The director of films like The Happening and Unbreakable, M Night Shyamalan is ready with his next sci-fi film. He chatted with Divya Kaushik on creating a fantasy world in his movies and his plans to come up with an Indian drama
It sounds fascinating to have the liberty to create another world, 1000 years in the future. That world would be the result of your imagination, only what you think would exist 1000 years from now, will be present.
We are not sharing details of some mobile application or an Internet game that gives you an opportunity to do all this. But you can surely know of such an experience from the man himself — who created After Earth. M Night Shyamalan, Indian American screenwriter, director and producer, who is known for his sci-fi, supernatural thrillers like Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The happening and Devil, is ready with his next sci-fi film. The director sounded excited with an idea of presenting a different fantasy world through After Earth, when we spoke to him over the phone.
“It is a very different idea which was casually discussed. It was about father and son on this terrifying planet that’s populated by dangerous species which can track human’s fear and use that to kill its prey. I was immediately interested in portraying this unique planet and bringing out a father-son relationship through the story,” said the filmmaker.
Sharing more details about the story he said that a crash landing leaves teenager Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his father Cypher (Will Smith) stranded on earth, 1,000 years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape. With Cypher critically injured, Kitai must embark on a perilous journey to signal for help, facing uncharted terrain, evolved animal species that now rule the planet, and an unstoppable alien creature that escaped during the crash. Father and son must learn to work together and trust one another if they want any chance of returning home.
“After Earth begins more than one thousand years in the future — in fact, one thousand years after humanity was forced to abandon the only home they had ever known. I’m fascinated by the question why human beings fear the unknown. In our earliest days as cave-people, that was really important — fear could keep us safe. Fear could keep you alive. But now, we’ll fear a new job or a relationship because we don’t know what’s going to happen. Playing with that in a movie is fun, and the film is about a father teaching a son how to overcome that. It’s a wonderful lesson because if you can learn how to control your fear of the unknown you can do anything,” explained the director and added that creating the whole new world was probably his favourite part.
“Normally I take around one and a half year to make a movie. This one took over two and a half years. Conceptualisation took that extra year. The movie required an evolved design and we were supposed to be thinking of society 1000 years from now. It was like creating a second civilisation and the presentation of that civilisation makes this movie very different from the other sci-fi films. We thought that the world might be more organic in future so the costumes were created in special fabric that will be projected as an intelligent fabric. In fact, everything that you will see on the screen will appear to be like a woven, fibrous world,” shared the director, who has been interested in filmmaking since his childhood. On why each of his films present a different fantasy, mysterious world that can only be a part of our imaginations, Shyamalan laughed and said, “In a certain way I revisit my childhood with my films. That stage, when you are 10 to 12 years of age is special and I think I have continued to live with the imagination of that age.”
Shyamalan was born in Pondicherry but was raised in Pennsylvania. There was news that he wanted to make a film adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel life of Pi. But unfortunately that could not happen.
Shyamalan watched Ang lee’s award-winning life of Pi and said it was “wonderful to see the film and Pondicherry.” He hopes that he would get to visit the place soon and Indian film will be in the making soon. “I am deeply connected to Pondicherry and India. I do plan to come up with an Indian drama but it will take next three to four years,” he ended.