While we’ll have to wait and see if the upcoming film adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn’s comic-book Ex Machina (retitled The Great Machine) will be able to successfully condense the series’ 50-issue run into a feature-length narrative, we can rest easy for at least one reason regarding the project now. It’s been revealed that Oscar Isaac will star in The Great Machine, portraying Mitchell Hundred, a former superhero that becomes mayor of New York City. It’s a smart casting choice for several different reasons, and one only has to look at Isaac’s filmography to understand why.
Quite simply, the 40-year old Guatemalan actor has amassed a very varied body of work, that has never allowed him to be typecast. While he’s already made his mark on fanboy culture, portraying hot-shot ace pilot Poe Dameron in the most recent Star Wars trilogy as well as X-Men villain Apocalypse, the actor has shown his best assets in more arthouse releases. In films like Inside Llewyn Davis (The Coen Brothers), A Most Violent Year (J.C. Chandor), and Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn), Isaac has shown that he has a penchant for choosing the right directors to work with, and is as much a character actor as any other leading man in Hollywood.
Mitchell Hundred is very much a character we know that Isaac can effortlessly portray, and is actually a bit of an amalgamation of several roles from his career. It would allow him to step back into the role of a politician, which he already did in the David Simon-scripted HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero (a role that awarded him his first Golden Globe). From that angle we know that Isaac can effectively give viewers a palpable rendition, applying the right amount of both aplomb and humanity that made the character so endearing.
Of course, The Great Machine is a superhero tale (albeit one that might often feel closer to hard sci-fi), and Isaac’s history with that genre shows he’s ready to take on another CGI-heavy film. His time in genre films have ranged from mammoth blockbusters like X-Men: Apocalypse to more cerebral attempts like Ex Machina (yes, coincidentally that latter film’s existence is the reason this adaptation of the Ex Machina comic needed a title change), but he’s always delivered committed performances. If the movie gets as visceral as the comic did, Isaac might very well be performing in the most surreal sequences of his career. The book’s most grandiose issues involve inter-dimensional hopping and gore-soaked superhero fights, although unlike other actors that have shied away from green-screen, Isaac has shown time-and-time again that he’s always up to meet the challenge.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to playing Mitchell Hundred, however, is delivering a performance that aligns with the book’s tonal fluidity. As is the case with virtually all of Brian K. Vaughn’s work, Ex Machina often goes from being jovially witty to gravely dire at just the drop of a dime. While the material recognizes that it’s a superhero story and emits plenty of self-aware humor, there’s an overlying sense of melancholy to it as well, and it ends on a fairly sorrowful note. Still, Oscar Isaac seems up for the challenge, as we’ve seen he can do comedy (he was hilarious in the aforementioned namesake-sharing Alex Garland movie), and then put his serious face back on. Mitchell’s actions do indeed become more morally complex in the book’s later chapters, but Isaac has shown he has more than enough girth to translate the role for the big screen.
So there you have it. Oscar Isaac really does appear the best possible choice to star in The Great Machine. Granted, we don’t know how close to the comic-book this adaptation will be in both tone and plot, but just the concept of playing a super-powered politician is firmly in Isaac’s wheelhouse. So with this and Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming adaptation of Dune, it would appear that this already very-accomplished actor may have an even brighter future next decade.
The Great Machine stars Oscar Isaac as Mitchell Hundred. The film does not currently have a release date.