Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Troy), the new Poseidon stars Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas and Emmy Rossum as the ragtag group fighting their way out of the destroyed cruise ship.
Wolfgang Petersen Explains His Fascination with Water: Poseidon is Petersen’s third movie involving boats and water (the other two being Das Boot and The Perfect Storm). So what is it that draws him to ocean-based films? “I love water,” answered Petersen. “Very simple. I grew up in Hamburg in the north of Germany. I love water. I have enormous respect for water. Sometimes [I was] really afraid of water when I was a kid. Also witnessed that water, when it really gets angry, is an unbelievable force of destruction - probably the most scary. More than fire and earthquakes and all that kind of stuff.
As a storyteller, a filmmaker, later on I knew about the enormous potential of water as threat and as your friend. We all know this beautiful thing of being in the water and everything is soothing and wonderful. The colors are great or its your worse enemy. So for storytelling purposes, it’s very dramatic.
My other obsession is I want to watch people in a confined space where they cannot run away and just see how they react to incredibly dramatic situations. Again, that’s great drama. It’s very clear now for me if you have somebody on the water and maybe the drama of these people inside a thing. If they are confronted [by] the danger of water, then you have the highest possible drama that you can imagine.
All of a sudden this submarine drama came and I said, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s perfect for that.’ They are really trapped inside, 45 people, and it’s a big thing. It’s war and maybe you can tell more about war with 45 people stuck in a submarine in the water and being underwater, above water, and going through storm in the water and depth charges in the water and everything. Then finally always, always, always, water is the real bad guy. Not so much the depth charges, the water coming when all of a sudden the hulls break in the boat and the water comes in. The real danger for the submarines is if they go too deep water comes and the water pressure goes [claps hands together] and they’re gone. They are like a stamp. It doesn’t get more dramatic than that.
Then after that you’ve got Perfect Storm. I figured, ‘Oh my God, we can do similar things on a completely different thing with fishermen.’ Now came the idea of Poseidon now with regular people on a big ship and still a claustrophobic situation where nobody can run again. It’s upside-down. They are stuck, but they are not professionals. They are human beings. I thought that was a great idea to now see it in this day and age, with so many disasters we are now living through and going through and are shocked by. You know, 9/11 and tsunami, Katrina, and all that. I think a disaster film that truly, really goes away from the old movie and tries to make it as realistic as possible, is a nail biter in the sense of you feel and smell the reality of how a disaster really [feels].”
Petersen Confirms There Won't Be a Longer Director’s Cut of Poseidon: “No. It’s a short film because I said to the studio from the very beginning this would be a short film. My films were always more on the long side. This would be a short film for one special reason. After the first 15 minutes when the boat goes, the boat is not only upside-down sitting there like in the old film it’s sinking. It’s slowly sinking which means we don’t know exactly how much time we have. We might have an hour, we might have 90 minutes, we might have two hours before rescue comes or before the ship is gone. So there is an urgency throughout the whole movie of, ‘You better get out of here because rescue might not come that quick and the boat might go quick.’
I had [decided]…to make it fast and to make it short, and also to make it so intense. I had reactions from people on the verge of leaving the theater because they got so claustrophobic and so hyper-ventilating in scenes about drowning and drowning themselves, all that kind of stuff and going through the A/C vent and other things. If I make it 100 minutes all together, I think that’s all they can really take.
Don’t forget the film is coming out in IMAX. The whole thing will be in IMAX. I think this will be the most intense thing an audience can have, and I think the length is perfect for that. Don’t make it too long.”
