Chris Hemsworth ditches capes for cartoons in Transformers One

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The Marvel star is taking over the iconic role of Optimus Prime, in the new animated origin story. Report by Nelsonj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00Chris Hemsworth, hello sir.

00:02How are you doing?

00:03I'm very well mate, very well.

00:04Tell you what, just last night I was introducing my stepson to Ragnarok and I don't want to

00:09put words in his mouth but you are pushing Robert Downey Jr. for his favourite superhero

00:14at this moment in time.

00:16Almost, yeah.

00:17Congratulations, congratulations.

00:19Let's talk Transformers.

00:20Doing voice work for you, you must think, oh thank God, I don't have to do quite as many

00:24press-ups this morning.

00:25No stunts, no wigs, no make-up, no costume.

00:28But it does come with its own little nerves, I guess, of having less to kind of feed off

00:34while you're on set compared to a booth.

00:35How's the experience been for you?

00:36It is, yeah.

00:37You're kind of flying blind sometimes because you don't know how far to push it because

00:42you're not sure what the facial expressions are going to be.

00:45And also, it being a robot, my first question was like, do we have to really push it because

00:50how much kind of expression is going to be there and it was a balance and I was glad

00:54we had a few opportunities to perform certain scenes, then the animation, some of it would

01:00start to come to life and then we'd watch it and listen to what the other actors had

01:04done and so it was sort of a jigsaw puzzle of sorts.

01:08And yeah, it's its own challenges and different to a normal experience but a lot of fun.

01:12And when there's been so many Transformers movies and cartoons and stuff in the past,

01:15many of them voiced by the same man, the same iconic voice, that must give its own sort

01:20of trepidation of, do I do something completely different?

01:23Am I going to do a version of that or whatnot?

01:25Yeah, that was probably my biggest hesitation I had and the apprehension and nerves was

01:31based around what Peter Cullen had done so brilliantly and become so iconic for.

01:36I was thankful that the script didn't require or ask of me to mimic what he had done.

01:42It was about, this was a younger version of the character, this was before he was Optimus

01:46Prime, so there was sort of a spontaneity and enthusiasm and a sense of humour there

01:51that felt unique and different to what we heard before.

01:54And I listened to what Peter Cullen had done as a reference and as sort of an end point

01:58but 95% of the film, it's quite a different sort of vocal quality.

02:03The reason I wanted to play this character was a fair amount of nostalgia around having

02:08played with the action figures as a kid and watched the cartoons.

02:12I asked my kids what they thought and they said, yeah, absolutely.

02:15I hadn't done an animation film before and I love this script and I love this cast and

02:20Josh, the director, is brilliant.

02:22So, that's kind of, my decisions are made around am I going to have a good time, are

02:27there good people involved and the rest sort of let it flow from there.

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