How Bassam Tariq Went From Stalled Blade Reboot to Mahershala Ali’s New Thriller: ‘I’m Happier I Did This Movie’ | Thrillers

Mahershala Ali swings around a blade in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. This isn’t a nod to Ali’s previous attachment to Marvel’s Blade. This is part of Ali’s character Latif, a devout Muslim who also happens to be a hitman, although he presents himself as a righteous killer. Latif justifies his violence as divine punishment, exonerating victims he believes have offended God. His sword, according to writer and director Bassam Tariq, is part of Latif’s code, a negotiation with his faith.

“You are forced to strike intentionally when you use a sword,” Tariq said during a recent interview in Toronto.

The filmmaker seems equally purposeful in our conversation as we delve deep into his pulpy samurai-coded neo-western. In Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, he grapples with grief, spirituality, violence, and broader American culture. The film is a visceral and stylish genre thriller – think Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey by way of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. It’s also a textured portrait of Houston, navigating the city’s cultural tapestry, but also the hostility and tension between its siled beliefs and ideologies. It’s the conflict that plays out between Ali’s Latif, who struggles to raise his three children alone, and Jon Cho’s Pastor Hwan, an evangelical Christian activist posting ironclad sermons online while waging a heavily armed and indiscriminately brutal religious crusade.

“It’s a little different in Texas right now,” Tariq says. He describes a palpable contrast between what he calls the “Mamdani era” in New York, where he lives, and Houston, where he grew up. “What I found particularly in Texas, where I started writing, is that whether they’re religious or not, people are connected to third religious spaces. All social services are cut off. So if you’re going to go out or play basketball, it’s probably going to be at a mosque or a church. You end up becoming part of these communities. At the same time, you can start to construct dogmatic ideas, (like) ‘We’re better than everyone else.’ The nature of that has really been politicized, I think it’s a dark time right now.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother fearlessly cuts through this tension while capturing what makes these communities so vibrant and inspiring, and seeking a sense of hope in her heartfelt and intimate interrogation of faith and fatherhood. These themes were particularly important to him and Ali, Tariq says.

“We connected on these things while we were on this (other) movie together,” Tariq says, referring to Marvel’s Blade. “You may have heard of it.”

He’s cheeky. The fallout from the aborted Blade reboot, which Tariq was set to direct, became a complex part of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother lore. Ali was attached for several years to play the role of Marvel’s vampire slayer, formerly played by Wesley Snipes. He recently confirmed that the long-delayed reboot simply isn’t happening.

“We were about to shoot when the pencils fell,” says Tariq, describing the moment before he left Blade in 2022. “Even though we didn’t have a script, that’s why it got stopped.”

Tariq says they had all their action sequences planned out, after a year and a half of preparation that included extensive fight training and choreography for Ali. That was Marvel’s process back then: the action comes first, leaving time for visual effects and set design, and the rest comes afterward.

“It was like Bollywood, man,” he says today. “You have dance scenes. Figure out all the choreography. And then we’ll find out what the story is later… Now (Marvel) doesn’t move forward until it has a good script.

“I’m not trying to throw shade at the writers,” Tariq adds, adding that they had big shoes to fill given that the previous Blade in his mind was a near-perfect film. “They worked really hard on it. It’s just a very difficult thing to solve.”

Tariq says he’s more than at peace with how everything happened. He’s actually a squirrelly mix of nervous and excited when I speak to him, the day before Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother premieres at the Toronto film festival, his whispery voice barely containing that mix of emotion. He takes a moment for this interview before settling in with his family, including two children aged 12 and 9.

They’re in town for the occasion. They have been there every step of the way, from the writing process in Houston to production in Atlanta, observing the beginning, during ADR and sound mixing. “I just try to keep everyone close,” he says, before linking that philosophy to the story of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which is ultimately about a father’s wayward journey to his children. “You live the film you make.”

The seeds for the film were planted after Tariq’s own heartbreaking experience following the birth of his first child in 2014, when his wife had an infection that sent her to the emergency room. “My son was only breastfed at the time,” says Tariq. “So I had to go all over New York trying to find breast milk for my son. I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

He poured this frenetic search into the first iteration of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which opens with Ali’s Latif searching for breast milk after the death of his wife, while going through the same crisis of faith that Tariq experienced.

“I remember that frustration,” Tariq says. “I felt this anger toward divinity. And then, of course, my son was fine. I realized that all he really needed in that moment was just for me to be there as a father. To have that miraculous moment where you hear your child wanting you, that’s something I think about. I tried to think: How can I put that into a propulsive, exciting story?”

Part of the solution came from working on Blade, where Tariq connected and collaborated with Ali, and mapped out these elaborate fight scenes, which would have been abandoned after Marvel pulled the plug. Instead, Tariq and Ali were able to take what they had prepared for the superhero movie and incorporate it into their more intimate film about a father discovering that his children are his superpower.

“I’m much happier to have made this movie,” Tariq says, comparing working within the Marvel machine to the freedom to really explore and express myself on Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

“As you know, with all of these things, there are massive systems, and they have so many stakeholders to satisfy. It’s just the nature of these things where they have to bring in a certain (amount) and they have to look a certain way. There’s a certain shine to it. And that’s great. I think some people have thrived and made incredible films. For where I am right now, this feels like the right space. My mind and my heart feel very at home. comfortable.”