we first read David Mitchell 's book, I thought it was an unbelievable examination of incredibly varied perspectives, and also the relationship between the responsibility we have to people we have power over, and the responsibility we have to the people who have power over us. Are we meant to just accept their conventional construct of whatever they imagine the world to be? Or are we obliged in some way to struggle against it? In the reverse, what is the obligation of the person whose life we have power over? Are they obliged to struggle against that conventional relationship? This is stuff of good stories. AVC: In other interviews, you've talked about Jacques Derrida and deconstruction theory, and this sort of analysis of the historical and conceptual underpinnings of your work. Is it frustrating if people approach them as spectacle instead of on that elevated level? LW: Yes, very. AW: [Laughs.] AVC: But is there a way around that when you're making action films? By making this film, are you trying to get away from action-centric films so viewers have more cues that this is something they should be analyzing and discussing? LW: We don't like boring movies. Dickens, Hugo, Melville, even Homer... these are artists who examined some very complex subjects, especially around power and responsibility and the grappling with understanding what humanity is underneath. These are people who worked very hard at that, but put their stories in a context that was really exciting to read. And in