It's well known by now that Chronicle creator and screenwriter Max Landis has been dropped from the sequel, as the studio felt his version, titled Martyr, was just too drastically different from the first that it loses almost all familiarity. In Landis' case, the story would have been told entirely from a villain's perspective. This kind of sucks, because, well...that sounds interesting!
In retrospect, I’m not even sure if fans of the first film wouldve been ready or eager for my second installment as originally written.Would you have liked to seen Landis' Martyr come to life?
Gone was the aspirational ‘what would you do,’ gone were the pranks and bromance, gone were lovely tragic Andrew and hopeful, bright Steve.
In their place was a dark, frustratingly unblinking stare into a complicated world that posed the question is it worth it to be a hero… [t]old from the point of view of a heartbroken and insane woman who would martyr herself to the cause of being the world’s first villain.
It was, in my estimation, a sequel that elaborated on the ideas and situations from the first to create a different genre of movie.
In the best of worlds, in my optimisitc but wildly prejudiced eyes, this could make it an Aliens, a Terminator 2…in the worst a Grease 2.
The most frustrating thing is that I don’t know if I’ll get the opportunity to explain what MOGO was or what he was doing in that cave.
So at the end of the day, maybe it’s better that Martyr never saw the light of day. Sad I didn’t get to do some of my other versions.
The multi-movie low budge Chronicle-based found footage superhero universe culminating in an Avengers type team up was a real good one.