journey 2 where was it filmed

Where was Journey 2: The Mysterious Island filmed?

City locations.

K'a'awa (USA), O'ahu (USA), New York (USA), Wilmington (USA)

Location Types

Ranch, Film Studio, Unusual

Location Styles

Beachfront, Tropical, Muscle, Helicopter Style, Sail

About Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an exciting and thrilling adventure movie that follows the story of Sean Anderson, a teenager who teams up with his mom’s husband in order to find his missing grandfather on a mythical island. In their search, they embark on a mesmerizing journey filled with unexpected twists and turns that take them across breathtaking landscapes and unimaginable creatures.

Along the way, they also face trying circumstances that call for courage, problem-solving, and collaboration. The mysterious island they find themselves on proves to be full of surprises as they discover secrets that help them make it out alive.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island features a star-studded cast including Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzmán, Michael Caine, Vanessa Hudgens, and Kristin Davis. It’s the follow-up to Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), which was written by Richard Outten, Brian Gunn, and Mark Gunn.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Locations

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was primarily filmed in Honolulu, Hawaii, home to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. The picturesque coasts and sweeping landscapes of Oahu provided an awe-inspiring backdrop for the film's scenes. From Diamond Head to Hanauma Bay, Honolulu is a perfect place to bring classic literature, like Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, to life onscreen. With its lush jungles and majestic waterfalls, viewers can practically feel as if they are part of the adventure.

A trip to visit locations from Journey 2: The Mysterious Island would be worthwhile for any fan of the film or avid explorer. From Waimanalo Beach Park where much of the movie was shot, to Nuuanu Pali Lookout which served as a breathtakingly beautiful backdrop for several scenes; there are plenty of sights and activities that will transport visitors back into the movie's setting.

Other popular filming locations include Laie Point State Wayside Park and Kualoa Ranch, both of which have appeared in other movies and television shows due to their stunning views. No matter what kind of traveler you might be, a visit to Oahu will be sure to impress you with its diverse landscape and rich culture, all captured beautifully in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.

An interesting fact about this movie is that it contains various elements from other Jules Verne works including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (1870) and Around The World In Eighty Days (1873). Moreover, there are references to other famous works like King Kong (1933), Star Trek (1966), and Clash Of The Titans (1981). By blending these references into one fantastic journey full of imagination and excitement, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is indeed an amazing cinematic experience!

Sean is arrested scene in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

New York City, New York, USA

Seventeen-year-old Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson), four years after his journey to the center of the earth, finds himself arrested for illegally accessing a satellite control center. He hopes to amplify a coded signal that may have originated from his grandfather, Alexander Anderson (Michael Caine), who has been missing for a long time.

Sean's new stepfather, Hank Parsons (Dwayne Johnson), tries to establish a connection with him by assisting in decoding the signal. This effort leads them to three books, namely, Gulliver's Travels, Treasure Island, and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island.

Situated on the east coast of the United States, New York City, also known as the Big Apple, is among the world's most iconic cities. It is also known as The Empire State and is celebrated for its rich culture, diversity, and history. The city currently houses more than 8 million inhabitants.

Amongst its numerous prominent landmarks is the Statue of Liberty, which France gifted the city as a symbol of democracy and liberty. The Empire State Building is another well-known structure, an imposing skyscraper that provides breathtaking views of the city from its observation deck.

Driving to New York is an option from nearby cities, with several highways that provide convenient access to the city. However, traffic congestion can be heavy at times, specifically during rush hour.

Another way to get to NYC is via train. Amtrak provides train service from other major cities in the United States, with the main train station being Penn Station, situated in Manhattan. Additionally, there are also regional train services including Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road.

Helicopter scene in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Waimea Bay Beach Park, 61-31 Kamehameha Hwy, Haleiwa, HI 96712, United States

Sean, his stepfather Hank, and helicopter pilot Gabato (Luis Guzmán) search for a way to reach the mysterious island. As the trio explores the area, they come across a stunning waterfall that flows into a lagoon. Hank quickly realizes that the waterfall can power their helicopter, which is low on fuel. After charging the helicopter's battery, they continue with their journey.

Located on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii, Waimea Bay Beach Park is a truly stunning destination renowned for its crystal-clear waters, golden sand, and world-famous surfing competitions. Nestled amidst lush greenery, this beach park provides a tranquil and serene environment perfect for visitors seeking to revel in the beauty of Hawaii.

It's a popular spot for tourists and locals alike, offering a plethora of recreational activities and breathtaking natural scenery. Aside from surfing, visitors can relish other activities at Waimea Bay Beach Park such as swimming and snorkeling in clear waters teeming with marine life, hiking, picnicking, and sunbathing.

If you have a rental car or your vehicle, you can drive to 61-31 Kamehameha Hwy. Take the H-2 freeway north from Honolulu to Wahiawa and follow the signs to Kamehameha Highway. Turn left on Kamehameha Highway and continue for approximately 15 miles until you reach 61-31 Kamehameha Hwy in Haleiwa.

Riding through the lush forests scene in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Kualoa Ranch, 49-560 Kamehameha Hwy, Kaneohe, HI 96744, United States

Sean, his stepfather, and pilot Gabato ride ATVs across the stunning landscape of Kualoa Ranch. As they navigate the lush forests and grassy plains, they come across a beautiful waterfall that Sean believes will lead them to the mysterious island they are searching for. They quickly dismount their ATVs and set off on foot, trekking through the jungle and climbing up steep cliffs.

Kualoa Ranch is a 4,000-acre private nature reserve situated on the northeastern side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The ranch is a popular destination for tourists and locals alike, offering numerous recreational activities and stunning natural scenery.

The ranch has been owned by the same family for over 160 years, and it’s served as a filming location for many popular movies and TV shows, including Jurassic Park, Lost, and Hawaii Five-O. Visitors can take guided tours of the ranch to see the filming locations and learn more about the rich history of the area.

If you have a rental car or your own vehicle, drive to 49-560 Kamehameha Hwy. Take the H-3 freeway east from Honolulu to Kaneohe and follow the signs to Kamehameha Highway. Turn right on Kamehameha Highway and continue for approximately 5 miles until you reach 49-560 Kamehameha Hwy.

Discovering the Island scene in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

EUE/Screen Gems Studios, 1223 N 23rd St, Wilmington, NC 28405, United States

Sean, his stepfather, and their guide Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens) explore the island's mysteries. They are taken aback by the realization that the miniature elephants, which belong to the prehistoric Dwarf Sicilian Elephant species, coexist with giant butterflies, resulting in a significant contrast in animal sizes.

They stumble upon a clutch of eggs, but things get out of hand when Gabato unwittingly disturbs a massive frilled lizard, which gives chase and pursues them through the jungle.

EUE/Screen Gems Studios is a state-of-the-art film and television production facility located in Wilmington, North Carolina. The studio complex covers over 150 acres and includes more than 10 sound stages, numerous production offices, and post-production facilities.

Since opening its doors in 1984, EUE/Screen Gems Studios has played a vital role in the film and television industry, serving as a production hub for numerous blockbuster films and hit TV shows. The studio has been involved in the production of over 400 feature films, including Iron Man 3, The Conjuring, and A Walk to Remember, among many others.

If you are driving from downtown Wilmington, take N. 3rd Street towards the north for approximately 2 miles. Then, turn left onto N. 23rd Street and continue for about one mile. You will find 1223 N. 23rd Street on your left.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is an exciting action-adventure movie that follows Sean Anderson and his family as they embark on an epic quest to find Sean's grandfather. Filmed in two stunning locations, Honolulu, USA, and Oahu, Hawai'i, the movie showcases breathtaking visuals, from lush jungles to sandy beaches.

Along the way, the Andersons encounter a range of mysterious creatures, from giant lizards to a swarm of bees with metal stingers. Despite numerous obstacles thrown their way, they eventually reach the mystical island and discover a hidden world teeming with new life forms.

The movie serves as an incredible reminder that there are still many unexplored places on our planet that hold undiscovered secrets and wonders. With its thrilling action sequences and captivating visuals, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a great watch for anyone looking for an unforgettable journey!

Behind The Scenes Of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

On set with The Rock and co

Heading To Hawaii

Film journalism can be tough. Like when you’re sent on a mission to Hawaii to uncover the secrets of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island . That really smarts. But, professional as ever, Total Film sucked it up and headed to the south side of Oahu island where the cast and crew of Journey 2 were setting up one of the movie’s biggest set pieces with Dwayne Johnson and Josh Hutcherson. For this sequel, Brendan Fraser is out of the picture, and Sean Anderson (Hutcherson) goes off on his next adventure with his mum’s new partner, Hank Parsons (Johnson). The pair set out to find Sean’s grandfather (played by returnee Michael Caine), in another riff on a Jules Verne story.

Setting The Scene

The scene that’s currently being shot comes as the mysterious island, an atoll that surfaces in the South Pacific once every 150 years and where the explorers have ended up, is rapidly sinking. The two actors were meant to be doing their own leaping off China Walls (the locals’ nickname for this stretch of coast), but yesterday the production had to be shut down after Hutcherson fell ill and was driven away looking very faint indeed (diagnosis: strep throat) so the young star’s stunt double will take over after close-ups and mid-shots are done. As for Johnson, the film’s panicky producers aren’t in the habit of letting their chunky leading man take too many risks. “If Dwayne so much as stubs his toe, everyone freaks out,” drawls one crew member to Total Film . Looking at the swells below, which look exceedingly dangerous, we reckon the producers’ claim that the actors were going to do their own ocean jumps could be a bit of hyperbole. With plenty of fake plantings and extra brush to beef up the jungle lushness, Hutcherson and Johnson stand on the bluff, gauging the leap below.

Harsh Conditions

Once they’re in the surf, their characters have to swim 100-feet under water to reach the submerged Nautilus submarine (told you this was loosely based on one of Verne’s rollicking adventures). Even though it’s late November, it’s a hot day and the crew's t-shirts are soaked through to a man (and occasional woman). “The sea level’s risen over 100 feet in the last 24 hours!” barks Johnson. Hutcherson, hobbling with the aid of a cane after his character plummeted off the back of a giant bumblebee, replies, “You know, if we die down there, mom’s gonna kills us.” After director Brad Peyton calls cut, the brollies go up to shield the stars from the Hawaiian sun, a lucky make-up girl sponges the sweat off Johnson’s naked scalp and a few Styrofoam rocks are moved around. The man formerly knows as The Rock decides to take a quick comfort break, although the production’s stinking portable conveniences have become a joke on the Journey 2 set. Before heading off, he turns to Total Film and laughs, “This is a $100m movie – we really need better Porta-Potties. Be very careful when you enter one.”

The Extra Dimension

Canadian director Peyton, who moved to LA two years ago, seems to be relishing the challenge of helming a large-scale blockbuster; “If you’re not filming giant lizards, then it’s diving into the ocean to find the Nautilus. There’s giant bees and birds and lizards and storms and helicopter crashes.” This movie is shot in 3D, and it was designed with the extra dimension in mind from inception. “A lot of the jokes and a lot of the action are designed for 3D.” That’s not the only high-tech hurdle to deal with. Some of the action sequences are being shot at 200 frames per second, so you’re going to be getting something coming out of the screen (like spear or some other pointy item) then freezing as the camera tracks around to examine it. “A lot of it is about how do you slow it down and just let it sit there and enjoy that moment,” adds Peyton. So can we expect 3D Bullet-time then? “Yeah it’s close.”

Return Journey

Peyton’s also keen to point out the massive increase in scale compared to the first film, from the scope of the production, to the sets being assembled and the crew that has been hired. “Not to denigrate the first movie but this is a better and more creative team and we’re going to have a much larger scale film.” Were there discussions about Brendan coming back? “It was always known that this film was a different adventure. So the answer is, yes, there was never any intent to have Brendan in this movie,” Peyton explains. “There was talk at one point of having Brendan do a cameo just because it would be fun – Brendan was interested and the studio was interested but story-wise it didn’t work out.” Peyton’s confident that it’s worth the audience taking a return Journey : “First of all, the script itself is better. It’s really more of a male-bonding story, this journey. The script is far superior and therefore the movie will be far superior to the first one.” Seeking solace from the overwhelming island heat, Total Film grabbed some shade for a chat with Dwayne Johnson and Josh Hutcherson.

Dwayne Johnson Interview

How does it feel to shoot at home in Hawaii? “It’s fantastic. It’s great to come back home, it’s great to shoot back here. You know, I grew up probably 30 minutes away from here and things were much different back then – for myself. It’s awesome to come back and bring a big movie back here to Hawaii, not only for the local businesses here in Hawaii but for me personally it’s very satisfying.” Does shooting in 3D affect your acting? “First of all, this is my first 3D movie so it’s been a fascinating experience. Does it affect the acting?” Because you’re already 3D yourself… “Thank you for saying that. You’ve known me for a long time, yes. No, I don’t believe it affects the acting, it mainly affects the shot set-ups. We’re the third generation users of Cameron’s 3D technology, we were the first generation with Journey To The Centre Of The Earth . He came by the set and was watching how all of his cameras, his technology was being utilised – and he was the second generation and now we’re the third. So it’s been fascinating.”

Bigger And Better

What was is that made you want to join Journey 2 ? “It was that, it was being part of a successful franchise. I really enjoyed the script and wanted to hopefully come on board and elevate it and make it bigger and better.” As an actor, what’s kind of films do you prefer working on? “Honestly I prefer everything. I’m really fortunate to be in the position that I’m in, to have the type of diverse career that I’ve been able to have, you know, being very comfortable in a lot of these spaces whether it’s adventure like this or action like Faster to a comedy.

"So I like the diversity and I like being able to work in all these different spaces, and I recognise that there’s not a lot of actors who have the opportunities that I have to work in such varied genres. I enjoy all of them. I think ultimately though, something that is part of my make-up is that I like taking care of things so I like that whether it’s in a comedy or an action movie or an adventure movie. Just the guy who may not be great but does get better by the end of the movie and does take care of things. Kicks a lot of ass too. You’ve gotta do that every once in a while.”

Finding Paradise

What about your character? “He’s a fun character to play. He’s an accomplished guy, was in the Navy, built his own business and gets taken on this incredible adventure with his stepson who has already journeyed to the centre of the Earth and is now going to explore, uh, this really cool, iconic Jules Verne novel and gets taken to this ethereal place that he never thought existed – and it does. So it’s been great.” What lost paradise would you like to go back to? “I’d love to go back to the Roman Empire; I would love that.” On the centurion or gladiator side? You could be Spartacus… “I’d love to take a crack at that… I don’t quite know – I would be an infusion of both. A Caesar who was a gladiator and got to compete – and get the girl, of course.”

Relating To Josh

What’s your relationship with Josh like in the movie? “He’s a young man and, like a lot of relationships - whether it’s with your real dad or it’s with your stepdad - oftentimes there’s a struggle to find some cohesiveness and find some balance. So we’re struggling, when we meet up with these two characters, we’re struggling to find that.

"And I was this way – like a lot of teenagers he feels like he knows the road, the path that he’s on, doesn’t necessarily need a lot of help, certainly not from his mom’s new husband. But now having children of my own and having gone through that myself, I know there are some wisdoms and some pearls that I can share so that’s how our relationships starts out. And then we ultimately bond together into a really nice relationship, which I liked.

"That was a point of movies that I like doing is that by the end your central character has just become better people, and they make everybody else around them better.”

Josh Hutcherson Interview

So, after a day off sick yesterday, you’re diving into the water later today? “I think so. We’re jumping off the end of the world into the ocean. I’m looking forward to it. It’s so hot out there and the water’s so nice. Especially on those rocks, because the heat just bakes them and turns them to hot stones and you’re just frying out there.” What happened to your foot? “Basically, I was flying on top of a giant bumblebee and I fell off and I rolled my ankle severely. As you can see we have a makeshift cast thing going on. It was pretty gnarly actually.”

Romantic Relations

What’s the appeal with Journey 2 ? “What’s cool about this cast is we’re all different genres coming together. With Dwayne it’s the action crowd and Luis [ Guzman ] is comedy and Michael Caine is a legend, and then Vanessa [ Hudgens ] is like my age. So it’s nice to have some different people around on set, and especially somebody younger like Vanessa so her and I can get along and hang out and stuff.” Your characters have a bit of romance don’t they? “Oh yeah, definitely. We definitely have a little something, a little something sizzling.” How was Dwayne to work with? “He is awesome. He’s so much fun, he’s so cool. I mean I grew up – when I was younger I used to love watching wrestling and he was The Rock back in the day. But now he’s transitioned over into a full-blown actor which is really awesome and he’s a great actor and he’s great with stunts, so he’s just a really all-round great guy.”

Absent Friends

How has it been shooting in 3D? “The 3D doesn’t really affect anything we have to do as actors. Sometimes it takes a bit longer to set up shots because they have the different special things they have to do with the two lenses. Other than that the biggest challenge for me is not being on the beach the entire time we’re here shooting. It’s so beautiful, you just want to enjoy the surroundings. The other day we were shooting on the most beautiful beach ever and we couldn’t get in the water because we were working all day. So that’s tough.” “The first movie it was like 80% greenscreen, although we got to go Iceland for a few days which was cool. This is like the polar opposite.” Is it strange coming back without the people who were there on the first film? “Um, it’s a little weird. To me it doesn’t feel like it’s at all the same movie. It’s a completely different adventure with a different cast and we’re in a different place.” What do you like to do in your free time? “I surf a ton. I’m always in the water. I love being in the water so much. I surf, work out, eat awesome food and enjoy the sights.”

Production Values

What’s next for you? “I have a couple projects that are on the horizon possibly but three days before I came down here I finished shooting this movie called Detention , which is a horror comedy, it’s a genre film that’s going to be cool. And I produced that as well so that was very exciting.

"It was great because I’ve grown up on sets since I was like nine years old and I’ve learned a lot about every aspect of filmmaking and I’ve always had my ideas and I’ve wanted to say things but I’ve never been in the right position to give my input because it would be out of place. So for the first time I was able to say my feelings about the project and in my opinion [ bring it to a better place ].” Do you think you’d like to direct in future? “Definitely. I love every aspect of filmmaking and I would love to direct something too.”

Getting Involved In The Action

What can you tell us about your adventures in Journey 2 ? “Can’t give away too much but there’s a giant lizard that chases us, giant bumblebees that we fly on. There’s tiny baby elephants that you want to keep as pets. And there’s a submarine that we have to swim down 100 feet and get to and there’s a little monster guarding that so there’s quite a few little adventures we have to go on.” Do you have many underwater scenes? “Yes, the Nautilus scene is the biggest one. We have to swim down a 100 feet and go into the Nautilus and come back up and get the rest of the gang. But I actually had to get certified for scuba diving to do that because we’re going to have to do a lot of underwater breathing and training and stuff like that.” Do you have a stunt tester? “Yeah, Ralph! It’s funny, I love doing my own stunts – I’m like a producer’s worst nightmare because I’m always trying to do my own stunts and they don’t like that. But Ralph is awesome, I’ve done three movies with him now – he’s a good guy.”

Friending Michael Caine

What fantasy journey would you like to take? “Atlantis would be pretty awesome, cos you always hear about the lost city of Atlantis under the water and the fact that in our movie it rises to the surface…? If that actually happened that would be a very cool place to go.” What’s it like working with Michael Caine? “Michael Caine’s a legend. I mean he walks on set and you’re like, Pinch me, that’s Michael Caine standing right there! He’s such a nice guy and it’s weird you’d think that as an 18 year old guy you wouldn’t – not necessarily not get along with him but you don’t think you’d be able to communicate very well with a 77 year old man. But he is hip; he understands what’s going on, he gets it, like he knows all the lingo. He’s down. He’s very sharp for being 77.” You two could be Facebook friends... “Exactly! My mom told me he was twittering the other day! I mean, I don’t even tweet, that’s ridiculous! Michael Caine’s beat me on the tweeting thing? That’s crazy.”

Perks Of The Job

You didn’t really know Vanessa Hudgens well before working with her on this, how do you get along? “We get along great. She’s so much fun to be around, she’s always dancing around and having a good time and joking. We were total goofballs together so it’s a lot of fun having her around.” Are there any other actresses you’d particularly like to do a romantic scene with? “Oh man, there’s so many beautiful actresses. I know it’s kind of ridiculous but I think Eva Mendes is absolutely beautiful. I know she’s like 10 years older than me but a guy can dream, right? It’s the movies, anything’s possible!” Journey 2: The Mysterious Island opens on 3 February 2012.

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine. 

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Filming Begins on JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND Starring Dwayne Johnson and Josh Hutcherson

Filming has begun in Oahu, Hawaii for JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, which stars Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, and Michael Caine.

Filming has begun in Oahu, Hawaii for Journey 2: The Mysterious Island , the sequel to the 2008 release Journey to the Center of the Earth . Josh Hutcherson ( The Kids Are All Right ) will reprise his role from the original, with Dwayne Johnson ( The Other Guys ) and Michael Caine ( Inception ) set to co-star along with Vanessa Hudgens ( High School Musical ), Luis Guzman ( Nothing Like the Holidays ) and Kristin Davis ( Couples Retreat ). Brad Peyton ( Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore ) is set to direct the 3D family flick.

Hit the jump for the official announcement, plus some of my thoughts.

This method of revamping and "kiddifying" classic Jules Verne novels may not exactly be my cup of cinematic tea... but considering that the first film wasn’t completely without its charms, I suppose there’s no harm in giving it another shot. And come on -- who hasn’t, at some point in their lives, desired to see Sir Michael Caine in glorious three dimensions? That’s what I thought.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is set for release September 23, 2011.

Here's the official press release:

Production Underway on New Line Cinema’s 3D Family Adventure “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Vanessa Hudgens, Luis Guzman and Kristin Davis to Star. Filming has begun on location in Oahu, Hawaii, for the 3D family adventure "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island," directed by Brad Peyton ("Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore"). Josh Hutcherson will reprise his role as young adventurer Sean Anderson in this exciting follow-up to the 2008 worldwide hit "Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D," the first live-action film ever to be shot in digital 3D. Dwayne Johnson stars as Sean's stepfather, Hank Parsons; Michael Caine as Sean's grandfather, Alexander Anderson; Vanessa Hudgens and Luis Guzman as a father-daughter tour guide team; and Kristin Davis as Sean's mom, Liz Anderson. The new journey begins when Sean receives a coded distress signal from a mysterious island where no island should exist - a place of strange life forms, mountains of gold, deadly volcanoes, and more than one astonishing secret. Unable to stop him from going, Sean's new stepfather joins the quest. Together with a helicopter pilot and his beautiful, strong-willed daughter, they set out to find the island, rescue its lone inhabitant and escape before seismic shockwaves force the island under the sea and bury its treasures forever. "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" is being produced by Beau Flynn & Tripp Vinson, and Charlotte Huggins from a screenplay by Mark Gunn & Brian Gunn, story by Richard Outten. Serving as executive producers are Michael Bostick, Evan Turner, Marcus Viscidi, Richard Brener, Samuel J. Brown and Michael Disco. The creative filmmaking team includes director of photography David Tattersall ("Gulliver's Travels"), production designer Bill Boes ("Fantastic Four"), costume designer Denise Wingate ("Wedding Crashers") and Academy Award© nominated visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis ("Poseidon"). Beginning in January 2011, production will move to Wilmington, North Carolina, to finish shooting after the holiday hiatus, and is scheduled to wrap principal photography in February 2011. "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" is a New Line Cinema presentation, a Walden Media and Contrafilm production and will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

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It has been four years since the events of the first movie. Seventeen-year-old Sean Anderson ( Josh Hutcherson ) is caught by the police after a brief chase on his dirtbike which ended with him driving into a swimming pool while trying to evade them. Minutes later, his stepfather Hank ( Dwayne Johnson ) arrives where a police officer (Stephen Caudill) who is friends with Hank tells him that Sean had broken into a remote satellite research center. The police officer also tells Hank that he has talked Mr. and Mrs. McGillicutty (the owners of the swimming pool) out of pressing charges. Hank takes Sean home where his mother Elizabeth ( Kristin Davis ) is not pleased with his actions or the fact that he and Hank don't get along well.

Hank discovers that Sean had broken into a satellite research center in order to boost the signal of a code he'd received from someone he suspects is Alexander Anderson, Sean's grandfather who had been missing for two years. Wanting to bond with his stepson the next day, Hank helps Sean decipher the code of Jules Verne characters which lead to three books: Treasure Island , Gulliver's Travels , and Verne's own Mysterious Island . Using the book's individual island maps, Hank suspects they are books of the same island and uses a back light in order to make them all one completed land mass with the coordinates to its location. Hank manages to convince Liz to let the both of them go in search of the island.

They arrive in Palau where their need of transportation to this dangerous part of the ocean attracts a Palauan helicopter tourism guide Gabato ( Luis Guzman ) and his daughter Kailani ( Vanessa Hudgens ) who Sean develops an immediate crush on. They agree to fly them out to the island for $3,000, but the helicopter gets caught in a category 5 hurricane and they crash into the Pacific, waking up on the island.

Crossing into the island, they discover one of the laws of the Mysterious Island that all animals big are small and all animals small are gigantic (inspiring Lilliput from Gulliver's Travels ). The crew find tiny elephants and giant butterflies, which are the first creatures they discover on the island. The group decided to explore further into the island.

After coming across a massive frill-necked lizard when they come across her egg clutch, they are rescued by Alexander ( Michael Caine ) who takes them to a large hut he'd built from the wreckage of the ship that brought him to the island called the Blue-Eyed Lucy. He has a radio, but due to the positioning of the communications satellite it would be two weeks before they could call for help.

The next morning, Alexander leads the group to the lost city of Atlantis which is usually submerged in the ocean and he also calculated that the island sinks once every 70 years. However, the sea water appearing from the ground is the evidence that Hank sees that leads him to prove that the calculations are wrong, and that the island will sink in a couple of days. Their only means of salvation seems to be the legendary Nautilus (Captain Nemo's submarine), hidden somewhere on the island. Kailani enters Nemo's crypt and finds his journal, which has the whereabouts of the ship in a cave at Poseidon's Cliffs. They decided to go to that cave through the heart of the island.

They mount giant bees in order to fly over a high ridge and make up time, but encounter large birds that try to devour the bees. After saving Kailani's life, Sean crashes and dislocates his ankle. Hank and Alexander later patch up Sean's ankle the best they can. Afterward, they have a good moment when Hank sings his rendition of "What a Wonderful World" to ease Sean's pain.

The next morning, the water has risen greatly and Hank deduces that the island will sink in a matter of hours, not days. Gabato is missing having gone toward the island's golden volcano (which was the inspiration for Treasure Island ) in search for the funds to give his daughter a better life. While Alexander and Kailani go after him, Sean and Hank head for Poseidon's Cliffs to look for the Nautilus. Alexander also finally calls Hank by his preferred name, as up to that point he only called him "Henry" and the family makes up.

To deal with the rising water after finding the Nautilus' cave underwater, Sean and Hank make makeshift oxygen tanks and dive down fifty feet in order to obtain the Nautilus and are nearly killed by a giant electric eel. They are unable to power the ship however because the vessel's batteries being 140 years old have run down. They find a way to power the submarine from the electric eel's electricity.

Meanwhile, Kailani and Alexander find Gabato and convince him to escape with them instead of trying for the golden volcano. They head toward the shore as the island begins to suddenly and violently rip itself apart. The golden volcano starts to erupt violently, pouring lava flows all over the area. Highly flammable lava bombs are thrown from the golden volcano into the air and suddenly land on the sinking island's debris. Sean and Hank use a harpoon to get an electrical jump start from the electric eel swarming around them and they are able to power the machine, just in time to pick up the others who had fallen into the water. Gabato pilots the submarine out of harm's way while Hank and Sean fire torpedoes into the path of falling island debris. As they clear the dangers, Kailani finally kisses Sean for his bravery.

Six months later, Kailani and Gabato are well off. Gabato is now running the most popular tourist attraction on Palau providing tours aboard the Nautilus and Kailani is attending college. Kailani goes to visit Sean on his birthday. While they are celebrating, Alexander shows up with a book for Sean's birthday present. Sean opens it to find Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon , Alexander's suggestion for the next adventure with the family to which Liz protests. Hank replies "What could possibly go wrong? It's only the moon!"

During the credits, the mini-elephants from the earlier scene are swimming underwater over Atlantis.

• Dwayne Johnson as Hank Parsons, Sean's stepfather and a former Navy code breaker.
• Michael Caine as Alexander Anderson, Sean's grandfather who is also the father of Max and Trevor Anderson.
• Josh Hutcherson as Sean Anderson, Hank's stepson who wants to find his missing grandfather on the Mysterious Island.
• Vanessa Hudgens as Kailani Laguatan, Sean's love interest who is part of the father-daughter tour guide team.
• Luis Guzman as Gabato Laguatan, Kailani's father, who is part of the father-daughter tour guide team.
• Kristin Davis as Elizabeth "Liz" Anderson-Parsons, Sean's mother.

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Journey 2 reveals the mysterious allure of islands

Jules Verne's works have much to offer the makers of CGI-prone, 3D-disposed kids' adventure flicks. The 2008 version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth did well enough at the box office, so a sequel was obligatory. We could have had Captain Nemo's submarine odyssey, the exploration of Africa from a balloon or a voyage to the moon by cannon-fired projectile. Instead, we get a trip to an island.

Even in Verne's day, this was considered a bit of a let-down. The author's publisher rejected the first version of what was to become The Mysterious Island with the reproach: "Where is the science?" To beef things up a bit, Verne got his adventurers blown off course while escaping from a war zone by balloon. Less thrillingly, the heroes of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island travel instead by downmarket tourist chopper.

Still, their destination is an island, and islands enjoy a special place in the human imagination. Those who can, including Marlon Brando, John Wayne and Mel Gibson, have insisted on actually owning one. Tiberius preferred to rule the Roman empire from Capri, while to create Nineteen Eighty-Four , Orwell felt obliged to maroon himself on Jura. A poet called Kimon Friar lived on 46 different islands ; a decorator called Andy Strangeway has slept on 162 ; a conservationist called Philip Conkling has visited a thousand .

The allure prompting such behaviour infected cinema from its beginnings. The first big-screen version of Verne's The Mysterious Island appeared in 1929, though the 1961 stop-motion animation is better remembered and the little-known Soviet version has its admirers. Island settings have sustained films as different as Jaws, South Pacific, The Wicker Man, Dr No and Il Postino, or more recently Mamma Mia!, Shutter Island and Archipelago.

Our preoccupation with islands goes back to classical times, while since the middle ages, both paradises and hell-holes have typically been envisaged on islands. This year, the BBC celebrates the 70th anniversary of its longest-running programme, Desert Island Discs , and Danny Boyle presents his Olympian extravaganza , entitled, fittingly enough, Isles of Wonder.

The role of islands in the human psyche has been much pondered , but the artefacts that they've inspired offer clues enough. Works such as The Tempest, Utopia, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island and Lord of the Flies may seem very different, but they utilise the same obvious but distinct features of isolation.

Islands are necessarily extrinsic; but, unlike deserts, forests or mountain ranges, they're also peculiarly finite. This makes them theatres in which alternative worlds can readily take the stage.

Evolution makes this happen automatically, as Darwin discovered in the Galapagos . Journey 2: The Mysterious Island relies on Foster's rule , which asserts that island life-forms may get larger if cut off from predators or smaller if denied mainland nutrients. That's why Michael Caine is subjected to the indignity of having to ride on a giant bee. However, as in so many island fictions, human character also evolves.

Islands provide distance from familiar ways of thinking and invite or require reassessments. Visits to them, real or imaginary, can be as conceptually disruptive as any sojourn in the contrived landscapes of science fiction. They enable us, as one writer has it, "to know ourselves as distinct from those around us, and, in so doing, forge a more articulated relationship with the world" . So it is, sort of, in Journey 2.

The film's protagonists are peculiarly unappealing. As romantic leads, Josh Hutcherson and Vanessa Hudgens are both vacuous and unpleasant. Luis Guzmán is drearily gross and The Rock seems to have wandered in from another movie. The quartet's adventures are mechanically predictable. When we reach the bog-standard redemptive climax to which they're subjected, we might weep with weariness, but for one thing. It's that island locale. This makes the whole thing somehow work.

Journey 2 is based on the idea that Verne, Stevenson and Swift's books were rooted in fact; that they were prompted by rumours of an uncharted island that does actually exist . The film ends up by reminding us that just such an enchanted isle is indeed real enough. It lies, however, not in the wide ocean's stormy embrace, but amid the boundless seas of the human soul.

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"Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" looks like nothing so much as one of those live-action adventures that Disney used to grind out in the 1950s — and hey, here's Captain Nemo's Nautilus to prove it. Also, a tree house to humble "Swiss Family Robinson," which contains a short-wave radio that has been assembled from old spoons, I think I heard.

The movie is very, very loosely a sequel to " Journey to the Center of the Earth ," with only two connections: It's inspired by a Jules Verne novel, and it co-stars young Josh Hutcherson as the hero Sean. The film opens with him on a motorcycle and being chased by cops, but not to worry; all he did was break into a satellite-tracking station to boost the power on a message for help sent by his grandfather from a lost island in the Pacific.

Sean, whose father in the first film ( Brendan Fraser ) has disappeared (from the cast, anyway), now has to deal with Hank ( Dwayne Johnson , aka the Rock). Hank is his new stepdad. Josh and Hank make friends by decrypting grandfather's message; Hank glances at it and intuits that the two-syllable words stand for dots and one-syllable words stand for dashes, which means Grandpa has had enough free time on his remote island to figure out a way to make Morse code several times longer than it previously was. Unanswered is why grandfather would encrypt a call for help.

This Hank, what a swell guy. He proposes that the two of them fly off to the Pacific and find Grandpa. On arrival somewhere, they hire a tourist helicopter pilot named Gabato, played by Luis Guzman as another one of those low-comedy guys who gets all worked up and is scared of stuff. (I enjoyed a reprise of this classic shot: Gabato runs toward camera, falls on stomach, looks up …and up … and up.)

Gabato has a daughter named Kailani ( Vanessa Hudgens ), a Polynesian beauty who wears a tank top and Daisy Dukes throughout the film. These four fly off in the helicopter, are trapped in a Force Five hurricane that rips it to pieces and are lucky enough to find themselves alive on the beach of the Mysterious Island.

This is your complete island. It has an active volcano; waterfalls with no apparent water sources streaming down cliffs; elephants the size of dogs, and giant lizards that are nowhere big enough to account for the size of their eggs. (Josh falls through the shell of one, splashes in a pool of yolk and is attacked by an unborn lizard chick.) Also on the island is the lost city of Atlantis, even though it's in the wrong ocean, and bees so big Sean and Kailani can both ride on the back of one. And Alexander Anderson, Sean's grandfather, played by Michael Caine , who will not be editing this role into his videos about how to act in movies.

I hope you understand I enjoyed most of this stuff. The director, Brad Peyton , apparently intended it as a genial parody of countless other movies in this spirit. There is, for example, a scene were Sean, Grandpa, Kailani and Gabato all sit around the old campfire and listen while Hank strums a ukulele and sings "What a Wonderful World." And I mean he sings it: every word of three verses. It's not every day you see the Rock channeling Gene Autry.

Sean deduces that Verne's novel contains everything they need to know, and this comes in handy when the volcano explodes, and the island begins to sink into the sea. Sure enough, Captain Nemo's submarine is still hidden underwater. Hank and Sean, trusting Verne, dive off a high cliff, and while holding their breath and swimming underwater, are able to (1) find the sub, (2) open the hatch by tugging and twisting it, (3) swim inside, (4) push a lever to fill it with air, and (5) get the power generator working by jump-starting it with an electric eel.

This is transcendently goofy. It isn't a "good" movie in the usual sense (or most senses), but it is jolly and good-natured, and Michael Caine and Dwayne Johnson are among the most likable of actors. Johnson is such a good sport, he even shows young Sean how to impress girls by flexing your pecs so quickly that nuts will ricochet off them. I can't think of any reason to pay extra for the 3-D.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Journey 2: Mysterious Island (2012)

Rated PG for some adventure action, and brief mild language

Josh Hutcherson as Sean

Dwayne Johnson as Hank

Vanessa Hudgens as Kailani

Michael Caine as Alexander

Luis Guzman as Gabato

Directed by

• Brad Peyton

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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a 2012 American science fantasy action-adventure film [4] directed by Brad Peyton and produced by Beau Flynn , Tripp Vinson and Charlotte Huggins. A sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), the film is based on Jules Verne 's The Mysterious Island (1875). It stars Dwayne Johnson , Michael Caine , Josh Hutcherson , Vanessa Hudgens , Luis Guzmán , and Kristin Davis . The storyline was written by Richard Outten , Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn, and the screenplay by Brian and Mark Gunn.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was released in cinemas on February 10, 2012, by Warner Bros. Pictures , New Line Cinema and Walden Media to mixed reviews, [5] [6] but was a box office success with a worldwide gross of $335 million, surpassing its predecessor. [3] It was released on DVD/Blu-ray on June 5, 2012.

• 3.1 Casting
• 3.2 Short film
• 4.1 Theatrical release
• 4.2 Home media
• 5.1 Box office
• 5.2 Critical response
• 5.3 Accolades
• 6 Soundtrack
• 10 See also
• 11 References
• 12 External links

Four years after his adventure in the center of the earth , 17-year-old Sean Anderson is arrested by the police for breaking into a satellite control center in hopes of enhancing a coded signal that could have been sent by his long-missing grandfather, Alexander Anderson. Wanting to bond with Sean, his new stepfather Hank Parsons helps decipher the code, which leads to three books: Treasure Island , Gulliver's Travels , and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island . Using the books' individual maps, Hank uses a backlight to make them a single island, complete with the coordinates to its location. Hoping to prove to Sean that there is no mysterious island there, Hank agrees to take him to where the coordiantes point to.

In Palau, Hank reluctantly hires helicopter tourism guide Gabato and his daughter Kailani (on whom Sean develops an immediate crush) to fly to the coordinates, as they are the only ones willing to take them. The helicopter gets caught in a cyclone and they crash into the Pacific, waking up on the island.

Moving inland, they are shocked to discover miniature elephants (which belong to a prehistoric species, the Dwarf sicilian elephant) and giant butterflies. After coming across an egg clutch, Gabato accidentally wakes up a giant frilled lizard, which chases them throughout the jungle. They nearly get eaten, but are saved by Alexander. He takes them to a hut he built from the wreckage of the ship that brought him to the island. He has a working radio, but due to the positioning of the satellite, it will be two weeks before they can call out.

The next morning, Alexander leads the group to the lost city of Atlantis, which rises every 70 years and sinks again after a couple of days. Their only means of salvation seems to be the legendary Nautilus , Captain Nemo's submarine. Kailani enters Nemo's crypt and finds his journal, which shows that Nautilus is in a cave at Poseidon's Cliffs.

To go there, they mount giant bees and fly over a high ridge. When giant bee-eater birds try to devour them, Sean saves Kailani's life, but dislocates his ankle. Hank and Alexander reset Sean's ankle, then the group has a bonding moment when Hank sings his rendition of "What a Wonderful World" to ease Sean's pain.

The next morning, the water rises greatly and Hank deduces that the island will sink in a matter of hours. Gabato is missing, having gone toward the island's volcano in search of gold. While Alexander and Kailani go after him, Sean and Hank head for Poseidon's Cliffs.

To reach Nautilus ' underwater cave, Sean and Hank create makeshift oxygen tanks and dive down fifty feet, but are nearly killed by a giant electric moray eel. The 140-year-old batteries have run down, so they engineer a way to start the submarine with the eel's electricity.

Kailani and Alexander find Gabato and convince him to escape with them instead of trying for the volcano. As they near Poseidon's Cliffs, the volcano erupts. Sean and Hank arrive in Nautilus just in time to rescue the others from the water. Gabato pilots the submarine out of harm's way while Hank and Sean fire torpedoes into the path of falling debris. As they clear the dangers, Kailani kisses Sean for his bravery.

Six months later, Kailani and Gabato are well off, as he runs the most popular tourist attraction on Palau – tours aboard the Nautilus . Kailani visits Sean on his birthday. While the family celebrates, Alexander arrives with a book for Sean's birthday present – Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon , Alexander's suggestion for the next new adventure with the family.

• Dwayne Johnson as Hank , Sean's stepfather and a former Navy code breaker.
• Michael Caine as Alexander , Sean's grandfather who is the father of Max and Trevor Anderson from the previous film .
• Josh Hutcherson as Sean , Hank's stepson who wants to find his missing grandfather on the Mysterious Island.
• Luis Guzmán as Gabato , Kailani's father, who is part of the father-daughter tour guide team.
• Vanessa Hudgens as Kailani , part of the father-daughter tour guide company and Sean’s love interest.
• Kristin Davis as Liz, Sean's mother and Hank's wife. Portrayed by Jane Wheeler in the previous film .
• Anna Colwell as Jessica
• Stephen Caudill as Cop, a police officer who is a friend of Hank's.
• Branscombe Richmond as Tour Guide
• Walter Bankson as Hockey Player

Production [ ]

After the commercial success of the first film, New Line Cinema and Walden Media purchased Richard Outten 's spec script, Mysterious Travels , in March 2009 to serve as the basis for the film. In the story, the characters embark on a journey to a mysterious uncharted island thought to have inspired the writing of three literary classics: Robert Louis Stevenson 's Treasure Island , Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels , and Jules Verne 's Mysterious Island . Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn were chosen to revise Outten's script. Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema announced that Journey 2: The Mysterious Island would be released on February 10, 2012.

Casting [ ]

Josh Hutcherson was the only actor to reprise his role. Due to scheduling issues, Brendan Fraser and Anita Briem did not return. Kristin Davis replaced Jane Wheeler as Sean's mother Liz. Dwayne Johnson played Sean's stepfather, who is forced to accompany Sean on the trip to find his missing grandfather Alexander (played by Michael Caine ) on a mythical and monstrous island. [7] Vanessa Hudgens was cast as Hutcherson's love interest, Kailani.

Short film [ ]

The theatrical release of the film was preceded by a Looney Tunes short film titled Daffy's Rhapsody , featuring Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd in the first CG or 3-D depiction of these specific Looney Tunes characters. The short film's director, Matthew O'Callaghan, noted that " Daffy Rhapsody was originally recorded in the early 1950s as part of a kids' album". Unlike the earlier CG Looney Tunes shorts that appeared before Happy Feet Two and Yogi Bear , this short did not appear on the home video release of the film it accompanied.

Release [ ]

Theatrical release [ ].

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was released in cinemas on February 10, 2012, by Warner Bros. Pictures , Walden Media and New Line Cinema . The film was accompanied by a 3D Looney Tunes short titled Daffy's Rhapsody . The short was originally going to play before Happy Feet Two , but was replaced with I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat to go along with the bird theme.

Home media [ ]

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was released on DVD/Blu-ray on June 5, 2012.

Reception [ ]

Box office [ ].

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island grossed $103.9 million in North America and $231.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $335.3 million, against a production budget of $79 million [8] surpassing its predecessor . [9] [10] In North America, the film earned a $6.54 million on its debut Friday, ranking fourth at the box office. [11] Over the weekend, it earned $27.3 million, coming in third place, much higher than the original's $21.0 million debut. [12] Outside North America, Journey 2 began its run three weeks before its North American release. [13] It topped the box office outside North America for two consecutive weekends [14] and three in total. [15] It surpassed the original's total outside North America. [16] Its highest-grossing region after North America was China ($58.4 million), [17] followed by Russia and the CIS ($17.6 million) and Mexico ($12.7 million). [18]

Critical response [ ]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 44% based on 131 reviews with an average rating of 4.92/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Aggressively unambitious, Journey 2 might thrill teen viewers, but most others will find it too intense for young audiences and too cartoonishly dull for adults". [5] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 41 out of 100 based on reviews from 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [6] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. [19]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B grade, stating that "the movie flies by pleasantly, and is then instantly forgettable. Perhaps Jules Verne can explain the science of that". [ citation needed ]

Accolades [ ]

Soundtrack [ ].

• Letterbomb - Performed by Green Day
• Sleep Forever - Performed by Crocodiles
• Aloha Oe - Performed by Dwayne Johnson
• Hello Again - Performed by Meta & The Cornerstones
• Three Little Birds - Performed by Bob Marley & The Wailers
• What a Wonderful World - Performed by Dwayne Johnson

In August 2014, Carey Hayes and Chad Hayes were announced to write the script for a third film. [21] Brad Peyton and Dwayne Johnson were expected to direct and star in the sequel, respectively. [22] It was later stated that there would be two sequels. [23] By January 2018 however, Johnson stated despite the financial success of The Mysterious Island , and although a third film titled Journey from the Earth to the Moon was intended, its development had been cancelled due to a lack of immediate interest and troubles in adequately adapting the novel. [24] Despite this, reports from Hollywood production insiders arose in August 2020, stating that a sequel was once again in development. In December 2021, Hiram Garcia confirmed that Warner Bros. Pictures wants a sequel film, though Seven Bucks Productions decided to delay development in favor of pursuing other projects. [25]

Gallery [ ]

See also [ ]

• Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008 film)

References [ ]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012): Full Production Credits" . Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . Archived from the original on January 4, 2013 . Retrieved March 23, 2012 . <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
• ↑ " JOURNEY 2 – (PG) ".
• ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 " Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ " JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND ". Warner Bros .
• ↑ 5.0 5.1 " Journey 2: The Mysterious Island ". Rotten Tomatoes .
• ↑ 6.0 6.1 " Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Reviews ". Metacritic.com.
• ↑ McNary, Dave (8 September 2010). " Michael Caine set for 'Journey 2' ". Variety .
• ↑ " Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) - Box Office Mojo ".
• ↑ " Jules Verne Showdown ".
• ↑ Subers, Ray (April 18, 2012). " Around-the-World Roundup: 'Journey 2' Wins Weak Weekend ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Subers, Ray (February 11, 2012). " Friday Report: 'The Vow,' 'Safe House' Draw Huge Crowds ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Subers, Ray (February 12, 2012). " Weekend Report: Moviegoers Say "I Do" to 'The Vow,' Check In to 'Safe House' ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Subers, Ray (January 25, 2012). " Around-the-World Roundup: 'Sherlock' Outwits Competition for Third-Straight Weekend ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Subers, Ray (February 21, 2012). " Around-the-World Roundup: 'Journey 2' Still Strong Overseas ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Subers, Ray (February 21, 2012). " Around-the-World Roundup: 'Journey 2' Wins Weak Weekend ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Subers, Ray (February 28, 2012). " Around-the-World Roundup: 'Ghost Rider 2' Catches Fire Overseas ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Xia, Yun (March 17, 2012). " China Weekly Box Office (03/05 – 03/11): War Horse repeat while A Simple Life shined; Mission Impossible 4 crossed $100m ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ " Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) - International Box Office Results ". Box Office Mojo .
• ↑ Weinstein, Joshua L. (11 February 2012). " Strong Friday Box Office Puts 'The Vow,' 'Safe House' on Track for $38M+ Weekend ". Reuters . ““Safe House” and “Journey 2” each got an “A-.””
• ↑ Roger Ebert (February 8, 2012). "Jump-starting the Nautilus with an electric eel" . Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved February 6, 2021 . <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
• ↑ " ' Journey' Sequels in the Works With 'Conjuring' Writers (Exclusive)" . The Hollywood Reporter. August 14, 2014. <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
• ↑ " Brad Peyton Wants A More "Mature" Journey 3 ".
• ↑ " Dwayne Johnson Journey 3 and 4: Writers Hired For Two More Sequels ".
• ↑ Stephens, David (January 3, 2018). " Dwayne Johnson Confirms That Journey 3 Isn't Happening ". Screen Rant .
• ↑ Weintraub, Steve (December 31, 2021). " Exclusive: Producer Hiram Garcia on ‘Red Notice,’ ’Black Adam,’ the Next ‘Jumanji’ Sequel, and Dwayne Johnson’s Upcoming Schedule ". Retrieved on January 5, 2022.

External links [ ]

• {{WP|Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
• Official website

• Journey 2: The Mysterious Island at the TCM Movie Database
• Journey 2: The Mysterious Island at AllMovie
• Journey 2: The Mysterious Island at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Now Shooting; Set Photos Surface at /Film
• 1 Tooned Out
• 2 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

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Aggressively unambitious, Journey 2 might thrill tween viewers, but most others will find it too intense for young audiences and too cartoonishly dull for adults.

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Brad Peyton

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Josh Hutcherson

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Kristin Davis

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Journey 2: the mysterious island: film review.

Josh Hutcherson returns as Sean Anderson, who embarks on a mission to save his grandfather with the help of his mother's boyfriend, played by Dwayne Johnson.

By Megan Lehmann

Megan Lehmann

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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Still - H 2012

A menagerie of outsized fauna is royally upstaged by Dwayne Johnson ’s dancing man-boobs in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island , yet another from the Verne-adaptation school of fanciful family adventure.

A 3D update of one of the less widely read Jules Verne classics, it follows the 2008 hit J ourney to the Center of the Earth , a pioneer in the 3D resurrection that reached its zenith a year later with Avatar.

The Bottom Line Jules Verne rejuvenated for the iPhone age.

PHOTOS: Dwayne Johnson and 26 of Hollywood’s Most Popular Athletes-Turned-Actors

Verne was a fantasist nonpareil, but his 19th century imagination would surely have balked at the notion of berries pinging wildly off The Rock’s pecs as they do in this kid-friendly excursion from Canadian director Brad Peyton ( Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore ).

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The targeted demographic, however, will gladly hop aboard for a cornball ride through colorful, often glaringly phony sets popping with miniature elephants, gold-spewing volcanoes and a monster-truck-sized lizard.

For the adults, there’s the edifying sight of Michael Caine astride a giant bee.

The New Line and Contrafilm presentation, bowing in Australia January 19 before a global roll-out that reaches North America on February 10, can expect to at least equal the $250 million box office drawn by 2008’s Journey.

Josh Hutcherson , whose teen idol status is set to hit critical mass with his upcoming role in The Hunger Games , returns as intrepid young explorer Sean Anderson. In Journey, he was accompanied by his uncle (played by Brendan Fraser ), but this time round a cheerily self-aware Johnson, as his Navy vet stepfather Hank, is the responsible adult on board.

VIDEO:Josh Hutcherson, Vanessa Hudgens and Dwayne Johnson Discover a ‘Mysterious Island’ in ‘Journey 2’ Trailer

Sean is now a rebellious 17-year-old and skeptical of the new father-figure chosen by his mom ( Kristen Davis ). The requisite male bonding ensues when Sean intercepts a coded distress signal which leads the pair to an uncharted island in the middle of the South Pacific and into the eccentric vortex of Sean’s adventurer grandfather, Alexander (Caine).

Equal and opposite attraction emerges in the form of the headstrong Kailani ( Vanessa Hudgens ), daughter of helicopter pilot Gabato ( Luis Guzmán , providing stale comic relief).

The island is a rainbow-filled world where evolutionary anomalies abound but, as the band of adventurers skips from one supersized Survivor -like challenge to the next, one can’t help feeling the creative potential of Verne’s vision is wasted.

There’s certainly nothing much here to frighten the children, although Johnson’s ukulele-accompanied rendition of “What a Wonderful World” might come close. The dense scientific discussion that characterized Verne’s “The Mysterious Island” is boiled down to an occasional spurt of exposition – and an iPhone cameo – as screenwriters Richard Outten, Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn braid together elements from that novel, together with Robert Louis Stevenson ’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, to produce an episodic storyline.

Like Jane Austen , Verne has provided a rich seam for Hollywood screenwriters to mine long after his death. There have been various cinematic adaptations of his 1874 novel; the most fondly remembered is 1961’s Mysterious Island, celebrated for Ray Harryhausen ’s stop-motion animation and the buckskin micro-dress worn by Beth Rogan . That film followed the 1959 version of J ourney to the Center of the Earth in the same way Journey 2 follows 2008’s Journey , but was considered a sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in that the megalomaniac Captain Nemo also featured.

Nemo is referenced obliquely here, but a glorious steam-punk rendering of the Nautilus is featured prominently, eventually getting a jump-start from a gigantic electric eel in one of the film’s most inventive set pieces.

Where the 1961 film took its make-believe seriously, Peyton is content creating a series of visual spectacles. Johnson sets the tone with an affable goofiness, although never ignites the spark that his labored banter with Caine requires.

Opens: Australia, January 19; U.S. February 10 Production company: New Line Cinema presentation of a Contrafilm production Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Vanessa Hudgens, Michael Caine, Luis Guzman Director: Brad Peyton Screenwriters: Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn, from a story by Richard Outten, Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn Producers: Beau Flynn, Tripp Vinson, Charlotte Huggins Executive producers: Richard Brener, Michael Disco, Samuel J. Brown, Marcus Viscidi, Michael Bostick and Evan Turner Co-producer: Dwayne Johnson Director of photography: David Tattersall Production designer: Bill Boes Costume designer: Denise Wingate Music: Andrew Lockington Editor: David Rennie Rated PG, 94 minutes

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Journey 2: the mysterious island.

2012 Directed by Brad Peyton

Believe the Impossible. Discover the Incredible.

Sean Anderson partners with his mom's boyfriend on a mission to find his grandfather, who is thought to be missing on a mythical island.

Dwayne Johnson Josh Hutcherson Vanessa Hudgens Luis Guzmán Michael Caine Kristin Davis Anna Colwell Stephen Caudill Branscombe Richmond Walter Bankson Cody Easterbrook Paul Leo Klink

Director Director

Brad Peyton

Producers Producers

Charlotte Huggins Beau Flynn Tripp Vinson

Writers Writers

Mark Gunn Brian Gunn

Story Story

Brian Gunn Mark Gunn Richard Outten

Casting Casting

Lisa Mae Fincannon Craig Fincannon

Editor Editor

David Rennie

Cinematography Cinematography

David Tattersall

Assistant Director Asst. Director

John Hockridge

Additional Directing Add. Directing

Boyd Shermis

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Michael Bostick Evan Turner Richard Brener

Camera Operators Camera Operators

Mike Repeta Gregory W. Smith

Production Design Production Design

Art direction art direction.

Bruce Robert Hill

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Chad S. Frey Dean Wolcott Greg Papalia Chuck Potter Kip Bartlett Gary Fettis Alex McCarroll Erik Parzwardek Benjamin Patterson

Visual Effects Visual Effects

James Baker Boyd Shermis Daryl Sawchuk Julie Orosz Nick Pill Randy Starr Hiroshi Mori

Stunts Stunts

Alex Daniels Tanoai Reed Tim Jarvis Jennifer Brusciano Ralf Koch Craig H. Davidson Clay Cullen

Composer Composer

Andrew Lockington

Sound Sound

Randy Thom Colette D. Dahanne Leff Lefferts Josh Gold Al Nelson

Costume Design Costume Design

Denise Wingate

Makeup Makeup

Tarra D. Day

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Walden Media New Line Cinema Contrafilm Warner Bros. Pictures

Releases by Date

19 jan 2012, 03 feb 2012, 10 feb 2012, 15 feb 2012, 16 feb 2012, 17 feb 2012, 24 feb 2012, 01 mar 2012, 02 mar 2012, 08 mar 2012, 09 mar 2012, 15 mar 2012, 16 oct 2012, 20 jun 2012, 18 dec 2012, 21 dec 2012, 23 aug 2014, releases by country.

• Theatrical PG
• Theatrical L
• Theatrical В
• Theatrical 11
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 6
• Theatrical Κ
• Physical DVD
• Physical BluRay
• Theatrical T

Netherlands

• Theatrical 12
• Physical 12 DVD, Blu ray
• TV 12 SBS 6
• Theatrical M/6

South Korea

• Theatrical All

94 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by shay ★★ 1

the rock has 72 movies in total but he plays the same exact role in so many of them that when it really comes down to it he really only has like 5 movies

Review by Chris Burns ★½ 8

Hungry Gamer: I hate you, stepdad The Rock. There's so much tension between us.

Next scene.

The Rock: I'm good with codes and maps and stuff. Hungry Gamer: Great! Let's be buds.

On the island.

Michael Caine: Look, I'm on a giant bee. This mysterious place has loads of mysterious creatures like this. Mysterious. The Rock: This mysterious island is mysteriously sinking. "It looks like the liquefaction has tripled overnight!" (actual dialogue) Hungry Gamer: So, all these mysterious animals will drown? The Rock: ... am... Check out my tits... they can dance. Quick, throw berries at them.

Review by chloe 💓 ★★½

this hunger games mfer spends the whole movie spitting facts about explorer novels and their authors, has all this camping gear, a bedroom decorated like he does this kind of adventure stuff often, but then points at coordinates on a map and says “ what are those things?” ????? i can’t with this movie omfg

Review by heykorra ★★★½ 3

used to watch this religiously as a child for josh hutcherson and i am still obsessed with him

Review by mia <3 ★★★ 1

three stars all dedicated to josh hutcherson

Review by nick atkinson ★★½ 4

Logically, the film makes no sense. The acting is pretty much awful. The writing is terrible. But The Rock makes his pecs dance, so here’s two and a half stars.

Review by Vidyuth Mahesh 11

love coming back from a long day out with my family and seeing the rock's titties bouncing off berries

Review by Ellie C. ★★ 4

I could see the rocks nipples the entire time

Review by 𝓢 ★★★

sometimes you need a bad movie with terrible effects to put a smile on your face

Review by ram<3 ★★½ 1

my josh hutcherson era starts… NOW

Review by tasha ★★★★★ 1

a masterpiece. holy shit. dwayne "the rock" johnson sucker punched a giant lizard in the FACE in this movie and that wasn't even the best thing that happened

Review by oppenheimer ½ 5

0.5 star for the miniature elephants...

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Screen Rant

Journey 2: the mysterious island cast & character guide - where you've seen the actors before.

With A-list stars like The Rock and Vanessa Hudgens at the helm, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island has a stacked cast of Hollywood heavyweights.

• Journey 2: The Mysterious Island brings a fresh perspective with a shift in narrative focus, combining mystery, fantasy, and action.
• Dwayne Johnson's charismatic performance as Hank Parsons adds humor, physical prowess, and emotional depth to the film.
• Vanessa Hudgens' portrayal of Kailani is full of confidence and charm.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is the second installment in the Journey film franchise, which features an all-star cast including Vanessa Hudgens. While 2008's Journey to the Center of the Earth was inspired by Jules Verne's classic sci-fi novel of the same name, Journey 2 embraces a different Verne novel, The Mysterious Island , as its primary source material and focuses more on comedy. Unlike the first film's underground exploration theme, Journey 2 expands its horizon to an enigmatic island, introducing new characters and challenges. It makes for an exciting standalone adventure while maintaining a connection to the franchise's adventurous spirit.

This shift in narrative focus brings a fresh perspective to the franchise, offering a new adventure that combines elements of mystery, fantasy, and action. The sequel stands out for its unique blend of mythical creatures, hidden treasures, and uncharted territories, providing a visually stunning and thrilling experience. However, 2012's Journey 2: The Mysterious Island not only explores new thematic terrain but also features a star-studded cast that adds depth and charisma to its fantastical world. The film's ensemble comprises both seasoned actors and rising stars, including Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in an interesting transitional phase of his career.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson’s Franchises Ranked Worst To Best

Dwayne johnson as hank parsons.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays Hank Parsons in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island . Hank is Sean Anderson's stepfather, a former Navy codebreaker who reluctantly joins the adventure. Typical of other Johnson performances, his character brings a blend of humor, physical prowess, and emotional depth to the film. Hank's relationship with Sean evolves throughout the movie, adding a layer of family dynamics to the adventurous storyline. His expertise in navigation and survival skills proves crucial in the challenges they face on the island.

Dwayne Johnson's career transition from a professional wrestler to a Hollywood superstar is legendary. Known for his charismatic screen presence and action-packed performances, Johnson has starred in major blockbusters like the Fast & Furious franchise as Luke Hobbs , San Andreas as Raymond, and Jumanji as Spencer. His roles showcase his physical strength and comedic talent, making him one of the most entertaining stars in the industry. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island marks an interesting point in Johnson's career, as it was right on the cusp of him becoming a bankable actor able who brings in billions at the box office.

Josh Hutcherson As Sean Anderson

Josh Hutcherson is the bridge between the first movie and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island , as he reprises his role as Sean Anderson, the intrepid young explorer from the 2008 film. Sean embarks on another extraordinary adventure, this time to find his missing grandfather on the mythical Mysterious Island. His character's bravery, intelligence, and curiosity drive the plot, as he navigates through the island's wonders and dangers. Sean's development from the first film is evident, showcasing a more mature and confident explorer, yet retaining the youthful enthusiasm that defines his character.

Josh Hutcherson became a household name with his role as Peeta Mellark in the Hunger Games series , a part that catapulted him to international fame. His portrayal of the compassionate and resourceful Peeta garnered critical acclaim and a massive fan following. Before The Hunger Games , Hutcherson had already established himself as a talented young actor with roles in other adventure films, such as Jesse in Bridge to Terabithia and Walter in Zathura: A Space Adventure . In 2023, he starred in the PG-13 sleeper hit horror movie Five Nights at Freddy 's as Mike Schmidt.

Michael Caine As Alexander Anderson

Legendary actor Michael Caine plays Alexander Anderson, Sean's adventurous grandfather, in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island . Alexander, a Vernian (follower of Jules Verne's works), is the reason behind the expedition to the Mysterious Island. His character is eccentric, full of wisdom, and embodies the spirit of exploration. Caine's portrayal brings a sense of gravitas and charm to the film, serving as a mentor figure to the younger characters while engaging in the adventure with youthful vigor.

Michael Caine's illustrious career spans several decades, with iconic roles such as Charlie in the classic British crime caper The Italian Job , the titular character in the '60s drama Alfie , and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. His remarkable versatility and distinctive Cockney accent have made him one of the most respected and beloved actors in cinema. Caine's ability to adapt to various genres, from drama to comedy, has earned him numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards. His latest film, 2023's The Great Escaper, marks the last film of his career after Caine announced his retirement .

Luis Guzmán As Gabato

Luis Guzmán portrays Gabato, the comical and kind-hearted helicopter pilot who helps the group reach the Mysterious Island. Typical of Guzmán's usual roles, his character adds a humorous and relatable touch to the film, often providing comic relief amidst the thrilling action. However, Gabato's concern for his daughter, Kailani, and his willingness to embark on the dangerous journey for her sake, adds emotional depth to his role.

Luis Guzmán is known for his character roles, often playing likable, down-to-earth characters in both film and television. The actor has two notable great working relationships in Hollywood. As a close friend of Adam Sandler , Guzmán has featured alongside the comedian in Anger Management, Sandy Wexler, The Do-Over , and others. The actor is also close to celebrated filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson , with appearances in Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love (also starring Sandler). In television, Guzmán gained acclaim for his portrayal of patriarch Gomez Addams on Wednesday .

Vanessa Hudgens As Kailani

Vanessa Hudgens plays Kailani, Gabato's determined and courageous daughter, who joins the quest to find the Mysterious Island. Her character is strong-willed, resourceful, and serves as a romantic interest for Sean. Kailani's adventurous spirit and bravery make her a key member of the expedition team, and Hudgens' performance brings a sense of determination and charm to the role. Hudgens rose to fame with her role as Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical series , a role that made her a teen idol. Since then, she has diversified her career with roles in films like Spring Breakers and Tick, Tick... Boom!

Kristin Davis As Liz Anderson-Parsons

Kristin Davis portrays Liz Anderson-Parsons, Sean's caring and concerned mother, who reluctantly allows him to search for his grandfather in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island . Her character, while not central to the island's adventure, plays a crucial role in the emotional backdrop of the story, representing the family ties and concerns back home.

Davis is best known for her role as Charlotte York in Sex and the City , which earned her widespread recognition. She notably returned to the role of Charlotte in the Max revival series And Just Like That.. for two seasons with And Just Like That... season 3 in development.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, and YouTube.

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Film / Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Edit locked.

A 2012 sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) , directed by Brad Peyton, starring Dwayne Johnson , and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The story is a very loose adaptation of Verne's The Mysterious Island .

Four years after the previous movie, the now seventeen-year-old Sean ( Josh Hutcherson ) is fixated on finding his long-lost grandfather ( Michael Caine ), and, driven by the first film's revelation that Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth was a factual account, believes he has found the key to discovering him: by overlaying the island maps in Gulliver's Travels , Treasure Island and The Mysterious Island , he creates a map of a new island, complete with coordinates. Heading to the western Pacific to seek out the island, Sean and his stepfather Hank (Johnson) secure a helicopter for their search but are caught in a storm and crash on their destination, a lost land of dwarf elephants, giant butterflies and huge, aggressive lizards — and also, incidentally, the home of the lost city Atlantis. They discover that the island submerges and reemerges on a regular cycle, and, when they realize that it will soon vanish back into the sea, they set out on a frantic search for their only way off — the Nautilus , Captain Nemo's legendary submarine.

This movie contains examples of:

• Artifact Title : A mild case. The title would have made more sense if they had left off the "Journey 2" part, but there is technically a journey (just not to the center of the earth and it's not particularly long as they spend most of the movie trying to get off The Mysterious Island ).
• Atlantis : The lost city is located on the island. They also reference the fact the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea had Atlantis under the ocean.
• Big Damn Kiss : Between Sean and Kailani in the movie's climax.
• Canon Welding : This movie makes at least the settings of Journey To The Center of The Earth , 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , and The Mysterious Island equally real in-universe, as well as parts of Treasure Island and Gulliver's Travels .
• Alexander brings up the Vernians in the opening narration and is established as the original Vernian in the Anderson family.
• Sean's wall displays articles referencing him and his uncle's expedition from the previous film.
• Alexander references Max's death in the last film.
• Death by Materialism : Narrowly averted with Gabato, who nearly dies trying to dig up a giant lump of gold. He isn’t motivated by greed, however. He just wants to give his daughter a better life and a good education.
• Disappeared Dad : Hank’s father ran out on him when he was a small boy. As a result , Hank is determined to be the best stepfather he can possibly be to Sean.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul" : Henry... er, Hank. Actually, it's not made clear if Henry really is Hank's name, or if Hank isn't really a nickname, but all the same, Hank doesn't like being called Henry.
• Fanservice : Vanessa Hudgens wearing a tank top and short shorts for almost the entire movie. Also, did any male viewers who saw it in 3D regret paying extra in the scene where she crawls out of a collapsing tunnel with the camera on her from behind ? Thought not.
• Hank is a genuinely caring person, and does worry about Sean. But, the way he insults Sean's grandfather, in front of Sean , is just a tad mean-spirited. He gets better though.
• Alexander, for mainly the same reasons. He and Hank pretty much take turns insulting and undermining each other for the first half of the movie before beginning to respect each other.
• Practically the moment Kailani appears, in a tank top, the camera goes straight to her breasts.
• As mentioned above, when Kailani is crawling out of the cave, the camera is focused on her butt.
• Oh, Crap! : When Hank attempts to punch the giant lizard. Hank: I think I just made it worse.
• Ominous Crack : The giant lizard egg that starts cracking under Gabato's weight.
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Sean Anderson partners with his mom's boyfriend on a mission to find his grandfather, who is thought to be missing on a mythical island.

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An Oddly-Named Town In Tasmania Is The Setting For the Most Heartbreaking Netflix Film of the Year

Heartfelt character study A Journey follows three childhood friends on a voyage of self-discovery through Tasmania, where the production was filmed on location.

Essentially a road movie, the film explores some deep themes and goes all out to ensure you are emotionally exhausted by the time the credits roll. But of course, what’s a good road movie without picturesque locations?

Where was A Journey filmed?

Manila, philippines.

Manila, Philippines | Image via Audley Travel

The Filipino movie was always going to use authentic locations for the production, and much of it was shot in and around Manila. There are establishing shots of the busy motorways and the homes of our leads, before the trio of friends hit the road on their trip, with the journey leading to Tasmania in Australia.

Our cast hit the road in their RV and we see them on the road stopping in various locations before they get to their spiritual destination, the oddly named town of Penguin.

Penguin, Tasmania, Australia

Instagram posts from star Patrick Garcia also shared some of the locations in Tasmania, including some from the town of Penguin, located on the North coast of Tasmania.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Patrick Garcia (@onlypatrickgarcia)

Extensive shooting took place in the small, beautiful community, which has a population of around 4100 people. Penguin launched an app in 2020 that allows visitors to peruse the local attractions.

Oddly, in one scene, you can see the town appears to have its very own Tardis from Doctor Who. The iconic blue police box is next to a sign that says Beach Access, but sports a heading that says “Penguin Library”, suggesting it may be full of books and not time travelers. It is spotted again in a nighttime scene too.

We see a motel called The Beachway, which is located in Ulverstone, Tasmania, and scenes were recorded at the Penguin Uniting Church that overlooks the beach and Bass Strait. Penguin Caravan Park is also used, as is Lane’s Supermarket, and the Penguin Country Bakehouse, Penguin Food Bar, and the Penguin Visitor Information Centre are also credited.

Who produced and directed A Journey?

A Journey was directed by RC Delos Reyes, and he has had a busy couple of years. In 2023, IMDb has him down as directing four features:  Swing, Unravel: A Swiss Side Love Story, Without You and I Love Lizzy. He has also written for television and has worked as a creative head on various other productions.

Reyes uses every trick in the book to ensure there is not a dry eye in the house by the end of this movie.

A Journey  was produced by Mavx Production Inc.

Who is the surprise cameo in A Journey?

Ogie Alcasid | Image via Newport World Resorts

In the third act of the heartbreaking film, a singer appears to sing a song for Shane. Bryan had arranged for the singer and TV personality Ogie Alcasid to sing to Shane, and the personality was cast in the film, no doubt delighting fans.

Ogie has had a long career, releasing his first album in 1989, and making his feature film debut in 1990’s Feel Na Feel . He went on to further TV work, including becoming a game show host and a judge on a TV talent show.

His career, spanning decades, encompasses nearly every aspect of film, music, and TV, and his appearance in  A Journey would probably have meant a lot more to viewers who knew of his work than it did to me. I was just confused, but in the narrative of the film, it makes sense.

Article by Louie Fecou

Louie Fecou joined the Ready Steady Cut writing team back in August 2018 as an Entertainment Writer and, since then, has published over 1,000 articles for the site. Louie has proven experience in various publications, print and online. To kickstart his journalism career, in 2013, he was a columnist and writer for The Irvine Herald Newspaper.

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf review - a rewarding side quest for fans

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Netflix’s A Journey: Where Was the Filipino Movie Filmed?

With RC Delos Reyes at the helm, Netflix’s ‘A Journey’ is a Filipino drama movie that revolves around three childhood and lifelong friends, out of which Kaye Abad’s character receives the news that her cancer has made its way back into her life. Instead of undergoing the necessary treatment for the illness, she insists that she wants to check off some things on her bucket list with her husband and best friend, which includes going on a road trip across Tasmania.

As the trio of friends embark on the adventurous journey, they find out some harsh truths about one another. The narrative is brought to life through the brilliant performances of talented Filipino actors, including Paolo Contis, Patrick Garcia, Kaye Abad, and Jimmy Santos. Exploring the themes of friendship, love, and loss, the film also pays attention to the visual side of things as there are many beautiful spots in the backdrop that keep the viewers intrigued and glued to the screen.

A Journey Shooting Locations

‘A Journey’ was shot in the Philippines and Australia, with the cast and crew specifically setting up camp in Manila, Tasmania, and Melbourne. Beginning in May 2023, the principal photography for the drama film continued for about three months, before seemingly wrapping up in August of the same year.

Manila, Philippines

For the first leg of the production, the filming unit of ‘A Journey’ utilized the locales of the capital of the Philippines — Manila AKA the City of Manila, which lies on the eastern shore of Manila Bay on the island of Luzon. Several important scenes, especially the exteriors, were recorded in and around the city’s vast skyline.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Patrick Garcia (@onlypatrickgarcia)

Tasmania, Australia

Next, the production team of ‘A Journey’ traveled to the Australian island state of Tasmania, where they recorded multiple pivotal sequences, involving the three lead characters. The cast and crew members of the drama movie were spotted taping a few key portions in and around the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park situated in the Central Highlands area of the island. Consisting of many walking trails, the national park is where hikes for the popular Overland Track begin.

Located between Burnie and Ulverstone, there is a town called Penguin that served as yet another filming site on the island of Tasmania. From the looks of it, the filming unit spent a significant amount of time in and around the small town while lensing crucial scenes. Overall, they took many aerial and other outdoor shots while the trio of friends traversed through the Tasmanian terrains in their vehicle.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Paolo Contis (@paolo_contis)

Melbourne, Australia

Reports suggest that the director of ‘A Journey’ and the rest of his team set up camp in and around Melbourne, the capital of the Australian state of Victoria. Using the modern architecture and vast landscape of the city as the backdrop, the production team recorded various prominent scenes for the film.

Read More: Best Filipino Movies on Netflix

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Where was ‘Blue Lights’ filmed? Inside the filming locations for season 2 of BBC’s police thriller

The co-creator of the smash-hit cop show on capturing Belfast’s dark side

Season 2 of ‘Blue Lights’ has just landed on the BBC. With it comes another tense, visceral and meticulously crafted slab of Belfast-set police drama as the cops at Blackthorn police station tackle a new loyalist threat. The handiwork of two Northern Irish journalists-turned-showrunners, Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn, both once of BBC investigative news programme ‘Panorama’, it marries characters with depth – fraught, hard-pressed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers, as well as criminals driven by greed or ideology – and real-world city backdrops that lend authenticity and cultural edge. As Patterson tells Time Out, Belfast is the show’s secret sauce. ‘You do a lot of location shooting in shows like this and it was really important to us to find the real places,’ he says. ‘We’re made a concerted effort to make the city a proper character in the show.’

The first season was set in nationalist West Belfast. The second run moves across the city to loyalist East Belfast. ‘Nobody’s really shown loyalism with this amount of depth before,’ says Patterson. ‘Sometimes it's positive and heartwarming; sometimes it’s dark and dangerous, but that is the world of Northern Ireland.’ Here’s how it came together on screen.

Blackthorn police station

Filmed at : Netherleigh House, Belfast

You may not even notice it but ‘Blue Lights’ police station, Blackthorn, has a new home. ‘The station in season 1 worked fine,’ says Patterson, ‘but it was only a few corridors and you couldn't really shoot in a 360 way.’ An ideal new location presented itself: the city’s Old Department for the Economy Building. ‘Our production designer, Ashleigh Jeffers, described it as a “LEGO house” because we could break corridors down, shoot with a lot more depth, and follow characters around like in “The West Wing”. We don’t really mention that they’ve moved in the show. We wanted to avoid boring exposition and keep everything propulsive.’

The Loyal Pub

Filmed at : The Cock & Hen pub, East Belfast

Co-owned by new antagonist Lee Thompson, The Loyal pub is a likely epicentre for the trouble ahead in season 2. The production team was determined to avoid recreating it on a studio soundstage and instead found and redressed a real boozer in East Belfast called The Cock & Hen. ‘It had to be the real deal,’ says Patterson. ‘We found a pub called The Cock & Hen in East Belfast, and struck a deal to close it down for filming. We didn't have to do too much inside: it wreaked of history and atmosphere.’ In 2018, the pub was raided by the Paramilitary Crime Task Force , a reminder of how closely ‘Blue Lights’ sticks to real life events.

The riot training scene

Filmed at : Gilford Mill, Craigavon

Episode 1 opens with a nail biting bait-and-switch as the show’s central cop characters get trapped in their Land Rover Tangi as a riot escalates around them. Only, it turns out to be a police exercise. The scene was filmed at an old working mill called Gilford Mill about 30 minutes outside Belfast. ‘We wanted a place that had stone work and was a bit overgrown so we could sell it as a real-world location for the action,’ says Patterson. ‘I was worried that an old mill might be a bit of a directors’ fantasy for a police training exercise but our police advisors said: “No, no, it’s exactly right.”’

The loyalist march

Filmed at : Tullycarnet, East Belfast

There’s real jeopardy when ‘Blue Lights’ stressed-out PSNI officers are faced with a loyalist march – filmed at a loyalist housing estate called Tullycarnet. The stakes were high for the showrunners too. ‘These are massively inflammatory issues,’ says Patterson. ‘We went to local politicians who spoke to the community, and then answered their questions. It's a long process but it’s the only way to do it. You have to be honest and say, “Listen, it’s not always going to be pretty but your world isn't always pretty.” Most people understand that; they just want to be respected.’ They were so successful in that, they were offered Tullycarnet’s own marching band to use. ‘You can’t get into that,’ says Patterson, who instead brought in a marching band from outside of Belfast.  

The anti-drugs mural

This anti-drugs mural, located in Tullycarnet, is a rare piece of wall-based messaging to feature in ‘Blue Lights’. ‘We were okay to shoot it because it’s not a paramilitary mural,’ says Patterson, ‘but we weren’t going to show paramilitary murals. We chose locations that didn't have them.’ 

The Harland & Wolff works

The distinctive yellow cranes of the Harland & Wolff shipyards pop up in ‘Blue Lights’ for good reason. ‘A lot of the dockworkers that built the Titanic and those big ships came from the east of the city, so it was really important to show that industrial area,’ says Patterson. ‘It's part historical and part modernised, which makes it a very interesting city visually.’

How to watch season 2 of Blue Lights

The new season airs on BBC One on Mondays at 9pm, beginning on Monday April 15. To binge the whole thing, head to BBC iPlayer now.

‘Blue Lights’ season 2: everything you need to know about the Belfast response thriller .

Find out where ‘Blue Lights’ season 1 ranks on  our list of 2023’s best TV series .

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The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

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A.I.’s Original Sin

A times investigation found that tech giants altered their own rules to train their newest artificial intelligence systems..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, a “Times” investigation shows how as the country’s biggest technology companies race to build powerful new artificial intelligence systems, they bent and broke the rules from the start.

My colleague Cade Metz on what he uncovered.

It’s Tuesday, April 16th.

Cade, when we think about all the artificial intelligence products released over the past couple of years, including, of course, these chatbots we’ve talked a lot about on the show, we so frequently talk about their future their future capabilities, their influence on society, jobs, our lives. But you recently decided to go back in time to AI’s past, to its origins to understand the decisions that were made, basically, at the birth of this technology. So why did you decide to do that?

Because if you’re thinking about the future of these chatbots, that is defined by their past. The thing you have to realize is that these chatbots learn their skills by analyzing enormous amounts of digital data.

So what my colleagues and I wanted to do with our investigation was really focus on that effort to gather more data. We wanted to look at the type of data these companies were collecting, how they were gathering it, and how they were feeding it into their systems.

And when you all undertake this line of reporting, what do you end up finding?

We found that three major players in this race OpenAI, Google, and Meta as they were locked into this competition to develop better and better artificial intelligence, they were willing to do almost anything to get their hands on this data, including ignoring, and in some cases, violating corporate rules and wading into a legal gray area as they gathered this data.

Basically, cutting corners.

Cutting corners left and right.

OK, let’s start with OpenAI, the flashiest player of all.

The most interesting thing we’ve found, is that in late 2021, as OpenAI, the startup in San Francisco that built ChatGPT, as they were pulling together the fundamental technology that would power that chatbot, they ran out of data, essentially.

They had used just about all the respectable English language text on the internet to build this system. And just let that sink in for a bit.

I mean, I’m trying to let that sink in. They basically, like a Pac-Man on a old game, just consumed almost all the English words on the internet, which is kind of unfathomable.

Wikipedia articles by the thousands, news articles, Reddit threads, digital books by the millions. We’re talking about hundreds of billions, even trillions of words.

So by the end of 2021, OpenAI had no more English language texts that they could feed into these systems, but their ambitions are such that they wanted even more.

So here, we should remember that if you’re gathering up all the English language text on the internet, a large portion of that is going to be copyrighted.

So if you’re one of these companies gathering data at that scale, you are absolutely gathering copyrighted data, as well.

Which suggests that, from the very beginning, these companies, a company like OpenAI with ChatGPT, is starting to break, bend the rules.

Yes, they are determined to build this technology thus they are willing to venture into what is a legal gray area.

So given that, what does OpenAI do once it, as you had said, runs out of English language words to mop up and feed into this system?

So they get together, and they say, all right, so what are other options here? And they say, well, what about all the audio and video on the internet? We could transcribe all the audio and video, turn it into text, and feed that into their systems.

Interesting.

So a small team at OpenAI, which included its president and co-founder Greg Brockman, built a speech-recognition technology called Whisper, which could transcribe audio files into text with high accuracy.

And then they gathered up all sorts of audio files, from across the internet, including audio books, podcasts —

— and most importantly, YouTube videos.

Hmm, of which there’s a seemingly endless supply, right? Fair to say maybe tens of millions of videos.

According to my reporting, we’re talking about at least 1,000,000 hours of YouTube videos were scraped off of that video sharing site, fed into this speech recognition system in order to produce new text for training OpenAI’s chatbot. And YouTube’s terms of service do not allow a company like OpenAI to do this. YouTube, which is owned by Google, explicitly says you are not allowed to, in internet parlance, scrape videos en masse from across YouTube and use those videos to build a new application.

That is exactly what OpenAI did. According to my reporting, employees at the company knew that it broke YouTube terms of service, but they resolved to do it anyway.

So, Cade, this makes me want to understand what’s going on over at Google, which as we have talked about in the past on the show, is itself, thinking about and developing its own artificial intelligence model and product.

Well, as OpenAI scrapes up all these YouTube videos and starts to use them to build their chatbot, according to my reporting, some employees at Google, at the very least, are aware that this is happening.

Yes, now when we went to the company about this, a Google spokesman said it did not know that OpenAI was scraping YouTube content and said the company takes legal action over this kind of thing when there’s a clear reason to do so. But according to my reporting, at least some Google employees turned a blind eye to OpenAI’s activities because Google was also using YouTube content to train its AI.

So if they raise a stink about what OpenAI is doing, they end up shining a spotlight on themselves. And they don’t want to do that.

I guess I want to understand what Google’s relationship is to YouTube. Because of course, Google owns YouTube. So what is it allowed or not allowed to do when it comes to feeding YouTube data into Google’s AI models?

It’s an important distinction. Because Google owns YouTube, it defines what can be done with that data. And Google argues that it has a right to that data, that its terms of service allow it to use that data. However, because of that copyright issue, because the copyright to those videos belong to you and I, lawyers who I’ve spoken to say, people could take Google to court and try to determine whether or not those terms of service really allow Google to do this. There’s another legal gray area here where, although Google argues that it’s OK, others may argue it’s not.

Of course, what makes this all so interesting is, you essentially have one tech company Google, keeping another tech company OpenAI’s dirty little secret about basically stealing from YouTube because it doesn’t want people to know that it too is taking from YouTube. And so these companies are essentially enabling each other as they simultaneously seem to be bending or breaking the rules.

What this shows is that there is this belief, and it has been there for years within these companies, among their researchers, that they have a right to this data because they’re on a larger mission to build a technology that they believe will transform the world.

And if you really want to understand this attitude, you can look at our reporting from inside Meta.

And so what does Meta end up doing, according to your reporting?

Well, like Google and other companies, Meta had to scramble to build artificial intelligence that could compete with OpenAI. Mark Zuckerberg is calling engineers and executives at all hours pushing them to acquire this data that is needed to improve the chatbot.

And at one point, my colleagues and I got hold of recordings of these Meta executives and engineers discussing this problem. How they could get their hands on more data where they should try to find it? And they explored all sorts of options.

They talked about licensing books, one by one, at $10 a pop and feeding those into the model.

They even discussed acquiring the book publisher Simon & Schuster and feeding its entire library into their AI model. But ultimately, they decided all that was just too cumbersome, too time consuming, and on the recordings of these meetings, you can hear executives talk about how they were willing to run roughshod over copyright law and ignore the legal concerns and go ahead and scrape the internet and feed this stuff into their models.

They acknowledged that they might be sued over this. But they talked about how OpenAI had done this before them. That they, Meta were just following what they saw as a market precedent.

Interesting, so they go from having conversations like, should we buy a publisher that has tons of copyrighted material suggesting that they’re very conscious of the kind of legal terrain and what’s right and what’s wrong. And instead say, nah, let’s just follow the OpenAI model, that blueprint and just do what we want to do, do what we think we have a right to do, which is to kind of just gobble up all this material across the internet.

It’s a snapshot of that Silicon Valley attitude that we talked about. Because they believe they are building this transformative technology, because they are in this intensely competitive situation where money and power is at stake, they are willing to go there.

But what that means is that there is, at the birth of this technology, a kind of original sin that can’t really be erased.

It can’t be erased, and people are beginning to notice. And they are beginning to sue these companies over it. These companies have to have this copyrighted data to build their systems. It is fundamental to their creation. If a lawsuit bars them from using that copyrighted data, that could bring down this technology.

We’ll be right back.

So Cade, walk us through these lawsuits that are being filed against these AI companies based on the decisions they made early on to use technology as they did and the chances that it could result in these companies not being able to get the data they so desperately say they need.

These suits are coming from a wide range of places. They’re coming from computer programmers who are concerned that their computer programs have been fed into these systems. They’re coming from book authors who have seen their books being used. They’re coming from publishing companies. They’re coming from news corporations like, “The New York Times,” incidentally, which has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.

News organizations that are concerned over their news articles being used to build these systems.

And here, I think it’s important to say as a matter of transparency, Cade, that your reporting is separate from that lawsuit. That lawsuit was filed by the business side of “The New York Times” by people who are not involved in your reporting or in this “Daily” episode, just to get that out of the way.

I’m assuming that you have spoken to many lawyers about this, and I wonder if there’s some insight that you can shed on the basic legal terrain? I mean, do the companies seem to have a strong case that they have a right to this information, or do companies like the “Times,” who are suing them, seem to have a pretty strong case that, no, that decision violates their copyrighted materials.

Like so many legal questions, this is incredibly complicated. It comes down to what’s called fair use, which is a part of copyright law that determines whether companies can use copyrighted data to build new things. And there are many factors that go into this. There are good arguments on the OpenAI side. There are good arguments on “The New York Times” side.

Copyright law says that can’t take my work and reproduce it and sell it to someone. That’s not allowed. But what’s called fair use does allow companies and individuals to use copyrighted works in part. They can take snippets of it. They can take the copyrighted works and transform it into something new. That is what OpenAI and others are arguing they’re doing.

But there are other things to consider. Does that transformative work compete with the individuals and companies that supplied the data that owned the copyrights?

And here, the suit between “The New York Times” company and OpenAI is illustrative. If “The New York Times” creates articles that are then used to build a chatbot, does that chatbot end up competing with “The New York Times?” Do people end up going to that chatbot for their information, rather than going to the “Times” website and actually reading the article? That is one of the questions that will end up deciding this case and cases like it.

So what would it mean for these AI companies for some, or even all of these lawsuits to succeed?

Well, if these tech companies are required to license the copyrighted data that goes into their systems, if they’re required to pay for it, that becomes a problem for these companies. We’re talking about digital data the size of the entire internet.

Licensing all that copyrighted data is not necessarily feasible. We quote the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in our story where one of their lawyers says that it does not work for these companies to license that data. It’s too expensive. It’s on too large a scale.

Hmm, it would essentially make this technology economically impractical.

Exactly, so a jury or a judge or a law ruling against OpenAI, could fundamentally change the way this technology is built. The extreme case is these companies are no longer allowed to use copyrighted material in building these chatbots. And that means they have to start from scratch. They have to rebuild everything they’ve built. So this is something that, not only imperils what they have today, it imperils what they want to build in the future.

And conversely, what happens if the courts rule in favor of these companies and say, you know what, this is fair use. You were fine to have scraped this material and to keep borrowing this material into the future free of charge?

Well, one significant roadblock drops for these companies. And they can continue to gather up all that extra data, including images and sounds and videos and build increasingly powerful systems. But the thing is, even if they can access as much copyrighted material as they want, these companies may still run into a problem.

Pretty soon they’re going to run out of digital data on the internet.

That human-created data they rely on is going to dry up. They’re using up this data faster than humans create it. One research organization estimates that by 2026, these companies will run out of viable data on the internet.

Wow. Well, in that case, what would these tech companies do? I mean, where are they going to go if they’ve already scraped YouTube, if they’ve already scraped podcasts, if they’ve already gobbled up the internet and that altogether is not sufficient?

What many people inside these companies will tell you, including Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, they’ll tell you that what they will turn to is what’s called synthetic data.

And what is that?

That Is data generated by an AI model that is then used to build a better AI model. It’s AI helping to build better AI. That is the vision, ultimately, they have for the future that they won’t need all this human generated text. They’ll just have the AI build the text that will feed future versions of AI.

So they will feed the AI systems the material that the AI systems themselves create. But is that really a workable solid plan? Is that considered high-quality data? Is that good enough?

If you do this on a large scale, you quickly run into problems. As we all know, as we’ve discussed on this podcast, these systems make mistakes. They hallucinate . They make stuff up. They show biases that they’ve learned from internet data. And if you start using the data generated by the AI to build new AI, those mistakes start to reinforce themselves.

The systems start to get trapped in these cul-de-sacs where they end up not getting better but getting worse.

What you’re really saying is, these AI machines need the unique perfection of the human creative mind.

Well, as it stands today, that is absolutely the case. But these companies have grand visions for where this will go. And they feel, and they’re already starting to experiment with this, that if you have an AI system that is sufficiently powerful, if you make a copy of it, if you have two of these AI models, one can produce new data, and the other one can judge that data.

It can curate that data as a human would. It can provide the human judgment, So. To speak. So as one model produces the data, the other one can judge it, discard the bad data, and keep the good data. And that’s how they ultimately see these systems creating viable synthetic data. But that has not happened yet, and it’s unclear whether it will work.

It feels like the real lesson of your investigation is that if you have to allegedly steal data to feed your AI model and make it economically feasible, then maybe you have a pretty broken model. And that if you need to create fake data, as a result, which as you just said, kind of undermines AI’s goal of mimicking human thinking and language, then maybe you really have a broken model.

And so that makes me wonder if the folks you talk to, the companies that we’re focused on here, ever ask themselves the question, could we do this differently? Could we create an AI model that just needs a lot less data?

They have thought about other models for decades. The thing to realize here, is that is much easier said than done. We’re talking about creating systems that can mimic the human brain. That is an incredibly ambitious task. And after struggling with that for decades, these companies have finally stumbled on something that they feel works that is a path to that incredibly ambitious goal.

And they’re going to continue to push in that direction. Yes, they’re exploring other options, but those other options aren’t working.

What works is more data and more data and more data. And because they see a path there, they’re going to continue down that path. And if there are roadblocks there, and they think they can knock them down, they’re going to knock them down.

But what if the tech companies never get enough or make enough data to get where they think they want to go, even as they’re knocking down walls along the way? That does seem like a real possibility.

If these companies can’t get their hands on more data, then these technologies, as they’re built today, stop improving.

We will see their limitations. We will see how difficult it really is to build a system that can match, let alone surpass the human brain.

These companies will be forced to look for other options, technically. And we will see the limitations of these grandiose visions that they have for the future of artificial intelligence.

OK, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Glad to be here.

Here’s what else you need to know today. Israeli leaders spent Monday debating whether and how to retaliate against Iran’s missile and drone attack over the weekend. Herzi Halevi, Israel’s Military Chief of Staff, declared that the attack will be responded to.

In Washington, a spokesman for the US State Department, Matthew Miller reiterated American calls for restraint —

^MATTHEW MILLER^ Of course, we continue to make clear to everyone that we talked to that we want to see de-escalation that we don’t want to see a wider regional war. That’s something that’s been —

— but emphasized that a final call about retaliation was up to Israel. ^MATTHEW MILLER^ Israel is a sovereign country. They have to make their own decisions about how best to defend themselves. What we always try to do —

And the first criminal trial of a former US President officially got underway on Monday in a Manhattan courtroom. Donald Trump, on trial for allegedly falsifying documents to cover up a sex scandal involving a porn star, watched as jury selection began.

The initial pool of 96 jurors quickly dwindled. More than half of them were dismissed after indicating that they did not believe that they could be impartial. The day ended without a single juror being chosen.

Today’s episode was produced by Stella Tan, Michael Simon Johnson, Muge Zaidi, and Rikki Novetsky. It was edited by Marc Georges and Liz O. Baylen, contains original music by Diane Wong, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 17, 2024   •   24:52 Are ‘Forever Chemicals’ a Forever Problem?
• April 16, 2024   •   29:29 A.I.’s Original Sin
• April 15, 2024   •   24:07 Iran’s Unprecedented Attack on Israel
• April 14, 2024   •   46:17 The Sunday Read: ‘What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise’
• April 12, 2024   •   34:23 How One Family Lost $900,000 in a Timeshare Scam
• April 11, 2024   •   28:39 The Staggering Success of Trump’s Trial Delay Tactics
• April 10, 2024   •   22:49 Trump’s Abortion Dilemma
• April 9, 2024   •   30:48 How Tesla Planted the Seeds for Its Own Potential Downfall
• April 8, 2024   •   30:28 The Eclipse Chaser
• April 7, 2024 The Sunday Read: ‘What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living’
• April 5, 2024   •   29:11 An Engineering Experiment to Cool the Earth
• April 4, 2024   •   32:37 Israel’s Deadly Airstrike on the World Central Kitchen

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Cade Metz

Produced by Stella Tan ,  Michael Simon Johnson ,  Mooj Zadie and Rikki Novetsky

Edited by Marc Georges and Liz O. Baylen

Original music by Diane Wong ,  Dan Powell and Pat McCusker

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

A Times investigation shows how the country’s biggest technology companies, as they raced to build powerful new artificial intelligence systems, bent and broke the rules from the start.

Cade Metz, a technology reporter for The Times, explains what he uncovered.

On today’s episode

Cade Metz , a technology reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading

How tech giants cut corners to harvest data for A.I.

What to know about tech companies using A.I. to teach their own A.I.

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We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

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Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

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