 |
|
Poseidon
|
|
|
|||
 Poseidon Production NotesThe original movie, released in 1972 by 20th Century Fox, told the story of a ragtag group of survivors trapped on a passenger ship after it is capsized by a monster wave. It was followed by the 1979 sequel "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure," which was released by Warner Bros. The new movie would be set in the present day and follow a new set of characters that attempts to survive after a tidal wave flips the S.S. Poseidon.
It's New Year's Eve and festivities have begun aboard the luxury cruise ship Poseidon, at sea in the North Atlantic One of the finest vessels of its kind, Poseidon stands more than 20 stories tall, boasts 800 staterooms and 13 passenger decks.
Tonight, many of the ship's guests have gathered to greet the new year in style in the magnificent Main Ballroom. They raise champagne glasses as Captain Bradford (Andre Braugher) delivers a holiday toast and the band rolls into a version of Auld Lang Syne. Meanwhile, on the bridge, the Chief Officer senses that something is wrong.
Scanning the horizon, he sees it – a Rogue Wave; a monstrous wall of water over one hundred feet high, bearing down on them with tremendous speed. He tries to steer the ship away from maximum impact but it's too late.
The wave strikes with colossal force, pitching the ship heavily to port before rolling it completely upside down. Passengers and crew are thrown into free fall, crushed by debris or dragged into the sea as water bursts in through shattered windows. Supports collapse, broken gas lines ignite flash fires and lights fail, leaving vast sections of the ship in darkness and chaos. In its aftermath a few hundred survivors are left to huddle in the still-intact Main Ballroom, now resting below the waterline. They should stay together, the captain maintains, and wait here for rescue.
One man, professional gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas), prefers to test the odds alone. Ignoring orders, he prepares to exit the Ballroom and find his own way to safety, but is collared by nine-year-old Conor (Jimmy Bennett), who asks that Dylan take him and his mother Maggie (Jacinda Barrett) along. Fast behind them is Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell), anxious to search for his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) and her fiancé Christian (Mike Vogel). Only an hour earlier this young couple had found it impossible to tell him they were engaged and now face much graver challenges.
Wary of alliances, Dylan reluctantly leads the small band of survivors upward through the bowels of the ship. Those who choose to join them rather than wait below include a shy stowaway (Mia Maestro), a suicidal man (Richard Dreyfuss) who re-discovers his will to live and a young waiter with knowledge of the ship's layout (Freddy Rodriguez).
Determined to fight their way to the surface, they must forge a path together through layers of wreckage as the ship continues to sink. Bonds form quickly in this journey of vertical climbs, dead ends and sheer drops. And trust proves vital.
What Would You Do if the Whole World Turned Upside Down?
For filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen, Poseidon raises an intriguing and personal question: What would you do if the whole world turned upside down? “Would you be a courageous leader or a follower? Would you panic? Would you give up or keep on going?”
The acclaimed director of Troy, The Perfect Storm and Air Force One, Petersen rose to international prominence with the tense 1981 World War II submarine drama Das Boot, which earned him Oscar nominations for both direction and screenplay. A master storyteller acutely interested in human nature, he returns to the sea with Poseidon to focus not only on the power of a massive rogue wave that overturns a luxury cruise ship in open water, but on the intense dramas that play out among a group of people fighting to survive.
“In a disaster you really get to see who people are inside, with the artifice and the normal conventions of life stripped away,” he says. “Life-or-death decisions are made in seconds. When you see how people react and how they behave in extreme situations you know what they’re made of.”
“The Poseidon passengers came aboard to celebrate,” Petersen sets the stage, noting that Poseidon’s passengers are on the kind of cruise people take not to reach a destination but rather to enjoy the luxury and leisure of the journey itself. “It’s New Year’s Eve and they are beautifully dressed and ready to have fun. Everyone has plans for the future.” Indeed, as the clock strikes midnight even members of the ship’s staff take a minute for their own impromptu celebrations in the hallways and kitchens off the Grand Ballroom where guests gather to ring in the new year.
“All of a sudden they are attacked by a monster wave and everything is turned upside down. Things are hanging from the ceiling, falling down or peeling away from the walls, and there are gas leaks, steam, smoke and fires. Imagine your whole life changing in an instant and you must deal with the unthinkable. Nothing is where it should be and you are totally disoriented. It’s an apocalyptic world.”
Heightening the sense of panic, Petersen explains, is their confinement. “This is not something a person can run away from. Trapped within a closed environment where there is no escape, no help and very little time, they are forced to deal with it by themselves.” What begins as an immense and spacious setting becomes suddenly small and claustrophobic, broken into disconnected pockets of air and clogged passageways. “The movie starts with thousands of people, then hundreds, and then it becomes just a handful as everything draws tighter and more intimately focused.”
“The story taps into our primal fears – fire, drowning, falling, being trapped, being helpless,” says Poseidon producer Akiva Goldsman. Most recently a producer on Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Goldman’s screenwriting credits include an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for A Beautiful Mind and a BAFTA nomination for 2005’s Cinderella Man. “Even if you never intend to set foot on a ship, these are disaster scenarios that could potentially find you anywhere.” On that level, adds producer Mike Fleiss (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hostel), “It’s a monster movie, but in this case the monster is water and it’s chasing them to the finish. It was Wolfgang’s intention to bring as many genuinely terrifying elements as possible into play.”
And what could be more terrifying than a disaster of this magnitude, striking in the middle of the sea where help, if it comes, would be hours away?
“Rogue waves exist,” states Petersen, who has long considered water “the most dangerous, dramatic and unpredictable of elements,” and was aware of the phenomenon prior to embarking on Poseidon. Once the stuff of maritime legend, these veritable walls of water, as reported by eyewitnesses, have come under scientific observation only in recent years via ESA (European Space Agency) satellite technology. Long suspected but unproven as the cause of countless ocean disasters, they are now confirmed responsible for damage to cruise liners and off-shore oil rigs since the 1990s when serious research began.
Radar reports from one North Sea oil field indicate nearly 500 rogue wave assaults in the past 12 years and, more gravely, the ESA suggests they could be the cause behind many of the 200 supertankers and cargo ships sunk in the last 20 years, generally attributed to severe weather.
One notable example is the 43,000-ton München, overturned in the Atlantic in 1978 with no survivors. In 1995 the cruise liner Queen Mary 2 was luckier, narrowly surviving an encounter with an estimated 95-foot wave during a hurricane. While scientists cite strong currents as one likely origin of these monsters, focusing natural oceanic flow into a single force, there are also incidents of rogue waves that develop in the absence of strong currents, literally out of nowhere.
Producer Duncan Henderson, a 2004 Oscar nominee for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, teams here with Petersen for the third time after sharing producing duty on Outbreak and The Perfect Storm. He notes that, unlike Petersen’s other two seafaring dramas, Poseidon marks the first time a disaster catches its victims completely unprepared.
“The submarine crew of Das Boot were military and the fisherman in The Perfect Storm were professionals who had sailing experience so even though they weren’t prepared for the dire circumstances they ended up facing, at least they went into it with some expectation of risk. But Poseidon is a cruise ship. These are tourists like you and me. Not only is the scope of this tragedy much larger, it involves a group of people who are the least equipped to anticipate or deal with it.”
Screenwriter Mark Protosevich (The Cell) crossed the Atlantic himself on the Queen Mary 2 in preparation for his work on Poseidon. He found both passengers and crew to be a diverse mix of ages, nationalities and backgrounds, supporting Petersen’s assertion that “disasters are great equalizers. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, if you’re the richest person in the world or if you’re working in the kitchen; you’re all in it together.”
“This kind of crisis brings out our essential selves, the very best and the very worst, says Protosevich. “Relationships are tested and emotional bonds will be either strengthened or severed. If someone you love shows cowardice you will never forget it, but if they are willing to risk their own life for the sake of others you will never forget that either. The potential for heroism lies in each of us; whether or not we choose to act on it defines who we are.”
The challenges faced by the Poseidon survivors and the choices they make in some ways represent, for Petersen, a parable for life. “If you hold onto someone you might save him or maybe he will just pull you down. At what point will you decide to let go? Either way, it’s a shocking moment and nothing will ever be the same.”
The Poseidon filmmakers brought to this project a genuine fondness and respect for the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, from producer Irwin Allen and director Ronald Neame. Like that earlier film, a classic of its genre, Wolfgang Petersen’s Poseidon begins with the same concept and uses it as a catalyst for a fresh story. “We borrowed the idea of a luxury liner with thousands of people aboard, hit by a rogue wave on New Year’s Eve,” he explains, “and then started from scratch with an all-new screenplay and original, contemporary characters. Our story is in those characters, what they experience as individuals and as a group, and the way their journey ends.”
The Passengers
“This is about you,” Petersen emphasized from the start, telling his cast, “It’s not about things exploding or big tanks of water; it’s about how you handle your situation and how you behave. I want to see your sweat, your fear, everything.”
This ensemble of actors had to be not only talented but resilient. In addition to performing their own harness work from precipitous platforms and being blasted by incoming torrents, the final weeks of filming had the actors working underwater – a skill for which each received a week’s training from a diving safety team.
Josh Lucas, who stars as self-sufficient professional gambler Dylan Johns, was so committed to doing his own underwater stunt work that he practiced after-hours at home, a routine he finds somewhat comical in retrospect. “Having said I wanted to do it, I would stupidly go home after work, after being in water all day, and swim laps in the pool to see how long I could hold my breath,” he recalls.
Lucas attributes his enthusiasm largely to Petersen’s own joyful energy. “Wolfgang has this extraordinary charisma and I think its core is his absolute passion for filmmaking and for telling stories. We all felt it. It was impossible not to get caught up in it.”
Throughout production, the actor also found himself thinking about people who have actually struggled in extreme situations – a consciousness he shared with many of his colleagues, especially as news of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami was still fresh when filming began in June 2005. “I think we all felt a sense of responsibility to honor the experience and to really show what that fear and pain and claustrophobia is like. There was a moment where I came up from the water into a space with about an inch of breathing room above me and I genuinely panicked. I was so grateful to be on a film set.”
Another of Lucas’ challenging scenes involved not only water but fire. “The group gets separated while crossing the lobby where an oil spill has created essentially a pool of fire, and my character has to jump into this pool and swim underneath it with a fire hose to create a connection between the two sides. I had to come up at just the right spot and it was pretty hot and terrifying,” he admits. “There are some wild sequences in this film.”
Lucas, who charmed audiences as Reese Witherspoon’s true love in Sweet Home Alabama and shared a 2001 SAG Award nomination for A Beautiful Mind, describes Dylan as “a hustler, probably not of a caliber to play in Vegas but good enough to make some money off people on a cruise who’ve had a few drinks. He’s not a bad guy, but he’s not a hero either. He just wants to go his own way, take care of himself first and not worry about other people.”
Dylan’s dilemma arises when he tells young Conor his intention to escape the overturned ship by himself while the others patiently await rescue. Jimmy alerts his mother Maggie and their ensuing discussion is overheard by former fireman and ex-New York City mayor Robert Ramsey, eager to leave the ballroom to search for his missing daughter. Nelson, another passenger, is also game to climb. To help them navigate the ship’s unfamiliar architecture they enlist the help of a passing waiter, Valentin.
|
|||||
Jacinda Barrett as Maggie James in Poseidon.
Mia Maestro as Elena in Poseidon.
Sitemaps, RSS Feeds & Social Networks
|
|||||||
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Movies Central
Movies Central website is created and designed by Atlantis, 2000 - 2010
All film stills, posters, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and may not be reproduced for any reason whatsoever. If proper notation of owned material is not given please notify us so we can make adjustments. Copyright © 2009 HTML Sitemap
