The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

Posted: 03 Apr 2013 05:20 AM PDT

A space invader experiences the complexity of young love and loyalty in The Host.

After pairing a teenager with a vampire in the Twilight series, author Stephenie Meyer creates a complicated love story involving a young woman – whose body and mind are taken over by an alien being – in The Host.

Its film version, directed by Andrew Niccol, shows a future in which an alien species called the Souls have taken over mankind's existence. There are a few remaining humans, like Melanie (Irish actress Saoirse Ronan) and Jared Howe (Max Irons). They find comfort in each other and eventually fall in love.

Unfortunately, their happiness turns out to be brief as Melanie is captured and a Soul named Wanderer – or simply Wanda – is "inserted" into Melanie. Strangely enough, Wanda begins to form an emotional attachment to Melanie's memories and, ultimately, to accept the concept of loving someone.

To ensure everything is kept faithful to the 650-page novel, director Niccol worked closely with Meyer – who doubles up as a producer – to make a125-minute film. Below is an interview transcript provided by the film distributor, Nusantara Edaran Filem, with Meyer answering some questions about the movie.

What did you do to capture the same audience as the book's?

Most of it was Andrew Niccol, who also did the screenplay. From the beginning, I felt like I was in really good hands. It wasn't too much what I had to do besides just sort of be a part of the conversation, what we were doing and talk about how I wanted the feel of it to be. I really liked what he was able to glean as he sorted it down, which I can't do. I can't abridge.

What is it like to see your story come to life on the big screen?

It's a really interesting process because there's stuff you lose with a book this long when making it into a movie. But so many of the things we were able to do really had the heart of the story. The casting is always such a big deal and if you can get that right then things tend to work out. I felt like the cast was just amazing on this. They did such a good job. It always makes me cry.

It was probably a relief to know that you are working with such as seasoned actress (Ronan) – essentially she's playing two in one.

That was really huge because we knew we were going to ask someone to play two characters. And initially this was a very complicated independent movie, this wasn't done with a studio because a lot of studios just didn't understand how you are going to make that clear. And the director and I always felt like it was just a really great performance, this isn't going to be special effects and we just knew we had to have a really great actress. Then we got Saoirse and we were all very, very happy.

The Host has been getting a lot of comparisons with Twilight. Is this warranted?

For me, they are so separate. But because I wrote them both, they're always going to have that ... since Twilight was this big deal. There's always going to be comparisons, but I wish that we could separate them a lot more because I feel like it's something so different.

And what these gentlemen have done, what Saoirse has done is just this really amazing thing and I wish we could do it in a vacuum, but of course it's not possible, so we'll just deal with what we have.

Your books contain all these complex worlds. What's the writing process like when you are coming up with all these ideas?

Coming up with the ideas is the easy part. This story started with three characters, two bodies. I had the idea of two people in one body in love with the same person and that was the seed it started from. Once you have an idea of your characters, all the rest of it just sort of grows around that. I've never had a problem fleshing it out; my problem is going too long. So keeping it a nice tidy story is not my gift; being complicated is a lot more of what I do.

A common thread in your books is that the villains are not really bad, they are just embodying their species. Was this a conscious decision?

My life has a lot of really good people in it, so I tend to look at people and try to understand their motives. I think people act in ways that seem reasonable and right to them, but this doesn't apply to everyone.

In this I don't have a lot of real bad guys because the aliens are super nice, kind of like Canadians and polite all the time, so they're not bad except that they've wiped us all out. It just depends on where your priorities are.

With the other series, there are different levels of evil and different levels of how sick some of them get, but I like to think the world is a good place, full of good people. I get proven wrong a lot, but I guess I'm still hopeful.

n The Host is in cinemas on April 4.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Rabu, 3 April 2013

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

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