In this exclusive interview, the action star takes us through his crazy stunts and more.
The action star takes on the role of Tyler Rake for the second time. This time, he has retired from mercenary work and is recovering in a cabin in Austria. Soon, he goes back to his old life when Alcott (Idris Elba) approaches him with an important rescue mission.
Things quickly get complicated as Hemsworth’s character does his best to save the hostages without anyone getting hurt while dealing with hostile characters, complex car chases, and crazy fight scenes.
In an exclusive interview with Pulse, Hemsworth breaks down the fight scenes that make the movie so entertaining, the heart of the film, and more:
Training for this movie
I had a number of months of training. I had just shot Love and Thunder, so I was fit, but I had a very different body shape. I was a lot bigger than I would have preferred to be for this type of film, and so my training immediately became about functionality, flexibility, movement, and cardiovascular training because there were really long sequences without any edits or cuts. A lot of martial arts training and then throughout the whole film, we would be updating adapting changing sequences and working with many different stunt performers.
Delving into his backstory in the sequel
We had a great experience in the first one, the action was incredible but there was really only one or two scenes where you really got under the surface of who this character was around and understood his past, history and motivations. So, it was exciting to come into this film and almost have an origin story for the second time in a way and be able to really understand what the complexity is within his personality and the relationship with his wife and the son that he lost and why he is the way he is. I think having a stronger emotional component and greater depth compliments the action and vice versa. If you don’t care about what the people onscreen are going through, it doesn’t matter how fantastic the action is, it just becomes noise. Hopefully, the audience is more invested due to the sprinkling of emotional scenes, that’s what probably our most proud of.
Pulling off the crazy prison sequence
When director Sam Hargrave pitched to me, it was exhilarating and terrifying but exciting. It was freezing in Prague so I gotta say it was nice to be a little warmer. We were in the middle of winter, it was snowing and I was lit on fire, thankfully, not for too long. It was the most complicated stunt I think because there were 300 extras in the shot and a few people were on fire and I was on fire. It was shot as a one-up so it could be seamless. Traditionally you would have two or three cameras shooting and you could cut to a different angle if it didn’t look right from one but this was done differently. However, I reckon the most dangerous scene is probably when I was on top of the train and it was moving at 50 miles an hour and there was a helicopter flying backwards in front of the drain shooting at me. I’m shooting at it That had a lot of variables and and Sam was in the middle of it under the rotator of the helicopter trying to hold the camera and film but it looks pretty spectacular. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it on screen.
Idris Elba’s arrival in the franchise
It was my idea. He’s one of my really close friends. We were looking for a character to be introduced that if we made a third film it could bring out something very different in Tyler. We have been wanting to work together for a while, I think it was New Year’s Eve, I was with Idris having a drink and I said, ‘You should do extraction’. He got really excited and we started throwing around ideas. I called Netflix and they said, ‘Absolutely great’, and off we went. Fingers crossed, there’s a great response for this film and the audience wants a third one so you’ll see us together again.
