Everyone on 'The Goonies' and everyone on 'Lord Of The Rings' knew that we were a part of something that was going to be big.
Ever since I was little it was programmed into me that London is where great theatre occurs and all the big shows you love start there.
I love to watch low-budget indie artsy films, but I do also love the big blockbuster things. I would love to do that one day, do a Marvel film. That would be really great.
I mean, there'll always be room for big productions and everything but it's good to see the other side.
It doesn't make any sense for us to do a scripted series if it's not going to be big, so we have to be really disciplined about them.
If you look at American studios, the big productions have nothing to do with reality.
In high school and college, I'd set a bunch of goals for myself. I wanted to be the lead effects supervisor on one of these really big, innovative visual effects productions, something on the scale of a 'Star Wars' movie. And I wanted to work on a project that wins the Academy Award for best visual effects.
Big productions, to me, are great - like, I love going to Vegas and seeing shows - but I think that sometimes it's distracting, especially when you are there to listen to the music.
I've got nothing against big-budget values. I mean, I was very proud of 'The Avengers,' the part that I played in it, albeit a small one. It was thrilling to be part of it. But it's so huge that you can never really wrap your mind around it.
Some of the smallest things on a smaller film, to me, are greater achievements than on a big film when you have the resources and the time and everything else.
I just want to keep going for broke, making bigger and bigger things like 'Lord of the Rings' until they kick me out of Hollywood. I just want to do the biggest thing I can.
Where do you go after something like 'Pacific Rim?' Which, for me, was such a moment, to have this thing and see it all come together, and it's big, and it has this cult following... You ask yourself, 'What's next?'
I go to the opera. It's mostly my wife that's a bigger fan, I'd say, than I am. I like the big opera. I want a lot of people on stage, elephants and marching stuff, and the modern stuff I don't care for.
With big productions, you can sometimes get lost with the terminology and all the different departments.
In the past, 'Avatar' would have won because Oscar voters loved to hand out awards to big productions, like 'Ben-Hur.' Today it's fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw.
I think I'm pretty committed to staying. I'm not committed to not doing big movies, but I am committed to continuing to make smaller movies, not for the sake of making smaller movies, but because I think it's really invigorating to just go work with people and know that it might be awful.
