Resident Evil Afterlife Set Visit - Jeremy Bolt Interview, Pt 2 of 2
Resident Evil Afterlife Set Visit - Jeremy Bolt Interview, Pt 2 of 2
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Below is the transcript from our group interview with Resident Evil: Afterlife producer Jeremy Bolt from the visit to the set. For details and personal observations as to what occurred on set the impressions people made, please read our article on the Resident Evil Afterlife Set Visit by Staci Layne Wilson
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Jeremy Bolt Resident Evil 11-13-2009 Transcript
Bolt: Yes, I think there is more freshness in Paul with regard to this because he’s been away from this. I mean, AVP, obviously, action-horror element, but he’s been away from the Umbrella Corporation for a while. For us, Resident Evil is really about an individual taking on a giant, the Umbrella Corporation. It’s not so much about undead. It’s about the evil corporation and one person standing up against them. And he’s been away from Umbrella for a while, but I also know that his wife is very pleased that he’s back. I frankly don’t think there was much discussion.
One of the things that I loved about the first film was that Beltrami-Marilyn Manson score which I was upset to see it leave.
Bolt: We are going to work with Tom and Andy, who did Strangers and who are, we think, awesome. I certainly will explore pairing them with somebody from the rock music world. As we did successfully with Marilyn Manson and Beltrami.
Paul’s movies, Death Race, has Tangerine Dream too. That’s his thing, right?
Bolt: We love to...
The sense of that music driving image.
Bolt: Yep, although for him, you know, we all sit there and dream that we’re going to get the Goldsmiths or Hans Zimmer score with the dramatic melody. It kind of never happens. So we always put the picture and the story first and the music should drive that. If one day we walked in and we had that melody, we would put that all over the film. But apart from in the first one where Marilyn Manson came up with this weird, fucked up Alice in Wonderland nursery rhyme techno nightmare melody, we’ve never really had it. Maybe Tom and Andy will come up with it.
Now why can’t you re-use that?
Bolt: We just want to be fresh. You know, I was saying earlier, we try on every movie to do something different. We think that’s why maybe we have gotten to a fourth version of the film. And that goes to music as well. Milla’s costumes. The costume in this film will be completely different to what you’ve seen before. We have new characters, new locations and we must have new music. But we think that the work Tom and Andy did on Strangers was just fantastic. So we’re very pleased to have them. I mean, we’d love to have Nine Inch Nails.
We had Charlie Clauser.
Bolt: Yeah, we had a bit of him.
Last night we were discussing how each film opens up the world more and more. Would you say that this is a much larger scale picture in terms of being more worldly.
Bolt: We’re trying to be more global, definitely. But at the same time, keep it a little relatable. There’s no President. I love the fact that we don’t have the President of America in this film. Morgan Freeman is not in the film. So try to keep it relatable. The characters are kind of a little bit relatable themselves. They’re all dealing with their own issues. And at the center there is Milla who is kind of almost an existential kind of heroine, just trying to find a soul mate. She’s trying to save the world, but also just trying to find someone to be with. She’s quite a lonely character and we keep that. That was very much at the heart of the last movie, those images of her by herself in the desert. We’ve kept an element of that, but now she’s joined up with some of her friends again. But at the heart of it, she’s just looking for someone to be with. And I think that’s really important to keep all these films relatable. When you go into some world that no one can really connect with, then the story just isn’t going to work.
Does that mean we actually get a love scene with her?
Bolt: I knew someone was going to ask that. Well, we have our version of that. Bot quite a love scene. She’s certainly beginning to feel for somebody in the film.
The third film was kind of a western. Are we continuing in that vein, the woman with no name?
Bolt: She has elements of that but she would like to be connected to somebody and to others. She actually likes people. I think Clint Eastwood at some level was actually misanthropic. Milla is very gregarious. She just has been forced into this very isolated situation by the corporation. Also she’s aware that when she’s there trouble tends to follow, so it’s not always good to be around her. But I don’t know, I think she would love to have a soul mate and be a regular person.
What about the zombies. The reason Romero kind of came out of his cave was because you guys did well. What are you doing different with them in this one?
Bolt: They have tentacles. (Laughs) Well, I mean, you haven’t all been out to the set, but you’re going to pass the dogs. We have a, what we call a stuffy dog, which is a part of the scene that they’re shooting over the next few days. The dog’s mouths open up, flower open, these huge teeth. We’re keeping within the realm of undeads, but we’re just doing an interesting twist on the creatures. As the games have done, yeah. I know for a fact, the last game, which is set in Africa in a hot climate, we influenced that with our last movie. There is a kind of respectful collaboration going on. But it’s taken right years to really get to that point with Capcom. They are very, very... And rightly so, the game has sold almost 14 million unit. They’re very protective. But as I’ve mentioned to some of you, I really hope in the future we could perhaps, yeah, put Alice in a game and have a greater connection between the game and the movie and really do that thing that everyone’s talked about. No one’s ever done it.
Is there a return of Jill Valentine?
Bolt: There might be.
Any of the other characters? I know Oded died.
Bolt: I know, that’s really a shame, but we’re not bringing him back, no. Ali Larter is back Chris Redfield, played by Wentworth Miller and K-Mart played by Spencer Locke. And then some new characters. You’re seeing Chairman Wesker today, who isn’t played by the actor who played him in the last film who couldn’t do it for scheduling difficulties. But we just love what Shaun’s doing with this. It’s a kind of cross between a Terminator and a Keanu in the Matrix. He’s really having a great time and is a really worth opponent to Alice.
Is he the big, bad villain in this one?
Bolt: He is the big, bad villain. And interestingly, the most popular character in all of the games is Wesker, so who knows? He might be around for another movie if we ever did one. But I’ve very impressed with Shaun’s work ethic. You want your actors to be in shape because people like to see good-looking, fit people in movies. But this character actually has to be in shape for the character in the film because he’s pumping so much stuff into him. He’s got this kind of narcissistic megalomania going on. He just adores himself. So Shaun has really, seriously, got into the gym, in an insane level. He’s really embraced it and we’re very pleased with that.
With each film you guys are kind of setting up another one. Are you already thinking of where you’re going to go if successful?
Bolt: We talk about it around the monitors a bit. We would like to thinking we could do another film, but we never think we will be able to. So we just try to deliver a really satisfying film with the one we’re making. But I mean, sure, I’m hoping that Paul will have delivered a film of such a level; someone used the term reboot. Maybe some revitalization goes on and that Chris Redfield, Wesker, other characters share the burden with Milla.
So the zombies with the tentacles (can’t understand)?
Bolt: Well, interestingly, you’re right, they came from the last game and it works perfectly with 3-D. That was just a good fortune.
Are you designing the rest, are there creatures and characters that were designed to exploit the 3-D?
Bolt: Well, it’s not so much we inserted someone to exploit the 3-D, but the way Paul has shot certain sequences make the most of the 3-D. We didn’t create characters for 3-D. There’s no character with a hugely long arm or anything crazy like this but there are actions the characters do that make the most of it. And, yeah, clearly the mandibles tentacles help. But I’m just curious because, in a horror sequence, a lot of it’s what you don’t see. What happens in 3-D is you see more, so is that going to make it scarier or less scary? I don’t know. We do sometimes feel like pioneers here. We don’t really know what’s going to happen. We know the images are stunningly beautiful, just magnificent. But as a whole, you know, we have less coverage, so it’s going to be less cutty. So is that going to make it too slow? That’s all for us in the cutting room, but these are all interesting challenges.
So are these going to be GG in the movie?
Bolt: A combination of real, CG and then real Dobermans. We have real Dobermans covered in makeup. They stand, for example. Then we do a CG take-over. Their head will literally flare open, the jaws will come here. This is very much part of the new game, Resident Evil 5. So we were very, very impressed with the Resident Evil 5 game. It’s probably the best game since the first game and its been a massive success. Apart from being pretty grotesque it’s a great piece of art as well.
This is the interior of the Arcadia. So it’s an Umbrella laboratory. These figures are being worked on. This is one of the final scenes of the film. It’s going to be the, sorry... It’s the scene of the final confrontation between Chairman Wesker and Alice, Milla Jovovich’s character, which takes place in this Umbrella lab. Chairman Wesker is the most popular character in the video game series. He was a good guy. He turned bad guy and he’s played by this very strong Canadian actor, Shaun Roberts. We think he’s awesome. He wears this long leather coat. It’s very Matrix-inspired. There’s these dark glasses, very Matrix-inspired. And he’s a really worthy villain of Alice. He’s probably the most worthy villain of all the villains she’s come up against. And within those pods at the back, the Umbrella Corporation has been experimenting on people. And K-Mart, who is one of the characters from the last film, will be in one of these pods. And then Claire Redfield and Chris Redfield will also be involved in this attack and there will be zombie dogs who will open up as you saw.
And on these tables?
Bolt: These are just, these are people that the Umbrella Corporation has been working on. Essentially Wesker is trying to empower himself by experimenting on other bodies. He’s obsessed with becoming as powerful as Alice. Alice and the T-virus have meshed and that’s what he wants. And then you see the usual Umbrella logos, the red and the white. It’s very Kubrickian, the set, deliberately. It’s in real contrast to the rest of the movie. There are quite a few looks to this film. We try as filmmakers with every one of the movies to give the audience a very different feel. The last one, obviously, was the desert. The previous one was in the city, a lot of it at night. This one we’re in Japan, we’re in Alaska, we’re in Los Angeles. And then we have the more typical high tech Umbrella environments, like this one. But we believe strong in order to keep a franchise going, you have to make an audience feel they’re going to get something new each time. Don’t just give them the same thing as the last one, but a bit more action. It’s kind of a cheat. It’s really quite hard work because visually, for example at the moment, there’s so many post-apocalyptic movies. And obviously, we are slightly post-apocalyptic. So we are trying to think of ways of being slightly different in a post-apocalyptic world, which is tough, especially when you don’t have the budget of 2012.
You don’t want to be 2012.
Bolt: Have you seen it? How is it?
It is one of the most idiotic movies I’ve ever seen, but I think I’m alone in that. I think a lot of people loved it just for the spectacle of it.
How are the undead and the zombies different in this movie?
Bolt: They’re moving, they’re becoming a bit more intelligent and also they have mandibles, tentacles that come out of their mouth.
That’s from the game?
Bolt: Yep. More intelligent, physically evolving and there is a character, one of them becomes quite a big character in this version of the film. I mean, as I said, we really looked at the last game which, although it’s set in Africa; we’re not in Africa. We did take a lot of their characters from that game and work them into this because we were very impressed with it.
Will we see Jill Valentine again?
Bolt: You might.
Okay, so that’s a secret. Will it be the same actress?
Bolt: Might be.
Okay, and is this envisioned as the final chapter?
Bolt: We try to make every one a satisfactory movie and if the movie does well enough and we feel there’s a demand, Paul and I and my colleagues are creatively excited enough, why wouldn’t we, we would do another one. I think we try to view every one as though it could be the last one. We’re not presumptuous enough to think it will just keep going. But we are, one of the things that’s pretty exciting now is we are working very closely with Capcom, so we have a very strong relationship. My dream is that I actually will make a version of this film that properly integrates a game and a movie, which has never properly been done to my knowledge. But I think we’ve showed them, we’ve brought things to their franchise and obviously we’ve taken from their franchise and I think there’s a good creative union potentially there which I haven’t properly explored. So that would be my goal in the future.
Which are the difference between the production design with shooting in 3-D?
Bolt: You see more, I mean really see a great deal more so you can’t cheat as much so it’s a little more expensive.
[end]