Warning: contains MAJOR SPOILERS for 28 Years Later
Talk about a swerve. 28 Years Later is full of surprises from start to end – returning director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland taking audiences where they expected in the film’s first movement, before wandering off the path as the narrative goes on. And yet, much of what unfolds even in the second half still does so in the expected milieu: apocalyptic Britain, running infected, spine-ripping deaths, mysterious survivors and more. Until the final minute.
If this first film in the new trilogy is largely a coming-of-age story for its young lead, Alfie Williams’ 12-year-old Spike, it ends with him making a big choice: he won’t return to Holy Island where he was raised in an insular, isolated community. He’s heading out into the mainland on his own, in search of a bigger world and more truths out there, bow and arrow in hand. Which is all well and good, until he’s attacked by multiple infected. Enter Jack O’Connell.
Who does Jack O’Connell play in 28 Years Later?
This is where it gets wild. O’Connell is playing Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal – a grown-up version of the kid in the film’s 2002-set opening flashback, who was watching Teletubbies before his entire family was killed in front of him by the infected. As Tinky-Winky would say: “Eh-ohh!” Throughout the film there are ominous hints of a ‘Jimmy’ out in the wilderness that Spike has seen on his journey: the name carved into the flesh of an infected man strung up in an abandoned house; also scratched into the wall of a house. When Spike is attacked in the final reel, in Jimmy comes to save the day, along with his fellow ‘Jimmies’ (all dressed similarly to him), some strange sort of cult leader in a bleach-blonde wig and tiara.
It’s not just O’Connell’s arrival that will catch audiences off guard. It’s how he arrives. There are exaggerated flips and acrobatic beheadings, a complete stylistic about-turn. There’s a cartoonish element to it, aided by the fact that Jimmy (and his Jimmies) are all wearing colourful tracksuits; the whole thing has an eccentricity more akin to Mad Max than The Walking Dead. It’s a daring final note for many reasons: narratively unexpected, tonally bizarre, and delivering a cliffhanger ending for a film that many audiences won’t realise is the first part of a new trilogy – but mostly for the clear allusions it makes to a monstrous figure in British history.
What’s the controversy with Jimmy?
Across the world, audiences will likely be surprised by the Jimmy scene. But for British viewers, his entrance comes freighted with extra meaning: Jimmy (and the Jimmies’) get-up of colourful tracksuits, full-bling rings, and straggly blonde hair isn’t just an offbeat post-apocalyptic outfit. It’s a visual echo of Jimmy Savile.
For those who don’t know, Savile was – for decades – a beloved British pop cultural figure, a radio DJ turned TV personality who hosted the likes of Top Of The Pops, and a show titled Jim’ll Fix It. Aimed at children, that show would make kids’ wishes come true; what they wanted, he’d ‘fix it’ for them. Savile was known as a philanthropist, raising money and running marathons for charities. But in the wake of his death in 2011, the truth emerged: Savile was one of the most prolific paedophiles in British history, who used his status and persona to sexually abuse hundreds of people (mostly children) over the years.
Having Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, then, style himself in Savile’s image is an additional shock to the system. In the world of 28 Years Later, the truth about Savile would never have emerged – to young Jimmy, he’s still the man who’d ‘fix it’, a figure he’d have seen on his TV just like the Teletubbies who open the film.
What does Jimmy mean in context of 28 Years Later?
It’s clear that Garland and Boyle will have invoked the image of Jimmy Savile for a reason. 28 Years Later is steeped in explorations of British culture through the last two decades, a dissection of a national consciousness that has undergone so much through that time: the divisive Brexit vote, a push towards Conservatism, a global pandemic, the death of Queen Elizabeth II – and, yes, the Savile scandal, which raised questions leading into the country’s leading institutions.
What role the Jimmies will play in 28 Years Later follow-up The Bone Temple (which has already been shot, directed by Nia DaCosta from another Alex Garland script, coming to cinemas in January) is yet to be seen. But Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal doesn’t exactly look like good news for young Spike. Already, there are interesting notes to unpick: having lost his family, Jimmy has grown up in a country without any institutions, possibly arrested in some kind of childlike state due to the age at which he experienced the start of the Rage apocalypse. And he’s clearly a leader with an outlandish personality – which, notably, was also part of the way Jimmy Savile presented himself.
“The trauma that [Jimmy] experiences is obviously unimaginable, that his family are all killed in front of his eyes, and his father is transformed into what appears to be a leader of this apocalyptic army,” Danny Boyle told Empire VIPs at our 28 Years Later screening in a post-film Q&A, teasing more info about O’Connell’s character. “He’s processed that [trauma] through memories of pop culture, sportswear, the English Honours system, and cricket. He’s kind of blended everything that he remembers.”
Of course, the entrance of Jimmy will be controversial, too, given the damage the real Jimmy Savile wrought – so many families across Britain were affected by his horrific crimes and still feel the ramifications of that today, and so any invocation of his image (let alone in a work of fictional entertainment) will inevitably be divisive.
What comes next with the Jimmies?
We’ll have to see The Bone Temple to find out. “The Jimmies play a large part in the second film,” Boyle confirmed to Empire. At the end of 28 Years Later, the group has Spike in their sights – and whatever unfolds from here likely won’t be an easy experience for our young hero, with Boyle teasing The Bone Temple as being about “the nature of evil”. Given that word easily applies to Savile, expect a greater exploration of this extraordinarily dark chapter of recent British history through the 28 Years Later lens.
28 Years Later is out now in UK cinemas