macnee dispatches bad guys with a deft flick of his umbrella and emerges from physical encounters with enemies without so much as a hair out of place.

Yet is it a tenable basis for an action-adventure film? Weintraub, producer of "Nashville," "Diner" and "The Karate Kid," as well as less distinguished action fare such as "The Specialist," thinks so. Yet even he admits to the difficulties involved in adapting "The Avengers."

"I thought the characters' sexual tension, innuendo and the repartee between Steed and Emma was very important," he says. "But can you make a movie of this size with just sexual repartee? No. You can't do a Noel Coward piece as a huge blockbuster movie. I wanted an action-adventure movie so kids will buy into it. But I also wanted it intelligent enough for adults."

The movie is designed as a very British production, symbolized by the presence of Fiennes, looking immaculate in his stunningly fitted suit. "It's Savile Row," he says, looking faintly embarrassed. "We spent ages going through various pinstripes and weights of cloth."

"In the original series, Steed was dressed in a way that was already anachronistic in the '60s," notes costume designer Anthony Powell. "It's interesting that in the '90s, apart from the bowler hat, a beautifully cut Savile Row suit is the height of fashion again."

Powell decided the cat suit was what Emma would wear on dangerous, action-packed missions, but everything else she wore (suede dresses, a leather maxi-coat) would be linked to it, to make the donning of it somehow inevitable.

The script is set in London in 1999, and "Avengers-land" is described as a place "where the '60s have never ended -- they've just been going on for a very long time."

"We set about asking ourselves how to honor the original intent, and chose not to have crowds of people in the background living everyday lives," says production designer Stuart Craig. "The only people you see are functionaries with a uniform -- a nanny, a cab driver, a policeman, a scientist in a lab coat.

Yet Craig was also allowed a free hand to create some extraordinary effects -- because of Sir August de Wynter's obsession with malevolent weather, London is seen beneath 30 feet of snow.

For Emma's apartment, the production took over the Chelsea home of Richard Rogers, Britain's internationally famed architect, who bought two adjacent Georgian houses, gutted them and gave them a hi-tech interior. Steed's home was conceived as an 18th-Century Belgravia bachelor pad, all yellows and golds, with battle prints on the wall, objets d'art and antiquities carefully placed.

"Emma's always the ultramodern, independent tough lady, sexy and graceful," says Fiennes. "He's the quintessential English gentleman. I have a line in this -- "Tradition is all we have, Mrs. Peel." The two are a perfect match. You mustn't modernize Steed, and I admire Jeremiah for not wanting to make him trendy at all. He's the way he is, which enables her to be what she is."

PERHAPS THE BEST evidence that the filmmakers are being careful to honor the source material is the fact that Patrick Macnee has a role in this movie version -- though the nature of the role is something they prefer to keep secret until the film's release.

"Patrick's the sweetest man," says Fiennes. "On the first day of shooting, I walked on the set dressed like this [with his bowler at a jaunty angle], suddenly saw him sitting there and had this very complicated feeling. It was a mixture of almost shame and of a wonderful sense of elation -- that by being there he was passing the baton on."