A lot of movies are heavy on the action these days, and a lot of the actors involved with these action-oriented projects end up doing at least some of their own stunts, sometimes to their detriment. Although you've probably seen some of the incredible stuff that Tom Cruise has done in his own movies, apparently he's not the only a-lister really going all out for stunts. In fact, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 actor Chris Pratt recently revealed that he was actually knocked unconscious during a stunt on the set of the upcoming Marvel movie. He explained what happened to Kelly Ripa and her new co-host Ryan Seacrest, noting,
There was one mishap. I got knocked out. I was like 15 feet in the air. We were hung by wires, so we were kind-of planking in the air, and then they were gonna drop us and we were gonna land on a mat. I saw it and thought, 'That's very fast.' I said, 'Should you slow that down?' They said, 'It's gonna be happening at half that speed, that's only half the speed.' So, when we did the stunt, they I guess accidentally did double the speed, so they essentially just dropped us from mid-air.
Chris Pratt explained that a stunt went wrong because instead of slowing down the stunt while he and his unnamed co-star were filming, they actually sped up the process that the actor had already thought looked awfully fast during the practice run. Occasionally stunts do go wrong on a set and actors do get injured during those stunts. In this case, Pratt went on to tell the Live! family that he was actually knocked out briefly, but he actually sounds like quite the trooper, as he says he continued filming once he came to. Here's what happened when he crash landed, literally:
I flew down, and I was heading towards the ground and I thought, 'I have a bad elbow; I'd better just take it in my shoulder and avoid my head so I don't crush this stuntman with my gargantuan head.' I turned this way and bounced my face off the mat. I saw a flash of yellow and it kind of tasted like smoke in my mouth. And then I came up and as I came to I realized there was a camera zooming past me and I realized if I didn't do the scene [right then], I was going to have to do the stunt again. And so I kind of stayed in the moment and it kept on going. Then, they yelled, 'Cut.'
The things an actor will do for their craft, amiright? Honestly though, this drop sounds pretty terrible and the fact that he can distinctly remember tasting "smoke" in his mouth can't be a great result. Still, the fear of having to do that drop again stayed with Pratt when he came to and he managed to punch the rest of the scene out, simply so he wouldn't have to go through the horrible drop again. He's just lucky he didn't break anything, or that nothing super serious happened when the stunt went awry.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 finally hits theaters this weekend, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for a scene where Chris Pratt's Starlord embraces one of his co-stars in the air. Hopefully that scene ends up being all that and a bag of potato chips, otherwise Pratt definitely got knocked unconscious for very little reason. At least it gave him a story to tell later...
Catch Guardians of the Galaxy on Friday, May 5 in theaters, and see what else is coming to the movies in May.
