MC: What was the most exciting thing to see on the screen?
KL: I liked seeing how the owls felt the flight. This is a very small detail, as you saw this movie is just visually stunning. When the birds are flying head on towards you, I loved the way the slight flutter, shiver of the wind through their facial expressions. That’s something I had not written about. I don’t know how I would have written about it. I said they felt a ripple of wind in their faces, but obviously a picture is work 1,000 words. That picture is worth 5,000 words!
Nyra (the partner of the main villain), in one scene one side of her face flinches a little. It’s almost like an interior wink of cynicism and contempt. There are things that I can’t do (as a writer). Although I said you can’t write interior monologue and get inside an owls head in a movie, they did it with this slight facial expressions.
The visual things constituted these surprises for me. It’s way beyond any 3D I’ve seen.
[youtube id =”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKzFjh6tw_Q”%5D
MC: The material was a little dark in the movies, but it’s the same in the books. How did you feel it translated?
KL: They’re not books for four-year-olds, and I think young kids now are much more sophisticated when I was growing up. So, I don’t think the books would have endured so long if they hadn’t been these shades of darkness in them.
I am thrilled with the end result. I’ve been reading some of the reviews online, and people are saying its dark, it’s not a kiddy film.
It’s not a kiddy film. The series was written for middle grade kids. We were staggered how many teenagers were reading this and grownups. The series grows darker as it goes on. Because they squashed three books into one film, it grows darker much more quickly so the darkness invades the film much sooner than a reader might encounter it in the book or at a faster pace, but its not unmitigated. I think it raises very serious questions about heroism and war and meaning and believing, and those are things worth looking at.
MC: And your kids? Did the like the movie?
KL: Now they’re 32 and 28! Oh yes they love it. They came with me up to LA (to the premiere). They were blown away. They too have been living theses books.
Lets see when I started this series I think my son was just in high school, and my daughter was in was in 9th or 8th grade so they’ve lived with this (story) a long time. They were just thrilled with it. And, of course were so excited when Zach Snyder was going to be the director. I – showing the generation gap – didn’t know who Zach Snyder was. They said, “Mom how do you not know him!?”
I think it’s a great movie and very well written. My daughter commented on this after we went for the premiere. She said, “I thought it was incredible how John nailed those characters so fast.” It was within seconds that we really started to identify the characters and their personality stood out, whether they were good or bad, he just nailed them so efficiently. I thought that was great, a great piece of writing.