Gen. Douglas MacArthur once famously vowed, "I shall return."
"But I don't think he imagined he would ever return as Tommy Lee Jones," says Peter Webber, director of the historical drama Emperor, due late this year.
Jones, 65, tackles the role of MacArthur, who led Pacific forces in World War II and stayed on to command the occupation of Japan. The actor's ability to channel the flamboyant hero is displayed in the re-creation of a famous photo taken at Japan's Atsugi Airfield.
"Tommy Lee Jones turned up on set that day with that hat, those glasses, and — bang — he was the man," Webber says.
Jones concedes, in typical bluntness: "I bear no resemblance to Douglas MacArthur whatsoever. But a campaign hat, some aviator glasses and a corncob pipe go a long way."
Webber and Jones agreed they would not mimic MacArthur's physical features. They sought to capture his essence.
"We were not trying to do a carbon copy of Douglas MacArthur. It wasn't the point," Jones says. "The most important thing was the thinking and the decisions he made."
Emperor picks up with Japan's surrender, when MacArthur tapped Gen. Bonner Fellers (played by Matthew Fox) to decide whether Emperor Hirohito should be charged with war crimes.
"It's a look at a time when America not only had military strength but also a keenness of intellect and perception for what was a very difficult situation," Webber says.
Most scenes of war-torn Japan were shot in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand. But the crew was able to shoot a key scene on the grounds of Tokyo's Imperial Palace.
"This was quite an achievement," Webber says. "It took our producers a year of negotiations to shoot that."
Jones, a major star in Japan, was a stickler for getting the historical facts right. But his greatest contribution is certainly his MacArthur.
"He's a man that dominates the screen," Webber says. "When people see this, they'll realize that Tommy Lee Jones was born to play Douglas MacArthur."
