Mark Wahlberg is no stranger to CGI and green-screen action. Of course, he has held down his fair share of action set pieces in movies like Deepwater Horizon, Max Payne, The Perfect Storm and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. But he also got an up-close look at acting alongside a CGI character when he starred in Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction. Wahlberg is back at it this summer with the fifth Transformers movie, The Last Knight, and during the recent press day for the film, he told CinemaBlend the secret to sharing scenes with CGI characters like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. The actor explained:
You just gotta be committed to it. You gotta be hyper aware of everything that's going on within that scene or sequence. And then you just gotta commit, you know? But it's the purest form of make-pretend, for sure.
The "purest form of make-pretend" is the greatest phrase I've heard yet for acting in green-screen-fueled, CGI tentpoles like the Transformers movies. And yet, Mark Wahlberg brings up a very good point. For while much of what Michael Bay does on the sets of these massive Transformers movies is practical -- as in, Bay is literally blowing shit up and constructing massive buildings to make his universe seems tangible and vulnerable -- there's no way for Wahlberg's character, Cade Yeager, to actually run lines with Optimus Prime. So, as Wahlberg tells us in the exclusive video below, they may put up a ball on a stick to give you an eye line, but you have to commit, and make "pretend."
Here's Mark Wahlberg, talking with CinemaBlend about the process of bringing a Transformers movie to life:
So, tell us, why do audiences keep coming to the Transformers movies? Is it for the human interaction? Or is it for the metal-grinding battles between the Autobots and the Decepticons? I'm putting my money down on the latter, because Michael Bay, over the years, has honed his technique when it comes to robot-on-robot action, and Transformers: The Last Knight is primed to become his explosive sendoff. Mark Wahlberg's character, Cade Yeager, is back in the fold helping a newcomer in Isabela Moner, who has landed in the middle of a war waged by former good guy Optimus Prime... who might be under the control of a mysterious evil force.
Transformers: The Last Knight brings the Autobots and the Decepticons back to the big screen for a globetrotting, time-traveling adventure. It opens in theaters on Tuesday night, June 20. And we will have plenty more from our conversations with Mark Wahlberg and the entire cast as the week leading up to the release unfolds.
