Chronicle hits theaters TODAY, people. TODAY! The highly-anticipated (and now, critically-acclaimed) film tells the story of three friends who develop superhuman powers and struggle to control them while one friend strays to the dark side. As the directorial debut of Josh Trank, the film starts as a fairly ordinary tale, but quickly twists into a disturbing display of anger and power. I caught a screening a few days ago with our film editor Emily Cheever and our heads were left spinning. Literally.
So, I hopped on the phone with one of my favorite actors and one of the stars of the film, Michael B. Jordan, to discuss his character, his love for sci-fi and his bro-chemistry with costars Alex Russell and Dane DeHaan. Check out the interview below!
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Ology: Hi Michael. How are you?
Michael: I’m doing good. At this carwash, enjoying this beautiful day.
Nice! So, last time I talked to you, we were talking about the end of Friday Night Lights. Then I saw you at Comic-Con and now you have two films out. So you’re staying busy huh?
I am staying busy. I am. It’s a blessing. It’s been going good. It’s been a wild ride with Red Tails coming out and Chronicle coming out [this] week. I'm just loving it and I'm just enjoying it, you know? (laughs) I'm enjoying the ride right now.
I know you've told me before that you were into comic books and animation. Were you looking to do a sci-fi film?
Definitely. I still plan on doing more sci-fi with the superhero element to it. But this is definitely a great start. This is a real approach to doing superheroes. There’s no distinctive good guy or bad guy.
Definitely. Alex [Russell] said he went through a pretty grueling audition process. What was yours like?
Um…mine wasn’t that bad. I auditioned one time in the beginning and they passed. They moved on and looked for somebody else. They came back close to the time we shot and I auditioned, I think, two at a time and that was it. Mine was pretty straightforward. Alex went through the wringer. I think he auditioned like 50 times. I got it easy.
How was it when you first met Dane and Alex? Did you guys get along right away?
When I first met them, it was in the audition room. The audition room itself is like a shark tank. I mean I guess we had some chemistry, it was cool. As far as the next time, I met him was in South Africa at the house. Cause we all lived together in the first two and half weeks of shooting. We stayed in a house together. We all got along fine. There weren’t any problems between any of us. We got to know one another. Everyone has their own personality. I think we got along great. Those guys are awesome. Those are my brothers. I definitely have a friendship that’s going to last a lot longer than this movie. We’re going to be friends for a while.
Now, obviously there are some serious special effects in this film. How difficult is it filming those kinds of scenes when you're not really looking at what you’re suppose to be looking at?
I mean, that’s the fun part, imagining. You know, the imagination. It’s the one of the things that we wanted to keep on this movie. A running theme was to make things as real as possible. They really had these powers. It’s all about your imagination. Imaging doing this, imaging doing that, that was the fun part. Coming to work and being able to create whatever your mind can create and think of that what they can do. That’s pretty much what we did. The special effects were catered around what we actually did as action or as far as movement. So that was the good part about shooting the show with all the special effects and stuff.
Was this before you shot Red Tails or afterward?
This is after. I shot Red Tails in 2009. Three years ago. This is a movie I shot last summer, April to May 2011.
So you were familiar to doing special effects by that point?
Yeah, special effects, working with green screen, I’ve done that before. I know how it works. It wasn’t a complete new experience for me.
The trailer to this film itself is pretty crazy. Some fans are worried it gives a lot away. Thoughts?
Not at all. That’s one of the best things about the trailer because even when you see the trailer and all the clips, you still have no clue what’s going on (laughs).
Yeah, at the end when it goes backwards… I was like, "Um, what the hell just happened?"
Yeah, its like you think you know what’s going on, but the movie is so much deeper than what meets the eye. So the trailer doesn’t really give away the movie at all and I think that’s one of the cool things. We have so much stuff [going on] that we could put some stuff in the trailer and still not give the movie away.
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Have you seen Chronicle yet? WHY NOT?
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