illa Jovovich straps on her big guns again in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the sequel to 2002's hit video-game-inspired zombie movie. This time around, Jovovich teams up with Sienna Guillory and Oded Fehr to fight the walking dead in Raccoon City, not to mention a host of other unpleasant creatures, including the colossal and unstoppable Nemesis.
In the sequel, shot last year in and around Toronto, Jovovich did most of her own stunts, fighting and shooting, including running down the side of a building, tethered by only a single wire. The film required her to train in several martial arts. And many weeks of night shooting took place during an unusual cold snap in the Canadian city, though Jovovich and co-star Guillory wear only tank tops and jeans in the film.
Jovovich, who recently completed production on the upcoming SF thriller film Ultraviolet in China, took a moment this week to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which was written by her fiance, Paul W.S. Anderson, and directed by Alexander Witt. Resident Evil: Apocalypse opened Sept. 10.
Was this movie fun for you?
Jovovich: Oh, it was crazy. ... I thought I did a lot in the first movie, but I didn't even know what they had in store for me for this one [laughs]. It was really one of those kind of surprises when I came from the first day rehearsal and I saw the scope of the choreography. It was just a little bit daunting.
What kind of preparation did you do for this?
Jovovich: Not enough, honestly. [For] four months we did, pretty much, five, six hours a day, six days a week. And I have to say ... I wasn't as ready as I could have been. And we were rehearsing literally up to the [last minute]. .... Like, for the Nemesis fight, we were rehearsing during filming up to the day we actually did the fight. So it was a lot. I mean, I had something like 800 moves throughout the whole movie. ... So it was pretty crazy.
We wanted to focus on more like high-impact martial arts, so you know tae kwon do was a major element of that. Because in the first movie, Alice's big kick to the dog was like what people really loved. We wanted to take advantage of that and really have her lay down some great kicks. So we got this incredible girl, she's like 22, this tae kwon do champion, this Irish girl. And she pretty much taught me different forms of kicks, different extensions. We did like simpler forms of kung fu for just like really straight punches. We did like Filipino kali, [a form of] stick-fighting martial arts.
And also, just to put a little flavor in there and also because Alexander Witt is from Argentina, he said, "Wouldn't it be great to put some capoeira into it?" Which is a Brazilian form of martial art, which is much more fluid and dancy. So in the graveyard sequence, when you see her kind of flipping from one place to the next, ... she's like using capoeira moves. So it was quite a lot of different stuff.
What was the hardest thing you had to do?
Jovovich: So much crazy stuff. ... The martial arts I love, because it's something I love to do anyway in my life. You know, I prefer martial arts to the gym any day of the week ... because that stuff is fun for me. The scariest part was dealing with certain fears that I've had since I was a kid. Like a fear of heights and fear of small places. So when I had to, like, scale down a five-story building, I was like, "Oh, my God." It was probably like 6 a.m., negative 7 below [zero] in Toronto in the winter. I'm like hanging there at 6 a.m. going, "Oh, my God. What did I get myself into?"
Did you suffer any injuries?
Jovovich: I got kind of a crazy injury during rehearsal, actually, that kind of affected me, where we had to turn some of my kicks around, because I couldn't use one leg because I had hyperextended my hip. So it was kind of not very good, because I had to do another movie after that was also an action film [Ultraviolet]. So I kind of brought my damage onto the next movie, so they had to deal with that when I got there [laughs]. But it's cool, I mean, you know, we worked it out.
How much of that is you, and how much is a stuntwoman?
Jovovich: It was all me for all the fight sequences. I didn't rappel down 260 feet down [Toronto's] City Hall, but I did the last 60, which is about five stories, which is what I was talking about, the craziest thing I've ever done.
You also fire a lot of weapons in this film.
Jovovich: I had to fire Uzis for the first time, which is pretty cool. Just kind of different. Quite a lot of kickback on that. But it was crazy, because we did a bit of arms training. But I mean, I've had experience from before, from the last movie, so it was just kind of refamiliarizing with the gun.
But it was amazing, because Siena Guillory, who played Jill Valentine, I mean, she was so spot-on with the gun. Because she would pull back and fire off, like, 10 rounds and not blink once. And she'd just be like, her eyes would be completely open! I'm like, "Siena, how'd you do that?" She's like, "I don't know, I just watch straight ahead, focus on the firing, and that's it." ... She was much better than I was at that, I have to say.
At the end of the movie, your character is submerged in a fetal position completely underwater in a tank.
Jovovich: That was so crazy, because I get very claustrophobic. They had me in this contraption and hooked up to all of these tubes. But to get into all of that, I had to already be submersed. But to be submersed and have all of that done, you have to be submersed for at least 15-20 minutes to, like, have them hook everything up. So I'm using the thing to breathe, but it's like the lower I go, the less air I'm getting, because the holes aren't in the right place or whatever, and I'm starting to get a panic attack, because I have to close my eyes, and it's just dark. And I feel like the more they connect me, the more I feel like I can't just get out or say, "OK, cut, everybody, I just need to take two minutes." So I started really panicking. And so I hear this, like, crack, and suddenly, ... I hear this commotion outside, and I'm like, "No way, screw it." I just like start pulling things off me. I get out, and they're like, "Get out!" And I'm like, "What happened?" And suddenly I see the whole set is flooded, because the thing exploded, and literally the water flooded the set. We couldn't shoot that scene. We had to like shoot it the next week. It was crazy.
Did you work with Anderson to come up with the story?
Jovovich: Well, you know, it was really great about this movie as like a sequel. When we filmed the first one, like, the script went through many changes during the actual filming. And by the time we were halfway through, the original ending—me and Matt [Eric Mabius] riding away into the sunset in a Winnebago—felt like it wasn't working, and it was like, "Look, you know, let's like figure out a new ending." And Paul, like, figured out this really great ending, and we put in the Nemesis, and like it was really good. But in some way, like a whole new movie sprang out of it, which was really cool, because suddenly we had this false ending, and then suddenly a new movie starts. So sort of based on that, he kept on going in his own mind about the story. Like, "Where did Alice go next, and what happened?" So he was already kind of thinking about Apocalypse even back then. Like, he hadn't written it, but he was already blocking it through. Because after we finished the movie, we were still asking, like, "So what happened? What does Alice do next? Like, where does she go? Like what's going on?"
And now we've kind of followed the tradition of the first one to have like the false ending and stuff [in Apocalypse]. But it was cool, because in a lot of situations, people put all of their energy into, like, their baby project and write a great first script, and then, like, "Oh, my God, it did well. Surprise, surprise, we need another one." And then they have to scramble to write something to give to the studio. But it was cool, because here we didn't expect it to do that well, but already the sequel was kind of broiling just naturally, because we loved the characters and we loved the game and the world.
Do you think you'll do a third movie?
Jovovich: Listen, we never expected part one to do as good as it did. I always imagined it to be like a maybe cult following at best. But it was like a European action film. I mean, it was supposed to be kind of dark and "the other cool video game that's, like, not everybody knows about, Resident Evil." So we never expected it to do so well. So, you know, keep our fingers crossed. It'd be great. If people want to see another one, we'll give it to them.
How different was it working with Witt vs. Anderson, who directed the first Resident Evil?
Jovovich: I feel like, because Alexander's had so much experience working [as a cinematographer and second-unit director] with such incredible people that have influenced him, he's just got this grand scope in his style that really needed the space of a city, you know? Where Paul is great in these closed spaces. Like Alexander took like this big sort of outdoor environment and had these huge cityscapes and these real wide shots. You know, he's great with the wide shots, because that's what makes certain films so beautiful is those really great wide shots. So I think cinematically he really gave it this sort of big feeling that the first one had a more, like, independent-film feeling, where this is, like, just bigger, and the action I think is more precise, it's more on, it's just better technically, you know?
With this film and such recent movies as Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later, there's been kind of a zombie renaissance that the first Resident Evil kind of started.
Jovovich: Well, I mean, there's something really endearing about zombies. You know, besides the fact that ... they can be really scary, but then they can be comical, but then they can be very twisted, too. So you can go in so many directions with them. You can have, like, straight kind of horror action, like Resident Evil. You can have like 28 Days, which is like more psychological and morbid. And you can have like Dawn of the Dead or Shaun of the Dead, and it's a comedy. I mean, let's face it, you can kill them like sitting ducks. I mean, they're zombies. ... They're not humans, so you don't feel bad putting a cap in their heads [laughs].
Dawn of the Dead was happening right about the time you were shooting Apocalypse?
Jovovich: They were finishing when we started shooting. Because I think we got a couple of their zombies. Which was good, because they were already pretrained. They didn't have to go to our boot camp.
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Larry Niven
