{"id":10936,"date":"2010-07-07T16:57:55","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T15:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=10936"},"modified":"2010-07-07T16:57:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T15:57:55","slug":"interview-joe-johnston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/news\/interview-joe-johnston\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Joe Johnston"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"captain-america\"<\/a>What kid has it better than Joe Johnston, who\u2019s spent the majority of his adult life playing with dinosaurs, superheroes and monsters? That\u2019s easy: there isn\u2019t one. The director, whose credits include Jumanji, The Rocketeer, October Sky, Jurassic Park 3 and The Wolfman, and who is about to helm The First Avenger: Captain America, has lived out his dreams and, in a sense, relived his childhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cI consider myself to be fortunate to be doing what I\u2019m doing,\u201d confesses Johnston. \u201cI don\u2019t want to drop names, but Steven Spielberg once said to me, \u2018Go live your life and put your life back into your movies.\u2019 I\u2019ve tried to take that to heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of that, he emphasises, is to constantly be shaking things up; to do films that are as different from each other as can be. \u201cI never want to do the same thing twice,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone really does. I think you want to look for something that is challenging, something you haven\u2019t done before, and as a result I\u2019m having so much fun now with the actors. Because of that, I try to find a project where it\u2019s more about working with the actors than visual effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strength of visual effects, he details, is that it allows him to hire talented people to handle that aspect of a film, assuming the director is aware of what is and is not possible. \u201cThe thing you can\u2019t turn over to other people,\u201d Johnston muses, \u201cis making the characters come to life, and that\u2019s where I want to focus more of my attention these days. For instance, it was a pleasure to work with the cast I had on The Wolfman, who brought a whole new style to the table. It kept me hopping, because they all work differently, and yet they all have to be in the same movie. You don\u2019t want anyone to feel like they\u2019re in some other kind of film. That was the challenging part and the fun part, figuring out who these people were. And I didn\u2019t have a clear vision of who these characters were when I went into it. I don\u2019t think you ever can if you\u2019re going to let those actors be those characters. Half of it is evolved when this actor takes over that character, and you have to let them bring enough to the table so they feel like they\u2019re making their major contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which leads to the question of whether or not The First Avenger: Captain America will fulfill that need, bearing in mind that the lead character is, to put it mildly, larger than life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will say one thing about Captain America,\u201d he notes. \u201cIt\u2019s the only \u2018superhero\u2019 film I would ever want to do, because he has absolutely no super powers. He really can\u2019t do anything that the perfect human physical specimen can\u2019t do. He can\u2019t fly or see through walls or throw tanks through the air. And the interesting part of that is what happens to this guy emotionally and psychologically when he goes from being a 98-pound weakling to being this perfect human specimen. What does that do to him? And how does that change his life in ways that he had no idea it was going to? Of course there are action sequences and really cool stuff \u2013 there\u2019s all that stuff that Marvel fans want to see \u2013 but what they are not going to expect is that there is much more to this character than they ever expected from the comic books.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re still writing the script for Captain America,\u201d he adds, \u201cand you don\u2019t know what the film is going to be until you start shooting, until you start developing the script. It\u2019s the process that\u2019s going to tell you who this character is going to be, and what this movie is going to be, and that gets back to the whole idea of keeping your vision flexible enough to adapt when a new, good idea comes along. Let\u2019s say you storyboard a sequence, and you show up on the set and you say, \u2018I know exactly what this sequence is going to be,\u2019 and then there\u2019s a problem. Maybe a windstorm comes and blows your set away, or your lead actor is sick. It\u2019s not like you can say, \u2018Let\u2019s go back to the hotel and think about it.\u2019 No, you have to shoot the scene and if you cling to that vision of that sequence you had storyboarded, you\u2019re dead. You\u2019re not going to get it. But what can you do to take those restrictions that you\u2019ve been handed, and say, \u2018How can I make the best possible version of this scene, now that I\u2019m standing on only one leg?\u2019 That, to me, is the fun of the whole process. It\u2019s the white-knuckle version of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He would seem perfectly suited for this film given the nostalgia of such efforts as October Sky and, in particular, The Rocketeer, based on the comics created by the late Dave Stevens. It\u2019s the latter that demonstrates a genuine affinity for the era of Cap.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just love the way everything looked in the late Thirties,\u201d he says, \u201cthe way women dressed, and I loved the way the music sounded. That\u2019s an era we\u2019ll never have again. And it seems, whether things were really like this or not, things were much cooler than today. I talked to my DP [director of photography] when we started shooting that and I said \u2018I want this to look like a postcard\u2019. One of those California postcards from the Thirties that are hand-tinted, and you look at the postcard and you say, \u2018Wow, I would really want to live in that place.\u2019 That\u2019s what this whole movie should look like and I think they did a good job of capturing that. It just wasn\u2019t such a cynical time. There was definitely a hopefulness to people. It was right before the Second World War, and it was like the sun was coming up and, then, \u2018Oh, no, now it\u2019s going down again.\u2019 We were getting out of the Depression and getting into a World War.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a sense, Captain America picks up where The Rocketeer left off: with the world darkening by war, Captain America stands as a bastion of hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to tell the origin story of the character,\u201d Johnston explains, \u201cbut you only get one chance to tell the story. We debated back and forth whether or not it should be period or present day. We realised that if we do it in present day, it\u2019s going to be impossible to go back and tell his origin story. So we said, \u2018Let\u2019s bite the bullet and tell how Captain America came to be.\u2019 I mean, studios and money people just think, \u2018Oh, period, this is going to cost us more and this is going to be harder to sell,\u2019 but I think, \u2018Well, look at Raiders Of The Lost Ark.\u2019 It was 1936, about as period as you can get, and everything worked. I mean, it was just virtually flawless from beginning to end. Not that we\u2019re using that as our blueprint, but we\u2019re certainly inspired by the hopefulness of what they did on that picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

And even though the film may feature Captain America\u2019s origin, it will also bring the character into the present, which should be intriguing. \u201cThere\u2019s a moment in Captain America,\u201d reveals the director, \u201cwhere he\u2019s been frozen since 1945, and obviously I\u2019m not giving anything away here. He comes out after being resuscitated in present day, and there\u2019s a moment where \u2013 although he doesn\u2019t verbalise it \u2013 he\u2019s thinking, \u2018Gee, this is what I was fighting for?\u2019 It\u2019s a completely different world to him, like landing on another planet. At the same time, I think he can absolutely stand for something in this modern world. I think he can stand for it because he has the perspective of the way things were. There are plenty of things to fight for these days, there are plenty of things on the side of good to defend, no matter what era we\u2019re talking about. That\u2019s who he is. He\u2019s Captain America.
\n\u201cThere is, of course a challenge to a picture like this,\u201d Johnston closes. \u201cI mean, you want to sell a movie like that to the world, and even though our title is Captain America, we don\u2019t want to wave the flag; we want it to be more about the spirit of America rather than about a guy in a flag suit. It can\u2019t be jingoistic or the rest of the world is going to say, \u2018Why do I want to see that?\u2019 Without beating people over the head with the red white and blue, it\u2019s about the spirit within this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the print edition of SciFiNow, issue 39 by Ed Gross. To buy a copy of the magazine or subscribe, go to www.imagineshop.com<\/a>, or call our subscriptions hotline on +44 (0) 844 844 0245.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We talk about Captain America with the film’s director.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[7,140,3],"tags":[854,4665,423],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/captain-america1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}