Karl Urban is set to star as Ghost in the upcoming action-adventure piece Pathfinder directed by Marcus Nispel who last brought audiences Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the good one from 2003, not the travesty of a prequel we saw last year.
Pathfinder tells the story of the clash of two cultures as we get a rare cinematic glimpse at the Norse Vikings as historical evidence shows they may have been the first to land on North American soil long before Christopher Columbus did in the late 1400s. “The Vikings actually had dealings in North America 500 years before Columbus,” Urban said. “The story of Pathfinder begins when a young boy is shipwrecked after one of the first Viking attacks on the Native Americans and he grows up as one of them and when the Vikings return he is compelled to fight against them.”
This young boy is played by Urban at an older age and when asked to describe the film he constantly told me a few simple words, “It’s an action adventure and it is very violent.”
Those words again popped up and with all the gritty horror films that have been released over the past few years you would have thought Pathfinder would have found a home, but the film has been pushed back countless times as it was originally supposed to hit theaters in 2006. When asked about the delays and whether or not it had to do with the violence or reshoots Urban said, “You know sometimes it is just a hard thing and some movies move forward a little bit faster than others. I think it has actually been released in Russia and Malaysia and has done quite well and I am anxious for it to get its release in North America.”
Given the storyline of Pathfinder it will be interesting to see a film centered on Vikings since I can’t remember the last time I ever saw a film that even had a Viking in it, but Urban warns us, “This is not a documentary,” he again references the violence and the mythology of the story but also says, “I think the Vikings have actually gotten a bad rep over the course of history and they even get a bad rep in our film.” He laughs at the idea because history has always told us how barbaric the Norsemen were, but Karl points out some of their customs and rituals which showed they had a culture just let everyone else.
When it comes to working with director Marcus Nispel, Urban credits a lot of the grit and edginess to him saying, “The film is actually based on a really simple story, a children’s story of sorts for 12-year-olds, and our film is just so gritty and violent it really changes it up a lot. We had Clancy Brown and Ralf Moeller playing the Vikings and they were great.”
After work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy as Eomer, a role as the baddie Vaako in The Chronicles of Riddick and then an unfortunate turn in Doom as John Grimm, a role that took a backseat to The Rock for some horrible reason, Urban hasn’t had a film that has hit United States movie screens for over a year.
“Bad guys are the greatest to play because they get to do and say the things that we never can, and I loved playing in The Bourne Supremacy,” he said. “They actually let me do a lot in that movie. I actually got to pull a 180 in the middle of Moscow for that car chase scene, it was great.”
However we won’t have to think three years back for much longer, 2007 will not only bring audiences Urban’s performance in Pathfinder, but he is also set to star in “Comanche Road,” a TV mini-series that will be seen on CBS later this year. “It’s a prequel to ‘Lonesome Dove’,” Urban tells us. “I always wanted to do a western and my agent told me there was no way, it was a dead genre, which I don’t agree with. So when this script came up they were like, ‘Well, yeah if you are going to do one this would be the one to do.’
“I just love horses and horse riding and the whole thing. It stars Steve Zahn as Gus McCrae and I star as Woodrow Call, the two characters played so well in ‘Lonesome Dove’ by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. It was written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry and it doesn’t get better than those two names.”
For those not sure where you might have heard the names Ossana and McMurtry before you are probably remembering they wrote the Oscar-winner Brokeback Mountain. “Lonesome Dove” was based on McMurtry’s novel.
When asked if there was anything else on his upcoming he slate he told me, “Yeah, there are a couple of things that are coming up but I can’t really say much because I shoot myself in the foot sometimes saying something and then they don’t happen, but yeah in the coming weeks expect some news.”
Pathfinder is a 20th Century Fox release and is currently slated for release on April 27. For more information on the film including stills and trailers click here.
