There are certain actors that come to mind when it comes to discussions of who does their own stunts and who is willing to really go all out and do just about anything on camera. Keanu Reeves does nearly all of the action in the John Wick franchise himself and we all know that Tom Cruise will hang from buildings or jump off motorcycles to make the Mission: Impossible franchise one of the most exciting ever. However, we may need to add Chris Hemsworth to this conversation, because he actually lit himself on fire for Extraction 2.
If you’ve seen the trailer for Extraction 2, then you’ve seen a sequence where Chris Hemsworth is fighting his way through a riot in a prison yard. He ends up getting splashed by an exploding Molotov cocktail, which lights his jacket on fire. Director Sam Hargrave recently revealed to Empire that the shot is not done with CGI. Hemsworth was actually set on fire, multiple times. He explained…
For me, the image of Chris Hemsworth beating the shit out of a bunch of prisoners, while on fire, in the snow was something that I couldn’t pass up. And hats off to Chris. It wasn’t CG fire. And he had to do it over and over. I don’t know a lot of people, let alone Hollywood A-listers, who are gonna let you light them on fire while on camera.
Hargrave is almost certainly correct that not a lot of actors are just going to let you light them on fire. Even under controlled conditions, that’s the sort of thing that is going to stress out a lot of people. And the Extraction 2 sequence was all the more intense because the scene in question is part of what the director calls “the craziest oner in cinema history.”
If you watch the sequence in the trailer above, it has a few edits, but those are clearly inserted as part of the trailer. The prison riot sequence is presented as a single shot, with Hemsworth fighting off attackers from all sides. That makes the sequence with the fire all the more impressive.
Not all "oners" are created equal. Sometimes these sequences are truly filmed in a single unbroken take, like the fight scene in Creed. Other times shots are edited together in a way that makes them appear seamless, such as 1917. While the scene does appear to have cuts, they’re well hidden giving the impression of an unbroken take. Adding the fire to a sequence like this certainly increases the odds something can go wrong, but it apparently worked out. Hargrave continued…
We had a bunch of different jackets all prepped for him, with different layers. We lit Chris Hemsworth on fire, and he beat up a bunch of guys all night. It was pretty incredible to watch.
The first Extraction also had an impressive oner, but Extraction 2 is clearly looking to outdo its predecessor in every conceivable way. We’ll find out if it succeeds when the movie arrives on Netflix on June 16.
