Hi. So, this is Tom Cruise.
This is Joe Kosinski, and we are here...
Joe and Tom.
to talk about this little movie we made called Oblivion.
Right there, you just saw, which was fun,
we got to do a little storytelling right off the bat with the Universal logo.
You saw the Tet orbiting the destroyed Planet Earth there.
I love the music. M83 has never done a score before,
and I think that you knew immediately
that you needed a unique sound, and what you did with it was incredible.
Okay, now we got the opening here.
Earth, before the war.
New York, before I was born.
A place I've only seen pictures of
Now, when you look at this script,
the structure is really interesting and it's challenging
because with any film, no matter what it is,
you're bringing them into the world, the tone of the film.
And right at the beginning, there's...
Particularly with sci-fi,
there's more of a language with sci-fi today than even 10 years ago.
But I remember there was just a lot of talk
because there's also the technology of this world that we're setting up.
It's a character piece.
You've got three, four characters.
Three or four main characters, yeah.
And the decision to open with Jack's internal struggle
before the external one, I think, was the right choice.
'Cause we really wanted people to be drawn into his psyche.
But the questions I ask, she doesn't.
The things I wonder about, she won't.
It's been half a century since the scavengers destroyed our moon.
Forced to leave their own dying planet, they came to take ours.
Without the moon, the Earth was...
Look at that. It's beautiful. Iceland. Incredible.
I remember you showing me what you wanted to create with this story
right from the beginning.
The emotional tone you wanted, the characters, visually,
it was so in-depth and accurate.
lost the planet.
Left it contaminated. Most of it uninhabitable.
Iceland turned out to be just a treasure trove of amazing imagery.
All these opening shots, obviously, except for this one,
were shot on location in Iceland.
Yeah, I don't know where you found that piece. That's really cool.
Thanks. That was a splinter unit we sent off, picked that one up.
Well, almost everyone.
Look at that.
Until our tour is complete, Vika and I do our job.
So, now we're in the Sky Tower,
which was an experiment in terms of how to make that set work.
We decided not to go with any blue screen or green screen.
All these shots were shot our first day in the Sky Tower using the front projection,
which, after that first day, I knew it was gonna work.
Amazing. The most beautiful set I've ever been on.
Thank you.
And how you lit it, that's the light. That's how you lit it.
Okay, so every little piece, like that photo, an effective team.
When an audience... We're not giving any spoilers away
because if you're listening to this, you already have seen the film.
But in every step, we're setting up character, story, technology, behavior.
Every shot was really scrutinized,
and we spent a long time talking about performance.
Me, I'm not so sure.
I can't shake the feeling that Earth, in spite of all that's happened...
I love this, your staging of this opening, Joe.
Yeah, this is, I think, one of the first shots on the stage.
After that shot, I knew it was all gonna work.
But every moment... There's the 49.
So much information we knew the audience was gonna be absorbing
in the first three minutes of this movie,
so that's probably where went spent most of our effort,
was just crafting that first three minutes to get everything that we needed to get in there.
Yep. Jack Harper, Tech-49, everything is. There's the engine startup...
- The Tet iconography. - Yeah.
Showing that everything's part of this very controlled system
that's been created for Jack.
- Look at that. - This is the Bubbleship.
It's such a cool design, Joe. I hope someone builds it one day.
That is a real prop that I'm in that was designed around my body.
And the world of Vika.
Her drone status, her map, her hydro rig status.
systems are green.
I'm good to go.
Andrea is... What a chameleon.
When she came in and read,
you and I looked at each other immediately and went, "Oh, my God."
I was so relieved because the search was over at that point, I knew.
And her talent,
the level of specificity and emotion.
Incredibly courageous.
Now, here's a performance that...
I got 'em. Hydro rigs...
We'll talk more about it.
Look at the hydro rigs.
Setting up the hydro rings, setting up the drone patrols,
showing that they're all numbered.
Our first shot of a drone here.
Now what I love about what you've done, Joe, with the film
is you're playing with the language of sci-fi, the language of romance,
so many different elements that you wonderfully tip your hat to.
And yet, the story itself is totally original, the characters are original.
Another day in paradise, Sally.
When you look at the Empire State Building, which comes from An Affair to Remember
you're dealing in romantic iconography, sci-fi iconography,
and yet, it's yours.
It's your story. It's very original.
Linking to beacon now.
Here we're seeing the kind of system as it's been put in place,
the way that Vika sends Jack off to his assignments,
the kind of role she plays in the relationship with Sally and Mission Control,
always working between her technician and Mission.
We've got Mission Sally putting pressure on them constantly.
Yeah, and you look at even just the static on that, and as the story progresses...
This film and the performances are... It's haiku.
There's a simplicity
that we had to reach with performance.
Tower, didn't he fix 166 recently?
Yeah, with the sparse amount of dialogue in this film,
it's really about behavior and the subtlety of behavior.
And we were always thinking not only about the first time you watched the film,
but on the second time, you're gonna see, and we'll point out those moments...
Well, the subtlety and the specificity, even when you look at Sally. Okay?
Just the composition of framing the other people out,
how the Tet is...
- Cropped in. Yup. - cropped in.
Because you think at this point in the film
they've dealt with many different Jacks and Vikas.
And the fact that they're asking, "Are you an effective team?''
And the fact that they co-piloted the Odyssey together,
but they're not meant for each other.
The relationship is slightly flawed.
Mission has seen that these teams,
after a certain amount of time, ultimately break down.
- And it's constantly monitoring... - "Are you an effective team?''
Yes, for that crack in the relationship.
And at this point in the film, we've established they are an effective team,
although we've already seen little hints that Jack...
ls questioning.
And is dreaming of another woman, which is obviously a problem.
Yeah, another woman, and also his affinity for Earth,
and the trajectory of two different dreams, two different futures that each one wants.
Now, the stadium, of course...
I love this set. Shot entirely in Iceland.
- Northern Iceland. Very, very chilly. - Very cold.
And here, we see the fact that everything Jack needs to do repairs
is in the back of the Bubbleship.
And this first clue that this is a guy
who longs for another time, with the old Yankee cap.
See, because in this region, you see that...
As the story goes on and when you get through it,
you see that these are things that he knows.
That's just part of who he is, his makeup.
The Yankees, baseball, even in this stadium.
See, "2017."
Because when he's on the Odyssey, this is the game that he missed.
This is the game that he was gonna come back and see.
- That he had recorded. - And that's what makes this Jack special.
When people ask, "Why Tech-49?''
It's because Tech-49 was stationed in the region that he had memories of
So, he's already primed for memories
because there is glimpses of places he's been before
that are gonna seep into his consciousness.
So, here, you hear him talking about a game.
He says he read about this or heard about this.
And ultimately, if you look closely,
you'll see the Sports Illustrated that illustrates this exact game
is sitting on the top of the magazine pile in Jack's Crater Lake home.
And this is the game that he mentions in the...
- That Sally, from Houston, mentions to him. - Right. Which he missed.
Yeah, he wanted to see it when he got back.
There is another important moment, the bubblegum.
The reason the bubblegum's there
is because it's the whole reason why techs exist on this planet.
Humanity have an ability to improvise,
and the fact that Jack fixes an unfixable drone with a piece of bubblegum
shows why humans are valuable in this world and starts...
When you watch the film a second time,
now you realize why the Tet uses Jack in the first place.
For moments just like that.
A drone could never fix itself,
but a human being, using a little bit of ingenuity, can do something.
And that's why she uses technicians,
but it's also the key to why, ultimately, the Tet's mission fails.
Now, I remember, originally, we were going to...
We were going to have the drone kill the dog,
- just to set up that immediately. - Yep.
We struggled back and forth and had many conversations.
Yes, yes. Once the drone came alive,
it was gonna smoke the dog right there in front of Jack,
and, ultimately, we figured that killing the dog at the beginning of the movie
might not sit well,
and felt like we could do it with this showdown between Jack...
And also be able to show this notion
that as long as scavengers stay still with their cloaking device,
they are able to remain undetected, which is the purpose of this shot here.
And all so clear. Look at that, we have drone vision.
We're setting up that technology.
Now, the sound design for this is just spectacular.
I remember the first time you showed it to me. It is very cool.
That drone is terrifying and very cool.
I've been wanting to work with Ren Klyce for a long time,
and thankfully, on this job, I finally got the opportunity.
And him and the whole sound team up at Skywalker,
just an incredible team.
We worked really hard on the sound design of this movie.
Did a great job. This is Earl's Peak.
This is actually shot, again, in Iceland. Beautiful Iceland.
We actually went up to the...
We had to helicopter all of our equipment up to get those shots.
And that's certainly one of those days I'll never forget.
We won the war.
The amount of time and layers it takes.
We spent over a year talking about... Look at this. This is...
You can already see her ignoring his reservations about leaving
and simply focusing on the notion of, "Two more weeks, and we're going to Titan."
We just have to find it.
Without a beacon...
No matter how many times Jack brings up this notion
of questioning the decision to leave,
Vika always changes the subject, very subtly and very effortlessly.
And I think that's an example of Andrea's genius,
and part of that idea to really get to the core of what Victoria's all about,
and that is just staying focused on this dream.
And not wanting to... Not being able to...
- See it any other way. - see it any other way.
That's the choice of living in oblivion or seeking the truth.
And they are just little hints, but...
- I had a little crash there, on that. - Yes.
When I did the jump.
And amazingly popped up unhurt,
which I still don't understand how that's possible, if you watch it in slow-motion.
- That's on the specials. - You'll see that.
That was so much fun, riding this motorcycle across this desert.
Yeah, I think we chased you for about 45 minutes.
I guess you'd call it a desert? Or what...
It was called "Dragon's Lake," is what it was called.
Amazing.
I think we chased you for about 45 minutes on that bike, getting some of that footage.
Now all of these moments talking about...
We're dealing with different kinds of technology
and the specificity that you have to have with storytelling
of the equipment.
I just know actors, we're dealing a lot with a lot of different kinds of technology.
That's why I'd spend a lot of time with you, asking you,
and we'll talk about it further.
Just combing through, like,
"Okay, what am I looking at here? What are we doing?''
And just talking every moment out,
so that I am like a kid playing in the backyard.
- But there's a purpose to every motion. - Exactly.
But I also know so that I can create that for you and be present with that.
Love that Bubblebike.
- Thank you for it. I got it for my birthday. - You're welcome.
I can't wait. I really wanna see you in Los Angeles on that.
I know. You will.
And there's the Tet.
Of course, that is how it would look, like a shadow in the sky, in the distance.
The idea of it setting now at the end of the day,
trying to get in the notion of, "12 hours on, 12 hours off"
Again, we see this mysterious being observing Jack
as he drops into this sinkhole.
Requesting backup to his location ASAP.
And what you're seeing here
is the Rose Reading Room of the New York Public Library.
We built it at about 80% actual size.
But I like the idea of it being like a tomb, very well-preserved.
You'll see in the background what we called the "scav-trap."
That's the net that the scavs used to capture the drone in the first place.
There's the book...
- The book is on the table. - that was laid there for Jack.
He spots the drone, or what looks like the drone.
Jack?
Vika's lost contact.
Now the camera that you used...
- The F65? - Yes.
It was darker to the eye than it was when recorded.
This whole set is lit with two lights.
It's lit with one light coming down through the shaft and the ceiling,
and the flashlight. That's all we used to light this set.
And key to making, really, this whole movie work
was that camera, the F65, which is rated at about 800 ASA.
It's a very sensitive camera.
We shot with Master Primes,
which are lenses that are able to pull in a tremendous amount of light.
And not only did it allow us to pull this scene off,
but more importantly, the Sky Tower set only could have been done
using the kind of technology we had available
right before we started shooting.
Look at that.
It's so beautifully lit and shot.
Look at the blacks. They're black, but we're not losing definition.
Source lighting. Yeah, we're only using source lighting.
Which is staggering, because...
And how you lit it, though, it just doesn't fade to black.
- We're not losing... - Shadow detail.
shadow detail.
Now a little, short sequence like this, about 10-15 seconds long,
this is basically a day of shooting, which people don't realize.
- About two days. - Maybe more.
Our first glimpse of scavs in the flesh.
We're just getting quick glimpses. There's one in the background.
We get that first hint
of the style of motion and movement the scavs have adopted
in order to avoid being detected by the drones.
This first one, I smashed my knee hard here.
I'm pretty sure you got knocked out.
I know you won't admit it, but I saw you at least have a gray-out there for a second.
When I jumped across, I actually did the whole thing in one shot,
- and I took a hard hit... - Crushed knee.
and my knee turned into grapefruit.
I remember looking at you and saying, "Okay, let's shoot this quickly."
Yeah, we had to shoot before your knee swelled up, which it eventually did.
It was already swollen. Before the pain got too much.
But what I don't understand is,
the second jump was even further, with the injured knee,
- so I don't know how that worked. - I didn't want to hit it again.
There's another tough one.
- Okay, now Jack's surrounded. - Did that a few times.
Our first hint of the voice-scrambling that the scavs use.
Again, the sound design of this, where you just now see the...
The way the drone scans,
and then it's first warning tone, which we'll hear a lot in this film.
Jack!
And now the destructive power of the drone is finally shown.
I love this next shot. Look at these guys. Right
there!
And then the helmet comes... That's just awesome.
- So, that's an example... - Listen to this sound. Go on, sorry.
I was gonna say, the example of how the scav technology to cloak themselves
works most of the time, obviously.
And once they've been caught red-handed like this and are scrambling away,
there is no escaping the power of the drones.
And here, even, we see Jack's relationship with the drones is a bit tenuous at times,
knowing that he's one microprocessor away from being dusted himself
Vaporized.
Those are real lasers that went across.
Yeah, we used practical lasers, which was key to getting that light effect.
Now here's this book. You just know that...
- It's an important moment here. - Morgan left it.
He knows the curiosity of Jack.
Here's this beautiful book that he saw earlier, he sees again.
That Morgan had left it on the table for him.
Again, here we are back in Iceland.
This shot was done at about 10:45 or 11:00 at night, I think.
So, this is an example of why you go to Iceland in the summer.
The light was basically like this for about three or four hours.
Just like this. It was stunning.
Yeah, this was probably done closer to 11:30, or maybe even midnight, this shot.
I think I went snowmobiling on a glacier after this.
Probably.
Now we're back at the Sky Tower. Look at the lighting.
- Again, that's all in-camera. - All in-camera.
Those clouds that you photographed atop a volcano in Hawaii.
And now another flashback. Another important moment.
This glimpse of another life, another person.
- There's 109. - Drone 109.
The drone that's left there.
- The endless project. - Yeah, the endless project.
The drone that's left there to vaporize them if they're no longer an effective team.
And then they would do a reset.
Yes, they keep asking for shielding for this Drone 109,
and it never seems to show up,
but we realize that that's probably all intentional.
In case. When it doesn't work out.
Now here is the introduction of Horatius.
Yep, I'll be right there.
We see Jack's hiding things from Vika for the first time.
And we see her aware of that, but ignoring it.
That's an important concept here.
And now another important concept, the idea of the flower.
Can it fly?
Barely.
And without armor, she's a sitting duck.
Well, I'll talk to Sally about that shielding in the morning.
This is a very important scene for the first act of this film.
This is the first time we really understand better the dynamic between Jack and Vika,
with the presentation of this flower he found for her on the surface.
Structurally, you've got to create a vacuum for Julia to come into.
It's an emotional vacuum.
And this is where it starts, right here.
Yeah, you see it, and he's questioning at the beginning,
but now we're in with their dynamic,
where it feels like this perfect life at the beginning,
except for him questioning in the voice-over.
But just their actions, and then you just start to see...
There's something wrong here.
- It's a flower, Vika. - Yeah, that's not the point.
It's that we are so close to the end,
and the last thing that we need is you putting it all at risk.
Okay.
Every day, you have to go down there...
And now we see Vika starting to manipulate him a little bit.
Like, the change in tone.
She's apologizing, in a way, for what happened earlier, and Jack's gonna...
Again, he's gonna bring up something that happened this day
that he can't quite figure out.
And her reaction, again, is...
This reaction she gives coming up here really exemplifies her character.
Yeah, both of them. It's really interesting playing it,
and we spent a lot of time talking about it.
They were trying to catch me.
- This look right here, I love it. - Yeah.
He brings up the notion of the scavs trying to capture him,
and she wipes it away like it was never asked.
Just instantly turns the scene into a seduction.
She refuses to engage with Jack on any of the questions he has about this world.
"Two more weeks," she's thinking. This is just a great performance.
She's so talented.
Jack left again, not able to engage with her on these things he wants to talk about.
She doesn't wanna engage, but she's so elegant in...
How she plays it.
And also, utilizing the set.
This is such a beautiful set, a beautiful scene, Joe.
The lighting, and it's...
"How do I keep his mind..."
"Away from these questions, just focused on me, focused on our future."
"Two more weeks."
"And we can get off this place, and he won't be asking these questions anymore."
But Jack is gonna try again here, which I love.
For the third time now,
he's gonna try one more time to get Vika to come down to the surface
to see something else.
And as the film goes on, you just see. Now look at her performance here.
You should come with me sometime, before we leave.
There's a place I found I'd like to show you.
I'll show you something.
- And there she twists his words again. - Yeah.
At this point, he's gotta go along with it.
You just look at the...
This is an example where you're looking at a set. The lighting, the music...
This really
is the seduction of Vika, of the world.
And her dream. Do you know what I mean? This is her dream.
- What she wants. - Pulling him into this world, and here it is.
It's very beautiful, Joe. God.
The persistence of this memory still pounds through with this shot.
Yes, because Jack also is...
- He can't fight this. - He can't fight it.
His memory, it's coming more and more present,
and you start to understand why, at the five-year mark,
these teams start breaking down.
It's because the memories of Julia are so strong, he can't escape it.
No matter how well this world is constructed, how convincing Vika is.
And it's tragic, I think, in the way you talked about,
that Andrea wanted to do.
She's not unlikable in any way.
No, it's like she is on this trajectory and the world is just pounding in on her now.
And with each scene, the stakes...
- The pressure is being turned up on her. - The pressure is being turned up.
It was a six-stage meltdown from inside the hydro rig's core.
It's offline permanently.
Tower 49, you have put the whole operation at risk.
I need to know exactly what happened.
Jack believes the scavs weaponized one of the stolen fuel cells
and got it into the suction.
Tower, hold.
Tower, I've got a rogue signal in Grid 37. Are you seeing this?
Yes.
It's gotta be scav.
It's not one of ours.
Jack, the signal is being directed off-planet.
So, here, we set up the scavengers.
Their plan is going into motion right at this time.
And this is the question of, "Why is this story happening now?''
All these events are leading up to the arrival of Julia.
They're all connected.
109 is combat-ready as soon as we get that shielding.
We can cover the remaining rigs with drones in the field.
I've run the numbers.
We'll do the numbers up here, Tower.
I'm tasking the drones to defensive positions.
Copy.
Our job is to run those rigs. Your directive is to protect them.
Pressure is increasing on Vika.
Mission's coming down hard. We've just lost a hydro rig.
Are you and Jack an effective team?
"Are you an effective team?''
And Vika's answer is instant.
Jack?
You're right on top of it. Do you have a visual?
Jack?
Yeah, I got it.
Now, again, you're playing with this iconography
- of the Empire State Building. - Right.
It is a romantic piece of real estate in cinema.
In fact, I don't know if you remember, but while we were scouting...
You must remember. While we were scouting the Empire State Building,
a couple proposed right in front of you, had you take their picture.
Literally, what we were going to do in the script
happened on that actual location
- while we were scouting it. - Yes, when we went.
- We just looked at each other. - Yeah, it was pretty stunning.
He came over and said, "Would you mind taking our picture?''
Right in front of us. He said, "I want to stand here in front of you."
It was beautiful.
And literally, right on this spot, we saw a proposal take place.
There you see Sixth Avenue just off on the right side.
All the avenues are kind of canyons in the Earth.
I was lucky to visit Petra in Jordan about 10 years ago,
and that was the inspiration for these New York canyons carved into the Earth.
Now we're in Baton Rouge.
So that little switch there, from Iceland to Baton Rouge,
was a tricky one, but I think we pulled it off pretty seamlessly.
Yeah, you can't tell. It's seamless.
I tell you, I love the wardrobe design.
It's incredible.
Marlene Stewart, our costume designer, very talented, did a great job.
Every element is important in a film, in a story.
Things that you don't want to think about when you're watching the film,
but it just feels part of the world.
It doesn't feel emotionally disconnected.
- Which is very hard in science fiction, I think. - Yup.
It's much more easier in a reality-based...
I mean, each one has its own challenges, but this is...
It takes a lot of..
Everything has to be selected. In a movie like this,
everything has to be designed.
- You can't really buy a lot off the shelf - No.
Tech-49, check your course.
And also, again, establishing there's the radiation zone.
And, of course, we know beyond the radiation zone
why the radiation zone is there.
But you have to see Jack's PO V, so you see that it's a construction on the...
- It's a virtual construction on his... - Around the full perimeter.
Just let me know where you are.
Do you copy?
Again, that is Iceland, right there. That's real.
You see him go off-signal once he dives into the canyon.
You start to understand the rules of this world,
that when you dive into certain sections below the surface,
that you can disappear for a little bit.
Yeah, and this piece of real estate coming up,
this is still Iceland.
But Crater Lake is in Mammoth.
Up near June Lake.
Now called Lake Oblivion, I'm told, which is pretty cool.
Is that right? Lake Oblivion?
Putting this in there and talking about when people see the film a second time,
they realize that he was just absolutely... He couldn't help it.
He's absolutely compelled to build this dream that he had
for he and Julia by a lake.
He, himself, is a scavenger.
They called them "scavs," but that's who he...
He's building, and saving, and creating.
Which I think is something that is very human.
It's what we all do. And especially the specificity
of each thing he chooses,
we find out later why he's chosen that.
Whether it's the monkey, or the sunglasses...
- The books. - Or those books.
Tale of Two Cities has an interesting resonant quality to it.
The magazine.
Basketball.
Here he is, creating this world for himself,
and this desire,
and those dreams that he had so many years ago.
- And even this song. - Yes.
We'll find out later that this song, the reason he loves this song
is for a very specific reason.
And I always loved the lyrics, too.
'Cause it seems to be right for his state of mind at this exact point in the film.
Haunting.
I'm gonna miss this place.
It would have been great.
Now, specifically, I had decided not to put any people in these flashbacks.
I liked the idea that they were incomplete.
You see later that, in fact,
the observation deck was crowded with people.
But when Jack remembers it, it's just her.
There's beautiful shooting at this location, by the way.
It was so important to...
A different look for the film.
And an emotion for the audience.
Now here's Julia coming in. You feel a relief when you come into this.
That there's hope for the planet. It's hope.
It's the real first piece of green we've seen in the movie, yet.
Yeah, and right away, we talk about these little moments of Jack's,
like, "What's happening?''
There's something underneath.
There's nothing that's going to stop him from going there.
An object came down in 17.
The Tet's going to do everything it can to keep Jack from going to this thing.
Jack, Mission's almost offline.
'Cause the truth is, the Tet doesn't know what it is either.
Because the entire crew was in delta sleep in those shielded pods,
it was essentially a piece of space junk
until the scavs' signal brought it down to the surface.
Copy.
Jack, Mission wants you to stand down. The drones will handle it.
And, of course, Tet just wants him as far away from anything...
- "Just do your job." - Yup.
"The drones are going to take care of it," is what they say.
- We know what that means. - Yup.
Tower, you have lost enough assets for today.
Keep your tech out of there. Do you copy?
Copy, Command, I'm...
- And Melissa's a great actress. - She is incredible.
Both her and Andrea having to essentially work
90% of the movie in a close-up, in a closed set,
and being able to pull off..
Driving the story and the emotional story of..
With just behaviors. Subtle behaviors.
And if you look at Andrea, she's just in a room.
For a couple of weeks, we shot her stuff in there.
And she had to play the whole movie.
to pull out and return to the tower immediately.
Now what you'll see there is...
Touching down.
Coming up here, I was actually playing the footage
of Jack running through the crash site on the desktop for her
because we had shot it two weeks before.
So, she was actually able to watch the scene play out in real time
because I had an assembly of it,
and that helps her react to what she's seeing.
Now, remember, we talked about this.
This is Jack's pod. So if you watch closely, that's Jack Harper's actual pod.
That's why it's empty and why it's never destroyed later.
But Jack doesn't see it in the moment. That's a good second-time viewing...
Here, he sees our art director, Kevin Ishioka.
He's the Japanese astronaut.
They're human.
This was all shot as one Steadicam shot.
George Billinger, incredible operator,
working through this set, following you around.
We have got survivors.
There are four... Check it, five survivors.
They are human.
So, there you see Andrea reacting to an explosion on the playback.
- He's drawn into... - I like how you edited this,
beautifully edited this stuff Look at... N ow...
We hear the memory tone before we see her, which is what I like about that moment.
Now the drones have arrived.
They're scanning each of those pods, and they start cleaning the place out.
Just beautifully lit, also, Julia in her... The presentation.
I don't have control.
Stand down!
- 166 again. Our friend. - Yeah.
Now for the third time challenging Jack.
Back off, you son of a bitch!
This whole sequence, how many days?
We had about two days to shoot the whole sequence.
Yeah, we shot this sequence in two nights,
and then we shot the return to crash site in one night.
So that was just some intense...
Intense, long days that we had to get.
Again, Andrea's performance there,
reacting, essentially, to the playback on the screen.
Our first glimpse of Sykes.
And Beech, who's been watching Jack now for a couple of..
Two scenes. This is the third time we've seen the scavs watching.
They're basically there for the reactor.
And to see Jack's behavior.
Beech brings that up later,
that once he saw Jack step in front of that drone,
he knew something was special about this guy.
Now you look at...
I love this next shot, as she sees.
These are the moments that you spend a lot of time talking about.
- But that moment, where she knows... - Yup.
- This is her worst fears come true. - She's seeing the pod.
I mean, remember, just the day before
we saw her throw a flower over the edge that Jack brought home.
Now he's bringing home something.
But Julia. You see right away,
and you're looking at
the recognition.
And the first time you see the movie, you think, "She's just terrified."
Now this shot, here. Yup.
- She's looking at her, going... - "I remember her."
"And this is trouble."
Her world, from this moment, starts to slowly fall apart.
Be sure and report that the drones killed the crew from one of our own ships.
See what Command makes of that.
It's breathing fluid. Just let her get it out.
Nonetheless, Vika is still a humanitarian.
She still wants to help her, and that's...
Even though she knows that's Julia.
- This is trouble. - Yes.
Everything that she's been deflecting.
And what is she going to do?
It's always, what does Vika know? What doesn't she know?
Here. You're still dehydrated.
But she's still helping her, and that's what's unique about Vika.
That's why she's such an interesting character.
She's a tragic character, but I never wanted her to be unlikable.
I think Olga's wonderful in this because...
This is such a tough scene.
You're waking up, it's...
What's your name?
I'm Julia.
And she's looking at her husband.
Yet is it a dream?
She's just very disoriented and...
We watched a lot of reference video of people waking up after having surgery.
And it's that kind of half-awake mode
of not quite being able to put everything together.
Now the confusion starts to set in.
What do you mean?
You're the only one that made it.
I'm sorry.
That look you gave her, too, it's so...
- There's no familiarity there. - Yup.
- And it's that hard look that... - It was so much...
We spent a lot of time talking about this scene,
and, I mean, the disorientation starts right in the beginning.
When you wake up, "Is this a dream? Where am I?
"What is this?''
Could you imagine? I always think...
Sixty years.
- It's like a nightmare. - Yes.
And now she's been told she's been asleep for 60 years,
and none of this makes sense.
But, really, I think it's the behavior and the way you look at her,
there's no sense of warmth, there's no sense of familiarity.
I mean, you're clearly... Jack is...
He can't betray his true emotions in front of Vika there.
Now there's mystery.
He recognizes her. He doesn't know how.
But he doesn't give anything away at that moment.
And what I like is Vika's got a plan. It's like, "Let's just let her sleep."
Yeah, and then we'll send her away.
But there's a strength in Julia.
Your ship's re-entry was triggered by a beacon from the surface.
Do you know anything about that?
Olga now, when you have this character, is such a wonderful character.
She's getting her strength back.
Trying that quiet kind of thinking things through.
Well, we have no record of an Odyssey...
I can't tell you anything until I get the flight recorder from my ship.
Julia, a lot has changed in 60 years.
And it's also this dynamic.
You start seeing where that infatuation...
Where did that start?
How do you wake up
and suddenly your husband is with someone else?
They destroyed our moon and with that, half the planet.
Then they invaded.
We won the war.
And now the story he's telling her is completely...
- To her, it's like... - It's insane.
He's speaking...
It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't connect to anything she knows,
and her husband and her teammate are now holding hands.
It is the twilight zone for her.
She's woken up in another reality, and she can't figure it out.
You've lost people.
Everything.
Well, I love Olga's performance in this.
She's so wonderful in this film. There's a quiet strength.
What you see is this, is she going insane?
Is this real? isn't it real?
What I love about the film, Joe, and what you talked about, is each one...
You can watch the film from the point of view of just watching different characters
and thinking about what they're going through.
And it's such a different experience the first time from the second time.
Yes. Look at this shot.
Our job is not to remember.
Remember?
- She doesn't want to remember. - No.
Jack...
That was a scav beacon that brought her down.
And this is a line that, I think, the first time you watch the movie,
it feels very different than the second time.
The first time you are, "Who is Julia? Is she a scav?''
That's the idea we're trying to get across,
and even maybe convincing Jack in that moment.
Okay?
Again, we cut back to Beech watching from below now,
just waiting for Julia and Jack to return to the crash site.
And will they?
I love this shot because here she is in the flight suit,
- and the performance in... - Her glance, right there.
She realizes now it's show time for her.
She's got to do anything she can to convince Jack
to take her to the crash site.
You fly that thing?
Olga just has such a strength, a quiet strength, and resilience,
and humanity,
and there's, "What do I do in this..."
Jack checks in on Vika, who's sleeping.
But he can't help himself
He has to approach her and find out more.
They'll send someone down for you.
Just through finding those moments of composition and staging,
where the introduction of her standing there in the flight suit...
With the Bubbleship in the background.
is telling the story. You're now with what she's thinking about,
right from the opening frame until here.
You need to know what happened.
But she knows Jack's curious.
And because she knows him so well, she knows how to...
- She's testing him. - manipulate him
in this moment to get what she needs from him as well.
She's testing. "Where are we?'' There's the Tet.
She knows the last thing they were supposed to go see was this object.
- She's putting... - "What has happened?
"How do I hold this together?''
"And how do I get the piece of.. How can I unlock my husband?''
And the flight recorder is the key to that.
And she knows that if she can get the flight recorder,
she can play back the tapes,
find out what happened and show him who he really is.
and secure the flight recorder.
Now, you would want the same thing.
Jack, I...
I think she's just... Her careful treading lightly.
It's a very delicate scene. She did an incredible job.
And being very intelligent about it,
knowing that Vika is not...
- She's the only one who can foil the plan. - Yup.
And also, "Is it there? ls the flight recorder..."
- She needs it. - "What has happened?
"Where am I?'' I think she's still feeling that...
Are there any crew left?
And now she finds out, of course, there aren't.
Also, I like the fact that the technology, even as hi-tech as it is,
you just look... The Tet does go down.
The Tet is in a unique orbit,
and it's also taking care of different zones.
- So Sally, there's times... - She's hitting zones all around the world.
And the Tet's offline.
It's now, you have the Tet is offline during this time period.
And there's fractured images.
- It's not a perfect system. - It's not a perfect system.
Jack. Jack!
Jack, can you hear me?
This is where Jack first discovers the idea
that maybe the scavs have already been there,
or came for something else.
It's the first shot of the reactor, which has been stripped.
Right here.
Now he knows they've already gone through the wreckage
and they're probably in the vicinity.
That's just a great suspense moment there, the way you played that.
- Thank you. - It's just those little behaviors that...
- She knows at this point this is... - This is it.
This is the key to getting him back.
- It's time to go. - Jack.
I found it.
There's a softness there that we haven't seen in her yet.
The way she looks at him for the first time, she treats him like...
- Hope. - Yes.
Hope.
Jack!
Again, I just love the cinema of this.
Sykes, now we see him again.
This is one of my favorite shots of Vika coming up here.
Just her performance here.
I love this whole sequence, how you shot it.
I think it's amazing.
Amazing, Joe. Really amazing.
This is, I think, a lava tube in Iceland.
Some of these canyons carved out by...
I just think it's haunting.
And now we see Raven Rock for the first time.
Again, this film is about
humans being able to think.
The Ingenuity, their survival.
And I love how Vika covers for Jack here, despite...
Yes, I know.
He's gone off the reservation a little bit,
and she's trying to save them.
She lies for the first time.
- And I love Melissa Leo's performance here. - Yes, the pause.
- She's fantastic. Yeah. - There, with the eyebrows. Yeah.
"Oh, really?''
We find out later that Sally can obviously detect any sort of lie,
and now Sally knows Vika's lying, but she doesn't know quite why yet.
And what's happening.
But she's going to play along with this, too.
Copy 49, tasking 185 to Grid 22.
You know, I love how Sally, how the Tet absorbs Sally
as a point of communication.
You just know that through time, they've tested it.
When we were working on the script the first time,
it was just Morgan Freeman.
He was who we always talked about would be the dream casting.
I mean, dream.
Obviously, getting him was so key.
And this scene.
"And how can a man die better Than facing fearful odds"
He recites the lines from the book that Jack just read the day before.
And that reaction you gave is just so spot-on.
A lot of talk about this cigar.
Had to go all the way up to Ronnie to get it.
Yup. Thank you, Ron.
But you look at Morgan, here's this tremendous actor.
So gifted, such a level of humanity.
And his voice coming through this set, which was the most challenging set.
I went from the most beautiful set of the Sky Tower
to the most challenging set I've ever shot in.
The most dangerous set.
But this confrontation...
I think the film is so beautifully edited.
Again, you don't have many lines here, but it's all about the behavior.
It's about Jack thinking, trying to piece together what's happening.
"There shouldn't be any humans on the ground,
"and now I'm talking to someone."
But we don't know if he's good or bad yet, at this point.
"Don't ask too many questions."
Not part of the job description.
Lights.
Constantly, this scene is, and the way Morgan played it,
you later realize that this is calculated.
He is taking a risk, but he knows what he has to do to save humanity.
He's trying to figure out...
And this, probably, is not the first technician they've taken in.
Exactly.
Maybe they've done it dozens of times, and every time it hasn't worked.
We're human.
But this hunch that he has here, with him, from watching,
having gone through the war to the repair man,
calculated...
Can you hear me, Jack?
Keeps your drones confused.
Well, most of the time.
The drones are programmed...
To kill humans, Jack.
You saw what they did to those sleep pods.
You almost got yourself blown to bits protecting that woman.
It's also a question of, "How much do we give away?''
Do you feel...
How much is he going to tell Jack? He can't tell him everything yet.
He's riding a razor's edge.
Interesting.
We're wasting our time.
The drone will track him here.
That's Sergeant Sykes.
He thinks I'm a fool for having brought you here.
We got two very different philosophies here between Sykes and Beech
- on how to deal with these guys. - Yeah, and you're kind of going,
"Where is the audience going to be at this point?''
When the humans arrive, the other humans,
- how many immediately... - Can we trust them?
You have to
feel the threat, but it's also...
It's got to make sense for the character, where he's just evaluating coolly.
Morgan is evaluating.
It's Jack.
Vika, are you okay?
Everything good between you two?
Of course.
You're still an effective team?
We're great.
That's the third time I think
- she's asked that in the movie. - Yes.
We were running a ground game, and losing.
So, we decided, "What the hell? We've got to throw the long ball."
Beech using football references with Jack, having seen him at the stadium.
Why?
And here's where we reveal what the scavs really were going for,
which was the compact reactor.
Very hard to come by.
Did you like the show last night?
That was just one fuel cell.
Imagine what 10 of them will do,
with a core of weapons-grade plutonium.
We have a nuke, and we have a drone to carry it.
This is all shot in New Orleans at an old power plant.
Concrete was falling on our head.
It would rain for days after it stopped raining.
I never had a set that rained on the indoors before.
On the inside. We had to shut down the generators.
program the drone.
Have it carry our nuke up to the Tet.
Now you realize this is something that Morgan has staged.
When you see the film again,
you'll start to see, he's throwing this stuff at him.
I'm going to lay it up. You're going to see where we are.
He's testing him.
There are people up there.
He's not surprised by Jack's resistance, though,
because they've all shown the same resistance.
They've all reacted the same way.
So sometimes you've got to use the stick, which Sykes tries here.
Yeah, another wonderful actor. This guy's terrific.
- Nikolaj is incredible. - Yeah, Nikolaj.
An amazing presence, also.
- Now, look. - Beech is observing.
- It's all about observing and... - Testing.
"Do I go? Do we kill him? Or do we keep going?
"Do I eliminate him at this point, and wait for another Jack?''
"What's going to be the best way?''
So now they go to plan B.
Bring out the girl.
Hey. Hey!
It's just upping, upping it a little bit.
He's observing again.
And now this reaction here is something new.
No.
That.
- Let's go! - Get him up.
- Beech has seen... - He's watching Jack.
He knows. They're not going to ever hurt Julia.
But the first time the audience is watching it, you think this guy is just...
- They're terrorists. - Yes.
But now Beech has seen something between Jack and Julia that is...
Structurally, it's playing with how... When do we...
With the structure of the piece, how it's unfolding the information
and changing the emotional dynamic for the audience.
So that the emotion is being carried,
the shift from Vika to Julia.
Now I got to say, I just think it's really cool how that guy got wasted.
Do you know what I mean? He's just dusted!
- The true point of that scene is to show... - It's just very cool.
how the scavs take down drones.
But whenever they take down one drone, they lose two guys.
- And that, by definition, is a war of attrition. - They lose people.
And that's why we are never going to win this
because every drone we take down, we lose at least two.
And this is a war that will never...
We will not win unless we can find a chink...
- This is it. Gotta throw the long ball. - Yup.
Hail Mary.
It's your only chance.
I've always wanted to work with Morgan.
I'm very, very grateful to have had that opportunity.
- He just has tremendous power. - Yup.
I've been to your
"radiation zones."
"Radiation zone'' is in quotes there.
That's where you'll find it.
It just shows that he knows this guy is seeking the truth.
There are elements to it.
It's going to work if Jack sees the truth for himself
No matter what he would tell him at this moment,
he needs to let Jack go and discover it himself
all our lives. Everything.
What makes you think he's different?
I think at this point, where you see Beech has...
This is where we talk about
the complexity and the simplicity of performance, of structure.
Of the confidence and the wisdom to do the unexpected.
You see why he's the leader, you see the environment,
you're seeing how long this guy has fought and how close they are now.
Mission, I've found my tech over in 37.
You can call off the search.
Copy that, Tower. Glad Jack's safe.
Tasking the other drones back to rig support.
Again, there's little things.
The cut on the nose.
Even that close-up when Beech is first introduced,
that close-up of the cut on the nose, establishing that.
Because, of course, you know later on in the story, we're gonna have Jack on Jack,
so there's just points
where you're just trying to give the audience that visual reference and storytelling.
Things you don't think about.
What aren't you telling me?
Now, this was shot in Iceland.
It was about 32 degrees. Poor Olga.
- She's wonderful in this scene. - She is incredible.
It was a research flight to Titan. My first.
I'm always thinking...
It's like, "What does she say? What can she say?
"Here we are. Here's this. This is happening.
"How do you communicate all of this?
"How do I reach him?
"He doesn't remember this. How do I get to him?''
But rather than just tell him, she goes for the memory,
she goes for the personal experience of walking him through that day
to try to jog something.
That object
was the Tet, Jack.
The Tet was our mission.
That's impossible.
That's impossible!
Who are you?
I'm your wife.
I don't know what happened, but you're not who you think you are.
Now we shot this scene about a week after we shot the flashbacks in New York City,
so we had that surreal experience of
standing in the middle of Manhattan, shooting the flashback scenes,
and then literally a week later, standing in the middle of Iceland on the same set.
- So, you guys were able to just play off that. - It was very helpful.
It was right here, Jack.
The amount of times that these scenes are written and rewritten for an audience.
We must have gone through this script, I don't know, a thousand times.
- Probably. - Going through, trying different variations.
"And I'll show you the future."
And I held up a ring.
How does Julia get this... How does she reach Jack? How do we...
Of course, when you think about it,
Vika knows the relationship between Jack and Julia.
Even on the Odyssey. And yet, she can't help herself
And it's all, at this point, slipping out of her fingertips.
There you are.
I have to say, I love the editing and the structure of this,
where you're taking your time with the audience,
and you're now bringing them back to that day that was...
- Hi. - Hello.
Right before they...
- Take off on their... - When you see it's...
They're probably on leave, we talked about.
You know what I mean? Right before they're going to go, in the final stages.
You see all the glimpses that he remembers. Now you see it's filled with people.
You see the monkey.
Why is it he picked up the monkey at the Empire State Building earlier?
It's because it was there that day.
All of these things.
Now you see this moment.
And she knows it's over.
She always knew, but now...
Any hint, any inkling she had, you can't deny it anymore.
She's lost him.
Vika, I'm coming in.
Do not report to Mission...
Just the choice of your staging, I think, is wonderful, Joe, and the composition here.
You look at this.
Here's the impossible shot that I love.
Jack's actually going into Jack's POV for that moment when he approaches Vika.
I don't want to hear it.
Again, "I don't want to hear it."
and we need to leave, now.
It was always her.
Now she admits she knew.
Wasn't it?
Vika...
She's my wife.
Jack has to be truthful with her at that moment, which I like.
Rather than trying to talk his way out of it, he just presents her with the truth.
I know. We spent a lot of time talking about that. He's just got to lay it out,
and she just doesn't ever want to know about it. Ever.
Well, that's the difference between the two of them.
Mission, this is Tower 49.
Go ahead, 49.
No.
I'm having a problem with my technician.
No, you don't know what you're doing.
He found a survivor at the crash site.
You've gotta listen to me.
She's impeding his abilities,
and he is unfit for service.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry to hear that, Vika.
Are you still an effective team?
Vika...
Open the goddamn door, Vika!
No.
We are not an effective team.
So, the magic words have been spoken, the Sky Tower's unlocked,
- and Drone 109 is finally put into service. - Drone 109 is booted up.
There we go.
I'm sure Sally's been through this a few times.
We discover why 109 has been there the whole time.
I love the dynamic of..
It's important, I think...
We spent a lot of time on what was important to you, Joe,
and what we talked about, is that Jack...
It's the humanity.
Even in the face of that. Whatever. It's just he...
- He tries to save Vika here. - He's trying to save...
He's doing everything he can.
He's not in love with her. He's trying to help her.
- And no matter what... - He can't.
No.
She can't be saved, and that's the tragedy in this.
And he will try again, as we see later in the movie.
I don't want to know!
That sums it up really for Vika. She doesn't want to know,
and you can't help someone who doesn't want to know.
Jack...
We had to capture this in-camera to get this scene to work,
so that drone coming through the curtains, that's a real drone.
There it is. Drone vision.
- Now you know it's "Terminate the Jacks." - Yup.
Terminate both of them and let's start fresh.
Hi, Jack. I don't believe we've had the pleasure.
What have you done?
Again, it's the little moments. I think Melissa's fantastic in this.
But also little moments that add up to a character with Olga.
Just the action of being able to figure that out,
the emotion of her saving Jack at that particular moment, those things.
Jack, we want to bring you in.
I've been authorized to tell you we're going to assign you...
We're starting to see more glitching,
we're starting to see Sally's having to think on the fly here
and put together a change of plans.
And we're starting to see a breakdown in her...
- Programming. - humanity. Yes.
But the thing is, is that we've only...
And then you start to question how much is Vika...
Where she was dealing with Sally.
So her level of oblivion, her level of denial that went on becomes...
It's like the dynamic shift to the story, where you're seeing Sally in a way that...
It's Jack's first interaction with her directly, and maybe it's his PO V...
And you see Vika has been seeing that.
I really love this moment.
I'm sorry.
That even Julia...
- There's a little understanding there. - Yes.
Hang on.
Jack realizing, using something we saw at the beginning of the film,
the only way to potentially buy some time...
Now, again, there's just a lot of time that was spent on
the physicality inside that Bubbleship.
This is something, of course, we shot with...
This is CGI and green screen, so there was a big rig built.
And there was a lot of time talking with you, Joe, to know,
"Where are we? What's happening?''
Because, of course, we have different light changes.
But the thing that sells the technology, that sells it, is the performance.
And it's the actor that's making the world emotionally...
- Yep, a shot like that. - Yes.
You only can get that by actually rotating you guys 360 or 720 degrees.
Yeah, but, also, look at our heads.
You would talk, "Okay, now moving to the left, moving to the right."
Looking at footage. I mean, I'm a pilot.
You love this kind of stuff
And finding, when we're acting the g-forces,
that Olga and I are in sync and doing it together.
So, it's really spending that time and carefully going through it,
and then discovering what physicality is going to communicate that to an audience.
And that kind of detail I like to see in a movie.
And you do also.
And how do we make it as visceral for an audience?
Yeah. Well, this sequence was a year in the making.
Even looking at a movement like this, the head. Little head movements.
- A year in the making, yeah, from... - The design of the storyboards to shooting.
Probably shot on this set for over a week just to do this short sequence
because of each of these little moments,
like that, the seatbelts flipping upside down, the impacts.
And finding, "How do we create that movement?''
Just for that little seatbelt moving, Olga and I, our heads going a particular way.
Eye-lines, composition.
And each moment, we'd talk about just giving you variations,
so that you had plenty of stuff to edit in the editing room.
Little moments like this.
Where to punch in, where to push through.
Where to look as the camera's coming in for the most dynamic...
Yeah, every little moment, we'd talk about. "Where do you want my head?
- "How do we emotionally..." - Right.
- Impacts. - Yup.
And then we see the virtual display on the back of the Bubbleship
- that allows you to fly backwards. - That's cool stuff, Joe, jeez.
That's just so cool!
Those kind of hits, how many of those did we do?
Man, do I love your action.
It is very unique.
- Are you okay? - No.
- That is not acting there. - No.
- With Olga, after. - "Are you okay?''
That was really me asking her, "Are you okay?''
I'm in the middle of..
The thing was doing it, like...
Because I'm going, "Are you okay?''
'Cause that thing is moving up in a particular way.
It was. She described it as a washing machine.
It was pretty intense.
Another impact. Doors blown off
They've been pushed through the radiation zone.
- Are we gonna die? - No!
Yeah, there's just a lot of detail and a lot of thought
in just the direction of the wind, where's the hair, the impact.
Just finding that behavior that's going to tell the story.
There's another great upside-down shot.
Of course, now we're in the radiation zone, and now we discover...
I love watching an audience when they see this for the first time.
Yeah, this is probably the most fun to watch with an audience.
Son of a bitch.
Again, the details of making sure that that scar...
- These things are thought out. - Sometimes shot out of sequence.
But really thought out because that scar on the nose
becomes very important geography for the audience.
Yup.
I ran up that whole thing without stopping. I was very proud of myself
That suit was very hot in this very hot day.
And humid.
Yeah, these scenes were shot in Louisiana with extensions done in Iceland.
And now, the first reveal of another Bubbleship.
At this point, people start...
This is where you see people starting to put the story together very quickly.
That's me getting out of the Bubbleship.
Shooting both sides of this scene.
Little story details, of course, through the action.
That's cracked.
So I very purposely shot this to be reminiscent of the scene in the stadium.
It's the same behavior.
Repairing the eye, same...
It's the same job.
But again, you're looking at the composition, the editing,
bringing the audience into a piece of geography,
letting them see it. And now, here we are, two.
Hey!
And here's what I love about this,
is just the difference in performance between the two Jacks.
Obviously, a level of surprise on both sides, but different.
You've got one, who's 49, who's not prepared,
but has had the clues laid before him, and his reaction,
versus Jack 52, who's completely caught by surprise by this moment,
- and the difference in those two. - He's a younger version.
- "Twitchy'' is what we said. - Yeah, twitchy and early in the tour.
And also, you see that each...
They're the same, but they have slightly different personalities.
We have to shut that drone down.
The handkerchief,
the slightly different shading on the suit, the slightly different color scheme.
And there was a lot of talk,
"How do we set this up, but keep the pressure on
"with that drone coming back to life?''
- There, you see, he's just... - He has the same memories that Jack does.
And that's key.
And, obviously, all of this is setting up the end of the movie.
That's what you're always working towards in those little flashbacks.
Yeah, now that's Jack 52, and he sees Julia.
Gosh, I almost wish we could go back, because that's such a...
Such an important moment.
He has the same exact flashback that Jack 49 had at the beginning of the movie, so...
And she...
- And she... - Stimulates that.
Stimulates it for 52 now.
He will now, for the rest of this film, will search for her until he finds her.
- Knowing... - She's out there somewhere, if she's alive.
And now 166 again coming alive.
Well, he knows that she's alive because he finds the humans and they tell her.
Right, at the very end.
Yeah, he knows she's alive. We'll get to that later, but he knows.
But, of course, what's important in this sequence also,
it's having a suspense underneath this sequence
with the drone putting pressure on the two of them.
It's not just a fight.
They don't have time to talk about everything.
He doesn't have time. He's got to shut the drone down.
And, of course, adding complication on complication, now Julia getting shot.
Don't.
Don't touch me.
These moments seem very simple.
But, again, what I love in what you've done and how it's edited
is how, just through looks, you're getting his thought process.
He's looking at the Bubbleship.
- He's looking at where he's going to put her. - The cave.
It's, "How can we be economical with storytelling?''
Yet you're going through a thought process of Jack.
That's where you're talking about a subjective reality of the character.
And behavior, because he's not able to have conversation.
It's not like a normal movie, where you can explain it through dialogue.
This is all behavior.
It's through looks, it's through PO Vs, it's the head turn, it's seeing the other Jack.
And you have to find these moments, and be very specific about it.
It's the thought process of a character.
Here, putting his plan together by staring at the other Jack,
which, by the way, you did play that part in that shot.
We bring back the Tech-52, so we understand that the Bubbleship thinks it's him.
And now we're in a totally different landscape.
Instead of the black sand of Tech-49, we're in the golden hills of Tech-52.
And, of course, we reveal another Sky Tower in a different location.
Building the suspense by looking at the control tower,
and Vika is nowhere to be seen, if there is one.
- Control station's empty. - Again, there's 52.
Different color design.
Of course, we know this piece of geography very well from the rest of the movie,
but there's just...
- Everything's slightly different. - Slightly different.
The positioning of the photo that comes up.
Instead of being on the locker, they've chosen to put it out in the living room.
So we know she's there.
He's come for the healant.
Hey.
There you are.
And Andrea's performance here of playing...
Again, when you talked about an earlier version of the character,
this is a more innocent Vika, I guess I would say, earlier in the tour.
False alarm.
But she did a beautiful job of just playing it slightly differently.
You come all the way home, and I don't get a kiss?
You know, the amount of conversations in playing these...
What's going on up there?
I was thinking...
Again, Jack tries to save Vika.
Now, again, just...
Has to be careful because he knows that she will say...
She will turn on him if she has to,
but he still has to try. He still has to try to bring her down.
Even though it's not even his Vika, he still tries to save her.
But the conversation is the same one we saw earlier.
It's like the one with the flower.
Victoria can't be saved, no matter how hard he tries.
And he understands that now.
Can we not do this again? I'm done talking about it.
Okay.
It was so much fun playing this scene, and the structure,
and the conversations that we had about story and character.
At this moment, look at her. She just knows it's...
No matter what he does, she is never...
- Never going with him. - Never.
She will never leave that Sky Tower.
You know the end, what happens.
And it's one of those scenes you can only have in science fiction, really,
which is why I love the genre. Because we are telling the same stories,
but science fiction allows us to put it in a different context.
- Yes. And there's Jack. - Jack's handkerchief there.
Jack 52's gone. He probably got up and just...
- Ran off - Ran screaming.
This is gonna hurt.
The language is sci-fi now. We know...
You'd have to design it differently even 10 years ago, the healant.
Now audiences know, "Oh, okay!"
They're facile with the genre.
No, we had a scene, you shall see, in the deleted scenes
establishing the healant bond.
We did a showing taking that scene out, and the audience got it.
100% of them got it right away. I was surprised, actually.
I thought for sure we'd have to establish something like that.
But, like you said, so savvy now.
They can pick up on those tropes very quickly.
And it's always finding, "Where is the audience?''
Now, Olga, I think, is just...
Why we cast her, she's...
The behavior here, this was her idea to smell the cap.
Yeah, and she just has a humanity. I think she's...
This character to me is also not only romantic but somewhat tragic.
It's the decisions that people make.
Here, she was so in love with her husband
that she's willing and she...
Not willing. She wills it to be him.
She sees here, in his collection of stuff,
all the things that her Jack would have collected.
And it's the moment that really...
There's still a leap for her to make, like you said,
to make the choice to accept 49 as her husband.
- She's willing it to happen. - But all the elements are...
It's like she's stepped into the lake house that her Jack always talked about
and that's what she's gonna tell him here.
God, is it beautiful shooting up there. I loved it.
The whole crew, we finished the film here.
Our last week of shooting.
We played with probably 30 or 40 different songs for this scene,
and ended up with Whiter Shade of Pale.
It had to be a song that people were familiar with,
but it couldn't distract from the scene, which was so important.
'Cause what Jack and Julia say to each other here
really sets up the whole idea of the movie and the last scene, and it's so important.
So, it was hard finding the right song,
but, ultimately, A Whiter Shade of Pale seemed to fit the bill.
We would grow old and fat together.
And we would fight.
Maybe drink too much.
Real romantic.
And Olga, every time you cut to her...
There's just some people...
You just look at her. She just holds the screen. It's just...
- It's incredible. - Yes.
Extraordinary presence.
And the world would forget about us.
But we would always have each other.
I remember.
Those memories are yours, Jack.
There's a loneliness and a yearning that Olga brings to this character.
They are you.
That's a beautiful shot, Joe.
Again, the staging, I love that. It has...
Just staying with Jack in that moment felt like the right way to go, ultimately.
And the character has to give it to him at that point,
Julia and Jack, that he's...
Again, I think this is about humanity.
This is the yearning, the...
And he has to be accepted because he, at that point, is in a moment of crisis.
You know, self-identity. He doesn't even know if he is him.
- She has to pull him in towards... - Pull him.
I always thought it was very...
She's a tragic character.
She's lost her husband.
She's willing this to happen.
I have to go.
Those people need my help.
It's such a big concept to grasp and pretty controversial to present to the audience.
Again, it's something you can only do in science fiction.
I know.
That's why I love this genre 'cause we can really ask big questions like this.
"What is it that makes us who we are?
"Is it the flesh on our bones, or is it something more than that?''
- And I think... - Is it the decisions we make?
- The memories we share. That's what we're... - The memories we share.
That's the questions we're posing in the movie, and I thought we're...
I like movies that ask big questions like that.
Even if you don't answer it, at least to pose it and have people talk about it afterward.
You know, Morgan...
I love characters, how they come in and out of scenes, and...
You had me worried for a second.
And I like the staging of this.
Well, I had to prove him wrong.
And Sykes. It's just fun movie stuff
You look like shit.
Yeah, I look like shit.
You should see the other guy.
If I had told you what you'd find out there,
you would have thought I was crazy.
I still do.
Malcolm Beech.
Julia Harper.
I like that, Morgan's reaction. This is now...
And, of course, structurally now we're just ratcheting up the tension.
Sally's coming online. She's reviewing all the logs.
She's now figuring out where Jack probably is.
Mission, 185 just went off-grid.
Again, the score, I think, is wonderful, Joe.
I think what you guys did here, the score, the mix,
obviously, the beauty of the sets and creating the world.
Yeah, this was Anthony's first score working with Joe Trapanese,
who I worked with on TRON: Legacy.
Together, they really just, I think, did an incredible job.
This is such a tough movie to score. There's so many different elements to it.
When the music can be in the front, when it needs to take a back seat,
creating memorable themes. Like this one, here.
Now, for the first time, we're establishing the hero's theme,
that we'll hear again at the end of the movie, at the ultimate moment,
we establish here with this story of Jack Harper.
Jack hearing, basically, for the first time, the whole story of the invasion.
- And Julia. - Yeah.
Astronaut Jack Harper.
Thousands of you.
Memory wiped.
That is why you have Morgan Freeman, also.
Here's someone who's carrying the whole story
and yet, he's making it emotional.
I just have to say, Joe, the design, the performances,
it was so much fun making the movie.
Being there, doing this scene, listening to him tell this story.
You want to get the performances to a simplicity, but it just takes
a lot of time going through layers of performance.
Finding the staging, finding the behavior.
Look at the lighting, too, it's all supporting the story.
The thing that you're coming from, it's astonishing to me
this is your second film. It's only your second movie.
It really is something that...
It is a great accomplishment.
I saw you set down.
Another drone to fix.
What number is this for you? Have you counted?
God, I have no idea.
- I don't know, I think I've made over 30 films. - That's amazing.
Well, for me just to be able to have one in your collection is...
It's a little surreal.
And then to see you and Morgan together in this scene,
I remember, to watch the two of you working together
was pretty incredible. It's one of those days on set,
watching you guys, it was like... I think the whole crew was in awe.
- Really? That's cool. - Yeah.
What I really liked was just the mutual respect you guys had for each other.
Really, you could tell that both of you had so much admiration for each other's careers.
I didn't want to leave set, I just wanted to talk to him.
Hearing about his life, he's an actor I've always admired.
And any moment in between, you know me, I like to be on the set.
- I don't hang out in the trailer. - No.
And to just be there and experiencing...
Hearing his stories about the directors... Seeing you guys trade stories
about your different experiences
- and people you've worked with. - And life.
That is one pissed-off weapon.
No, it's just a machine.
I'm the weapon.
When you look at that composition of the four of us,
with Morgan and Olga and Nikolaj right there.
To me, that's cinema. You're seeing that... Here I'm not talking about myself,
because I have a different...
It's the coming together of these...
Yeah, and it's a quiet, heroic moment.
For me, I can look at Olga and Morgan and Nikolaj...
You were just saying, they hold the screen.
- It's just, that's what... - That's what cinema is. It's about...
- You're telling a story visually. - It's aesthetics.
I don't know any other way to do it. Other than to make sure that,
the way I see it, every shot is an opportunity to tell your story.
And you need to use every opportunity, every single shot.
Where you are compelling the story and there's also,
there's an emotion that you're creating with the film.
There's a harmonic and a tone that you don't vary from.
And when I look at films, I'm always like, "What is the tone?''
And being consistent with your motif
Yeah, there's a language you set up in the first opening minutes of the film
that you want to keep consistent or, if you're gonna change it,
you wanna change it for a reason. There's a reason why
we only went handheld for the Raven Rock battle
and the Jack versus Jack fight.
Because I feel like if you go handheld, it really means something.
I like that shot.
Also, the consistency of lens choice.
- Shit! - Spread out!
Now, Joe, I love how you shot all of this action.
There are so many different elements of storytelling, geography, the drones.
Like this shot coming up here.
I'm about to get hit by a drone shortly.
You had taken an impact.
- Yeah, over this. - It was a big one. Here it comes.
We kept playing it back in slow-motion.
Yeah, right here, your neck goes about 90 degrees there.
We'd play it back in slow-motion.
If you freeze it in slow-motion, you'll see his neck is bent completely sideways,
and I'm not exactly sure how you got up from that so quickly.
Similar to the motorcycle flip.
- A good warm-up, again. - Very flexible.
I like how the drone's moving through these spaces.
This is just a great shot.
Well, Digital Domain did this shot. This required building the entire set digitally
so they could fly through it.
I like how you have the drone banging into things.
You'd say it's a knife fight in a phone booth?
Right.
The physicality and I'm really trying to sell the idea that these drones are real.
I like how you have the smoke, the guy just got smoked.
It's so cool.
Again, the tone where the guy's being wasted,
but, again, the tone of it is so wonderful.
You gotta understand, too, how these drones are able to dominate.
It's horrible, but it's not punishing the audience for this experience.
You did it in such a manner that the audience is enjoying the action,
is enjoying the story.
Again, these sequences, there's so many different levels.
- You have Julia, here. - Helping this kid out.
And then her courage. She's human, she's panicked.
And there's the gun, and there she is. And she's
not all of a sudden...
She's standing up against this thing, but you can see that it's just impenetrable.
It can't be beaten.
I love this.
I love this next shot, Joe. Oh, my God, it's so cool.
Man.
And, again, the reveal of Nikolaj.
What did you say? Probably the hardest set you've ever shot on in your career.
Hardest. I mean, it was raining inside this set.
We had a very tight schedule to shoot this sequence.
It's astonishing what you were able to capture within a limited amount of time.
It's such a stunning space. You could never build a set
that looks like this place. The patina, the aging of this structure
just gives you so much visually.
But it was brutal to be able to light, to move the crew.
It was the most dangerous set I've ever been on.
Structurally, there were areas you couldn't go to.
Like you said, pieces of the ceiling were falling on some of these pyro shots.
It's amazing no one was injured in shooting this.
With the explosions, we were worried that the structure was gonna come down.
The engineers checked it daily and said we were safe to do that.
But, again, when you look at that sequence and when you see
the amount of days that you were able to get this level of sequence in the movie,
is astonishing.
Yeah, I think we shot everything in Raven Rock,
which includes all the dramatic scenes, all the action scenes,
including getting rained out for a day, I think we were out of there in 11 days.
- So that was intense. - It's astonishing, okay?
I looked at it. It was very ambitious.
I like that pressure, though. I always remember hearing that
Raiders was shot in 75 days, and to me that always felt like...
I like that challenge. It keeps you guys sharp.
- The whole crew knew that... - And they were...
But you've gotta have the crew. We had a great crew.
Everyone knew. Everyone had to show up every day
and really be prepared. When you're on a set, you can't wait 15 minutes for things.
And everyone was ready. Special effects, stunts,
props, wardrobe. Everyone was there. There was no waste.
The amount of props on this movie, too, I wanna thank Doug Harlocker.
Oh, yeah, no question, Doug is actually back there in that...
Yeah, he plays the bomb technician in the movie.
I like that you cast him in that. He's holding his own props.
Yes, exactly. He was the one who knew how to make it work,
- so I figured... - Put Doug in there.
He's holding the weapon and he's pulling it out.
But I think we probably had maybe two drones,
and we had to dress them and re-dress them on all those different sets.
The set work on this scene I was really proud of
All those artifacts from everywhere to set up the archives.
This shot I love, Joe. I have to say, I love Olga's work in this.
It's, again, very subtle.
And her reading here is sensational.
It's her dream. To me, it was always a contrast to Vika.
Vika's dream was to go to Titan,
and all Julia's character wants
- is to go back to... - Humanity with Jack.
Yeah, her home, a simple life.
Which is what he's ultimately gonna give her.
Again, I love Olga's performances here.
I don't know, it's just spot-on. It's understated and elegant and...
Romantic but tragic.
Yeah, and look at that shot. Your compositions
and storytelling, look at how the camera's coming up.
Coming up and wrapping around on that jib arm.
You've got the beautiful halo lighting. Look at that lighting
and the shot and her performance, when just everything is coming together.
I love this moment that she gives.
She was so strong up until that point, and then there's just that...
Dream of us.
And, "Dream of us," of course.
And then you see, back in the Odyssey, the callback.
Jack...
Again, look at this shot, the lighting is just... Man.
She did a great job, and this is probably one of my favorite moments in the score.
This cut, here, to you dragging that thing out.
I have to say, I thought you did an incredible job.
The whole time, I was like, "Man, he really looks like he's struggling with that thing."
It's like, "That's great acting, but how heavy can it be?''
And after making you drag it a dozen times in this shot, and then I went
and I realized I couldn't even lift the thing up myself
That thing must have been 220 pounds.
I didn't realize that until after you had dragged it around most of the set.
I didn't want to say anything.
I was able to do it, I was just sweating.
You never complained. I was surprised.
So here, we answer
the question of, "Why did Jack listen to that particular song
"at Crater Lake?'' We hear.
Ramble On was the NASA wake-up call in 2017 for the Odyssey.
Of course, and the musical transition from the score to that piece of music,
I love this transition, Joe.
And also the transition into the past with the match.
It's just beautiful storytelling.
This is Commander Jack Harper.
Thank you for that fantastic wake-up call.
Pre-rendezvous checks complete.
Electrical guidance and nav systems, all good.
Range behind object...
Now here we are at the Odyssey.
I've had a number of people tell me that this Odyssey sequence
is one of their favorites in the movie, which surprised me a little bit.
Because you'd think with all the other stuff in this movie,
I think for some reason this sequence really grounds the movie, in a way.
Because, by putting a sequence in our time, it really makes the movie feel more solid.
It's also everything in the story is now put together for them.
It's those payoffs. It's all those questions.
It's everything, and that's the nature of the structure,
where everything is resolved at this point, and then you hold that tension
until Jack has entered the Tet. So, you're seeing everything.
And I think it's beautifully shot and edited where...
Right to the pieces.
And now we know that the rest are in delta sleep.
- There's Victoria. - Julia in the background.
There's Julia in the background. They're in delta.
Yeah, the loop is closed here. Now we start to understand.
No spoilers about last night's game.
There's the football game that he missed
that he talked about at the beginning of the film.
- Good morning, Vika. - Good morning, Sally.
It was great that you had that played back for me
while I'm doing it, so I'm hearing Vika's voice for the first time.
Now here's the photo that the Tet took.
And the photo, so three things tied...
That the Tet absorbed.
So all these things are coming at the audience.
And the score is, I think, really beautiful here.
- Yeah, the way it transitions here. - And look at this.
That shot is wonderful.
Tech-49, I have you on approach.
And this is the first time you hear Sally's voice.
She's not hiding behind the Sally voice. You're starting to hear, from this moment on,
Sally's true nature starting to come through in her voice.
And I liked playing that up all the way to the final scene.
Yeah, she's still using Sally's voice, but it's transitioning to a different tone.
Slightly more official.
Deliver the survivor, as requested.
We are
a more effective team.
Proceed to entry.
Mission, we have a situation.
The last burn was spot-on to give us...
- Look at the Odyssey. - Yeah, I would just say,
one of the designers, Joe Hiura, in the art department
is a NASA nut.
He collects NASA components and he was
hugely helpful and instrumental in designing the Odyssey t o feel as realistic as possible,
to the point where I remember when Rick Searfoss,
our astronaut, came on the set,
- he was blown away by the... - Detail.
I was blown away by the detail.
Just the reality of it, all the switches, everything, he said, felt just
like it was from the same world that the shuttle came out of
So, he was really thrilled and excited, to the point where he was actually
able to show us the right switches, and the behavior
that you guys have here was all...
Yeah, the behavior in terms of the training that they have,
each of them as an astronaut.
The calm under pressure, which I think is also reflected in Julia's performance.
The sense of..
Resorting to her training when things start going wrong,
- rather than freaking out. - Yes. Thank you.
And people will ask, they'll say, "Why didn't Julia freak out when she woke up?''
And these astronauts are trained.
There's a training that they go through, and it's a second nature to them.
Yeah, it's about figuring out how to solve the problem and get what you need,
and that's instantly what Julia resorts to. From that dinner scene on,
it's all about getting the flight recorder,
so she can figure out what exactly has happened.
Again, you have Vika, who is bound by duty, yet is in love with Jack.
Dream of us.
Unbeknownst to Jack.
"Dream of us." All of these pieces.
This was all shot with wires.
Rob did a great job.
But just a scene like this, one shot like this, this was hours of training
just to get the coordination and the camera...
Months of talking about it, months of figuring it out in training.
There you see the crew module heading back to Earth.
The command module being pulled into the Tet.
And here, on the flight recorder, we hear the last few seconds of transmission
before the transmission's abruptly cut off
Jack...
They're taken into the Tet, and this recorder is in the sleep module.
ls in Julia's sleep module, recording remotely.
- It's getting taken in. - Then it's cut off right when it goes inside.
Tech-49, enter at headway speed.
I love your look there.
Entering at headway.
- This shot, I just wanted to show the scale. - I love this shot. God.
This is one of those shots that's really designed for the big screen.
Anyone watching this movie on their iPhone,
I recommend you...
If you want to see that shot, the detail and the amount of work, go to the biggest...
In my mind, I designed this shot for the big screen.
What's important in this, also, is that relationship with the actor and the director.
That you're in total sync on what's happening and finding the behavior
and specificity of what's going on.
Where the drones are, what the space is, and finding those moments.
Because now, of course, I'm acting to green screens.
I don't know, you tell me, but we had talked about this movie
for about a year and a half, worked on it full-time for about a year
before we shot it,
and to have that much time for us to sit down and go through these scenes,
really, I think, made it possible to shoot a movie like this in 80 days,
because you and I were so in sync on the shoot day.
A lot of times, it was getting everyone else to catch up to what we had in mind.
But have you had an experience where you've had that much time to work...
Yeah, that's why I like going through layer for layer,
and finding out what is the movie you wanna make,
and how can I help you accomplish that?
And what is the character? And us discovering it together.
I want Julia to live.
- I like this piece of writing. - This is one of my favorite lines in the movie.
Jack has to not lie.
- Arndt wrote this, it's just... Not lie. - Very clever.
He has to be truthful, but not give away his true plan,
which he is able to do with those three lines.
It was a very hard line to write, this.
And your reaction here, once you realize you've made it through.
Just great.
To play that level of intensity, like you said, sitting in a gimbal by yourself,
surrounded by crew and blue screen.
It was fun. I gotta tell you, I really enjoyed that,
because when it's working, you're so in sync with the director.
We were so in sync talking about, "What am I seeing here now?''
And this scene, reacting to... Basically, I had concept art and some pre-vis.
But this is all playing in your head, in these moments.
I just remember, "Just talk me through it. What am I seeing?''
I'd have you talk to me.
All these shots were done underwater in a pool.
Requiring you to be underwater for a couple of minutes at a time.
We did the underwater stuff at the swimming pool
at the Sky Tower pool.
I loved that Sky Tower pool, it was just awesome.
Welcome home, Jack.
Of course, I love how you had Sally's voice start to change as he's getting closer.
Well, for her, the facade is over at that point.
It's like, there's no need to pretend anymore.
But the Tet is still portraying a Sally.
Jack, you're doing the right thing.
I don't know what you are, or where you're from,
but I'd like to tell you about something.
You have an audience understanding of sci-fi to such a point now
that it allows for a line of, "I don't know where you are,
"who you are, or where you're from." You know what I mean?
If we did it in the '50s, it would be like, "You're from Mars." You know what I mean?
Well, the true mission of the Tet, Sally's overall mission, to me,
I have my idea of what it is, but I like that being something that the audience
can ponder after the movie.
As to what, ultimately, the mission of the Tet is.
It's obviously something beyond our understanding.
Yeah, and it's just going around collecting resources
from different planets. Goes in, destroys it.
- It's a machine that's going on... - We're just a fuel stop along the way.
from some other life form. They send out.
Jack, that's not the survivor you promised me.
No, it's not.
Now, again, you look at Morgan's performance, he's looking around.
There was nothing, we were shooting in a black room.
That might seem like a little thing,
- but that moment of wonder... - He's in the moment.
You know what I mean? He's looking at it like...
"For the ashes of his fathers..."
And little moments. When Julia opens the painting, but you don't show the painting.
Not yet. I liked that being a reveal for the next shot.
you, Jack.
I am your God.
I loved doing this scene with Morgan.
Fuck you, Sally.
I love the look on Morgan's face right there.
I know, I know, his choice there is great.
This explosion is so cool.
Well, I love the idea that rather than just blowing up, that it imploded first.
It's cool.
It is very cool.
Again, that shot over the drones, going in to Nikolaj. It's...
We realize Jack obviously swapped out the bomb for the painting because
she said it reminded her of home.
How important is this painting. How important is the location.
It does give an emotion for the audience.
I wonder if I come to you at night, in dreams.
In the day, as memories.
Of course, this is Jack 52. And his journey starts.
And I wonder if you see me
when you look at her.
Mommy, look.
If we have souls, they are made of the love we share.
Again, at this point, you know that Julia's a survivor.
Because we've set that up. Her character has the strength to believe
that she could survive on her own.
Even through just her shooting the drone, her trying to kill, you know, in the Sky Tower.
- Her attempt to kill. - And what she did at Raven Rock, even.
I love this shot, Joe.
I searched for the house he built.
I knew it had to be out there.
There's 52.
Again, this visual storytelling of the survivors come out first,
so you see them. You're establishing them.
And now Jack 52 comes, so it tells that story of
he found the survivors. They're the ones... They told him about Julia.
- That she was out there somewhere. - That she was out there somewhere.
I am Jack Harper.
And I am home.
And that final line is basically set up in the opening of the film, when he says,
"Earth is still my home. I can't shake the feeling that Earth is still my home."
Hey, Joe, I just have to say, really, congratulations.
You are so talented.
And as I said, it's hard to believe this is your second movie.
And it was such a great joy for me to work with you.
- A real honor. - Thank you.
I was constantly amazed by what you created, the world you created.
Claudio is unbelievable. You guys are an incredible team.
Darren did amazing.
Francis-Bruce, fantastic editor.
You assembled such a tremendous crew.
I gotta thank the actors, Morgan, Olga, Andrea, Nikolaj.
- Melissa. - Melissa.
Small cast, but so important in every role that they deliver.
I wanna thank all of Universal, too, for making this film.
Ronnie Meyer, Donna.
- Adam, Peter. - Adam Fogelson, Peter Cramer.
Yeah, to make an original science fiction movie
in an age where everything's a sequel.
Yes, and Peter Chernin and Dylan.
A lot of love and hard work and detail and I know, the crew...
Barry, Radical Comics.
Duncan Henderson, incredible producer.
Very difficult, from a logistical point of view.
Yeah, and we did not have a massive budget and an endless number of days.
That's the challenge, that's what makes it fun is trying to figure out...
How do we do it within there, within that framework?
It really is a very simple, emotional story,
but the structure of the piece is one that is, I thought, really unique.
And it's so beautifully done, Joe, that even right from the beginning, I was like,
"Man, I've gotta be part of this."
And I loved every day making it.
Well, thank you. For me, getting a chance to work with you,
and I try to surround myself with the absolute best team I can.
Obviously, a film like this takes thousands of people to put it together.
Yeah, but it's your vision that we're going through and supporting and, for me,
I learn every time I make a movie. And figuring out that story,
and the way the film was made,
we'd really talk about not just first viewing. It's a movie that...
With this kind of film, it has so many different layers to it
that we're talking about story, and how do we communicate it,
and what do we tell the audience, and what don't we share with the audience
and allow their participation.
And I think that from everyone that...
Karl Gajdusek, Michael Arndt.
Outstanding. Arndt. Koepp, who came in.
I really respect and appreciate it, just on every level.
The mix of the film is incredible.
Everyone up at Skywalker.
And Anthony for the score.
This song he wrote for the end I thought was just spectacular,
with Susanne Sundfor coming in to do the vocals on it.
Really captured the spirit of the film.
Yeah, and with this kind of movie, it's the detail.
The Jack on Jack fight, I'll never do another fight like that again.
It was so much fun to be able to do that. The scenes that I had to play,
the specificity of moments.
Things like that, it just takes a lot of time,
and it was constantly like, "Where are we in the story?
"What do you want communicated?''
Working on giving you a lot of room in the editing room
to be able to cut and decide how.
But it was always the two of us working together on making sure
that you have those moments, if you want to go to it.
Yeah, you have to have those choices. Like you said,
you make the movie when you write it, you make it when you shoot it,
and you make it again when you cut it.
And each time there are surprises and the movie changes.
It starts speaking back to you at some point,
and tells you what it wants to be.
And right from the beginning, also, working with the studio, understanding,
all of us together going, "Yes, this is the movie that we wanna make."
"This is the movie we're making. This is the one we wanna make."
And top to bottom, Universal did an extraordinary job.
All the way through marketing.
It's fun seeing how excited everyone was to work with you,
make this film, and be part of this whole experience.
- It takes a village to make a movie. - It truly does.
It takes a lot of people, and I'm so thankful to everyone who worked
- on this movie at every level. - Thanks, buddy.
- Thank you. Thank you. - It's awesome. It's awesome.
Thank you very much.