Taglines: Revenge gets ugly.
Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is a scarred drifter and bounty hunter of last resort, a tough and stoic gunslinger who can track down anyone…and anything. Having survived death, Jonah’s violent history is steeped in myth and legend, and has left him with one foot in the natural world and one on the “other side.”
His only human connection is with Lila (Megan Fox), whose life in a brothel has left her with scars of her own. Jonah’s past is about to catch up with him when the U.S. military makes him an offer he can’t refuse: in exchange for his freedom from the warrants on his head, he must track down and stop the dangerous terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich).
But Turnbull, who is gathering an army and preparing to unleash Hell, is also Jonah’s oldest enemy and will stop at nothing until Jonah is dead. Based on the legendary character from the graphic novels, “Jonah Hex” is an epic adventure thriller about one man’s personal quest for redemption against the vast canvas of the battle between good and evil.
In the action-packed adventure thriller “Jonah Hex,” Josh Brolin brings the tough Civil War veteran and bounty hunter to life with a bad-ass attitude and wry humor. A man who has gone to hell and back and has the scars to prove it, Jonah Hex is not your typical hero. In his quest for revenge, he will take down any villain with a price on his head to rid the Earth of all the evil he has witnessed.
In the action-packed adventure thriller “Jonah Hex,” Josh Brolin brings the tough Civil War veteran and bounty hunter to life with a bad-ass attitude and wry humor. A man who has gone to hell and back and has the scars to prove it, Jonah Hex is not your typical hero. In his quest for revenge, he will take down any villain with a price on his head to rid the Earth of all the evil he has witnessed. “He’s an absolute complete loner from every point of view,” says Josh Brolin, the acclaimed actor playing the title role. “He’s tortured. He’s full of rage and guilt. His journey in this movie is personal—he wants revenge.”
Megan Fox plays Lilah, the beautiful yet tough courtesan at a New Orleans brothel who becomes his partner in crime. Together, in a sprawling adventure that takes them to the heart of the deep South, Lilah joins forces with Jonah to bring down Quentin Turnbull, played by John Malkovich, a former colonel in the Confederate army.
Jonah lost his family to Turnbull’s murderous vengeance and will stop at nothing to see him dead, but Turnbull has his own score to settle with the gunslinger. When Jonah and Lilah come face to face with Turnbull’s mad schemes, Jonah has to draw on all his powers—both of this world and beyond—to stop him. “‘Jonah Hex’ is a classic revenge tale with the future of the union hanging in the balance,” says producer Akiva Goldsman. “Jonah Hex has access to the netherworld. He can talk to the dead and is unstoppable, possibly even unkillable, though Turnbull will try. Jonah is a unique hero.”
“There is a spiritual element that follows Jonah everywhere he travels,” Brolin adds, “and no one really knows how he got that way. What is the truth? What’s not the truth? Half of his whole background is lore.” The roots of DC Comics’ popular and long-running Jonah Hex comic book series trace back to the 1970s. Originated as a purely Western tough, the character has crossed boundaries and genres that steeped him in elements of the supernatural.
The film’s screenplay, by the team of Neveldine & Taylor, emerges from the look and tone of the graphic novels but creates an all new adventure for the gunslinger. “People who read the comic came out loving the character,” Neveldine says.
Taylor adds, “We were drawn to the character of Jonah Hex…he’s a haunted soul driven by revenge, a man of violence; but he’s got a sense of humor too. He’s vulgar, he’s sarcastic…the flawed human being behind the campfire legend.”
Producer Andrew Lazar, who has wanted to bring Jonah Hex to the screen for almost 15 years, observes, “Jonah Hex is a guy who has his own version of what justice is. He’s the kind of guy that would prefer to save an animal than a human, especially if that human is morally corrupt, and is not afraid to kill somebody if he needs to. He has taken many bullets and not died—a guy who’s got one foot in the grave, one foot out of the grave. So, between that lore and the scar on his face, he has become this kind of mythological figure in the West.”
“This is a tortured, mutilated man that is tough as nails, can take on anybody and can virtually hear bullets coming at him,” director Jimmy Hayward offers. “He’s a hero to some, a villain to most. Wherever he goes, people speak his name in whispers. As Turnbull says, ‘Hex doesn’t know how to die.’ But as you tear off the layers of Jonah Hex, you realize he’s a guy who paid for his role in the Civil War and has redeemed himself, and then had everything taken away from him in a time and place where life is cheap and good men die like dogs. And he wants his revenge.”
Creating The World of Jonah Hex
To bring the Jonah Hex graphic novels to life, Hayward and the producers collaborated with the key department heads to craft an original, visceral world that would reinvent the iconic Western aesthetic and reflect the story’s comic book origins. “Whether it was the cinematography, production design, makeup or the costume design, we wanted it all to be a little heightened,” Lazar explains. “We asked ourselves, ‘How far can you take it while staying authentic? How do we keep one foot in reality but also pay tribute to the fact that Jonah Hex has been this amazing comic book?’ Essentially, we were able to take reality and stylize it just enough to make it seem totally unique.”
The character’s trademark, of course, is the disfiguring scar that takes up half his face. It is the result of Quentin Turnbull’s branding iron and a lifelong reminder of the lust for revenge Jonah carries in his heart. “Jonah Hex was my favorite comic book character growing up, and the scar is so much a part of who he is,” says Hayward. “To me, the most striking part of Jonah Hex was that rope of skin that stretches over his mouth. If I look at all the different versions of Jonah Hex that have been drawn over the years, the one unifying idea is this scar.
To create a lifelike prosthetic that would reflect the production’s vision for the character’s look while nodding at the tradition of the comic, Brolin and the filmmakers worked with makeup effects artist Christien Tinsley and his effects company, Tinsley Studio. “We went through all these different variations of what it should be and what it shouldn’t be,” Brolin recalls, “and Christien came up with this ingenious contraption to make it real. Doing something practically gives you a lot of freedom to be creative.”
Tinsley began by attaching a silk tab to the right side of Brolin’s face to make the skin taut and allow for a thinner look. Next, he applied the first layer prosthetic and placed dentures that housed a high gauge dental wire to draw back the lips and push the cheek inward to create the negative space that is the Jonah Hex trademark. Finally, Tinsley applied a silicone prosthetic, painted the pieces to blend into Brolin’s skin and added facial hair stubble to complete the look.
The complexity of creating a realistic version of a comic book character through makeup and without the aid of VFX enhancement was a challenge the makeup artist reveled in. “From the beginning, I knew we could not match exactly the comic book’s exaggerated look nor did we want to,” he comments. “We were balancing an emotionally complicated character that audiences needed to connect with while offering the flavor of the comic book drawings. In order to achieve the look, we knew that it would be an uncomfortable process for the actor. However, Josh was always very encouraging and didn’t want to detract from the look simply because of the discomfort. He wanted reality…and he was willing to go through the process in order to achieve that.”
The notion of heightened reality infused the entire production, particularly the costumes created by costume designer Michael Wilkinson and his team. For Jonah Hex, Wilkinson offers, “I like the ambiguous quality that Jonah has in that he seems to be unkillable. People have taken shots at him over the years and he keeps going. He’s a true anti-hero, not just a two-dimensional ‘good guy.” With his costume, I wanted to explore how he walks the line between a gritty, sweaty realism and the stylized world of the graphic novel.”
The Action of Jonah Hex
Of all the battles seen in the film, the most complex and elaborate took place on Turnbull’s ship, where production utilized the largest number of extras in the production. Many of them were Civil War reenactors, who came with their own period-specific costumes and weapons for the fight between Turnbull’s boat and a Yankee cutter.
“We used a lot stunt people to perform the falls and high risk stunts, but the reenactors did a lot of shooting because they came with their own period guns and know the drill,” says stunt coordinator and second unit director Steve Ritzi. “With so much mayhem, this scene required really careful choreography and a lot of collaboration with Tom Meyer’s crew to ensure maximum safety.”
In addition to the sequences shot on location in Louisiana, some of the tight hallways and other spaces within the belly of the ship were shot at the USS Lane Victory, a ship docked in San Pedro. This is where Lilah engages in a cat and mouse stand-off with Turnbull’s thugs. “Megan is accustomed to action through her work in the ‘Transformers’ movies, so she was ready to take out five guys in a gunfight,” stunt coordinator Chris O’Hara offers. “On the ship, the hallways are really tight and we worked with her on how to move through them. She picked it up quickly and is very convincing in this tense stand-off between Lilah and Turnbull’s men.”
O’Hara also worked with Brolin and Malkovich to bring bone-crunching realism to the stand-off between the two longtime enemies, Hex and Turnbull. “We tested this sequence with a team of stuntmen to make sure it could be done safely, considering how intense the fight is, and John and Josh came in and did it flawlessly. Having such intense actors as Brolin and Malkovich delivering lines as they’re beating the hell out of each other was definitely the highlight of the experience.” Doc Cross’s carnival tent was another site of a major action sequence. Built like a Western-style gladiator arena with a pit and raised bleachers above for the audience, the ring is the site of dog fights as well as fights between men. Although real dogs performed in the sequence, animatronic puppets were also used to ensure the animals weren’t harmed.
This sequence features an arena fight with an incredibly nimble man who looks more like a creature than a human being. To fill this role, the filmmakers enlisted free runner, stuntman and extreme skateboarder William Spencer, whom Christien Tinsley made over as a feral subhuman killing machine. “William was able to do all these crazy moves wearing prosthetics,” describes Ritzi. “He did an amazing job playing this character where he was running across walls and flipping over Jonah. It helped make it a really visceral fight.”
But through all the action—both natural and unnatural—the cast and filmmakers sought to ground the story in the mythos of these original characters originating from the acclaimed graphic novels. From the shoot-out at Stunk Crick to the ring fight in Doc Cross’s carnival tent, to the final confrontation on board Turnbull’s ship, Hayward sought to merge gritty realism with a comic book sensibility.
“In the graphic novels, the whole Western mythology is a jumping off point that takes Jonah into deeper, stranger realms,” Hayward says. “Visually, we wanted the movie to take the audience on the same kind of journey.”
“We have full-tilt action sequences in this movie, but we also have quiet moments where you see Jonah with Lilah and get a window into his soul,” says Lazar. “I think that in non-sentimental ways, in the midst of this cocktail of action and revenge, this movie really brings out the heart of Jonah Hex. It may be dark and blackened, but it shows why this character has endured for so long and gained a fanbase.
Jonah Hex (2010)
Directed by: Jimmy Hayward
Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, Michael Fassbender, Julia Jones, Rio Hackford, David Jensen, Sean Boyd, Jimmy Hayward, Scott Staggers
Screenplay by: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Production Design by: Tom Meyer
Cinematography by: Mitchell Amundsen
Film Editing by; Kent Beyda, Daniel P. Hanley, Tom Lewis, Fernando Villena
Costume Design by: Michael Wilkinson
Set Decoration by: Robert Greenfield
Art Direction by: John B. Josselyn, Jonah Markowitz, Seth Reed
Music by: Marco Beltrami, Mastodon
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images, sexual content.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: June 18, 2010
