The action largely takes place in a fictional country called New Asia, a combination of present-day Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, although production primarily took place in Thailand. The focus was on utilizing real locations as much as possible—in fact, only a few scenes ended up being shot on soundstages.
“Throughout our movie, hopefully the audience feels like they’re in a real place, but then they’re confused because they see robots walking around and futuristic vehicles and buildings,” Clyne says. “It’s all about them hopefully not knowing what’s real and what’s not real.”
Here Clyne discusses how actual locations around Thailand became New Asia in 2065.
Why did Gareth want to use as many real-world locations as possible to make a futuristic sci-fi film?
That came from Gareth’s desire to shoot in exotic locations that are not other planets. We’re not on Jupiter. We’re not on some fictional planet. We’re on Earth and because we’re on Earth, the question was: Where can we go that’s exotic and beautiful and new and fresh for sci-fi? In sci-fi, we’re used to being on a moon base or a crazy planet. Iceland is used a lot because it looks so desolate and otherworldly. We wanted to go the opposite direction, where it’s lush and green. And then we could offset all that natural beauty with futuristic architecture and vehicles.
