Matthew Macfayden, Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson take on the roles of Athos, Aramis and Porthos while Logan Lerman joins them as D'Artangnan.
Macfayden, Lerman,Stevenson, Evans, Anderson, Orlando Bloom, Milla Jovovich, Freddie Fox, Gabriella Wilde and Jeremy Bolt gathered in London to talk about the movie.
- So when did you first become aware of the story of The Three Musketeers - was it the novel, the movies or even Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds?
Logan Lerman: I grew up with the movie, it was my father who introduced them to me, so I saw them at a very young age.
Ray Stevenson: I am just trying to think as I am not sure about the first time I came across the story it is just something that is embedded in some dark part of my history.
I did start reading the book, but like most books I didn’t finish because there weren’t enough pictures in it (laughs).
Luke Evans: I have to be honest it was Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds when I was a child - I still remember the theme tune ‘Muskehounds are always ready, helping everybody’ the things that stick in your mind are crazy.
So that was my first introduction but as I was growing up I was introduced to the true novel and then obviously we have seen quite a few movies over the years.
Matthew MacFayden: Yes the films - I think the first one I saw was not the seventies version but the 1995 version. I was told today that there is a Barbie Musketeers as well; our daughter has the colouring book, so I might have to check that one out.
Paul W.S Anderson: One of the first movies that my dad took me to see, that I remember, was the Richard Lester film. Then I read the book at school and chased kids around in the playground with a stick being a Musketeer.
Orlando Bloom: I remember seeing the movie with Oliver Reed and then the one with Kiefer Sutherland. It was also required reading at school as well.
Milla Jovovich: My mum forced me ’Read five chapters of The Three Musketeers and you get tall’ that’s how it worked in our house. Outside of that when my husband told me that he wanted to make The Three Musketeers my reaction was ‘Really?’ And then I thought ‘Yeah of anyone is going to reboot the Musketeers then it is going to be Paul.’
Freddie Fox: I think it was my dad who read it to me - and that is the only version that I ever known - my dad has a very good voice for sending me to sleep (laughs).
Gabriella Wilde: Mine was reading at school as well.
Jeremy Bolt: Mine was the movie with Oliver Reed and Raquel Welch, the emphasis being on Raquel Welch (laughs), I think it was an important moment for every young boy.
- Paul there was an interesting decision to be made about accents in this movie, because it is indeed a French story, so what sort of decision did you make on this?
Well it is obviously that it is something that we though a lot about with the idea that an Englishman was going to make a classic French novel in Germany and I had to decide what nationality to use because we would not be using French people.
I find it terrible distracting in movies when people try and do accents I must say, unless it’s a terribly serious movie and it is important say if it’s rooted in South Africa and have to do a South African accent, but in period movie nothing can be more distracting than doing accents.
We looked at Amadeus and this is a perfect example as Tom (Hulce) speaks with an American accent, because he is American, but one of the interesting things is he is from outside that area, he is an outsider from Vienna.
And we watched Amadeus quite a bit and learnt a lot from that with the way that the accents - there were lots of different accents but they tended to be grouped together; and that is what we did. The young feisty, energetic is always American and so we made Gascony America essentially so Logan spoke with his American accent - but we also has his mother and his father speak with an American accent as well.
When he travels to Paris and meets the more cultured people they all speak with an English accent of course (laughs) and anyone associated with evil tended to speak with a more Germanic accent - no stereotyping her whatsoever.
That was the general approach we didn’t want anything to extreme but to try and keep them unified in blocks. We also didn’t want it to be distracting because this is a popcorn movie and you are supposed to have fun and not be distracted.
We worked quite a bit with a voice coach to take out any sort of really modern references or words that may have a bump.
- Logan picking up that point you are surrounded by Brits on this movie was it a different type of set for you - did you get the sense of humour as well?
Yeah, yeah it was definitely a different kind of set because I was working with a bunch of classical British theatre actors I definitely felt a little bit under-prepared. But it wasn’t too uncomfortable.
- Milla did you do all of your own stunts? And when you sign on for a movie like this is doing your own stunts something that you always insist on?
I do 90% of my own stunts but with the corset and the 90lbs skirt me and my stunt double did take turns because neither one of us could survive it. But when you see my face on screen it is me.
- And to everyone else you are wearing these fabulous costumes so did that make the stunts and the sword fights more difficult?
Luke Evans: It was the boots - they have heels these boots.
Matthew Macfayden: It was the heels on the cobbled floor. Nobody told us about the cobbles.
Paul W.S. Anderson: One thing about doing a period piece is all the costumes and the Cardinal Guards, these guys are fighting so many of them, there were a lot of people wearing these boots and at the end of every day of shooting, we shot that fight scene for about a feet, there would literally be a hundred boot heels lying everywhere.
- Because the movie was shot in 3D does that change how you behave with a sword and how you move?
Ray Stevenson: It does in a sense because with 3D the camera can almost see around you so you can’t traditionally lay off for safety and move the camera position.
Everything has to be on point and everything has to be on target so the discipline of our training, and we had phenomenal training and it had to be of such a high standard.
But with that intensity and that focus meant that when we actually came to filming we were actually a lot more freer and be who we were meant to be trying to be and not worry about the fight because all that groundwork had been done. But it does add a heightened discipline to the sword work.
- Orlando we have seen you handle a sword on the big screen before so were you disappointed that you weren’t involved in any fight scenes this time around.
No it was quite nice to have the power of the British Empire behind me so I didn’t have to lift a sword.
- The movie was shot at the Babelsberg Studios had you shot there before and what was the experience like?
Paul W.S. Anderson: I had produced a movie Pandorum that had shot at Babelsberg so they were excellent studios and I knew all about them.
They had very big stages and we needed the big stages for the sets that we built - the movie was primarily, 70% location and 30% stage.
Obviously we used a lot of big historic locations which were fantastic - when you have Milla and Christoph (Waltz) walking down some of these huge walkways talking you can do that on location but when you need to start blowing things up, which you need to do on a movie, you have to do all that on stage. But we had to build them big so that the stage proportions would match visually the locations.
- I am very proud that I introduced my kids to The Three Musketeers with Dogtanian...
Luke Evans: Thank you.
- They have seen it on the stage and when they saw a poster for the movie they got very excited about it. But the film has been given a 12a rating which means kids can see it - I have seen the film so I can now take them knowing it is fine so what would you say to parents who might be a bit concerned?
Paul W.S. Anderson: I set out to make a family movie because this is the first film that I have made since I had a family and I was thinking about movies that my daughter might like to see in the future.
Milla Jovovich: She is four and she is allowed to see it.
Anderson: There is no blood in it, just a tiny bit on Mads Mikkelsen’s costume, there is no nudity and no bad language, just a couple of words. I think it just depends on how sensitive your kids because the only thing that it does have, even though it avoids all of those things, it has an intensity in the action scenes - if your kids are up for that then I would definitely say go for it.
Milla: Can I just say that the intensity in the action sequences really is just about the skill of the actors when doing these scenes - I would be more inspired as a child than freaked out by the intensity.
It’s not violence, it’s certainly tense, but it is beautiful and inspiring.
- Paul I was going to lead on from that the movie is quite dangerous in parts and there are some dramatic moments so how did you make it child friendly? And was it something when you went into it that you had in mind to make it available to a wider audience?
Definitely. It starts with something as simple as thinking about what you are going to see - are you going to see blood? I mean it is a little unrealistic as these guys decimate dozens of Cardinal Guards and you have all these bodies lying around and yet there is not one drop of blood.
But that was the intention as I really saw this movie as a big popcorn entertainment movie; it was the kind of movie that I had gone to seen when I was a kid and really enjoyed.
So a lot of my films have a lot of blood in them so I feel like I have got that out of my system so I am happy to make one without.
Luke Evans: It also meant that we got to leave much earlier in the evening because you didn’t have all the blood to take off.
Milla: Popcorn entertainment is what it is and that is great but this movie is so much more faithful to the books than so many movies that I have seen - for the first time in film history that D’Artagnan is playing by an eighteen year old, yes he is older now, but it is the first true life D’Artagnan.
It’s the first time that we are seeing young kids playing the parts that they should be playing as they are written in the book - when you see these kids playing the King and Queen and you see Christoph and M’Lady circling like sharks around Freddie and Juno; they are young and they are vulnerable.
Read the second part of the interview here.
The Three Musketeers is released 12th October.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Matthew Macfayden, Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson take on the roles of Athos, Aramis and Porthos while Logan Lerman joins them as D'Artangnan.
Macfayden, Lerman,Stevenson, Evans, Anderson, Orlando Bloom, Milla Jovovich, Freddie Fox, Gabriella Wilde and Jeremy Bolt gathered in London to talk about the movie.
- So when did you first become aware of the story of The Three Musketeers - was it the novel, the movies or even Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds?
Logan Lerman: I grew up with the movie, it was my father who introduced them to me, so I saw them at a very young age.
Ray Stevenson: I am just trying to think as I am not sure about the first time I came across the story it is just something that is embedded in some dark part of my history.
I did start reading the book, but like most books I didn’t finish because there weren’t enough pictures in it (laughs).
Luke Evans: I have to be honest it was Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds when I was a child - I still remember the theme tune ‘Muskehounds are always ready, helping everybody’ the things that stick in your mind are crazy.
So that was my first introduction but as I was growing up I was introduced to the true novel and then obviously we have seen quite a few movies over the years.
Matthew MacFayden: Yes the films - I think the first one I saw was not the seventies version but the 1995 version. I was told today that there is a Barbie Musketeers as well; our daughter has the colouring book, so I might have to check that one out.
Paul W.S Anderson: One of the first movies that my dad took me to see, that I remember, was the Richard Lester film. Then I read the book at school and chased kids around in the playground with a stick being a Musketeer.
Orlando Bloom: I remember seeing the movie with Oliver Reed and then the one with Kiefer Sutherland. It was also required reading at school as well.
Milla Jovovich: My mum forced me ’Read five chapters of The Three Musketeers and you get tall’ that’s how it worked in our house. Outside of that when my husband told me that he wanted to make The Three Musketeers my reaction was ‘Really?’ And then I thought ‘Yeah of anyone is going to reboot the Musketeers then it is going to be Paul.’
Freddie Fox: I think it was my dad who read it to me - and that is the only version that I ever known - my dad has a very good voice for sending me to sleep (laughs).
Gabriella Wilde: Mine was reading at school as well.
Jeremy Bolt: Mine was the movie with Oliver Reed and Raquel Welch, the emphasis being on Raquel Welch (laughs), I think it was an important moment for every young boy.
- Paul there was an interesting decision to be made about accents in this movie, because it is indeed a French story, so what sort of decision did you make on this?
Well it is obviously that it is something that we though a lot about with the idea that an Englishman was going to make a classic French novel in Germany and I had to decide what nationality to use because we would not be using French people.
I find it terrible distracting in movies when people try and do accents I must say, unless it’s a terribly serious movie and it is important say if it’s rooted in South Africa and have to do a South African accent, but in period movie nothing can be more distracting than doing accents.
We looked at Amadeus and this is a perfect example as Tom (Hulce) speaks with an American accent, because he is American, but one of the interesting things is he is from outside that area, he is an outsider from Vienna.
And we watched Amadeus quite a bit and learnt a lot from that with the way that the accents - there were lots of different accents but they tended to be grouped together; and that is what we did. The young feisty, energetic is always American and so we made Gascony America essentially so Logan spoke with his American accent - but we also has his mother and his father speak with an American accent as well.
When he travels to Paris and meets the more cultured people they all speak with an English accent of course (laughs) and anyone associated with evil tended to speak with a more Germanic accent - no stereotyping her whatsoever.
That was the general approach we didn’t want anything to extreme but to try and keep them unified in blocks. We also didn’t want it to be distracting because this is a popcorn movie and you are supposed to have fun and not be distracted.
We worked quite a bit with a voice coach to take out any sort of really modern references or words that may have a bump.
Tagged in The Three Musketeers Paul W.S. Anderson