Hanna: Interview with Seth Lochhead

Did you have anyone in mind when writing? Or were Hanna and all the other important characters just abstract faces?

Back then, I only had Cate in mind because she was the best actress at the time and she still is. And I hadn’t seen her play evil. I love the idea of great actors playing against type. I was joking to myself on Twitter that I wanted to see Jason Bateman as Bourne. Just think of those possibilities, how his known personality would cut across that of Bourne’s. It would be fascinating.

As for Erik, the character, I had a few guys in mind. They were men who walked a delicate line between creepy and lovable. And none were Eric Bana. But when I met him on set, I knew he was the right man for the job. Erik is Hanna’s heart (even if she doesn’t know it). There is something very kind and gentle about Eric Bana, as a person, and you can see that when he plays Erik with a K. It was a brilliant choice on his part, to show that kindness. Erik with a K is a deeply troubled human being who is, in some ways, the most evil of the bunch. But his love for Hanna, in some ways, redeems him (maybe).

I had no clue who Saoirse was in 2005 but now, in hindsight, she is the only living human being who could’ve played Hanna. I’m happy she exists.

It’s interesting that you say that Cate was the only one. How important is the “villain” in a movie like Hanna?

First of all, I had no input on the casting. It’s not like I got a phone call and they’re asking me who they should cast. If only! Cate was just a figment of my imagination, a ‘what if’ I would rattle off to whomever was listening. It was weird when that figment became reality. It made sense, I knew it was going to happen (like this psychic feeling), but pretty weird when I was sitting across from Cate at a table trying to not shit my pants.

As for your question, I think the honest answer would be that the villain is not important in a film like Hanna. I believe the hero/villain relationship resides in Hanna. Erik and Marissa are characterization, visualizations of Hanna’s two warring halves. What makes it complex, and what the actors bring to it, is that they too have their own struggles with their own hero/villains warring inside. Maybe Erik’s hero is a bit more prevalent. And perhaps Marissa’s villain is more prevalent (especially when she’s hanging out with Isaacs). But, ultimately, my conception of them is that they are human (neither the hero or the villain).

I read that the script was blacklisted. Who stepped in and saved it from production limbo?

Franklin Leonard’s Blacklist is a great thing. It’s a list of most liked screenplays by people who have to read 10, 15, 20 scripts a week. When a script makes it on the blacklist, you know there’s something about that script that has stuck in the head of the reader. Reader/audience mentality fascinates me. There Will Be Blood was on the same list! Ha. I’m proud Hanna was on the blacklist. It helped my career and did not hinder the script’s progress. If anything it helped.

What drew you to write an action film with a teenage girl as the lead?

Nothing drew me to it. It was always just there, in my head. When I choose what I write, I try to make it a non-conscious act. I don’t start a script and say I want it to be this genre and I want it to have this type of character. I very much attempt to allow my experiences and my instincts to drive my writing. I love action movies, but I also love epic journeys. I love literary prose. I love being physical. I love human beings who speak without speaking. I love feeling and tone. I hate plot (because sometimes it gets in the way of feeling — that sounds lame, but it’s true!). I have ambitions for my screenplays beyond them becoming films because most of them will not become films. I want them to exist in their own right. They need — especially at first — to be documents of inspiration, not blueprints.

We tried to ask people who’ve seen the film if they had any questions, and Aris Blevins (@fredone) asked if you found inspiration in a single Grimm’s tale or just the whole Grimm’s universe.

The universe. I conceived Hanna as a fairy tale. I thought you could, maybe, staple Hanna into your copy of Grimm’s and she could live happily there ever after.

But, thinking back, there was one story, not a common one… I can’t remember the title (I think it was “Godfather Death”) and there was a passage I had Hanna read out loud to Erik (in the original draft of course), “…and soon spindle-legged death came toward him and said, ‘Take me as godfather.’ ‘Who are you?’ the man asked. ‘I am Death and I make all people equal.”

You’re in luck, I’m reading the Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales. It is “Godfather Death.”

Actually, I kind of missed that quote from “Godfather Death”.

Since I haven’t seen the film, I’m flying a bit blind here, but from what I read there are obvious fairytale undertones in the film. Were they there since the beginning or was it something that developed?

Joe’s visual interpretation of the Fairy Tale theme was definitely all Joe. Obviously, when I was doing production rewrites I had to keep his new visual motif in mind and it grew from our collaboration, but the literal references (save for the book of Fairytales, which was present in all drafts) was something he conceived with his production designer Sarah Greenwood.

Hanna is a fairytale (not like a fairytale) and Joe took Hanna and stapled her, quite firmly, into the Grimm universe.

Talking about the re-writing process, is there any scene included in older drafts that didn’t make it to the shooting script that you wished had?

There was a scene that I wrote on set that was never filmed. Hanna falls through the ice when they’re training. She almost dies. Erik saves her. And she gets so angry that he saved her. She so wants to leave, to grow up, that she gets angry at the man who just saved her life. It was a good scene.

Why was it taken out?

Timing. They ran out of shooting time in Finland and Joe had to make a choice. It was a fairly complicated sequence (some under water, Erik breaking ice with his forearms, etc.). They had like five days in Finland and to shoot that sequence it would’ve taken up two or three days (plus a day or two in an underwater tank in Berlin). Shit happens, as they say.