What Went Wrong: Jonah Hex
By Shalimar Sahota
October 6, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jonah Hex was the creation of John Albano and Tony DeZuniga, appearing in DC’s All-Star Western and Weird Western Tales in the early 1970s. It wasn’t till 1977 that he got his own comic book series. With DC Comics tied to Warner Bros, a film adaptation was bound to happen.
William Farmer wrote a draft for Jonah Hex back in 1997. His script had a much more supernatural tone to it (a werewolf and a dead army?) and bears little resemblance to the eventual film, for which he has a story credit. Somewhere along the way Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor must have got a hold of it and done a complete rewrite, one that would have resulted in a hard R-rated film. Neveldine had said that Warner Bros loved their script. Looking to also direct the film, they now needed their actors.
In October 2008, when Josh Brolin first read their script for Jonah Hex, he thought it was awful. As an over-the-top action movie, he was not too keen on the incessant swearing, nudity, face melting, zombies and exploding eyeball violence. However, he was interested, so long as changes could be made. A month later Neveldine and Taylor left the film over the usual “creative differences.” It’s believed that they were reluctant to make script changes, yet Warner was desperate to keep Brolin attached. Once he was onboard, Brolin appeared to have a lot of control over the film.
In January 2009, Brolin and Warners decided on director Jimmy Hayward, who had previously only directed Horton Hears a Who!. Brolin revealed that Hayward had somehow managed to email him, listing all the things he loved about Jonah Hex, for it turned out that he actually happened to be a fan of the comics. Before shooting began, Hayward removed everything that was so over the top in Neveldine and Taylor’s script, even changing the ending. A touch of their crass wit survives, but at the behest of Brolin most of it was cut with the intention of releasing Jonah Hex as a PG-13 film.
The film actually managed to acquire quite an eclectic cast. Hayward cited how Brolin was “leading the film… and brought in his friends.” He had called in John Malkovich to play Quentin Turnbull, and after being wowed by Michael Fassbender in Hunger, Brolin asked him to play Turnbull’s right hand man, Burke. Then came the casting of Megan Fox as Hex’s girlfriend/prostitute Lilah. Brolin apparently saw Fox to be full of sorrow during a TV interview and thought that could be useful for the portrayal of Lilah
Principal photography took place a few months later from April to July. However, in December 2009 came news that the film would undergo ten days of reshoots the following month. It was initially reported that Warners brought in I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence to direct the additional scenes, only it was then made clear that his involvement was as a consultant. While reshoots are nothing new, and Warners may have meant well by having Lawrence there, it doesn’t really strike confidence that Hayward has to shoot extra scenes while being guided and overseen by another director.
Even with reshoots out of the way, it was not a good sign that no one had yet seen any footage from Jonah Hex, suggesting that the film was still far from finished. A trailer didn’t appear till the end of April 2010, less than two months before its release. Around the same time a preview screening of the film took place in LA, and the early buzz was pretty bad.
To further promote the film, a press conference took place in June some days before the film was released. Brolin said of the reshoots, “I think that we missed some things during additional shooting that we didn’t realize, because tonally, there’s no model for this…It was kind of like plowing out a completely new genre road, and saying, now we know what we have, how can we extrapolate on that?” That there was “no model” (except for maybe Wild Wild West), showed just how risky this film was. Also Brolin’s words are practically the best way of saying, “we had no idea what kind of film we were making.” Hayward also revealed that what he initially turned in was still worthy of an R-rating, so he had to trim a few scenes down.
The film itself opens with a very brief (and partially animated) introduction explaining how Hex (Josh Brolin) fought in the Civil War, only to turn against his superior, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), killing his son Jeb (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in the process. We’re not really told why till about half an hour in, when Hex reveals that he disobeyed Turnbull’s order to burn down a hospital. Turnbull takes revenge by scarring Hex and killing his wife and son. Left for dead, Hex is revived by American Indians, which somehow leaves him with the ability to talk to the dead. Living life as a bounty hunter, he’s then roped in by President Grant (Aidan Quinn) to put a stop to Turnbull after it’s transpired that he intends to build a super weapon.
Jonah Hex was made on a production budget of around $47 million. Apparently the film was originally set to receive a budget as high as $80 million, only to be cut before production. Who knows how much the reshoots added to the final total. The film became Warners' sacrificial lamb when it was released on June 18, 2010, the same weekend as Toy Story 3. It opened at #7 with an opening weekend of $5.3 million. On the Monday after, Neveldine and Taylor took to Twitter, and as if to rub it in, tweeted “JH: box office karma,” though the tweet has since been removed.
The following week it dropped 69%, earning $1.6 million, and was down to #10. The film earned $10.5 million at the US box office. While it was released theatrically in a handful of other countries during the summer of 2010, such as Australia, Norway and the UK, its overseas takings amounted to just $356,000. From October 2010 it was dumped straight to DVD everywhere else.
The majority of reviews were unanimous in just how awful the film was, with some critics labelling the film as one of the worst of the year, while some called it one of the worst ever made. Still, Jonah Hex does have its fans, such as BOP’s own Tom Houseman, who happened to enjoy the film.
Given the way Hex’s family is killed by Turnbull within the first few minutes, it’s done so hastily that we unfortunately don’t really know enough about the two of them to really warrant caring at this point. This is followed by an animated sequence and further narration by Brolin, which plays like a poor excuse to try and fill in the gaps. It might have been better to start the film the way it did in the original script, with Hex collecting his bounty on the Clayton Boys, and revealing Hex’s history and relationship with Turnbull via flashback.
Given that the original script was over 120 pages, and Warners spent time and money on reshoots as well, the film is insanely short at just 80 minutes long (70 minutes when you take out the end credits). It just does makes you wonder just how bad the deleted scenes must have been. There are five minutes worth of deleted/alternate scenes on the DVD and they’re rather pointless. More was obviously shot. Actor Jonathon Joss revealed that he played an American Indian in the film and appeared in four scenes, all of which were cut. The infamous sex scene between Hex and Lilah, glimpsed at the San Diego Comic Con and in the trailer, is also gone, most likely sitting on a shelf in Brolin’s house.
There’s the obvious saying that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In trying to "fix" what Nevaldine and Taylor wrote, Brolin and Hayward got rid of all the good stuff and ended up with a film that seems unsure of what the hell it actually is. Neveldine and Taylor wanted to ramp up the absurdity and should have simply made their version of Jonah Hex. It’s a shame they couldn’t work things out with Brolin, for this could have been the start of a new franchise for Warner Bros. Instead it’s a film that they, and all involved, would rather forget.