‘Arcadian’ Stars Jaeden Martell and Maxwell Jenkins On Their New Apocalyptic Creature Feature
The world of Benjamin Brewer’s apocalyptic creature film Arcadian is rife with detail and short on answers. It traces one family’s struggle to survive in a world that’s been overrun by ravenous monsters. Are the creatures aliens from outer space? Are their origins tied to the exploitation of the planet due to capitalistic greed? The answer could be none or all of the above. Indeed, Brewer’s film is less concerned about the logistics or “why” of the apocalypse and much more concerned about how one can survive in a crumbling world.
The film centers on Paul (Nicolas Cage) and his twin sons Joseph (Jaeden Martell) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins). While the family has developed a steady rhythm of survival, teenage angst stops for no one, even in the apocalypse. Thomas spends time with Charlotte (Sadie Soverall), a girl on a neighboring property, and increasingly finds ways to volunteer at her place in order to be away from home. Joseph may be more reserved, but he, too, has aspirations of escape even though he knows it’s not safe to wander. His rebellion manifests in the form of rebuilding an old golf cart, mainly so he can explore the areas around him that were previously off-limits.
Dread Central spoke with Martell and Jenkins via Zoom. The on-screen twins shared about what it’s like to do a coming-of-age story with elevated stakes (you could get eaten, not just grounded if you come home past curfew), what it was like building their sibling dynamic, and the chaos of the film’s climactic action sequence.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dread Central: I had the privilege to watch the film at its SXSW premiere. There were so many moments where people were reacting quite viscerally so I’m excited for more people to witness this in theaters. What was your reaction to reading the script? What drew y’all to the project?
Maxwell Jenkins: When I first read the script, even before I knew who was involved with it, I loved how it had these action moments and that it was also a coming-of-age story. I loved being able to bridge two of my favorite storylines and genres, coming-of-age and science fiction, together. I grew up going to Comic Con and was going there to meet my favorite superheroes and comic book characters. So I loved being able to play in that sort of genre and do a coming-of-age story in a world that doesn’t really let you grow up. In the world of Arcadian, the extremes of coming home late aren’t you getting grounded, it’s your entire family dying. I liked those elevated stakes.
Jaeden Martell: I think back to how for my character, a big motivating force for him was building his car. We all have that moment when we turn a certain age of wanting that freedom and wanting to be able to get a car and leave the house anytime we want. That feeling is the same in this world except it’s that sentiment of “I don’t want to hide anymore. I want to go out there and create my own life.”
DC: It’s a curious point you bring up about the setting in which your characters are coming of age. We get some voiceovers from Nicolas Cage’s character about how the world in Arcadian came to be, but we don’t really get a lot of backstory. We’re just thrust into this world and the film is a sort of day in the life of the apocalypse. For both of you as actors, did you ever ask Ben about the world that he’s created or ask why it happened? I’m curious if knowing that backstory was important to develop how you were going to act out these characters.
JM: He kind of didn’t want us to fully know. It was more about us knowing what our characters knew and what we didn’t know. For example, Maxwell’s character is able to juggle, and he only knows that because his character read that in a book. For me, a lot of the research and preparation for my character revolved around questions like “Do Joseph and Thomas know what music is? Have they experienced that?”
Those were more of the details I was curious about but as for the general end of the world and how it happened, it was left as a bit of a mystery. There was this sense though that what transpired could happen to our world. The human race tends to be very destructive, especially considering the direction we’re going in so there are some hints there even though the “reason” is meant to be a little broad.
MJ: I think it almost helped that we didn’t know the full story of what happened to the world. Certainly, our characters didn’t know everything. I remember asking Ben “Where’s our mom? Do we have a mom?” It was up in the air and up to our interpretation of how we wanted to play it. I think we settled on that we just didn’t ask about it. The characters don’t really know so us not knowing helped us get closer to our characters in that sense.
I think for my character, the Rose Farm was the closest thing that Thomas knew what the world used to look like. That farm is sort of a bubble and gated community that sort of has what old civilization used to be. There’s that moment where I’m in the room with Charlotte and it’s really one of the first times my character has seen himself or at least seen a clear reflection. It explains my weird patches of hair… I haven’t seen myself, so I’ve just sort of been chopping all my hair off randomly.
JM: (Laughs) It does explain that.
MJ: Yeah, I’ve got a really messed up haircut in that movie and it’s because I’ve just been chopping off my hair when it gets too long in this area. You can see scars on my face where I’ve cut myself. There are all these moments scattered throughout the film that give the audience inklings about how much our characters know about the world.
DC: I’m sure it’s a fun experiment to think about how someone who is coming of age in the apocalypse might react to things that are present staples in y’all’s lives like driving a car or getting a haircut. Speaking of the importance of setting, I’d love to hear about what it was like to shoot that final battle in the house. There’s so much going on in a cramped space. You have Sadie with a shotgun, Nicolas with a bat, and you two are setting up traps against this horde of monstrous creatures …
JM: We had a great team, man. We choreographed the hell out of that. That sequence was a big chunk of the shoot I’d say.
MJ: I think we spent a few days on that sequence. We lit a car on fire.
JM: We lit a car on fire?
MJ: Do you remember that? We drove the car so hard it burst into flames
JM: (Laughs) Oh my God that was a crazy shoot.
MJ: Yeah, that was a crazy shoot. We had a great crew. I mean if we ever get stuck in apocalypse, I know exactly where I’m going. I’m going to Ireland and I’m finding the Irish crew. They’d help us survive for sure. The stunt coordinators are great. We had a chunk of time before we started filming for pre-production. Most of that time was spent choreographing all of that stuff so that way when we got to shoot that scene, we could focus on keeping the story straight in our minds.
The hardest part for me is when you’re shooting such a whirlwind of a movie in such a short timeframe, I really have to focus on keeping the timeline straight, especially that final battle sequence as this plan is being enacted. I’m super grateful to the crew who really helped make my job a whole lot easier by keeping that stuff straightforward.
DC: I’d love to hear about what it was like to build chemistry between you two since the brothers are so different. I have a younger brother and I’ve noted how at various points in our relationship, as much as I may be teaching him some things, he’s also teaching me so much. We’re leaning on each other in separate ways. I know that in the film both of you play twins but I noticed that the dynamic is a bit more porous and imbalanced in that sometimes you’re helping each other or taking the “lead” in different ways. What was it like to build and workshop that dynamic?
MJ: In real life, Jaeden is older than me, and certainly throughout that whole process, other than my mom on set, Jaeden was the person I could go to. More than just being a phenomenal actor, Jaeden is a great person and I’m super grateful he was the person playing my twin brother.
Even though we were playing twins, at times, it certainly felt like there was a maturity difference or reliance on logic difference between the characters. Thomas is certainly all impulse. We talked a lot during rehearsals about how Thomas has this animal instinct. He’s a caged animal who is going a little crazy. There’s no logic until he really messes up in the film and then you see a shift in disposition there. That’s when he starts to question his own instinct which is new because up until that point, instinct is what led him to survive. That was a dynamic I was grateful was written in there and I think translated over well with our characters.
JM: Yeah, I’d say a lot of that film is about that battle for ways of life. Thomas wants freedom, he wants the girl, and he wants to live life and be happy. Joseph is much more strategic and very logical. He doesn’t know how to communicate his feelings and emotions because he’s thinking. What he really wants is for his family to stay together and be safe, and it’s interesting to contrast that with Thomas’ emotion.
Arcadian is out now exclusively in theaters.
Categorized:Interviews
