or many of the cast and crew members of The Core, the film was their first experience working in the genre of science fiction. Director Jon Amiel's resume is filled with a wide variety of projects, from the Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones thriller Entrapment to the crime drama Copycat, starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, but until now it hasn't included an effects-laden action-adventure that transcends the bounds of reality.
The same can be said of stars Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank. Eckhart, last seen opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in Possession, plays Josh Keyes, a scientist who discovers that the Earth's core has stopped spinning. Keyes convinces the government that if something is not done to correct the problem, the Earth's electromagnetic field will break down and it will be destroyed, along with all its inhabitants. Swank, who won an Oscar in 2000 for her gender-bending role in Boys Don't Cry, plays Maj. Rebecca Childs, a former space shuttle pilot who is assigned to lead a team of scientists, including Keyes, as they travel toward the center of the Earth in an attempt to restart the core and save the planet.
Amiel, Eckhart and Swank took some time to talk to Science Fiction Weekly about the exciting and terrifying aspects of their first foray into the genre, and the challenges of finding authenticity in a story based on the fantastic.
So this is your first science-fiction film.
Amiel: It is. Yeah. I don't like science-fiction very much. I wanted to make a science-fiction movie that people who didn't like science-fiction movies could go to and enjoy. I wanted to make a movie that people would go to and come out saying, "Well, I didn't think I wasn't going to like it, but I really did."
What made you choose this project in particular?
Amiel: I feel that the disaster movie has become very devalued. It's become cartoonized. It's sort of lost its soul to visual effects. So that was partly why I felt like it was a wonderful genre that, in some way, somebody needed to just grab hold of and say, "Let's go in this direction now a little bit. Let's make a visual-effects movie that's got great special effects, that's a wonderful ride, but actually has people you care about and believe in, that actually has an idea in its head and some feelings in its heart other than the clearly desperate desire to make money and to entertain."
How much of the science in this film is based on actual research?
Amiel: We did do a lot of homework, for a number of reasons. One, we wanted it to be kind of real. We wanted to actually put some science in the science fiction. Secondly, it's really interesting. It's fun stuff, and it's stuff that most people don't know. We live on a planet we absolutely know nothing about. ... Fact is so much more interesting than fiction very often. So yes, we all did our homework, and we really tried to make the science real and the images that we used in the movie as authentic as we possibly could.
Each of the actors went to, relative to their roles, astronauts, engineers, geophysicists, Nobel prize-winning scientists. We had a lot of people around to help us through the process of making it. But the other thing is that we've all become very used to listening to detectives going through sort of forensic thinking, C.S.I. and every program you see on the Discovery Channel. So much of the thought these days seems to be about forensic process. So that's kind of the science we know. We're very used to hearing lawyers argue legal thinking. What we're not used to doing is actually seeing scientists going through scientific thinking in a way that's exciting and, most of all, fun. Mostly, we see scientists in the movies either as kind of demented geniuses or comical geeks. And it was great fun to put not only the science into science fiction, but the scientists as well.
Do you feel that a lot of these kinds of movies underestimate the intelligence of the audience?
Amiel: I do, very, very much. I think Spider-Man was a very interesting turning point for the superhero movie. The reason many people said it enjoyed the success and the longevity it did was because people actually cared about the characters. We started before Spider-Man came out, but I think we had this in common, we definitely set out to make a genuinely character-driven visual-effects movie. And without real characters I don't think you can ever really appeal either to the heads or the hearts of your audience. And I do think that movies, particularly movies of this genre, have by and large underestimated the intelligence of their audiences, and we tried very much not to do that. We try to treat them as though they're smart, as though they were going to actually listen to what people are saying and enjoy the journey that they were going to be taken on.
There was a significant delay on the release of this film. Why was the decision made to push it back?
Amiel: The fact is this, that the special effects would have been done by November 1, which was our original date. We were basically on schedule to deliver those things probably about a week or two before the movie was due to open. ... And Paramount, to our enormous relief and pleasure, felt that they couldn't market the film to its full outside potential, to use their phrase, in the time frame that they had, so they pushed it back. What that did do was allow us to actually continue to buff some of the visual effects shots a little further.
A visual effects shot is always a function of time. There are processes which take amounts of time, and each visual effects shot is effectively buffed, faceted like a diamond. You get the overall architecture and then you start putting in foreground elements and background elements, and then you start dealing with the things that make the difference between graphic reality and photographic reality. And those things can be tiny things like glints, reflections, shadows, the way the liquid is moving around the ship as it moves through the thing. Very small things, which you may not notice, but you'll certainly feel one way or another. So the chance to take some of the final shots and really buff them up even further was an opportunity we gladly seized. And that's basically what happened.
There's a lot of humor in this film, and it has a fairly light tone throughout. Were you conscious of not taking yourselves too seriously?
Amiel: Correct. Anybody can make a serious movie about the end of the world. Humor is very important to me, on a number of levels. Firstly, if a character makes you laugh, you immediately connect with them. And if you connect with them, you care whether they live or die. And if you care whether they live or die, you'll be more moved and more affected through the movie. Secondly, it seems to me part of the nature of true heroism that those people somehow find laughter even in the depths of a dark situation. I think true heroes do. ... So it feels to me a tremendously human and a tremendously courageous thing to do to find humor. One of the things we like about Josh is that he doesn't take himself too seriously at all. And so laughter, to me, was a very, very important part of the movie. And every time I hear the audience laugh I feel happy.
You don't have a lot of big-name stars in the film, and many of them have never done science fiction before. How did you go about the casting process?
Amiel: Very, very important to me and actually, to their credit, to the studio as well. I felt that we didn't have a chance to create real people unless we used real actors. And Paramount was very supportive of my going out to people that were not necessarily A-list names. And every one of these actors were people that I had cherished the desire to work with for some amount of time. I felt that with Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, DJ Qualls, all of these people in the movie, I want to go and see that movie. I thought if I saw their names on the marquee I would personally I would think this film has to be interesting. Because they are people who consistently make interesting choices. The fact that you don't expect to see them in this genre of movie, again, helped me to feel convinced that we could make something that would stretch the envelope of the genre.
What appealed to you about Aaron Eckhart?
Amiel: Personally, if you want to know the truth, I think Aaron Eckhart is ready to be one of this country's major leading actors. Aaron has something I think is in a very rare supply at the moment. There are a lot of leading boys, I don't think there are many leading men. Aaron has enormous maleness without being macho. He has a very rare commodity, he has an active and evident intelligence in his performance. He has humor, again, a quality somewhat lacking I think in a number of our leading actors at the moment. And the ability to convey it. He's enormously handsome, but not in a way that's impossible or inaccessible. He's accessibly handsome in a way that feels rugged and real. If I were to liken Aaron to any actor alive or dead I would say, if anybody wanted to inherit the mantle of Harrison Ford, I would say here he is. And he is an enormously gifted actor, I think, who absolutely is a star if he wants to be.
And what about Hilary Swank?
Amiel: She's never done an action movie and, again, for Hilary, who always wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up, interestingly enough, it was a chance not only to play with a lot of, again, her luminous intelligence, and that wonderful kind of openness that she has. There's something very translucent about Hilary on screen. But also to play a great deal of her femininity. I think she's an intensely vulnerable and feminine women as well as an intensely strong and capable one. And that combination really attracted me enormously to her and her work.
So you've always wanted to be an astronaut?
Swank I wanted to be an astronaut my whole life, even before I wanted to be an actor, so I was really all over this from the beginning, saying, "I've got to be in this. I want to be an astronaut." And then there's this picture that they took from the stills and I sent it to my mom and dad and I wrote on it, "Looks like I got to be an astronaut after all. At least for a few hours."
How would you describe your character?
Swank: She actually is in the Air Force, and she was an amazing pilot, and NASA oftentimes recruits those pilots into being astronauts because they're really remarkable at what they do. So that was my backstory. That's what I took from [the script]. And my dad was in the Air Force, so it was really great to be able to talk to him about his experience as well.
How was the experience making your first science-fiction film?
Swank: It was amazing. When you think, and I know [writer John Rogers] thought this, too, when he heard that I got cast, Hilary Swank? Science fiction? Does she know? Are you sure she read the right Core? And I think that that's kind of what you think of when you think of this cast, just in general. So I think it, one, makes you realize that it is what we're talking about, it is special effects, but there is a realness within it that has drawn all these people, these actors who you think of as dramatic actors. And I think it ties in nicely. I think what's great about it, if you think about it from a business standpoint, you get both genres. You get the people who like to go to dramas and the people who like to go to sci-fi. So I think it caters to a lot of different audiences.
Would you say the film relies as much on drama as it does on special effects?
Swank: It has special effects, but it also transcends the special effects, and there's people that you relate to. And to me, that's what I'm always trying to find when I'm playing a role. It's like, can I relate to these characters? Is this something that I can go through? Is this conceivable? And it absolutely is. ... In this, you know, there's all these special effects and it's make-believe. That's the beauty of acting. What I get to do is have all these experiences that I would have never experienced had I not been an actor.
What was it like acting against a blue screen?
Swank: You really have to trust your director, because he was saying, "OK, it's going to be really bright purple, and there's going to be these things falling that are the size of the Empire State Building." So you're reacting to that. I mean, really, acting, as they say, is reacting, and I'm watching, like, the focus puller and the cameraman back and forth as I'm pretending to see this stuff. So I'm either going to be really overacting or underacting, you just hope that when you watch the movie that you don't cringe and go, "I would never have reacted like that to that."
How do you feel about the film now that it's finished?
Swank: I have to say, I think I lucked into a perfect situation. I mean, it was a wonderfully written script. It was John Amiel directing. He was so fabulous. He could call me up and say, "I have a movie for you," and I wouldn't even need to read it. I really, really respect him as a filmmaker and as a person. And it was really challenging, I have to say, challenging in a way I didn't think it was going to be.
Aaron, how do you feel about the filming experience?
Eckhart: Primarily, I feel like we sweated and bled for this movie and, like every movie I do, I want people to see it because I think it's worth seeing. And I think Jon did a great job and all that. So I want it to be successful for that reason.
Why did you decide to make this film?
Eckhart: I wanted to do a movie that was fun for me to do, that I didn't have to kill myself or torture myself, that my parents could go see, the whole family could see. Kids could see this. There's very little swearing in this movie, if any. It's not laden with nudity and violence.
How did you prepare to play a scientist?
Eckhart: They just tell me things to say and I say them. But it was fun getting to know the science of it. It was fun. I bought a chalkboard, and I'd sit there and teach my friends about the core of the Earth and how it's spinning and the revolutions and the heat and the electromagnetic field and how it protects us from the sun's solar radiation, the solar wind. You don't know this. I do, damn it, because I studied.
So you felt that it was important to study the science?
Eckhart: When we were doing it I thought, let's get the information out there—because you have to—but let's do it in a fun way. Let's do it in kind of a truthful way. When I went to JPL and these guys were, like, in these dark garage closets with the Mars probe sitting on the floor, and I'm like, "That's the Mars probe, dude. You might want to put that up here." It was like they were talking about these parties or a weird thing this guy did and all this kind of stuff. And I go, "You guys are out of your minds." Nobody would believe it.
We're all smart. All of us are smart, and we all have funny things to say, and we all in our own circumstances and our own lives are witty and self-deprecating and arrogant at the same time, and that's where all the humor in life comes from. And I think a movie like this can get pretty wooden if we don't attempt at least to get some humor in it.
You do have a lot of comedic moments in the film. How much of that came from you personally?
Eckhart: We said in rehearsals of this film, we said, "Look, man, what kind of movie is this going to be?" None of us had done science-fiction movies, and we were all happy to work with each other, but we said, let's try to bring some humor and humanity to it. Those are the movies that work. That's why, for example, Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford in action movies, because there's this sly humor. ... So we wanted to go out and have fun. And also, it makes it interesting for us. When there's an energy flowing between the actors, and you want to say something. It's usually funny or tragic or whatever it is. And that's where the colors come from in the movie.
What was the most surprising thing about the experience?
Eckhart: That I had fun doing it. That I kind of got used to it. That it's fun running around. It's fun getting sweaty. ... That kind of stuff is actually fun because it brings me back to an age when I did that for real life. I had all the toys. I had the GI Joes, the Tonka trucks. ... I always want to run around and play war and stuff like that.
Would you do science fiction again?
Amiel: Yes, I would. As long as, as I said, I could find both the science in it that I cared for, and the right kind of fiction, which means the right kind of people. I think of this movie much more as science-faction than science-fiction, as I think I said [in another interview]. But you know, because it's not fully science fiction, there are a few fictional elements. A few what-if elements, but by and large, the rest is pretty factual, really. I don't see myself doing an outer-space movie in the near future or that sort of genre.
I think what's interesting about futuristic drama is its ability to illuminate the present. What interested me about the futuristic elements of this story were mainly that they could illuminate things that were very rooted in the present. I felt that there were very relevant things that the movie had to say about the nature of heroism, because we clearly started making this movie very much in the aftermath of 9/11, about heroism, about our use and abuse of the planet, and about, in a sense, something that we see so little of, but God how much I wish we'd see more of, is that in the face of great disaster, seeing the world come together, pool its resources, its ingenuity, and pull itself back from the brink of catastrophe by the use of a common endeavor. To me that feels like a theme that couldn't be more timely.
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Also in this issue:
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