Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
Zack Snyder has only completed four movies (with one more, SUCKER PUNCH, to follow in March 2011), but with the first three (DAWN OF THE DEAD, 300, and WATCHMEN), he has already become a favorite among geeks around the world (and a favorite target). On the surface, his latest work LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE (adapted from the novels by Kathryn Lasky), may be a perplexing choice--a PG-rated, 3-D animated tale of warring owls with competing Australian and British accents. But both visually and with the films sweeping scale and scope, GUARDIANS fits very nicely into Snyder's lexicon of big, beautiful adventure stories. Even his trademark slow-motion action scenes show up her a couple of times.
Another reason geeks love Snyder is that he speaks their language and has an eye and voice for detail that is impressive. Regardless of what you think of the finished product, the mere fact that Snyder attempted WATCHMEN earned him points in my book. Included GUARDIANS, I happen to think the man is 4 for 4, and the advanced footage of SUCKER PUNCH that I've seen is as awe-inspiring as it is mildly disturbing, and it looks like another one that I'll view several times on the big screen.
Snyder was gracious enough to pop into Chicago last week to talk about GUARDIANS and got wherever the conversation took us. Hope you enjoy my chat with Zack Snyder…
Capone: Hi, it’s good to meet you.
Zack Snyder: Good to see you.
Capone: We actually met very briefly at Comic Con a couple of years ago, not in an interview, but at the big party.
ZS: Oh yeah!
Capone: You were talking to Harry when I walked in, and I just came up.
ZS: Oh yeah at the "Wrath of Con" thing. I remember that.
Capone: So I’ve got to ask you, when I first started watching LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS, and I'm hearing all of the Australian and the British accents, and then it kind of hit me at some point that it was your film. Do the accent sell the myth a little better in your estimation?
ZS: Yeah, a hundred percent. Look, we made the movie in Sydney, halfway through when we were scratching the movie, I mean putting the scratch dialogue in the movie before we even have the actors, because we were making the movie in Sydney, we had local actors from Australia, and I was like “You know, the Australian accent’s really nice.” The guy would be like “What do you want me to do?” and I would say “Just do your own accent, forget it, we just want to get the drama worked out. I don’t need you doing an accent at this point,” like trying to be an American “Hey, howdy, how ya doin’” There are Australians that do perfect American accents, but just some local actors might not be perfect. So I said “Look, let’s just not fuck around with the accents, just do your own accent,” and then about halfway through the process I said “You know what? We have used so many of the awesome actors"--Hugo Weaving, fucking Geoffrey Rush--“Let’s honor that. In some way, lets just make the native accent of Ga’Hoole, let’s just make that Australian,” and I’m sure to an American ear, that’s going to have like a LORD OF THE RINGS, exotic quality that is particular. That’s how it happened, and then Helen Mirren is whatever, you can’t really mess her up.
Capone: And Jim Sturgess. You’ve got your Brits in there, too. At first I thought “Wait, has he made one group British and the other group Australian? But no, they're all kind of mixed together.”
ZS: They are. The sort of more country language is more Australian, you know, but the tree people from Ga’Hoole are a little more cultured, so they tend to have more of an English accent.
Capone: I really like the way that you in almost no way whatsoever have given these owls or any of the creatures in the film human features at all. They look like owls.
ZS: Oh, 100 percent. No, we didn’t change their anatomy and actually you know our big controversy was how rubbery the beaks would be, so they could actually make words, but we really kind of pushed it to the sides of their mouths as much as we could.
Capone: Right, and I love the detail on the beaks, that you can see light coming through a little bit and to that end I looked at the armature and the hoods they wear, and I thought “Could those be put on without hands?” The helmets look like you would just slip your head underneath it, you wouldn’t have to tie it on, and everything looked like something that an owl could put on.
ZS: We worked on that stuff really hard. There’s a shot of Bubo, who is like the blacksmith, he’s in the trailer like pounding. If you actually see a rendering of the anvil itself, it’s got these metal horns that stick out of it, so he can actually grab on while he’s pounding. He can actually hold on with his other foot. Those are the kind of things that were good to figure out and make sure it worked. The attention to detail that the guys did is just insane.
Capone: And just on that level and then on the more basic anatomy--the way the wind ruffles the feathers--you did everything in your power to make it look as real as possible. You can see individual feathers moving.
ZS: Absolutely. We really endeavored to… I said, “Look, I don’t want to make a cartoon.” That’s just something I didn’t know how to do. I’m like “I just don’t know how to do that, so I’m going to do my best to just make these guys real.”
Capone: I even like the way that there are different levels of flying expertise going on here, and there’s the more graceful stuff, but then there is also the learning-to-fly moments. Can you talk a little bit about how you saw the anatomy of the bird in those different situations?
ZS: Yeah, we did a lot of research and stuff like that, of course we just looked at hours and hours of actual owls flying, and then we needed to just anthropomorphize that a little bit to make them feel connectable, to just get that little bit of unsure quality, that teeny bit of a baby learning to walk. I think animals are a lot more decisive than humans, in some ways. They tend not to hesitate in the same way that humans do, while contemplating the outcome or consequence, so that was the thing that we really had to slowly back into each character, that little bit of “If I’m an owl, I might do this.” Our hard rule was “You don’t manipulate stuff with your wings.” You would never touch an object or push something, maybe when you are fighting, but you would never try to pick something up with your wings, because that’s crazy. But in a cartoon they are like “Look, your feathers are fingers.”
Capone: Right, exactly. I always see plenty of that.
ZS: That’s just not cool.
Capone: Once we get into some of the action scenes, your signature visual style comes out, and you’ve got some slow motion in some of the more death-defying moments. In general, what does slow motion mean to you in an action movie?
ZS: It’s funny, because I think that we were just talking about how one of the things early on when we were doing the 3D tests and we were talking about how to do the 3D. 3D doesn’t work well in a super-cutty sequence, it’s kind of hard to watch, so even the scene like where Nyra and Grimble are fighting, and the Owls escape from St. Aggies, that sequence feels kind of cutty and fast based. If you actually looked at in 2D, it’s not a super-charged scene, so the 3D is kind of adding to the urgency of the sequence. So what we realized was that when we were going to get to the final battle… because we don’t have a lot of slow motion until the final battle, except when Soren flies through the rain. I knew we were going to do it in the final battle, because I said, “It just happens to be one of the things I like to do, but also it’s a great way to keep the shot making, to give the illusion of lots of energy without making a lot of cuts, so your eye can stay on the focal plain that it is on. Even if it’s 3D, you no where you are in the action, and then if it slows down, you can still track that moment. When it speeds up again, you are still in that same focal plane, so you can stay with it.” It’s a little bit easier on the eyes than to try and make a fast-cut sequence that you can get lost in.
Capone: What was your first exposure to this material?
ZS: My first exposure to the material was a series of paintings that Animal Logic had done to pitch the business to Warner Brothers, and they didn’t have a director. I had seen the paintings and they had done basically Soren with his helmet on and his battle claws and embers of fire. It was madness, and I was like “That is cool.” They said “No, no…” I was like “What is that?” “That’s an animated movie. You wouldn’t be interested in that.” I go “No, no tell me more about it.” The next thing I know, I was sort of drug into it. I was working on the story, trying to figure it out, so I was first… look, I have kids and I want to make a movie they can see, but I’ve got to say I was drawn to this awesome imagery first before anything else.
Capone: It’s interesting you say that about kids, because I think there are some kids that this material might be a little too intense for.
ZS: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a PG movie and I think that’s important.
Capone: There’s death.
ZS: The original version of the book, the parents die and we sort of kept… There’s a whole sequence where Kludd goes back and murders his parents.
Capone: Wow.
ZS: That’s in the books, and we said “You know what? Maybe that’s too much.” It will probably be on the DVD, but it’s just one of those things where we were just like “You know what? It’s too much.” But those are the kind of editing choices we had to make, because Kathy [Lasky] wrote really these super dark books, and a lot of kids I have been confronted by have asked me all of these questions like “Why did you cut that out?” I said, “Look, I know you guys are hardcore,” because they are like these hardcore fan kids that are saying “No, that’s the best bit.” I wanted to make it something for a general audience. I still wanted the adventure to be intense and I wanted the movie to be intense. I took the movie seriously. I wanted the experience to be 100 percent for the kids, so that was also part of the process of creating a family film that’s fun like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, STAR WARS, but the jeopardy is real where you don’t feel like “No one is going to get hurt, it’s a cartoon.”
Capone: I like that Soren is a character that loves heroes and myths. I assume, a lot of the people who have been reading these books, he represents them. That’s a great character, but you don’t see a lot of characters who are excited to be part of the myth.
ZS: Yeah and I think the other thing that’s interesting about Soren is he is so… He’s not too cool to be enthusiastic about his “He’s made it to Ga’Hoole. This is so awesome.” He’s not an angry character, you know? He doesn’t feel sorry for himself and he’s not mad. His biggest flaw is that he just had a picture of what he thought the Guardians were, and it turns out that’s not exactly the reality of armed conflict.
Capone: And the character that Geoffrey Rush plays, Ezylryb, he kind of embodies that. He’s the one who tells him “War is hell.” That’s a really interesting scene where Soren comes face to face with this ugly owl that’s been scarred and damaged.
ZS: “You’re not the owl of my imaginings,” this beautiful white and perfect owl. He’s this beat up screech owl.
Capone: Yeah, but that’s how a lot of hero worship ends up.
ZS: Absolutely, and in some ways that’s the more badass owl than the gleaming idealized soldier.
Capone: Yeah. Were there any surprises in working in 3D?
ZS: I’ve got to say, I feel like I’m really proud of the 3D in the movie. We really endeavored to have it serve the film and not be like a gimmick or done for any other reason other than that it expands the world of Ga’Hoole, which is what it’s job is in the movie, and so the challenges were really just trying to get, like I was saying earlier, for the cut sequences not to be too jarring . The actual 3D itself I feel like because we had a formula, we got at it pretty early, and it was working really great.
Capone: I like the environments too. The tree on the one hand and the caves for the Pure Ones.
ZS: The “Stone Palace” we called it.
Capone: I’m sure they were written that way, but they seem to have deliberately different looks from each other.
ZS: Yeah, we really wanted to, like St. Aggies and the Stone Palace were like where the Pure Ones lived. They are burning the forests and they don’t give a shit about. I don’t know who carved those statuettes. Amongst my production staff, we always go like “There must have been an alien civilization that landed with laser cutting tools that actually carved those things. They were owls too and then they left to go to another planet.” Because it’s pretty awesome, like “Look at this.” [Zack motions to the poster.] That’s all stonework too, and I have no idea how they did that. It’s like Stonehenge. This is like, Leonard Nimoy would be like “In search of…” [laughs] I’m sorry, what was I saying?
Capone: Just about the looks of the two different places.
ZS: Yeah, so the environment. Of course I wanted Ga’Hoole to be like this amazing organic world with waterfalls and trees and it’s like alive and then the stone palace in the Pure ones world to be sort of a dead stone world with banners and the idea of conformity and no natural elements, but them trying to create order out of this kind of stone palate that they’ve created.
Capone: As much as I loved Helen Mirren, I did think that the Queen’s persona reminded me a lot, especially in the way she sort of tempts Soren's brother, of the White Witch in Narnia.
ZS: Oh, interesting. Yeah, in the books they actually end up marrying, she and Kludd later on, so it’s pretty intense. Actually in the books, they have a child and their first child ends up becoming King of the tree before Soren. Soren kind of like turns away from Ga’Hoole and goes, and then the son of Nyra and Kludd, who sort of maybe like the two evils created this really beautifully good owl who becomes King of the tree, and then finally he dies in battle. The last book is like Thermopylae--it’s like 300. He’s like the Leonidas character and he dies by giving his life, and then Soren then becomes King of the tree.
Capone: Did you approach directing animation any differently than you normall direct?
ZS: No, like I said before, I really tried to stay with my style, even though I was working in an entirely different way and I think it suited me really well actually, because I just stayed with my style and made everyone sort of adapt to me. I know that sounds crazy, but I did, just because I knew… Look, I didn’t have time to learn an entire skill set of animation. That wasn’t going to happen, but what I did know is that they had time to figure out the way I see and the way I conceive shots and such.
Capone: Right. Can we talk just two seconds about SUCKER PUNCH real quick?
ZS: Of course.
Capone: That's not in 3D, correct?
ZS: No.
Capone: I didn’t think so.
ZS: Part of the reason SUCKER PUNCH is not in 3D is because the 3D we were doing [on LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS] was so awesome, I was like “God, we are never going to be able to make it look that good. Let’s not do it.”
Capone: Since it is a largely female cast, was there any difference in the way you approached the fight choreography at all, or did you go out of your way not to do it any differently?
ZS: Fight choreography itself we approached in the exact same way. The thing that was different was the way we trained them, and the difference there is because when we did the physical training with the guys--and this is just how it is--we pitted them against each other. So if you do your workout and if it’s a timed workout and you do it in 18 minutes, you write on the dry erase “I did that in 18 minutes, can you fucking beat it?” Then the other guys are trying to beat it. With the girls, it was the exact opposite, like it was all about them actually encouraging and helping each other and bonding together through struggle and suffering rather than what bonded them together was the camaraderie of trying to beat each other. They actually didn’t need that at all. The sort of communal suffering was enough.
Capone: I wasn’t actually in the room at Comic Con when you showed the footage, but I’ve seen the trailer you put out. I know you must have heard this, but people were saying at Comic con, “It looks really cool, but I have no idea what it’s about.” I’m like “That’s not the point. It’s a tease.”
ZS: That's exactly it. I purposely took all story out of it. I didn’t even want to start the conversation, because it doesn’t even come out until March, so I was like “This is what I’m working on.”
Capone: It was a strange comment, because I’m sure there was a lot of footage that played there where you couldn't figure out the story, but for some reason they focus on that. There’s Nazis and dragons and zeppelins and beautiful women kicking ass. That’s the important part.
ZS: That’s what it’s about! I know, it’s pretty crazy.
Capone: Is SUCKER PUNCH… Would you consider that maybe your most personal creation?
ZS: Oh sure, by far. Absolutely. It’s an original story that I wrote and I cast and just the way you shot it and everything about it is really personal.
Capone: I’ve interviewed Carla [Gugino] a couple times before at SXSW, and I actually ran into her when you guys had finished your Comic Con panel and were coming up to do your press conference, we just ran into each other at the escalator. I love that you're working with her again, because I think she really does bring an intelligence to everything. Can you just talk about what you enjoy most about working with her?
ZS: I feel like she always tries to make it better, no matter what she’s working on. I’m like “This is the idea.” She will read the script, and it’s always like “What if I said this? Doesn’t this get at what you are trying to go from?” “Yeah, absolutely,” so she’s really collaborative and really smart and she’s also fearless.
Capone: I’ve said that to her before: “If you believe in what you're working on, you will do anything.”
ZS: And that’s amazing and 100 percent true. She really would do anything.
Capone: Alright, thanks a lot, Zack.
ZS: All right, thank you. Nice seeing you again.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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