Live Forever. Hunt Forever. We recently had the pleasure of speaking to director Brett Eisner and star Rose Leslie, about their new film "The Last Witch Hunter", also starring Vin Diesel, Elijah Wood and Michael Caine. The movie premieres this Friday October 23rd, in theaters everywhere.
The film stars Diesel as Kaulder, an immortal warrior from medieval times, living in the modern era as a slayer of witches and their summoned monsters. Cursed by the Queen of Witches, Kaulder is incapable of dying. Although this would seem to lessen tension in the story, Eisner envisioned the magic of the film's universe to pose a significant threat regardless.
"[Kaulder] may be immortal but his mind is susceptible. We didn't want witches throwing fireballs. They create spells that enter your mind and make you think they're somebody they're not or they pull out a memory and send you back into that memory. Twist the memory, turn you insane, trap you, force you to face an old memory and that idea of magic seemed unique to me. "
"It's a power that Chloe doesn't necessarily want to tap into," says Leslie, of her character, who teams up with Kaulder in his quest to fight evil. "She holds it with a little trepidation because it is essentially black magic and the fact that she has the ability to enter someone else's mind and warp their perception or thoughts and memories to her advantage, gives her this unsightly feel. It's a nasty, nefarious power."
Leslie, known primarily for her roles on feature-scale shows such as "Game of Thrones" and "Downton Abbey", was right at home on a big budget set. "I realized while I was working on 'The Last Witch Hunter' that the quality that HBO brings to their television shows are absolutely on the same scale as a feature. The kind of cinematography that you're looking at when you watch something like Thrones, the costumes, the locations, the story lines, the characters; it's very much on par with films."
While Leslie spoke of cinema's current trends, Eisner was moved to consider the past.
"[We're in] a world where we can now do almost anything technically, visually that is. When you look at Ridley [Scott]'s earlier movies, those effects are as good if not better than [effects] are today. And all that was done with miniature and stop motion. It's not about the technology necessarily, it's about the person using the technology."
Eisner is enthusiastic about the science-fiction genre. His previous credits include a pilot for the Syfy channel production of "The Invisible Man" and the early 2000's miniseries "Taken". "My goal in making movies is to get to big sic-fi films," he says. "And it seems like we're in a renaissance of that…"Blade Runner", "Star Wars, "Alien", those were the movies when I was a kid….2001: A Space Odyssey… I mean it's the greatest Sci-Fi- of all time, clearly."
Of "The Last Witch Hunter" he is quick to enthuse about it. "It's a film that's based on nothing other than the original writer's ideas. That's one of the things I absolutely loved about the movie. The last film I did was a remake of a Romero movie so the next one I wanted to do something wholly unique if that was possible. Not easy, these days." Eisner further talked about his hopes for continuing to explore the possibilities within the movie's universe, possibly in sequels.
"This idea of multiple planes of reality, how can we have Kaulder fight as he's physically fighting this character but also fighting off remnants of this memory where he's seen his family or his own death… to me that was an exciting way to treat the movie and I would love to be able to expand on that more in later films."
For Rose Leslie, the experience was to be treasured. "From the get go I felt so lucky to be surrounded by all these male characters like Elijah Wood and there's Michael Caine and Vin Diesel. I couldn't believe who I was surrounded by. I was constantly in awe of getting to know each one."
This observation led her to reflect on the disparity between men and women within the industry. "I went to drama school when I was 18 years old. For three years, in London, and it was far more predominantly male within my year. I think they took 26 [students] and there was a solid 20 men in comparison to 6 women and that was when it really struck me that there are far more roles for men within this industry than there are for women. But," and her eyes lit up, "there's a turning of the tide. Hell's yeah! It's about time."
~ By Paul M. Zapata and Christopher Froehlich