The Rain is coming down on Ningin, part 3

Interviewing Director James McTeigue was a challenge of a different sort for me. I didn’t know much about him at first other than that he directed V for Vendetta, which so happens to be one of my favorite films. That’s the only movie that’s he directed prior to Ninja Assassin but he’s been part of the Wachowski’s team for a long time and he’s had a role in the making of Speed Racer as well. I’m starting to see a pattern of Wachowski, James McTeigue, and Rain. I hope those three combine to produce movies forever!

V for Vendetta was a great movie on many levels. I think it’s one of the best political action thriller movies of all time, if not the only one in that genre that I just created. The hero in that movie, a mysterious man named V, played by Hugo Weaving, is essentially a terrorist. When it came out, I wondered if it was going to do well at the US box office when, you know, the US has an issue with terrorists. Plot controversies aside, the movie had really awesome fighting sequences.

Going into the Ninja Assassin screening, I half-expected something similar to V for Vendetta – complex storylines and intense fighting but without the run-on alliterations. I was right about the latter two things, although it would’ve been funny to see Rain tackle run-on alliterations in English. In any case, McTeigue has two movies under his belt now. One stimulates thought and the other stimulates adrenaline. I didn’t get a chance to explore that more with the director, but we did get into more detail with some of the fighting scenes. So again, SPOILER ALERT!!!

Hoc: What was the driving force for making this film?

James McTeigue: I guess it was the love of the ninja genre. You know, I guess it became much maligned in the past few years. But it was always been cool. I grew up with TV series that had ninjas in it. There was Samurai Shintaro when I was a kid. There’s famination and a bunch of other stuff. I grew up with a lot of Japanese anime; Marine Boy and Gigantor and a whole bunch of stuff. And I thought it’ll be good to do a mix martial arts film and take it to another level. I did some work with Rain on Speed Racer and thought he’d be the perfect person to be in the vehicle. Yea, I just went about writing a script around the mythology or the folkloric-ness of ninjas and put them in a modern context.

Was it your idea to combine all the different forms of martial arts and create a new hybrid style?

Through discussion with Chad and David, the second unit directors, and the fight coordinators, we thought, there’s all these martial arts films that has done all this stuff. Let’s take it to another level. Let’s make it a mixed-martial arts film. Let’s put elements of papkor in it. It was like a confluence of ideas that takes it to the next level and push forward what’s already been done — change the weaponry up a bit. I mean I don’t think you’ve ever really seen someone use that blade and chain thing because it’s hardly used. You puts elements like that it in. Make the shurikens almost seem like machine guns fire.

Yea, they were faster than bullets, it was incredible.

When the Europol guys attacked the ninjas, at least they had some kind of recourse. In that way, they match up.

Well, ninjas can throw like five at a time. Another thing with combining the various martial art forms, you put into definition how ninjas move and the style of their motion. The final outcome looked incredible and I thought it was especially apparent in the scene where the bad ninjas were chasing Raizo on a German freeway and were hopping cars coming at them at full speed in one fluid motion. The style of motion was something that seems very un-human, more cat-like or beast-like.

I was interested in ninjas having a supernatural aspect and a horror aspect. So when they come out of the darkness, they’re always whispering (doing intangible ninja whisper sounds). To have them evolving out of darkness and then when they get into a street scene and running into traffic, get them to do crazy things like somersaulting over cars and being really stealthy and acting stealthily. Yea it was fun doing that stuff.

It’s funny you should say that because I just interviewed Rain prior to coming here and Rain said he got hurt or cut a few times.

(laughing) Did he?

All over his body, on his nose…

You know it’s hard when you have fighting of that intensity; we were using some of the best stunt guys in the world. But every now and then you can’t dodge everything. Don’t worry we were pretty careful with Rain.

Oh he looks fine, all in one piece.

But yea he really put the hard work in to be that physically adept and fighting a lot of the stunt guys, that’s him fighting the stunt guys as ninjas.

He told me that he’s relatively new to martial arts and picked it up just before the filming started. Can you tell us a little bit of what it’s like working with Rain?

Rain is a few things, he has incredible discipline, he has incredible drive, he has great screen presence, and a great physicality which comes from him singing and dancing. When we were teaching him the choreography he fast surpassed anything we would do. Ultimately we would make up more choreography to give to him and was like, “Hey do this,” and he would do it. “That’s great! Ok, do this.” In some ways he kept pushing the bar high. He could get to a level that no other person that we have trained with before could get to. And I’ve trained a lot of people from the Matrix films.

And V from Vendetta which also had great fight scenes.

Yea thanks! He was great to work with.

Would you say that Rain is the only person in the world that could fit that Ninja Assassin role?

I would love to say yes…he’ll be in the top 2%. I think more than anything, there hasn’t been an [new] Asian kind of Jet Li or Jackie Chan. Why not? There should be. We shouldn’t have waited so long. It’s great. Hopefully this will be the movie that crosses Rain over. He’s like the new God. (laughter on both sides) I was totally excited that he wanted to do it. Cause he is. I couldn’t hope for anyone better to tell you the truth.

Are you going to do future projects with him?

Hope so.

Do you have something in mind? Ninja Assassin 2?

(laughs) Yea. Maybe. We were just talking about a project recently that hasn’t come to fruition. But hopefully it will soon.

What was the biggest challenge of directing this film?

I think the biggest challenge is getting the balance of these action pieces and holding onto the thread of the story. Basically, you want a very simple story. This story was, Rain is in the ninja world. There’s a girl investing the ninja world. Both of them collided together in the macrocosm of the ninja world and are now on the run from all ninjas. You want a film that has decent narrative and characterizations but also has great set pieces. It’s just finding that balance which is one of the more difficult things to do sometimes.

I have to say that my favorite scene was in Mika’s bedroom and there were two ninjas fighting in the dark and the only light source was the tiny flashlight that Mika was frantically waving around looking for her potential killer.

Oh cool!

Yea it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen!

(smiling) Oh good! It was good. Funnily enough, it’s much harder to light something like that. In post-production you tweak it a little more. But it was a cool idea. She got a flashlight pointed straight at them, but like where did they go? Yea it was cool, I’m glad you like that.

How difficult was it to put that together?

Yea it was. Obviously there’s a digital component to that kind of scene. I wanted [Raizo] to be able to move really quick. I also thought it was interesting that she didn’t know who was the good ninja or a bad ninja. Which one was helping her out? Who was she shooting at?

Yea she has no idea what’s going at that point.

Then when the fighting dies down there’s these voices kinda echoing around the room and she doesn’t know where he is.

So was most of that scene finished in post-production with a lot of special effects added to it?

Oh no. In that particular scene, except for a couple instances of the chain and the blade, it was all done practical.

Wow, that’s amazing!

Aww thanks. Yea it was cool. The chain and the blade, that’s such a special weapon that you have to digitally put in later. So that the opponent always acted or responded correctly, Rain would train with a rope dart which is a martial arts weapon. He would swing it at a guy and you would replace it later with a chain.

That’s probably safer that way.

(laughing) Yea it’s better than someone getting their head cut off or something. That’s definitely safer.

I also know that you have a new technology in this movie where you see people get cut in half.

(laughing)

That’s just really cool! Do you foresee this being used in more American movies?

I don’t know you know. It’s nice that you reacted well to it. Other people, it’s not their cup of tea. I made it for guys like you. I hope you got into it.

That’s tame for Asian cinema.

Wow! That’s kinda my point. I was saying this morning to some people; I wanted this movie to be a confluence of Asian cinema and American cinema. Asian cinema is violent and it’s cool. And it looks good. I was trying to bring this anime game feel and have Asian cinema and American cinema cross-pollinate.

I can see why you would like working with the Wachowski brothers.

(laughing) Yea, right. They’re fun to work with those guys.

For all the high-flying acrobatics, advance choreography, and special affects, one of my favorite scenes was the one with Rain in the bathroom fighting that really big guy. It was Raizo’s first kill assignment and he didn’t really learn how to kill efficiently yet. The scene was more a brawl than an assassination and it was the most visceral, most-intense edge-of-your-seat moment in the movie for me.

I’m glad to hear you say that. It’s meant to be like a rite of passage. Up until that point, he’s had doubts about the family. They obviously put him in a situation where they know he’s completely over-matched. The [big] guy is not mucking around. You feel like he might defeat [Raizo]. [Raizo] is like throwing him in the urinal and smashing his head. He’s in the fight of his life. When [Raizo] goes on the rooftop, it’s like, ok, what is this? What’s going on? Are you guys my family? Are you my father? This is ridiculous. That bathroom was meant to be set apart from the others. You’re meant to feel the violence of the fight.

Was that your favorite scene in the movie or did you not have a favorite?

I like the love scene. (laughing) No, kidding. It was one of my favorites. There’s lots of other stuff in there that I like. I like the rooftop scene that’s kinda cool. Oh I like the tattoo parlor at the start, it kinda fun and sets the tone of the movie.

The rooftop was Rain’s favorite part according to him.

Yea that was a hard scene to shoot actually. You know it was inside and it was raining for days on end. But it was cool.

The Ninja Assassin movie comes out around the same time as Twilight, so if there was ever a fight between ninjas and vampires, who do you think would win?

(laughing) Depends on whether or not they’re vampires from the Twilight movie or not. Those are kinda tame. If it was the vampires from True Blood, it would be more of a fair fight. But definitely ninjas.

I’m not talking about the box office, I’m talking in a fight.

Oh I know you’re not talking the box office. That movie has like a 98% awareness or something.

Well, we’ll recommend to people to watch Ninja Assassin in the theaters because it’ll look better on the big screen and rent Twilight on DVD.

Yea that would be great if you can get those girls going to watch Twilight to watch Ninja Assassin.

We’ll do our best! Thanks again for this interview and I really do love your movie.

It was great talking to you and thanks for your kind words about the movie. Take care, thanks.

Afterwards, since I was the last non-video interview of the day, I was lucky enough to ride the elevator down with the director. Because there’s so many tall buildings in New York, we have speed elevators that can go up and down 50 floors in 10 secs or so. That’s just enough time for one more random question:

Since I have you here, do you think ninjas really exist, or can exist at all in today’s world?

(laughing) No I don’t think so. It would be too hard for them.

I’m a little surprised by that. What about Rain, could he be a secret ninja?

(laughing) Yea I suppose so. If anyone could, it would be him.

That’s all folks! It was an awesome three hours of my life. But that’s not all the Ninja Assassin coverage on Ningin. We have so many other things planned before the movie launches, including more interviews, so be sure to check Ningin often. And if we can’t convince you to watch Ninja Assassin over Twilight, then you should check out our newly launched Vampire lovers site, SwanDiary.com! Here at Mixr Media, we like to appease both the ninja lovers and vampires lovers =)