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On location - Co-writer/Director
St Mary Le Strand
We set our first big battle in the streets of London. Specifically, we set it in the vicinity of the church of St. Mary Le Strand.
The church was built to replace a medieval parish church pulled down in 1594 to make way for Somerset House.
The church was designed by the architect James Gibbs and built between 1714 and 1717. When Queen Anne died in 1714, they were going to erect a giant column in her honour, with a big statue of her on top, but that [project] fell apart, and instead, St Mary Le Strand got a steeple.
Charles Dickens has a very close connection to this church. According to church registers, his parent John and Elizabeth were married here on June 13th, 1809. The place is steeped in history.
These days, the church has become the official church for the WRENs, the women's Royal Naval service. During World War II, when London was heavily bombed by the Germans, this church was left undamaged.
Sadly, the church fell into disrepair afterwards, and it was only a campaign led by Poet Laureate Sir John Betjemen that brought it back to its original glory.
We chose this church because it's beautiful - and you can imagine all kinds of craziness happening around it. It's on its own little island [in the Strand]. It was kind of cool to imagine scary things running around it and trying to take over the world, in the presence of God.
We decided to use Waterloo Bridge as one of our locations, because we decided that we were going to have this giant worm/serpent thing coming out of the Thames - and Waterloo seemed to be the perfect place to a have a battle with a giant worm!
The bridge itself was built between 1811 and 1817, by an architect who created a lot of the celebrated docks in England. The Prince Regent ordered the bridge's construction because he wanted to commemorate the second anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
It was originally going to be called the Strand Bridge, until around 1816.
They say that the bridge cost over a million pounds to build. It has nine elliptical arches that each span about 120 feet. It was 35 feet high when it was originally built, and is supported on piers 20 feet wide.
It was considered dangerous after 1923 because two of the piers shifted on the riverbed. A temporary crossing was constructed until they rebuilt the bridge in 1942, although it wasn't officially opened until 1945.
Fun fact about the bridge: there were explosive chambers built into it, in case the bridge had to be blown up during World War II - so be careful when you cross it!
Euston
We have our really big battle at Euston station here. I'm not really sure why we chose it, but we did. We mainly chose it for the Arch. It was built in around 1837 and made completely of granite.
It's no longer here because a bunch of guys dismantled it to make way for some renovations to the station that never actually happened.
[Legend has it] that it was taken and used to stone a garden! The mighty Euston Arch is no more. [these outbuilding] are all that are left, one of which is now a ladies-only bar called the Glass Bar.
The arch was around for 125 years. It's sad that it's no longer here, because it really was a historical site - a mighty symbol built for the glory of railway travel.