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There’s an Art to Setting Chris Hemsworth on Fire (and Getting Netflix to Let You Do It)

You could be forgiven for believing the hero dies after the final battle sequence in Netflix’s baroquely violent 2020 shoot-’em-up thriller Extraction. Sacrificing himself to rescue his teenage quarry (Ovi, the son of a ruthless drug lord, played by Indian actor Rudkhrash Jaiswal), Chris Hemsworth’s OxyContin-popping black-ops mercenary character, Tyler Rake, absorbs a kill shot through the neck, then plummets off a bridge to his seeming demise in a river in Bangladesh.

In the movie’s final scene, however, Ovi jumps into a swimming pool some time later and resurfaces to encounter a blurred, indistinct figure who may or may not be Tyler.

Judging from how Extraction 2 narratively picks up where the bridge fall left off, reports of Rake’s death were premature. Released in the earliest weeks of pandemic lockdown, the first film — written by Joe Russo, of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame co-directing fame, and produced by his and brother Anthony Russo’s AGBO entertainment company — became Netflix’s most-watched original movie at the time, logging over 99 million viewers in its first month. Further, it put Sam Hargrave, stuntman and action coordinator turned first-time feature filmmaker, on the Hollywood talent map.

The former Captain America stunt double, 40 (who has spent the years between the Extractions as a second-unit director for The Mandalorian on Disney+), faced his own brush with death while filming a surface-to-air battle sequence in Extraction 2 when the rotors of a hovering helicopter nearly blew him off the top of a train moving at 40 miles an hour. The director talked us through the decision to bring Tyler Rake back from the dead, the future of an Extraction Cinematic Universe, and setting Hemsworth on fire for the movie’s signature set piece: a seemingly continuous 20-minute shot Hargrave envisions as the “craziest oner in cinema history.”

Tell me about the decision to resurrect Tyler Rake.When fans saw the movie and we as filmmakers and Netflix saw the positive feedback, the appetite for Tyler Rake returning was very big. During test screenings for the first movie, we tried a couple of different endings. The one that wound up in the movie was an “ambiguous” ending, meaning we didn’t ever rack focus to the person in the background. We kept it purposefully out of focus so that each camp of audience members could be satisfied. If you watched the movie and thought Tyler’s story was complete, that he had redeemed himself, he had done this self-sacrificing act to make up for the sins of his past, then you could be satisfied with that ending.

And if there never was a sequel — if the thing tanked and no one watched it — then you could just have a stand-alone. There was a lot of excitement internally about this character. So we said, well, the other camp who really craves a second installment could argue with the other fans in the parking lot that, no, that’s Tyler Rake: That silhouette matches Chris, and I know that’s Tyler because he’s got to be alive. Actually, both camps could be right.

Extraction 2 was also discussed as a prequel. Why didn’t you go in that direction?There was a discussion: Do we go back in time and tell how Rake got to this point and leave it as he sacrificed himself on the bridge, or do we move forward in time and say he survived that ordeal? We landed on moving forward because we felt like we had peaked emotionally with that first movie. It’s harder knowing what we know about Tyler Rake and how he left his son dying of cancer. If we go backward, the audience already knows that’s the emotional crux of that story. So you have to go way back to before he had a son, but then how do you de-age Chris Hemsworth? You’re going to de-age him by ten years?

That seemed like a lot of money to spend. A recast seemed like a terrible idea. So all of those complications pushed us in the direction of moving forward with the story. We could move this character down the road, deal with unresolved conflicts with the past, his son, his ex-wife. And then, by the end of it, allow Tyler Rake the freedom to move unfettered into some other adventure. We thought it would be easier to explain how he survived than to deal with a whole movie of trying to battle against this emotional peak we’d already reached with the Extraction film.

Photo: Jasin Boland/Netflix

You’re filming outdoors; if the wind blows the wrong way, your movie is literally toast.Exactly. So we had people with all their weather instruments being like, All right, the wind’s good. And all the stunt teams, Yeah, we’re all prepped. We did a rehearsal with Chris so he could see what that felt like and find the right volume and size of the flames where he felt comfortable, but he was really on fire. And then it was time to convince the studio. And they were like, “Well, why can’t you do it CG?” I’m like, “Well, it’s going to be probably more expensive to do it digitally because fire is one of those elements that’s still hard to make look real.”

That isn’t the energy and DNA of this franchise. If we can do it practically, I want to do it practically because you can tell the difference. Hemsworth was down because of our success with the helicopter stuff and our previous success with safely doing these practical stunts. The studio said yes; we lit Hemsworth on fire; and I think over the course of that night, with probably six, seven, maybe eight times he was lit on fire, he and four other stunt performers, he just did it to perfection.

At the end of the movie, Chris’s character is getting hit with a bucket of nails, he’s getting hit in the face with a metal coupling on a rope. Seemed like you guys were trying to get as creative as possible with finding new ways to fuck him up.It’s so challenging to come up with creative new choreography that hasn’t either been done before or done in a specific way or done with this character or done recently. It’s really tough because there are so many great fight coordinators and stunt coordinators and stunt minds out there. How do you differentiate yourself? So in the church fight at the end, my stunt team tried to find as many specific weird gags that would work and make sense for the set we had.

We decided to make this church under construction so we could have a bunch of different tools and fun things in there. So we stab Tyler Rake with a screwdriver, we use a saw — he blocks it with his arm, and he gets the saw in the arm. We smash him in the head with a bucket of nails. That was a setup for the Easter egg: Chris Hemsworth’s character reaching for the hammer, which gets a laugh oftentimes —

Don’t let Thor get that hammer!It’s over if he gets it.

The Russos have discussed an Extraction Cinematic Universe with something maybe for David Harbour’s character, Gaspar, or a spinoff for Saju, played by Randeep Hooda. And then there’s the just-announced Extraction 3. Can you say anything about this universe or even another installment going forward?Hemsworth is very much excited about continuing to play this character. Netflix loves the character; it’s doing great things for them. AGBO is very excited because Joe Russo has created a character he thinks is very memorable.

What that is exactly is still to be determined. But I do know it’s being worked on as we speak. The universe, different characters — I don’t know. I’ve read scripts for a couple of different characters that are growing in that space. Who knows how they’ll interact and interweave throughout the years? But there is talk of potentially giving a stand-alone film to Nik Khan to give her origin story. People love that character. And Golshifteh Farahani has really personified a strong, independent badass heroine. I would love for something like that to come to pass.

Plus having Olga Kurylenko portray Tyler’s ex-wife: She’s got her own action bona fides as a James Bond woman. The door’s open to a lot of possibilities.We introduce the Idris Elba character into this universe. He could have his own movie, or he could be in a movie with Chris. There’s a lot of potential now. The stage has been set for a pretty interesting future in the Extraction universe.