Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Vanessa Hudgens, and Josh Hutcherson recently sat down for a roundtable interview with reporters to discuss their new movie Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.
The 3D family adventure, which is a sequel to the 2008 hit Journey to the Center of the Earth, centers around Sean Anderson (Hutcherson) who receives a message from his long-lost grandfather Alexander Anderson (Michael Caine), who seems to have discovered a fabled Mysterious Island. Sean is determined to find the island but must take along his stepfather, Hank ( Johnson), who he resents. The only person willing to fly them to the Mysterious Island is Gabato (Luis Guzmán), a desperate helicopter pilot, and his strong-willed daughter Kailani (Hudgens). The four then embark on the journey of a lifetime on the beautiful, but dangerous island.
Journey 2, was filmed at Screen Gems Studio in Wilmington, NC, but they spent several weeks filming on location in Oahu, Hawaii, around the Waimea Valley and Kualoa Ranch.
During the roundtable interviews, the cast talked about filming in Hawaii and what impact it had on them and the movie.
Vanessa told reporters that some of the highlights of working in Oahu were the restaurants and the outdoor activities. “Morimoto’s we went to a lot, its amazing,” she said. “And just being out on the ocean, I love paddleboarding.”
Dwayne also talked about filming in Hawaii and how much it meant to him personally as a native to the state, and how much it added to Journey 2:
“There’s a texture where we shot,” Dwayne explained. “In those mountains, where Jurassic Park was shot, that you really can’t simulate on a soundstage. And there’s a scope that was out there too, just the vastness and the beauty of it out there. There’s just a great spirit -the Aloha Spirit that everyone talks about- that I’m always really proud of. And personally for me it was great to come back in this capacity. I was a kid [in Hawaii], 14 years old getting arrested, getting in trouble, and finally to be able to come back and bring a movie of tens and tens of millions of dollars.”
Vanessa agreed that the Hawaii filming locations added a certain magic to the movie:
“Hawaii was a large part on making everything real, to shoot such magical places,” she said. “Hawaii definitely has ’em. I mean we would go out to these valleys and I would show up to work and like almost be in tears by how moving and how stunning these places were so I definitely think it added that extra magical element.”
Of course, before they let him get away, reporters had to ask Josh about his next movie, The Hunger Games. Josh didn’t divulge too much information about the movie, but he did talk about why playing Peeta was so important to him:
“I had never read a role I felt like I connected with so much and that I felt like I was more right for in my life,” Josh told reporters. “For me Peeta has this really strong belief that no matter what circumstance you’re in, you have to maintain who you are as a person and stay true to yourself, and that’s like my biggest moral as a human being. As well as he has a very self deprecating sense of humor and he is good at communicating with people, and I just felt like his voice and his overall kind of existence was very much who I was.”
Journey 2 hits theaters on Feb. 10, 2012. You can check out the latest trailer above.
