ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One star Nolan North. The actor spoke relating to the various DC characters and how he goes about playing robot characters. The film is now available digitally and on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.
“Death is coming,” reads the movie’s synopsis. “Worse than death: oblivion. Not just for our Earth, but for everyone, everywhere, in every universe! Against this ultimate destruction, the mysterious Monitor has gathered the greatest team of Super Heroes ever assembled. But what can the combined might of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern and hundreds of Super Heroes from multiple Earths even do to save all of reality from an unstoppable antimatter Armageddon?!”
Tyler Treese: A three-part animated movie like this is pretty unprecedented, but if you’re going to do one, it’s probably Crisis on Infinite Earths because that’s one of the major DC stories. What was your reaction when you saw the whole scale of this project and it being the capstone of the Tomorrowverse?
Nolan North: Great question. Very rarely do you get presented with the idea of, “Hey, we’re kind of going to do a trilogy. We’re going to put this out there.” And to be honest with you, I didn’t know right away that that was the plan — maybe nobody told me because it’s like, “Hey, what if he stinks? We’ve got to replace him, and let’s not hurt his feelings.”
But to be part of something like this, something bigger, something that will continue … it’s humbling. I’ve done this for a long time now, and despite everything else, I do work in different mediums. I told people today how much I enjoy animation, how much I like to sit down, and there are movies that everybody says, “Hey, have you seen Saltburn? Have you seen this?” I’m like, “No, but have you seen Justice League?”
Sometimes they’re not the animated films that people think of because they’re not in theaters, they’re not the big, celebrity-heavy type of deal, for instance. With the DC Lego, where I got to be Superman and those, but not Superman on the other one. But these smaller-scale things are written so well; they’re so well-directed. We have such a great time with it. This one, in particular, feels like it’s our Lord of the Rings kind of deal.
It’s our Hobbit, it’s a big scale. With the on-camera side doing their own iteration and bringing the Justice League and the DC universe into more and more prominence every day, I’m just proud to be part of this and look forward to people seeing this, getting it on DVD or digitally — but I like a thing to take to the cons and have people sign. Just to be part of that and see how people gravitate toward it in the future is very, very exciting.
Amazo is a highlight of this first part. Obviously, there’s some post-production on your voice to make it more robotic, but when you’re actually recording it, are you being a bit more stilted in your performance and robotic in your delivery? What’s the balance there?
You know, it’s, it’s interesting. I rely on the directors to find that balance because if you do something too stilted and kind of robotic in your own voice, when it gets processed, it’s garbled. You can’t understand it. So sometimes it has to be … I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t remember where we placed it, but I do know that it wasn’t processed heavy. We found something, but it was more the delivery. That processing can be intelligible. Somewhat stilted, but then you don’t want it to be too “1950s robot,” like, “Does not compute” … unless you’re playing that for a humorous effect or nostalgic effect.
But, for that part, I rely on the people who know better than me. They’re just like, “No, do it like this, and we’ll take care of that.” I always record a backup when I’m recording in case they lose it on their end, but I’m fairly certain the final product doesn’t sound like what I have recorded somewhere. I’d like to see the scenes again. I’m waiting until the release.
What impressed me the most was just the arc that Amazo goes through. I thought he was just a generic villain, but he has this really nice arc and there are some really great scenes with older Barry later on. How is it, recording those scenes? He’s an android, but there are some emotional scenes there.
I remember there was a lot of conversation during those sessions about, “Well, he’s an android, so how are we dealing with emotion?” It’s always an interesting thing when you’re doing that, but for Amazo, it was that idea where you ask, is he the villain? And then he makes the conscious shift to change his ways. But the one thing we did do is, how do you take something that’s an Android and give it human emotion? It’s very similar to Star Trek with Spock. But he’s an actual being. I remember a conversation when we were recording going, “Well, okay, so if he’s an android, at what point do we find his conscience? Do we see raw emotion?”
We abandoned that idea. It’s not raw emotion, but he would be smart enough to be able to figure out what the right emotion should be at this moment. It may not be human emotion, but it got into this deep conversation of like, “Well, where would an emotion come from? Where does emotion come from with us?” Don’t say your heart because that actually pumps blood. And then everybody got metaphysical. We’re like, “All right, let’s get back to recording.” I think it’s really cool to see a character like that. I always love to play a character that goes through a shift that has a change of heart, rather than a one-dimensional character that goes through from the beginning of the script to the end to see somebody who evolves.
I think we, as viewers and as human beings, all evolve. We all change. We grow, we mature, whatever. To see that in a film, to see somebody have an arc to their story rather than just a straight through line … I think it’s something we can relate to. I think that’s what makes for a good film where you relate to the characters. You like that character because it’s making choices. It’s evolving. I told somebody earlier, I’m always drawn to characters that it can be a villain, but you feel for them. The worst thing about any film that I watch is when I don’t care about the characters.
What was the one I had on White Lotus … I don’t even know — I hope it’s not a Warner Brothers thing. Well, The White Lotus, I watched the whole season and I was like, “Yeah, it’s well done. Well-acted, but I didn’t really care about anybody deeply.” They all were kind of … I just didn’t care. Bringing it back around to this, you care about these characters. There’s not one character in this film you don’t really go, “Yeah, I get it.” It’s just so well-written. It’s well done. There’s a number of characters that you can identify with and care about, and that’s makes a good film to me.
