The Fly II

The Fly II
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Chris Walas
Produced by	Steven-Charles Jaffe Mel Brooks (uncredited)
Screenplay by	Mick Garris Jim Wheat Ken Wheat Frank Darabont
Based on	Characters  by George Langelaan
Starring	Eric Stoltz Daphne Zuniga Lee Richardson Harley Cross John Getz
Music by	Christopher Young
Cinematography	Robin Vidgeon
Edited by	Sean Barton
Production company	Brooksfilms
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	February 10, 1989
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$38.9 million[1]

The Fly II is a 1989 science fiction horror film starring Eric Stoltz and Daphne Zuniga. It was directed by Chris Walas as a sequel to the 1986 Academy Award-winning film The Fly, itself a remake of the 1958 film of the same name. Stoltz's character in this sequel is the adult son of Seth Brundle, the scientist-turned-'Brundlefly', played by Jeff Goldblum in the 1986 remake. With the exception of stock footage of Goldblum from the first film, John Getz was the only actor to reprise his role.

Plot

Several months after the events of The Fly, Veronica Quaife delivers Seth Brundle's child. After giving birth to a squirming larval sac, she dies from shock. The sac then splits open to reveal a seemingly normal baby boy. The child, named Martin Brundle, is raised by Anton Bartok, owner of Bartok Industries (the company which financed Brundle's teleportation experiments). Fully aware of the accident which genetically merged Seth Brundle with a housefly (a condition that Martin has inherited), Bartok plans to exploit the child's unique condition.

Martin grows up in a clinical environment, and is constantly subjected to studies and tests by scientists. His physical and mental maturity is highly accelerated, and he possesses a genius-level intellect, incredible reflexes, and no need for sleep. He knows he is aging faster than a normal human, but is unaware of the true cause, having been told his father died from the same rapid aging disease. As Martin grows, Bartok befriends him.

At age 3, Martin has the physique of a 10-year-old, and frequently sneaks around and explores the Bartok complex. He finds a room containing laboratory animals, and befriends a Golden Retriever. The next night, he brings the dog some of his dinner, only to find it missing. He enters an observation booth overlooking Bay 17. There, scientists have managed to reassemble Brundle's Telepods, but were unable to duplicate his programming that enabled them to teleport living subjects. Using the Golden Retriever as a test subject, the experiment fails, leaving the dog horribly deformed. The dog attacks and maims one of the scientists, horrifying young Martin.

Two years later, Martin's body has matured to that of a 25-year-old. On his fifth birthday, Bartok presents Martin with a bungalow on the Bartok facility's property. He also offers Martin a job: repair his father's Telepods. He apologizes about the Golden Retriever and assures Martin that its suffering was brief. When Martin is uneasy about the proposition, and Bartok shows him Veronica Quaife's videotapes, which documented Seth Brundle's progress with the Telepods. Seeing his late father describe how the Telepods ostensibly improved and energized his body, Martin accepts Bartok's proposal.

As he begins work on the Telepods, Martin befriends an employee, Beth Logan, and they grow closer. Beth invites Martin to a party at the specimens division, where he overhears some scientists and learns that the mutated Golden Retriever is still kept alive and studied. Thinking Beth is aware of the dog's imprisonment, Martin argues with her, leaves the party, and goes to the animal's holding pen. The deformed dog, in terrible pain, still remembers Martin, and he tearfully euthanizes it with chloroform. Martin reconciles with Beth, and shows her his progress with the Telepods by teleporting a kitten without harm. They become lovers, but Martin begins showing signs of his eventual mutation into a human-fly hybrid. Martin devises a potential cure for his condition, which involves swapping out his mutated genes for healthy human genes. The gene-swapping process requires another human being, who will in turn suffer a grotesque genetic fate. He then shelves the idea.

Eventually, Martin learns that Bartok has hidden cameras in his bungalow, and has been lying to him for his entire life. Martin breaks into Bartok's records room, where he learns of his father's true fate. Bartok confronts Martin and explains that he's been waiting for his inevitable mutation. He reveals his plan to use Martin's body and the Telepods' potential for genetic manipulation for profit. Martin's dormant insect genes fully awakens, and his transformation into a human-insect hybrid begins. He escapes from Bartok Industries. Bartok is unable to use the Telepods, as it is locked by a password. Martin also installed a computer virus which will erase the Telepods' programming if the wrong "magic word" is entered. Bartok orders a search for Martin.

Martin goes to Beth, explains the situation, and the two flee. They visit Veronica Quaife's old confidant, Stathis Borans, who is now a reclusive, embittered drunk after her death. Borans confirms for Martin that the Telepods are his only chance for a cure. They keep running, but Martin's physical and emotional changes become too much for Beth to handle, and she eventually surrenders them both to Bartok. Without revealing the password, he becomes fully enveloped in a cocoon and enters the final stages of his transformation. Bartok interrogates Beth for the "magic word." Shortly after, the fully transformed "Martinfly" emerges from his cocoon and indiscriminately kills the scientists and security guards. A trace of his humanity remains, as shown when he doesn't harm a rottweiler.

Martinfly breaks into Bay 17. He grabs Bartok and forces him to type in the password (revealed to be "DAD"). He then drags Bartok and himself into a Telepod. Martinfly gestures Beth to activate the gene-swapping sequence and, despite Bartok's protests, Beth complies. Martin is restored to a fully human form, while Bartok is transformed into a freakish monster that can barely crawl around.

The Bartok-creature is placed in a specimen pit similar to the one he had kept the mutated dog. In the final shot of the film, as it leans down to feed from a bowl, it notices a housefly.

Cast

• Eric Stoltz as Martin Brundle
  • Harley Cross as Martin Brundle (age 10)
• Daphne Zuniga as Beth Logan
• Lee Richardson as Anton Bartok
• John Getz as Stathis Borans
• Frank C. Turner as Shepard
• Ann Marie Lee as Jainway
• Garry Chalk as Scorby
• Jerry Wasserman as Simms
• Lorena Gale as Woman
• Saffron Henderson as Veronica Quaife
• Jeff Goldblum (uncredited archive footage) as Seth Brundle

Production

On the DVD commentary track, the film's director, Chris Walas, states his belief that screenwriter Frank Darabont wrote Bartok to represent the worst aspects of corporate America.

Makeup/creature effects

As with the first film, special makeup and creature effects were provided by Chris Walas, Inc. As opposed to Seth Brundle's diseased deterioration into "Brundlefly", in The Fly II, Martin's metamorphosis is much more of a natural evolution (as a result of the fact that Martin was already born with human-insect hybrid genes instead of being accidentally fused with a fly the way his father was).

Here is a breakdown of Martin Brundle's transformation into the creature dubbed "Martinfly" by the CWI crew (behind-the-scenes information is in italics).

• STAGE 1 (on view in the scenes where Martin confronts Dr. Shepard and then attempts to telephone Beth Logan): Martin's face is slightly discolored, and he's looking haggard. Worse, a bizarre cavity in his left arm has appeared, and sticky, web-like threads are being excreted from it. Eric Stoltz's face was subtly discolored with makeup, and a gelatin makeup appliance was affixed to his left arm. The webbing coming out of Martin's arm was made from Halloween-style decorative spider-webbing.
• STAGE 1-A (on view when Martin views the various Bartok surveillance tapes, and when he subsequently escapes from the Bartok complex): Martin is looking even more haggard, and the skin beneath his eyes is puffy. This is an accentuated version of the Stage 1 makeup, with gelatin eyebags added under Stoltz's eyes.
• STAGE 2 (on view when Martin talks to Beth inside her houseboat, as well as in the deleted "Stopping for Food" scene which can be seen on the 2005 The Fly II: Collector's Edition DVD): Martin's bone structure has started to shift, and his face is rapidly becoming deformed. Gelatin appliances were added to Stoltz's face to give the impression that Martin's brow and cheekbones were becoming distorted.
• STAGE 3 (on view when Martin and Beth visit Stathis Borans, as well as when they arrive at the motel): Martin's entire head is deformed, his hairline is receding, and his voice is deepening. Also, the stringy white webbing is being excreted from his face now. Gelatin makeup appliances were added to Stoltz's entire head, and his voice was artificially lowered in post-production.
• STAGE 4 (on view inside the motel, and when Bartok arrives to retrieve Martin): Martin (his voice now even deeper) has begun to instinctively pull the webbing out of his own body and wrap it around himself. As it hardens, the webbing begins to form a cocoon. At this point, Martin's legs have been enveloped by said cocoon. Now that Martin is no longer wearing clothes, a hideous assortment of lumps and bumps can be seen on his discolored body, his face and head are even more distorted, and his teeth and ears are receding. Some of his fingers are webbed together with flaps of skin, and claws are growing on his knuckles. Martin removes his human right eye in this stage to reveal an orange insect eye behind it. The most complex makeup, this stage took some 12 hours to apply to Eric Stoltz, and he was required to remain immobile on the motel couch (with his legs inside the partial cocoon) all that time, as well as during the additional hours of filming that immediately followed. Body makeup and gelatin bumps were added to Stoltz's arms and torso, in addition to the makeup appliances covering his face and head.

Soon, Martin is fully enveloped by the cocoon (which begins as slightly transparent, with the next stage becoming opaque and iridescent). The scene featuring Bartok talking to the cocooned Martin involved a Martin rod puppet—transformed from the waist-down—being operated inside a transparent composite cocoon that was filled with water.

After a brief gestation period, the final "Martinfly" creature is revealed when it bursts out of the cocoon and goes on a rampage around the Bartok complex. The iridescent creature has four arms (the top pair featuring two large, clawed digits, and the other pair having four webbed digits), two digitigrade legs, and its green body is covered with insect hairs. Martinfly is also tall and slender, with a segmented torso. Its head has piercing, orange insect eyes (with pupils), distorted nostrils, and two flexible mandibles with sharp teeth covering a mouth full of even more teeth. The interior of the creature's mouth contains a pseudo-proboscis, which can spray corrosive enzymes at high velocity. Whereas the Brundlefly creature in the first film was deformed and sickly-looking, Martinfly possesses better symmetry and is very strong, very fast, and very deadly. The final Martinfly creature was created as a series of cable-controlled and rod-operated puppets.

Reception

The Fly II fared well in the box office making $20,021,322 at the US box office and a further $18,881,857 worldwide. Despite this, the film received negative reviews from critics. Many believe that Walas (who was the special effects engineer for the Oscar-winning make-up and creature effects in the first film) set out to repeat the success of the original by relying more on heavy gore and violence than on plot and atmosphere. However, it is appreciated by many fans of the horror genre for its great visual impact. Walas has stated that the film was designed to be much more of a traditional (albeit gory) monster movie than Cronenberg's horror/tragic love film.

The scene of a character's head being crushed by an elevator aroused some controversy with the MPAA: they originally gave the film an "X" rating due to its graphic nature. Ultimately Chris Walas was able to gain a more audience friendly "R" rating after reediting the sequence. The VHS and DVD versions retain the full scene.

The film received a certain amount of backlash regarding the 'mutant' dog, in particular, the scene where Martin mercifully euthanizes the dog, which is hideously deformed and kept in a large observation room. Many viewers were disturbed by the dog's appearance and sad fate as mentioned by Chris Walas in the documentary for the Special Edition DVD. He said the audience would feel more sympathy for a mutated animal than a human.

The Fly currently holds a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from a sample of 15 critics.

Sequel

Beginning in March 2015, IDW Publishing released a five-issue comic book miniseries titled The Fly: Outbreak, written by Brandon Seifert.^[2] The story is a direct sequel to the events of The Fly II, and features Martin Brundle inadvertently causing a transgenic outbreak while attempting to cure Anton Bartok, to whom he'd previously transferred his mutant genes.

Production notes

The following are events related to film production:

• An early treatment for a sequel to The Fly, written by Tim Lucas, involved Veronica Quaife dealing with the evils of the Bartok company. Seth Brundle's consciousness had somehow survived within the Telepod computer, and the Bartok scientists had enslaved him and were using him to develop the system for cloning purposes. Brundle becomes able to communicate with Veronica through the computer, and he eventually takes control of the Bartok complex's security systems to gruesomely attack the villains. Eventually, Veronica frees Brundle by conspiring with him to reintegrate a non-contaminated version of his original body. David Cronenberg endorsed this concept at the time. Geena Davis was open to doing a sequel (and only pulled out of Fly II because her character was to be killed in the opening scene), while Goldblum was not (although he was okay with a cameo), and this treatment reflects that. However, a later treatment written by Jim and Ken Wheat was used as the basis for the final script, written by Frank Darabont. Mick Garris also wrote a treatment, with elements incorporated into the final film.
• The first videotape of Seth Brundle is actually part of a deleted scene from the first film (with Geena Davis' dialogue redubbed by Saffron Henderson, who played Veronica Quaife at the beginning of the sequel).
• The film contains a subtle reference to David Cronenberg, writer-director of the previous film. In an early scene where Martin sneaks out of his room to explore the Bartok Industries facility, a guard is seen asleep at his post, and resting on the desk in front of him is a copy of The Shape of Rage, a book which discusses the films of David Cronenberg (and the book's cover features a photo of Cronenberg himself).
• The script for The Fly II explained that Stathis Borans lived in such a fancy home because he had taken hush money from Bartok (and had been told that Brundle's baby died in childbirth along with Veronica), but this was never mentioned on-screen. In an early treatment for The Fly II, it was revealed that the Telepods were not working because Stathis had taken the computer's information storage discs (which contained the Telepods' programming) before Bartok took possession of the pods. However, this detail was dropped from the final film, and it is left unclear as to why the Telepods suddenly aren't working at the beginning of the sequel. The implication is that the Telepods were completely reassembled according to Seth Brundle's design plans; but that the specific programming, enabling it to teleport live subjects, had been lost.
• Chris Walas mentioned on the DVD documentary that he was very displeased with the marketing of the film as he warned them not to use the "Like Father, Like Son" tagline as it sounded too "corny." The marketing executives still went ahead with the tagline. Producer Steven Charles-Jaffe says that he hates the marketing process as it could kill a movie with too much hype.

References

1. The Fly II at Box Office Mojo
2. Orange, Alan (December 17, 2014). "David Cronenberg's 'The Fly' Gets a Comic Book Sequel". MovieWeb. Retrieved December 18, 2014.

External links

• The Fly II at the Internet Movie Database
• The Fly II at AllMovie
• The Fly II at Box Office Mojo
• The Fly II at Rotten Tomatoes