Showing posts with label Joel Edgerton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joel Edgerton. Show all posts

Joel Edgerton is Conflicted Monarch and Brother to Moses in Staggering Epic "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

9:37:00 PM

From acclaimed director Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Prometheus) comes the epic adventure EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, the story of one man’s daring courage to take on the might of an empire.  Using state of the art visual effects and 3D immersion, Scott brings new life to the story of the defiant leader Moses (Christian Bale) as he rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses (Joel Edgerton), setting 400,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues.

Filmed in 3D, Scott’s film tells the story of Moses, abandoned by a desperate mother as a baby after the Egyptian rulers orders the murder of all boys born to slaves. He is found in the bulrushes by the Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in the royal household, where he grows up alongside Ramses, the future monarch.

As a man, Moses has a vision and turns his back on his privileged life and leads his people, the Israelites, from enslavement. Scott’s film will feature ground-breaking special effects, including the plagues - visited upon Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea.

According to the Book of Exodus in the Bible, God inflicted ten plagues on Egypt as punishment for not releasing the children of Israel from slavery – these included frogs, flies, boils, hail stones and locusts, all of which feature in Scott’s movie. It made for some very interesting days filming, says Edgerton.

The central relationship of “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is between Moses and Ramses, who grew up as brothers.  Ramses becomes Pharaoh and Moses his most trusted advisor and second in command.  But when Ramses learns that Moses is actually a Hebrew, he expels his “brother” into the desert and to an almost certain death.  “Ramses personifies how absolute power corrupts absolutely,” says Joel Edgerton who takes on the role. “Ramses starts to believe he actually is a god, which creates a wonderful dynamic between Moses and him.”

Ramses is the story’s principal antagonist, but Scott and Edgerton wanted to give the character nuances and complexities that transcend stock villainy.  “Ramses has a strong , brotherly connection to Moses, so he’s very conflicted when Moses is revealed to be a Hebrew.  He also loves his wife Nefertari, and his young son, so that gives him important emotional shadings,” says the director.

Scott first encountered Edgerton years earlier, while casting his Crusades epic, “Kingdom of Heaven.”  The actor was deemed too young for the role then, but Scott continued to follow Edgerton’s career, particularly his work in the acclaimed independent drama Animal Kingdom. “Joel has flair, and he’s athletic, brooding, intellectual and very warm as well. He transposed himself elegantly into the demeanor of an Ancient Egyptian, acknowledging the period, without it feeling like ‘period.’ Ramses is a bad guy, with good emotional parts to his character, so that you are not sure whether to hate him or not. Joel is also very physical, so he provides a real sense of action and fury when needed.”
               
Bale hails Edgerton’s “tremendous commitment to the role.  I felt he had one of the most difficult parts in the film.  Joel captures all the arrogance of someone with limitless power, and all the insecurities of someone desperately trying to hold onto his position.”
   
Edgerton relished the role, especially its complexities.  “The most fascinating villain is someone who, in their own movie, would be the hero,” he explains. “I always feel if you can understand the bad guy, you can cheer for the hero even more. So I wanted to find that balance between doing my job as the villain of the piece, but give him humanity.  Amidst all the epic scenes of warfare, the big conflict here is the battle of wills between Ramses and Moses.”

Edgerton admits that Ramses has a huge ego, as expected from someone brought up to believe he is a living god. “He is unreasonable and lacks empathy,” says the actor. “Ramses is a tyrant and a dictator, but that was part of the beliefs of the times.”


Joel Edgerton has been on some big – very big – films in the past but nothing has compared to Ridley Scott’s epic adventure Exodus: Gods & Kings.  “It’s definitely one of the biggest that I’ve ever been involved in. The scale of the sets, the amount of people around – the crew and the hundreds of extras we have on some days - and the epic scale of the story, is really staggering.”

“Exodus: Gods and Kings” opens December 5 nationwide from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros. in 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D.

Joel Edgerton Thrives in Villain Role in “The Great Gatsby”

3:42:00 PM

Australian actor Joel Edgerton (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Warrior”) stars as Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s (Carey Mulligan) husband, and therefore Jay Gatsby's (Leonardo DiCaprio) rival, in Baz Luhrmann's new big screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby.”

GreatGatsby_JEdgerton_03

“Tom is the bad guy, he’s a bully, he’s very destructive and he’s also super rich and entitled,” comments Joel Edgerton on his character. “It’s my job to present that, but it’s also my job to present Tom as a real person and not to judge him.

“I know from reading a lot about Fitzgerald that he kind of hated guys like Tom; he’s a guy who embodies the ultra-wealthy kind of characters of that era, and he is married to a woman who actually had a chance at love with someone who didn’t have that money. Instead, she chose Tom,” marvels Edgerton. “I’m fascinated by that. I understand that there’s a love there, but there’s also something deeper about the culture of money.”

“The Great Gatsby” follows would-be writer Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) as he leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in the spring of 1922, an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz, bootleg kings, and sky-rocketing stocks. Chasing his own American Dream, Nick lands next door to a mysterious, party-giving millionaire, Jay Gatsby, and across the bay from his cousin, Daisy, and her philandering, blue-blooded husband, Tom Buchanan. It is thus that Nick is drawn into the captivating world of the super rich, their illusions, loves and deceits. As Nick bears witness, within and without of the world he inhabits, he pens a tale of impossible love, incorruptible dreams and high-octane tragedy, and holds a mirror to our own modern times and struggles.

Despite Daisy’s unhappiness, co-star Carey Mulligan points out that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to her relationship with Tom. “Daisy and Tom have such a great dynamic. When they walk into a room, they know they are the most powerful people there because of their wealth and status,” she says. “There is a reason they are together and a reason that they were, at one point, really in love. So, that’s what we had fun playing with. I think it’s really easy to make them an unhappy couple, but they’re not necessarily.”

Luhrmann found the part of Tom difficult to cast. “Honestly, all sorts of actors wanted to play that role, but finding exactly the right quality was really hard,” he says. “Joel is a talented young Aussie guy, and he was coming in to read for Tom Buchanan, but I cannot say that I thought at the time, ‘Well, that’ll be a slam-dunk.’ But from the moment Joel walked in until the moment he left, he was Tom Buchanan.”

Edgerton was so immersed in his character that he continued using his upper-class American accent on set, long after the cameras stopped rolling. Luhrmann recalls, “I forgot what Joel Edgerton—the guy who has the Aussie accent that I know well—sounded like, and I really think it would be very hard to find anyone who won’t see the Tom Buchanan that is on the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s `The Great Gatsby' in the interpretation that Joel found, because he’s boorish and you love to hate him. But he has his own kind of moral universe. And to that he is faithful. As Nick says, ‘I couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified.’ It’s both complex and entertaining.”

“Fitzgerald said Tom Buchanan was one of the best characters he ever created,” adds producer Doug Wick. “Joel owns it all. He owns the bigotry, he owns the energy, and he makes him multi-dimensional. He did a brilliant interpretation.”

Opening across the Philippines on May 17 in Digital 3D and regular format, “The Great Gatsby” will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

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