Sharlto Copley On Why He Thinks Hardcore Henry Will Be a Cult Success on Home Video

Today sees the release of Hardcore Henry, a film in which Powers star Sharlto Copley plays...well, a bunch of roles.

If you didn't see it -- and you're not alone, it made about $15 million globally -- Hardcore Henry is a movie shot in the same way you'd see a first-person shooter video game. The main character is a mute amnesiac who finds himself caught up in a web of violence and intrigue, led mostly by a character named Jimmy who keeps appearing in a variety of different forms and fashions even when it appears he's been killed.

Ilya Naishuller brought in veteran character actor (and Powers star) Sharlto Copley to play the role(s) of Jimmy. Copley joined ComicBook.com to talk about the series in advance of today's Blu-ray and DVD release.

How did somebody pitch the high concept of your role to you -- the fact that you're just a never ending army of guys?

Well, it was actually one of the real reasons I wanted to do the film was when Ilya said to me, "I have an idea for doing multiple versions of the same guy, basically." They're different characters but they're the same guy. It's this crazy guy in a chair, his split personalities, and his opportunity to explore all of these different things.

As a character actor, it's kind of a dream job. It was a lot of fun. That was the most fun part of the job. Everything else was gruellingly challenging and difficult. It was really fun playing the characters.

You've often been a character actor, but now you're a leading man on Powers. Now you're going to do this bit where you're a character actor again but you're going to be nine different character actors doing six different archetypes in one film. There were some of these characters that were pretty broad and then there were some that were much more down to earth. Did you, at some point, kind of feel your head spinning and going like, "Is this all going to work? What's the tone of the movie?"

We had a very important tone conversation in the beginning where it went backwards and forwards several times. I think initially Ilya had a more serious form in his mind. Then as we sort of explored stuff and I would do tests and send them to him; we realized that the form shouldn't take itself too seriously.

It's video game fun. All the characters are in the tonal world of...it's not like serious, Oscar winning-style acting. It's all just fun. It's fun, it's the word I can use. Everything has got a heightened reality to it. That was the idea.

It was made, to my mind, for a very specific type of audience. I knew there would be a very specific ... That's what we had with the film. It's very divisive in terms of people that love it. I don't think I've ever done a film that so many people have tattooed onto their bodies. Every now and then Ilya came to me like, "A tattoo. Somebody else who has got some sort of Hardcore tattoo." It sort of blows my mind.

It's a very different movie. It was a great ... There's so few opportunities to try something really different, to be honest, in the business. I felt very fortunate to be able to just try something. That idea of, "Well, is it going to work," your question. At the budget we were working at, at what we were trying to do, there wasn't a big fear around that. It was very much, "Well, yes, it is going to work. It's going to be something completely unique and original." That's the objective. How people respond, you can never control that in a film. You just never know. To be able to work with someone who has a really different vision and you can offer something different doesn't come along often at all.

It's funny because the style of acting and the style of, I don't want to say filmmaking, the kind of movie that you made here is almost a little bit retro. It feels a little bit like '80s and '90s action movies where having fun was its own end. It was interesting seeing a movie where there was so much cutting-edge technology, had this really interesting concept of the first-person camera, but so much of it also felt like they could've made this 25 years ago if they thought of it.

Yeah, I think so. If someone had the desire to try and sort of put themselves on the line and do it, I guess. Obviously, you couldn't have made it 25 years ago because of the technology. It's only because of the GoPro cameras that allowed you to make the film in that way.

It's also very reminiscent, obviously, stylistically of video games that you play today. It has potentially retro formic elements, for sure. It also has much more current this generation video game elements that kids who are in their 20s have grown up with.

I'm 36 and when I was in high school I started to catch the beginnings of the first-person shooter craze. How is it being somebody who is over 30 and looking at this...

That was actually a very interesting sort of point between Ilya and I where I kept looking at it; and, as we were going, if there was any sort of point of contention, we had an amazing relationship throughout the filming, I was always trying to get him to slow down. I was like, "Dude, do we have to go this fast the whole way? I really feel like it could be a little bit of a slower pace." He'd test it and he's like, "I've tested it. I've played it with a whole bunch of my peers. Everyone thinks the pace is fine."

I think there definitely is a generational aspect to it. The best actual responses we've had from it, in general, are younger people or older people that are very young at heart and still very much in touch with video games and all those elements of pop culture. I found every time I watched the film, it got easier for me to watch.

It reminded me of MTV when they started doing music videos and cutting them really quickly. In the beginning everyone going like, "You can't watch this. You can't edit this fast. It's annoying and it doesn't..." Within a couple of months, people were used to, "Oh, well, this is what you do in music videos. You can cut this quickly." People sort of adjusted.

The first time I watched the film it was almost like, "Wow. Okay." I think processed like a fifth of this. Then you watch it again and eventually it's like, "Okay. Wow." I'm actually seeing all the details now. I'm actually processing quick enough to see little details like the guy gets blown up into the air and I'm watching his hands as he tries to wobble as he's falling down, which I completely missed the first three watches. I think stylistically, as well, it really pushes the envelope on the pacing.

What that sounds like to me, kind of reading between your lines, this is very much a film that's made for the audience that's going to digest it, without a ton of fear of critics and the like.

Yes. Going into it we knew that. I tried as much as I could to try and push for having the most amount of character and story that Ilya would accommodate. I really feel, having done this, I actually feel you can do narrative forms that are more traditionally character and story-based, not just action.

I think if you watch the first 10-minutes of this film, for example, when he's coming alive and stuff it actually does keep your attention, a very slow pace like that. It's quite intriguing. When characters are actually talking to the camera, it's quite engaging. If there was a complaint from people who didn't get it, as it were, it's generally to do with the relentless sort of pace of the action. The actual idea of first-person and acting to the camera and actually developing a relationship with the camera, I think there's little scenes in the film where you can see, wow, that could actually be possible. You could explore this in other genres.

The big question in my mind as I was like, "Well, he made his shorts. His music video, Bad Motherf---er." The question in my mind was, "Is this going to be a 90-minute music video or 90-minute action set-piece? How much character and story can we get in there?"

I think there is an incredible story. I love the idea of the guy who makes avatars of himself. He's really crazy and these avatars have different personalities. I think you could make a traditional film just on that one idea. I actually think there is an incredible concept in this film; but, for a lot of people, the action is ... For people who don't get it, as it were, the action is too distracting from that in a way.

There's actually a great story idea in here, if you made it as a traditional movie. Here is a very solid, very cool, different, within the genre kind of story.

I'll be perfectly honest with you. This was a movie that, when I saw the trailer, I was like, "That's a really cool idea, but the movie looks terrible." When I actually sat down and watched the film, I really enjoyed it; but a lot of that had to do with the fact that, like you're saying, there's a lot more going on than what the trailer gave you.

As someone who just sits from the outside and you're watching studios and you're watching these films go through their process of how they market them and how they release them and whatever.

It was quite interesting to me that in the screenings that we have done with audiences that, I suppose, were amenable to this genre; the midnight madness audience, the South by Southwest audience; people really vocally got crazily behind the film. It was probably, of film experiences that I've had people, people seemed to enjoy the movie more than any other film I've done, including watching District 9 with people. The actual vocal reaction.

I think, in a certain way, it's possible that some of those trailers alienated people or that because you didn't see enough character, because you didn't get enough sense of some of the finer aspects of the film watching experience. The film, when it opened in theaters, it didn't do well. It wasn't like people went and were telling their friends don't go. They just didn't go. I think exactly what you're saying, the experience that you had where people were like, "Ummm, I don't know," in a cinema.

I think for a lot of people ... I always said to Ilya, "Look," when we started I said, "the one thing I feel confident of .... I feel like, if you're 20 years old, and this film gets made, no matter what the story is or the characters or whatever; the sheer spectacle of this action that you're doing ... You can't be a 20 year old kid and ignore this film. You're going to watch it on your computer or you're at least going to watch pieces of it because there's nothing like it."

The question was and the challenge was would we get a theatrical release. Could we put this in theaters? Would people go? That was the question in my mind. I always felt like the film was going to find a home with people watching it on computers and on TVs at home. I think, in some ways, maybe that's where it should be because it's easier for people to digest, it's less assaulting on their senses. Ilya was telling me when it was ... There was a torrent version that got our for 2 or 3 days and it was, for those 3 days, the most torrented file in the world. He said he had very mixed feelings.

It feels like a very cult movie where I can see your character being something you're going to see people cosplaying at Comic-Con in 20 years.

I think so. That was the other thing we discussed, was that we had all the makings of a cult movie. I agree with you -- that's probably where it lands.

I think it's something that is very difficult by its sheer sort of audacity of filmmaking and so many different aspects of that character's style, technology, violence, whatever. It can't be ... It's not something that you can easily ignore and just not watch the whole thing. Just to see what it was talking about as it starts to travel.

Was it odd spending so much of the film talking to a camera or, because the GoPro is so small and unobtrusive, did that just not play in?

The hardest part of the job was acting; not into a camera because it's easy to act into a camera lens, I find. What was tricky with this was that the GoPro wasn't a traditional camera; it's attached to, most of the time, a stuntman. There was something like 12 or 13 or 14 different people in total, 12 of which I think were stuntmen, playing Henry. What you had was a person behind the camera so that the GoPros are sitting, as you might have seen in behind the scenes footage, just below the normal, human eye. We put sunglasses over the real eyes so that it wasn't distracting for me. I could use the GoPro as the person's eyes.

What you had was, sometimes you would have an actor that you were acting against because they would interact with you. Whoever is playing Henry is interacting and doing something. It's almost like, "Oh, I'm actually acting with a person." Then sometimes Ilya, as the director, or the DoP would be playing Henry and he's kind of looking, because you could actually monitor on the GoPro, he's just kind of framing you. He's just a cameraman framing you, using his head as a tripod, using his body as the jib. We constantly shift. I've got someone that I'm acting with. No, no, I don't. I've just got to pretend that it's a camera. Normally you have either somebody or you have an eye-line for a visual effects movie. It's like you're looking at nothing.

This is some sort of hybrid. Sometimes there's somebody there, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes I'm giving a stuntman tips. I'm helping him from an acting point of view. "Well, you know, dude, actually why don't we try this?" I'm trying to direct the stunt guys, sometimes helping with the acting because he's trying to focus on setting himself on fire and not screwing up the shot. It was very tough. It was a very, very hard film to make for everybody, especially the stunt guys. I have so much respect for them and for Ilya's sheer resilience that he had in making this film.