ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Chupa director Jonás Cuarón about Netflix’s upcoming action-adventure movie. Cuarón discussed his childhood love of Amblin movies and his passion for lucha libre. Chupa is set to debut on Netflix on April 7.
“Shy 13-year-old Alex flies from Kansas City to Mexico to meet his extended family for the first time. There he meets his grandfather and former lucha libre champion Chava, energetic, wrestling-obsessed cousin Memo, and fearless, hip cousin Luna. But just as Alex begins to get his bearings, he discovers a mythical creature living under his grandfather’s shed: a young chupacabra cub, which he recognizes from stories of the feared, full-grown chupacabra, fabled to feed on farmers’ livestock,” reads the synopsis.
“Alex soon learns that his new friend ‘Chupa’ has a secret history with his family, and that dogged, dangerous scientist Richard Quinn (Christian Slater) is hunting the misunderstood creature to try and harness his powers. To protect Chupa from impending danger, Alex sets off on the adventure of a lifetime, one that will push the bonds of his newfound family to the brink, and remind him that life’s burdens are lighter when you don’t have to carry them alone.”
Tyler Treese: I really enjoyed the movie and lucha libre plays a large part in Chupa. Are you a fan of Mexican wrestling? I really loved getting to see the footage of the old wrestling, followed by some of the moves brought out later on as well.
Jonás Cuarón: Thank you very much for having me. Lucha libre … definitely. Growing up in Mexico, I was a huge lucha libre fan. It’s such an acrobatic sport, but it is also a sport that comes with narratives. Each character has a mask, and the mask itself has its own story. There’s a narrative to the sport that is really fun, as a kid watching. So when we decided to bring that into the movie, I was very excited. Then, afterward, the old matches that you talk about … it was really fun because I hired professional lucha libre wrestlers in Mexico and we filmed them in Arena Coliseo, which is a really important place for lucha libre. It was a really fun experience to get to see all these luchadores and see — it’s really impressive what they do. It was really fun.
That’s awesome. The Chupacabra has a lot of mythology to it. I remember when they would stop talking about Bigfoot eventually, and the shows I would watch would do episodes on the Chupacabra. How familiar were you with the greater mythos of the Chupacabra and how exciting was it to use it in this movie?
I think I was a kid in the ’90s when the myth started. It started in Puerto Rico, but it really quickly spread all over Latin America. I was a kid in Mexico and I saw it everywhere in the news and it was very exciting, this idea, as a kid, that there could be a real magical creature outside your door, you know? So I think that was very exciting. I think that’s something really cool about the myth of the Chupacabra, which is unlike Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, which are older legends, the Chupacabra started in the ’90s. So in a way, as a kid, that made it more real because it was the first time people started talking about it. It’s so new. It has to be real. And to me, it was exciting to be able to bring that into a movie nowadays that turned it into a kid discovering this creature.
I loved Christian Slater in the movie. He is such a fun villain in it. You don’t really go too over the-top with it. Can you speak to using him as a researcher and not making him a super cartoonish villain?
Well, first of all, working with Christian was incredible. This whole movie was a trip down memory lane for me, and Christian was a face I grew up watching. When building the character of Quinn, it was important for us that he wasn’t two-dimensional and that he actually was a scientist going after the creatures for a reason. A reason that maybe would have had a good purpose to it. We definitely shaped the character … a lot of this movie’s shaped after Amblin Entertainment movies that I grew up watching. So there’s a lot in Quinn of Sam Neill in Jurassic Park, and also the character in E.T., the man with the keys, that is going after Elliott, where they’re characters that, at the end, are scientists that have a purpose for going after this creature.
I love the element of just taking pride in your heritage and embracing yourself. Can you speak to that theme and what it meant to have such a great message in this movie?
Well, I think growing up a fan of Amblin movies, the one thing that I was missing in all of those movies is that they happened in the U.S. I didn’t get to see my context, my reality, in those magical movies. So suddenly, it became very exciting, the idea of doing a movie where I got to bring a Mexican kid that had grown up in the U.S., so he didn’t know a lot about his culture and bring him into Mexico and have that as an excuse to show all the sides of Mexican culture that are rarely shown in cinema. It was very important to me to show all of those sides and, on top of it, it was Mexico in the ’90s, which was the Mexico I grew up with. So besides showing all those sides of Mexico, it was also showing the younger audiences nowadays things that, to them, seem so foreign, like Game Boys and Walkmans and just playing with those elements.
