Chris Pratt As The New Indy?
In this exclusive interview with our friends from VOICES FROM KRYPTON, Chris Pratt talks about the importance of the new JURASSIC PARK reboot, how he still is amazed at how big GUARDIANS was and the possibility of picking up the hat and whip to become the new Indiana Jones!
Transcript
They come from the past and the future. There is nothing wrong with your radio. Lesson. With the single most important interviews in Scott Talk-a-Mosis. The voices you are hearing are…
The voices from Krypton. I'm Ed Gross, this is Voices from Krypton, and he's Star-Lord, man. Actually he's Chris Pratt, the only play Star-Lord in the Guardians of the Galaxy films. But on June 12th audiences will see him as Animal Behaviorist Owen Grady in Jurassic World.
Chris is making no secret of the fact that he's excited about this fourth entry in the Jurassic series, particularly its theme which he feels holds a mirror up to modern day society. It is different, and it's been 22 years since the original movie, the events of Jurassic Park took place, and some of the things that are different. One of the main things that I think is different is we're exploring a different society now.
You know, thematically we're talking about a group of people, you know, a generation of people whose relationship to cutting edge, mind blowing science is different. Just different now. Like kids, your kids, you talk about your kids in their 20s, they have phones in their pockets that, you know, if they want to they can press a button and look at live images
from Mars where a Land Rover has landed and is driving around doing drilling samples, sending data back and they can, you know, look up symptoms for their sore toe online and then they can buy a t-shirt and then they can check in with their friends and then they can use that same contraption to videotape a video of themselves and send it to you which in two seconds will then appear onto the contraption you have in your pocket.
Like, this is mind blowing, but we don't, but it's not. It's kind of like what I'm talking about. Like, we're kind of numb to it. You know, we become, we have tech fatigue. We're a little numb to this amazing cutting edge stuff, fascinating stuff that's happening
around us. So that's the society we are in now. And this movie thematically deals with that because the park is open and there's 20,000 people a day, but they're just bored with dinosaurs. Like, dinosaurs are not enough because in this world they've been around for 20 years.
They're not new and exciting the way they would have been in 1994. They're just another thing that you can see if you want. And so Jurassic World, the executives of Jurassic World are dealing with the financial loss of a tenant falling off and they've introduced this newer, bigger, scarier thing to get the kids involved.
And of course that's what they're doing is they're meddling with nature now in a way to generate profit. And so it's a parable about, you know, the classic ethical tale of man meddling with natural order of things for his own entertainment, like the first ones. But this one has a new theme, which is like kind of shining a mirror at a society that's
a little disenfranchised with the point of the winter. As to his character of Owen Grady, the guy who in one of the coolest moments from the trailer is riding a motorcycle flanked by a pair of velociraptors. He offers up this view. You know, he's one of the people who's been on the island for a long time.
He's been working in a research facility on the outskirts of the island, working with the raptors and is basically not exactly thrilled with where the executives want his research to go. But at the same time, he's dependent upon their funding and their animals to do the work that he wants to do because there's no other opportunity in the world to do it.
And so he's on the cutting edge of some pretty interesting research, but also that is funded by an establishment that he secretly wants to rebel against. You know, he's quick and tough and he has fun. He's kind of, he's got a good relation. He's got an interesting cinematic relationship with Claire, Bryce Dallas Howard's character.
They're similar to like Bogart and Hepburn and African Queen or no, like a, you know, what Jule and I are, romancing the stone, I mean, type of relationship. You know, it's like contentious sexual chemistry between two people, a ruffian and a more corporate executive type of, you know, pure kind of woman. And so you get to explore their relationship through the movie and that's the character
relationship that really, that really, and we get to explore through the course of this movie and he's a tough guy who rides a motorcycle. Chris was as surprised as anyone at the mega success of Guardians of the Galaxy and he has his own hopes for the 2017 sequel. I was very pleasantly surprised.
I mean, I'd heard from everyone in the press what a risk Guardians was, what a gamble it was. So I was secretly setting myself up for the movie to come out and just perform, you know, kind of only in a mediocre way. But when I came out and did so well, I was just very relieved.
But I wasn't surprised after seeing how good the movie was. I always knew that it had a good reach with Marvel, like that if it was really, really good, that it was going to be really successful. And once I saw the movie, I had a feeling that it was really, really good. I mean, it's hard to judge your own, you know, but I was like, I think that might be really,
really good and people are going to talk about it. So when it opened up and did so well, I was just really satisfied. I'm not exactly sure where Star Lord's going to, where Quill's going to go, but I'm hoping it stays in space. I hope it doesn't come back to Earth just yet.
I think I want to open up the universe even more. I want to open up the cosmos and see even more imaginative worlds and original worlds. And, you know, I'd like to just see more of Marvel cosmos and hopefully it doesn't end up like, you know, protecting, you know, Orlando. In a career that one would think couldn't get any more exciting, there's also those
rumors out there that Chris may inherit the Indiana Jones fedora and whip from Harrison Ford. While neither confirming nor denying those rumors, he nonetheless recognizes the responsibility of potentially taking on so iconic a character. It's sacred territory, that's for sure.
Just like Jurassic is to me. I watched those movies as a kid and they were, they were, they're a big part of my fabric and my makeup, so, you know, it would be, it would be thrilling, but at the same time, it's a bit, it's, there's a big responsibility there to not screw that up. So I don't think I would just blindly go into it with enthusiasm.
I think I would, I'd be pretty critical from the beginning and it would have to, it would have to be perfect in order to do it. And I think that's probably why it's taken so long for them to want to do another reboot after, you know, number four or to want to do another installment after number four because they're the sacred territory and the fans, they want to protect that and rightfully so
because it's really important. So I think it would be thrilling, but I'm kind of like the, I'm kind of like the attendance of the people who go visit Jurassic World, you know, I need to, I need to, it needs to be pretty goddamn perfect for me to get excited. A lot is happening in Chris's life and career of the past couple of years and one would
have to imagine that it's all been pretty mind blowing. Surprisingly, his reaction has been much more mellow than one would think. Like there are moments every once in a while where I stop, I take a breath, I feel gratitude and joy, I do a little victory dance, but I don't have that much time to do that because it's like, it's like being on a tight wire, you know what I mean?
You don't want to start pumping your fist when you get halfway across the Grand Canyon. Yeah. You got to fucking do what you're going to fall to your death. And so that's how I feel. I feel like, I just feel like it's a great view.
I'm really excited. It's, you know, it's a costume I'm capable of wearing and for the most part, there's a lot of work, work that needs to get done. And so I just look at it practically, like how are we going to get this work done? And you know, also like you don't want to be like, I remember, who was I talking to?
Maybe it was Amy, Polar, or somebody had just worked with it. I can't remember. It was someone on set, but they had worked with the director who kept looking at them with this look on their face. Like, can you believe this?
Can you believe what we're doing? Wow, can you believe this? And it's like, you better wipe that look off your face because you got people around you are hoping you know what you're doing, you know? Like, it's that you should have a moment where you feel excitement and, and, you know, enjoy
the wonder of it all. But if you don't put that away and start focusing on how you're going to make this work, you're going to have a chance to do that. Jurassic World reaches theaters on June 12. This is Ed Graz.
