The concept of star-crossed lovers, kept apart by the constraints of their world, is not exactly a new concept. There's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo + Juliet, and let's not forget Gnomeo and Juliet, but the new sci-fi film "Upside Down," which stars Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst, flips the old world tale on its head.
MTV News' Josh Horowitz recently sat down with Sturgess to find out how the cast and the filmmakers brought the two-sided universe to life.
"I just did what I was told. For the people who were on that side of the fence, it was hard," Sturgess explained. "The hardest thing was eye lines. Where do you look? Which point are you looking at? They built technology where you would build two stages side-by-side — one was the ceiling, one was the floor — and we would act at the same time. So me and Kirsten would be doing a scene at the same time. We would have sensors on our clothing, so that when you moved around, you could follow what the other person was doing."
When the gravitationally challenged lovers do finally hook up, the love scene might call back memories of another inverted moment of passion involving Dunst, and that similarity wasn't lost on Sturgess.
"It was hard to top. I felt very intimidated," he said referring to the famous "Spider-Man" kiss. "[Dunst] probably made a joke about it at some point. We did sort of an antigravity love scene, which I think was new for her. We weren't just regurgitating old tricks from 'Spider-Man.' "
"Upside Down" opens in theater today (3/15).