Kit Harington, Ben Barnes and Jeff Bridges on ‘Seventh Son’ and Fantasy Films

Seventh Son was well represented during the San Diego Comic-Con, with actors Kit Harington (Jon Snow in Game of Thrones), Ben Barnes (best known for playing Prince Caspian), Jeff Bridges, and Antje Traue making the trek to the annual gathering of comic book/movie/TV fans and pop culture geeks. Legendary Pictures also brought director Sergey Bodrov to the Con to talk about what fans can expect from this fantasy film.

The Plot:

In a time long past, an evil is about to be unleashed that will reignite the war between the forces of the supernatural and humankind once more. Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges) is a knight who had imprisoned the malevolently powerful witch, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), centuries ago. But she has escaped and is seeking vengeance. Summoning her followers of every incarnation, Mother Malkin is preparing to unleash her terrible wrath on an unsuspecting world. Only one thing stands in her way: Master Gregory.

In a deadly reunion, Gregory comes face to face with the evil he always feared would someday return. He has only until the next full moon to do what usually takes years: train his new apprentice, Tom Ward (Ben Barnes) to fight a dark magic unlike any other. Man’s only hope lies in the seventh son of a seventh son.

Seventh Son Press Conference:

What was the appeal of Seventh Son?

Jeff Bridges: “There is a wonderful children’s book series and the first one is The Spook’s Apprentice, written by Joseph Delaney. I’m a big fan of myth and mythology and I saw this as a chance to make a modern-day myth. It also talks about good and evil. My idea is that good and evil are really different sides of the same coin.

I ran across a quote that really set me off. I thought, ‘If we can accomplish in turning people onto this idea, this would be something I’d like to be involved with.’ It’s from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the quote is, ‘If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But, the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?’ That rang true for me.

I think that’s something that is evident in the world that we live in today, and certainly in the past. It’s something that’s a work in progress for us human beings. As an artist, I see it as our task to help bring that dream of peace about.”

Kit Harington: “I wanted to do this film because I got to work exclusively with Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore, which is something I really wanted to do when I found out the casting. It was a really exciting, action-packed role. It was a lot of fun.”

Ben Barnes: “I’ve done some work in the fantasy realm before, but I think a lot of films are presented as an allegory of good versus evil and they have very interesting subtexts. Not all too often are the characters really explored, to the point of what dilemmas they’re going through in their approach to what they’re doing. I think that whole concept of good versus evil, and are you evil if you’re attempting to kill or murder something that you believe to be evil, are dilemmas that these characters are struggling with, particularly my character, as an apprentice.

He’s somebody who’s new to it but knows that he’s meant for something more in this world. How exactly that’s going to play out is something that he doesn’t know. The idea of fate and destiny is painted on top of that, as well. There are a lot of interesting things, thematically.

And Jeff has been one of my heroes since I was very young. He is even more so now, since working with him.

I met Sergei in Los Angeles. We were sitting, looking out at the ocean and talking about all sorts of interesting things. He just presented me with this. I had managed to read one of the books at that point, and now I’ve read six of them. They are pretty interesting, special books. They’re quite microcosmic and particular to the north of England, but they have these incredible themes that run through them and these great characters. So, we’ve borrowed things from the book.

We’re not pretending to make an absolute, complete visual dramatization of the books. It’s something new and exciting. But, I knew that Sergei’s international vision for it, with ghosts and warlocks and creatures that turn into other creatures and witches, would be a really cool idea, and that the tone of it was going to be something very different from what any of us had done before. I’m excited.”

Did anything, in particular, you took away from the book help your performance?

Ben Barnes: “When the trailer came out, I was so excited to see it. I saw it on YouTube the first day it came out, and the first couple of comments below it – but then you try to avoid all of that stuff. I don’t go anywhere near reviews, ever, but it’s hard, even when you’re looking at a video because they pop up. They’re going, ‘Oh, no, they’ve ruined it! He’s supposed to be 13!’ And you’re thinking, ‘They’re so down on me already and I haven’t even done anything.’ But, sometimes these things have to be a visualization. Other people’s imaginations come into play and you have to reserve your judgment until you see the whole thing, in context and in its entirety. I think it’s going to be pretty cool.”

What surprised you the most about working on this film?

Jeff Bridges: “I remember working in Alberta we had such a wild time. We were on top of the world, on this mountain. There’s a place mentioned in the script and Sergei found it. No CGI was required. There it was. And we went there and shot, and we had a wild time being helicoptered in there. It was really terrific. It was an unusual experience.”

Ben Barnes: “There was the day of the lightning strikes. We were having to run and hide under the trees, but the trees were only two feet tall and it was raining. Every five minutes they had these mountain guides who were like, ‘Everyone under the trees!’ So 200 people went to hide under these two-foot shrubberies, looking up like, ‘Please don’t kill me, wrath of the weather!'”

Jeff Bridges: “And then there was an announcement that I’m not sure whether it turned out to be fiction or not, that said, ‘Be careful and don’t have any food out because there is a grizzly bear, just over the river.'”

Ben Barnes: “It was that same day. That was a terrifying day.”

Kit Harington: “I have worked in this genre before, but what was interesting about this project was working in a different category within this genre. People seem to forget there are different categories, sometimes. They group everything into fantasy or sci-fi, but within those genres there are other things. This was different from anything I had done. It was a wonderful mixture between dark and light. It has the elements of the children’s novel in it, and it also has the elements of what horrible acts can be done by humans. I thought that was a really interesting mix to play with.”

Jeff, what was your favorite day on the set?

Jeff Bridges: “The one that I recounted, up on the top of that mountain, was pretty wild. It was the last day and everything came to a peak. As I often do on my movies, I was taking my pictures. I don’t have that book together yet, but you’ll see those shots and you’ll see the top of the mountain I’m talking about. Another time was very unusual when I got terribly sick.

I was down for 10 days with a terrible bronchial infection, and they put me on steroids. If you’ve never been on steroids, they’re very bizarre. I didn’t know what to expect, but it gives you all kinds of bizarre emotions. And you can’t just stop taking them. You have to taper them down. So, I worked for a few days on these steroids and that was pretty amazing. I was manic. It was very crazy!”

If you could take home any one object from the world of this movie, what would it be?

Kit Harington: “I’ve got it! I stole it from the set. It’s this beautiful little necklace that I wore. Our wonderful costume designer styled it after something she had. It was a little pouch with a little Bible in there that was from China or something. It was all very compact. She made a few of them to be worn, and I ran off with it at the end of the movie.”