‘Weapons' Once Had a Whole Chapter About That Crucial, Mystery Character

Gizmodo

3 days ago

Weapons is a film filled with huge secrets and reveals. Secrets and reveals that were very carefully talked around and avoided in the marketing. But now that the film is in theaters, we can talk about them, and in terms of arguably the biggest reveal, writer-director Zack Cregger spoke to us about the different ways he approached it.
We're about to dive into some of Weapons' biggest spoilers, so if you haven't seen it yet, be aware.
One of Weapons' biggest reveals comes right at the beginning. All the marketing said that every member of Ms. Gandy's (Julia Garner) class disappeared, but that's not true. One boy named Alex (Cary Christopher) remained. And, as the film moves along, we learn Alex is the key to all of this. Alex and, more specifically, his family.
A character who didn't appear before release at all is Gladys, Alex's aunt, played by Amy Madigan (Field of Dreams). With each creepy, clown-like appearance, we become increasingly terrified of Gladys until finally, in the chapter dedicated to school principal Andrew (Benedict Wong), all is revealed. Gladys is behind the disappearance of the children because she's an evil witch with an ability to bend people to her will. She uses her magic to not just turn Andrew into a killing machine, but several others, including the kids who disappear.
But to what end? We know Gladys' goal is to extend her life, something she's already been doing for an inhuman amount of time. But how exactly that fits in with kidnapping the kids in Alex's class is never clear. Is she sucking their energy? Does just possessing them help her? We don't know. We also don't know where she sees all of this going. Did she just expect to get away with torturing this family and town forever? Plus, there's no hint at all to any of her history. Where did she learn her witchcraft? How long has she been doing it? Are there other witches out there? It's all left intentionally mysterious, though; that wasn't always the case.
'In an earlier draft of the script I had given her her own chapter,' Cregger told io9 of his decision to keep Gladys' goals a mystery. 'It was a little bit of an origin before she came to town. But I realized that it was just giving too much away. It's more compelling to not know some of these things. So I ended up cutting it very early on in the writing process.'
One place some of that does exist, however, is just in Cregger's head, and he did decide to talk to his actor about it. 'For [Gladys], I kind of had an idea of what was going on with her,' he said. 'And I talked with Amy [Madigan] about that somewhat, but I also want to respect Amy's process. And I want her to take ownership, and I want her to kind of create her own mythology. So I gave her a couple of options of what I think might be going on. And then I kind of didn't ask her too many questions about where she landed with it.'
So while Weapons completely satisfies in answering how the class of kids disappears, that answer just creates more questions. Questions that the film, and filmmaker, did answer—but decided to leave out of the movie.
For more from Cregger on Weapons, read the rest of our interview here. Weapons is now in theaters.
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