Josh Lucas on Wolfgang Petersen’s Obsession with Water and Boats: “Wolfgang's interesting because I guess it's something he's learned, you know? He's very clear about the fact that he's learned how to use it and how to work with it. The more he learns and knows how to work with it, the more he wants to, because the challenge of it is so massive.
There's nothing as difficult as working with [water and fire]. Because you are, in a sense, trying to contain Mother Nature. Water and fire are completely uncontainable, even on a soundstage. There's moments where really Kurt was like, 'My hair's on fire!' Literally sparks had popped into his head and there's so much of that no matter what, and I think Wolfgang loves that. Wolfgang loves the fact that you're creating something where you're putting people inside of a situation that cannot be controlled as much as it can be. I think that becomes something for him every day that he's really enjoying that challenge, and enjoying putting people within that and trying to see how they would react. It comes from Das Boot obviously. Then each time I think he feels he's gotten better at it and better at understanding how to play with it. It's a treat for him, I think.”
Lucas’ Thoughts on Remaking a Well-Known Movie: “From the very beginning, I was incredibly skeptical. I felt like, 'Why remake a movie that people love?' And he was clear, and all of us were clear from the outset, that we did not want to remake that movie. I think, you look at them, they are radically different films. There are a couple homages to the original and that's about it. The structure's obviously the same, but Wolfgang was very clear in that he wanted to do a total reinvention. To me, I was like, 'All right. That's interesting.'
This was really a clear-cut choice for me to work with a film master. That's really it. And to experience what he then put us through, which was a radically challenging environment on a daily basis and trying to maintain, like you say, some sense of character within it without dialogue, which is almost a silent film in a way.”
Is it a sign of the times that we don't need the character development from the original? Lucas said, “That's a good question. Ask Kurt about this too, because we talked about this a lot. We said this will be an interesting movie to analyze, the difference between the original Poseidon Adventure and this Poseidon and to analyze it from the point of view of how movies have changed, and how culturally there's a shift too from really accepting the joyful cheesiness of that movie… If you really look at it, it's really what the strength of that movie is, the original, and what absolutely this movie basically strips away. Is that a reaction to the fact that we went through such horrible disasters? Is that a reaction [where] people can smell it like a rat and, as much as it's fun to watch, not find it truthful? That is what we then battled with the entire time, is trying to figure out how to make this movie honestly have a legitimacy to it, a sense of, 'This is what these people go through.'
Yes, it's a big fun ride. But truthfully, it's very, very tough, that situation. So I think that's an interesting question I don't know the answer to it. I think there's a clear-cut difference between the two films.”
Behind the Scenes of the Pool of Fire Stunt: “That's a real shot. That's a real shot, you know, and that was a shot I ridiculously trained for. I would really really go home from work... I mean, Jimmy Bennett and I, the little boy and I, we would go in the hot tub and really sit and go underwater and hold our breath with a stopwatch and be like, 'Who can go longer?' That became the work of this movie in some ways. I would actually go home, in a house I rented here, in the pool and swim laps underwater without breathing as long as I possibly could because I knew that Wolfgang wanted me to do that shot.
They lit that water on fire and the safety people told me, 'If you go up, we will knock you down and shove a regulator in your mouth before they'll be able to turn the fire off, because you cannot go up.' And that point, I'm standing there like, 'What am I doing?' And literally they lit it on fire and you're sitting and you just basically go under and - Boom! - you go and you cannot see anything. It's such a misconception. The water's so filled with debris and oxygen from the water cannons and all this stuff, your field of vision is about between two and five feet, which is one of the ways I got hurt. You can't see each other underwater and so you're smashing against each other and [it’s] just an extremely interesting thing. What it was for me at that point, I was like, 'This is the only time. You're never in your life going to do this again.'”
Lucas said the shot of him jumping into the pool of fire is one of the few stunts he did not do. “I did not jump. I think that is actually the only shot in the entire movie that I'm double. They wouldn't let me do it.”
