Henry Cavill and Luke Evans Talk IMMORTALS, SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL and THE THREE MUSKETEERS at Wondercon

While everyone knows that Henry Cavill has been cast as Superman in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel movie, only fans of his Showtime series The Tudors could probably pick him out of a crowd.  However, by the end of this year, that’s all going to change.  The reason is Tarsem Singh’s Immortals.  In the film, Cavill plays Theseus, a mortal chosen by Zeus (Luke Evans) to bring down the power-hungry King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke).  Until today, no one had seen any footage from the November release, but during this afternoon’s WonderCon panel, Relativity Media premiered the teaser trailer and I’m happy to report it looked fantastic.  I’d describe the visuals as a mix of 300, Tarsem’s distinctive style, and vibrant CGI.  For a much better recap on the footage and the panel, here’s Matt’s write up.

However, before the panel, I got to sit down with Cavill and Evans to talk about making Immortals.  We also talked about the similarities and differences between Immortals and 300, the visual style of the film, and I also got updates on Superman and The Three Musketeers.  Hit the jump to watch the interview (or read some selected quotes).

Finally, for all you Superman fans, after getting to talk with Cavill, I think he’s going to be a great Superman.  Here’s the time index of everything we talked about.  Included are all of Cavill’s quotes on Man of Steel.

Henry Cavill and Luke Evans

• 0:25 What is their go-to karaoke song?
• 1:08 How they first got attached to the film. Both Evans and Cavill were aware of the script, and were familiar with Tarsem’s work. Cavill went straight to screen test and played Theseus as many different ways as possible because Tarsem was unsure which way he wanted to go with the project. Took a while for the project to come together, about a year until filming actually started. By the time they started shooting Tarsem could answer every question possible about the world they were inhabiting.
• 4:17 Talk about the similarities and differences between Immortals and 300. Both have visceral and exciting action, but whereas 300 is an event story, Immortals is a journey. You follow a character and their story as opposed to one single event.
• 5:01 Have they seen any finished footage from the film? They’ve only seen the teaser trailer or just a tiny bit of footage.
• 5:49 Is Immortals still Tarsem’s crazy style or is it more of a narrative feature? Echo Tarsem’s statement that the film is a cross between Fight Club and Caravaggio. They say he is an artist, he could have drawn or painted the entire film.
• 7:11 Was there a lot of freedom on set? Cavill says yes, Tarsem gave them a lot of freedom to find the characters, but would also steer them in the right direction giving them very specific guidelines. Evans says they all tweaked the lines to make them sound right to their characters.
• 9:27 Evans talks The Three Musketeers. Says he shot that right after Immortals and they shot Musketeers in 3D. Says it was a very interesting experience to see the playback in 3D on set. Says the depth was staggering. Then he moved into working on The Raven with John Cusack.
• 10:51 Cavill talks Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot.

How are you preparing for the role?

Cavill:  At this early stage it’s just doing some foundation training. The guys from Gym Jones, Mark Twight is training me. I’ve done about a month so far of foundation training. Really hard stuff, to get my body used to the real stuff, which is coming up soon. So at the moment it’s just getting my body in the right aesthetic shape.

I heard you’re filming in Chicago. Is that true?

Cavill: Possibly. I don’t know how much I can tell you.

Zack talked about how it’s gonna be very realistic. Is that something that excites you?

Cavill: I think it’s a great way to go, because superheroes themselves are so unrealistic that to add a realism to them just makes them easier to associate with and attaches more directly to a real life imagination.

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