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What’s ahead for Emma Swan and the rest of Storybrooke in Season 2
By Lie Shia Ong
MSN TV
“Once Upon a Time” returns to ABC on Sunday, Sept. 30, and when it does, the magic will also be back in Storybrooke, as the curse was broken at the end of last season.
MSN TV spoke with Jennifer Morrison, the actress who portrays Emma Swan, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, now that she heroically has broken the Evil Queen’s spell over the town and its people.
Bing: More about 'Once Upon a Time' | More about Jennifer Morrison
MSN TV: What can you tell fans about the Season 2 premiere of “Once Upon a Time”?
Jennifer Morrison: Oh my gosh! So much has happened. I don’t even know where to start! [Laughs] we pick up right where we leave off in terms of everyone being hit with their memories of their true identity, so we really hit the ground running because we pick up exactly where we ended.
There are certain repercussions with Regina (Lana Parrilla) in terms of how people feel about the fact that she’s responsible for taking their lives away for the last 28 years.
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We kind of also kind of then launch into a whole different level of conflicts. … There’s a group of people who want revenge and want to go after her and a group of people who don’t want to stoop to her level and sort of want to take the high road and settle this in a way where she pays for her actions but isn’t necessarily lynched by a mob. There’s sort of two factions in town that are at odds with each other, and then both factions are at odds with her. So we kind of launch into a tremendous amount of conflict immediately that involves pretty much every character.
Now that everyone knows who they really are, how will relationships change, especially with Emma, Mary Margaret/Snow White and David/Prince Charming?
Yeah, everything changes drastically. By removing this element of the curse, people are suddenly truly themselves again, which sort of opens up the world emotionally. In the first season there was always a balance of, OK, well, Snow White would do this, but Mary Margaret wouldn’t because the curse makes her different. Now that the element is removed and people aren’t controlled by the curse, there’s just so much more room for emotions to be at the surface and to be raw and to be expressed with confidence. It just sort of immediately heightens the stakes for each character.
More: Official ABC 'Once Upon a Time' page
Obviously there’s a lot for Emma to try to process because, first of all, the amount of proof it took for her to believe [in the curse]. Now she has the proof, but just even having the proof doesn’t mean she accepts it all. She’s still processing all that and in the midst of all this conflict that starts immediately. It’s this constant push and pull of emotional events and also so much going on already. I feel like Emma is trying to handle all these things that are happening to her in the midst of trying to make sure that the town doesn’t fall apart and Henry is still safe and that things are going to be OK. It’s definitely going to be a lot all at once.
Is Emma going to try to get custody of Henry?
Yeah. She was already sort of headed that way at the end of the first season in terms of realizing of trying to find a way where both her and Regina could be in Henry’s life, and there was a point where she sort of gave up on that idea. There’s definitely potential that she’s going to continue heading down that path [of wanting custody.]
Did you change your approach of how you portray Emma this season now that she’s a believer when it comes to the curse and the fairy-tale land?
Well, for me, you know, it’s interesting because even though she’s a believer, she hasn’t lost her skepticism. That’s what’s kept her alive her whole life. She’s been through so much with being in the foster system and going through times when she didn’t have shelter and was on the streets and was in jail and all the things in her past. Nobody’s ever been nice to her in her past. … Possibly the only exception to that now is Mary Margaret, but that relationship is immediately complicated by the fact that she’s my mother! So she’s definitely going to maintain her skepticism.
… I think what’s different is that she does feel like she has a world in which she can start to figure out how to be an emotional being — being surrounded by people who don’t seem to be interested in abandoning her any longer. Once she gets to a place where she can start to believe that’s true, then she can start to handle things that she emotionally could never handle before. Her first reaction is to shut down. Her second reaction is to make a joke out of it, and her third reaction is to try to process it and figure out how she’s going to deal with it. You’re going to see her go through that process over and over and over again.
Some of your fans sent in your questions they wanted me to ask. Karolin wants to know what you like most about playing Emma and what has been your favorite episode been to shoot.
I’d say what I enjoy most is that there’s just so many different parts of her. In order for her to be a survivor she’s had to adapt in every situation in order to find a way of fitting in. That means I get to play a huge spectrum of different emotions and different sides of her. She’s at times incredibly tough and unapproachable. Then there’s times when she’s incredibly vulnerable and open and almost like a little girl and she’s everything in between. As an actor, with writing like that, it’s really, really fun.
In the first season, I liked Episode 7, where the sheriff died. I didn’t like the fact that he died, but I just thought that story line was the first time Emma kind of got to be vulnerable in front of everyone. I also enjoyed Episode 17 as well, which was the Mad Hatter episode. I felt like because I was kidnapped and taken to the middle of the woods, it sort of felt like a play. … We shot all of that in one day, and it felt like doing a play for one day, so that was really fun.
This season [Episode] 5 is really cool. I’m actually not in 5, but that’s when they introduce Captain Hook and explain who he is and where he came from. It’s a huge episode.
And [Episode] 6 has been fun because that’s when you get to see Emma’s backstory. So it was definitely fun to be able to after all these months — to find out what her backstory is and to bring it to life.
The Season 2 premiere of “Once Upon a Time” airs Sunday, Sept. 30, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
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In honor of 'Fast & Furious 6,' horror/sci-fi on the road
"Duel" (1971): This early Steven Spielberg thriller was made for television but was later expanded for theatrical release in Europe. Dennis Weaver plays a traveling salesman who is caught in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a massive tanker and its unseen driver, who seems intent on running Weaver to his death. Based on a story by Richard Matheson, this gripping and lean shocker will keep you watching the rear view mirror the next time you're on a lonely road.
"Horror Express" (1972): We're going to jump briefly from cars and trucks to trains for this Spanish-British production that put Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas on the Trans-Siberian Express with an ancient frozen ape creature that is actually the hiding place of an alien entity from another galaxy. By the time it starts turning everyone on the speeding locomotive into zombies, you'll be hooked by this wild, over-the-top horror/sci-fi/runaway train mashup.
"Death Race 2000" (1975): Roger Corman produced this now-classic sci-fi satire, set in a future fascist America where the annual Transcontinental Road Race provides the ultimate in violent reality TV to keep the masses distracted. The more pedestrians you kill, the more points you acquire. Crashes and chases ensue -- and all of it seems eerily plausible these days.
"Race With the Devil" (1975): Two couples accidentally stumble upon a satanic ritual and are pursued in their RV across Texas by the cult. Peter Fonda and Warren Oates are the menfolk, Loretta Swit and Lara Parker are the ladies, and the movie builds a decent amount of tension while also delivering some knockout chase scenes.
"The Car" (1977): Notice how a lot of these movies are from the '70s, when films based around autos were very popular? "The Car" is as simple as it gets: A black Lincoln Continental begins laying waste to the citizens of a small Utah town. Why? It's possessed by a demon, silly. James Brolin plays the lawman tasked with stopping the infernal machine. Look for future "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" sisters Kyle and Kim Richards as his daughters.
"Damnation Alley" (1977): This cheesy post-apocalyptic film was based loosely on a novel by sci-fi great Roger Zelazny and follows four men as they travel in 12-wheeled Landmasters across "Damnation Alley," the devastated heartland of what was once America that is now populated by freakish weather and giant mutated insects. The Landmasters almost outshine the actors -- Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Paul Winfield and others -- in one of two sci-fi films released in 1977 by 20th Century Fox. This one was supposed to be the hit. The other? "Star Wars."
"Mad Max" (1979) and "The Road Warrior" (1981): Australian director George Miller delivered some of the finest action sequences of their time in these brilliant first two entries in the "Mad Max" trilogy, starring a young Mel Gibson as a cop who lives through the collapse of society to become a near-mythic hero. The slamming automobile action in "Mad Max" paved the way for the climactic extended chase in the second film, surely one of the greatest in modern cinema.
"Maximum Overdrive" (1986): When the director -- who happened to be Stephen King -- calls his own picture a "moron movie," you know you're in for either a painful sit or an enjoyably bad time. Sadly, "Maximum Overdrive," which first-time (and only-time) director King based on his short story "Trucks," leans closer to the former. The idea of trucks, cars and other vehicles and machines coming to life and coming for us is a fun one, but King just sends it all into the ditch.
"Drive Angry" (2011): Car-chase movies with a supernatural or sci-fi slant dropped off the pop culture radar for a long time, but director Patrick Lussier and star Nicolas Cage tried to bring them back with this 3-D exercise, which does feature some well-staged automobile action but an ultimately dull story. Cage does the same loony schtick he's been doing for the past decade, while William Fichtner races off with the picture as the demonic Accountant.
Be prepared for moments between Plutarch and President Snow
During a Stella Artois-sponsored media event at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, "Catching Fire" director Francis Lawrence revealed that the film, while keeping very faithful to the book, will also feature some entirely new scenes:
"Lots of new stuff—new cast members, new action, a new arena and a fantastic story. There's very little that's been taken out—there's some additional scenes with some of the characters," says Lawrence, who specifically mentions new moments between Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and President Snow (Donald Sutherland).Could the still image shown above be from one of the scenes?
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Jennifer Lawrence has revealed, when asked about how "Catching Fire" compares to "The Hunger Games," that, "Visually, it's a lot bigger this time. We get a little deeper into The Capitol as Katniss is trying to get her life back together."
As the book is written from Katniss' perspective, we only see The Capitol as she does. We'd definitely be fascinated to see more of what goes on behind President Snow's closed doors.
"Catching Fire" is out in theaters Friday, November 22.
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Odds favor 'Doctor Strange' and 'Hulk' movies
We already know what lies ahead for the rest of Phase Two: "Thor: The Dark World" arrives in November, followed next April by "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and in August 2014 by the weirdest, most cosmic new addition, "Guardians of the Galaxy." Those, of course, will all lead up to "The Avengers 2" in May 2015, for which writer-director Joss Whedon has already confirmed the addition of mutant brother-sister act Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch to the roster. But what happens after that presumably takes in its billion-plus box-office earnings?
Next comes Phase Three, and plans for that have been, until now, mostly murky. But Marvel president Kevin Feige, the public face of the studio, just gave an extensive interview to EW.com in which he discussed a number of potential candidates for Phase Three movies and gave some better chances of making the schedule than others. So let's take a look at the possibilities and lay our own odds on which heroes, villains and otherworldly beings could be blasting onto movie screens in 2015, 2016 and 2017:
And then there are the wayward children who have recently come home: the rights to "Daredevil," "Ghost Rider," "Punisher" and "Blade" have all reverted to Marvel from the studios that owned them previously. But don't expect to see any of them -- even Blade, the vampire hunter whose hit 1997 movie arguably launched the current wave of comic book movies -- back on the big screen in the near future.
Why? Because with the exception of Blade, none of these characters have truly caught on with the public. The first "Ghost Rider" and "Daredevil" were modest hits despite being widely regarded as lousy movies, while the second "Ghost Rider" and the "Punisher" films have been almost complete write-offs in both quality and commercial success. No one's asking for a new movie about Ghost Rider, and we suspect it will be a long time before anyone is.
Plus, there's only so much room in Phase Three, unless Marvel expands beyond its current pace of two films a year. With "Ant-Man" locked in and, say, "Doctor Strange" or "The Inhumans" making their debut, Feige and company still have to figure out where to put a "Thor 3" or a "Captain America 3" or, depending on how current negotiations go with Robert Downey Jr., an "Iron Man 4." This is a quality problem, one that will keep the Marvel brain trust up nights and the rest of us speculating madly until Phase Three is officially unveiled at Comic-Con 2015.
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