It’s Metallica as you’ve never seen them before with the theatrical release of the 3D feature film Metallica: Through the Never. Directed by Nimrod Antal (Predators, Vacancy), this concert film with a narrative story finds Dane DeHaan (the new Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2) playing a roadie on a mission. Coming to theaters on September 27, 2013, Metallica: Through the Never star DeHaan, director Antal, and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich sat down to discuss what audiences can expect from this R-rated music-filled action movie:

What was your interest in doing this type of film?

Lars Ulrich: “I think increasingly as we get into the fourth decade of our career, it’s just looking for things to do that are out of our comfort zone. I mean, it’s that simple – doing something that is just unique and otherworldly to us. We love making records and we love doing that grind, but we also know it so well that there’s just not a lot of sort of surprises. It’s like we know how to make records and we enjoy it, but increasingly just the last few years, when Lou Reed calls, we just can’t wait to do things out of our comfort zone. We just jump into these projects often not knowing where we’re going to land or how it’s going to go, and we say yes sometimes even before we’ve thought it through. That’s kind of how we are as people. That’s kind of how the dynamic of this band is.

A lot of people have this kind of idea that Metallica is this big multinational corporation that sits around in board rooms and crosses t’s and dots i’s. It’s just four guys that are trying to figure it all out and have as much fun as possible. We love to do stuff like this that’s kind of just out of our comfort zone. Then when we go back to music, then we’re kind of re-energized. Do you know what I mean? That’s kind of where we’re at right now. When this kind of came up again, a couple, two, three years ago, it was like, ‘Let’s f**king go.'”

Were you a Metallica fan before you worked on this film?

Nimrod Antal: “Yes, I was a Metallica fan. I remember buying the Justice album and a Justice cassette at a record store in Westwood. I always felt that having an opportunity to work with someone like them would be a pretty awesome experience, so when the phone call came through, and they asked – much like they had asked Dane – they said, ‘Hey, does a Metallica concert film interest you?’ I jumped at the opportunity. There were a few different reasons for it. One, being a fan of theirs, but also having an opportunity to do something that I hadn’t done before. That challenge was exciting. Then having met Lars and the band and having had conversations with them, I saw that, much like Lars had said, that they wanted to do something that they hadn’t done before.

It was kind of a creative endeavor that just seemed very pure. Having made a few American films, that’s not always the case. Sometimes you have release dates before you have scripts, and you have a business mentality dictating a tempo. In this case it was the pure want of doing something creative, and that was very refreshing and inspiring.

This was a return for me to do something that I had always loved, and that was just go crazy with it and have fun with it. Most importantly, it’s reflected in the movie. You can see the tangible kind of excitement and energy that we had and enthusiasm that we had going into it, and we were fortunate enough to do something that of everything I’ve made in the United States, this is hands-down the thing I’m most proud of.”

Can you talk a little bit about the collaboration?

Nimrod Antal: “For me, writing the story was kind of a three-tier thing. We had a general idea that had started with the seed of protest, and that was something that Metallica has already represented for me. They’ve always been f**k you music for me. Protest was at the heart of it. The day I pitched them the idea, interestingly enough, Time magazine picked the Man of the Year to be the protester, so that was a fascinating kind of coincidence. Then there was also a book that I’d read called The Alchemist, which structurally was something that I felt was appropriate for this story, and that just being the circular nature of the structure of it.

Then the most beautiful thing, and the thing that actually gave me weapons to work with, that gave me ammunition to use and that helped me and hopefully inspired Dane and the band, was meeting some of the guys that work for the band. One gentleman in particular, Dan Brown, who is the production manager. Dan is responsible for the physical [preparations] – he makes it happen physically. Having a conversation with him early on, one thing became immediately apparent to me and that was his passion for his job and the fact that he loves these guys. They don’t micromanage. They do trust. They do give you a lot of love. They give you enough rope to hang yourself with, certainly, and you want to try to avoid that. They give you a lot of freedom. As an artist, them being artists, I think that they understand that you have to kind of let someone fly. They gave that to us.

From that point forward, hearing that love that Dan Brown has for the band and seeing that this guy’s willing to really go bend over backwards to make it happen because he respects and loves them so much, that suddenly became a cardinal part of the story for me. I think that Dane and I were able to use that as ammunition.”

What’s your role in the film?

Dane DeHaan: “I play this guy named Trip. He’s a roadie for the band. He basically shows up at the beginning of the concert, really hoping that tonight he gets to watch. The concert starts and he gets sent on this errand to go get a bag. But for him, he loves the band so much he would die for the band. He lives for the band and he would die for the band. He gets sent on this crazy journey, and he pretty much has to go through hell and back to try to get the bag and bring it back before the concert’s over.”

Nimrod Antal: “Much like an athlete needs to leave it on the field, you’ve got to leave it all on the field. These guys do it every night when they’re up on stage, man, that energy and the passion that they bring – and the guys that all work for them do the same. They leave it all on the field.”

Dane DeHaan: “I mean, you see when the concert’s almost over and they’re ready to strike the stage, you see these dudes in the wings just ready to go and strike the scene. They’re just so ready! Then it goes, and they just run on. They’re striking it down and they love the band so much that they will do anything for them. The passion that they have is equal to the passion that the band has. It’s just amazing.”

Do you see that with your Metallica fans? Are you feeling that as they get older?

Lars Ulrich: “When you get older and you have kids, I have three of them, the main thing that happens, the soundbite is you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about others. When you get older, your eyes open up instead of just looking at your own needs so you sort of take in everything. When I think a lot about why we were doing in my twenties and probably halfway through my thirties what we were doing, it was just about what my needs were. More and more and more.

I think in the last ten years, especially probably since some kind of monster meltdown, there’s just a different sense of appreciation in this band. We love each other. We love what we do, and we really appreciate the fact that we are given the opportunity to share it with people and that there are so many people that it touches. It is a fine line, though, because we have to… I mean, it’s not something that we, speaking for myself, that I think about a lot. It really only comes up at interviews, because what you don’t want to do if you walk around with it all the time, I’m scared that it will affect where you’re going. It can play into your decision-making about what you’re doing.

These guys are saying that to try to keep things pure, you have to try to keep things as kind of free of a particular end place, a particular sort of finish, you know? You try to just think about just keeping that at bay, but obviously we are aware of it. When we are given the opportunity to travel all over the world and play to tons of people and sell records and meet the people, every show we play we meet thirty fans in a meet and greet, hear their stories.

We work very closely with the Make A Wish Foundation. Every show we meet kids who are unfortunate and sick. We do all this stuff. We do it sort of under the radar. We are obviously aware of it, but we’ve just got to have a fine line because ultimately the creative elements – the music and the other creative projects that we do – have to be for ourselves. If they’re not for ourselves, if they’re for other people, then they can maybe be altered, because well, I’m trying to make a record for you. I’m going to make the kind of record you want rather than the kind of record that I want. Then it gets hokey and phony and weird. We certainly, as you approach fifty years of living on this beautiful planet, your eyes do open up more and more, definitely.”

What was the process of structuring the set? Were you trying to thematically link his adventures with the songs that are being played?

Nimrod Antal: “Yes, they have elements within the concert that there’s things that go down during the concert. I think that we referred to it as the ghost in the machine at one point. Early on we started to discover that in order for the narrative to really function, that one does have to influence the other. Fortunately, I think the story is weird enough that we were able to marry the two so that certainly things that transpire within Dane, within Trip’s world, influence the concert and vice-versa.”

Why 3D?

Nimrod Antal: “For me personally, and I can’t speak about what the band’s decision was, I’m a big fan of good films. There are certain things within 3D that can enhance emotion, but I think a good film is a good film if it’s in 2D or 3D. The 3D of it all is just an enhancement. At the end of the day, the film’s life, the span of the film’s life, will primarily be 2D when twenty years from now people are watching it on DVD or Blu-rays or whatever that technology will be then, Yes, it was a fun, fun thing for us to take on, and I think that it does enhance the emotional experience of watching the film. It’s a stunning movie. I mean, it’s visually a gorgeous flick, so I think fans will have fun with it.”

Lars Ulrich: “For us it was really about depth, about what we try to do. Most films, and we try not to call this a concert film but a dramatic film set around a concert, but most music films, concert films, are really shot primarily from the audience’s perspective. What we wanted to do was to try to get the cameras and the audience up on stage with us. A large portion of the film is shot up on stage looking out, rather than from the audience looking in.

We’re trying to give you the experience of being up on stage with the band, rather than looking at the band. We figured that with 3D that would give it more a sense of depth. It’s not so much about, ‘Now I plunk my drums to get the camera and you go woo!’ It’s just more about depth and trying to sort of re-create for the film audience what it is that happens. Because it’s a 360 show we play in the round, so to try to give the audience that kind of experience of what it is that happens up on stage.”

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