By Christina Radish

In the Walt Disney Pictures action-adventure Race to Witch Mountain, a UFO convention is being held in Las Vegas and, for years, stories have circulated about a secret place in the middle of the Nevada desert, known for unexplained phenomena and strange sightings, called Witch Mountain. When Las Vegas cab driver Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) encounters two teens (played by AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) with supernatural powers in his cab, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of an adventure that he can’t explain. Working together, along with help from the beautiful and brainy astrophysicist, Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), Jack and his young passengers discover that the only chance to save the world lies in unraveling the secrets of Witch Mountain.

For many moviegoers in the 1970s, Escape to Witch Mountain and its sequel, Return from Witch Mountain, were popular sci-fi adventures. Now, this re-imagined version is a more action-filled  story, complete with breathtaking sequences and state-of-the-art special effects. Co-stars Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about why they were so excited about remaking this film.

MediaBlvd Magazine> Why remake this film?

Carla Gugino> I loved the movie as a kid. I lived in a van. As a kid, we had a motor-home for year. So, I always just related to those kids so much, except for the alien part. And then, when I got this script, I just thought it was really good, and I was a fan of (director) Andy Fickman. We sat down and talked about it and, within about three minutes, I was like, “We have to work together! We have to do this!” And, I’m a huge fan of Dwayne’s. It was just a really natural fit. I fell in love with the character and all the elements. It’s great when something isn’t a lot of work to make happen. Obviously, making a movie is a lot of work, in a great way, and it’s really fulfilling, but what you want is the creative connections to be easy, and that was definitely very immediately apparent.

Dwayne Johnson at the MTV Movie Awards held at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, Calif. on June 1, 2008.

MediaBlvd> Carla, how would you describe your character?

Carla> I play an astrophysicist, named Dr. Alex Friedman. She’s been discredited from several universities because she has decided that there is enough hard data to prove that there probably is alien life and, at the universities that she was working for, that wasn’t a popular notion for a respectable university. So, she’s relegated to lecturing at the UFO Con in Las Vegas. She’s hoping, of course, that she’ll get some support, and all they want to talk about is crop circles and kooky theories. She’s pretty much having one of the worst days of her life, when Dwayne’s character, Jack, the cab driver who drove her from the airport, walks in and says, “Hey, these two kids are aliens.” She’s like, “Great, and now I’m being made fun of!” And then, she comes to realize that they are, in fact, aliens. It’s basically the most exciting thing -- the thing she’s been waiting for, her entire life. Then, she is swept away to help on the journey to save two worlds.

MediaBlvd> How does your relationship with aliens in this film compare to your relationship with aliens on your previous TV series, Threshold?

Carla> It’s definitely a different vibe. When I sat down with Andy, it was very cool because he was a big fan of Threshold. So, when I first thought about her as an astrophysicist, she was a contingency analyst, so there are certainly differences, and tonally the movie is very different from the series. Molly was much more super-serious. I loved that show so much, but inevitably, it’s very difficult in TV, if you are the hero of the show. You have to behave in a very particular way. This was almost like Molly gone berserk. It was the flipside of that, where I just got to have so much fun in this movie. She takes her job very seriously, but she ends up in an unknown terrain. The two characters definitely could be sisters, but they were extremely different to play, much more so than I thought they would be.

MediaBlvd> Dwayne, did you like the fact that your cab driver character doesn’t suddenly become a great action hero?

Dwayne> He’s struggled to stay on the right path, for a long time, and he’s frankly not very happy with his life. With a lot of great movies, it’s always about the collisions of worlds. In this, it’s a phenomenal collision that takes place between this guy, who’s your everyday guy, and these two teenagers who have these supernatural powers. Throughout the course of the story, he learns to trust them and wants to help them. What I really enjoyed about it, and Andy and I talked about this really early on in the process, is that even though he struggles to stay on the right path, and he’s done a lot of things that he shouldn’t have done, and gotten in trouble a lot, he has one opportunity to do something great and really achieve greatness, at a level that he would never, ever dream of. He gets a chance to save the world. He has that type of responsibility and he accepts it and embraces it. He doesn’t know if he’s going to succeed or not, but it’s his intent to embrace it and move forward.

MediaBlvd> How were the teenagers to work with?

Carla Gugino at the premiere of "Watchmen" held at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on March 2, 2009.

Carla> They were amazing!

Dwayne> They were really great to work with. Making movies is a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of hard work, too. Acting is difficult to do, on many levels, and you’re so impressed when you can find teenagers like that, who have a tremendous amount of capacity to do what they’re doing, and to be that involved and that present in the characters and the movie, and to see the same vision that Andy and the rest of us have. To see that wide scope, and then for them to still embrace being teenagers and having fun, I thought was great, and I give a lot of credit to their families. They’re really talented kids. A very important point to mention is the fact that they are really passionate about the movie -- not only this movie but the originals. They have big love for the originals, and loved the fact that Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann (the original actors who played their roles) were there on the set. They spent a lot of time with them. They were great to work with, and they’re very talented.

MediaBlvd> Exactly how much trouble is it to protect these kids?

Dwayne> It’s a lot of trouble. Immediately, within 10 minutes, as soon as they get in my cab, everything goes to hell in a handbag, and the race essentially begins. Andy wanted to create action that resonated with people and that we didn’t have to rely on CGI effects for, in terms of creating the CGI villain or monster. So, we had a great monster that those guys over at ADI created, which is really bad-ass and real, and that shows. It has that texture of reality. When I get hit, the thing punches me in the face and I fly across the room, which hurt because Andy had me on wires. The action was our greatest challenge. How can we compete, in terms of our action sequences? There’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned ass-kicking -- either giving one or taking one -- in movies. It’s great when you have CGI monsters and you can fight them. That’s wonderful. I think there’s also something great and real and appealing about one-on-one combat.

MediaBlvd> Do you think CGI goes too far these days?

Dwayne> No, I don’t feel it goes too far. There are great movies out there where CGI has done great work with the villains and the monsters. But, there is something appealing about having a real monster, and fighting something that’s real.

Carla> With this movie, in particular, there’s something great about the authenticity and the fact that it’s a little bit messier. It’s not slick, in that way. It’s done really well. I watched some of the footage and it looks like they are actually fighting, and there’s something fantastic about that, as opposed to flying through the air, which is great for a different kind of movie.

MediaBlvd> Do you believe in aliens?

Dwayne> Of course I do, yeah. It’d be extremely arrogant to think that we’re the only ones. I firmly do believe, and I’m always fascinated and intrigued. Spending three or four months with Andy, as all of us did, in pre-production, and seeing his love and his passion -- he had all these videos and books, and he just literally took us on this course -- it was amazing. It was really phenomenal.                            

MediaBlvd> Carla, you’ve done Spy Kids, Sin City, Watchmen and now this film. What is the appeal of this genre for you?

Carla> I was never a graphic novel or comic book person, per se. For me, it’s just about a good story and good characters, and those films have happened to be that. With Sin City, I had worked with Robert Rodriguez on Spy Kids, and I was really up for the challenge of doing a completely different character. For me, it always comes down to how I relate to the character, who I’m working with and the vision of the director because that is ultimately what you’re serving. In that way, it was a director I trust implicitly, and I did love Frank Miller’s graphic novel. And, with Watchmen, I got to play somebody who starts at 25 years old and ages to 67, with full prosthetics, and becomes an alcoholic mother. I was like, “Are you kidding?” And, Zack Snyder is amazing. Watchmen is clearly an unbelievable graphic novel. It’s funny that I’ve done so many films in this genre. It hasn’t been intentional. I’ve just fallen in love with each project, individually.

MediaBlvd> Dwayne, what do you look for in an action film?

Dwayne> The whole Bourne series, and the last Bond movie, really raised the bar in contemporary action, and how it’s shot in a very energetic, but still very real way. That resonates with a lot of people. In terms of how I pick projects, in general, it’s just anything that I’m drawn to, and a good story. Good material is hard to come by. Everybody can attest to that. For me, personally, I look for a character that I can relate to, and if the character can have a little bit of humor and heart to him as well. That’s important to me, with the exception of Doom. That was the only one that didn’t.