Each time I sit down with Sam Worthington, I am struck by just how resolutely unpolished he is, and how refreshing that can be.
No matter how many press junkets and interviews he does, I get the feeling no one is sanding any rough edges off of Sam Worthington any time soon. He doesn’t have that filter that is so carefully trained into most movie stars, and he doesn’t seem terribly political in terms of what he will or won’t say.
As a result, I’ve always enjoyed talking to him. If you do get a reaction out of him, it’s genuine. If you want to talk ’80s metal bands with him, you’ll get him to talk all afternoon, and you’ll see what passion looks like. But he’ll be equally frank and critical if you want to talk about his own movies.
For example, as we sat down last week to discuss his new film “Man On A Ledge,” I wanted to ask him about returning to play a character in a sequel, something he just did for the first time, and something that he’s going to do soon (relatively speaking, considering the “Avatar” sequels aren’t going to arrive until at least 2016) when he returns to Pandora for James Cameron.
When we started to talk about “Clash Of The Titans,” Worthington lit up… and not in a good way. When I hear a guy talk like this about what went wrong and what he hopes to accomplish in a sequel, it gives me hope that self-awareness is going to result in a better film the second time around.
The trailer sells the spectacle, and the biggest problems in the first film had nothing to do with the special effects or the action, but more with the poor storytelling and wafer-thin characters. It certainly sounds like Worthington had the same issues with the film that viewers did, and I’m happy to give him a chance to prove that he can do it with a second shot at the same material.
We’ll have more of that interview with Worthington soon, and “Man On A Ledge” arrives in theaters January 27, 2012.