Go out and make something that reflects your interests, your taste, and your ideas. No one will pay you to make something until you have a few things you can show that you've directed. I got my start by making short films on my own.

As a director, if you know what you want, then it's not scary.

For me, I feel like, between 'Tron' and 'Oblivion,' I've gotten to fulfill my 'Star Wars' fantasies, in a way.

I always say, 'If you're planning on seeing our movie, don't look at any more of the materials.'

I think the excitement of movies is discovering stuff you weren't expecting, and I hope to preserve that.

I'm a huge electronic-music fan.

Listen, whatever makes the movie better. That's the attitude you have to have.

Of course there are always exceptions, but opinions are not to be feared.

Once I got out of architecture school I decided not to be an architect, I just started my own little design studio.

That's the tricky thing these days: being able to surprise people.

Well I grew up in the Midwest, and I think the first film that blew my mind was 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'

When you make a movie, you can only make the movie that you would want to see.

You never watch movies the same as you do when you're a kid, ever again.

An established property can be a blessing and a challenge. On one hand you have all those fans of the original that you can pick up with and continue on with but then you have a lot of people out there who haven't seen the first and might feel like this isn't a movie for them because of that.

But I grew up in a place where no one knew anyone in the entertainment business, I never knew it was an actual career. The closest I ever got to movies was going to watch them, and I thought that's the way it would be, so I never considered working in this business.

Disney's clearly in the business of doing giant tent pole movies based on properties that they own. And that's what they should be doing because they're great at doing that.

I don't think every movie should be made in 3-D, and it should depend on whether it's one of these films that's more immersive or needs to be taken to another world. I'm interested in other formats.

I realized that I loved using computers to create something, but being an architect just wasn't going to keep me interested. The idea of a life spent obsessing over bathroom details for an Upper East Side penthouse was pretty depressing.

I went to school for engineering, I studied jazz. So I always had this kind of creative side and technical side, and I thought architecture might be the way to combine them, so I went to architecture school in New York.

It's a fine line to find that balance: to show people enough to give them the promise of something unique, and something they want to see, but at the same time make sure that when they show up for the movie, they're surprised by what they eventually get.