“You want to take people right to the edge,” James Watkins, director of DC’s new Clayface movie, says of his body-horror flick, which enters the comic book movie pantheon this weekend. Though an argument can be made (and easily won) that the Batman villain is more mainstream than the likes of Peacemaker or most members of the Creature Commandos character seen in the animated series which launched James Gunn and Peter Safran’s tenure at the top of DC Studios, Clayface is yet another bold swing from the studio which is amplifying characters that aren’t exactly the marquee names in its catalog… and Watkins drummed up plenty of visual terror and mental horrors to get people right where he wanted them.
This article will contain spoilers for DC’s Clayface movie, citing insights from director James Watkins and star Tom Rhys Harries. Watkins appeared on The Brandon Davis Show’s Director Debrief which is available now.
Who Is Clayface?
Clayface first appeared in Detective Comics back in 1940 and has long been known for his feuds with Batman. Fittingly for the character who can change his shape, the debut in the books was with the Basil Karlo character in the part. Matt Hagen, the version of the character portrayed by Tom Rhys Harries in this weekend’s Clayface movie, first appeared in a Detective Comics book a year more than two decades later.
Despite a long history and multiple characters carrying the Clayface moniker in books and animation, plenty of moviegoers will be hoping to see Batman make his live-action debut in Gunn’s DC Universe. Unlike Sony’s Spider-Man villain movies which never featured the wallcrawler, Clayface has proved to be successful with critics; the 75% review score on review-aggregate site RottenTomatoes indicates 3-out-of-4 critics approve of the film.
Moreover, the audience score at the time of publishing is a hot 92%. Another difference between the delivery of a villain to the big screen without their her whose rogue gallery claims them seen between Clayface and the likes of Morbius or Kraven the Hunter; the budget. Even with the least favorable estimates for the sake of seeing the ratio from a studio executive’s perspective, Clayface’s budget is reported to be around half that of the least-expensive of those Spider-Man-without-Spider-Man films.
The Plans For Batman, If Any
Still, with no Batman, there is room for some fans to come out of the film wishing they’d seen the Caped Crusader who Gunn has recently admitted saw his plans changed in the DC Universe after announcing Batman: The Brave and The Bold when launching the new saga. For Clayface director James Watkins, not featuring Batman was not a concern when bringing Flanagan’s script to life. “I’m quite good at not worrying about things I can’t control in terms of the noise outside,” Watkins said.Watkins, in fact, seems quite content with the characters he did get to focus on in Clayface. “This is the story, this is Matt Hagen and Clayface’s story, and that’s the story I’m telling. Beyond that, there’s so much. There’s so many things in the world you can’t control so I was like, ‘Okay, how can I tell this story to the best of it?’
“When I first read Mike Flanagan’s original script, when it came my way, the journey of that character being an actor, a nice guy, to him becoming not so nice,” Watkins went on. “The relationship, connection that [Matt Hagen and Naomi Ackie’s Dr. Caitlyn Corr] form and then the heartbreak of it, it just felt like there was a character led journey that I thought people could really lock into which allowed some pretty intense sequences of horror and body horror and general craziness.”
With Clayface having his origin story told through this debut solo outing and first journey to Gotham City in this new DC Universe (unless plans have radically changed and Robert Pattinson will be bringing his Batman to an inevitable Justice League forming around David Corenswet’s Superman), the character joins a long line of characters who plenty from the audiences will be hoping to see again. Still, Watkins doesn’t seem ready to share any thoughts on sequel ideas and whether or not he has any intentions of directing one should it come along, saying, “I just want to get across the finishing line,” in TBDS’s Director Debrief conversation which was recorded a little more than a week before Clayface hit theaters.
Tom Rhys Harries, however, did have some terrifying thoughts to share about Matt Hagen’s future as Clayface in a conversation provided to THS by the The Brandon Davis Show for an exclusive early preview; “He’s got nothing left to lose. And I think that’s a dangerous man,” Harries said.
It seems there are plenty of ambitious ideas rattling around the Welsh actor’s mind. “There is so much scope for us to explore a lot of different things with Clayface,” Harries said of his shapeshifting DC villain. “He’s so overpowered, I’d like to watch him go up against some of the strongest heroes and/or villains in the DC canon.”
Finding the appearance of Clayface when the powers started to kick in and take over was as important for Watkins and portraying the darkness of the Hagen inside. “We went through many iterations to try and find the right version,” Watkins said of the Clayface design, with a fully-formed take on the character briefly appearing to put audiences right where Watkins said at the top of the story. “I wanted to do something that honored what was there before but also it has to feel real on screen in a live-action movie. Also, just trying to make sure we had the sense really, that was most important to me, which was the man inside the monster.”
In the end, Watkins was still “maintaining the man within the monster,” into what seemed to be his final moments in the film. “At one point, there’s vestiges a Matt leftover where he says, ‘Do it,’ where he’s trying to sacrifice himself to save her,” is where Watkins wanted to show the tormented humanity of Hagen one last time, a glimmer of its existence shining through a dark monster which has consumed him from the inside out.”
In the end, the future for any character in film and television today often comes down to whether or not the audience shows up to see them. “If the world finds out about this guy, they should all be worried,” Harries said of the Clayface monster, aptly describing the other character who would be threatened by Matt Hagen but perhaps also foreshadowing what might happen if Clayface turns out to be a box office hit.
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