Exclusive ‘War Machine’ Clip Shows Alan Ritchson’s Shocking Filming Stamina
The new Netflix action movie War Machine stars Alan Ritchson in the role of an Army Ranger hopeful known only as "81." And, if you're feeling like a movie in which Ritchson plays an absolute unit, fighting with a bunch of soldiers sounds like Reacher, but in the Army, you're half right. Directed by Patrick Hughes, War Machine isn't just a war movie; it's a sneaky sci-fi survival story that starts as a military movie about 81 and his compatriots in training. And during that training, Alan Ritchson walked the entire length of a pool, underwater, carrying weights.
To be clear, it's not just that the character of 81 walked the pool; what you see in this early scene in the movie is 100 percent real, something which surprised Hughes while filming. And, in a new, exclusive behind-the-scenes clip, Men's Journal is pleased to reveal the story behind this scene.
War Machine: Uncut Alan Ritchson Underwater Scene
Early in the film, Alan Ritchson's character 81 is in training with the Army Rangers, which includes an exercise in which he and other recruits walk along the length of a pool, holding weights in each hand, trying to see how far they can get before coming up for air.
Speaking to Men's Journal, Ritchson and Hughes revealed that the original plan was simply to have Ritchson walk a little while underwater, not the entire length of the pool.
"They said walk as far as you can, but we can cut around you if you need to come up for air," Ritchson explains. Meaning, the idea was for him to just walk a short distance underwater, and then edit the film later to make it seem like he walked the entire length of the pool. "I said I don't think I can do this for more than 10 seconds," Ritchson continues. "And I just kept trucking in that shot."
"We had a camera operator who was sort of three-quarters all the way down, and was walking back as Alan walked forward. It was literally an almost two-minute take. Alan ended up walking into the camera operator because he had nowhere to go. That's when I knew Alan had embodied 81."
Overall, Ritchson says that the physical aspect of filming War Machine was unlike anything he'd done before that point. As he puts it: "We were pushing the envelope with what we were going to put a body through."