Patrick Wilson Was Put Through “Full On” Tidal Wave Stunt Sequences In ‘Moonfall’
At one simple glance, one might think that training and executing all the sequences in Roland Emmerich’s latest film Moonfall would require to be quite intense when it all comes to zero gravity training (just like, for Halle Berry, it did) to even carry out some outer space sequences. However, as it turns out, for Aquaman star Patrick Wilson and Game of Thrones star John Bradley, there was a lot more to this apocalyptic thriller than simply acting out space travel, as the duo did in the movie. In fact, the most intense days on the set actually came when their characters got stuck in a hotel lobby during a huge tidal wave’s invasion of LA. It was “full-on” if we listen to Patrick Wilson.
“That was crazy. I’m not gonna lie,” Patrick Wilson told ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview. “I’ve done a lot of stuff, wire work and all that stuff, I’m pretty comfortable in, as comfortable as you can be, but that, because it’s literally just, you go outside and you see this giant container of water and then they’re like, ‘Okay, basically, we’re just gonna tip that over. Now, we’ve padded the stairs and that thing that looks like rocks that’s actually rubber, but we’re not quite sure where it’s gonna take you, so good luck.’ They’re as careful as they can be, but you are just kind of, they said, ‘Listen, if you go out too far, you go this way, you go that way, just be careful. Make sure you’re facing what’s gonna happen.’ So yeah, we were in it, it was probably just one, or was it, I think it was just one day for that one shot. I think we probably did it like four times maybe, four or five times, the real sweeping you away.”
Moonfall will release later in March
In the addressed sequence, Wilson’s disgraced astronaut is seen meeting with Bradley’s character who is seen as a conspiracy theorist who has some wild solutions on solving Earth’s problem of its collision with the moon. As Los Angeles is getting pummeled by massive waves of water, the two alongside a few others find themselves completely soaked in their very first encounter. This, obviously, comes before the two jet off into the space which \ offered a very different experience for the entire cast.
“We did a lot of rehearsal. A lot of people think that we were on wires for that zero G stuff but it was actually, we were just sort of… We had a board molded to our body,” Bradley explained. “We’d fit the contours of our body perfectly. And on my body, there are a lot of contours to fit. Believe me. You lay on this board and then you’re on a crane arm, and you just float through on this crane arm. But the thing about me was I seem to play a lot of characters that are no good at anything. I don’t have to look like I know what I’m doing. I don’t have to look proficient at anything. It’s such a gift that I can look like I’m struggling. If I’m struggling, it looks like the character’s struggling, and that seems to be what people want from me. So I get off lightly with all that stuff!”
For the whole cast and crew, it is still “easier,” to create the apocalyptic sequences for Moonfall now than it was for nearly 30 years ago for Emmerich when he was making films like Stargate and Independence Day. “In Independence Day, we had to do this all in-reel, you know?” Emmerich explained. “And so it becomes much easier. And it’s also a little bit an afterthought, you know? Because now you can do so much more and you just like kind of create this incredible images.”
