Alex Turner’s big idea for Stanley Kubrick and Lego
The cinematic influences on Arctic Monkeys‘ most recent studio album, The Car, are undeniable. Throughout the record, Alex Turner makes several references to the terminology of cinematic production and the accompanying music videos for its singles also have a grainy edge, ramping up the homage feel to a lot of Arctic Monkeys’ output right now.
Discussing whether or not he had cinema explicitly in mind upon first devising the record, Alex Turner said: “There’s certainly that sound on the record. I don’t know if that was a decision we made in the initial meeting about the record, but it just seems that naturally, that’s where it went.” Thankfully, it did go in that direction as The Car continues the glorious new approach that the Sheffield band have taken in recent years.
One particularly interesting reference to the world of film on The Car comes in ‘Hello You’, which opens with the line: “Lego Napoleon movie, written noble gas-filled glass tubes”. Admittedly, many of the lyrics on the record are somewhat difficult to decipher, and none more so than here. Interestingly though, Turner is making a reference to Stanley Kubrick and a film that the legendary director never quite got the chance to finish.
Turner said: “Well, there’s Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman. I was imagining those guys taking the Napoleon script that Stanley Kubrick never made. I think it was maybe something like that – they gave it to the Lego guys.” Fortunately, Kubrick’s unrealised Napoleon project did not go to the Lego movie makers, as the prospect of that makes us drop to our knees and shake our fists at the sky.
As to the project itself, just after Kubrick had finished making 2001: A Space Odyssey, he turned his attention to creating a biopic of the French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. Kubrick had watched almost every other film about Napoleon but thought they could have been better. With that, the director wrote a screenplay and scouted out filming locations in France and Romania. David Hemmings had been pencilled in to play the titular leader, and Audrey Hepburn was to play Josephine. However, the high cost of actually making the film was ultimately to be what put an end to it.
As of yet, Turner’s Lego Napoleon film is yet to come to fruition. He noted that he felt comfortable including such fanciful lyrics on The Car when he might not have on previous records. He said: “I suppose, in the past, I would have left out anything that felt like it was on the outskirts of being about the creative process… and probably wasn’t welcome in the lyrics of the song. I guess there’s a reference to having ideas at that moment.”
