So much of the movie is about being connected in today’s modern world, would each of you would be willing to share and characterize your own relationship with technology.
Robert Luketic: It’s terrifying. I was in Las Vegas yesterday and lost my iPhone, and I didn’t have a pass code on it. This is a whole thing going on right now. Don’t worry, you guys are all protected [laughs]. Honestly, I’ve been an early adopter of technology since I was a kid. It’s always been part of my life, it’s always been there, and this movie really sorta spoke to me, and something I’ve been sorta thinking about since Twitter, and since Facebook. All this data gathering, data finding, when I read the script I was like ‘oh my god, this is so timely.’ We didn’t realize how timely this was, given what’s happening with Snowden and all this other information. I realize now how powerful it is, and it’s interesting.
Amber Heard: I don’t think we’ve caught up with regards to mechanisms to protect information at the same rate as our ability to kinda gather that information. We haven’t caught up with a way to protect it and harbor it, nearly as quickly as we’ve learned to gather it, and I think that’s interesting. It could not be more relevant today in what’s going on today. The whole idea of personal privacy and liberty, and how that conflicts, or can conflict with a more omnipotent system of gathering, and what that says about individual liberties and how that’s confronted with protection.
Robert Luketic: Because everything you’ve ever written in an e-mail is now in a database. Just uncovered this morning, if you read this morning’s news.
Amber Heard: That’s exactly what’s so scary about it. That our personal liberties are always going to be in some conflict with our necessity to be protected. And those two serve as enemies to one another, as we see right now, especially now with Snowden. It’s an interesting question because it’s relevant right now.
Harrison Ford: One of the things that the film talks about which I think is to me the most interesting, because I’d always presumed there was no such thing as privacy, is that if you offer people something, or create a perceived need or value in a service that you offer, people will forget about, or they will want that newest wrinkle in technology, and will give up freedoms, their personal privacy, in order to have it. And that’s the nature of marketing, for this kind of device, or devices.
Liam Hemsworth: What I think is interesting too is that one of the biggest threats these days is cyber warfare, and how dangerous that is. They talk about terrorist groups now hacking into power plants and how all these things that are now run by computers, and everything’s connected. We’re all so connected by the internet and all this stuff, and all of a sudden you don’t have these things in place to protect it. We’ve advanced that technology so quickly that we haven’t thought about all the other repercussions of it.
For those of you who had a chance to work with Gary Oldman, I was wondering what it was like to work with him and especially Harrison, your face-off with him was pretty extraordinary, can you talk a little about that?
Harrison Ford: I worked with him, I guess it was about 20 years ago on Air Force One, and when I knew he was attached to this film, it was a big part of the draw. I enjoyed very much working with him in Air Force One, and I was looking forward to the opportunity to work with him again. He’s fun. You never know what’s he’s going to do – what’s he’s going to look like, who he’s going to be, and I enjoyed it.
Liam Hemsworth: It was great to sit there and watch Harrison and Gary go head-to-head, particularly in those last few scenes when we were in the room together. In the scene, my character watches, and in real life I watched, and it was just very exciting. You don’t know what either of them is going to do.
Robert Luketic: When these guys got together in that face-off scene, there was literally this tension in the air. It was very palpable, it was fantastic. Highlight of my career – so far.
You used the line a couple times in the film – ‘competition breeds innovation’ – I’m wondering for you how that has maybe applied to your own work, to your career. For Liam, this is a decidedly very adult, different role for you – What did you love about getting to dig your toes into this guy?
Liam Hemsworth: This is a completely different film than anything I’ve done before. I think what I initially related to was this kid has something that everyone can relate to. He’s trying to climb the ladder. He started at the bottom, and he’s been at the bottom for a while, and he’s kind of fed up with being there, and he’s kinda at the point where he’s got big ideas and big hopes and they don’t get him anywhere really, and all of a sudden he’s caught in a position where he’s being told to do something that he wouldn’t normally do. He starts going down this road and he starts buying into the whole life, and the power, and he gets a taste for it. And, I’ve always liked thrillers like this, and I try to find characters that I think are going to challenge me. This is definitely one of those.
Harrison Ford: The character’s presumptions about competition creating innovation I think are appropriate to the story that we’re telling and the world that he lives in. But you asked me something about acting, as well. Acting’s not about competing, acting’s about co-operating. Acting is about collaboration, it’s about utility, your usefulness. Your capacity to add to the work that has already been done and will be done. You’re just part of a team. So I never feel competitive about acting.
In the beginning of the film, Liam’s character says something about how it used to be that if you worked hard, you became successful. This isn’t true in real life anymore either, so how do each of you see future generations of young kids coming up wanting to be successful. How has the value of hard work changed?
Robert Luketic: For me there very much is a generation that as we say in the movie, was promised a lot of things. If you went to college, you’re going to get a great job. As we’ve seen with the economic down turn, and the greed of certain sectors of the corporate world, it’s not so. So we had to make sorta the lost generation. There is a youth, there is a movement I think, that wants very much to offer a hope and promise, and I think the moral in our story is not to go to the dark side, because ultimately that kind of cutthroat ruthlessness is not going to service you on a spiritual level. Don’t do what those have done before you.
Liam Hemsworth: In the end, Adam realizes that he has to get out with his wit, and with his intelligence, but also he has to do the right thing – and regardless of the consequences. I think you would like to hope that you work hard at something, you get somewhere. I guess that’s not always the case – but sticking to good morals and good values would be the key to it.
Lucas Till: Hard work always win, in the end. I’d kinda like to throw a reference about the movie, but I haven’t actually seen it, so I’m at a loss. But yeah, I’ll reiterate that hard work always wins.
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