Flame On: Fiery Words with Chris Evans
Chris Evans plays charismatic confirmed bachelor Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, in Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Reprising his role from the first film, he sat down to explain why comic books make poor seduction tools, who the Silver Surfer might be and why La-La Land is like a really hard game of chess.
Childhood Dreams . . . Teenage Nightmares
It’s fun being a superhero. It’s every little kid’s dream. But as a kid, I didn’t read a lot of comic books. I didn’t watch a lot of TV. I was outside, getting dirty, putting frogs in girls’ hair and sh*t like that. Comics aren’t so good [for flirting] especially when you’re 14, 15. That’s when it’s a problem.
The Tao of Torch
Johnny Storm is very self-involved. Everyone says "cocky" and "arrogant," but I think he’s very present. I think he loves life. He loves to laugh and have a good time. He’s very unaware of his own actions, which is probably a great way to live, if he wasn’t so insensitive. I think he’s just very much in the moment. I think that’s why he doesn’t dwell in the past or stress about the future.
Research Is Tough When Mr. Fantastic Is Faster Than You
When I went to Vancouver [to shoot Fantastic Four], I went to the local comic book store and I was like, "Do you have any Fantastic Four comic books?" And they were like, "No, actually, this guy came in the other day, said he was playing Mr. Fantastic in the movie and bought all of them." F*ck!
The Silver Surfer Eats Memory, Too
I must have explained the Silver Surfer 100 times so far, but today I just blanked. It’s tricky because they don’t really explain it in the movie, and most of these comics have four or five different series, and each of them has a different origin tale. But we skew him as an alien [who works for] Galactus, a entity who derives energy from eating planets. We do our best to stop him. And Earth is OK. Everybody claps.
Hollywood Chess
Blockbusters are just stepping stones. It’s chess, you know — I’m just doing this now so I can do something else later. And what I really want to do — it sounds so funny, but it’s true — is direct. I love movies . . . . I’m a bit of a control freak. I’d love to be the quarterback on a film, and things like these movies will enable that. I like contained space, real-time, small casts, heavy dialogue. I want to take a play and make it into a film. Hurly Burly and Closer were great films that made such good character pieces. I like going to the movies and thinking something, feeling something. I think of a movie as a way of changing someone’s whole outlook on life.
