Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller say they tried to remove apparent Queen’s Gambit and Whiplash references from their new Apple TV+ sci-fi horror movie The Gorge. Scott Derrickson’s new genre-bending streaming film, centering on two snipers guarding a mysterious chasm, may have an overall dark tone, but there are a few moments of levity. At one point, the joking turns meta, when Taylor-Joy and Teller’s guardians play chess across the тιтular gorge, a seeming nod to Taylor-Joy’s Queen’s Gambit turn. Later, Teller gets his own apparent cheeky homage in the otherwise horrifying The Gorge, when the Whiplash star plays air-drums.

Though The Gorge’s Queen’s Gambit and Whiplash references may seem like deliberate jokes, Taylor-Joy and Teller insist those scenes were in the script before they were cast in the project, and when they discovered the odd coincidence, they argued for the accidental nods to be removed from the movie. Teller explained (via EW):

“That was in the script from the very [beginning], before either of us were attached to this project. That was a part of the very first draft. We tried to remove it.”

Taylor-Joy then added her own perspective, noting the groan-worthy nature of the seemingly unintentional jokes:

“Yeah, we were like, do we not think that this is a bit on the nose? And they were like, ‘Nah, they’re trying to get to know each other. These are things that you can do across the gorge.'”

What This Means For The Gorge

The Movie Blends A Lot Of Genres

Taylor-Joy and Teller provide the star wattage powering Derrickson’s genre-bending AppleTV+ outing. The fact that they both lobbied to remove the film’s allegedly unintentional references to their past roles seems to indicate their serious approach to the movie’s story, which centers on the unlikely bond that forms between their characters as they undertake their strange mission.

Derrickson himself is a noted horror director, but it’s perhaps relevant that he also helmed Doctor Strange, a darker-than-usual MCU entry in some ways, but also a typical one for its sometimes-wacky humor. The Gorge’s Queen’s Gambit and Whiplash jokes indeed feel like something from an MCU movie, implying that Derrickson has not entirely shed his Marvel tendencies, even though he’s gone back to being a horror director.

Our Take On The Gorge’s References

Something’s Fishy About Taylor-Joy And Teller’s Story

Taylor-Joy and Teller may insist that those “on-the-nose” references to their past films were already present in the Gorge script before they signed on, but their story doesn’t quite hold water. The presence of those specific references is a little too much of a coincidence, and it doesn’t seem believable that they just happened to be written before the stars were hired. Furthermore, it makes little sense that Taylor-Joy and Teller’s lobbying to remove the references would have fallen on deaf ears, given their importance to the production.

It’s more likely that the stars were in on the joke, and finding the nods cringeworthy in retrospect, elected to fib a little by claiming they were in the script prior to their arrival. Insisting they tried to have the jokes removed further distances them from culpability in an arguably misguided attempt at meta-humor. In reality, it would have been easy to rewrite the script, as the plot of The Gorge does not hinge on the scenes in question. Those references ultimately are not hugely troublesome, but they are slightly odd given the movie’s overall tone.

Source: EW