Angels & Demons is the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, which are both film adaptations of author Dan Brown’s bestselling novels. Tom Hanks reprises his role as Robert Langdon, an academic scholar who specializes in Symbology, who must solve a murder and uncover a terrorist plot against the Vatican, led by a secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati.

Director Ron Howard and actor Tom Hanks shared the details on adapting Dan Brown’s novels onto the big screen and even if you are not a religious person this film can affect us all.

Q: Are you worried that the film might be received as a negative stab at the Catholic church?

Howard: If you’re doing a story like Angels & Demons you are sort of expecting to stir a little controversy. Part of the fun of these stories is that they provoke some thought and conversation, in addition to being full-on entertainment. My feeling really about it is that I don’t think anyone who has been commenting has actually seen the movie. And yes there’s a novel, but this is the movie version of it. And I am not sure how they are going to respond, but I certainly didn’t attend it as an attack on the Catholic Church at all. I don’t think it is, but people will have to see for themselves.

Q: Is Angels & Demons more about science or religion?

Howard: Angels & Demons is literally a ticking bomb story, and on a thematic level, it’s about a very contemporary modern clash: science vs. religion. And the most cutting edge kind of science, and its possible thread to our contemporary life. There are echoes from the past, but this film doesn’t take place in the past. The Da Vinci Code had one foot in antiquity and the other in the modern world. As a result, Angels & Demons goes from clue to clue, murder to murder, and it’s just by its nature much more intense therefore it has to move faster and Langdon is in a lot more personal, direct jeopardy in this story. So it was a very different tone and feel. I really enjoyed making it; it was a good challenge for me.

Q: How does Dan Brown adapt his stories to the big screen?

Howard: Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory as Dan Brown likes to say. And what Dan brilliantly does is research known, excepted, historical facts, fringe thinking that even historians may have offered up at some point or another, and conspiracy theories both old and new. I am one of those people that fundamentally suspects that there’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about how things work around us. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that there’s an organization that either calls themselves the Illuminati or is influenced by the Illuminati. But I certainly don’t have any research that confirms it.

Q: Can you talk about Dan’s Brown new novel and if there will be a third movie in the franchise?

Howard: Dan Brown, great guy, we have become really good friends. Man, does he play his cards close to the vest. I honestly don’t know anything more about this project at this point than anyone who has been on the Internet knows. All o f that said, I have had two fantastic life experiences and really changeling interesting creative experiences making The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. I really love what Tom Hanks is doing with the movie version of Robert Langdon. These things are enticing to me. I can’t confirm a thing, but I am certainly open and dying to read it like the rest of the world.

Q: (To Hanks) What is Langdon searching for in this film?

Hanks: Robert Langdon is searching for a series of clues that will lead him to the path of illumination, which will take him to the spot where the Illuminati had regrouped. And he can finally get his revenge on the established church. The path of illumination is marked by the four elements of science: earth, air, fire and water. And Bernini, that crafty sculptor that he is, has decided to put them very surreptitiously, very mysteriously in sculptors, fountains and statues in ways only a man with a degree in Symbology could discern. That is what Robert Langdon is doing; he’s got to do it before the stroke of midnight, and the election of the new pope.

Q: Your character is not well liked by the church, but he is asked to help them. Can you talk about that?

Hanks: In fact, Robert Langdon is probably public enemy number two. I don’t know who number one is at the Vatican, but he is public enemy number two. And he is reluctantly brought in because no one can interrupt these symbols as well as he does. There are members of the Swiss Guard, members of the Church hierocracy itself that are very vociferous in their defense of the church’s standings and the work that the church does. Sometimes Langdon is asked point blank, ‘Are you with us or against us?’ And he answers snakelike, ‘Well sir, that depends on what you mean by with us or against?’ That raises the stakes, I think, about what the whole theme, which is faith vs. science and in some ways the established church history vs. the grander history of the world. The loggerheads that the Swiss guards have with Langdon as soon as he walks in, makes for each scene to be quite juicy.

Q: How does Langdon answer the question of whether or not he believes in God?

Hanks: [There is a scene where,] he speaks with the authorities before going into the archives, which are loaded with sacred texts as well as cool cars. They ask, ‘Do you believe in god?’ That could be a difficult question for a lot of people to answer, least of all, an academic scholar who has not only studied the symbols of theology throughout the world, but also the concepts of god from the beginning of recorded man kind to the end. I think Langdon answers it as only a true academic scholar, science and artist could possibly answer it, which is more or less, ‘that’s beyond my pay grade.’

Q: What do you think the audience’s reaction will be to this film?

Hanks: I think the audience will react to the horse race. I mean quite frankly, bad things are happening to people on the tick of a clock, and at the end there is a very important moment in time; the naming of a new pope. Whether or not you are a Catholic or not, a believer or not, as you are a citizen in the world; the naming of a new pontiff is an opportunity for a brave new era of human consciousness. That guy is a powerful guy, and he is going to come in with new opinions and ideas. You want to pay attention to who is going to be named Pope. It would be a very bad thing if it were to be possible for that election to be hijacked with ulterior motives. That is what is hanging in the balance. So in a lot of ways, Angels & Demons is the world’s most important treasure hunt, and all the audience is going to be involved in trying to see Langdon solve this complex Sudoku puzzle that the fate of the world is hanging on.