Josh Brolin has revealed that the sequel to Sicario, known as Soldado, is “more severe” and “much bigger”.
Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve, was a big hit with critics upon its release in 2015, garnering a metacritic score of 82. Villeneuve has since gone on to direct notable films like Arrival and this year’s Blade Runner 2049.
Villeneuve won’t be returning for the Sicario sequel, however, directing responsibilities for Soldado have fallen to Stefano Sollima (Gomorrah) with Taylor Sheridan writing the script.
One of the actors returning for the sequel, Josh Brolin, seems pretty excited by the feature, telling Collider the following in a recent interview:
“You know what? That movie, honestly, I’ll just tell you really quick, when I first saw it I was like, ‘Okay, it’s a good movie and I think we need to trim some things. We need to do this, and this, and that to it.’ Everybody else had their notes and then when they saw the final cut it’s a really good movie. I’m really excited about it. I was actually surprised at how good it turned out.”
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Even thought that sounds a little like a backhanded compliment towards the movie, Brolin was also sceptical about Sicario initially, as he reveals:
“When I saw [Sicario], I said, ‘This is a really fucking good movie.’ When I finished the movie, I thought it was going to be OK. I had seen Denis’s movies. I knew he was a great director, but not everybody’s perfect and not everybody can put a good movie together no matter what their intentions are, but when I saw Sicario I didn’t know what happened. I was like, ‘I know we accomplished a good movie, but why don’t I remember this?
“I kind of felt the same way [with Soldado], and maybe that all stems from Taylor Sheridan’s writing and the fact that you can only fuck up his scripts to a certain extent, but it’s still going to be a good movie because maybe it does all start with the script. When you have an OK script you’re constantly manipulating it to make it sound decent, is one thing. When you have a great script and you’re just trying to do justice to it, maybe that’s something else, and I think that’s what we experienced with him.”
Then finally, the actor said the following while comparing Sicario to Soldado:
“I think it’s just more severe, man. All the way around. I think the characters are more severe. I think the movie is more severe. I think it’s just much bigger. It’s just a bigger scope film. Like I said, when I saw it it was like Sicario felt like a small movie to me, even though it was a very intimate movie. I’ve always said I don’t understand why bigger movies can’t be just as intimate, if not more intimate. Why do they have to be less emotional? I think Soldado‘s a perfect example of that. I think it’s extremely emotional. I think it’s extremely tense and it deals with similar subject matters.”
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Originally published October 19, 2017. Updated April 15, 2018.
