Comic-Con@Home: Constantine’s delightful panel with Keanu Reeves revealed so much about the film

Constantine is one of the most influential movies of all time. The 15th anniversary Comic-Con@Home panel gave us new insights that still managed to surprise.

Constantine is one of those unforgettable movies that is part of the zeitgeist now, and in my opinion, set the standard for so many comic-book films to follow. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it was to make, but the Comic-Con@Home fans were treated to a panel that discussed the making of Constantine on its 15th anniversary, featuring star Keanu Reeves, director Francis Lawrence, producer Akiva Goldsman (familiar to Star Trek: Picard fans), and moderated by Collider’s Steven Weintraub. It was a truly amusing panel about a much-beloved film (one of my all-time favorites). The three of them hadn’t been in the same room together since Constantine.

“Probably not, since the film was released,” explained Keanu Reeves, who also noted that he wasn’t the first choice for the role. (Nicholas Cage was for a 2002 version, but thankfully the execs saw reason.)

“But you know, I’m not English and I’m not blonde,” Reeves explained about coming onboard and making the character of John Constantine his own, a departure from the comics. Reeves also insisted that the film be shot in Los Angeles, a locale that plays an integral part of the drama. He even put the requirement in his contract.

“I love L.A. I love filming in L.A.,” explained the star of Constantine, The Matrix, John Wick, and the Bill and Ted Excellent Adventures (also coming out with a sequel this year). “I love being on the streets, like the way the weather changes, like the early dawn, the deep night … the colors, the lights, the people, people who are on the streets….”

The most intriguing thing to come out of the panel was how the film achieved its ‘R’ rating in the first place, when it strived so hard to get to the coveted PG-13, that would bring in many of the teenage comic book fans.

Watch Comic-Con@Home’s Constantine panel here:

"“They said we got a hard R for ‘tone,’” said director Francis Lawrence, about the head-scratching reason.“I remember hearing that they got about five minutes in and put their notepads down,” Lawrence further explained, with no alternative to get around the decision.“This is not something that’s on the list. But, basically, there was an overwhelming sense of dread, was what I heard, from the opening scene on. And they didn’t think there was anything we could do about it.”"

The creators lamented that, if they had known, they would have gone with their original, no-holds-barred version, instead of being censored into tailoring the product into a less-gory/profanity-laden edition.

“Originally, when we all started on this, we thought it would be a rated-R film,” Francis Lawrence stated. “Warner then dictated that it had to be PG-13 because of what it cost. We got the list of guidelines of what you can and can’t do in a PG-13 movie and we followed those rules to a T.”

But once the R rating was decided, the executive “suits” left no room to get around the verdict, which producer Akiva Goldsman described as pretty “subjective.”

“What you learn is that despite the fact that there are guidelines, it’s a purely subjective interpretation,” Goldsman explained. “And that subjectivity ebbs and flows based on the group that is designating the rating. But we have a lot of demons. Demons seem, for some reason, to trigger an R rating.”

“We got a bit screwed on that front,” Lawrence concurred.

The movie stands on its own, of course, despite the strictures.

Which begs the question of why we haven’t seen a sequel, despite the intriguing end-credits scene with Shia LeBeouf’s character as an angel.

“Boy, we wanted to make a sequel, we wanted to make a hard ‘R’ sequel; we’d probably make it tomorrow,” said Goldsman, which sounds pretty hopeful to me.

“To the studios who made it, Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, it was always a little bit of a feathered fish; its oddness,” Goldsman elaborated, as to why we haven’t seen a sequel to date, even during this time, when it seems like every hit gets an endless stream of continuing narrative. “It’s not action-packed; it just has a bunch of action. This movie isn’t exactly a thing, it’s actually a few things. And those seem harder and harder to make.”

"“Religion is a polarizing element in storytelling,” Lawrence explained. “The subject matter of the story was just putting people off.”“And we were doing something that was weird,” added Goldsman, “It was noir, stylish, and comic book … we were doing something that was atypical.”"

Since LeBeouf’s character death (Chas Kramer) was left ambiguous, perhaps the door has been left open? One can only dream.

One concept involved a storyline with John Constantine and Jesus, helmed by co-writer Frank Cappello, where John “wakes up in a cell. He has to identify the prisoner… and it was Jesus,” Goldsman said. Adding Jesus to the narrative would have segued from the storyline involving Lucifer (the terrific Peter Stormare) in Constantine.

The Constantine panel was one of the highlights of Comic-Con@Home. Did you watch the anniversary panel? What did you think?