How the sentries invents the French Steampunk series
By adapting the impressive comic strip of Xavier Dorison, the new original creation of Canal+ dares to venture into an unprecedented territory. His designer, Guillaume Lemans, gives us his vision.
It is a historical adventure like no other, which awaits you this evening on Canal+.
The sentries adapts Xavier Dorison’s comic book (published between 2009 and 2014) over a retro-futuristic fresco which replayed the Great War in its own way, by injecting a good dose of science fiction. We follow a Battalion of Super Soldiers, boosted by a serum developed in the labs of the French army, to overcome the Germans taking over in the trenches. Gabriel, hairy injured in combat, finds himself a guinea pig despite himself, soon won by a new and destructive power.
Rare hybridization in the French television or cinematographic landscape, claimed by the creator Guillaume Lemans (in the mist), which explains his way of seeing the series:
“We are not entirely in an uchrony. We are rather in a steampunk gender story,” said Guillaume Lemans. “Because we do not vary the great elements of the history of France. There is in the series of technology or almost futuristic details which are fantastic. But we are always in the history that we know, in the Great War, with Verdun etc. Our technology has not deflected the course of history. Maybe it will come in other seasons, but for the moment, we are in the merger of genres.”
The authors of the series thus adapted the original concept of comics, but then took a lot of liberties, by inscribing their sentries in a larger story, which comes out of the battlefields and fantastic, mystical and espionage mix. This merger was, by the very confession of the scriptwriter, “a little broken on paper.” Fortunately, the series was able to count on “very good directors and an excellent technical team, which gave a visual aesthetic that works, and this, from the start. Because we have to believe in it right away. There is a need for this realistic anchoring, so that we can then instill in this story various layers, in particular SF. This merger of full genres allows us to have a universe that could be expanded.”
The inheritance of Jules Verne
But at the crossroads of all these genres, it is the “steampunk” that best characterizes the series for Guillaume Lemans. An almost unprecedented approach on the small or the big screen in France:
“The steampunk is almost a plastic movement, which brings together a lot of things. Steampunk is really linked to the idea of a technological story. There is Jules Verne in the steampunk. Nautilus de Némo, it’s steampunk in my opinion! And suddenly, it gives legitimacy to French authors to seize this genre and do more easily … “
A visual and sensory dimension that Louis Peres also underlines. The interpreter of Gabriel sees in the steampunk, “an extremely graphic genre. The imagination is tenfold. It allows you to go further in emotions. Even more than in a naturalistic fiction I have the impression …”
A genre to question humanity
In this case, sentries uses gender to question humanity. The series is not limited to an aesthetic demonstration. Behind the retro-futureist machines, she questions the place of science in war. A reflection that even echoes the themes of a certain Oppenheimer (2023) by Christopher Nolan.
“The war of 14-18, in the middle of an industrial period, served to invent dozens of death machines: flame thrower, grenade, tank, fighter planes … The sentries, it is the culmination of all this basically, like the apotheosis of this arms race,” explains Lemans.
Season 1 of sentries, in 8 episodes, is to be seen from this Monday, September 29 on Canal +.
