A Land The Maps Ignore

[webfact]

A land the maps ignore

THASONG ASVASENA

THE NATION

Taipei

TAIPEI: -- Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson journeys to the centre of a sequel with 'Mysterious Island', screening here next week

Director Brad Peyton had a lot of expectations riding on him in filming "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island", but turned them into opportunities to make a bigger and better sequel to the 2008 box-office hit "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" - with the help of 3D and his new star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

"Journey 2" is getting staggered openings across Asia - in Thailand next Thursday - before it moves to the West, and Peyton and Johnson met the press last week in Taiwan.

Peyton insisted he didn't want to merely mimic the look or (US$242-million) success of the first movie. "I'm not making a sequel," he decided, "but potentially re-branding a franchise. The first franchise that has done very well, but I'm taking 'Journey 2' to a new place."

"Journey 2" is the young Canadian's first live-action feature after a series of shorts and the 2010 animation "Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore".

The cast has changed considerably - Brendan Fraser and Anita Briem are out, Michael Caine and Vanessa Hudgens are in, among others. Josh Hutcherson is back as Sean Anderson and his co-lead will be Johnson, the pro wrestler-turned-actor.

Johnson said he felt no pressure taking on the role, "just excitement, really. It's all about wanting to make the second one better."

"Sequels are tricky," he acknowledged. "In this case, I enjoyed the first one and I wanted the same latitude, with Brad involved as director, to really raise the bar, and make it better and bigger.

"I think we're going to do very well with 'Journey 2' because we made a great movie for families. You have the notion of family values and the family in the film staying together through a crisis, and getting better at the end. That notion resonates.

"On top of that," Johnson said, "it's a great 3D movie. Visually, the 3D experience is phenomenal, with the film written, designed and shot for 3D."

"Journey 2" will also be screened with the Imax technology developed by "Avatar" director James Cameron. The producers got approval from the Cameron Pace Group to use its state-of-the-art strategies and equipment to capture the depth Peyton wanted for his lost-island world.

Peyton believes he's matched and might have outdone "Avatar" in terms of 3D imagery. That movie was 50 per cent computer-generated animation, whereas "Journey 2" relied instead on "a new shooting technique" to achieve dramatic depth in, for example, its jungle settings. Peyton screened his remarkable "bee-chase scene" for the press in Taipei.

"Journey 2" is also one of the first films on which the 3D cameras were used as Steadicams, affording extra movement as well as stability, and deploying them in pairs gave the actors greater flexibility as well.

The movie opens with 17-year-old Sean (Hutcherson) receiving a coded distress signal from an island that doesn't appear on maps. His grandfather (Michael Caine) went missing there while studying the strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes and other astonishing secrets.

Sean's new stepfather Hank (Johnson) tries to stop him from answering the call, but then agrees to go along too. With a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his beautiful daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves submerge the land and its treasures forever.

Peyton was asked why the island has no human settlement. Thematically, he said, no human civilisation could adapt to the island, only its strange animals. At any rate, "Journey 2" is more about a family and its inner conflicts, he said.

"There are no true enemies to the family, except for the environment and indigenous creatures. If tribal people were put in, it would have taken away from this theme. I've spent more time focusing on the characters and their relationships.

"I went through the script to make sure that Dwayne and Josh had conflicts, and Dwayne and Michael Caine, Dwayne and Luiz, Dwayne and Vanessa. That's what the movie is about."

Something else to look forward to: Johnson sings and plays ukulele in one mellow scene, and it does indeed improve family relations.

It's all a long way from "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", both the 2008 movie and certainly the classic 1864 novel by Jules Verne.

"Journey 2" also draws on Robert Louis Stevenson's "Robinson Crusoe" and Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" for its episodic story line. Among the interesting subplots is Foster's Rule, the evolutionary principle that suggests species grow bigger or smaller depending on the resources available.

The writer attended the press conference in Taipei courtesy of Warner Bros Pictures.

BUDGET BUMP

"Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" opens in Thailand on February 2, more than a week before its US debut.

While "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" cost $60 million to make (earning quadruple that amount in cinemas and on video rentals), the bill for "Journey 2" is $100 million.

-- The Nation 2012-01-26

[lubbkis]

I thought this would be about Wales as the OECD famously left that place off a map once.

"Robinson Crusoe" was penned by Daniel Defoe based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Yorkshire mariner who was marooned for 28 year near the mouth of the Orinoco.

RL Stevenson, was an Edinburgh born "health tourist" who spent his last days in Tahiti because the Edinburgh winds didn't suit his medical condition. He wrote "Treasure Island" which also has a Carribean, though tropical, background. Another Scottish children's author, R M Ballantyne wrote "Coral Island".

Possibly they inspired the generations of Scots who Engineered the Ben Line, ending with their great stereotypical descendent, "Scotty" of the Starship Enterprise.

Noo a'hm aff tae book ma nixt holiday on a tropical island.

Edited January 26, 2012 by lubbkis

[MaiChai]

Thought that was Laos?

[StreetCowboy]

Thought that was Laos?

I thought it was ironic that the cast were in Taiwan at the time...