Angels & Demons (film)

2009 American thriller directed by Ron Howard

Angels & Demons is a 2009 American mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, based on Dan Brown's 2000 novel of the same title. It is the sequel to the 2006 film The Da Vinci Code, also directed by Howard, and the second installment in the Robert Langdon film series. However, the novel version was published before The Da Vinci Code novel. Filming took place in Rome, Italy, and the Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. Tom Hanks reprises his role as Professor Robert Langdon, while Ayelet Zurer stars as Dr. Vittoria Vetra, a CERN scientist joining Langdon in the quest to recover a missing vial of antimatter from a mysterious Illuminati terrorist. Producer Brian Grazer, composer Hans Zimmer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman also return, with David Koepp coming on board to help the latter. The film grossed $485 million worldwide, becoming the 9th highest grossing film of 2009, and received mixed reviews from critics, who considered it an improvement over its predecessor. A sequel, titled Inferno, was released on October 28, 2016.

The Catholic Church mourns the sudden death of Pope Pius XVI, and prepares for the papal conclave to elect his successor in Vatican City. Father Patrick McKenna, the Camerlengo, temporarily controls the Vatican during the sede vacante period. Meanwhile, at CERN, scientists Father Silvano Bentivoglio and Dr. Vittoria Vetra create three canisters of antimatter. As Vetra goes to evaluate the experiment, she discovers that Silvano has been murdered, and one canister stolen. Shortly thereafter, four of the preferiti, the favored candidates to be elected pope, are kidnapped by a man claiming to represent the Illuminati. He sends the Vatican a warning, claiming he will murder each of the cardinals, one every hour, from 8p. m. to midnight, when the stolen antimatter, hidden somewhere within the city, will explode and destroy it. Due to his involvement with the Priory of Sion in Paris and London, American symbologist Professor Robert Langdon is brought to the Vatican by Claudio Vicenzi to help. After listening to the assassin's threat, he deduces that the four cardinals will be murdered on the four altars of the "Path of Illumination", in locations relevant to the classical elements. McKenna gives Langdon access to the Vatican Secret Archives to research the altars, against the wishes of Commander Richter, head of the Swiss Guard. Langdon and Dr. Vetra examine Galileo Galilei's banned book, finding clues to the first altar. Initially believing it to be at the Pantheon, they eventually discover it to be the Chigi Chapel. Though they rush to the chapel, accompanied by Ernesto Olivetti and Claudio Vincenzi of the Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City, they are too late to save Cardinal Ebner, who suffocated on a mouthful of dirt and branded with the ambigrammatic word "Earth". Following the clue left at a Bernini statue at the Chigi Chapel, Langdon discovers the second altar is a Bernini created sculpture in St. Peter's Square. Upon reaching it, they find Cardinal Lamassé mortally wounded, his lungs punctured and his chest branded with the ambigram "Air". A threatening note left on Lamassé's body leads Vetra to suspect that Pius XVI did not die of a stroke, but was murdered with an overdose of tinzaparin, which he took for his thrombophlebitis. This is confirmed when McKenna and Vetra secretly inspect the body in the Vatican necropolis. After returning to the Archives for further research, Langdon, Olivetti, and Vincenzi identify the Santa Maria della Vittoria as the altar of fire, where they fail to save Cardinal Guidera, branded with the ambigram "Fire" from burning to death; the assassin appears and kills everyone except Langdon before escaping. After consulting a map of Rome, Langdon identifies the final altar as Piazza Navona's Four Rivers sculpture. Escorted by two Vatican police officers, they find the assassin attempting to drown Cardinal Baggia, who is branded with the ambigram "Water". The officers are killed by the assassin, but Langdon, aided by bystanders, rescues Baggia. Baggia tells Langdon he was held with the preferiti in Castel Sant'Angelo. Richter confiscates Dr. Silvano's journals, thus convincing Vetra that he is a conspirator. Langdon, Vetra, and the police storm Castel Sant'Angelo. Langdon and Vetra find the assassin's lair, discovering the four brands used on the cardinals, and deduce that the missing fifth is meant for McKenna. The assassin confronts them, but leaves the two unharmed. He claims he was hired by "men of God" and warns them to "be careful". Guided to an escape car, the assassin is killed when it explodes. Langdon and Vetra find a secret passageway leading to the Vatican, warning the Swiss Guard of McKenna's fate. They find Richter hovering over a branded McKenna. Richter and Archbishop Simeon, an alleged conspirator, are killed. Langdon retrieves a key from the dying Richter's hand. The antimatter container is found in Saint Peter's tomb, due to detonate in five minutes. The cold temperature has prematurely drained the battery (according to Vetra, the device would not have enough residual charge to keep the antimatter in suspension). McKenna, a former helicopter pilot, seizes the canister and pilots a helicopter into the sky, parachuting out seconds before the antimatter detonates. The explosion unleashes a powerful, blinding shockwave throughout Vatican City, but no lives are lost and the Church is saved. McKenna is hailed as a hero, with calls for him to be elected pope by acclamation. Langdon and Vetra retrieve Silvano's journals from Richter's office, finding he kept tabs on the Pope with hidden security cameras for medical reasons. Using the key Langdon retrieved from Richter, they discover that McKenna was the true mastermind behind the attacks. The Pope had invited Silvano to publicly present the antimatter as proof of a divine power, bridging the gap between religion and science and potentially ending the conflict between them. Considering such a claim blasphemy, McKenna orchestrated Pius XVI's death and hired the assassin, plotting to have himself elected as pope while making the Illuminati the scapegoat. The footage is shown to the papal conclave. McKenna, realizing he has been exposed, commits suicide via self immolation. The following morning, Cardinal Baggia is elected as the new pope. He chooses to take the name Pope Luke, an allusion to the biblical Luke being both a doctor and an apostle—symbolically bridging the gap between science and religion. The Vatican also announces McKenna has died from injuries from his parachute landing, which leads to calls for sainthood, since the people are not aware that he was the mastermind. Cardinal Strauss, the Pope's new camerlengo, gives Galileo's book to Langdon as thanks for his help, asking that he ensure it returns to the Vatican in his last will and testament. Pope Luke gives Langdon and Vetra a thankful nod, before stepping out on the balcony to greet the crowd below and give the traditional first Urbi et Orbi as pope.

In 2003, Sony Pictures acquired the film rights to Angels & Demons along with The Da Vinci Code in a deal with author Dan Brown. In May 2006, following the release of the 2006 film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, Sony Pictures hired screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, to adapt Angels & Demons. Filming was originally to begin in February 2008 and was originally going to be released on December 19, 2008, but because of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, the film was pushed back for May 15, 2009. David Koepp rewrote the script before shooting began. Director Ron Howard chose to treat Angels & Demons as a sequel to the previous film, rather than a prequel, since many had read the novel after The Da Vinci Code. He liked the idea that Langdon had been through one adventure and become a more confident character. Howard was also more comfortable taking liberties in adapting the story because this novel was less popular than The Da Vinci Code. Producer Brian Grazer said they were too "reverential" when adapting The Da Vinci Code, which resulted in it being "a little long and stagey". This time, "Langdon doesn't stop and give a speech. When he speaks, he's in motion." Howard concurred "it's very much about modernity clashing with antiquity and technology vs. faith, so these themes, these ideas are much more active whereas the other one lived so much in the past. The tones are just innately so different between the two stories." The character of CERN Director Maximillian Kohler does not appear in the film. The Italian Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is changed to the Irish Patrick McKenna, portrayed by Ewan McGregor. The Lockheed Martin X 33 that takes Langdon from the United States to Geneva and then to Rome is absent in the film. Langdon's visit to CERN is absent in the film. In the novel, Commander Olivetti is the commander of Swiss Guard, and his second in command is Captain Rocher, whereas in the film, Rocher (changed to Richter) is the head of the Swiss Guard. In the novel, the assassin contacts members of the BBC in order to influence how they present the story of his activities, but this does not happen in the film. The character Leonardo Vetra is named Silvano Bentivoglio in the film, is not related to Vittoria and his death scene is changed. Vittoria is a love interest for Langdon in the novel while there is no attraction present in the film. In the novel Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is revealed to be the late pope's biological son, while in the film he is his adoptive son. In the film, the Camerlengo briefly acknowledges Langdon's involvement in some events of the previous film when in the book it does not, as the events in The Da Vinci Code are yet to take place. This is due to the fact that The Da Vinci Code was adapted to film before Angels & Demons. In the book, the assassin has Middle Eastern looks, whereas in the film he is portrayed by a Danish actor. In the film, he is killed by a car bomb, whereas in the book he falls from a balcony at the top of the Castel Sant'Angelo. He consequently breaks his back on a pile of marble cannonballs, an injury which eventually kills him. In the novel, Vittoria is kidnapped, whereas, in the film, she joins Langdon almost everywhere. In the book, all four preferiti are killed by the assassin and eventually the high elector, Cardinal Saverio Mortati, is elected as the new pope, whereas in the film, the fourth preferito, Cardinal Baggia, is saved by Langdon and is elected the new pope. The high elector, renamed Cardinal Strauss, becomes the camerlengo to the new pope. In the book, the fifth brand is one that incorporates all four words from the previous four, whereas in the film, the fifth brand is the crossed keys, symbolic of the papacy. The means by which the heroes discover the location of the bomb is significantly different. In the book, the Camerlengo feigns a religious vision from God, telling him where to find the bomb. In the film, he feeds Langdon a clue to the bomb's location by branding himself with an upside down version of the papal keys, which Langdon successfully deduces is a metaphor for Saint Peter, the first pope, who was crucified upside down. In the book, Langdon stows away on the Camerlengo's helicopter, and just before the antimatter explosion, jumps out using a makeshift parachute, and lands on Isola Tiberina, whose mythical healing powers heal the injuries he incurs from the fall. In the film, Langdon does not get on the helicopter. In the book's closing scenes, a Swiss Guard hands Langdon the fifth brand, the Illuminati diamond, as a gift. In the film, the new Camerlengo hands over Galileo's book to Langdon.

Shooting began on June 4, 2008, in Rome under the fake working title Obelisk. The filmmakers scheduled three weeks of exterior location filming because of a predicted 2008 Screen Actors Guild strike on June 30. The rest of the film would be shot at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California, to allow for this halt. Roman Catholic Church officials found The Da Vinci Code offensive and forbade filming in their churches, so these scenes were shot at Sony. Filming took place at the University of California, Los Angeles in July. Sony and Imagine Entertainment organized an eco friendly shoot, selecting when to shoot locations based on how much time and fuel it would save, using cargo containers to support set walls or greenscreens, as well as storing props for future productions or donating them to charity. Howard hated that the Writers Guild strike forced him to delay shooting the film until summer. However, the quick shoot allowed him to refine the naturalism he had employed on his previous film Frost/Nixon, often using handheld cameras to lend an additional energy to the scenes. Hanks interrupted filming of one scene in order to help Australian bride Natalia Dearnley get through the crowds to her wedding on time. McGregor said the Pope's funeral was the dullest sequence to film, as they were just walking across staircases. Then, "Someone started singing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' [and] it became the funeral theme tune." The Saint Peter's Square and the Piazza Navona sets were built on the same backlot; after completion of scenes at the former, six weeks were spent converting the set, knocking down the Basilica side and excavating of tarmac to build the fountain. As there had been filming at the real Piazza Navona, the transition between it and the replica had to be seamless. To present the Santa Maria del Popolo undergoing renovation, a police station in Rome opposite the real church was used for the exterior; the scaffolding would hide that it was not the church. Cameron built the interior of Santa Maria del Popolo on the same set as the recreated Santa Maria della Vittoria to save money; the scaffolding also disguised this. The film's version of Santa Maria della Vittoria was larger than the real one, so it would accommodate the cranes used to film the scene. To film the Pantheon's interior, two aediculae and the tomb of Raphael were rebuilt to scale at a height of 9.14 m, while the rest was greenscreen. Because of the building's symmetrical layout, the filmmakers were able to shoot the whole scene over two days and redress the real side to pretend it was another.

Angels & Demons: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released on May 22, 2009. Hans Zimmer returned to compose the score for the sequel. He chose to develop the "Chevaliers de Sangreal" track from the end of The Da Vinci Code as Langdon's main theme in the film, featuring prominently in the tracks "God Particle" and "503". The soundtrack also features violinist Joshua Bell.

The DVD was released on November 24, 2009, in several countries as a theatrical version and extended cut. Angels & Demons was also released on Universal Media Disc for the Sony PlayStation Portable on October 21, 2009. The extended cut includes violent scenes which had been cut out to secure a PG 13 rating. In the UK, the already censored US theatrical version had to be censored further in order to obtain a BBFC 12A rating. The Blu ray includes the original theatrical version and is classified BBFC 15. A 4K Ultra HD Blu ray was released on October 11, 2016. Angels & Demons is available for rent/purchase on Apple TV, Prime Video, and Fandango at Home.

Overseas, Angels & Demons maintained the #1 position for the second weekend as well even with the release of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which opened at #2. The film opened with $46 million at the US and Canada box office. The Da Vinci Code had opened in the US and Canada to $77.1 million, but the sequel's opening met Columbia's $40–50 million prediction, since the film's source material was not as popular as its predecessor's. Within more than a month, the film grossed $478,869,160 worldwide, making it the largest grossing film of 2009 until it was surpassed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Of this $478 million, just over 27% of it is from venues in the US and Canada, giving the film high worldwide totals, with over $30 million in the UK, $21 million in Spain, $13 million in Brazil, $13 million in Russia, $34 million in Japan, and $47 million in Germany. Angels & Demons was the ninth highest grossing film of 2009, with box office figures of $485,930,810 worldwide.