‘The flesh. It should make the computer, uh, crazy’: Remaking The Fly

Abstract

This chapter details the process of remaking The Fly. Strip out all the special effects from The Fly and you've got a singularly focused and somewhat forthright drama, heavily driven by dialogue with just the occasional set and location change. But add in these special effects and the film production becomes a whole different beast — a titanic effort in both problem-solving and firsts in filmmaking or, at the very least, filmmaking tactics very rarely attempted. However, to reduce The Fly to the narrow label of ‘a special effects movie’ could not be more inaccurate. Unlike the ‘special effects movies’ of a new millennium, The Fly relied less on post-production and more on effects produced in-camera and/or on-set, the exception being optical animation. In a case of life imitating art, David Cronenberg fully embraced the symbiotic themes within The Fly film and then extended them into his practical filmmaking approach. He confesses to being the physically fittest he has ever been during The Fly's shoot due to the daily workouts in the filming breaks, mirroring what Jeff Goldblum was doing and completing this fusion-of-sorts with his lead actor.