Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here, with the fourth and final interview with the folks behind the upcoming RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE, all conducted at San Diego Comic-Con in July. I've already posted my conversations with Wentworth Miller and Ali Larter, who play the brother and sister team of Chris and Claire Redfield, as well as writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson. But the key missing piece needed to complete this 3D puzzle is right here:
Now what's missing from this image is one of the many cameras that were normally be at the center of the all the lights aimed at the lovely face of Milla Jovovich, who plays the enigmatic Alice in the RESIDENT EVIL movies. One camera after another took their place at the center of the light circle to shoot her doing bumpers for some sort of RESIDENT EVIL marathon (presumably going on this week), or a sneak peak at AFTER LIFE. But when I look at this image, all I see is that right leg jutting out to the side in a classic fashion model pose.
On screen, Jovovich has been seducing us slowly over years since RETURN TO THE BLUE LAGOON. And after supporting parts in such films as CHAPLIN, DAZED AND CONFUSED, and HE GOT GAME, Jovovich hit her sci-fi stride with THE FIFTH ELEMENT as the mysterious creature Leeloo. I happen to thing she's a really effective actress most of the time, and feel free to watch THE MESSENGER, THE CLAIM, THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL, or even last year's A PERFECT GETAWAY if you disagree. I've also recent seen STONE, her film opposite Robert De Niro and Edward Norton, which may feature her finest work to date as an actor. When we met, the trailer for STONE had just surfaced online.
Our talk was fairly short (her handlers literally took her from our interview to Hall H for the RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE Comic-Con panel), but it gave us enough time to cover a decent amount of group and to get some photos of her looking just a little bit prettier than I did on this marathon day of interviews. Please enjoy Milla Jovovich…
Capone: Hi, great to meet you.
Milla Jovovich: Hi, how’s it going? Nice to meet you.
Capone: It occurred to me that there really aren’t a lot of female action stars and certainly not ones that are in a franchise this successful.
MJ: We had Ripley.
Capone: True, but it’s been a while for the ALIEN franchise with Ripley. But you are sort of at the forefront of this female action star, and you are not even doing that many action films anymore. I just saw the trailer for STONE yesterday, and that looks like a pretty intense drama.
MJ: Oh really?
Capone: It looked really great.
MJ: Yeah, it’s an intense, intense movie. That was a hard one.
Capone: Do you feel like you are single handedly keeping the idea of a successful female-driven action franchise alive?
MJ: Well, I don’t really think about it that way. I mean, it’s such an honor of course that people love these movies and love to see me come back over and over in them. I really found a niche that I love, because I’ve always been such a fan of like "ThunderCats" and Cheetara and "She-Ra: Princess of Power" and DUNE…
Capone: So you're a girl geek going way back, then.
MJ: Oh yeah, like reading the DUNE series over and over. DRAGON LAND… I was always into women with powers whether it be sorceress or like cats from outer space. That was what I grew up with really, so to find myself being this superhero in a way was kind of natural, because I’d always been into that as a kid, but I think too the fact that to be a woman that has a four-part action franchise is unbelievable. We never knew when we did number one that it would go this far and that people would really attach themselves to it as much as they did, and it’s unbelievable too that every film we just get better and we have such amazing actors coming into it that have so much passion for it and love it. We don’t get any of this crap on set of like “I’m a serious actor. I don’t like to do action movies.” All of us are just so into it, and we love it and we have so much fun doing it, and I think that comes across. I think that comes across, and that is so important. When an audience doesn’t feel like they are being, excuse me, “bullshitted.”
Capone: Swear away, it’s fine.
MJ: No, but you know I don’t like to swear. [laughs] But it’s true, people are smart. When you feel like somebody is just churning out something, like some big money-making, factory-produced machine, they feel it, where we started as a little European independent movie and we still are always financed by like independent companies. So we never got into the whole big studio thing and we always retained our freedom to be able to do what we wanted and to do it when we wanted to. It wasn’t like “Okay, sign this three-picture deal and you have to have three scripts ready by this time.” It’s like no, when Paul [W.S. Anderson] is inspired to write a script, he writes it, and it’s always creative and it’s always fun and it’s always like “Oh, let’s make another one, because there’s some really great ideas and wouldn’t it be cool if....,” and then the conversations start again.
I think the fans really feel that from us, that we honestly love what we are doing, and it’s something we think about with a lot of love and a lot of affection and a lot of fun. It’s like this crazy theme park on set, we are flying around, we’re working, we’re kicking, and we’re exploding things. With explosions, everybody from the other crews run over, and it’s like “Alright, ready. Let’s watch the explosion. Aw, cool!” and then it’s “Okay, run back to set to do the other scene.” But people are just so excited on our film sets, and I have so much fun and it’s hard. It’s grueling and it’s a lot of dedication, a lot of training to make it as safe as possible, but at the same time, we love what we do and we have a great time doing it, and I think the fans see that and appreciate that.
Capone: About Alice as a character, what do you still find interesting about her? Are there still things to discover about what’s going on inside her head?
MJ: I think every movie she changes from the first where she was just this innocent person that realized that was really not innocent at all, and in the second movie just hating herself and hating what she has become, and in the third movie like completely drawing away from all of her friends, because she knows that she is chipped and she is close to her friends, and Umbrella will get them and being able to overpower that. Now on this film, it’s like there’s this ease about her now that she’s free of them, that she can find her friends again and form that team that’s going to help bring them down and be part of a family and be part of a team again and sort of be as much of a human as she can be at this point. It’s exciting, because every film she changes and she grows like I do.
And you know it’s always an actor’s dream, like you get off a movie, and on the last day you're like “If only we could start all over again today.” That’s what we have gotten to do four times. It’s like every time I get to come back and tweak things and do things I didn’t do in the last one that I was like “Oh, I wish I could have done something like that,” and I’m like “Alright, I get to do it now.” So it's a lot of fun. In a way, it’s almost like a TV series, except it’s not going on six days a week, but every couple of years we come back to it and it’s our world you know. I know this world now. It’s part of my dreams. It’s part of my life. It’s my family. It has really become part of my subconscious. I was telling Wentworth [Miller] when we were doing one of our scenes, I was like “This is so random, because I feel like this has all happened to me so many times before,” like I’m running from these crazy zombies and like “This is happening again.” It just feels so real. It feels like I know what I’m doing. Do you know what I mean? So I tell everybody on Twitter “If there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, I’ll tweet you guys my address, because I do know what I’m doing now.”
[Both Laugh]
Capone: It's your duty to protect us. All right, thank you much. It was great meeting you. I can’t wait to see the footage.
MJ: Oh good. Thanks so much.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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