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FILM Q&A
One-on-one with Uwe Boll
The notorious director answers questions about his latest production 'In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale' and why his films are so often the target of brutal criticism
By Sarah Gopaul | Posted on January 11, 2008
 Last October, before the premiere of his latest film, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, I had a chance to sit down and talk with notorious German director and producer Uwe Boll. In addition to discussing In the Name of the King (which opens today and was filmed in Vancouver and other locations in B.C.), we talked about why he bases his films on video games, and his response to the widespread, brutal criticism his films often receive.
What can you tell us about In the Name of the King from your side of it?
It was for me, as a director, it was by far my biggest movie and it was the most money – over 60 million dollars – and, well, it was also the most relaxed shoot I ever had. If you have five cameras, you have a great team. I had Tony Ching from House of Flying Draggers and Hero for the fight choreography. It was all the great actors, also. It was over three and a half months long. Basically the story is: you have the normal farmer, his hometown gets robbed, his farm gets robbed, his son gets killed, his wife gets stolen and he wants his wife back and he recognizes after a while he will not get his wife back if he is not saving the whole kingdom basically. This is the story.
So it’s one of those classic “hero because he has to be” stories.
Exactly, it’s a classic story and I think the difference in this movie to similar movies is that you have a lot of great characters around him and all the characters have their own agenda. You have Burt Reynolds as the king, Matthew Lillard as his nephew, Ron Perlman as his neighbor, Claire Forlani as his wife, Leelee Sobieski as the daughter of the good wizard, John Rhys-Davies as the good wizard, and Ray Liotta as the evil one. This is like a whole crowd of interesting people and you want to follow each character arch.
Did you find it difficult choosing which character to really pay a lot of attention to, or did you try to balance it out?
The theatrical version is more focused on Jason Statham against Ray Liotta… the DVD version will be 40 minutes longer and in that 40 minutes we spend more time with the side characters and supporting people basically.
Was there any character that it hurt to cut scenes from?
I thought I really liked the cut of the longer version. It’s kind of more epic, slower, where you spend more time with the people, with the landscape, with the locations. I think the strong thing in Lord of the Rings was to spend time and to relax also after the action. In the theatrical version now, let’s say it’s a fast movie. And on the other hand it’s tough to get a three-hour movie in the theatre, so we are better off with that shorter version and I think we have everything in the shorter version, all the big epic things. The big special effects are in the shorter version and we lost basically whole set-up scenes and the aftermath scenes.
You already mentioned some of the names that are in the film. What was it like working with such an established, star-studded cast?
It was, first of all, impressive if you sit on set near certain stars or the big scenes almost everybody’s in. On the other hand, I think the stars were all very easy to work with and one of the big reasons for it I think is because of our other stars. It’s kind of like everybody has more discipline if more name actors are in the movie. There was nobody who came late to set, they had no star attitude, no perks, everybody got the same trailer, and everybody got basically no extras. And because it was an adventure movie, we shot a lot of time out in nature, in the Rocky Mountains, and everywhere so it would be a bad movie for a star who needs a private cook or something.
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