Why 'Fountain of Youth' continues to be an Apple TV+ hit adventure movie: 'It keeps my inner child alive'
Apple TV+ subscribers can't stop watching adventure film Fountain of Youth, which has been one of the most popular titles on the platform for weeks, starring John Krasinski, Natalie Portman and Eiza González. Guy Ritchie's story didn't get the most glowing reviews from critics, but it continues to find interested viewers.
Fountain of Youth is largely centred around estranged siblings, Luke (Krasinski) and Charlotte Purdue (Portman), who reconnect and assemble a crew for a global adventure to find the Fountain of Youth. It all stems from what they learned from their late father, a famous archeologist.
"The story was so fun and cool, ... a nostalgic type of movie that doesn't exist anymore, really. Not in the way that I think ... we were trying to go for," Arian Moayed, who plays Inspector Jamal Abbas trying to stop the group from getting to the Fountain of Youth, told Yahoo Canada.
For Laz Alonso who plays Patrick Murphy, working alongside Luke and Charlotte on their quest, The Boys star has lots of experience with impressive ensembles, but he also has a personal goal to work on movies and in genres that he was "obsessed" with as a kid.
"It keeps my inner child alive," he said in a separate interview. "I feel like a little kid when I'm on set and I get to tell these magnificent what-ifs. And it really changes the storytelling when you can do it in these insanely gorgeous, real backdrops."
Fountain of Youth takes on the adventure genre with a long history in Hollywood, including the Indiana Jones series.
"Everybody keeps talking about, Hollywood is doing nothing but remakes," Alonso highlighted. "While that is true, you also have the opportunity to tell a brand new story in the genre of the remake, ... the genre that has already proven to have an audience."
Moayed highlighted that, in the context of the search of the Fountain of Youth, there's an inherent human curiosity and fear around death.
"Deep down, we're all kind of a little worried that we're all going to die. We've all got to die, but [the fear is that] we're going to die too soon," Moayed said. "And so the quest for something that keeps us immortal is universal."
"It's not just something that's a western concept. In Persian we have, it's called the cheshmeh javani, which means, literally, the fountain of youth. Because even in Persian culture, thousands of years ago, the idea that we can live forever or pass down our ideas is something that never goes away."
But an added element to the show is that it has Ritchie's signature style, a blend of witty dialogue with strong elements of mystery. The Fountain of Youth stars also highlighted how collaborative and spontaneous he is as a filmmaker.
"He's probably one of the most collaborative directors that I've worked with," Alonso said. "There were times during this film where he would bring in John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, myself, and Carmen and Ejogo into his trailer, and now we're in there rewriting a scene, all of us together. ... That's something that rarely happens on a film set, where actors are allowed to be part of the creative process."
"It's a butterfly effect. ... I think that's what happens in a lot of films when people say, 'Oh, well, there was a plot hole here' or 'they never addressed that.' It's because something changed and they didn't carry that change throughout the end. Well Guy really pays attention to that."
Moayed echoed her co-star's comments, adding that Ritchie also really wants to lean into the personality that each actor brings to their character.
"What's cool about Guy Ritchie is that he really always is trying to make it fresh and alive," he said.
Moayed recalled a moment filming Fountain of Youth in Liverpool and he didn't have any lines in the portion of the script being filmed that day. But then Ritchie had an entire monologue for Moayed at the last minute, leaving the actor with only about 30 minutes to learn it.
"He's seeing it in a bigger scale and sometimes when you see an edit on a large scale, you're like, oh, this actually needs to fill in this as well," he said. "I enjoy that kind of like spontaneity and freshness to the piece."
And the final element that plays a role in the interest in the film is the commitment to using a practical set as much as possible, from Vienna to the pyramids in Egypt.
"A lot of what I felt was most exciting about a piece this is that it's practical," Moayed said. "I had the privilege of doing Spider-Man: No Way Home, ... it's all make believe around you."
"[Fountain of Youth] felt like you're walking into those old movies of like [Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade], where you see and feel all those things. So that's kind of like a joy, a little bit, to have a big budget Hollywood, Apple movie that like feels all those things."
For Alonso, he said those elements contribute to what makes Ritchie's visual storytelling "incomparable."
"The colours, the wardrobe, he really tells a story with the palette that he uses to paint his entire frame, not just words on a page," Alonso said. "I love being able to now take the performance and match the painting. ... It's picturesque, and without having to say a word, you immediately get drawn in. ... And he's a master at that."
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