Comic-Con: Talking Starship Troopers and Bug Problems with Casper Van Dien

We can ill afford another Klendathu!

Casper Van Dien returns as Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers: Invasion, the latest chapter in the space-faring, bug-crushing saga, due on Blu-ray and DVD on August 28th from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film represents Van Dien's first foray as Johnny into CGI-animated form, and he also executive-produced the project along with Ed Neumeier, screenwriter of the original movie. Shinji Aramaki, the director of Halo Legends, Appleseed and Appleseed Ex-Machina, brings his anime stylings to the film as director. And these gentlemen will all be hitting San Diego Comic-Con this week to show off the new movie.

In fact, if you're going to the con, IGN and Sony are giving away 25 free passes to the worldwide premiere screening on Saturday, July 14, at 7pm. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Van Dien, Neumeier and Aramaki (moderated by yours truly!). Click here for your chance at grabbing a pass. And Casper will also be participating in a fan signing at IGN's Oasis Lounge at the Hard Rock Hotel at 1pm that day, so if you're in town you know where you need to be.

But in the meantime, I jumped on the phone with the actor to talk about his newest Starship Troopers adventure. Check out our chat below -- and see you on Saturday…

Scott Collura: How does Starship Troopers: Invasion connect to the previous films in the series?

Casper Van Dien: In my opinion, I feel like it’s a continuation of the first and probably takes a little bit from the second and the third as well. But it brings back the characters from the first. It has Carl, Johnny and Carmen. We’ve also got some cool new characters. It ties in more to the book as well. I think it’s a combination of the Starship Troopers world created by Edward Neumeier, Paul Verhoeven and Phil Tippett. Then we’ve added in this new Japanese anime style by Shinji Aramaki and the executive over at Sony, Tony Ishizuka [Vice President of International Production, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions]. They did a great job. I loved it.

SC: What was it like transitioning to animation for this project?

CVD: It was a lot of fun to do. With Shinji Aramaki, the anime director, he’s such a talented man. He created a lot of the mecha suits [in anime]. He also drew the Kamen Rider, which was the Masked Rider. When I grew up in Japan until I was almost five years old, that was my first hero, the Masked Rider. So it was interesting to see some of his work. I thought he did a great job. It was a blast to work on this with everybody.

SC: What similarities does Invasion have to the original Robert Heinlein book?

CVD: Well, you definitely have the suits, and they’re done really well. Even just the regular armor that they wear is so cool, and the weapons are just amazing. I just wish we could have actually had those [in the live-action movies]. That part of the world is amazing to see what they can create. That’s just a phenomenal job. And the bugs, what they’re able to do with that and take off from what they did in the third one. They’re able to create even more of the Starship Troopers world. Flint Dille did a great job with the screenplay. He’s really good with these animated projects as well. He’s been around for a long time. So there’s just a huge… they just have so many different things in so many different worlds, I think they’ve created a very unique spin with this on its own but it also completely correlates with all the other Starship Troopers worlds. And it leaves room for more to happen and more to come. There’s a nice twist in the end that I think opens up a whole other can of worms. It opens Pandora’s Box, in my opinion!

SC: The thing about the first film is you kind of feel like your character Johnny might not survive all the craziness, but now here we are and he's still fighting the bugs all these years later.

CVD: It’s a lot of fun to see that. You know, I heard that Sony is rebooting Starship Troopers, and people ask me all the time, they go, “What do you think? They shouldn’t do that.” And I think it’s really cool. I was also the twentieth Tarzan, and there have been so many different Bonds. I think it would be cool to see a lot of different Johnny Ricos. I think it’s a great character.

SC: The Starship Troopers universe would seem to be big enough to support a variety of approaches.

CVD: Completely. It’s a fun and exciting process, and I’d like to see -- of course, I’m always going to be attached to this. It’s just something where I walk down the street and people go, “Johnny Rico!” [Laughs] And that’s 15 years later and there are still people saying that to me. It’s kind of cool.

Casper Van Dien

SC: Did that ever bother you, being so closely associated with one role?

CVD: You know, sometimes when people go, “O.K., we know who it is. This is the guy from Starship Troopers.” Of course, I wasn’t the guy from Starship Troopers before I did it. But for the most part, it’s really thrilling to have people quote lines you said in a movie 15 years later, for them to keep coming at you with it. I can be at Disneyland or walking down the street or picking my kids up from school -- I picked up my eight- and ten-year-old the other day, and these six boys go, “Johnny Rico! Wait a minute, your dad’s Johnny Rico!?” And I’m like, “What are you guys doing watching Starship Troopers?” They’re like, “Our dads made us watch it with them.” [Laughs] It’s kind of funny. It’s just something that keeps going on. The longevity of it is fantastic. It’s an honor to be in something that people quote all the time. I’m still doing interviews about that movie, and it’s 15 freaking years later. It’s still something that they’re talking about. A lot of directors talk to me about it, and they like it. I’m like, “Well, put me in your movie!” [Laughs] But I had a lot of fun with it. I’m loving being in this business, and it’s a lot of fun to do. That movie, I am so grateful for every chance I get to be a part of that world.

SC: Did you guys know you were making something special when you were working on the first film?

CVD: It felt like something special every day. First of all, you’re talking about a book I read when I was a little boy. So to be able to play a character that you liked and you were 13 years old when you read it, and then to be around a director like Paul Verhoeven who directed movies you had seen as a kid, too -- RoboCop -- then later when I became an actor and started studying and seeing his older films and just going, “God, this guy’s amazing,” and actually getting an opportunity to work with him? It kind of felt surreal, the amount of extras they had on it and the team -- working with Academy Award-winners like Phil Tippett and the writer of RoboCop, you’re blown away. It was a really cool cast. I enjoyed everybody, and I had so much fun with all those people. I still, when we bump into each other to this day… we’re starting to become closer I think. It’s pretty interesting.

Source : ign[dot]com

Depp's Night Stalker Stakes Out a Writer

His latest big screen adaptation of a cult classic horror TV series isn't exactly doing great business at the box office, but that apparently isn't deterring Dark Shadows star Johnny Depp from moving ahead with his plans to produce and star in a feature film version of The Night Stalker.

The Hollywood Reporter says D.V. DeVincentis (High Fidelity, Gross Pointe Blank) has been hired to script The Night Stalker based, like Dark Shadows, on the 1970s Dan Curtis TV series.

Scott Pilgrim helmer Edgar Wright will direct The Night Stalker for Disney.

Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/19/depps-night-stalker-stakes-out-a-writer

Dark Shadows Review

Director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp reunite for their eighth collaboration in this feature film adaptation of Dark Shadows, the 1966-71 cult classic supernatural soap opera they loved as kids.

In this version, scripted by John August and Seth Grahame-Smith, Depp portrays Barnabas Collins, the heir to a prosperous fishing family who leave England to settle in the New World. In 1752, Barnabas is cursed by the witch Angelique (Eva Green) after breaking her heart and falling for his one true love, Josette (Bella Heathcote). Angelique's spell leads to Josette's death and turns Barnabas into a vampire. She chains Barnabas inside a coffin and buries him "alive" for the next two centuries.





After being unintentionally released from his grave, Barnabas finds himself in the strange, perplexing world of 1972. He returns to his family estate, Collinwood, where he passes himself off to his descendants -- matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer), her troubled children Susan and David (Chloe Grace Moretz and Gulliver McGrath), Elizabeth's shady brother Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller), as well as the family's live-in psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) and caretaker Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) -- as a distant relative from England back to help the struggling dynasty return to prosperity and prominence. His true nature will remain a secret to most of them ... for now.

But the Collins aren't the only ones he finds in the namesake town of Collinsport. Barnabas meets Victoria Winters (Heathcote), David Collins' new governess and the spitting image of his beloved Josette. He also discovers that Angelique is still very much alive and well, having thrived in the ensuing centuries to become a successful businesswoman and the Collins' biggest rival. Her lusty obsession for Barnabas remains, and she's grown powerful enough to destroy him and the newfound family he's vowed to help.

- Warner Bros.

The characters are played by one of Burton's best ensemble casts yet, but only Depp's Barnabas has anything remotely resembling an arc or development. Pfeiffer is commanding as the Collins' matriarch, but we never get to see her do much more than sit at the head of the dining table or at her desk. Moretz's Susan is the character most radically altered from her small screen counterpart as she's about a decade younger and more akin to Winona Ryder's moody teen in Beetlejuice than the young woman from previous incarnations of the show.

There's an element to Susan that's introduced late in the story, that comes out of left field and is completely arbitrary. Why even introduce it if it's not going to truly be explored? McGrath is a very likable child actor whose arc here as David is, like Susan's, underexplored and underwhelming in the end. For a kid whose problems have brought not one, but two different people (Dr. Hoffman and Victoria) to Collinwood to care for him, there's practically no time spent showing them doing anything with or for him. It's all just exposition to nowhere

Haley has a dopey appeal as the family's oft-drunk handyman and Barnabas' mind-controlled servant, while Miller's self-centered Roger is all upper crust smugness. But, outside of Barnabas, the women are the true protagonists of Dark Shadows and besides Pfeiffer the real standouts among them are Carter as the bitter, besotted shrink and Green as the obsessed enchantress whose spurned love for Barnabas and disdain for the Collins knows no bounds. Green and Carter clearly enjoy sinking their teeth into their roles and have fun with them even when the script seems to forget about them. The most inexplicably neglected character is Heathcote's Victoria, who begins the movie as the protagonist and eyes of the audience only to almost literally disappear from the narrative once Barnabas takes center stage. Their romantic subplot is completely shoe-horned in and woefully undeveloped.

 But this movie is, as expected, The Johnny Depp Show where everyone else is just a guest star. Both Depp and Burton show a degree of restraint here (well, for them at least), finding the pathos in Barnabas' plight even as they have fun with the fish out of water and anachronistic elements. Yes, there are times when Depp seems like Captain Jack Vampire, but there's more vigor and palpable interest from him in this character than there's been in any of his performances in the Pirates sequels. Depp keeps you interested in Barnabas even after it's become clear the movie is in a rush to nowhere during its homestretch.

Like the cult classic TV series it's based on, Tim Burton's Dark Shadows is oddly charming despite being a mess that never reaches its full potential. There are strange characters galore, almost none of whom ever develop into anything more than an image of an interesting character. Commercially, one can't help but suspect that Dark Shadows may prove a disappointment despite the usually powerhouse coupling of Depp and Burton. The film's not horrific enough to be scary, funny enough to truly be recommended as a comedy, and about as dark and Gothic as a Hot Topic t-shirt. And yet, like the original TV show, there's just something about Dark Shadows that keeps you watching to see how things play out. It's just all so damn … peculiar.


Source : http://movies.ign.com/articles/122/1223999p1.html