INTERVIEW: This teenage girl takes on giants to escape the difficulties of reality
Photo: Madison Wolfe plays Barbara Thorson in I Kill Giants, an RLJE Films release. Photo courtesy of RLJE Films / Provided by KWPR with permission.
Academy Award winner Anders Walter is the man behind the new fantasy film I Kill Giants, starring Madison Wolfe as Barbara Thorson, a teenage girl who leaves reality for a bit to fight giants in a magical world of her own creation. The story is based on the successful graphic novel by Joe Kelly, who also produced the film, and JM Ken Niimura.
I Kill Giants, which is now in theaters, on demand and on digital HD, follows Barbara as she faces her fears and tries to overcome the many obstacles in her troubled life. Helping her along the way is her school counselor, played by Zoe Saldana.
For Walter, who won an Oscar for his short film Helium, the character of Barbara is what hooked him to the story.
“When I got to read the screenplay, it was definitely the character of Barbara who really made me fall in love with the screenplay and the story in general,” the filmmaker said in a recent phone interview. “I just thought she was an extremely unique and original character. I hadn’t read a screenplay with such a complex character thinking about the fact that she’s only 13. It really impressed me, and I really went on her journey. And the screenplay had a huge emotional impact on me.”
Walter comes from a background as an illustrator. He has worked on graphic novels and storyboards, so adapting I Kill Giants for the big screen was definitely in his wheelhouse.
“I was very much into the graphic novel scene, but I’m from Denmark,” he said. “I’ve lived my whole life in Copenhagen, and I Kill Giants is not a big title in Denmark. So when the screenplay got to me, I didn’t realize it was based on any source material. It didn’t say anywhere, so I just read the screenplay and fell in love with the story. At first, I thought it was an original screenplay. Then I got to talk to my agent, and they told me the background. Immediately I ran down to my local comic book store and got myself a copy and then read the graphic novel, and then I was totally hooked. I wanted to do the film even more.”
After securing the job and meeting Kelly, Walter felt honored that the acclaimed graphic novel was entrusted to his care. It was now his challenge to take the visuals of the printed art and make them dazzle in cinematic form. That’s easier said than done.
“Is there a way to actually translate this so it feels very similar to the graphic novel,” he asked himself. “I figured I don’t think this will work for live action. I don’t think this expressive style will help to convey the level of emotions I wanted to convey in the film with real actors, so then I put the graphic novel aside. And [I started] a whole new process inventing your own language and your own visual approach to the live action version, and then for quite some time on purpose I didn’t really look into the graphic novel. I really had to kind of find a way to my own style and trust my own instinct in doing so.”
Working with Wolfe was a special experience for Walter. The young actor has had experience in TV and film with roles in The Conjuring and True Detective, and Walter was impressed by her ability to humanize the Barbara role.
“To me, she brings everything, at least everything in terms what I think is important for a young girl who has to carry a whole feature film on her shoulders,” he said. “Madison is a highly smart and clever little girl who understands the complexity of a girl like Barbara. You can’t only approach a character from an intellectual point of view. You also have to understand them I think on a pure gut level, and Madison did that. She had a very strong gut feeling on how to go from A to B and how to do an arc with Barbara that was quite impressive I must say. When she showed up on the set in Ireland, she really had great ideas about how to portray her and what would actually happen.”
Similar to how Wolfe had a gut reaction to the role of Barbara, Walter had a gut reaction to hiring Wolfe. This came after watching her audition tapes.
“I will say at least 60 or 70 percent of why you end up going with someone like Madison is because you have a reaction to her,” he said. “It’s just a gut feeling. You watch that casting tape, and you go, that’s it. When you watch 100 casting tapes with 100 different girls, it’s a gut feeling process. You feel it in your stomach or you don’t, and I have a certain DNA that makes me react to certain things that other people might not react to. That’s what makes us different and makes each of us directors or storytellers approach storytelling differently. With Madison, everytime I watched her casting tape — the first casting tape, the callback tapes and then later on the screen test — everytime she just hit me so hard in my stomach and in my heart. It wasn’t so much intellectual. It was based on the fact that she conveys certain feelings that hit me right in the gut. That’s how I think most people cast. It has to be by instinct.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
I Kill Giants is now playing in theaters, on demand and on digital HD. Click here for more information.
