Why Echo's ASL Scenes Were Terrifying To Film
"Echo" looks as though it could mark the moment the Marvel Cinematic Universe might get back on track. This is the very first "Marvel Spotlight" series, indicating that "Echo" is its own show and doesn't require audiences to have seen a thousand other MCU projects to understand the narrative. It also means we'll be getting a lot more focus on character rather than events that occur simply to progress the overall MCU narrative. Pretty neat! Especially since we've had far too much MCU in recent years, and most of it has just been an excuse to set up whatever comes next in the saga.
Anyone who saw the "Echo" trailer will know this TV-MA series is a decidedly gritty affair, following in the footsteps of the original Marvel Netflix shows that were focused on "street-level" heroes rather than the grand spectacles of the MCU movies. In the trailer, Alaqua Cox's Maya Lopez/Echo, who first appeared in the Disney+ series "Hawkeye," battles her way through numerous thugs, dealing out brutal punishment along the way. As does Vincent D'Onofrio as Kingpin, who looks to be every bit as blood-thirsty as he was in Netflix's "Daredevil." Speaking of which, it looks as though Charlie Cox's Man Without Fear will also be showing up in "Echo," setting up what is sure to be his triumphant return whenever Marvel finishes the highly-anticipated "Daredevil: Born Again" following some significant production delays.
All of which sounds kind of alright, doesn't it? Of course, there's a lot more than a "Spotlight" banner and cool fights working in the show's favor. "Echo" will mark the first time an MCU project has been led by a deaf hero who uses American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate. Tackling the ASL scenes, however, wasn't easy.
The ASL scenes terrified Echo's director
The writers and producers of "Echo" seem to have gone to great lengths to keep the show authentic in both overall tone and when it came to specifics. Maya Lopez is of Native American Choctaw descent, and it sounds as if the producers made sure to represent that culture as authentically as possible. The same is true of the ASL scenes, which will see Lopez communicating using real sign language.
That, in and of itself, presented a unique challenge for series director Sydney Freeland, who told Collider that the ASL element was the thing she was "both excited and terrified to shoot." She continued:
"Going into the process, you ask yourself the question, like, 'How can we sustain a 3/4/5/6-minute conversation between a character or multiple characters who don't speak?' And so that was a big question for myself going in. And then with my cinematographer, we're figuring out, 'How do we do this? Can we even do this?' And the answer is yes. And I'll say, one of, if not my favorite scenes in the entire series, without spoiling it, is a scene between two characters where not a single word is spoken for multiple minutes, and it brings me to tears every time I see it."
It might sound like removing spoken dialogue could be a major drawback, but "Echo" is far from the first show or movie to have to navigate this problem. In fact, some of the best moments in TV history don't involve any speaking...
Echo isn't the first show to use ASL
Before the MCU was even a thing, Joss Whedon wrote a whole episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" where no one speaks and claimed it saved him from hackdom. "Hush" also saw every character lose their voice at the hands of the sinister Gentlemen, and was 45 minutes of silent interaction between the main cast. Though it was a major challenge for the actors, that installment is still remembered as one of the show's finest.
Then, there's the brilliant Millicent Simmonds, who similarly uses ASL and was a standout part of "A Quiet Place" and "A Quiet Place Part II." Those films certainly didn't suffer due to a lack of dialogue in the sign language scenes, though being quiet is sort of the point of both films. Still, the point is that having to craft scenes without dialogue often brings out the best in creators, and it seems "Echo" has as good a shot as any of pulling it off — if what Sydney Freeland says about her favorite scene is accurate.
Star Alaqua Cox is deaf herself, so much like Simmonds, she brings years of personal experience expressing herself through ASL to "Echo." In that sense, there's no reason why a lack of dialogue was going to hamper her scenes, though you can see why Freeland was initially concerned. In much the same way as people worried a Spider-Man movie wouldn't work because you couldn't see the hero's face behind his mask, "Echo" will be yet another reminder to those who doubt whether ASL scenes can work that, as William Goldman said, "Nobody knows anything."
"Echo" is now streaming on Disney+.