{"id":166167,"date":"2025-06-07T23:13:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166167\/"},"modified":"2025-06-07T23:13:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:13:15","slug":"road-rage-brexit-and-why-im-returning-to-28-days-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166167\/","title":{"rendered":"Road rage, Brexit \u2014 and why I\u2019m returning to 28 Days Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the turn of the century Danny Boyle was thinking about Kenneth Noye, the Brink\u2019s-Mat gold bullion crook who evaded police in the 1980s. The coppers had dug up his garden and followed him to Spain, but couldn\u2019t pin him down. Then, in 1996, a young man called Stephen Cameron ran Noye off a slip road on the M25 and Noye flipped, stabbing him to death. He was finally jailed in 2000 \u2014 becoming the inspiration for Boyle\u2019s seminal 2002 zombie movie, 28 Days Later. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur idea came from road rage,\u201d the director says. A visceral Alex Garland script about a \u201crage virus\u201d transmitted from test lab chimps to humans showed a Britain that had been wiped out, and fast. \u201cBecause we are all capable of rage, no matter what you\u2019ve got at stake.\u201d <\/p>\n

They were shooting when two planes flew into the World Trade Center. Suddenly, road rage was not all over the front pages but replaced by the war on terror, a deeper paranoia that felt reflected in a film about millions living in fear. 28 Days Later was a huge hit, making nearly \u00a357 millionfrom a budget of about \u00a35 million.<\/p>\n

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Crucial to its success was an indelible early scene, in which Cillian Murphy wakes from a coma and staggers from hospital into a deserted London. \u201cIt evoked this sense that cities were vulnerable,\u201d Boyle says, explaining why his film resonated post-9\/11. \u201cYou think they are almighty, but suddenly cities felt fearful. And that happened again during Covid.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 2020, as the lockdowns took hold, people shared that eerie clip again: a man in scrubs wandering bewildered across Westminster Bridge. The 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, featuring quarantines and cures, was similarly resonant. <\/p>\n

Now Boyle is back for more with 28 Years Later, in which Isla (Jodie Comer) and Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) live on a virus-free island just off the British mainland, connected by a tidal causeway. Their 12-year-old son sees a distant fire and feels there may be more to the mainland than his parents have led him to believe. The film depicts Britain as an isolated, crippled rock devoid of decent human life and populated only by the deranged \u2014 but more on Brexit later. <\/p>\n

I meet Boyle bright and early in London, not long after a dawn cover shoot on Westminster Bridge to recreate that memorable opening scene. \u201cOh, it\u2019s beautiful, the city\u2019s asleep,\u201d he smiles. He mentions Wordsworth\u2019s sonnet, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, and is remarkably chipper for a man who has been up since 4am. But then chipper is what the 68-year-old director of Trainspotting is. From his Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire in 2009 to his bold London Olympics opening ceremony featuring Daniel Craig\u2019s 007 and the Queen, he is one of life\u2019s great enthusiasts, a man who could find joy in descaling the coffee machine. <\/p>\n

I ask if it was hard to pull off a deserted London in 28 Days Later. \u201cNo,\u201d he says, surprisingly. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the money to close the bridge, but had a plan to be there at 4am. The police can\u2019t ask the traffic to stop, but they will allow you to ask drivers. So we hired a lot of girls, including my own daughter, who was 18. Anybody driving at that time is a bloke, so we had the girls lean in, saying, \u2018Do you mind?\u2019 And it worked fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end of 28 Weeks Later showed the virus reaching Paris, but the opening text of Boyle\u2019s new film makes it clear that \u201crage\u201d has since been shoved back across the Channel. \u201cThis is a very, very British film,\u201d Boyle says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a political film, but when we started work on this, it came after Brexit and that retrenchment to older values, and you cannot help but think that this film is a response to that. The film is full of British actors, and our obsessions.\u201d <\/p>\n

It has also been conceived as the first in a new trilogy, with a second film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, due in January. A third script is \u201cready and waiting\u201d for finance, \u201cwhich will be dictated by how well this one does,\u201d Boyle says, laughing. \u201cYou have to wait until the public declare their enthusiasm or not. And I cannot imagine what the Americans are going to make of it. Obviously you\u2019d love it to be a hit there, because they\u2019ve given us the money, but really? We\u2019ve made the film for here, my homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/p>\n

Danny Boyle recreates a scene from 28 Days Later with Cillian Murphy, below<\/p>\n

TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE<\/p>\n

\"Cillian<\/p>\n

Boyle was born in 1956 in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, one of three children to his Irish Catholic parents, Frank and Annie. He was an altar boy and, until his teens, looked destined for the priesthood. Instead he edged towards theatre, directing for the Royal Court and the RSC before 1994\u2019s black comedy Shallow Grave launched his and Ewan McGregor\u2019s film careers. Two years later Trainspotting made the pair stars. <\/p>\n

Boyle turns 70 next year. Has time changed his relationship with the faith of his youth? \u201cNot in a conventional sense,\u201d he says, \u201calthough I\u2019m agnostic, really, and the older you get, the more you see things differently. I\u2019m obsessed with the autonomic \u2014 those processes we have no control over, but are completely why we\u2019re alive. Like breathing. If you had to remember to breathe, you\u2019d be dead with the effort of it. But we have this system that runs it for us. What is this? There are mysteries we do not understand, and I\u2019m open to those.\u201d <\/p>\n

Boyle does not so much answer questions as turn them into a platform for further questions. That curiosity seeps into all his films, often making them prescient. The chimps in 28 Days Later are infected by the rage virus after being bombarded with images of war and brutality on screen. Fast-forward 23 years to today, I say, and are we not all monkeys scrolling distressing images on our phones? <\/p>\n

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\u201cWell, yes, we think we are so advanced, and becoming more sophisticated, but nothing in that footage is dated,\u201d Boyle says. \u201cThere is this intolerance and you hope that goodness will return, and that we\u2019ll start paying public servants better, cherishing teachers and doctors, those institutions we are improved by or that save us. They should be the people who inspire us, not the technologists, who feed us this stuff as a result of the devotion we show them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you have to take personal responsibility,\u201d he adds, on a roll, \u201cto try and keep a spirit alive. There\u2019s this great Embrace song called All You Good Good People, and I still have this belief in good. Progress isn\u2019t based solely on technology, but on soul. My mother brought me up to believe that, and younger generations seem like they are actually better people than we were.\u201d Boyle has three grown-up children with his ex-partner, the casting director Gail Stevens. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll that work in education that people take the piss out of has worked,\u201d he says. \u201cIt seems to me that young people are more understanding. My son\u2019s a better man than I was, a more valuable member of society. A lot of that is due to the work his schools put in to raise a better human than us lot and, you know, I think I improved on my dad as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ewen<\/p>\n

Ewen Bremner, Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

This optimism runs through Boyle\u2019s back catalogue. Renton makes it out in Trainspotting. Jamal triumphs in Slumdog Millionaire. Aron flees the rock in 127 Hours \u2014 his 2010 film about a man trapped in a canyon \u2014 albeit without an arm. Boyle titled his Olympics ceremony Isles of Wonder, taking the UK\u2019s past and present and making it all a vibrant part of who we are. <\/p>\n

Thirteen years on from London 2012, is there anything he wishes he\u2019d done differently? \u201cWell, there was a lot of advice and warnings we ignored, but the one that we listened to that I regret deeply [meant] that we didn\u2019t feature the BBC enough,\u201d Boyle says. He would have liked to have included a segment celebrating the broadcaster, similar to his dancing NHS nurses. \u201cBecause I look now at news values and who to trust, and think, \u2018F*** me \u2014 we should look after that.\u2019 <\/p>\n

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\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter whether you approve of it or not. It is just the idea of this national broadcaster with some kind of values you can rely on. These technology internationalists will have you believe that they don\u2019t matter, that there\u2019s something global much more important. But they do matter. They define us. But we were told we couldn\u2019t feature them by the IOC [International Olympic Committee].\u201d <\/p>\n

Boyle\u2019s stories keep coming. Of his failed attempt to direct the most recent James Bond film (Boyle left No Time to Die after two years in development, citing creative differences with Eon Productions), he says: \u201cIt was bound to end like that, but there is no cure for curiosity. We couldn\u2019t find agreement.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Freida<\/p>\n

Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Asked which of his films was the hardest to make, he quickly says Sunshine, a 2007 sci-fi thriller with Cillian Murphy. \u201cDoing space movies? Would not recommend.\u201d And of the underrated box-office bomb A Life Less Ordinary (1997), starring Cameron Diaz and McGregor, Boyle says with a cackle: \u201cThere\u2019s a great saying: \u2018If the people don\u2019t want to come, nothing will stop them!\u2019 But it was number one in Belgium for three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask Boyle about Trump\u2019s proposed film tariffs. \u201cWho knows if it will stick or not? The film industry is extraordinarily international.\u201d But rather than talk about the business, he is suddenly reminded of the dance performance he saw the night before, created by the French choreographers (La)Horde. His enthusiasm is a recommendation, but also a plea for funding and a neat summation of the director\u2019s ethos: he is a profound believer in the power of the arts to tell myriad stories that will change and improve us. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd people ask if we can prove that power,\u201d he says. \u201cCan we prove that to people who make decisions? Well, if you saw La(Horde), you just feel better. It was incredible. It made me a better person. I felt lifted, and it only cost 20 quid.\u201d He beams. \u201cCulture is good for us! It\u2019s like blood transfusion, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

28 Years Later is in cinemas from Jun 20<\/b><\/p>\n

Are you looking forward to 28 Years Later? Let us know in the comments below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the turn of the century Danny Boyle was thinking about Kenneth Noye, the Brink\u2019s-Mat gold bullion crook…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-166167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114644622508160684","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}