To celebrate this release from Disney, SciFi Media Zone takes a look back at the making of the film.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice stars Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder, She’s Out of Your League) as average college student Dave Stutler, whose life changes forever when he encounters Cage (The Rock, National Treasure, Kick-Ass) as sorcerer Balthazar Blake. Dave is told that he is a descendant of the wizard Merlin and must become a sorcerer or the earth will be destroyed. Pressure much?
There may be lots of magic happening on screen, but most of it is generated by the chemistry of the film’s two leading men. “It’s really the heart of the movie,” offers director Jon Turtletaub, who has directed Cage in the National Treasure films. “The key of the movie is that relationship. Where they find each other and how they change each others' lives in the course of the film is what we deal with. There’s also a lot of humor and fun there, because that’s who those actors are and that’s how we wrote those characters.”
Mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer agrees. “They’re fantastic together,” he enthuses. “They both have a quirky sense of humor, they like the same things and that affection for each other shows up on screen.”
Without further adieu, we present the Sorcerer and his Apprentice (and check out the list of Blu-ray/DVD extras following the interviews)
NICOLAS CAGE
(BALTHAZAR BLAKE, THE SORCERER)
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: How do you view this character?
NICOLAS CAGE: He’s a very calm, very confident, relaxed magician in the true sense of the word, meaning he can use his imagination combined with his will power and he can create effects in the real world. My teacher was Merlin himself in 500 A.D. and I have to spend hundreds of years looking, combing the earth and he’s just exhausted from searching. Finally in modern day Manhattan walks in this boy named Dave Stutler, and he happens to wear the ring and the ring wraps its tail around his finger and I know that, after searching for 1,500 years, he’s the one.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: Is this kind of movie and different things you’ve done in the genre all wish-fulfillment for you?
NICOLAS CAGE: I think you know that I enjoy creating supernatural characters, recently more than in previous chapters of my career. I’ve become more and more interested in that sort of thing, because the possibilities are limitless. It’s about infinity and imagination and the abstract. You’re not tied to some sort of realistic context, whatever realism is. If you look at Next or Ghost Rider or City Of Angels or, now, Sorcerer’s Apprentice and then on to Season Of The Witch, clearly you’re starting to see a pattern of sorts. I’m trying to carve out my own little niche. I want to play these characters that have these kind of enchanted aspects to them.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: Is it then a challenge to take these enchanted characters and root them in some sort of reality?
NICOLAS CAGE: Yes. In Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I’m playing Balthazar Blake and I was actually very comfortable playing that character. A lot of people may think, “I’ve never seen him play a sorcerer or wizard before,” and that’s the challenge: they don’t know that about me, but I felt quite comfortable. I had more challenge going into Kick-Ass, because I was dealing with a character who was shooting his daughter in the chest [which had on a bullet proof vest]. I didn’t know how I was going to pull that off, but with Balthazar Blake I feel as though my whole life has been training for that in the sense that my life was mostly spent in the imagination. Here I am in the material world and all of that, but I grew up with two brothers who were older than me, so I was pretty much in the backyard on my own. A lot of kids thought I was strange, but I had my own thing going on. My dad built this wooden castle for me and I’d go in there and pretend I was an astronaut or a wizard or the Incredible Hulk or whatever I was in to. That’s where I got all of my work done as an actor, because that’s what it’s all about. It’s about the imagination. That’s why I say I think I’ve been preparing for this part all my life.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: Is this pure escapism or is there some weight to this? How do you view this film?
NICOLAS CAGE: I view it as entertainment first. I really believe this movie is exactly the sort of film that would be perfect for adults and their children. I want kids to look forward to seeing this movie with their dad and mom, and them going to the movies together. I think that’s the kind of entertainment that’s closest to my heart right now, because I feel like that’s the best way I can apply myself. But there is a lot going on in the movie. We’re dealing with Merlin himself in the beginning, we’re dealing with Morganians and these sorcerers that use selfish magic, they corrupt magic and use it for personal gain. Typical dictator stuff. But the Merlinians that Balthazar is a part of, they don’t want that. They want to use the magic to help all of mankind, not white or black or Asian, but everybody. And the way they go about it is in the shadows. You don’t see it happening. The idea is that this is all going on around us and we don’t know it. That’s pretty complex. That’s pretty deep stuff, so there are a lot of different levels the film operates on.
JAY BARUCHEL
(DAVE STUTLER, THE APPRENTICE)
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: What is it like to step into the world of Jerry Bruckheimer, blockbuster producer?
JAY BARUCHEL: It was never lost on me the scope of the movie and the size of it and what we were accomplishing on a day to day basis, what the movie was supposed to be and how epic it is. It’s pretty neat showing up to work and knowing that you’re working on one of the mid-summer blockbuster movies that, as a kid, I would eagerly anticipate all year round. I remember waiting for the summer preview issues of Fangoria or Starlog or Entertainment Weekly and just devour that stuff, so to show up every day and Know that I’m making one of those is pretty special. And the huge juxtaposition to all of the movies that I usually make in Canada which for the most part cost under $5 million Canadian, so it’s pretty crazy. I think it would have been far more daunting and stressful had I not made a movie called Tropic Thunder a couple of years ago. The scale of that movie is pretty massive as well. That was my introduction to blockbuster movies. But my feeling is bring ‘em on, the bigger the better!
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: What’s your feeling about this character and what’s his arc in this film?
JAY BARUCHEL: He’s a regular guy who thinks he knows what his priorities are, but has that all changed when he’s told that civilization as we know it will end unless he learns how to be a sorcerer. So in many ways he undergoes the classic Joseph Campbell hero’s journey. At the beginning of the movie, his biggest concern is finishing his project at university and trying to woo Theresa Palmer’s character. Then Nic comes and tells him he’s the next heir to the line of Merlin — this movie ties in a lot with Arthurian legend and I’m the next Merlin, or so he tells me. Basically it’s an arc that is more commonly seen in Japanese cartoons than American live action films, where a socially awkward guy, not Alpha Male looking, by the end of it turns into a superhero who is shooting energy out of his hands and killing monsters. That’s the gist of it. To me, it’s an anime movie.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: A lot of green screen in this?
JAY BARUCHEL: A lot of green screen and reacting to things that aren’t there. Two things about that. First, it’s humiliating, because it’s ridiculous what you’re doing. You can have no shame or dignity about it, but there are moments when you say, “I feel like an idiot.” I remember Nic and Monica Bellucci have this shoot out with the Alice Krige’s character at the end of the movie and we’re all just shooting energy out of our hands. I was, like, “You guys feel as silly as I do?” Because there’s no such thing as shooting plasma out of our hands, so it’s all of us just standing there, shaking our arms and groaning. It’s ridiculous. The other thing is it’s embrassing how easy it comes to me, because I’m just a chronic daydreamer and I have one of the world’s most active imaginations. So it didn’t take much preparation for me to picture anything. To me, it’s like play acting, getting to do cops and robbers and being a kid all over again.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: The connection between you two guys is so important in a film like this…
JAY BARUCHEL: If we don’t get on or at the very least have some sort of on screen connection or chemistry, the film won’t work. There are a bunch of tremendous actors in this film, but the movie is he and I, Sorcerer and Apprentice. We’re flies in each other’s ointments. We spent a great deal of time between takes just talking about stuff. We have a lot of interests in common so that when it came time to say, “Action,” he and I were like two friends spending time together on camera.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: The single most poignant question I can ask you in this interview is how much of an influence was Mickey Mouse?
JAY BARUCHEL: [laughs] He was an influence in that I really didn’t want to screw up, because the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence from Fantasia is so beloved and timeless and has meant so much to so many people for so many generations, that not only are we paying homage to that sequence in name, we are doing it in practice as well. We do our own 21st century version of that sequence. I felt a tremendous degree of responsibility to not screw up. What I’ve been saying is I didn’t want to be New Coke. I didn’t want people every time they see the Sorcerer’s Apprentice cartoon in Fantasia to think of my lanky ass messing it up for them. I just did not want to do that. I wanted to do the best I could, hopefully put a little bit of my own spin on it, but still give the people what they want.
BLU-RAY/DVD EXTRAS:
Go behind the scenes and on location to learn all about the making of The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Blu-Ray:
* Magic In The City
* The Science Of Sorcery
* Making Magic Real
* The Fashionable Drake Stone
* The Grimhold: An Evil Work Of Art
* The Encantus
* Wolves & Puppies
* The World’s Coolest Car
* 5 Deleted Scenes
* Outtakes
* And more!