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By Sarah Lyall
Published: July 18, 2006
LONDON, July 17 The problem with most movie action heroes, said Alex Pettyfer, who plays a teenage secret agent in the forthcoming film "Stormbreaker" is that they are way too old.
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Liam Daniel/Weinstein Company
Alex Pettyfer with Sarah Bolger in the film Stormbreaker, scheduled to open this week in Britain.
Steve Forrest for The New York Times
Alex Pettyfer, left, as a teenage spy with Damian Lewis in Stormbreaker.
He said, like, Imagine your dad on an ironing board, snowboarding down a mountain with a bunch of guys chasing him, Mr. Pettyfer, 16, said recently, recounting a preproduction conversation with the screenwriter of Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz. The full horror of the image is meant to speak for itself: Mr. Pettyfers father is like 47, 48.
To open in Britain on Friday and in the United States in the early fall, Stormbreaker, based on Mr. Horowitzs phenomenally popular book of the same title, tells the story of Alex Rider, a 14-year-old orphan drawn against his will into the grown-up world of espionage, massive explosions and dangling from skyscrapers by one arm. Most of the adults are dishonest, incompetent or psychopathic.
Instead of a boring businessman, Alexs murdered uncle (Ewan Mc Gregor) turns out to have been an operative for MI6, the British secret intelligence service, cynically grooming his nephew for a career in spying. (That explains all those lessons in martial arts, rock climbing, white-water rafting, German, French and Japanese, Alex realizes.)
The MI6 officials who manipulate Alex into working for them are emotionally constipated weirdos led by Bill Nighy, camping it up with prosthetic balding and the look of a man who goes home to his coffin every night. The villains are a catalog of grotesques, particularly Mickey Rourke as a flamboyant billionaire who, because of his unpleasant experiences in boarding school, cooks up a scheme to gas British schoolchildren via computer.
Hes always been lied to, Mr. Pettyfer said, describing his characters alienation. Hes always thought, My uncles a top man, we have such a great relationship, but his uncle was manipulating him. In school, hes always been given Bs and Cs even though hes an A student. Thats when you become, not a loner, but alone.
Published by the Penguin Group, Mr. Horowitzs six-book Alex Rider Adventure series (two more are planned) is particularly popular with adolescent boys and has sold 10 million copies worldwide. The films makers and MGM and the Weinstein Company, the studios releasing it are trying to capitalize on that success, hewing carefully to Mr. Horowitzs concept of the character as a kind of teenage James Bond, but without Bonds enthusiasm for the job or propensity for black-tie missions.
Thwarting pesky adults at every turn, Alex uses his youth to fine advantage. When his uncles possessions are bundled into a mysterious van and taken away, he drives off in hot pursuit on a bicycle. When trapped inside a water tank, moments away from being devoured by a giant Portuguese man-of-war, Alex extricates himself with special metal-destroying ointment disguised as acne cream.
The way Alex gets himself out of these adult-induced predicaments is not by using a gun, not by knifing someone, but by using his brains, said Peter Samuelson, one of the films producers. He has certain undeniable athletic skills, but he also uses his resourcefulness, his bravery and his loyalty; these are values we all teach our kids.
What will children make of the violence in this film, which is rated PG but has a high count of explosions and several untimely, unpleasant deaths? The filmmakers say that such action is par for the course these days, and that they were careful to rein in the violence to ensure the family-friendly rating.
We didnt want it to be ultraviolent, but we did as much as we could, the director, Geoffrey Sax, said. So many young viewers today either play computer games, which are pretty violent, or have access to DVDs. We didnt want to make a film that looked like it was patronizing them.
Mr. Pettyfer is teen-idol hunky in person, taller and rangier now than in the film and with a shaved head in place of Alex Riders surfer-dude dirty-blond hair. At an interesting juncture in his career, he is teetering between being a normal teenager and a movie star.
He chose to play Alex Rider in Stormbreaker over the lead in an American film, "Eragon" partly because Eragon was being filmed in Budapest or someplace like that, the Czech Republic, he said, and he is afraid of flying.
At 8, Mr. Pettyfer was shopping with his mother in a Ralph Lauren store in New York when, he recalled, this weird-looking guy in the lift said to me, Youre quite good-looking; you should model for me. The man wrote his phone number down on a piece of paper, which Alexs mother promptly threw in the trash. It was not until later, after Mr. Pettyfer became a child model and appeared in a Ralph Lauren ad, that he realized that the man in the elevator had been Mr. Lauren.
Published: July 18, 2006
LONDON, July 17 The problem with most movie action heroes, said Alex Pettyfer, who plays a teenage secret agent in the forthcoming film "Stormbreaker" is that they are way too old.
javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.n...00,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')
Liam Daniel/Weinstein CompanyAlex Pettyfer with Sarah Bolger in the film Stormbreaker, scheduled to open this week in Britain.
Steve Forrest for The New York Times
Alex Pettyfer, left, as a teenage spy with Damian Lewis in Stormbreaker.
He said, like, Imagine your dad on an ironing board, snowboarding down a mountain with a bunch of guys chasing him, Mr. Pettyfer, 16, said recently, recounting a preproduction conversation with the screenwriter of Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz. The full horror of the image is meant to speak for itself: Mr. Pettyfers father is like 47, 48.
To open in Britain on Friday and in the United States in the early fall, Stormbreaker, based on Mr. Horowitzs phenomenally popular book of the same title, tells the story of Alex Rider, a 14-year-old orphan drawn against his will into the grown-up world of espionage, massive explosions and dangling from skyscrapers by one arm. Most of the adults are dishonest, incompetent or psychopathic.
Instead of a boring businessman, Alexs murdered uncle (Ewan Mc Gregor) turns out to have been an operative for MI6, the British secret intelligence service, cynically grooming his nephew for a career in spying. (That explains all those lessons in martial arts, rock climbing, white-water rafting, German, French and Japanese, Alex realizes.)
The MI6 officials who manipulate Alex into working for them are emotionally constipated weirdos led by Bill Nighy, camping it up with prosthetic balding and the look of a man who goes home to his coffin every night. The villains are a catalog of grotesques, particularly Mickey Rourke as a flamboyant billionaire who, because of his unpleasant experiences in boarding school, cooks up a scheme to gas British schoolchildren via computer.
Hes always been lied to, Mr. Pettyfer said, describing his characters alienation. Hes always thought, My uncles a top man, we have such a great relationship, but his uncle was manipulating him. In school, hes always been given Bs and Cs even though hes an A student. Thats when you become, not a loner, but alone.
Published by the Penguin Group, Mr. Horowitzs six-book Alex Rider Adventure series (two more are planned) is particularly popular with adolescent boys and has sold 10 million copies worldwide. The films makers and MGM and the Weinstein Company, the studios releasing it are trying to capitalize on that success, hewing carefully to Mr. Horowitzs concept of the character as a kind of teenage James Bond, but without Bonds enthusiasm for the job or propensity for black-tie missions.
Thwarting pesky adults at every turn, Alex uses his youth to fine advantage. When his uncles possessions are bundled into a mysterious van and taken away, he drives off in hot pursuit on a bicycle. When trapped inside a water tank, moments away from being devoured by a giant Portuguese man-of-war, Alex extricates himself with special metal-destroying ointment disguised as acne cream.
The way Alex gets himself out of these adult-induced predicaments is not by using a gun, not by knifing someone, but by using his brains, said Peter Samuelson, one of the films producers. He has certain undeniable athletic skills, but he also uses his resourcefulness, his bravery and his loyalty; these are values we all teach our kids.
What will children make of the violence in this film, which is rated PG but has a high count of explosions and several untimely, unpleasant deaths? The filmmakers say that such action is par for the course these days, and that they were careful to rein in the violence to ensure the family-friendly rating.
We didnt want it to be ultraviolent, but we did as much as we could, the director, Geoffrey Sax, said. So many young viewers today either play computer games, which are pretty violent, or have access to DVDs. We didnt want to make a film that looked like it was patronizing them.
Mr. Pettyfer is teen-idol hunky in person, taller and rangier now than in the film and with a shaved head in place of Alex Riders surfer-dude dirty-blond hair. At an interesting juncture in his career, he is teetering between being a normal teenager and a movie star.
He chose to play Alex Rider in Stormbreaker over the lead in an American film, "Eragon" partly because Eragon was being filmed in Budapest or someplace like that, the Czech Republic, he said, and he is afraid of flying.
At 8, Mr. Pettyfer was shopping with his mother in a Ralph Lauren store in New York when, he recalled, this weird-looking guy in the lift said to me, Youre quite good-looking; you should model for me. The man wrote his phone number down on a piece of paper, which Alexs mother promptly threw in the trash. It was not until later, after Mr. Pettyfer became a child model and appeared in a Ralph Lauren ad, that he realized that the man in the elevator had been Mr. Lauren.
