Brendan Fraser, director welcome timeless story

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 10, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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Without Brendan Fraser there would be no modern world, right?

It almost seems that way if you look at the actor's body of work. How many times has he saved us from mummies and other merchants of evil bent on destroying the benevolent side of humanity?

Fraser gets another chance Aug. 1 when the third Mummy movie (Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) hits theaters. But first he gets to have some old-fashioned adventure in Journey to the Center of the Earth, the latest remake of the Jules Verne science-fiction classic.

Fraser and Journey director Eric Brevig were in Denver recently to promote their film. Mike Pearson caught up with them for a Q&A.

After a decade of action films, Brendan, does it get easier to work against a green screen?

Fraser: For me, yeah, because the technology keeps getting more sophisticated to the point where if screenwriters and directors can imagine it, the image can be created.

Insofar as what an actor does, you just need to believe there's something there that is not there on the day (you shoot). It really just comes down to doing what actors are supposed to do anyway, which is believe what's there so your audience does.

How about the physicality of it all? Is it still fun?

Fraser: I go back and forth. Every once in a while (I do a film where) you get a couple of guys sitting around a kitchen talking about stuff. This movie for sure had all of us pitted against an endurance course made out of set pieces and diving tanks and being strung up by mountain-climbing equipment and dropped from heights.

We were working around flames and wet environments, like standing underneath the world's largest shower for five days on a raft. The thing is, if you see our faces, we're really doing it.

There have been at least a dozen film and TV versions of Journey. Why another one?

Brevig: I think the concept is just timeless. Until we actually go down there (into the Earth) and prove there isn't this stuff, it will remain one of those things humans are intrigued about.

We didn't remake the book, because the science in the book doesn't hold up.

So we came up with a way of making it possible that what was in the book was true, and our modern characters went down to investigate.

There are basically only three actors in the movie. Is that more challenging than a large cast?

Brevig: The challenge is to hire three really good actors, because the audience is going to be watching them the whole time and I'm going to be working with them. In these kind of extravaganza movies, the only thing that makes them any good is not the effects - it's the people that are going through whatever the story is. It was really important to us to round out these characters so that you care about them.

Each of them has something lacking in their lives. They find themselves thrown together and they don't like each other, but they're stuck.

You're rooting for them to get out alive and to heal and find that sense of family.

What about the decision to use 3-D, one of the oldest effects in the books?

Brevig: New technology with digital projection in movie theaters allows us to project 3-D that looks as good in the smallest town in Iowa as it does in Hollywood or New York. I basically made a movie that works in 2-D, but you go into the 3-D theater and you experience it in a way that's so much more communal and visceral. More of your brain has been engaged.

Journey was planned from Day One to be 3-D, so I designed sequences that will play in depth - floating rocks, birds flying around - because I knew audiences would be able to enjoy them.

Fraser: There's a difference between 3-D as we've presented it and CGI. You get some of the same effect (with CGI), but minus the organic quality.

Is Hollywood training audiences to favor special effects over storytelling?

Brevig: I've had a hand in doing visual effects in a number of films where they were the star of the film and you didn't care about the story. There was a concerted effort in this film to make it a story about three people that you care about and you follow them against a background of really cool stuff.

The story is about seeing things you've never seen before. I think we never upstage the human story that's being told. That's why we go to the movies: to get engaged in a human story, not to see a bunch of fireworks.

Can we expect a sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth?

Brevig: At the end of the movie, they find a book about Atlantis. That might be something. If people embrace the movie and want to see these characters on another adventure, we might come up with something.

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