First Look: JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

Warner Bros. jumpstarts the buzz for “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” as it launches the film’s poster and trailer online (http://youtu.be/nGuoGIF183w).

In this follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the new 3D family adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” begins when young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson, reprising his role from the first film) receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist.  It’s a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret. 

            


  Unable to stop him from going, Sean’s new stepfather, Hank (Dwayne Johnson), joins the quest.  Together with a helicopter pilot (Luis Guzman) and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever.

          “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” also stars Michael Caine as Sean’s grandfather, Alexander Anderson, and Kristin Davis as Sean’s mom, Liz Anderson.

             
Opening in theatres beginning January 2012, “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” is a New Line Cinema presentation, will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Sucker Punch showing on March 25

Directed by Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen”), “Sucker Punch” takes us into the vivid imagination of Babydoll who has been locked away against her will, but has not lost her will to survive. Her dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary. “The words ‘baby doll’ make you immediately think of something really fragile,” Browning says, “but she’s not at all. That’s what was so cool to me about this character—she’s actually pretty tough, with an unexpected stoicism.” “Babydoll symbolizes that transition between thinking like a child and thinking like an adult, when your perception of the world changes,” Zack Snyder says. “She is a warrior, both delicate and strong at the same moment, and Emily really personified everything I had envisioned about Babydoll. She has this mystic, timeless, almost unquantifiable look and completely brought the character to life for me.” 

 Snyder, who conceived of the story and co-wrote, produced and directed the film, states, “`Sucker Punch' is a movie about escape, both literal and figurative. It shows how the mind can create an almost impenetrable barricade against the real world, and to what lengths we’re willing to go, what sacrifices we’re willing to make, to get out of a difficult situation.” The full story was years in the making. “I’d written a short story a while ago, which included a character named Babydoll,” Snyder says. “As I worked on it further, the idea evolved and expanded, and took on a life of its own.”

  
On the heels of “300” and “Watchmen,” the visually complex film is the result of an idea Snyder says “was an evolution for me. I’m inspired by fantasy art and magazines like Heavy Metal. It’s sort of a mash-up between those influences, as well as ‘Twilight Zone’ and the writings of Richard Bach.”

 For Vanessa Hudgens, who became famous overnight with Disney Channel's “High School Musical” five years ago, self-confidence is the key. "I used to be very shy," the actress, 22, says. "Hiding behind a character allowed me a certain freedom that I didn't have." Her roles in two upcoming films reflect her growth. Hudgens stars as the street-smart Blondie, an action heroine trapped in a mental asylum in Zack Snyder's epic action fantasy “Sucker Punch” opening worldwide (including the Philippines) on March 25. And on September, she can be seen opposite Dwayne Johnson and Josh Hutcherson in the 3D adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” the sequel to 2008's “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” 

 As for making the transition from her Disney image, the actress speaks from experience. "I think it's about surrounding yourself with the right people," she says. "A lot of people may get lost in the lights and glamour of it all. It should be about the work first and everything else later." 

Ironically, though the story has virtually no boundaries of time and space, it is set in one of the most confining places imaginable—a forbidding Vermont mental institution in the 1960s.

 

Nonetheless, the film transports the viewer along with Babydoll as her fantasies take her to otherworldly places at once ancient and futuristic and everywhere in between. She and her fellow warriors, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie and Amber, battle everything from gargantuan samurai beasts to reanimated zombie soldiers to fire-breathing dragons. At the girls’ disposal: their wits, an arsenal of deadly hardware, and their willingness to work together to survive. It would seem that there are no limits to Babydoll’s imagination as she falls down a rabbit hole of her own making.

 Opening across the Philippines beginning March 25 in IMAX and regular theaters, “Sucker Punch” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.