Disastrous disaster movies are ten-a-penny, so hats off to director Brad Peyton for even daring to take on the genre with his new film, San Andreas.
No doubt having Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in your corner helps.
The former WWE superstar and star of the Fast and Furious series has reunited with Peyton, the director he’d previously worked with on Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, to make a movie about the mother-of-all earthquakes along America’s infamous San Andreas fault.
Johnson plays California Search and Rescue pilot Ray, who sets out to save his estranged wife (Carla Gugino, Watchmen) and daughter (Alexandra Daddario, True Detective/Percy Jackson) when the quake hits.
We caught up with the director and star at the movie’s World Premiere in Leicester Square yesterday evening.
Of his decision to make the movie, Peyton said: “I was just inspired by the fact it was such a big, huge movie but at the core of it is this family that is trying to put itself back together.
“A lot of scripts have a lot of destruction and robots and explosion and whatever in Hollywood but it’s really rare that you have all the spectacle and a heart: real emotion and real characters and strong women.
“Then it was up to me to make the most of all of it.
“It had that potential to check all of those boxes and be one of those classic movies and try to elevate something. That’s what you set out to do.
“You try to do the best you can in an original way.”
Picture: Jasin Boland. Dwayne Johnson as Ray and Alexandra Daddario as his daughter Blake in San Andreas.
The script evoked a similar response from Johnson, who trained with real helicopter rescue pilots and performed a number of San Andreas’ terrifying stunts himself.
He said: “I thought the audiences would really, really love seeing this if we did it right.
“The movie is big, it’s epic, there are visual effects, there’s family.
“There’s all these cool elements that if you do it right in a disaster genre - which is a hard genre to get right - then we have got a shot at making it cool.”
There is no doubt that Peyton pulled out all the stops. There are around 1,300 visual effects shots in the movie – nearly half of the total – while the director also focussed on getting as much of the action in-camera as possible, which meant putting the cast through the ringer.
Throw in 3D and the result is stunning - and terrifying - realism.
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Given horrific recent events in the real world, it is inevitable that a movie about an earthquake will evoke thoughts of Nepal.
Peyton said: “When you are making a movie and there are earthquakes and tsunamis and things that are real, you have to have respect as a filmmaker and an artist.
“I am not trying to insult anybody.
“I’m not trying to scare you, outside of the scares you want.
“At the end of the day, I was telling a story about this family trying to put itself back together.
“I came into this very sensitive because this isn’t silliness – this isn’t robots and aliens. It’s real life.
“I started that way and I still feel that way and obviously all of our thoughts and prayers go to the people affected by it.”
San Andreas (12A) is in cinemas on Thursday, May 28.
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