So, with that drum roll,
I'm David Kerr,
welcoming you to the director's commentary of
Johnny English Strikes Again.
So, thanks for joining me.
If you haven't seen the movie yet,
then what are you doing listening to me?
Get rid of me, watch the movie,
come back to this when you've seen it.
So, here we go. Ominous music,
something sinister might be about to happen.
And we're in London.
It's nighttime.
Ml? Headquarters, and here we have Kevin Eldon.
A great British character comedy actor.
I worked with him on Inside No. 9.
A comedy series I did for the BBC.
And we actually built this
bunker-like room
inside a ballroom. Quite a grand ballroom.
So, that's a fake ceiling that you're seeing there,
that our art department put in.
And depending which version of the movie you're listening to,
the word "bollocks"
may have been changed to "bollards."
There you are.
Emma Thompson, what a star.
The only person, I think, who's won
an Oscar for both writing and acting.
She's an amazing, amazing actress,
playing our Prime Minister.
And don't we wish she was our Prime Minister.
So, there she is with Adam James,
Playing Pegasus.
And, yeah, it's all kicking off.
...and you know absolutely nothing?
That does pretty much sum up the situation, Ma'am, yes.
Well, you better get someone on it and find me some answers!
So, who're they gonna call?
I wonder.
So bring back an old one!
And we're in a forest.
And that's Black Park,
which is very close to Pinewood Studios,
where we shot a lot of the movie.
Black Park's been used for
all kinds of movies, including Bond movies.
And here he is, Rowan Atkinson.
And I have to say,
kind of a dream fulfilled to work with Rowan.
I grew up watching Not the Nine o'clock News,
Efiackadder, British TV shows like that.
And then of course, Mr. Bean.
And enjoyed the first couple of Johnny English movies.
And we shot this at night in Black Park,
where comedy fans...
I also shot a sketch
for That Mitchell and Webb Look.
A BAFTA-winning TV show I did years ago
about Nazis
discovering that they might be the bad guys.
So, look that one up on YouTube if you can.
Never mind, Baggaley.
It's a great cast of child actors here as well,
playing the school kids.
We really were fortunate to find some really good people.
Excellent. That is a first-class man-trap.
- Six house points. - Yes!
Right, let's get back to school before matron notices you're missing.
So, it's kind of the school we all wish we went to, I think.
Worth saying that, that fall in the hole,
we actually picked that up after the main shoot.
We sort of shot the main film
and that scene used to end with sort of a dialog joke.
And we came back to shoot Johnny falling in the hole.
Gus Brown there, headmaster of the school.
I worked with Gus before on comedy sketches.
Very funny man.
We haven't seen him, sir.
And here is one of the times
that Rowan suffered for his art.
He had to get painted, as you can see,
in camouflage paint.
And a special suit made
that was also painted
to match the suit he'd been wearing.
Here we go, the zip wire.
So, those are actually small stunt people,
as opposed to actual children.
Spoiler.
And here we go for the bomb that goes off.
And we only got, I think, one take of this
foam in Rowan's face,
'cause it went right up his nose.
He wanted to do another take
and then he just couldn't bear it,
'cause it was really quite hard to put up with.
We shot this
at an empty building. It's not actually a school.
So, we dressed the whole set.
Everything you see was kinda brought in specially.
And here, Johnny's about to get the call back to Ml7.
And we had a number of... At the script stage,
we had a number of options on how he was gonna get
the invitation from Ml7. It was gonna be
at one point, a ticket on his car.
A fake driving ticket.
And Johnny's driving a Triumph Dolomite Sprint.
Rowan, as you may know,
is really into cars.
And we felt like the Dolomite Sprint,
that green car, was the sort of thing Johnny,
as a teacher, would have afforded.
It's a little bit sporty,
but it's the sort of affordable version of sporty.
Here we are in Britain's real Foreign Office.
So, the Prime Minister lives literally,
you know, yards away from where Johnny's standing.
And this, through sleight of hand,
movie style,
is the interior of London's County Hall.
So, it used to be where the Greater London Council was based.
And the wonderful Pippa Bennett-Warner there,
Playing Lesley.
And, fact fans, some of those paintings
you'll see in actual Bond movies.
We hired them specially
as a little homage to Bond movies.
And here we go, some of Britain's greatest older actors.
An amazing line-up here.
Confession. This scene, originally,
was written for three old Bonds.
Potentially, it was gonna be
Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton.
But, sadly, Roger Moore died.
Then we realized that
it was gonna be very difficult to get
people who'd played Bond
to play a sort of slight send-up of the Bond thing.
And...
So, instead we rewrote the scene
and we managed to persuade Charles Dance, there,
who you probably know from Game of Thrones.
And Edward Fox, who you may know from
something like The Day of the Jackal.
If you haven't seen that, the movie dates to 1973.
But if you haven't seen it, go and watch it.
After you've watched this, go and watch Day of the Jackal.
And Michael Gambon, an absolute legend of a British actor.
You might know him from Ham] Potter,
but The Singing Detective was the TV show that I most
remember him for.
So, getting these three guys in a room together with Rowan,
and this was actually our second day of shooting,
this was an absolute coup.
Amazing to work with them.
And, you know, Rowan,
here we go. It's just a classic thing of his,
the way he manages to play those different expressions
as he's listening to the cups.
Just a consummate physical comedy actor.
And just these little details
about how hot the cup is.
Of course, the water's not even hot. That's just acting.
And...
Boom. That's one of those moments where
we sort of thought, should it be a bigger bang?
And then we figured, well, if it's a bigger bang,
then everyone in the building would hear it.
So, it's a stun grenade after all.
And...
And there they are.
They nodded off.
Right...
So, this bit of the County Hall's actually a hotel.
So, we sort of sectioned off a corridor or two
to do this bit of the filming.
"English..."
So, Johnny's back in.
He's back in Ml7.
This is, again, a part of County Hall here.
We shot this in one on Steadicam.
So, we got this in, in about an hour.
Which is pretty quick for a sort of single-take scene.
...because the links get caught in the little hairs on my wrist.
And I'll also need a Bough.
What's a Bough?
And this was one of the joys really, of this film,
was to bring back Ben Miller,
from the first movie, as Bough.
And we really wanted to
play with the idea that he's almost been living in the basement
of Ml7, all this time.
And he's kind of the forgotten man.
They've kind of forgotten he's still on the payroll.
So, this little set is a set build.
So, that sort of fake daylight that you see outside the window.
And I love the way it's dressed.
Production designer, Simon Bowles,
went to a lot of trouble to
get the details right.
Just to make it feel like a sort of time-worn forgotten space.
And then we go through the lift into a slightly
zhuzhier, jazzier, more modern part of Ml7.
This is at Kensington, Olympia.
We built a set inside a massive hall at Kensington, Olympia.
Matthew Beard playing P.
Great actor, you might've seen him in The Imitation Game.
And again, that ceiling, design fans, is a sort of
nod back to the ceiling we saw
in the bunker set at the start of the movie.
What's he on about, Bough?
I need a weapon. Not a box of gobbledygook.
So, we're getting introduced to what is, I suppose,
one of the main themes of the movie.
The idea of analog versus digital.
Johnny is pretty dubious about digital technology, and much more...
Puts his faith much more in analog.
And we're gonna be going on a mission with Johnny
where he's gonna try and use analog to avoid digital detection.
So, what he's come for is a gun.
We don't really do guns anymore.
Just get him a gun.
And I love this...
This kind of wall that moves away
to reveal behind it this sort of old,
kind of dusty bit of storage, where, you know,
the things that don't get used much anymore,
like guns, are kept.
..."of the Health and Safety Directive to inform you"...
So, behind Matthew there,
you're seeing a sort of vast expanse.
It's actually probably 400-meters long of a big hall at Kensington,
sort of a big conference hall.
"Furthermore, any agents with nut allergies
"should be aware that traces of cashew oil..."
Thank you.
Right, transport.
So, we had such a big hall
to make space for all of these hybrid cars.
Which are absolute anathema to Johnny.
And I love Rowan's expression there.
It's really not what he signed up for.
I love this little point-of-view pan.
A sort of double-take from Johnny's point-of-view.
And here we meet another character in the movie.
The Aston Martin Vantage.
And if you were a real Bond fan,
you may have noticed that the Aston Martin Vantage,
not that color, but one appears in
The Living Daylights. The Timothy Dalton movie
from the late 1980s.
And this was Rowan's very specific choice, this car, for the movie.
Right for the character. Rowan really knows his cars.
Encyclopedic knowledge of cars.
And we had to buy a second one.
And they're very rare. The second one was actually black.
So, we had it resprayed red and changed the upholstery
so we end up with two cars that are identical.
So that we could have one for free driving,
as Rowan is showing us here.
And another one, we could put onto
low loaders, and tracking vehicles, and so on.
Here we are, King Charles Street, just outside the Foreign Office.
Bursting out onto Whitehall.
So, great to be able to film right in the heart of London.
The real true heart of government.
And now, we get to hear about some of the gadgets
that are gonna be going with Johnny and Bough on their mission.
So, set-up Klaxon.
Look, these are gonna be important, guys.
Something's gonna happen with these pills.
I wonder what.
Probably worth labeling these.
Look, sir. Sweeties.
So, old style sweets.
Hang on a minute.
Jelly babies.
I wouldn't if I was you, Bough. "Jelly" is short for gelignite.
One bite and it'll take the top of your head off
along with the roof of the car.
So, what does this do?
So, lots of things that may be unfamiliar to people under 30.
So, here we go. Cassette goes in and we're with Wham!
We tried a bunch of different tracks over this driving montage.
We tried all sorts of things, from Duran Duran
through to AC/DC.
We wanted something retro and kind of energetic and uplifting.
And we also tried ABBA,
'cause Johnny has quite a history of
involvement with ABBA in the first movie, particularly.
But we couldn't resist this Wham! track.
It just seemed to give a great uplift.
Driving through France
and ending up at this hotel.
It's not actually a hotel, it's a private house.
So, this was a drone shot.
It's quite fiddly to get it right,
with the timing of the car.
And that's Rowan driving the car,
as he very often did.
He did most of his driving, the stunts.
He's an excellent driver.
And that's a stuntwoman, with her touching her hat.
Just in case Rowan got it wrong, which he never did.
Love this. That's a fax, everybody.
That's a whole pile of faxes stuck together.
And filmed this at magic hour,
so there's a very short window
to catch this kind of dusky light that we wanted.
Just to get that kind of very rich, glamorous atmosphere.
Sebastian Lynch, ex-Army and Military Intelligence.
And we wanted a photo of
Roger Barclay, who's playing Sebastian Lynch,
that really looked very non-threatening.
There he is. That's Roger Barclay and Irena Tyshyna.
And they are our couple that are gonna be watched.
And this...
To film this whole sea sequence.
We're about to have a long sequence in the restaurant.
We built this set at Pinewood.
So, it's a pretty enormous set
with a wraparound of a photo of the south of France.
So, it was vast.
And there they are.
The waiters' outfits, they're almost
sort of, you know, Bond casino kind of outfits.
I like that sort of smartness that they have.
But, this is just a really bold thing to sort of,
in the middle of the movie,
go in for a scene. A long scene that's very low on dialog,
apart from the old bit of French.
And it's just a great sort of opportunity for Rowan
to show what he's a master of.
Which is this kind of physical comedy.
This really amazing ability to express without words.
So, they're trying to get to Sebastian Lynch's phone
and they go...
And they go to any lengths, really, to get it.
This is a scene that we spent quite a lot of time rehearsing.
And we went through various iterations of what the action would be.
At one point,
Johnny was playing three-card Monte, shuffling the glasses.
And trying to take the phone.
And we actually shot that.
What we just felt was, it was taking a bit too long.
And it's a tricky thing, that.
Sometimes you have to lose something that's funny
to help the next thing that's funny.
And to not try people's patience.
Pacing a comedy is a really difficult thing to judge.
And it's really only when you get to the edit suite,
that you can make those final decisions.
And then, if you do a test screening, and we did a couple.
If you do a test screening,
then you sort of know what the audience is feeling.
You can tell by the laughter, or dare I say, the lack of laughter.
If you're getting tumbleweed, then you know you gotta change something.
And here we go. This is just masterful, I think.
This is so funny.
Cracks me up every time.
And this little detail of wiping it on his bottom, and handing it back.
You don't want that phone when it's just been on the waiter's bottom.
Jack Fox, here.
I worked with Jack on a British TV comedy I directed, called Fresh Meat.
Very funny man.
And that's Miranda Hennessy playing his fiancée.
Playing exactly what you would play if a waiter started handling your food
with the sort of ineptitude that Johnny is showing.
And yet again, this kind of physical comedy thing
that Rowan can judge so well on this.
We did do a lot of takes.
We spent several days on this set just shooting this one scene.
'Cause it's all about the details.
It's all about timing those details.
Dan March there, playing the hotel maTtre d'.
And then, that's a real, genuine, real-life waiter
who knows how to flambe' properly.
He was brought in by our chef advisor, a guy called Andrew Turner.
I 'd worked with Andrew on a BBC comedy called Whites.
Set in a restaurant kitchen with Alan Davies.
And again, it's just that little dance that Rowan does as Johnny,
it just made me laugh.
And this. Just superb timing to make that look accidental.
I think, all credit to Rowan.
Could never get quite enough velocity out of the champagne.
I know they manage to do it on Formula 1,
but it was actually surprisingly difficult to do
with the prop champagne that we had.
So, we actually enhanced that slightly in CGI.
And here we go. It's just this...
The very last thing you want to eat
is the food that you know has been stamped on,
that you know has been on the floor.
It's completely disgusting and Johnny is fronting it out.
He's just trying to get away with it.
Everything's fine.
And...
And those final words, "Bon Appétit."
I will talk to the manager. I will talk to the manager.
So, we used to have a scene at this point
where Miranda Hennessey, the fiancée's hair went on fire.
And it was one of those things. It was really a funny idea.
And it was funny itself, we shot it,
but it actually sort of unbalanced the scene, somewhat.
It was a difficult decision to lose it,
but we went instead for that suspense.
So, you just know something's gonna kick off
when you see that kind of final flaming prawn.
We just left that hanging there.
As an absolute sort of "Uh-oh. Something's up."
...and then just sailed away.
I think it's time we paid...
And there we go with the first glimpse of the Dot Calm yacht.
And I love that, you know,
we get a sense of something going on before they do. And then we hold back
the full reveal of the fire.
So, we're just playing it in audio
and then those facial expressions.
'Cause getting that timing between Johnny and Bough was wonderful.
All credit to Ben and Rowan.
Jake Lacy here, playing Volta.
So, for Volta, our tech guru,
we wanted him to be, I guess, quite charismatic.
Quite a sort of smooth character.
Not sort of nerdy, social misfit.
So, he's a very sort of smooth, polished guy.
And that's why
our Prime Minister feels so much faith in him.
...a second-rate nation and make it
world class.
We meet our Prime Minister's assistant, Samir,
played by the wonderful Amit Shah.
I worked with Amit on that show I mentioned a little earlier, Whites,
BBC comedy.
Where he played a sort of inept chef.
Really funny guy, Amit.
I love data.
And I think it's, well, you know, the movie playing with the notion of data.
You know, we're all just becoming aware of
the idea of tech companies having our data
and that that may not be such a great thing.
So, it's sort of
one way that the movie, I hope, speaks to the present day.
Just get him into Number 10 and let me work on him.
So, Emma is not drinking red wine.
She's not that method.
Red wine in movies is almost always grape juice.
And we're about to see us burning a set down.
Which is huge fun to do after working on that set
for a few days
and perfecting the physical comedy of trying to get the foam.
We burn it down, so...
Few stunt people
and quite a lot of doing to get that to work.
And we're back in the south of France.
We only spent just, I think, a week or two.
Just over a week in the south of France.
And then quite a few of the locations,
we sort of cheated interiors and built sets back in the UK.
A phone box,
for anyone too young to know what that is.
Again, it's just playing with this great
analog-digital theme.
Where?
And here we are, the first time
we see the Dot Calm yacht for real,
as opposed to just on the phone.
We're in Villefranche, in the south of France
where movie fans,
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a lot of that was filmed here.
And this tittie scene with the...
The shoe box inflatable blowing up,
was actually the very last thing we shot on the main shoot.
And it was huge fun to see it working.
Not much fun for Ben and Rowan,
getting their faces squashed against the glass.
But I just love that swivelly eye thing that Rowan does.
Really lovely detail.
And now we're in a tank at Pinewood to shoot this.
So, that's a CG yacht.
And there it is floating in,
that's a real section of hull
propped up in a tank
and the background is CGI.
And we're about to meet the magnetic boots.
Which seem like a great way
of climbing up the side of a yacht's hull.
They're actually incredibly heavy, these props.
You know, so Rowan and Ben kinda hated putting them on,
but they really work.
They don't really work.
You couldn't actually scale the side of a yacht with them,
but I love the joke.
So, here we are.
Inside the kitchen, they don't know what's about to happen.
Remember, the absolutely vital element of this mission is surprise.
And off they go.
So, those things initially were being pulled on wire.
And then there's magnets, real magnets,
on the other side of that wall.
And we laid the wall almost flat on the floor.
It was a small section of wall.
So that in those cutaway shots, we could move the metal implements.
So, that's not acting.
That's Rowan and Ben
genuinely feeling the pain of those heavy old boots
as they swing their legs over the side of the yacht.
And originally, they were gonna walk across the yacht
at a crazy angle,
which we found out, on the day, was impossible.
So, we went for this little ant-like scurrying.
Which I really enjoy.
And here we meet
Ophelia Bhuletova,
Played by Olga Kurylenko.
You may recognize her from many things,
but Quantum of Solace, the Bond movie, that she was in.
It's really hard to have a conversation like this.
I have a better idea.
And Olga doesn't get to play comedy very often,
but she's fantastic.
And just a little note from the set.
At that point, on one of the takes,
Rowan and Ben were thrown in pretty roughly, into the room.
And they landed against that back wall
and the back wall fell off.
So, the set had to be resecured
and the chippys, the carpenters, came back and stuck it back together.
There will just be a slight pop.
And there's the slight pop.
Yeah. I mean, I love that bang.
Again, it's the sort of thing where sound makes such a difference to comedy.
Both the timing of it and the level of it.
And especially if you're gonna do a joke here about
shouting when you should be whispering,
you really want to have...
You gotta get that absolutely right in terms of creating a sort of
space for it to land.
But unlike earlier with the pen,
exploding pen stun grenade at Ml7,
where it was a very deadened, stunning noise,
this is a much bigger noise.
Anyway, here we are
in the bowels of the Dot Calm
where Volta's processing power
is pretty evident.
So, again, it's a set build.
And we're about to meet another of Johnny's gadgets
based on old-fashioned confectionery.
That's Sherbet Fountain.
Again, if you're a certain age, you may remember Sherbet Fountains.
A sugary powder with a liquorice stick.
Here we go.
He's activating the Sherbet Fountain.
It's gonna help them track
the movements of the yacht.
Aniseed balls.
So, Aniseed balls.
Again, another old-fashioned confectionery
put into use. And away they go.
If you'd wanted to kill me, you would have already done so.
So, some lovely eyebrow acting from Rowan, again.
A great, you know, little kind of Johnny motif.
And here he goes over.
He Cousteau's over the side.
Like Jacques Cousteau used to do.
I love that.
I just love that reveal of him landing
and then the little click of his spine as he tries to
sort it out.
And a lovely deadpan from Olga at that point.
And it's nice to be able to do a joke about Johnny
feeling the aches and pains that an older guy feels
doing something like that.
And we're back in Villefranche.
So, yet again,
where they filmed Dirty Rotten Scoundrels many years ago.
And we built this little cafe'.
So, it's all a set that we put in.
So convincing was the set that
plenty of people turned up and tried to buy coffee.
But I love what Will Davies, the writer,
has done with this scene.
It's a sort of gentle scene
where you kind of get
a little insight into Johnny and Bough's relationship.
And, you know,
Bough's got married
and Johnny could not care less.
He's not interested remotely
in hearing about Bough's wife.
It's just a lovely, sort of,
little character joke.
And they just play so well together, I think, Ben and Rowan.
It's great to watch them.
She's in the Navy, you see.
What, as a cook?
Or some kind of seagoing...
And again, Johnny's prejudices, really,
about what women can do.
Extremely funny, I think,
just to see that he's a man out of time
and he can't quite figure things out.
No. An Aston Martin is surprisingly economical, Bough.
Yes, another bit of setup.
So...
...it looks like we're in business.
So, yeah, that's Villefranche harbor.
So, we're about to get into a car chase
and pitting the
electric BMW i3 against
the roaring Aston.
So, all the way along, this was really a sort of
culture clash, as much as anything else.
The idea of the
digital and analog again.
It's a roaring dragon of a car,
and then this sort of
sleek and silent
space-age capsule that's kind of
gliding ahead.
And we get a pretty clear sense that
Ophelia is talking to some sinister-sounding Russians.
Look at her cornering. Seems so effortless, doesn't it, sir?
So, we filmed again in the south of France.
But, actually, in quite a few... This is near Monaco.
And then, about, you know,
10 seconds later, we're about 100 kilometers away
in a different part of the south of France.
Because we wanted to get
a different landscape
to do the scene that we've got with the cyclists.
And the idea that Ophelia's taken...
Taken a turn away from the main road and onto a smaller road.
And we meet the cyclists.
Now, I have to confess, I am a cyclist.
So, when I first read this scene,
part of me felt,
"Oh, that's not fair. You can't do that to the cyclists."
But, Johnny has to make a calculation.
The security of Britain
could be at stake here.
And after all, this is a non-lethal technique.
So, he's making a judgement call.
I mean, who wouldn't want a sliding bonnet
with missiles in it, from time to time?
So, he's taking aim...
And that's a practical rig
that actually fires a missile,
but not quite as far as that one went.
So, it's a combination
of CG and practical effects to get all that to work.
And those guys really did fall off their bikes.
Believe me that, if you've ever fallen off a bike,
it's not something you would do lightly.
So, we did as few takes of that as possible.
We're talking a bit about the score.
Howard Goodall, who's worked a lot with Rowan over the years,
on a lot of Rowan's TV work
and is a really fine composer.
So, Howard did a lovely job, I think, on the score.
And just here, getting the music to sort of come to a halt
around the time that the car does, as well.
And this is Rowan driving himself...
Doing that little kinda kangaroo hop with the car.
Which again, is a really difficult thing to do,
to sort of make out that the car has just run out of petrol.
And I just love the way
Olga arrives there.
And Johnny's trying to play it cool.
And I say trying to play it cool, because in fact,
it was an incredibly hot day.
And even though this scene is only two minutes long,
it takes hours to film a dialog scene.
Because you gotta do separate setups for each of the shots.
So, we were going through this scene for
a good half a day.
And there's no air conditioning in the car.
'Cause you can't have air conditioning on
when you're trying to record whispery dialog.
So, it was a case of,
between takes, having to sort of
stretch legs and powder foreheads
just to get through it.
But, it is just beautiful, I think, to see
Rowan and Ben playing
a really quite classic bit of physical comedy.
And I think Olga's just superb at
earthing all this and making it feel real.
Real-ish, shall we say.
It's a date.
And, yet again...
Johnny taking the credit for every disaster.
Trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
What?
Junior doctors. They've confirmed they are going on strike...
So, yeah, I mean, really,
what's great about the way Emma plays the Prime Minister is
that I think you just believe she's this person
who's trying to deal with all sorts of
crazy chaos kicking off.
And it matters how she's doing in the opinion polls,
it matters what's going on.
And she's really in trouble.
But I think Emma made that very believable
and just very funny.
But she could've played it in a much more broadly comic way.
But I think you have to believe in the authority of the Prime Minister
for the movie to work.
But you know she's pretty desperate
to have someone to help her in this situation.
So, Volta, she is hoping, is gonna be that guy.
- Can we do a quick... - Needs Photoshop.
So, it was nice to have that little
"needs Photoshop" gag, I think.
Again, Xander generally...
It's kind of the personality of Xander,
was where it could say things that were
inconvenient for people to hear.
But it's not actually trying
to assert itself.
It's just kinda working out ways to make
comedy from what Xander says
and the circumstances in which it's said.
- I won't tell if you won't. - Right you are.
Bypassing security. Security bypassed.
So, there we are, British security.
Beat that.
Denied service attack. Yeah, primitive but effective.
You know what we could try, rerouting all service requests
to our server farm in Nevada.
Rerouting, Jason.
Rerouting complete.
Crikey.
So, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?
So, yep. She's completely fallen for
everything that Volta can do for her.
This is back at,
even though it says it's in Cagnes-sur-Mer,
we actually shot this at night in London.
And so, it's the exterior of
London's old County Hall,
which is now a hotel.
But we put in that fountain
and some of the flowers around it.
And that really is Ben pushing the car.
We shot this, I think, on the first night
of our main shoot.
And we're in a sophisticated restaurant
within the hotel.
And this, in fact, is a restaurant in London called Quaglino's.
And there's Olga again.
We committed to this scene at the script stage,
being quite a sort of long scene.
Where we were just gonna have a chance for
Johnny to plaY
some quite classic jokes.
So, it's very much riffing on that kind of Bond glamour
of meeting in a bar in an exquisite place,
and then just kinda undercutting it with silliness.
But, so often, we tried to play this
as if it were a Bond movie,
in terms of the lighting, in terms of the locations,
to give it the sort of production polish that you'd expect
from a Bond-style movie.
And then just to undercut it with silliness.
Wild horses couldn't keep me away.
So, it's like a Bond movie, but with an idiot
where James Bond would normally be.
I'm feeling a little homesick tonight. I'll have a Moscow Mule.
And the barman, David Mumeni, there.
Great, great actor.
I worked with him on Fresh Meat as well, TV show.
So, Johnny's come up with this "London Lemming,"
as his riposte to the Moscow Mule.
It's something equally alliterative.
And it was a case of trying to think of what the most revolting...
What's the most revolting combination of ingredients?
And the Parmesan really is the topper, I think.
That just sounds pretty unpleasant.
So, what brings you to the South of France, Miss...
Bhuletova.
I'm just visiting a friend of mine.
So, where did that olive go?
So, again, Ophelia really...
Johnny's trying to figure out who Ophelia is.
Olga's playing it pretty subtly, I think.
Basil?
I'm just here on business.
Although, it's rapidly turning into pleasure.
I love these.
So, here we go.
They're really hot.
And only after Johnny's put them in his mouth
does he find out they're really hot.
So, again, it's just
Rowan's capacity to make this funny.
It's extraordinary, just
something as simple as putting a nut in his mouth, that...
Just amazing.
Cheers.
I'm not sure I've ever met a man quite like you, Basil.
Let me clear up the uncertainty for you.
So, this cocktail gag, I mean,
I can't tell you how many takes we did
to get this exactly right.
To get it to sit in just the right spot,
with just the right timing,
just the right expressions.
I mean, Rowan is an absolute perfectionist.
He's absolutely meticulous.
And we would be discussing...
Take after take, we'd just be discussing
what little detail we could tweak
to make it better.
Just to really refine it and hone it
until we were happy.
And that carried on through the edits.
Just trying different takes...
I love that reveal of Ben, by the way.
Lovely little comic reveal.
Where did he come from?
Lovely sense of humor. And obviously entirely innocent.
I just love this scene,
the way Ben plays the son' of...
He knows... He just knows
that Ophelia can't be any good at all.
Gotta be a wrong 'un.
Clearly working as a spy.
And Johnny's not having it.
He's not even entertaining the notion.
Comes up with these harebrained excuses
for why Ophelia
can't be a spy.
I think I know what a spy looks like, Bough.
So, grave news for Johnny
that Ophelia's been given orders by Moscow.
She's gonna have to dispatch him.
So, you can see that she's already
not delighted with that order.
But she's gonna have to carry it out.
Johnny's tossing and turning.
We shot this in a hotel
which was in London, in fact.
So, we're about to be reintroduced to those pills
that we've set up much earlier on.
So, whether or not you can remember which ones were...
Which ones were gonna keep you awake
and give you energy,
and which ones were not
total knockout sleeping pills. Johnny can't remember either.
Crucial.
So, one of my favorite moments there.
Johnny knocks Ophelia out
and we find him on the dance floor and he's buzzing.
This was just one of those things that was hilarious to watch.
Just to see what Rowan can do, you know.
Literally just dancing to a piece of music.
Incredibly funny.
And we shot a lot of takes for this.
Tried a lot of different things.
And in the end, we sort of kept it fairly short,
just so that you feel like you're just left wanting more.
And we tried a bunch of different tracks as potential tracks.
This one's called Sandstorm.
So, Ophelia hides behind the curtain.
Track has changed.
Ophelia's trying to get a bead on him.
And he's oblivious.
So, this next section
is more closely choreographed.
I worked with a choreographer called Litza Bixler.
We'd done some commercials together.
And between us, we sort of worked with
Rowan and Olga, to get this...
This whole routine working, really, in terms of
which moments Ophelia could be trying to use the garroting watch.
And there, she's trying to, again,
pretend she's having a great time.
Johnny's having the time of his life.
This is amazing.
Ophelia's come to dance with him,
it's great.
And over she goes.
So, we stunt-doubled Johnny and Ophelia,
just for the moment of the throw.
So, just at that moment there,
there are actually stunt performers.
And I love this,
that they're still in the club.
It was a really funny idea in the script
and something that...
We actually came back to this location, Quaglino's,
on a separate day,
'cause we ran out of time.
So often, filming is a case of
chasing a schedule and trying to get it done.
Sometimes, you have to go back to a location.
This was the one time that happened to us.
Again, choice of music here.
Nick Angel was our music supervisor
and we wanted something a bit crazy and high-tempo
to sort of work with the energy of Johnny as they drive back from France.
Do you think we might slow down a little, sir?
And Rowan's face at that moment is just so funny.
In case... In the edit, of trying to hold that back.
So, you don't see his face. You're with Ben,
and then you hold back that reveal.
With what appears to be another cyber attack,
pressure is mounting on the Prime Minister.
- Every train in England? - Yes, sir.
They're all trying to terminate at Bristol Temple Meads.
So, back at Ml7,
Johnny's still buzzing.
And this was actually the very first scene we shot.
We shot this on the first day of the main shoot.
We'd rehearsed it a little bit,
and we'd gone through various iterations of the scene.
There was a version where
Johnny struggled to stay awake
for a lot longer.
And he was sort of like,
asleep, awake, asleep, awake, nodding off, awake.
And then we went for this version,
where he falls asleep really pretty early in the scene
and they have to carry on
as if he's not asleep.
I'd need hard evidence.
Which...
...is why Agent English is proposing
a penetration of Volta's country estate in Surrey.
It's just so funny to see both of
Rowan and Ben in a two-shot.
It's just always funny, I think, when you can see
how they play off each other.
They just have this uncanny chemistry.
Sometimes, it's like a Laurel and Hardy situation.
This sort of double-act chemistry they have. It's amazing.
"Virtual reality"?
So, we're back with P at MI7.
That is a plan of Volta's house in the background.
And the graphics were designed by a company called Territory.
Who have done some great work on other movies.
This floor, by the way,
this sort of treadmill that's gonna move in any direction.
We had numerous conversations about what this could look like
and how it could work.
'Cause this doesn't actually exist as a thing in life.
As far as I know.
So, we had to put Ben on wires
and then paint out the wires.
And then get the floor to move in CG.
So, something as simple as that,
where it's a wide shot of Ben apparently just moving,
walking on a little treadmill,
took quite a lot of doing.
But, I think when I read the script,
this was one of the scenes that most excited me.
I just thought, "I've never seen this joke."
'Cause very often, you read jokes,
you think, "Well, I've seen a version of this before,
"or something a bit like this."
But I've just never seen this joke where Johnny
puts on the VR goggles
and then... VR headset.
And then, you know,
sets off on this hapless journey.
And it just felt like an amazing opportunity
to do some physical comedy.
It was really true to Johnny's character.
And completely in tune with the theme of the film.
So, again, it's about
the digital and the analog.
So, that's the Bank of England.
In fact, it took us ages to get access to that door.
But Jonah Coombes, our location manager,
finally persuaded the Bank of England to let us
use that building.
And going into a bookshop.
And Johnny, of course, thinks he's in Volta's house.
And what he thinks is a bread board is, in fact, a book.
And this scene was an amazing jigsaw puzzle.
I storyboarded it very closely with the storyboard artist, Doug Ingram.
And then it was a case of
adapting it slightly as I found locations.
And to see what the
point-of-view that Johnny sees in the mask would be like,
and how that would relate to the geography of the locations.
And it took a lot of getting right.
It was a scene where,
in the early versions of this scene in the edit,
nobody was laughing because we didn't have the point-of-view,
Johnny's point-of-view, of what he sees in the goggles.
We didn't have this made,
'cause it took quite a lot of making.
So, we just had, literally, the stills from my storyboards
and no one was laughing.
So, there were some concerns, I think,
at the production level,
of, "Is this scene ever going to be really funny?"
And once we started getting the point-of-view in,
and testing it in front of an audience, it just...
The audience went crazy for it.
It was just really thrilling
to see people getting behind it and understanding what was going on.
I love just the stillness of this.
Just seeing a wide shot
in a banal location, and then,
holding back the reveal of, "It's a granny."
And Johnny thinks he's done great things.
And here, we're about to meet
an actor called James Eeles,
playing the coffee shop worker.
So, Johnny thinks he's about to go up a staircase.
The Steadicam guy, by the way,
almost collided with that bicycle.
It was a near miss.
So, Johnny thinks he's going up a stairway,
and in fact,
he's on a London bus tour.
And about to meet the tour guide,
played by Jonny Sweet.
Wonderful comedy actor, Jonny Sweet.
I just love the way he's trying to carry on with his tour.
Despite this strange man advancing towards him.
So, we rehearsed this with a static bus ahead of the shoot.
And then had to get it right with the bus moving.
And this is one of my favorite moments in the film really.
Just this idea of a background joke.
So, Pegasus thinks one thing is happening
and that people are reacting to his serious news.
And, of course, there's another story happening behind him
and he's oblivious.
So, timing and everything for this, was really key
for it to work.
And Johnny, back where he started.
Sir?
- Is everything all right, sir? - Yes, I've done it, Bough.
Child's play. Don't know what all the fuss was about.
So, Bough's point-of-view was actually shot,
I think, a few weeks later,
just outside the Foreign Office.
Took quite a lot of choreography
just to get all of those people on the bus
in exactly the right spot.
The pleasure's all mine.
Hate to rush you...
And we see inside the real Volta's mansion.
It's a location in Oxfordshire.
So, we just like this idea that
Volta didn't just have a hologram,
but he had a hologram that could be
behaving in a different way from the way he was behaving.
So, it's kind of more formal and polite
and he's just sitting back in his house.
At one point, he was playing PlayStation
while communicating with the PM.
But that was just getting a bit too complicated. A bit too silly.
So, yeah, believe it or not, sometimes things are too silly
for us to do in the movie.
Here we have
Johnny and Bough advancing towards Volta's house
and that hedge is actually at Pinewood Studios.
But this side is in Oxfordshire.
So, we're cutting 150 miles or so,
maybe not that many, but 50 miles at least,
to get between the hedge and the point-of-view.
And Johnny recognizes the
interior of Volta's house, of course, from the VR model that he trained on.
Sir?
It was a tricky find, this location,
'cause most ultra-modern houses
are quite small.
And we needed a place that was big enough to really explore
and give us this sort of range of locations that we needed.
So, at this point,
Johnny's about to go downstairs
and we transition from the location
to a bit of a set build.
So, this was built back at Pinewood.
Again, it sort of...
So much of filming is about joining up
these disparate bits of
things that were shot on real locations,
with sets that you construct specifically.
So, this is a set build.
There's so much you don't understand about this world you've got caught up in.
Spare me the idiot act. You're British Secret Service.
So, Ophelia is on to Johnny.
She knows exactly what he is.
Who he is.
And Johnny's trying to bluff it, as ever.
I've spent two years undercover. Simple operation until you showed up.
And I like to keep things simple.
"Simple" is my middle name.
Great line. Thanks, Will Davies.
It would seem you've got a choice to make.
- Temporary suspension of hostilities? - A short-term partnership?
Agreed.
So they're now working together.
I love that little nod.
This little recognition, shared moment.
Get me a copy of the target list.
We'll hit them once more just to be on the safe side.
So, we're back in Oxfordshire.
The house location for Volta's house.
And yet they're so useful for making phone calls.
- Excellent. - I'm not phoning anyone.
So, Johnny's about to try gathering evidence.
The target list, Jason. Four iconic central London landmarks.
Make your selection.
Volta's got his energy juice.
This cyber attack could potentially impact...
And we're about to hear Boney M.
The great Boney M track.
And I liked the idea that it was all like a little Russian nod.
But it was just something...
Trying to find something silly and inappropriate
that could kind of puncture the serious spy atmosphere.
Face recognition software launched.
Johnny English is a geography teacher from Lincolnshire.
Rather heavily armed for a lesson on European capitals, Mr. English.
Any thoughts, sweetheart?
So, yeah. Jake Lacy...
I'd seen Jake in Girls,
the HBO TV series,
and in some really interesting films.
He was in one called Miss Sloane and another one called Their Finest.
And he's also, I think, in Rampage,
the Dwayne Johnson movie.
...just waiting to strike.
I love this. Just a really simple joke.
Fact fans, Ben Miller is actually a really good runner.
I think the school record
that he set for, I think, the 800 meters,
still stands from when he was at school.
So, that's Ben doing some great running.
And the dogs...
We actually shot the dogs running
as a separate plate and then comped them together afterwards,
so that there weren't dogs genuinely chasing Ben.
Stop him?
Johnny takes out a couple of stunt men.
And we're outside the real Volta's house.
Go.
So, yeah, we're about to get into a chase scene
involving the learner driver car.
So, Johnny just manages to get through the electric gates.
And then he sees something ahead
that may be his route out of here.
Those electric gates are slow,
so Volta stopped behind the electric gates.
Johnny sees a learner driver car, this is Neil Edmond,
who I've worked with before.
And we're about to meet Pauline McLynn as the learner driver.
Pauline McLynn,
best known, I think, for the wonderful
Channel 4 sitcom, Father Ted.
Very funny woman.
So, Johnny takes one look at those glasses and thinks, "Uh-oh."
And he then notices dual controls.
So, just felt like a really funny idea
that Johnny's powering the car
and Mrs. Trattner has to steer it.
So, to make this feel as dynamic and speedy as possible,
we actually had a stunt driver
on the top of the car.
Not for those shots, the exterior shots of the car,
but these shots, when we're inside the car.
There's actually a racing driver
in a special rig
built on top of the car.
So, he's doing the actual driving.
And there's five cameras pointed at Johnny and Mrs. Trattner
while they do the dialog and the action.
And what this allowed us,
was to drive at quite considerable speed,
to make it just feel as immersive and dangerous as possible.
It's a technique used on some movies like Mission: Impossible.
Three, two, one.
Go!
So, this moment,
there's a driver actually doing that spin handbrake turn,
on the top of the car. The roof of the car. It's amazing.
And we used to have another scene.
We had a scene just after this.
A sort of final beat of the pursuit,
where Johnny escaped by driving up a transporter truck.
And the ramp...
And he sort of flew off the end of the ramp like an Evel Knievel move.
We shot it
and it just felt that it wasn't quite good enough for us.
So, we ended up losing it and coming out where we did.
Given the Prime Minister's new friendship with Volta, the situation has changed.
But the facts haven't, sir. That attack is V0lta's responsibility.
It's always funny when Johnny thinks he's winning.
He's got that sort of smug pleasure in...
You know, he's definitely winning.
And, of course, he's about to be brought low and humiliated.
And it's just amazing to get Emma and Rowan in the scene together.
Emma's younger than Rowan,
but they both broke onto the British comedy scene around the same time.
Emma had been...
She began doing comedy at Footlights at Cambridge.
And Rowan started doing his comedy at Oxford.
They're just two of the towering figures, really, in British comedy.
So, getting them in a scene together is amazing.
And I just love this dawning realization
and the sheer horror.
Happy birthday to you
And you know, yet again,
Johnny's ineptitude at digital tech.
Can I just ask, what is wrong with you?
The country is in a state of complete chaos.
The press is wetting itself,
and the only person capable of saving us
is the man you're accusing of high treason.
I was in the room myself when he gave the order, Prime Minister!
But there was a...
Do you know what I was in the room with, English?
Your file, which I've read, in its entirety,
and I have a few questions.
Did you or did you not burn
the Cote de Roe restaurant tn Antwaes to the ground'?
And did you or did you not fire a guided missile
at a peloton of French cyclists?
So, you know, the first couple of accusations,
Johnny knows he's guilty.
Whereas this one, he's not quite sure.
Because, of course, he had the VR headset on all that time.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to be me?
And yet again, we're just feeling the strain of
the Prime Minister, having to run a country.
And then deal with Johnny English.
...in the face of events and facts and voters
and that tsunami of tosspots we call "the national press"?
Finally I get the chance to do something good for my country,
and what happens?
The universe sends me you.
So, it's a big emotional moment, I think, in the movie at this point.
Johnny has just been...
Just been fired.
So, he's brought really low.
I love Adam James' reaction. Pegasus' reaction at that point.
So, Johnny's been fired and it's quite a sad moment.
And we go out to the courtyard of the Foreign Office.
Worth saying as well
that my director of photography on this, Florian Hoffmeister,
who I've worked with before on commercials,
I think he did an amazing job of
making it look like a polished Bond-style movie.
And helping me give it the kind of scale that we wanted the film to have.
And we had rain bars set up in the Foreign Office courtyards.
So, that's where the rain's coming from.
The camera's on a crane and it just starts coming down.
And in runs Ben.
The thing about rain scenes is that you do get very wet, very quickly.
So, we had to dry Johnny and Bough off, Rowan and Ben off, between takes.
And it's one of those difficult things where they have to get soaked
and then dried, and then soaked, and then dried,
as we do successive takes.
So, we're in Scotland, where we're gonna spend the third act.
And that's a real Scottish loch and a CG submarine.
And this is a submarine set at Pinewood.
And this is the amazing Vicki Pepperdine.
This says we're sinking.
Again, just a great moment for Rowan there.
Just the timing from banging his head.
And it's a very British score at this point from Howard.
Harking back to some of those old war movies
that we can remember.
And then revealing the castle
where so much of the action is going to happen in this third act
in the G 12 Summit.
Jeremy has always spoken very highly of you, Agent English.
That conning tower is a little set at Pinewood
and all the backgrounds are a combination of plates shot in Scotland, and in CG,
trying to get the right level of mist.
And a sort of atmosphere of that kind of early dusk feel.
This sort of fading light
so that Johnny and Bough can mount the mission.
...until you're well clear, gentlemen.
So, all this action in the third act is set in Scotland.
And we didn't go to Scotland at all,
apart from sending a drone team there to shoot some shots of lochs.
And then all of this was done with the tank and then CG.
But this is actually a real location.
So, that's CG water, a real wall,
CG pier, you know.
It's all manner of trickery.
Sorry, I'm letting a lot of daylight into the magic here.
Johnny climbing over the wall.
Again, just a lovely bit of double act chemistry here.
He's made Bough do all the work, all the heavy-lifting, quite literally.
And all he cares about when Bough lands on his back
is that the equipment might be damaged.
Gain access to V0lta's bedroom and take him out.
How are you going to get up there, though, sir?
So, the model for the castle
is actually an English castle, Berkeley Castle, just outside Bristol.
And here we meet the exosuit.
So, a lovely bit of old-fashioned tech.
And it was great fun finding the right sounds and the right images
to put on the screen here for this lovely bit of clunky old tech.
And I love that little gesture that Ben does
as this thing's powering up.
And this is kind of like one of those tooling-up moments
that you get in '80s action movies.
And then off he goes, Johnny.
Very heroic score.
And even Bough is surprised that this thing actually works.
So, this involved a real section of tower laid flat on the ground.
And then an elaborate crane move that I choreographed with Florian
so that it moves around Johnny.
And this used to be a longer scene here.
There used to be a scene where Olga had crept into...
Ophelia had crept into Volta's room and was hacking into his laptop.
And then hid in the bathroom when he came in.
But we just cut it back.
'Cause I think at this point in the movie, you're just with the action
and just getting to the point of her trying to poison him.
And then him catching on to her, that she's trying to deceive him.
Just felt much stronger, really.
You're working for Russian Intelligence and you have been from the start.
Again, so much of the movie is,
you go through the script process
and you try and make the script as strong as it can be,
and then you learn things in the shooting of
lines that you don't need.
And you learn even more in the edit
as you discover things that can be played on a look
and not with a line.
And then, as you screen test things as well,
you can sort of sense when an audience is with you
and maybe when they're slightly losing attention.
So, you end up pacing the movie into taking out anything that's holding it up.
And 100% deadly.
So, this was a set build at Pinewood Studios
where we were based for the production of the movie.
Seriously, this cannot be happening.
And this was very tricky.
'Cause it's a combination of
real fabric attached to a real window stanchion.
And then CG...
That's a sort of CG shot. So, the stretching rubber.
You cannot be working with this English idiot!
Save the pillow talk for your prison cell, Volta.
Rowan was actually on wires for this
so that we could hoick him out at great speed
and come crashing out of the set.
So, that's Rowan genuinely being flung out.
Although, the one from behind him is a stunt double.
And that is...
One of Rowan's flying shots is a real Rowan shot as well.
Nice to get a little quick bit of fighting in.
Paul Herbert, stunt coordinator, did a great job on the movie.
So, this is Berkeley Castle just outside Bristol.
And we used CG to create the loch beyond.
And here we're about to see Bough popping his head up.
And then a very soggy Johnny appears.
And we did a few takes of this
and between takes, we had to literally chuck
a bucket of water over Rowan's head.
So, again, he's suffering for his art.
So, this pipe band,
I think, is possibly Ben's favorite day.
Ben Miller's favorite day was when he got the play the massive drum
at the front of the pipe band.
And we tried a few versions of this with Rowan.
He's playing My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,
but he was just playing duff notes.
But this felt funnier, that he can actually play a tune,
apart from a couple of dud notes,
but it happens to be the wrong tune.
Hey, you!
Hey!
That's Ca van Clerkin
playing the first of the guards in pursuit there.
And then we're into the chamber in Berkeley Castle
where the G12 meeting is going to happen.
And down he goes.
So, that was actually a stuntman doing that fall.
Not something anyone would wanna volunteer for, I think.
...where the great Scottish clans
once settled their differences and forged new alliances.
So, we spent a couple of days filming in this chamber,
doing the dialog scenes.
Sir?
Back with Johnny in the armor.
So, this was a suit of armor that was actually made of plastic.
And then we've added sound effects to make it sound more metallic.
So, it wasn't. ..
It wasn't particularly heavy, in truth.
Bits of it were metal.
Including the chain mail, by the way,
which did sort of cut into Rowan's skin a bit.
He didn't enjoy that, understandably enough.
And getting the helmet to behave itself,
it was on a sort of electronic release,
but the... It wasn't always reliable,
so it did take quite a few takes to get that timing to work.
Standing by to launch attack, Jason.
So, that staircase that you see in the background of the G12 chamber,
I'll talk about that again in a minute.
Must have jammed when you fell over, sir.
- For goodness sake. - Wait. Try this.
So, it's very important, I guess that we set up the idea that
this thing is really jammed.
Nothing's gonna move it and Johnny's put a lot of oil on it.
It's really stuck.
Back in the chamber,
that staircase that you're seeing on the left
is something we built and it doesn't exist.
It's a Grade I listed castle.
I think it's the oldest continually inhabited building
in the UK, apart from the Tower of London.
And well worth a visit if you're in that part of England.
But the...
We needed a staircase,
'cause you're about to see Johnny arriving into the scene.
And, of course, once he arrives,
he, very swiftly, makes his exit down the stairs.
And we searched high and low
all around the country, really, for a chamber room
that would lend itself to the action we wanted
where Johnny would fall down the stairs.
And it's incredibly difficult to find somewhere
that had everything we wanted.
So, we built that. That's a set build.
So all credit to the art department for pulling that off.
The only person ordering an arrest around here will be me.
There's no cause for concern, ladies and gentlemen,
you are now in the capable hands of Her Majesty's Secret Service.
And you, my friend, are in for an uncomfortable ride.
So, that's a stunt man doing that fall,
but that's Rowan, very much, up to that fall moment.
And it's very difficult to stunt-double Rowan,
because he's so brilliant at playing full body acting.
So many actors just act from the neck up.
And with Rowan,
he knows how to make every bit of his movement
help sell his character and sell the comedy.
So, absolute master of that stuff.
But there are just one or two things like the falling down a whole lot of stairs
that we can't ask him to do.
Shut up.
Now, hold on.
Castle now locked down
and under your control, Jason.
The agreement this ignoramus just signed
didn't just give me access to all the UK's data.
So, yes, we're paying off this idea of sinister tech guru
stealing your data, or data.
And it does feel like a very timely idea.
Timely threat.
So, this is a set build in Pinewood.
There's that little breakaway door, 'cause Johnny's obviously
come down all those stairs and fallen through and broken that door.
And don't lose that one!
And here's an old-fashioned phone
that Ophelia got to replace the other one that Johnny took
and she didn't get it back.
Got left behind in Mrs. Trattner's car.
Trains will collide. Law and order will break down
and the world as you know it will be over.
Show, don't tell, right?
Initiating attack, Jason.
Taking control of junction box.
Suspending Internet and electricity supply across Britain and Europe.
Stage one of attack complete.
Ladies and gentlemen. I can stop the attack
as long as each of you signs the same agreement as the Prime Minister,
giving me complete control.
Your call.
- Welcome to British Intelligence. - Get me Pegasus!
So, this was actually filmed back at Pinewood studios.
So, that's a CG loch with a CG submarine.
The computer graphics across the movie were designed by BlueBolt.
Our VFX supervisor, Angela Barson, did an amazing job.
Signal the chopper, we're almost done here.
For accounts, press five.
And I just love the banality of being stuck in a call-waiting
when the country's about to be overtaken by a villain.
Only two further signatures required to achieve control of G12 nations' data.
And so, yeah, we ceded the idea
that the submarine could be affected by mobile phone calls
in close proximity.
And so it goes...
Oh, my God.
Dive the submarine. Repeat, dive the submarine.
And back in Ml7,
where, of course, their emergency generator
is keeping their lights on.
One moment, please, sir.
This is HMS Vengeance.
We have a full launch code. Repeat, launch code is locked.
Do I have your permission to fire?
Oh, my God. Could you hold on one moment, please?
So, here's a little bit of crossed lines.
Again, a background joke, the submarine sinking beneath the waters,
and Johnny's oblivious.
- Did you say "attack," sir? - Yes, an attack. Attack.
General quarters, we are go for launch.
I love this set.
Peter Singh there, Submarine Officer Kohli.
Hello?
Commander, the missile is being redirected.
A nice little bit of silliness that it's coming up as a Sherbet F.
And we zoom back inside the boat to see...
Yep, there it is.
- Oh, no. - What was that?
So, lighting effects in Berkeley Castle,
and then everything else is computer-generated
at that point, the yacht and the explosion.
Did you
make a call quite close to the submarine, sir?
And it's a lovely moment here
where Johnny's just trying to piece things together, and wondering if
it's a good thing to take ownership of this or not.
And, of course, it was his idea all along.
Not for the first time.
I am re-evaluating our options, Jason.
So, Xander is on the back foot, and so is Volta.
They're beating retreat.
Volta is getting away! He's heading for his helicopter!
No, Bough.
So, it's a real jetty that they're walking on.
But pretty much everything else you see is visual effects.
Again, I just love this, kind of gag where Johnny's trying to move quickly,
but wearing this incredibly heavy suit of armor
and Bough is impatiently held up by Johnny,
but he's trying to do what he can.
Their relationship,
they're sort of like the master and servant.
It's a very old-fashioned relationship.
It goes back
through comedy, really. It's an old archetype.
Careful, sir. Sir?
This was a little bit of set actually, for that,
that pick-up shot on Johnny's face.
We picked that up back at Pinewood.
And this helicopter, we had to take the rotor blades off
to wheel the helicopter in through the archway
'cause it wasn't quite big enough.
This courtyard wasn't quite big enough to land a helicopter in.
You need a bit more space than the rotor blades
to land a helicopter.
Just love this.
It's almost like one of those First World War tanks
where you used to see the soldiers crawling along behind,
using it for cover.
Don't worry, he's only got six bullets in that thing.
And this is a nice gag that we added afterwards.
It wasn't in the original script, and Rowan came up with that,
the line about the six bullets and the thing itself.
Nice extra joke to have in the edit.
The world's going down, English. And I'll be the last man standing.
Goodbye, English! Goodbye, Internet.
So, the rotor blades are only moving through VFX.
And this was a difficult scene,
'cause we had all sorts of weather and light changing during the scene.
So, it was quite a balancing act to get it all to work.
Look at you! You couldn't use that thing if your life depended on it!
And again, nothing more analog than throwing the iPad
as opposed to hacking into the website, so...
Rerouting complete. Attack data now installed at our Nevada servers.
And I hope, by now, you, as an audience member,
are feeling what Johnny is feeling about Xander,
this sort of smarty-pants bit of technology.
So, we were sort of really hoping that everybody feels
the same sort of delight that Johnny feels to kill the dragon at that point.
So, we're back with the press.
I think we can all agree, that wasn't quite the evening we were expecting.
And again, as a prime minister would,
trying to make the best out of a pretty unhappy situation,
and trying to take as much credit for it as she possibly can.
...the man who, I might add, I personally assigned to this case,
Lovely Rowan reaction.
And it's that sort of Elgar-type horn section going on.
Pomp and Circumstance kind of feel to it
that Howard Goodall has given us in the score.
...and above all, a quiet
unassailable dignity.
And just trying to get that reveal and the timing of the reactions
to make it as funny as possible,
and then to cap it with the little helmet joke from Olga there.
And an extra bit of bottom at the end.
So, this used to be where the film ended and it did feel a bit abrupt.
And we'd always kind of wanted to
get something back at the school with the kids.
So, we went back and shot for a couple of days back at the school.
So, what you're seeing now, this is what we picked up.
So, Johnny's come back, but not as a teacher.
He's a sort of returning hero.
Thank you, Headmaster.
Thank you for agreeing to be our guest speaker.
Of course, what he wants to do is catch up with the kids
who are in his class.
And here we go.
So, trying to find places to hide the kids in the classroom,
that they could reveal themselves and make it an escalation...
I love that volcano-hat thing.
And then this spinning blackboard joke.
- Here, sir. - Good.
And this is, of course, a little callback to the opening scene.
So, that took some doing to disguise him there.
There we go.
There we are. There we are.
- Breadstick blowpipe, anyone? - Me!
So, of course, Johnny thinks it's great to have all these gadgets.
And then very quickly realizes that giving them to children,
these lethal things, is maybe not the best idea.
Here, let me take that.
But this scene is really just building up to the jelly babies.
And we just have to hope that people remember that setup.
We did have conversations about,
"Do you think everybody'll remember that the jelly babies
"were made of gelignite?"
'Cause if they don't, then people will be thinking,
"Why on Earth is this any big deal if the jelly beans have gone amiss?"
I always did love a jelly baby.
Great face.
And over to Olly Murs.
Well, thank you for listening.
I hope you've enjoyed it,
and why don't you watch the movie again, now with all that extra knowledge?
Thanks a lot.