Bad Times at the El Royale

As Kyle Kizu from The Hollywood Reporter notes, the filmography of writer and director Drew Goddard has deconstructed specific genres multiple times. When focusing on the 2018 film, he said that it was the filmmaker's "most controlled and fruitful piece of deconstruction" as it was able to present its thesis, of "what looks plain and ordinary hides something beneath", with its opening scene through a literal metaphor of a man deconstructing a room.[1] While The A.V. Club's Katie Rife noted that the film attempted to deconstruct its neo-noir genre, but that it was instead "a structurally ambitious example of same",[2] Matthew Razak of Flixist wrote that the film purposely avoided deconstructing its main genre as it "mashes together a whole wealth of genres and delivers an utterly unique, unpredictable, and unexpected movie that never stays still long enough to be anything but itself".[3] In a negative light, Andrew Paredes from ABS-CBNnews.com said that the film's runtime made it difficult to analyze, and that the film could have been "both a deconstruction and a commentary" or neither, and that only Goddard could say.[4] When asked if he had focused on deconstructing the genres in his film like he previously did with the horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods in 2011, Goddard said "It's funny because in both cases that was not conscious either way. I just sort of go with what feels right for the story. Cabin was very aggressive in its approach. Whereas, in this case, [...] it just sort of came out inherently. I didn't want to make it about the genre."[5]

A major aspect of the film was its visualization of each character's morality. One of its main cues to this was the presence of the California-Nevada border dividing the hotel. In one of the opening scenes, Darlene Sweet takes her time walking across the state line and crosses it only with the help of Father Daniel Flynn, never actually stepping on the line itself. However, characters such as cult leader Billy Lee calmly walk in between the line without a second thought.[6] To further illustrate this idea, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey used color to give each character a "photographic signature". With this process, he assigned Billy to the color red for the significance of "impending doom, blood, and death", black and white to Daniel to tell his distinctions between the truth and deception, and bright colors to Darlene for her character's hopefulness and purity.[7][8] Goddard said he placed the story in 1969 due to the circumstances and tensions during the decade while drawing inspiration on morality from the techniques used by the Coen brothers.[9][10]

Alissa Wilkinson from Vox said the film's themes tackled "religion, salvation, and who we really are" and that the film was about "humanity's drive to find redemption". Believing that the state line served as the "existential crossroads" each character was facing, she came to the conclusion that the hotel was a "stand-in for purgatory". She noted that the main point of the use of religion in the film was the idea that confessing would help the characters "[speak] freely about their past misdeeds in time for someone else to see them for who they really are".[11] Tracy Palmer, from Signal Horizon, similarly evaluated the story and arrived at the assumption that Daniel was, in fact, God testing six people in purgatory, and as "Darlene never commits any sin beyond hating herself and aiding a criminal find his money [...] she is rewarded for her charity, and acceptance of self by singing for an audience what she wants, how she wants to look for eternity."[12]

The Hollywood Reporter's Ciara Wardlow said the film had "a lot to say about faith". She began her analysis with the mention that the reveal of Daniel not being a priest but bank robber Dock O'Kelly as being similar to "other invocations of religion" turning out to be misleading. She explained the decision of Dwight Broadbeck to violate his orders to potentially rescue a kidnapping victim, as his attempt to do what is right after reciting to his daughter a revised version of the prayer "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep". After concluding that all the characters in the film were having their faith tested, such as Miles Miller seeking forgiveness for his sins and Billy playing God as a cult leader, Wardlow cited Pascal's wager to summarize the major theme of the project: "Bad Times repeatedly asks what is 'goodness' even, or forgiveness? And who is qualified to give it, for that matter?"[6]

Furthermore, a journalist named Jasmine from SSZee Media studied the film and wrote that it was "a study of religion" as every character was having a "crisis of faith". Focusing on the introduction of Billy Lee and how he uses religion to take advantage of his followers and to pose as a God himself, "walking the line between good and evil", Jasmine noted the similarity of his followers to the "disciples following Jesus". Also analyzing a scene in which a shot was framed to make Billy appear to have a halo on his head, she interpreted that his character was created to focus more on threatening appearances through his movements and words, calling it "the performance of Chris Hemsworth's career".[13]

Rumors surrounding the personal life of John F. Kennedy influenced the presence of the film reel.

A film reel containing a recently deceased person in an intimate act is destroyed in the film's finale. The choice to never tell the audience the identity of the person on the film was examined by both critics and filmgoers. Screen Rant's Zak Wojnar said the scene would lead the audience to question "if it should actually matter." He said it was possible the person on the film was John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King Jr., major political figures who were all assassinated in the 1960s. In his conclusion, Wojnar said the "key takeaway of the film is that great men aren't perfect. Good people can do bad things, bad people can do good things, and there's more to human beings than the binary poles of righteous and wicked."[14] Lia Beck from Bustle, on the other hand, closely examined the possibility of JFK being the person on the tape, as he had been rumored to have had an affair with Marilyn Monroe in the 1960s, who appears in the film through a photograph. They also pointed out that the hotel the El Royale is based on, the Cal Neva Lodge & Casino,[15] was frequently visited by the Kennedy family.[10][16] Goddard said his choice to leave the person on the tape ambiguous was to move the focus on Darlene, her rant towards Billy, and her character as a whole.[17]

Drew Goddard wrote, produced, and directed the film as his "love letter to the crime thriller" genre.[18]

Goddard began writing the spec script to Bad Times at the El Royale in November 2016.[19] To prepare for the film financially, he pitched the project with a budget and a selection of songs he wanted to be included. On March 8, 2017, 20th Century Fox bought the screenplay,[20] accepted Goddard's terms,[21] and set the budget at $32 million.[22] According to The Hollywood Reporter, the script was only given to top studio executives, with potential buyers having to read it off a tablet before returning it to a courier.[23] Goddard was also attached to direct for TSG Entertainment and Goddard Textiles, producing alongside Jeremy Latcham. Mary McLaglen was an executive producer.[24]

Gumbo is the perfect way to describe it. I love crime fiction, I love film noir, I love big ensemble movies, I love 60s music. So much of this movie is about my love for the music of the 1960s and wanting to celebrate the artistic revolution that was happening. I take all of those things and throw it into the gumbo pot, spice it up with a little [of] my own stuff, and out comes El Royale.

— Goddard at New York Comic Con[25]

The film's location was influenced by the Cal Neva Lodge & Casino, a hotel located in between the California–Nevada border. Goddard said he wanted to work with an ensemble cast after finishing The Martian with lead actor Matt Damon because he "wanted to play around with a large cast so that you don't know who the protagonist is."[15] On further inspirations, Goddard said his cast and crew watched several films throughout the film's production, including Casablanca (1942), Out of the Past (1947), Chinatown (1974), and Barton Fink (1991), along with reading several novels from Jim Thompson, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, James Ellroy, and Flannery O'Connor.[15][26] He also compared the film to The Good Place, a television comedy series he executive produced, and said they were "two sides of the same coin. They're both about characters struggling to be better people and trying to figure out what it means to be a better person. One is a very broad comedy, the other is a dark noir. But at the core, they are about characters."[27]

Cynthia Erivo plays soul singer Darlene Sweet. She was cast in the singing role in August 2017 and helped Goddard develop a scene.

Goddard chose to spend more time developing his characters than looking for actors who would best fit the roles.[28] Jeff Bridges was the first person to receive the script,[29] and on August 23, 2017, it was announced he had been in negotiations to star alongside Chris Hemsworth, who previously worked with the director on The Cabin in the Woods.[30][31] Actors who were also being considered for lead roles included Beyoncé, Tom Holland, and newcomer Cailee Spaeny;[32] the latter was officially cast on August 24.[33]

Cynthia Erivo was first considered for a lead role while working on Widows. She submitted two auditions tapes to casting director Carmen Cuba,[34][35] and was cast on August 29, 2017.[36] When asked about Erivo's audition process, Goddard said he "felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It was pretty exciting the day she walked in, that's for sure."[19] Erivo would go on to help Goddard write a scene in the climax of the film in which her character gives a speech towards the primary antagonist portrayed by Hemsworth, explaining that as the only lead character who is a woman of color, that if her character "doesn't have a moment where she can just speak, it will seem as though we don't want her to".[37]

In January 2018, Dakota Johnson joined the film; Russell Crowe signed on to star but dropped out shortly before filming began.[38][39] To quickly find his replacement, Jon Hamm was contacted while attending the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and given two days to read the screenplay and decide whether he wanted to star.[21][40][41] After accepting, he had less than a week to remember fourteen pages of dialogue before filming began.[42][15] Hamm noted a major reason he accepted to star was to work with Bridges and said, "I've wanted to work with [Bridges] since I was in college or even younger. So to get that opportunity, you gotta jump with both feet".[43] In February, Nick Offerman and Mark O'Brien were spotted on set.[44] Lewis Pullman was confirmed to star in May 2018.[45] On casting Pullman, Goddard said "it was one of those good old-fashioned casting searches. After meeting with lots and lots and lots of actors, Lewis came in and you just felt that immediately. The last time that happened, quite honestly, was when Chris Hemsworth walked in for The Cabin in the Woods. You're just looking for actors who inherently fit the role — and then also transcend the role. Lewis had that sort of magic."[19]

Costume designer Danny Glicker created each character's attire and found Goddard's "visual vocabulary" to be "playful and sharp". Glicker said his job was to create "real tension" in each character "between their outward appearance and who they really are". To create the design for Hamm's character, a salesman, Glicker and his production crew researched different types of salespeople and used the documentary Salesman (1969) as inspiration, before deciding that his attire, described as being "very American", would change as the temperature in the film changed as well. On the other hand, the clothing of Erivo's character, lounge singer Darlene Sweet, was purposely created to look imperfect to reflect her declining career.[46] Glicker said he had to screen test each piece of clothing due to conditions presented in the film, such as the weather, environment, and lighting, and that he spent time at the library researching different types of clothing from the 1960s.[47] Summarizing his work, Glicker felt that actors wearing his created costumes were "infused with truthful information [...] to experience that character's life without inhibition".[46]

Principal photography took place between January 29 and April 6, 2018, in areas around Vancouver, British Columbia, where an incentive was given in the form of a 28% refundable tax credit.[48][49][50] The film was shot under the working title Purple Harvest and filmed in chronological order to improve continuity.[18][51][52] After working on The Greatest Showman (2017), Seamus McGarvey was hired to bring out the "1960s look" and "beautiful colors" of each set.[7][53] Shot with Kodak 35mm film with a Panaflex XL camera on a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, McGarvey used Panavision C Series and E series anamorphic lenses to capture the film.[54][55][56]

Principal photography took place in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Filming locations included Pioneer Avenue in Agassiz (top) and Burnaby's Mammoth Studios (bottom).

Several actors took pay cuts to complete the project and allow the production to "take big creative bets".[21][57] For the first few days of the shoot, filming for the main bank robbery sequence took place in Pioneer Avenue in Agassiz, British Columbia.[51][58] The following week, cast members were moved to Mammoth Studios, a 60,000 square foot (5,600 m²) sound stage in Burnaby featuring a 10,000 square foot (930 m²) set of the El Royale.[55][59] Early in the production, the film crew realized they could not find a real place with perfect symmetry to film, and Goddard also wanted the weather to be controllable, thus the decision to build the set in Burnaby.[5] The set was created under the supervision of production designer Martin Whist, who had previously worked with Goddard on Cloverfield (2008) and The Cabin in the Woods.[5][59][46] Each hotel room of the set was designed to be unique to each character, particularly through their wallpaper, with Darlene's room being the most vibrant.[60][61]

It took eight months to plan a tracking shot in which Hamm's character discovers the secret corridor of the El Royale and watches the hotel guests through one-way mirrors.[61] Rehearsals of the scene began in November 2017, with the cast working with a model of the hotel and small figurines to research how to perfect the timing.[41] Due to the complexity of the scene, in which Erivo was singing live for the five-minute continuous shot, cast and crew members had to move silently in unison while wearing "padded shoes and quiet clothes".[19] Using "30% reflective glass" for the one-way mirrors,[53] the scene took an entire day between twenty-seven takes to accomplish.[18][26][62] An additional scene in which Erivo's character sings to cover up noises caused by Bridges's character took twenty takes to complete.[63] Furthermore, the set of a scene involving Billy Lee and his cult talking around a bonfire was built outside the parking lot of the hotel set.[60]

The scene showing the first interaction between Daniel and Darlene was one of the last scenes shot for the film as it was built on location to have the scene occur during the day; every other scene taking place inside the hotel was shot on the set at Mammoth Studios.[64][65] The film's climax scene in which the hotel burns down was planned using fire retardant materials by Whist's brother Joel, a special effects coordinator.[64] The last scenes that were shot for the film involved flashbacks; the Vietnam War scene, originally going to be shot in Thailand, was filmed at the Pölsa Rosa Movie Ranch in Acton, Ontario, while the FBI scene, doctor's office scene, and jail scene were shot in an armory from the Canadian Army. Additional filming in Los Angeles and north of Malibu, California, took place for three days when scenes involving a flower walk and a beach were shot.[55][66][67] McGarvey said he used a wide aspect ratio to shine focus on the ensemble cast.[53]

Lisa Lassek edited the film using Avid Media Composer; she previously worked with Goddard on The Cabin in the Woods. Lassek said she had to wait for the film stock to travel to Los Angeles, where it was processed and returned to Vancouver. As a result, Lassek was permitted to edit the project as filming took place while in a workspace above the set. Due to the delay, the footage shown in the film on television monitors was shot first so the original film stock could be projected on said monitors weeks later. After post-production concluded near the start of October 2018, the finished product reached an Avid DNxHD 115 resolution. On working with the director, she said there were various "scenes that, in the script, were particularly memorable. It was really the way Drew shot them that took them to a whole [new] level."[52]

Goddard wrote each song into his screenplay before pitching it for an "organic process of structuring the film and the songs" and told major studios to avoid buying the script if they could not buy the licenses for each piece of music.[63][29] He described the film as "a love letter to music" and served as a music supervisor.[68] Goddard had Erivo sing her songs live on set with the belief that without it, "the movie would not work".[21] Goddard said that the music was "almost like the eighth character in the movie. It serves the function of a chorus in a Shakespearean play. It actually is a key part of the emotional fabric of the film."[69] As a result, the production crew had each song playing during filming on loudspeakers; Pullman and Bridges said they had originally read the script while listening to the songs in the background as a "great way to set the tone".[70] In introducing the character of cult leader Billy Lee with "Twelve Thirty", Goddard said he wanted to provide a metaphorical connection with the character, as the song is "very bright and seductive, but when you really listen to what the words are saying, there's an incredible darkness".[69]

The film score was composed by Michael Giacchino, who had met Goddard while working on television series Alias and Lost.[18] Both the score and its accompanying soundtrack album were released on digital download by Milan Records and Republic Records, on October 12, 2018.[71][72] The original tracklist for the soundtrack featured eleven prerecorded songs, while a digital re-release on November 30, 2018,[73] included two additional songs; "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)" and "Hold On, I'm Comin'", performed by Erivo in the film.[74][75] Following its re-release, the soundtrack received positive reviews from critics. Polygon's Karen Han called it "one of the year's best".[75] Angelica Florio from Bustle said that "between the music [...] and Darlene's show-stopping performances, you definitely get the sense that the song selection was key for Goddard".[76]

Bad Times at the El Royale grossed $17.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $14 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $31.9 million against a production budget of $32 million.[107] A box-office bomb, its performance was credited to its runtime, competition, and R-rating from the Motion Picture Association.[108]

Box office analytics projected the film would make $8–12 million in its opening weekend from 2,808 theaters, with some "ambitious estimates" going as high as $17 million.[109][110] Bad Times at the El Royale earned $2.8 million on its first day (including $575,000 from Thursday night previews) and went on to debut to $7.1 million in its opening weekend, finishing seventh at the box office.[111][112] Opening below initial estimates,[113] Deadline Hollywood noted the fact that the film had made less in its first weekend than Night School in its third. Audiences during the film's opening weekend were 53% male and 73% above the age of 25.[114][115] In its second weekend, the film made $3.4 million and dropped to ninth place at the box office.[116] The film was pulled from theaters in the U.S. and Canada on December 6, 2018.[112]

Worldwide, Bad Times at the El Royale debuted in 36 markets, making $4 million in its opening weekend;[113] the top countries were Russia ($913,000), Australia ($884,000), the United Kingdom ($620,000), and Germany ($315,000).[115][117] The film earned $2.5 million in its second weekend and $1.63 million in its third from 49 markets.[118][119]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 74% of 256 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Smart, stylish, and packed with solid performances, Bad Times at the El Royale delivers pure popcorn fun with the salty tang of social subtext."[120] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[121] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[114]

The film was criticized for its runtime, character beats, and pacing.[2] Additionally, Goddard's screenplay for the film received mixed reviews, with some praising it for its dialogue and use of violence,[122][123] others comparing it to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956),[2][24][124] and several critics finding its third act failed to deliver the ending it was building towards.[125][126] From NPR, Simon Abrams noted Goddard's directorial style, and how he was able to keep his "hyper-compartmentalized plot moving forward so swiftly" despite its moments of tension and significant plot points.[127] On the other hand, Glenn Kenny from RogerEbert.com did not enjoy the film's finale, writing that it was "an unfortunately apt demonstration of what can befall a clever filmmaker who gets too clever".[128]

Other aspects of the film, such as its soundtrack and cinematography, received praise.[129] Critics agreed that McGarvey's cinematography made the film visually appealing because of its composition and color palette.[105][130] The film's performances, especially those from Erivo and Bridges, also received praise and were mostly well received.[11] While The A.V. Club's Katie Rife criticized Spaeny's character, she praised Erivo's monologue near the climax of the film.[2] Collider's Adam Chitwood said Erivo's acting made Bad Times at the El Royale "one of the best films of the year".[131] Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Leah Greenblatt gave praise to Erivo for her "steely charisma and gorgeous powerhouse of a voice".[132] Abrams also gave positive feedback to the film for its ability to give each member of the ensemble cast enough time to act out their "best,"[127] with Manohla Dargis from The New York Times writing that "the performances and the visual style keep you easily engaged [...] Goddard keeps everything smoothly, ebbing and flowing as the characters separate and join together, but at some point [...] you want something more substantial".[123]

For her performance, Erivo received nominations for the Black Reel Award for Outstanding Breakthrough Performance, Female,[133] the London Film Critics' Circle Award for Supporting Actress of the Year,[134] and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress.[135] A member of the British Society of Cinematographers, McGarvey was nominated by the organization for Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature Film.[136] The film was also nominated at the Golden Trailer Awards for Best Home Ent Horror/Thriller and received a San Diego Film Critics Society award nomination for Best Use of Music in a Film.[137][138][139] At the 45th Saturn Awards, it received Best Thriller Film and nominations for Best Writing (Goddard), Best Actor (Bridges), Best Supporting Actor (Pullman), and Best Supporting Actress (Erivo).[140]