Der Survival thriller Eden tells the story of dropouts who turn on each other in paradise. In an interview, director Ron Howard reveals how he came up with this disturbing story.
During a family vacation, of all places, Ron Howard was inspired to create his darkest film. When the director visited the Galápagos Islands over 15 years ago, he stumbled upon the bloody history of Floreana Island in a museum. Three dropouts died here in 1934. Three more disappeared without a trace. They sought paradise, but found hell.
Howard, who is actually known for comfort blockbusters like Apollo 13 and the Robert Langdon films, was immediately captivated by the Galápagos affair. Nevertheless, a lot of time was to pass before the project took on concrete features. Now the relentless struggle for survival Eden is being released in cinemas and shows us Howard from an unfathomable side that makes even In the Heart of the Sea seem like a leisurely boat trip.
When Ron Howard visited Berlin a few weeks ago to present his passion project, we had the opportunity to sit down with the Hollywood legend for an interview. Why did it take so long for Eden to see the light of day? Howard talks about the long history of its creation, important creative decisions, and how he feels about himself as a director.
8kstreaming: It’s great that you took the time for this interview. How did the German premiere go last night?
Ron Howard: I thought it was very nice and exciting. Since we finished the film last summer and showed it at the Toronto Film Festival, I’ve noticed more and more differences in how the audience reacts to the film and its ideas. Probably because you can empathize so well with the characters. They want to leave the society in which they live behind and build a new, better world in a remote place.
What do you think is the reason why many people identify with these characters and their escape ambitions?
Various things come together here. The war [in Ukraine] is ongoing while Western politics is threatening to become more and more autocratic. Many societal norms are being put to the test and we are experiencing so many changes. There is a constant swinging from left to right and back again. You can’t keep up. Our reality is like a rollercoaster ride that we are experiencing in real time, which has a destabilizing effect on our lives.
Is that why you made the movie right now?
Yes and no. When I first came across the story, I just thought it was a great drama about people, maybe even a comedy. After all, the situation the characters find themselves in has something absurd about it. You could almost think you were immersed in a Kafka story.
I also thought of Dostoyevsky and, of course, Joseph Conrad, who takes us to the heart of darkness. As the story took shape, I realized that similar projects strike a chord with audiences. I’m thinking of something like The White Lotus and the continued popularity of Survivor. Audiences are very interested in these dark stories right now.
When I saw Eden, I was surprised by how dark the film was. When I think of your films, I first think of blockbusters like Apollo 13 and Solo: A Star Wars Story, which give me more of a comfort blockbuster feeling. Did you plan to make a rougher film this time around from the start?
I admit that it was a first for me, but I never saw myself as a brand, but as someone who is very curious about cinema and loves all kinds of stories. I hope I have earned the skills and trust of my colleagues to try films in different pitches. Sometimes I wish I could take my name off the movie so that people could experience it without bias. Without thinking, “Ah, this could be like Solo or Apollo 13 or Cinderella Man or Rush.”
But in principle, your observation is correct: I am an optimist and I like to make films that share that attitude, even celebrate it. There is some of that optimism in this film, but I had to make compromises to get to the truth of what the characters experience on Floreana. Of course, this is a stark contrast to my last film, Thirteen Lives, which is a pure celebration of optimism. There are a lot more moral ambiguities in Eden. What matters is that in the end it is a human story and I hope that in the remaining time of my career I can explore many more of these stories.
You have tried your hand at so many genres in the course of your career that I often wonder: what is the one motif that unites all Ron Howard films? I’m not necessarily looking for proof of the auteur theory, but I still wanted to take the opportunity to ask you directly how you feel about it.
I would put it this way: I love challenges and exciting characters. No matter what genre I’m in, it’s always about my own personal curiosity. Many people expect you to become a reliable brand in Hollywood. The only reliability I can offer is that I put a lot of care and work into my films, as well as into the collaboration with all the people I work with on the films.
Is there a dream project you haven’t gotten around to yet?
For a long time, that was Eden for me. Now I’ve made the film.
Why did it take so long? If I understand correctly, you came across this story over 15 years ago.
I was on vacation with my family on the Galápagos Islands. On the very first day, we went to a museum about the history of the Galápagos Islands. It was about the wildlife and Darwin. And then there was a room dedicated to this Floreana mystery. It was really fascinating. My daughter Bryce [Dallas Howard] said, “Oh, that sounds like a perfect movie.” And I thought to myself, “Yes, maybe I’ll make that one day.” Even then, however, it was clear to me that the film would be much darker than all my other films, which complicated things.
At the time, I was still working a lot with major studios. I could never have pitched this film to them. They wouldn’t have dared to make the film, and I didn’t want to force anyone to make a film they didn’t believe in. So I started writing it for myself, until at some point I realized I wasn’t making any progress. Three to four pages a year – that’s all I wrote. And they weren’t even particularly good. But I just couldn’t get the story out of my head.
Finally, I told [screenwriter] Noah Pink about it. I had worked with him before on the series Genius. He wrote a spec script, a script for which you don’t get paid and hope it gets picked up. More and more people became curious about the script because it had everything from humor to suspense. And as I mentioned earlier, when I saw the success of The White Lotus, I knew there was definitely an audience for Eden as well.
You then financed the film without a studio. Was this independence also a way for you to reinvent yourself as a filmmaker?
Not really. I just kept going. I’ve worked with smaller budgets and tighter schedules in the past. For example, on Genius or Frost/Nixon. That was shot in a similar time frame to Eden. Rush had a longer shooting schedule, but that was mainly for the elaborate action scenes. We had very little time for the dialog back then.
As a filmmaker, you often think that if you have a smaller budget, you have to compromise over and over again. But since many of our cast and crew members worked for lower salaries than usual, we were able to make the film without any problems. We even shot on location in the Galápagos Islands. This was particularly important to me in order to make the film as immersive as possible. You see all the animals and landscapes in which the characters move. Eden is a very cinematic experience that you have to see on the big screen.
One thing I definitely want to talk about is the look of the film. Eden comes across as very desaturated. Everything seems so hopeless, almost apocalyptic. What were your thoughts behind that?
That’s one of the film’s most distinctive features. Partly it’s because Floreana is a desert island, a barren, inhospitable place. But we shot a lot of Eden in Queensland [in Australia]. Most of the time, the surroundings matched our shots of the Galápagos Islands. Sometimes, however, the backgrounds were very green. To still convey the feeling of the lonely island and the drought, we had to desaturate some of the green tones.
Furthermore, the film’s look was inspired by the black-and-white shots that Allan Hancock took of the real people on the island. You can find a surprising amount of it on the internet. It’s really interesting. Just search for Empress of Floreana. It’s a very funny short film about the Baroness [Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn]. It’s really hilarious. But the environment is no paradise – and we wanted to convey that from the start.
