Tom Hanks: MSN Interview

Robert Langdon becomes a romantic lead in this book. Is that element carried into the film?
Actually, if there’s any romance, it is hidden deeply behind their desire to go stop a murder. There’s not a lot of time for ‘let’s pause for romance’. Because this was Dan Brown’s first pass – he created Langdon with “Angels & Demons” – he had a more time to spin out who he was. By the time he got to The Da Vinci Code he was all business all the time. And now, because this is the second movie, the second story of Langdon, we didn’t have time to explore the romantic notions that might exist between a very healthy and robust Robert Langdon and then a very healthy and attractive Vittoria Vetra. I like to assume that at the end of the movie they retire to perhaps a cup of espresso or maybe a glass of wine at the Hassler Hill Hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps.

 

How is your mental image of CERN different to the reality and would you like to star in a film about a black hole devouring the planet?
Yes, I’d like to play the planet, but not the black hole. You know, when you first drive up, it looks like there’s a bank over there and a gasworks over here. But the accelerator downstairs - well, that’s just the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It’s not unlike when you go to NASA in Cape Canaveral and Cape Kennedy and you just see a bunch of what looks like bad office buildings and weeds. But when you walk inside you see The Orbiter, the space craft, which is actually hooked up to the boosters and it’s all ready to go. That ends up being a very formidable human structure. You can’t help but look at these things and think that we’re powerful human beings. We are amazing entities if we can imagine this in the first place and then actually build it on top of it.

 

We know from the story and the trailer that we can expect a lot of action sequences…
A lot of running, a lot of fire - yeah, there is, but there are no fist fights. It’s not like Langdon grabs a machine gun in any scenes. He does actually shoot a gun, but only to break a window. That’s it. There’s a clock that’s running in this movie, not only the antimatter that might explode, but there’s also the papal election that is ongoing. And Robert Langdon has to stop this trail of murders before that election happens.

 

Angels & Demons Video Special

We now know that Dan Brown has scripted another Robert Langdon story “The Solomon Key”…
I might make a movie that’s called “The Solomon Key”, but I haven’t read it yet. And the way this works so far is, when we were finishing up “The Da Vinci Code” not knowing if it was going to work or not. We were discussing if it was possible to move this movie into second place in the story and whether or not the theme was going to be worthy of the scrutiny that goes along with making a movie out of it. Without reading the new book I have no idea. But Dan Brown is a pretty facile guy and I’ll buy and read that page-turner to see if it makes any sense.

 

Ron Howard has talked about using more artistic licence and being less reverential in this film. Do you think this is also true with your interpretation of the Robert Langdon character?
Well, because this is the second one we do have that opportunity. Langdon has this truth in his pocket that he did not have in the book. In the book this was the first time this all happened, so it’s irreverence to a degree. There’s a lot of extrapolation that goes on in this book. We don’t take a lot of liberties with it, but in order to adapt it to current common sense a lot of things just simply had to change.

 

Is there a chance that we can watch a movie directed by Tom Hanks with starring Ron Howard in the future?
I don’t think Ron wants to be an actor. And I’m not sure I want to be a director. It’s hard work. I’m not speaking for Ron here, instinctively I know how to approach a job as an actor. I don’t have to tell anybody about it, it’s all internal and I think those are my strengths, because that’s been my training. If I was to direct Ron Howard, I guarantee you, I would put him through a living hell every day. I would demand so much of him. We wouldn’t quit until he leaves the set crying. Weeping! Spent!

 

Do you think that A&D will help get kids and younger people interested in science?
I would say yes, but the bad thing here is that the science as depicted by Dan Brown says that you can take a little antimatter and blow up the skies over Rome and send down a shock wave that knocks people over. The reality is, well.. have you noticed how there's not any big security around CERN, because there’s nothing to steal, not even a secret? If somebody was going to come into CERN and try to walk away with what CERN has developed here, they would still need 450 Billion dollars to go back and build a light speed particle collider. That being said, if in the course of all of this we get to talk about what goes on here at CERN and realize that something great can come out of that – I think the power of movies is substantial. Don’t discount how cool a movie can make something mundane look.

 

Angels & Demons Video Special