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As "Avatar" officially became a worldwide cinema sensation last Friday night, the Hero Complex was honored to be hosting a special Hollywood screening and stage interview with the makers and stars of the film. We showed you some video yesterday of James Cameron explaining the eye-opening themes of the film and now here's part two, which includes star Sam Worthington talking about his well-worn work boots and his unlikely path to Hollywood fame.
Check back tomorrow for more video and our ongoing coverage of "Avatar," the movie event of 2009.
"Clash of the Titans" is getting more epic -- and perhaps 3-D.
I talked to Sam Worthington backstage last night at The Envelope's special screening of "Avatar" and the subject turned to "Clash of the Titans," the fantasy adventure due in March from director Louis Leterrier, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. The 33-year-old actor said thatWarners, pleased with what they saw of Leterrier's work, had increased the budget for the film.
"We're going to be going back and shooting more scenes for it, they cut loose with some money so we can add to it," Worthington told me as we sat in the green room. He was obviously very enthused about the studio's decision. Sigourney Weaver, Worthington's costar in "Avatar" and a friend of Leterrier's, was sitting next to us and listening in as well.
Worthington went on: "We're going to be shooting more scenes in January, so we're going to be right up against it -- the movie comes out in March."
I had to ask: Is it really enthusiasm that is behind the mad scramble? From the outside, last-minute returns to the set look like signs of trouble. Worthington conceded that the January labors will help fix up some problem areas of the film, but he insisted that the new money and the new filming opportunity are signs that Warners and the producers are setting their sights higher for the film.
"There were some creaky parts but they are the parts that we knew were creaky and that we knew were going to be creaky going into it. The studio is also letting us add some gods and scenes. And they're talking about making the movie a 3D film."
Amy Kaufman, one of the newer members of the entertainment coverage team at the Los Angeles Times, braved the madness of the "Avatar" premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Wednesday. This is a longer version of her story, which will appear in today's editions of the paper. She also shot the video.
Hundreds of fans crowded behind barricades along Hollywood Boulevard on Wednesday hoping for a glimpse of celebrities walking down a Pandora-blue carpet rolled out to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of James Cameron's sci-fi epic "Avatar" at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
The adventure film -- hailed by some in Hollywood as "the game changer" for its special-effects wizardry and 3-D approach -- is winning over critics and appears poised for a strong opening weekend. The film's stars, including Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, as well as interested celebrities such as Bill Paxton and Tom Arnold, came out to support the movie. Also among the interested observers: Fox co-Chairmen Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman, who have plenty riding on the most expensive film in Hollywood history with a budget somewhere north of $310 million.
The biggest star in the film never appears on the screen -- "Avatar" is the first feature film by Cameron since "Titanic" broke box-office records in Hollywood with its theatrical run in 1997 and 1998. The director -- who has been called a visionary, a crowd-pleaser or a tyrant (it depends on whom you ask) -- stood clutching the hand of his wife, Suzy Amis, and talked to reporters nearly 30 minutes after the film was scheduled to screen. With a big grin, he said he found the early acclaim from critics especially exciting.
The 55-year-old director also said he hoped any success the film has will help the emerging technologies -- though he also considers himself an innovative storyteller.
"I'm a techno geek and I love the innovative processes, but I never put that before telling a story," Cameron said. "I spent a lot of time in the writing, I spent a lot of time thinking about the characters. I love working with the actors finding the characters. I love the casting process, finding the actors that will bring those characters to life."
Zoe Saldana, who plays the blue-skinned alien princess Neytiri, said she hopes her role will encourage other actors to work with Cameron's refined performance-capture technology.
"I think as actors, besides the fact that you want to play roles that are unique and are very different from the ones you've played before, you also want to continue challenging yourself," she said. "And part of that is also challenging technology and working with it. And when technology works in your favor and gives a filmmaker or an artist an ability to continue growing and capturing his vision, as opposed to limiting it, that can only be a good thing in my eyes."
Saldana blew kisses to fans while Michelle Rodriguez, who plays a tough military pilot, stopped to pose for photographs with those who called out her name. One reporter standing on the press line had painted his face dark blue and tousled his hair to resemble the Na'vi tribe members in the film.
Aussie actor Sam Worthington, "Avatar's" hero Jake Sully, was accompanied by a petite brunette he introduced to others as "his girl." Worthington, who stars next in "Clash of the Titans," said he first met Cameron in the summer of 2006, long before he had any idea of the phenomenon the film would turn into.
"Like any actor, you fear unemployment, you get the opportunity to go for a job and you do the best you can. You know stepping into Jim Cameron's world it's gonna be quite monumental and that's an understatement. But you do your best. That's all you can really do."
It's. Almost. Here! Now we delve into a bit of the process: casting the actors who would take on the now epic journey to make "Avatar" come to life. Hero Complex contributor Yvonne Villarreal spoke withveteran casting director Margery Simkin -- who's done everything from “Top Gun” to “Marley & Me” -- about scouring the thespian world for people who could convincingly express emotion through motion-capture suits and a yet-to-be-created language. Oh, and having to do it in secret.
YV: Let’s start with the casting of Sam Worthington. He was this construction worker with not a lot of screen time outside of Australia.
MS: How about none? None! No screen time outside of Australia. Obviously we looked at millions of people. When I felt that we had pretty thoroughly explored the U.S. people, I went to Jim (Cameron) and suggested we expand the search to England, Ireland and Australia because they’re native English speakers and I think that historically, in recent years, we’ve found a lot of manly leading men in those places.
YV: So you just weren’t finding those manly leading men out here?
MS: We found some really wonderful people here. But nobody quite nailed it. It was an embarrassment of riches job. Lots of people wanted to do it. Lots of people came in -- people who normally wouldn't -- came in for all kinds of roles in this movie. That, in it of itself, was an amazing and humbling experience. The thing is … As much as the technology is wondrous in this picture, it’s ultimately about telling a story. I know that's corny to say, but it’s true... And we were seeing wonderful people come in for the role of Sam, but we hadn’t yet seen somebody who riveted us in that way.
And Christine King, a casting director in Australia who I’ve worked with before, I called her up and asked her to put all the guys she thought were great on tape. We saw probably 20 or 30 guys from down there. One day my coworker came in and said, ‘You gotta see this.’ Honestly, Sam just popped. I believe there are sort of marriages of actors to roles. He definitely popped. There were these two young girls who worked at the front desk. And we dragged them in to look at his audition. And it was kind of like they were weak in the knees.
It took us six months until it finally happened. One of the many things I’m proud of is my part in keeping Sam alive for six months. He was the guy to beat. [But] we’ve all seen these movies where favorite actors don’t have chemistry with each other and the movie just doesn’t work. Jim did this thing -- it was the most brilliant thing -- he, one night, took all the final auditions for the girls and edited them so you could see them reading "opposite" Sam. Once you saw that pairing of him with Zoe [Saldana], it was like, ‘That’s it.’ You knew film-ically, there was chemistry.
YV: And was it hard to convince them to go with an unknown? Was the goal to get a big-name star?
MS: I think that Jim wanted the best person. I think that he understood that he was making a really big movie. He was comfortable because — I mean, Leo wasn’t a big star when he made “Titanic,” so [Cameron] was comfortable with the idea. I think the powers that be would have liked the idea of a big-name. They always do. Let’s face it: Big-names sell the movie. It took a while and took exploring other things and continually reminding them why Sam was the best choice.
YV: How did you know he was the right choice?
MS: You know. That’s the hardest thing to explain about my job. Great is easy to see. The perfect match is easy to see. The bigger casting challenges are when things are very good but not exact. And then it’s a leap of faith to some extent. That’s what I do. I don’t know how actors act. It amazes me every day. And I don’t know how to tell you I know what I know. But I know when people come in a room, and do a scene, even if it’s not perfectly done, you can see the promise in there. That’s the art of what I do, is seeing that. We can see that. That’s my talent.
YV: What were some of the challenges in casting for this movie?
MS: Well, there were a lot. Obviously, the Sam situation was a challenge. Here was the most unusual challenge. It was a very secret project; no one was allowed to leave the building with the script. All the actors who came in to audition would have to sign scripts in and out. There were a number of roles that had key scenes in Na’vi and, again, you have to put this in historical perspective: The language was not written when we were -- Paul [Frommer] was writing the language while we were doing the audition. So those scenes did not exist in that language. Plus, it wasn’t fair to ask those actors to audition in a language they’ve never heard before. So how to address that and be able to assess that became one of the most interesting challenges of the casting process.
I realized it didn’t matter whether or not the actors spoke the language, but I had to see whether or not they could do the scene not in English. So I let the actors prepare — I didn’t tell them in advance; this is where the bravery of the acting population comes into play – because I felt if I told them in advance, they’d be sitting in the waiting room trying to figure out a language and they weren’t going to be working on their performance, which is what they needed to be focused on. So they would come in the room. They would do it in this sort of limited English, and then I would ask them to do the scene and make up a language, even if they ended up just doing ‘A B C D, A B C D.’ It was like an acting exercise to play the scene without English words. People were amazing. What you saw — and I think it’s true for the whole process for actors in this movie — there’s a purity of performance. It’s not about the technology for them and that’s what made it work. I needed to find actors that could focus that way and were free in that way.
I will never forget those actors who came in that room and just threw themselves into it — verbally and physically. It was a scary thing for them to do. The people that ended up with those roles — Laz [Alonso],CCH [Pounder],Wes [Studi]--they were amazing. They were just amazing.
YV: There’s a lot of performance capture, what kind of actors do best in that?
MS: Everybody thought there’d be animation or whatever. I think actors were afraid of what would happen to their performance. But the essence of this technology is about capturing the performance. I would say to the actors, ‘It’s like performance will be recorded and then for the stuff that took place on the planet -- with the Avatars and the Na’vi-- your makeup will be put on after. So they were in performance-capture suits and they had head gear on and they had all kinds of stuff. It was like the purity of acting on an empty stage. Almost like theater performances. And, for me, watching the 3-D, is like watching live theater.
YV: Yeah. I heard Stephen Lang said theater actors do great in it.
MS: He’s right! Except Stephen didn’t have to do it! You know, I’ve been a huge fan of his for a long time. The last time I saw him, he was very out of shape. I don’t know if you’ve seen him recently, but that’s not the case. There was this poster [online] — I mean, he should be very grateful to the photographer of that poster. I looked at that and went, ‘OK, that’s the guy.’ Because I knew he could do the role. I knew he would be able to act. And he read for Jim. There’s times when you have numerous phenomenal choices. But every once in a while someone walks in and walks out and you say, ‘That’s the guy.’ He was [Col. Miles] Quaritch.
YV: And what was it like to not have any restrictions, as far as casting the Na’vi?
MS: People often talk about non-traditional casting. In my life, I probably will never have an opportunity to do something that is this colorblind. I mean, the three finalists for the role that Zoe got — she’s Hispanic; there was an Asian woman and a Caucasian woman. And those were the three finalists for that role. I can’t imagine another opportunity to cast for something that is that race neutral. We didn’t have to worry about who looked like they were related to who.
YV: So now that everything’s complete and people are just a few days from seeing the film, how do you feel about your casting decisions? To see it all come together?
MS: I still haven’t seen the whole film. But the scenes I have seen … the actors hit my heart. Earlier, you asked how I know when I’ve found the right person … when you see something that’s right, it touches your heart. Even though, you’ve seen it hundreds of times before, when the right person does it, it’s magic. When I saw the completed stuff, I had no regrets. I envy people the surprise of seeing it for the first time.
--Yvonne Villarreal
Photo: (top) Sam Worthington. Credit: Chris Carlson / Associated Press. (middle) James Cameron directing on the set of "Avatar." Credit: 20th Century Fox. (bottom) The character Neytiri, voiced by Zoe Saldana, and the character Jake, voiced by Sam Worthington, in a scene from "Avatar." Credit: 20th Century Fox.
On Monday night, I hope you L.A. readers will join us at the Landmark Theatre for a free 3-D screening of Pixar's "Up" and, afterward, a Q&A session onstage with director Pete Docter. This great event is part of the Envelope screening series, which puts filmmakers and stars in the same room with members of Hollywood guilds so they can discuss their trophy-worthy projects as awards season begins its serious ramp-up here in Tinseltown.
Those members of the voting guilds get seated first, of course, but we almost always have seats for the general public. These events are great and there are often surprises. I hosted the "Crazy Heart" screening recently, for instance, and not only did the post-screening panel include Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall, but T Bone Burnett showed up as a surprise guest and joined us for an especially lively conversation. The "Up" screening starts at 7:30 p.m. Hope to see some of you there. If you have a question you'd like me to ask Docter, post it below in the comments section.
On Friday, I'll be hosting the big daddy of the Envelope series this year, an opening-night screening of Fox's "Avatar" with guests James Cameron, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana. That event will be at the Mann Chinese theaters. Some of you readers have reserved seats for that one -- you've been contacted if you were one of the lucky ones -- and we're expecting a major turnout from guild members because of the timing and the talent on hand. For more on the Envelope screening series, go right here.
UPDATE: THE "AVATAR" SCREENING IS FULL DUE TO RESERVATIONS BY GUILD MEMBERS
This is a longer version of my cover story in this upcoming Sunday Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. -- G.B.
There were inscriptions written above the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi, and the two most famous ones were cautionary words of wisdom: “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much.” Those bits of ancient advice are worth considering as two Hollywood studios hope to launch film franchises that use Greek mythology as the unlikely premise for popcorn entertainment.
“These are the stories that began storytelling in many ways,” director Louis Leterrier said a few months ago on the London set of his “Clash of the Titans,” the Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures epic that arrives in theaters in March with Sam Worthington as Perseus, Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades. “These are tales of adventure that endure. These stories are who we are.”
True, which lives up to the “Know thyself” advice. But as for that second suggestion, the one calling for limits, well, Hollywood has never been known for moderation. “Clash of the Titans” arrives in theaters on the winged heels of “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” which also has mighty Zeus (Sean Bean), the nefarious Hades (Steve Coogan) and the other gods of grand Olympus, although it brings them to modern-day Manhattan where they meet the title character, one of the most popular heroes at the bookstores in recent years with the bestselling young-reader novels of Rick Riordan. No surprise, the makers of both films are eyeing each other with some anxiety.
“You can’t ignore it,” said “Percy Jackson” director Chris Columbus while taking a break from post-production work in San Francisco on the film that opens Feb. 12 and, for Fox, has been circled as a potential “Harry Potter”-style multiple-film property. “They are two completely different pictures. But I’d be a liar if I said that I’m not fascinated by everything they’re doing. In today’s version of Hollywood, you have to be aware of everything else that’s going on around you. It’s just kind of foolish to put yourself in a bubble and pretend it’s not there.”
It’s interesting that, after so many years of futuristic tales, Hollywood is once again looking back to Greece and the Roman Empire for adventure tales and, in the cases of “Clash” and “Percy,” special-effects fantasies. Just as “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” were pulled from the bookshelf for their potential in this digital-effects era, Columbus said the thunderbolts of Zeus and the pits of Tartarus are camera-ready for the 21st century. “The world of Greek myth really hasn’t been dealt with, on screen, in a long time, at least not in terms of a big blockbuster motion picture,” Columbus said. “It’s exciting to think about. At least it is for me.”
“Percy Jackson” stars 17-year-old Logan Lerman (“3:10 to Yuma”) as the title character, a troubled youngster who (like a certain boy-wizard) discovers he has a magical heritage and then teams with his young friends to fight the dark forces aligned against him. Columbus directed the first two “Potter” films and was brought in by Fox with hopes that magic lightning can strike twice. The choice of Lerman may not sit entirely well with devoted fans of the book series for the simple reason of age; in the books, Percy is 12 at the start of his adventure.
“Clash of the Titans” is a familiar brand name to fans from the 1981 movie of the same title and, like that film, this new model is more about an adrenaline adventure than meticulous scholarship. Leterrier (2008’s “The Incredible Hulk,” “Transporter 2”), for instance, was playing with the idea of presenting Pegasus as a black horse with webbed, bat-like wings instead of the iconic white steed with angelic feathers. He and his star, Worthington, have already discussed the possibilities of a sequel, and Warner Bros. has high hopes for the movie.
The films follow a surge in more traditional sword-and-sandal movies in recent years. The decade began with “Gladiator,” which won the Oscar for best picture, and it was followed in 2004 by both “Alexander” and “Troy.” It was the 2007 hit film “300,” though, that truly captured the attention of Hollywood executives with $456 million in worldwide box office off a $67-million budget.
The Zack Snyder film, the highest-grossing March release ever, was based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about King Leonidas and his doomed army of Spartans; Miller is preparing a follow-up now titled “Xerxes,” which begins about 10 years before the events of “300,” and Snyder has expressed interest in it as a film property as well. “It’s the battle of Marathon through my lens,” Miller said Wednesday. “I’ve finished the plot and I’m getting started on the artwork.”
Miller said he is not surprised Greece is resurgent in Hollywood. “Every generation returns to ancient Greece because, well, the stories are so damn good,” said the artist, who also directed last year’s “The Spirit.” Miller said that during his research trips to Greece he realized that the myth and history overlap begins to blur, which adds to the storytelling allure. “The fact and the myth are inseparable and, believe me, when you go sailing for a while in the Aegean Sea, you start believing in Poseidon.”
The success of “300” was a likely inspiration for the new series “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” which premieres Jan. 22 on Starz (it even co-stars Peter Mensah, whose character died memorably in “300” when he was kicked into a pit by Leonidis). The empire was last seen on a regular series in “Rome,” the HBO series that won seven Emmys during its 22-episode run and is now, according to star Kevin McKidd, ramping up for a feature with creator Bruno Heller (“The Mentalist”) finishing the screenplay.
McKidd, known to “Grey’s Anatomy” fans as Dr. Owen Hunt, is taking his experience in “Rome” to “Percy Jackson,” where he plays Poseidon, the estranged father of Percy.
“It’s a tricky thing in this movie,” the Scottish actor said. “I do modern times right now on ‘Grey’s,’ and on ‘Rome’ I played a character from antiquity. With this film, you have these gods who scale themselves down to walk the streets of modern Manhattan. But you think you have to play it differently because you have these classical texts. So how do you strike the balance? Chris Columbus helped us define it. These gods can be contemporary and act in a contemporary way. It’s a great thing because you can hit the ground running with emotion instead of putting on this classical mask as you would on stage.”
The classics of Greece never really left us, of course, when it comes to theater; just note the production of Euripides’ “Medea” with Annette Bening this year at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse. Other pop-culture ventures of the moment take the influence of Greece into unexpected directions. One of the most compelling comic books right now, for example, is Vertigo’s “Greek Street,” written by Peter Milligan, which transports Greek myths to contemporary London. The tales of Cassandra (called “Sandy” here) and Oedipus (now simply “Eddie”) play out in familiar rhythms but with a backdrop of Milligan’s gritty Soho.
Then there’s the acclaimed SyFy series “Battlestar Galactica,” which had plenty of references (there were characters called Apollo, Athena, Cassiopeia, etc.) and planets named after the Greek zodiac; the tales of the “Battlestar” universe continue on Jan. 22 with a spinoff series called “Caprica” and there are plans for a “Battlestar” feature film by Bryan Singer.
And Hollywood isn’t limiting its interests to the Greco-Roman gods. Marvel Studios and director Kenneth Branagh are just now getting underway with “Thor” (with Chris Hemsworth in the title role and Anthony Hopkins as the one-eyed Odin) based on the Norse god of thunder as imagined by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Walt Simonson and, more recently, J. Michael Straczynski in the pages of Marvel Comics. But are the old gods viable as entertainment to the young moviegoers who made the mecha-minded “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” the highest-grossing film of 2009?
On the set of “Clash,” star Worthington, still sweating from battle and picking at flecks of blood on his fingernails, dismissed the idea that ancient epics can’t be of-the-moment.
“Look at this world,” he said, nodding toward the set of the river Styx. “We’re not exactly going by the book. The armor we wear is very futuristic looking. It’s not dated to a period of time in a history book. This is a story with winged horses ... but what we’re doing, we have to have a modern take on it, to make it relevant to our audience. This isn’t like a Ridley Scott kind of thing, where every minute detail has to be an exact replica. We’re making a fun kind of romp.”
The original “Clash” starred Harry Hamlin, Laurence Olivier and Burgess Meredith, but the most memorable performance was the stop-motion animation by effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen. Those effects look quaint now, but they captured the imagination of many youngsters, including an 8-year-old Leterrier in his native France. Leterrier was resistant to the idea of a remake, but he came around after considering the wide range of gods and creatures who were untapped in the first picture.
The new film, from the screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, follows the journey of Perseus, the son of Zeus and a human mother, as he becomes a reluctant volunteer in the building conflict between his father and Hades. The film, like the original, is an amalgam of different Greek myths, and, again, a centerpiece is the showdown with Medusa, the cursed creature with serpent-tresses.
This time Medusa’s lair has staircases and walls that run off in different directions, like an M.C. Escher madhouse, since she can slither up surfaces. “It’s amazing,” Leterrier bragged of the work by production designer Martin Laing. But will it be enough to set “Clash’s” Medusa apart from the one moviegoers will have already seen in “Percy Jackson”? Columbus smiled at the question.
“We’re a good, solid five weeks ahead of the release of ‘Clash,’ so we will have succeeded or failed at that point,” Columbus said. “I’m very, very confident about our characters, our performances and our creatures. And I’m telling you, when you see Uma Thurman as our Medusa — well, you’ve never seen anything like it. It’s pretty spectacular. It’s something you’ve never even dreamed of.”
Columbus said the competition — or, to use a more topical word, the clash — between Greek myth movies is both real and imagined. “In the end, each movie will be judged on what it puts up on the screen. There’s room for both to succeed.”
McKidd, who hopes to carry the trident in multiple “Percy Jackson” films, said that if both films do find glory there will be rejoicing in classrooms well beyond Hollywood. “The stories of Greek myth are very allegorical and, as a adult reading them, I see a lot of truth in them. They’re archetypal. But that’s not what I thought when I was young. Listen, I remember reading Greek myth and it was dry and arid. That was the class I always fell asleep in. Well, we’re keeping those kids from dozing off now.”
Our countdown coverage continues today with a bit of "Avatar" news that has is especially exciting for us here at the Hero Complex...
Moviegoers everywhere will be able to see "Avatar" on Dec. 18 but the best place to see it that day will be at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where director James Cameron and stars Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldaña will attend the screening and then be interviewed on stage by Hero Complex blogger Geoff Boucher.
The event is part of the awards-season screening series by the Los Angeles Times and The Envelope. You can find the full schedule of films and stage discussions right here. "Avatar" will be shown at 7:30 and the stage portion of the evening will begin afterward.
Check back here early next week for information on how to get tickets for the free event. First-chance opportunity for seating is for Hollywood guild members and Academy voters, but fans will be admitted into every screening as well. (There's more information on the screening series attendance policies here.)
Also, for this special night for sci-fi fans, Boucher will be picking some Hero Complex readers to attend the "Avatar" screening and have reserved seats waiting for them; interested fans just need to leave a message explaining why they want to see the movie in the Hero Complex comments section and Boucher will pick from the most interesting or clever responses.
Boucher also interviewed director Henry Selick after a Nov. 2 screening of "Coraline" and will be handling the stage duties at two other upcoming Envelope screenings, both at the Landmark Theatre: "Crazy Heart" on Dec. 1 (with a panel of JeffBridges, Robert Duvall, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scott Cooper), and "Up" on Dec. 14 (with director and writer Pete Docter).
Remember McG's plan to bring Sam Worthington beneath the waves for a huge revival of Captain Nemo and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"? In a shocker, the whole film has been scuttled by Disney; Claudia Eller and Dawn C. Chmielewski have the latest at our sister blog, Company Town. Here's an excerpt:
In one of his first major creative moves as Walt Disney Studios' new movie chief, Rich Ross has made the costly decision to pull the plug on the planned $150-million production of "Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" -- the last project approved by his predecessor, Dick Cook.
The movie -- which was a high-priority project for Disney and envisioned as a potential franchise along the lines of the "Pirates of The Caribbean" series -- was scheduled to begin shooting in February in Mexico. Disney had already spent millions of dollars hiring crews and building elaborate sets in Rosarito Beach, which will now have to be struck and workers laid off. The studio will also be shutting down the film's production offices on the Burbank lot, where dozens of people were doing prep work for the movie.
Just a few weeks ago, Disney spent generously to hire writer Michael Chabon to quickly rewrite the script. The studio had recruited Chabon, author of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," to rework "Nemo" after he had recently written a draft of its forthcoming production "John Carter of Mars," the first live-action film to be directed by Pixar Animation Studios director Andrew Stanton.
As recently as late last week, the production of "Nemo" appeared to be full speed ahead...
There is no film this year that has been anticipated, discussed or debated as much as "Avatar," the sci-fi epic from director James Cameron that reaches theaters Dec. 18. We're going to start a monthlong countdown to the film here at Hero Complex in mid-November, but here's an early bite at the apple. This is a longer version of a feature I've written about Sam Worthington for the big movie sneaks issue that runs next weekend in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar section.
Forget the flying dragons and giant blue aliens, Sam Worthington is in search of human life amid all that extraterrestrial spectacle of “Avatar.”
Director James Cameron’s sci-fi epic arrives Dec. 18 amid intense discussion of its state-of-the-art performance capture and 3-D innovations, but for Worthington, the 33-year-old Australian star of the film, none of that is as important as locating the human heart in the story.
"I don’t believe there’s a certain way to act in an action blockbuster and I think it’s a mistake to approach it that way,” Worthington said. “It’s still has drama, romance, suspense; it’s only a blockbuster because of the size of scale and the money they throw in and maybe the time of year it comes out. If you bring in the subtleties of proper human emotion, then an audience can relate to a character. That character isn’t just a cartoon. I don’t want to be a cartoon.”
Cartoon or “dead” faces are the bane of motion-capture films and exactly what Cameron hopes to avoid with “Avatar.” The filmmaker wrote the script for “Avatar” before he made his Oscar-winning 1997 film “Titanic” and has been waiting, he says, for the technology needed to pull off his vision. That’s why some observers are referring to “Avatar” as a “game-changer” for special effects films -- and others are calling it the most over-hyped Hollywood release of 2009.
And at the center of this massive machinery is the brawny Worthington, a former bricklayer and high school dropout from west Australia. His life path changed at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. A girl he knew planned to submit an application for the program, and he joined her as a lark.
“To have these opportunities now, I’m extremely humble about it, to be honest with you,” Worthington said. “I feel lucky to do these kinds of films. I always said I wanted to make movies that I would go see. I would pay 12 bucks to go see ‘Avatar.’ Just to be part of it all -- I pinch myself.”
In person, Worthington comes off as coolly confident and wildly straightforward; he seems about as ironic as a rugby tackle. He said, for instance, that one of his goals as an actor is to portray men who prove that "a man's fate isn't written, that he decides his own fate," a lesson he himself wants to impart to his 9-year-old nephew. Worthington’s screen career began with an episode of “JAG” in 2000 and he caught the eye of Hollywood with performances in smaller films, such as his lead role in Geoffrey Wright’s gritty 2006 “Macbeth,” which reframed the Shakespeare play in the criminal underworld of Melbourne, Australia.
But there was a big one that got away: Worthington was one of three finalists in the search for the new James Bond but lost out to Daniel Craig, whose screen aura is a more cynical menace. Instead, Worthington is getting a reputation as an action hero with soulful eyes; in “Terminator Salvation,” opposite Christian Bale, the relative newcomer was the most memorable part of the film for many reviewers.
“Wearing his conflicted humanity like Clint Eastwood in his Sergio Leone days ... Worthington overtakes every scene that he is in,” film critic Betsy Sharkey wrote in The Times.
Cameron, whose last leading man was Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic,” said that for “Avatar” he needed a star who could handle the action but also pull the audience along on an adventure that covers a lot of emotional ground as well as exotic alien-jungle terrain. Cameron said that, in aspiration, “Avatar” has more in common with Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad and Edgar Rice Burroughs than with modern Michael Bay cinema.
“I’ll go to a ‘Transformers’ film for the fun of seeing the spectacle,” Cameron said, “but, personally, my soul craves a little more story, a little more meat on the bone and characters and that sort of thing.”
In the futuristic tale of “Avatar,” Worthington portrays Jake Sully, a Marine who comes home from combat in a wheelchair. He gets a chance to walk, run and fight again, though, through a strange off-world mission. Scientists will place his consciousness in an avatar, a towering blue body grown in a laboratory melding of alien genetic material with Sully’s DNA. This new body is sent to a jungle planet to help plunder a valuable mineral but, in a sort of intergalactic “Dances With Wolves” scenario, Sully goes native.
In “Terminator Salvation,” Worthington presented the mash-up of man and machine; this time it’s the hybrid of earthling and alien. He chuckled when asked whether there were themes that pull him toward certain roles.
“I just want to work with people of high caliber, whatever kind of genre,” the actor said. “I don’t basically go, ‘I want to make a movie of this type’ or ‘I want this genre.’ I look at who’s making it and who’s in it. With ‘Avatar,’ they tell me Jim Cameron is directing and Sigourney Weaver is in it? Sign me up.”
There’s considerable interest in Hollywood to signing up Worthington. He will star with Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes in “Clash of the Titans,” which hits theaters in March, and he has completed two other films, John Madden’s “The Debt,” a war-crimes thriller with Helen Mirren, and “Last Night,” a New York romance with Keira Knightley, which was shot in 2008.
He was slated to star with Charlize Theron in another thriller, “The Tourist,” but that project may be in flux. There is talk, too, that Worthington will reunite with “Terminator Salvation” director McG for Disney’s major revival of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
For the actor, though, the bigger the franchise, the tighter his focus on the people living and breathing between the explosions.
“If you’re going to do blockbusters, you have to find the human in them or else you’re just making a video game,” he said. “I’ve always said if I’m going to make these things, I’m going to do the thing I can do in a $4-million Australian film -- a dramatic piece -- and bring that into the action film. If you do that, the audience feels it and then they’ve got a way in. They see themselves up there on the screen.”
Photos: At top, "Avatar" director James Cameron, left, and lead actor Sam Worthington on the set. Credit: Mark Fellman. Middle: Worthington in "Terminator Salvation." Credit: Warner Bros.
Betsy Sharkey is one of the two film critics at the Los Angeles Times. After surveying the great glut of fanboy fare this year, she got to thinking about the nature of the modern film hero and the inner workings of their characters as well as their appeal. Here's an excerpt, or you can read the entire piece right here.
This summer's heroes may go boldly, but in every case, someone has gone many times before: three earlier "X-Men" and "Terminators"; one earlier Michael Bay "Transformers," a 1984 animated film and the pervasive TV series; and countless iterations of "Star Trek" on every size screen known to modern man.
It hasn't been easy to be the fresh prince this year.
Yet on they came in their own distinctive ways. For "Terminator's" Christian Bale and Sam Worthington, martyrdom drips like sweat from their brows. Others swagger with a cocky smile and an endearing arrogance, as Chris Pine does in directorJ.J. Abrams' "Star Trek." There is the tortured struggle with a darker animal nature, as is Hugh Jackman's fate in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," or, like Shia LaBeouf's Sam [in "Transformers"] there is the boy David facing off whatever Goliath happens to be tearing up the town.
Most of us have long since gotten past the notion that superheroes and the comic books and graphic novels they're so often rooted in are merely kids' stuff, having intellectualized their political and social undercurrents to death in recent years. But it's always interesting to look at our current boys of summer to see who we're looking to save us these days, why certain actors carry the mantle so vividly and why others struggle.
Consider Bale. One of the most intensely interesting actors around, he must have seemed the perfect match for the gritty, deconstructed post-apocalyptic future director McG and screenwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris envisioned for "Terminator Salvation." But he isn't. The interior force field that works so well for him underneath the "Dark Knight's" mask is exactly what is working against him in "Salvation," a rebel-with-a-cause story that has Bale's John Connor leading an underground resistance.
Unfortunately for John Connor, to say nothing of the resistance, a leader of men Bale is not, or at least that's not a role he's been able to get his head around. His very essence seems to be solitary, which is why he was far better as Batman with that no-friends-are-required existence than as Connor, the man destined to save the human race from the "Terminator's" relentless killing machines, embodied by Arnold Schwarzenegger before he went political on us.
Bale's appeal is the icy certainty of survival that you feel deep in your bones any time you see him. That steel is at the center of his pilot in Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn." You believed he could survive the impossibly harsh, torturous Laotian prison and an escape into an even more unforgiving jungle. Though others start the journey with him, he walks out of the jungle alone.
But cold never draws men close, and that is why it is Sam Worthington's man/machine hybrid Marcus who emerges as the one you want to follow in "Salvation." The accidental hero, charisma hanging easy on his broad shoulders like an old coat, Worthington claims every scene he is in. His is an empathy you can feel -- he did good not because it is right, which is Bale's motivation, but because he cares.
One of Worthington's strengths is that ability to make his vulnerability accessible, that sense of a shared humanity easy for the rest of us to embrace. Cut from the same action/fantasy cloth, his next films -- "Avatar" and "Clash of the Titans" -- feel filled with promise.
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"I don’t believe there’s a certain way to act in an action blockbuster and I think it’s a mistake to approach it that way,” Worthington said. “It’s still has drama, romance, suspense; it’s only a blockbuster because of the size of scale and the money they throw in and maybe the time of year it comes out. If you bring in the subtleties of proper human emotion, then an audience can relate to a character. That character isn’t just a cartoon. I don’t want to be a cartoon.”
In person, Worthington comes off as coolly confident and wildly straightforward; he seems about as ironic as a rugby tackle. He said, for instance, that one of his goals as an actor is to portray men who prove that "a man's fate isn't written, that he decides his own fate," a lesson he himself wants to impart to his 9-year-old nephew. Worthington’s screen career began with an episode of “
