By every measure imaginable, Chris Hemsworth is in great shape. But coming out of Thor: Love and Thunderthe Australian actor was not in the LAW form for Extraction 2, the sequel to his 2020 action hit for Netflix. “I needed to be a lot more athletic,” Hemsworth told Yahoo Entertainment, in what initially seems like a completely incongruous statement given her busy fitness Instagram feed.
Allow Hemsworth to explain: “I had just come out of the back of Thorwhere a lot of my workouts were bodybuilding, aesthetic sculpting and body shaping,” he says, referring to how he took on divine proportions in the last Thor-what. But play Extraction 2Rock ’em sock’em mercenary Tyler Rake requires a different skill set – one that emphasizes physical stamina to keep up with the long takes of wall-to-wall combat that director Sam Hargrave intended for its star.
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“I did a lot more cardio training, a lot more functionality and movement and flexibility,” Hemsworth said of her change in training. “And then we were touring for 12 to 14 hours a day plus after-work and weekend rehearsals. The preparation was just immersing ourselves in the rehearsal and stunt choreography as much as possible.”
All that cardio paid off in Extraction 2The signature twist of: a 21-minute action sequence that begins with a prison break, morphs into a car chase, then jumps to a runaway train that is machine-gunned by helicopter fire. Oh yeah, and it’s all edited together to make it look like a seamless take without any obvious on-screen clipping.
“I was so excited the first time Sam introduced him to me — and terrified,” laughs Hemsworth, recalling early discussions around the scene, which has already gone viral since the film’s June 16 premiere. “I knew it was going to be amazing, but also this huge mountain to climb.”
From a director’s perspective, Hargrave says the idea of an action-packed 21-minute “oner” wouldn’t have been possible before the advent of digital cameras. “Because the size of the cameras is getting smaller and the resolution is getting bigger and bigger…it’s allowed us to shoot things from a perspective that you might not have been able to. do ten or fifteen years ago.” explains the filmmaker. “You don’t miss film, so you can shoot very long continuous sequences. Advances in technology have helped in terms of storytelling.”
Naturally, there are hidden cuts throughout the 21-minute scene, though Hargrave and Hemsworth happily challenge viewers to spot where those cuts occur. “We should put it online and ask people to vote on where the cuts happen,” jokes the director. Not for nothing, but the “oner” the duo staged in the first Extraction managed to fool an action movie veteran like madmax mastermind, George Miller, who directed Hemsworth in the next road of fury prequel, Furiosa.
“George [said] “I couldn’t find the stitches,” marvels Hemsworth. “I was blown away by that. I think Sam did an amazing job of blending each sequence together to make it feel like one continuous shot.”
One of the requirements of “oners” is that the slightest mistake in choreography requires a restart from the top of a given section. And it’s something Hemsworth co-stars Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Bessa – who play fellow Tyler mercenaries and on-screen siblings Nik and Yaz – have experienced on a regular basis. “Every take, something got messed up,” Farahani says. “And you can be part of the mess too!”
“You’re already ashamed,” Bessa adds when asked if those who messed up would bear further blame. “Because you know how complicated it is for everyone, so when you messed it up, it was like, ‘Oh f***!'”
Tyler seemed to perish at the end of the original Extraction – a canceled death in the first minutes of Extraction 2. But the sequel includes a death that Bessa promises to be permanent… her own. Yaz sustains a mortal wound during a different action sequence in the middle of the film, and her loss literally tore audiences apart.
“The moment he got shot, the audience was like, ‘Oh no!'” Farahani remembers how moviegoers reacted to the premiere. “They took care of him and didn’t want him to die. I didn’t like it at all either!” In fact, the actress reveals that Nik was also supposed to die during the movie, but she fought her way through to get a reprieve. “I said, ‘Guys, one is enough,'” Farahani said with a laugh.
But Bessa, at least, isn’t mourning the loss of Yaz. “To be honest, my own death really turned me on,” he enthuses. “We get attached to Yaz, and so his death serves the film. And we have to be realistic: given what they are going through, one of them To die!”
And given the stellar streaming numbers for Extraction 2, Yaz could easily return in a prequel. “There’s definitely something to explore in our stories,” Bessa teases. “It would be amazing – we could go back in time!” All of a sudden, of course.
Extraction 2 is currently streaming on Netflix