Fantasia weighed on Baruchel on Sorcerer’s Apprentice set

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This article was published 10/07/2010 (5600 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LOS ANGELES — Probably a large percentage of the juvenile demographic intent on seeing the action fantasy The Sorcerer’s Apprentice may be unaware that this is one slick, visual effects-filled summer movie with a remarkable lineage.

What they will see is fast, glossy Jerry Bruckheimer production in which an ancient wizard named Bathazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) enlists young physics student Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) in a magical war with rival wizard Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina) for the fate of humankind.

Directed by Jon Turteltaub (who made two National Treasure movies with Cage), the film’s most immediate ancestor is the animated Disney short of the same name within Disney’s landmark animated feature Fantasia (1940), which included would-be sorcerer Micky Mouse accidentally causing a tsunami of damage to a wizard’s lair in an attempt to clean up the place.

Go back further. The music for that cartoon (echoed in the new movie) was written at the turn of the 20th century by French composer Paul Dukas. The music was inspired by a poem written 100 years earlier still by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe titled Der Zauberlehrling about a "hexenmeister" getting his arrogant assistant out of trouble.

But it is the Disney cartoon that weighed on Jay Baruchel’s mind when it came to shoot a scene that refers to the Fantasia episode.

"There’s a gravity to it that’s not lost on me," Baruchel, the 28-year-old Montreal native says at a press conference for the film.

"When we were shooting the famous Fantasia sequence … when the mops come to life, it’s like every day I came to work, I’m like: You really can’t mess this up, right?

"Worst case scenario: Every time someone saw the cartoon Fantasia, I would be irrevocably connected to it. ‘Remember that punk kid and how terrible that was?’

"It sounds cheesy but I felt the ghost of my grandparents kinda watching me. When you’re paying homage to one of the more iconic sequences in film history, right up there with people making out on the beach in From Here to Eternity, it’s a big one, you know?"

On making a big visual effects movie:

"It was the first movie all of us had done, I think, with this many special effects," says Jon Turteltaub. But Nicolas Cage, for his parts, says he loves working with visual effects.

"Acting is imagination," he says. "I actually enjoy working with green screen, because I can imagine all that stuff happening, and I really cut my teeth on a movie I made called Adaptation where I had to imagine four-page dialogue scenes with my twin brother, who was nothing more than a tennis ball … so I was really up for it."

"It’s acting, that’s what it’s all about."

On why Nicolas Cage makes a good Sorcerer:

"It was really important that this sorcerer be a daunting and intimidating figure," Turteltaub says. "We always feel safest, I think, around the most dangerous person who’s on your side, more than the nice good person who’s on your side. And Nick really is able to bring all that without losing that sensitivity and heart, and a sense of goodness, because that’s Nick."

On the magical events that got the movie made:

Cage says he and Turteltaub both attended the Beverly Hills High School drama department together as teens, and laughingly recalls how "we both auditioned for the lead in Our Town and he got the lead, he beat me out, and I got to play Constable Warren, who was two lines of dialogue. And he will never let me forget it.

"But what’s interesting about this is that when the idea was developed and created to do Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I wanted Jon to direct the movie. And there was a play happening at Beverly Hills High School, and my son was in it, and so there we were, in the old seats, and the old drama department in the theatre, watching this Inherit the Wind production, which was good as well. And then we’re talking about doing Sorcerer’s Apprentice together, so it came full circle. The whole movie has been like that, has had that magical quality."

On shooting "plasma bolts" from your hands:

"For me, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t practiced shooting energy out of my hands my entire life," says Baruchel. "It’s all Akira, or Street Fighter 2, or the end of Return of the Jedi. I’ve been groomed for this, you know."

Why it’s not in 3-D

In the wake of the blockbuster Avatar, even mediocre films such as Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender get a box office boost from 3-D. So why didn’t obvious 3-D contender The Sorcerer’s Apprentice go there?

"Are we allowed to be honest?" asks Turteltaub. "We went to Disney two and a half years ago and said this is a perfect 3-D movie, and they said: ‘No, that’s silly, nobody’s doing 3-D, and it’s a waste of money.’ True story."

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca