Ashmore puts himself in the game
Stars in Quantum Break, a revolutionary mix of video game action and episodic TV
Canadian actor Shawn Ashmore is used to watching himself on screen. But killing himself on screen? That’s another beast entirely.
Ashmore, best known for playing Bobby Drake/Iceman in four of the X-Men film instalments, is the physical and digital star of Quantum Break, an Xbox One title that melds a video game with an episodic TV show in a never-before-attempted way.
Ashmore plays Jack Joyce, an everyday guy who gets swept up in a cataclysmic series of events that ultimately give him time-manipulating superpowers. Facing off against his former mentor Paul Serene (Aidan Gillen of Game of Thrones fame), Jack must ultimately try to stop the literal end of the world.
Quantum Break’s twisting story unfolds across five game chapters, interspersed with 22-minute, liveaction streaming TV episodes that expand the plot, focusing on events happening in parallel to Jack’s own tale.
The cast of the show and the game — which also includes Dominic Monaghan (The Lord of the Rings) and Lance Reddick (The Wire) — underwent a high-tech face and body-scanning procedure developed by Finnish game-development studio Remedy Entertainment, which also created the Alan Wake and Max Payne franchises.
The result is an incredibly lifelike digital representation of Ashmore as the gun-wielding, time-bending Jack taking on the sinister Monarch Corporation.
“It gives you a real sense of being a superhero and in a different way from X-Men,” Ashmore said of playing a game starring a virtual version of himself. “In a more interactive, sort of powerful way because you’re controlling those things.
“It’s much stranger than sitting back and passively watching a performance. Playing the game was really bizarre because in the middle of traversing something when I wasn’t in the action, I would just spin the camera around … ‘Oh that’s what I look like from that angle?’
“And then of course you’re putting yourself into danger, which is kind of weird. ‘Ah, I got myself killed again.’ I think I was kind of reckless.”
It’s a brave new world for entertainment, but one that more and more actors are keen on exploring, from Kevin Spacey’s turn as a power-hungry private military contractor in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to Hayden Panettiere in the interactive horror Until Dawn. Still, Quantum Break creative director Sam Lake was concerned the actors might not be able to get their figurative heads in the game.
“There was a slight worry from our angle that these guys are big names used to working on movies and TV,” said Lake. “How familiar are they with video games and will they take this as a serious project? With Shawn, it was kind of easy because he’s a gamer.”
If Quantum Break does well, it could launch a long-running series for Xbox-maker Microsoft, one Ashmore said he’d be eager to continue working on. But he’d also love to return to the franchise that helped launch his movie career: X-Men.
“I’m always hoping for it. I love that character, I love the films,” said Ashmore, who last played Iceman in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). But that would hinge on the direction the franchise takes after this May’s X-Men: Apocalypse, which focuses on the young X-Men in 1983.
“I personally think there are stories to be told from that (original) cast, but it’s really just how Fox wants to pursue the franchise and where they want to go,” Ashmore said. “I really hope that it happens, but it’s just really hard to tell. And if it doesn’t happen, I’m really satisfied with the four films I got to make and where we got to go with the character.”
In the meantime, Ashmore, a bona fide X-Men fanboy, is stoked for the new movie.
“I grew up reading the X-Men, watching the cartoons. I love going to see them. I can’t wait.”