he One, the upcoming science-fiction action film, teams up star Jet Li with genre veterans James Wong and Glen Morgan, the writing duo who directed and produced Final Destination. It's a teaming that almost didn't happen.
One producer Morgan and director Wong are well known to TV fans for creating memorable episodes of The X-Files, Millennium and the short-lived but critically acclaimed Space: Above and Beyond. Li, by contrast, is the Hong Kong martial-arts star who gained fame in the Unitd States for roles in Lethal Weapon 4 and Romeo Must Die (opposite the late Aaliyah).
But when Morgan and Wong wrote the first draft for The One, it was for pro-wrestler-turned-movie-star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The pair turned the draft in to Revolution Studios, which immediately gave the project a go-ahead. But then Johnson—who was to gain fame in The Mummy Returns and is now completing the prequel The Scorpion King—dropped out soon afterward. At the last minute, Li was recruited to take his place from the Paris set of his film Kiss of the Dragon. After reading the mind-bending script, he agreed.
The One was re-engineered for its new star. A genre-busting tale, The One now combines SF and kung fu in a story about a contemporary man pursued by his evil doppelganger from a parallel universe, who is bent on eliminating all versions of himself to gain ultimate power. It opens Nov. 2. Li, Morgan and Wong took a minute to speak with Science Fiction Weekly during a break in filming last spring of the climactic fight scene in a Los Angeles-area power plant.
Jet Li, how did you become involved in this film?
Li: When I was working in Paris ... I got a script. Revolution, they wanted me to make this film. I read the script. Thought it was a very creative, interesting idea for a sci-fi action movie. It's very interesting. Because I've never done it before: I fight myself in the movie.
There are several versions of you in this movie.
Li: A total of 125 people. They have many, many universes. They call it the multiverse. This story tells about 125. So that means you have 125 yourselves in this multiverse. In this, I play three [versions]. ... They are quite different. According to this story ... in different universes, you're a man, or you're an older man, maybe you're a girl, maybe you're a gay man. ... But that's backstory. ... Onscreen, there are only two main characters. One is good, one is bad.
One is ... a multiverse agent, the bad guy. ...In one universe, he kills the other him. That person dies, and his energy splits to [his] other [selves] in different universes. He feels it, the energy, inside his brain. He turns bad. He continues to kill himself in other universes to get that energy. In this story, there are three left
Which is more fun to play, bad you or good you?
Li: It's a totally different character, the different personalities. One guy is selfish and ego [driven]. He really does a straightforward, kill, kill, kill, destroy everything [brand of martial arts]. He wants to be The One—that's the movie's title. I want to be The One.
The other, good character, living in Los Angeles in the present day, he doesn't want to become Superman or a special man. He just wants to be a normal sheriff. He has a wife and a dog. He's an L.A. County sheriff. So he wants to keep his family together. But suddenly, in the last few years, the energy is going to him [too]. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't want to talk to people about this strange feeling, this energy. He can run much faster than normal. He can jump much higher. He's afraid about the power. If he tells his friends or his partners about his superpowers, they will call him crazy. And he doesn't want to lose his job. He really wants to become a normal guy. But one day, the bad guy comes to try to kill him, and then things happen.
They changed the script to fit you when you came on the project. How did they change it?
Li: I think in the beginning, when I read the first draft, it was just sci-fi action movie, like an American sci-fi action movie. ... I sort of had the wonderful idea [for] the character. ... I worked together with the director and the producer. ... [We] helped build up these two guys' characters more clearly. What are they thinking? ... And what kind of martial art would they [each] use in the film? ... Because different kinds of personalities use different kinds of forms.
We would try to fill out that the bad guy would use one kind of Chinese martial art form, called the shing-yi—[a] straight-line, destroy-his-[enemy form]. He's really clear about what he wants to get. He doesn't want to kill ... other people. He only wants to kill himself in different universes. He wants to become a god. But the other guy wants to say, "No, no, no, I don't want to become Superman. I just want to be a normal guy." So his philosophy is very clear: It's a circle. ... Balance. You have man ... you need a woman. Yin and yang. ...
In the different universes, how are things different?
Li: Some things are a little bit different, some things are quite close.
Tell us about the scene you're shooting, in which you must fight yourself.
Li: This is a factory. ... This is a wormhole area. So, this is where the movie ends. If the bad guy kills the good guy, he gets all the energy and [can] use the wormhole to go wherever he wants to go.
Carla Gugino (Spy Kids) plays your wife in this?
Li: She also has—in the different A, B, C universes—a different type of character, too. In this universe, she is my wife. Maybe in a different universe, she's the bad guy's wife. Or the bad guy's girlfriend. Or in a different universe, they haven't met yet. ...
In the beginning, when we discussed the script, we had a lot of questions. "Wait a minute. What's the timeline here?" And then they would try to explain. "They're at the same day. [It's as if] maybe in mainland China, it's 12 hours faster than in the States. And maybe in Paris, it's nine or seven hours faster than the States." So in A, B, C, they're at the same time, but a little different. ...
In how many scenes do you perform opposite yourself?
Li: A lot, from the beginning to the end. ... We'll have maybe 20 minutes [in which we] talk about the "A" world, then 15 minutes [when] we'll talk about the "B" world. And then the rest of the movie, we'll be in the "C" world, which is right now.
The sheriff doesn't know anything about it, just like us. We don't know there are different universes. ... When you see yourself, you think ... there's something wrong with your mind. ... But the other guy understands everything very clearly. He came here to find me. But I, the good part of me, thinks there's something wrong with me.
For the drama part ... on different days, I shot different characters. But for the action fights, I had a double. ...Then switch. Because the characters are different. Their attitudes are quite different. ...
Do you like playing the bad guy?
Li: In this movie, it's very fun. It's a challenge. Because we've seen a lot of movies before when one actor plays two characters onscreen. But we've never seen one actor fight himself in an onscreen fight. ... I think it's three times harder than a normal action movie.
Glen Morgan and James Wong, this is a strange idea for a movie. How'd you come up with it?
Morgan: Almost a year ago, Jim and I went to the opening Dodger game with our agent. He took us and Marty Edelstein, who represents The Rock. And he'd been saying for a year or so, "Hey, you going to make a movie with this guy The Rock? He's the next [Arnold] Schwarzenegger." And we go, "No." And so he brought it up that day. And for whatever reason, I hadn't seen The Rock. And I'm like, "Yeah, OK, all right." So I started watching RAW, Smackdown, and I read his book. And I just thought he was really funny. And my brother [Darin Morgan] and I had always kind of been in and out of [pro wrestling]. ... My brother Darin was a big Jesse Ventura [fan]. We had to go to San Diego to watch him. And he wrote his X-Files for him ["Jose Chung's From Outer Space"] and all that stuff. ...
So, if you're going to do a movie with The Rock, what you want to see is The Rock fight himself. So, work backwards. I think Jim came up with the parallel universes and kind of read about that and kind of worked that out that way. And then my agent said, "[Revolution chief] Joe Roth will make this movie. You guys and The Rock." And we went to Joe, and we didn't even tell the whole story, [and] he said, "OK, I get it. Go write that." And we pitched to The Rock and [World Wrestling Federation co-founder] Vince McMahon. And then wrote it. Turned it in on a Friday. Revolution green-lit it on a Tuesday. And I think The Rock dropped out within a week or so. Vince McMahon wanted him to do something else.
So we went back to Revolution. They said, "Don't worry, we'll get you Jet Li." They went off to France, and came back. "OK, Jet Li's in the movie."
How is the film different for Jet?
Morgan: The structure is actually ... the same. ... The Rock would have dialogue like that [holds fingers five inches apart]. Jet's is that [fingers one inch apart].
Wong: The other thing is that, with Jet, you have the opportunity to deal with ... more philosophical, Eastern thinking. ... Not truly Buddhist thoughts, but sort of leaning that way, about [the] circle and life and how things come around. And of course, the action sequences are completely changed, because you have Jet. It's not just a martial-arts movie. It's sort of a hybrid. ...
Combining SF and martial arts calls to mind other movies. What are you doing to distinguish it from The Matrix and other such films?
Wong: Obviously, people are going to look at this and say, "Oh, yeah, this is going to be Matrix-like, in that there's a martial-arts element and science fiction combined." But I think the story is very different. ... We're trying to do a movie that, even though it's fantastic ... all the action and everything ... is grounded, I believe, in what a super-Olympian could accomplish.
Morgan: Our sense has always been that, if you're going to have Jet Li fight himself, it takes place here, in our world, in whatever city. ... We don't go to a fantastic world. ... We go to different universes for a bit in this, but it's designed to be like Close Encounters or something—bring that here.
Wong: Everything is designed to be—even though it's fantastic— ... still grounded in what we understand physically. The physics, the action, the philosophy of the movie, of the characters. In those terms, we believe we're doing different things. And the way we're using our special effects is merely [as] an enhancement of those ideas. It's not ... in a completely different world, as The Matrix is.
Did you guys just make this up?
Morgan: You know what? It's like anything we've ever done. It's like, take that theory, which really deserves a serious movie, and kind of screw it up enough that scientists would really be mad, but my dad would go, "That was a cool idea!"
How do the parallel universes work?
Wong: It is not exactly the same. They're different in ... the idea that ... changing one event can change a chain of events. So ... in another parallel universe, you and I all exist, but … early on in school, you didn't go for English, so you're not a journalist now. But you still exist, and you have similar traits, but you're not doing the same thing. In that sense, every world has a similarity, in that they're based on what we know, but at some point in time, something else happened, and that effect ... affects everything else.
Morgan: It's a real theory debated by physicists. ... I just hope the other guy living in the other universe is doing better than I am [laughs].
Wong: It's the same time. Except [in] some worlds, their 2001 is much more advanced than our world. Or if they made a discovery 10 years ago about quantum tunneling, then they are that much more advanced than we are in that regard.
Morgan: The movie starts out with prisoners being transported. And what we wanted the audience to think is that we're 25 years in the future. But then, in the background, as you pass, there's a TV on, and [Yasser] Arafat ... [is] celebrating 50 years of peace. And you go, "Wait a minute, where are we?" And then Jet comes down and does his thing, and these agents catch him and take him back to a different universe. It's almost like going to U.N. headquarters. Very high-tech.
Wong: That's the central world, where they've discovered quantum tunneling, so they're the most advanced of all the worlds we visit.
Morgan: ... They go back to almost the same, exact location. ...
Wong: The same, but different. ... I think the audience, when they watch this movie, will really get it. ... Really get the concept of these different worlds, even visually. And then, sort of similar things happen, but they don't happen exactly the same way, and things veer off from there. ... In the last universe we visit, it's a very similar place to here, but … we call it Happyland, because everybody has electric cars, and everything's nice [laughs].
How's it working with Jet Li?
Wong: I think Jet's a really good actor. I just think there's a language barrier. ... And that's a real concern. But I think he's done really well. ... I think you can sense real emotion behind what he says. ... Because of the language barrier, there are some nuances that you may not be able to get, because those nuances come with slight changes in inflection ... and that stuff's really hard. But I think what we have is a ... performance that ... has different levels.
Wong: ... kinetic motion.
Morgan: Yeah.
Wong: We're not trying to trick anyone. ... We're not doing Terms of Endearment [laughs], as much as I'd like to.
That wasn't the pitch?
Wong: [laughs] Yeah. Terms of Endearment in parallel universes. With kung fu.
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