'Extraction 2' director Sam Hargrave breaks down the action scenes and shares why Chris Hemsworth stands apart from other action heroes.
From coordinating the stunts on the Russo Brothers’ Marvel projects, former stuntman Sam Hargrave returns to the action behind the camera as director for his sequel, Extraction 2. Starring Chris Hemsworth as Australian mercenary, Tyler Rake, and adapted by Joe Russo, these movies pack a punch that benefit from the trained eye of someone who has been at the center of that kind of action.
SAM HARGRAVE: [Laughs] That's like the greatest question of all time. I mean, that's tough because, you know, I'm partial to the character of Tyler Rake. I’m gonna take away John Wick's bulletproof suit and I'm gonna give it to Tyler Rake. The dude's a badass, so there's no debate.HARGRAVE: Okay, so you want me to be a fan, remove myself?
HARGRAVE: You know, it's too early to tell, truthfully, because as they did with the Wick movies, I think you kind of have to wait and see how the audience reacts. Just because the first movie was successful, it doesn't mean the second one's gonna be more so, that's not a given, right? You hope, and it's tracking well, but who knows? We had a pandemic happen the first time that helped us out, something else could happen that doesn't help us out, so you never know.
Now that you are coming into the home stretch, you're going to promote this movie, I know you're already thinking about, “What will I do next?” So I usually save this for the end, but I'm just going to ask it now, do you know what you're going to do next? I think that's an interesting challenge because, oftentimes, creativity comes from boundaries. When you have anything and everything you need, sometimes your mind can just run too free, and it get spread too thin sometimes. When it's like, “Alright, you're in a shoebox, figure something out,” and you go, “Well, alright,” and now your focus is so much sharper. So I think that's gonna be a fun challenge, you know, who knows? We'll see. I'm looking forward to it though.
HARGRAVE: We talked about it. I think that was mostly Joe being cagey because he's a smart businessman. You don't want to give too much away too early, and it's good to lead people off the scent, and say, “Oh, we're gonna do a prequel, look over there while we figure out the sequel!” Because I don't think you can an audience with that ending and then not go figure out what happened because that's the question.
So I was like, “Well, that's a pretty simple part. Hard to screw that one up. I'll just jump in the ditch and dig it.” Now, I tried because – you got me, you caught me there – Chris's guys put a wig on me, we dyed my beard, or at least put some more gray in it, but you still got me. So I didn't do that good of a job of hiding my identity.
So the first movie had a lot of orange and warm tones because of where we were, we wanted it to feel hot, and it was – we shot in India and Thailand, it was very hot. And so now we're in Eastern Europe where it's very cold in the wintertime, so there's more blues and grays, and we tried to lean into that. So the glass and concrete was just a very great contrast, visually and tonally, from the first movie.
HARGRAVE: No, I love it because fan reactions and fan ideas spark creativity. I welcome ideas because, truthfully, some of the ideas for action aren't coming out of my brain, they're coming from suggestions. People write a comment, sometimes being funny, sometimes being facetious, and I go, “Wait a second, hold on now… They're trying to be like sarcastic, but that could be brilliant.
HARGRAVE: [Laughs] That's the quote, that's the title of the article: We Actually Did Crazy Shit on Extraction 2. But we wouldn't be the first action franchise to do crazy things. However, the DNA of Extraction is definitely to do as much practically as possible, so with the train sequence, we fully embraced it. We were on a real train out in the nether regions… away from Prague, out in the mountains, it was amazing and cold and beautiful, on a real train.
HARGRAVE: Very much so. That sequence, we started the movie with those seven days. We were prepping– All the other bits of the movie were important, but they were down a little further. We're focusing on the train. We had five parajumpers, like pararescue from the Air Force, that were with us, and we brought them in specifically for that reason. Because, if something happened, medics are great, but these guys have been through combat.
But again, the rehearsal process was so detailed, and our stunt team and safety team were so great, they were just out there over and over again, calculating the exact, to the millisecond, of how long we had between the power lines and the trees, “Alright, this is how much time you have. And if this, then that, if this, then that,” it is so many contingencies. And anyways, it was an amazing feat of filmmaking, and I'm super proud of every single person that was a part of it.
HARGRAVE: Well, the prison sequence, in my mind, comprises a couple of different parts, and it was actually a couple of different locations. So once Tyler Rake goes into that prison and pulls the family out, there's a little scene in the cell and it was a couple of different locations.
HARGRAVE: Well, extensive rehearsals, and there's a certain pace that you have to get with the stitches right. So you look at it broken down, kind of like a shot list, and, for example, on the first movie, we averaged between three and five stitches, or pieces that we put together, per day. And with this one, it was like twice as long, so we did have a little bit longer to shoot.
So then I go, “Alright guys, this is what I'm thinking for this.” Sometimes I’ll be very specific, but most of the time I just try to convey a feeling to them. And actually, that bit where he's surrounded, and he starts with the rifle, and he goes through all the different weapons, I pulled up a National Geographic special where there's a lion, like a single lion, surrounded by a bunch of hyenas.
HARGRAVE: I totally agree, and I think that's one thing that makes Tyler Rake so great, and a lot of that, for me, comes from loving Jackie Chan movies so much growing up. And what I think he did that separated him from the Bruce Lee’s and Jet Li’s is, he wasn't the martial arts expert.
HARGRAVE: Oh, man, this movie had all kinds of iterations. It originally, on paper, it was scripted as – and it read great –it was scripted as it starts with the oner, and then we go through that crazy sequence, and then we stop, flash back to how Rake came to survive, and then keep going with the story. So we put it together that way, and it was cool to start with the oner, but just because it's so epic, you get a little lost in tracking the why and the who.
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