Director Joseph Kosinski talks Sci-Fi film ‘Oblivion,’ tone of film and doing another ‘Tron’
Director Joseph Kosinski is center stage in science fiction circles as his next film, “Oblivion,” is scheduled for April with Tom Cruise as the lead. (check out the trailer, new poster here)
In recent interviews, quoted by ScienceFiction.com on Wednesday, Kosinski gives fans a big update and insight in the upcoming Sci-Fi film and building around his stars.
“That’s step one, you get Tom Cruise. Step two, you get Morgan Freeman. And in the marketing of the movie I think they’re going to market in a way that tries to make it feel familiar even though it is a new property. And I think we saw a little bit of that in the trailer. Try to lean in to those trailer tropes so it feels like something that we’ve seen before even if it isn’t.”
The tone of the film is the reason the film was dropped by Disney and picked up by Universal, says the “Tron: Legacy” director.
“It wasn’t really the ratings; it didn’t come down to something just as simple as PG-13 or PG. I think when the movie comes out, it will be very clear as to why it didn’t make sense as a Disney movie. There’s some stuff in the trailer that’s very un-Disney that was always important to me to be in the movie. Obviously I have a great relationship with Disney and all the people over there and it was a totally amicable decision that in order for the movie to be what it wanted to be it didn’t make sense to be there. So we landed at Universal, which was a great place for it and now the movie’s kind of able to be what it needs to be. Disney’s clearly in the business of doing giant tentpole movies based on properties that they own. And that’s what they should be doing because they’re great at doing that.”
So what should fans expect as the tone of “Oblivion.”
“So I modeled it thinking back to Omega Man or Silent Running, these very character driven stories that had a small cast of characters but set against an epic backdrop with big ideas. In terms of the look and my vision for it I felt that I wanted to do something that I hadn’t seen in a while, which was a daytime science fiction film. After Alien, which is one of my favorites, science fiction kind of went into a very dark place for a long time and I thought it would be an interesting challenge to bring it into the daylight. So this aesthetic of taking this kind of very clean refined technology set against a rugged backdrop, which ended up being Iceland. For me that juxtaposition of those two looks felt like something that could be very unique. For whatever reason that was something that came to me very clearly and something that we stuck to and that has worked throughout the whole film.”
Speaking about the “Tron: Legacy” sequel, Kosinski says he thinks they’ve found an idea that makes the follow-up worth doing.
“Well the only reason to go back, for me and I think for anyone involved would be if we could do something truly spectacular. We’ve been talking about it for a couple years and there’s always been this idea, a big idea, in the back of my head that we’ve been talking about. The idea itself, the notion of what the next Tron could be, is exciting enough that it would be worth going back to do it. Obviously we hinted some things at the end of Legacy, it’s kind of there for people to see what that potential is. So we just want to make sure that we have a script that delivers on that promise on an epic scale.”
For more on the “Oblivion” interview, click here, the comments on “Tron” came here
“Oblivion” arrives in theaters April 19, 2013.
