Back in 2007, the original Trilogy film emerged from a very different surfing world. Featuring Andy Irons, Taj Burrow and Joel Parkinson, it was made at the height of surf industry largesse; before the industry became a smoking ruin, the anti-heroes took over from the surf stars, and surf film was driven underground and online. The original Trilogy budget by today’s standards seems eye watering today, but at the time was a simple line item in a marketing budget. This is how it was done. Big stars on big ensemble projects. True to the style of the times, Andy filmed the final Trilogy sequence in Mexico, flew to Chile where he won the event without sleeping, and then flew to California and went straight into rehab. A broad reckoning soon followed, and when the surf industry went down, it took surf film with it.
Sixteen years later, the sequel to Trilogy started life from the ashes… and a chance encounter. In January 2020, Californian filmmaker, Andrew McKenzie was on a surf trip to Martin Daly’s resort in the Marshall Islands and found himself headed out to the reef with three young surfers he recognised straight away. “We took the little puddle-jumper out and the waves were firing. Ethan and Griff didn’t say a word to me. Seth came over and acted like he’d known me for 20 years. They were there filming and waves were firing, probably double overhead. I got back to the boat and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t wait to see what they do with this.”
Ethan Ewing, Griffin Colapinto and Seth Moniz were on a short turn-and-burn edit for Billabong and Stab, which appeared soon after as For Whom the Atolls. It became vicarious viewing during the early days of the lockdown.
McKenzie was a tech-savvy filmmaker who’d come out of snow and commercial work but had grown up engrossed by the big budget surf features of the noughties, including Trilogy. “When I saw that Marshall Islands edit it all clicked for me. There was a light bulb moment. We were in the heat of Covid and I’m in my apartment just grasping for anything to keep my brain busy. I watched this and I’m like, oh my god, this thing is slapping you in the face. This is the new Trilogy.”
The project was willed into existence from there, including bringing in Taylor Steele – the original Trilogydirector – to produce. “I’d been pitching longer feature films for a number of years to no avail, and the short answer about getting this kind of thing off the ground is that it was incredibly challenging.” The budget for the film is rumoured to be close to a million dollars, which certainly wasn’t coming out of a surf marketing budget. Then there was Covid to navigate while filming, and Griffin’s surprise defection from Billabong to Quiksilver.
The scale of the project sits at odds with the zone-flood of cheap, shitty, forgettable-by-design surf content that has filled the vacuum left by demise of the high-end surf feature. “People just don’t put the same amount of time and effort into these films these days,” offers Andrew. “And for me it was like, hey, I’d love to reinvigorate the medium. I want more people to make these things.”
It also sat at odds with concept of surf stardom, or whatever that means today. The world’s two biggest ‘surf stars’ today, you barely see. Outside of the tour, where they appear almost reluctantly, John Florence and Gabe Medina are almost recluses. They’re bigger than the brands. John became his own brand. Both do things on their own terms, and the rock star lives of Andy and Taj, have been replaced today by something more understated and guarded.
On this front, it was a huge leap of faith in the cast. When the project was first hatched three years ago, Ethan Ewing, Griffin Colapinto and Seth Moniz had all shown plenty of promise, but there was no guarantee of greatness for any of them. In many ways they were still kids. Ethan had already been knocked off tour, and the occasional glimpses of magic from them were quickly countered by dispiriting early round losses to the tour’s big dogs.
But today Griff and Ethan sit number two and three in the world respectively. One of them might, by the time you read this, even be world champion. Seth meanwhile has made the final at Pipe, as big as it gets for a Hawaiian. All three have lived up to their billing. “As much as I’d love to take all the credit for it, I think there’s only so much I could foresee,” laughs Andrew of their recent success. All three have grown with the project, and not just in the water. “It’s funny, I was just talking to a friend the other day and I’m like, I’ve learned more from three 25-year-olds than I have from most of the 65-year-olds in my life.”
Andrew McKenzie started out “shooting real estate for beer money,” but had already started a camera services company by the time he’d finished college. He’d seen his first drone on the beach at Lowers in 2013, taken a photo of it, then showed it to his roommate, a biomedical engineer who told him, “I think I can build one of those.” He’s seen camera technology evolve in the years since the last real groundbreaking application of camera tech in surfing, John John’s View From A Blue Moon in 2015. “We get to see these big-time Hollywood directors use all this technology and I’m sitting here like, ‘Hey, I love surfing. Why couldn’t we shoot surfing this way? Why has no one done this?’”
For a storyline, they’ve gone back to roots. The original Trilogy lionised the stars, while the sequel tries to avoid making them seem like stars at all by retracing humble origin stories. “We wanted to show where they came from and the waves that molded them and the people who molded them and what family life looked like for them. And that’s very different from surfer to surfer. Seth grew up in Hawaii in this crazy ecosystem; four brothers and sisters, big family, revolving door, and him being the youngest and always having to be the toughest. Then there’s someone like Ethan who’s been raised by his two older brothers and his dad on Straddie. You’re like, okay, these guys are very different individuals, from different places, but they’ve both arrived at a similar place with really positive outlooks about life and surfing.”
The final shooting trip of the whole project was to Stradbroke Island. “It’s one of the most unique places I’ve ever been in all my travels,” offers Andrew, who studied in Sydney and had spent plenty of time surfing in Australia. “I guess I thought I knew what it would be like, but then you get there and you’re like, ‘Okay, I get it.’ I remember the first afternoon we get to Straddie; it’s mid-September, no one around, kangaroos in the streets and you’re like, ‘I get it. I get Ethan. I get his flow and his lifestyle and just the whole deal.’ I think we definitely also try to lean into that even with the style of cinema we used too. The way we shot Straddie was very still, very quiet, very stark frames versus Hawaii, which is just this super energetic and chaotic section to reflect Seth’s upbringing.”
The efforts of Trilogy to present a genuine portrait of the lives of these three guys will undoubtedly be measured against the efforts of the WSL to do the same thing. In recent years the WSL have attempted to mine the back stories of their surfers, while feverishly confecting behind the scenes drama, rivalry, and ego around the tour, often where little exists.
“Looking at some of the stuff that’s come out in the last few years,” offers Andrew, “I think there’s been this trend, and you’ve seen it now in every sport with a company like Box to Box, that started with Drive to Survive. I loved Drive to Survive but I think what you’ve seen is that you can’t just take those models and expect they can apply from sport to sport. Drive to Survive is so interesting because it’s this intersection of all these different crazy people in F1. You got drivers who could die at any point. You’ve got crazy engineers; you’ve got billionaires to support the whole thing. And it’s a really interesting intersection. And not to hate on Make or Break, but I just don’t know if I see that with surfing.”
“I think so much of the surf content that has been made over the past five years, like, how many versions of Make or Break have we seen? And I’m trying to depart from that. I want to get as far away from that as possible. How can you still create something that has a story and a narrative, but doesn’t say, ‘Hey, feel bad for this guy who loses his heat and now has to fly from South Africa to Tahiti to go surfing again.’ Like, who gives a shit? For us, we’re like, what happened to the fun? What happened to the reason that these guys started surfing in the first place? I’m like, let’s explore that.”
Andrew hopes the movie will offer a correction back from digital white noise. “My hope for this project is that people look back at this film and say, ‘This was a departure from the instant feedback loop. How do you get people to appreciate the surfing and just appreciate what’s happening without being like, ‘Okay, what’s the next one? Where’s the next wave?’ I think if in 10 years we’re back in a place where there’s four or five big, beautiful films coming out every year, then that’s when I’ll say it was a success.”
Beyond surf film, Andrew hopes the film in a way rejuvenates surfing itself and adds a touch of optimism after some years of decline in its big moving parts. “I don’t really think there’s been a time like this, maybe since 2007, where you have a generation of such young, crazy surfers coming into their own. And I really feel like that changing of the guard is happening. I have a really positive outlook for surfing in the next 10 years.
“It’s really easy to get caught up, depending on the media you read, that things are not that good. But to me, just watch Ethan Ewing on rail. And when you slow down Ethan’s surfing to the point where you can see every drop of water, everything is in the exact right place no matter where you freeze it. Everything is balanced. He’s always in the right position. It’s just incredible. It’s perfect. Just watch that and everything’s okay.”
