Interview with Julian McMahon

From "Fantastic Four"

Is there a comedic vibe to the film?

Yeah. You know, certainly I remember sitting with Avi [Arad] and we were doing an interview together. He said certainly that’s what they want to pull out of it. I think that definitely. I think it reminds me a little of those Harrison Ford in a “Star Wars” movie one-liner kind of “screw you” kind of lines. I mean, there’s certainly a lot of those.

I think it does try to [be comedic]. It’s hard to know whether you’ve succeeded at that until you see it. It really depends on the way that it’s cut and the way that things are set up. There’s certainly a number of comedic moments throughout it. I think what they want to do is they want to take you, ultimately, on a ride of everything. You know what I mean? It’s an emotional ride, it’s a physical ride. It’s a comedic ride. It’s all of those things. But I have to see the movie, so don’t keep me to it (laughing).

How does what you’ve seen of “Fantastic Four” in post-production compare to what you thought it would look like when you first read the script? Is it visually what you thought it would be?

You know, the script went through so many transitions because the movie itself…this movie’s been on the way to being made for 10 years. And literally had been made once before. So it’s had so many different transgressions and so many different whatevers, but the final script that we got and started working with was really good.

That was just one of those things where we were allowed to play with anything on the day. You know what I mean? And you know sometimes you’d get a note from Tim [Story] the director, or sometimes you’d come up with a line. Or sometimes the prop guy would say, “Hey, why don’t you think about this?” Or Tom Rothman would call and say, “Get Julian to say this.” And they were all great input. It was all kind of part and parcel of really everybody coming together as a conglomerate and just trying to do the best with what we had.

I think that basically at the end of the day, you’re doing a movie for the visuals and it’s for the prosthetics. That’s kind of the biggest [thing]. That’s kind of the monkey in the room. You know what I mean? That’s the biggest thing there is. For the rest of us, it’s to fit in where we can and make everything else work as well as it can. I don’t even know what the end final script will end up being.

Seriously?

(Laughing) No, you don’t because I tried so many different things. I was even in ADR [Automated Dialogue Replacement] the other day and we tried a few different lines just to kind of enhance things a little bit more. You just continually try to get it to a place of where it’s the best it can be. Because it is a computer generated graphic movie, at the end of the day you want to try and make sure, because we’ve seen all those movies where you have that but then the characters don’t work. We don’t want that to happen. We want you to enjoy the characters rides, as well. It’s continually a work in progress, I think.

I’m not a comic book fan. Am I going to understand this movie?

Without a doubt. That’s one of the things that we tried really hard to do is make it for people who don’t know the comics. I mean, you want all the kids to go and see this movie. Like I was just saying on stage, I want kids to walk out of this movie just absolutely blown away. And if it doesn’t make sense, then they’re not going to be blown away. So, yeah, it has to.

We did things as quickly as possible because we want to kind of get into the meat of the movie, but we set it up and you understand who the characters are and why they’re doing what they’re doing, and their relationships with each other and blah, blah, blah, and all that kind of stuff. We tried to give you as much information as possible. You could have never known about the comic or the cartoon and go and see this and be well-fulfilled.

Coming from your perspective of being a comic book fan, how did it feel to be on stage with The Thing and with the metal arms and the green hood?

Well, you know to me, I was the kind of kid that would strap a towel around my neck and jump off the deck. And I knew that at some point in time I’d end up flying because Superman was a part of who I was. I was kind of such a ridiculously stupid child in regards to all that stuff. I had all the little toys and I’d make them fight and I’d burn them, kill them, whatever. And so to me I think anyone of those characters is like a childhood dream in a way. You grow up, you want to be Superman or you want to Batman. Dr. Doom for me was just kind of particularly interesting because he was my favorite villain. And Dr. Doom was like…I remember when ”Star Wars” came out and I was one of those nerdy little kids who’s like, “He’s such a copy of Dr. Doom.” So it’s really a boy/childhood dream come true.

Julian McMahon on the Comic Books and the "Fantastic Four" Cast