Secret Headquarters directors wanted to make a different superhero film

Paramount Plus’ Secret HeadquartersMany different movies have inspired this drawing. Owen Wilson’s character Jack Kincaid is secretly the Guard, a superhero who uses alien technology to rise up as Earth’s guardian, à la Green Lantern, and wears a metal suit strongly resembling Iron Man’s. But the bulk of the action takes place in the Guard’s titular secret headquarters. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman told Polygon that they looked at the Batcave from Tim Burton’s Batman movie as inspiration for the setting, as well as Lex Luthor’s lair in the first Superman movie. They also took inspiration from some unlikely places.

“A little bit of Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer,” Schulman says, naming the 1979 divorce drama about a workaholic father losing custody of his young child.

“A little bit of Tom Hanks’ apartment in Large,” adds Joost.

Photo: Hopper Stone/Paramount Pictures

The biggest part of Jack’s character isn’t that he’s a superhero, but that he’s a dadHe is a hero. Much of the movie focuses on hIt is relationship with his son, Charlie, who has no idea that his dad is a superhero and feels like his dad abandoned the family for “work” reasons. So the vibe for the headquarters was part Batcave, but also part man cave (“I’ve always hated [that term] but it’s appropriate here, because it literally is a cave,” says Joost). It’s a lived-in bachelor pad, with takeout containers and a guitar that he could probably practice a bit more.

The superhero movie features the Guard and children facing off against the bad guys. However, the real tension lies between Jack and Charlie. Joost and Schulman wanted to show a conflict that is not usually seen in superhero movies. This was for very particular reasons.

“Because it’s It is not a Marvel movie,” explains Schulman. “Those are great and they’re excellent at what they do. We’re trying to sort of carve out a different space in the genre. This meant that we focused our attention on the family dynamic and the relationship between fathers and sons. From the child’s perspective, the superhero film. For us that meant exploring the job itself and the stress that parents feel trying to balance work and life and then if you’re being very, very nail-on-the-head about it, you think, Oh, well, it’s actually kind of ironic if what his job is is saving the world but all his son wants is for him to save his family.”

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