big movie
The Darkest Mindsw w w. s c i fi n ow.co.u kNelson wanted the
friendships to shine.
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YA movies always find ways to
make its heroes stand out from
the crowd, no matter how rigid
the sorting process is...not just
a number
throughout, as the kids are not only tracked
by the government but by bounty hunters
(personified by Gwendoline Christie’s badass
Lady Jane), but Nelson felt it was crucial to let
the light in.
“Definitely, because basically the premise
has a pretty stark moment that happens in it,
a lot of children die, and the ones that survive
have these abilities but that is a stark backdrop,”
explains Nelson. “But I think that that starkness
allows the warmth to stand out. It’s about this
adversity that’s overcome by these kids. So that
journey for them where they become stronger,
where they find their power, find their strength,
is a thing that really attracted me to it. It’s an
uplifting message so if it was just all fluffy daisies
I don’t think that they would have anything to
fight! Things have to be tough for you to respect
them for overcoming it.”
The film really kicks into gear once Ruby hits
the road with her newfound friends.
There’s kindly team leader Liam (Harris
Dickerson), brain-box Chubs (Skylan Brooks)
and silent young Zu (Miya Cech). Inevitably
there are some nerves at first, a little distrust,
but before long the four have bonded and are
operating as a family unit as they head towards
a promised safe haven, scrounging food and
dodging adults along the way. Despite the high
concept, Nelson knew that focusing on the
friendships would allow her to bring some light
into the darkness.
“One of the things that I really wanted to
make sure was that it felt very grounded, like
you could watch it and imagine yourself doing
this today right now with your friends,” she tells
us. “And that warmth that comes out when the
kids find each other and are travelling together
and are making friends; they’re a family against
all these things they have to deal with. That
positivity and that joy that you come out with
when you are with your friends, no matter what
the circumstances are, is something that’s fun
to watch. It’s not all just people getting beaten
down all the time. These are people standing up
and doing something and finding the good in
a bad situation. And I think that warmth is told
both emotionally and also visually, the colours
and the palette of the movie.”
Indeed, if you’re sick to death of seeing the
same shades of grey rubble, dark green forests
and blue cities in your YA movies, The Darkest
Minds will feel like an incredible breath of fresh
air. It takes place primarily during the daytime
over beautifully scenic stretches of the American
landscape. “Yeah, that was a big conversation
actually, when I first met with Fox about the
script,” enthuses Nelson. “In that, yes YA movies
have been done very well with a dark dystopia,
that’s been done very, very well many times,
people are kind of used to seeing that. And I
wanted to do something different with this film. I
didn’t want it to be depressing. It already has the
stark thing that happens, I don’t want it to just be
a sad movie about sad people who are being
sad, it had to be beautiful and the main core
of it is about these kids travelling together and
finding the joy of life together. And if you think
of all those beautiful images you can imagine
you have with your friends if you’re having a
summer together, travelling together, those are
not dark images.
“So, we actually pushed the production
from the original time of shooting in winter to
spring,” she continues. “So that we could get
the beautiful greens and the colours, even in
the harsh parts of the movie with the internment
camps, there’s always colour. Something that
my DP Kramer Morganthau and I really thought
about that when we looked at the locations, we
wanted to make sure that every single location
had a beauty and a colour palette to it that
would be uplifting. It’s about the world being
beautiful in spite of it all, it’s about people being
strong in spite of it all, so because of that it had
to be a beautiful film.”
One of the most crucial elements to finding
that positivity was finding the right cast. A film
like this relies so heavily on its young actors, and
Nelson was well aware that putting the right
group of kids together was paramount. Star
Amandla Stenberg will be familiar to YA fansfor her role as Roo in The Hunger Games back
in 2012, and she demonstrates that she is more
than capable of carrying her own franchise.
“She was 17 when I met her and she was
as wise as an 80-year-old warrior, I swear,
she was so good and so wise and so genuine,
and such a nice person,” Nelson tells us. “And
the character of Ruby needed that strength
underneath her vulnerability and that was
somebody was that Amandla incarnated.
“Harris was amazing. We put him and
Amandla together just to sit and chat and you
could see that they were just going to be friends,
there was just sparkle and electricity right there.
Skyland had to have the charm and the wit
and the smarts of Chubs, and Skyland is also
insanely genuine. And Mia is the most amazing,
she’s super chatty even though she doesn’t
speak in the film, but she has really genuine
raw ability. And that was the big important
thing, we wanted to make sure that the casting
was a group of kids that you really believe.
They don’t feel like they’re from acting school,
they don’t feel like they’ve gone through some
process, they’re just genuine people that you
want to watch do things together. That was the
backbone of the movie.”