Andy Serkis teases 'The Hunt for Gollum': 'It's not just a nostalgia film'

Do you have maybe a favorite Lord of the Rings meme, potentially

just because we love the internet here and I love to hear about it. Oh my gosh, there's, actually I do

I mean, these are completely, I think, created by AI, by the way

But there are some amazing, have you seen One Funk to Rule Them All

No, what is that? It's an extraordinary, extraordinary. What is this? I can also find it

You will not believe what you're watching. I'm curious because the technology, I would assume, has evolved since you first performed as Gollum in Lord of the Rings

And now you're going to be reprising the role in Hunt for Gollum. How has the technology changed

Are you going to be in a different suit? I'm just curious about how the actual shoot for that is going to look

There's no difference between performance capture acting and conventional live, you know, acting on screen in the conventional way in costume and makeup

Obviously, the technique as a director and directing it is very different because what you're watching in a live action shoot is what you see in the camera is what you get

And so you can make adjustments. what you get when you're watching a performance capture driven film on set is you're seeing an

actor with a head mounted camera and dots but but you're watching performance you're not really

and you're you're imagining what the avatar might might look like later on but you but you're

watching the actor's performance and because that's if you don't get that on the day then

no matter how much animation is put on top of that that won't have the emotional integrity

so that that is that is something but then of course if you're directing say uh actors on a

motion capture stage you can actually in real time see the the video game engine version of that

avatar so you're looking at the actor's performance and the avatar of that character

move completely in sync and not not with facial expressions but physically so you can compose

shots and using using the video game engine you can put the lights where you want it to be and

so it's more like live action shooting yeah i mean really since the planet of the apes movies

the technology is pretty similar but up to that point there was a huge in the first in the first

movie i was in a very skin tight suit but it there was no on set capture as such it wasn't

They didn't have motion capture cameras around capturing the dots and, you know, try retargeting those to an avatar

That wasn't happening. So I was literally filmed and then the animators copied my they rotoscoped which was a technique of painting over every frame to actually get the physical movement

And there was no facial capture then. And so it was called motion capture

What I'd have to do is we'd shoot, I'd shoot the scenes with the actors on set, and then I'd have to go back to a motion capture stage

and then reshoot my elements separately in a motion capture suit so that we could get the physicality

There was no facial capture then. But then when we started working on King Kong, which is the next film I did with Peter Jackson, we had facial markers driving one to one as a digital mask of King Kong

So, you know, whatever facial expressions I would make, it would, you know, come directly through

By the time we got to Planet of the Apes, it was full on what we'd call performance capture because you're capturing audio, facial capture and physical capture on set in all sorts of environments

whether it was in studio set or whether we were in the rainforests of Vancouver

or up in the mountains in Whistler. So that was full-on performance capture

And you only shoot it once then. You only shoot those scenes once and it's one and done

Then it's like shooting live action normally. So go back to your point

going back now 25 years later um that that will be the process that we use when we're making the

hunt for golem nice so you don't have to do the double you're like one in one go yeah yeah yeah

that's really cool i'm this is a prequel and or it's set within the chronology of fellowship of

the ring it sits between the hobbit trilogy and the lord of the rings yes and i i mean i'm someone

who can sometimes be skeptical of prequels like for andor which you were also involved and i was

like I don't know how this is going to fit we know how this story ends and then that was proven so

wrong I adored that and the Narkina 5 arc is a huge part of that and I'm curious in your time

working on Andoran you know seeing how they're shaping a prequel that fits into the Star Wars

universe but also carries its own meaningful story did you learn any lessons about shaping a prequel

like Hunt for Gala? Well I mean certainly from from Tony Gilroy's amazing writing I mean it was

all laid out for you as a performer. I mean, he had a very clear intention about, you know

about creating a story talking, which talked about fascism set in the Star Wars universe

that felt very grounded and real. And so that was preordained in a sense. And I was, you

know, and I loved the character that I was playing, although I was slightly concerned when I came into it that some people who was already were worried about Snoke and not knowing

the origins they might think that this character was some kind of weird cousin of his or something He went on a very different journey Yeah yeah yeah exactly But once I sort of accepted the fact that people would be okay with the fact that I was playing another character

in the Star Wars universe, it was a joy to play. I mean, it was just great

It was amazing working with Diego and everyone on a really incredible set

which had everything all for real, working pieces of the elements that we realized later down the line

were building, we were building pieces of the Death Star. Yeah, heartbreaking realization

Yeah. Like incredible work. The joy of this is that it's entirely its own story

but it fits into, perfectly fits into the lore, the tone, the feel of the Middle Earth films

that were created by Peter Jackson, you know, 25 years ago and 15 years ago

the two trilogies. So it will seamlessly feel like it's part of that world, but the story and therefore how we see the story is different and unique to this particular tale

So it's not just a sort of nostalgia film, you know, and we're seeing plenty of those, you know, we're seeing, you know, and laying heavily into the nostalgia and the things that we loved about those movies of 25 and 30 years ago

it adheres to that world, but it certainly has a freshness and a newness

in terms of the actual story. Yeah, I like that you mentioned the newness

because last week we got the official casting and we know Jamie Dornan is taking over the role of Strider

which that has to be so difficult to recast someone in a role that is so iconic with Viggo Mortensen and Aragorn

You think of them as one and the same. Can you tell me about finding Jamie as a replacement

and why he's going to work? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to talk too much about this

because I know I'm going to be talking about it for a long time to come. But just to say that, I mean, all the casting decisions for this

we're calling him Strider in our movie and he is at a different point in his journey

So he is slightly different to the Aragorn that we see later on

It's a version of himself that's been out in the wilderness as a Dunedin ranger

And I'll leave it at that for the moment. But Jamie is perfect for this part of that journey of the character

Awesome. I mean, thank you for even saying that. Sure. And, I mean, you mentioned it's been 25 years since Fellowship

What has been an element of the legacy of these movies that has, like, surprised you as we've seen it

Well, people, it's so interesting because prior to The Lord of the Rings

there were very few sort of fantasy films for want of a better word because I don really see it as a fantasy film and it wasn treated as a fantasy film It was always treated by Peter as a historic It felt like a piece of history in a way

And the way that Tolkien wrote it and created the language and the lore

and the worlds and the cultures around that felt like real events, you know, historical events

So I think that's why they've endured, because they felt that they were

sort of fantastical stories, but they were grounded in such emotional truth

And the characters, all of the characters, mean a lot to people

And across the spectrum of characters, and speaking from personal experience, and I've been to many conventions

and seen this to be true, it's the character of Gollum, for instance

that really connects with people because we all have an inner voice

we all doubt ourselves, we all have a dark side. And because the notion of addiction

was very much part of the entrance into the character for me

being addicted to the ring and how powerful that was, I've come across so many people who have been through hard times

and have found Gollum a character that has helped them in some way

So it's really interesting, and this is across the board. People relate to all of the characters in Lord of the Rings in their own way or see themselves in those characters

And we look to mythologies like the Lord of the Rings in times like these that we're living in, where going back to the truth and the lack of it, there seems to be essential values and truths in those stories which are worth hanging on to, you know, about the small person being able to make the difference and things like that, which are so, so important

and tie back into Animal Farm, which is why we've made this as an animated movie

so that we cannot, you know, the rebellion went wrong that time for the animals

and they ended up back at square one. And it's like the world now. We keep going around in circles

History does repeat itself. Yeah, a great needle drop. Sorry, at the very end, I was like, okay, yeah

You know, but it does. And all we can do is question

how we can make it better next time around. We probably will, it's not

we don't come up with an answer it's not a Hollywood ending

we don't neatly tie up Animal Farm with a bow but we do say

that we are going to be handing over this planet to the kids

you know, the young generation and it's such a complicated world we're passing on

and why not listen to what they've got to say about what they're feeling at the moment

and so that was, you know, just sort of tying it back into that

One small hobbit, one small pig Exactly, it's like What have they got to say about that