At a glance, one might think training for and executing the sequences in Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster film Moonfall would be most intense if it required zero gravity training (for Halle Berry, it did) to carry out some outer space sequences. However, for Aquaman star Patrick Wilson and Game of Thrones alum John Bradley, there was much more to this apocalyptic thriller than acting out space travel. In fact, the most intense days on set came when their characters were stuck in a hotel lobby during a massive tidal wave’s invasion of Los Angeles. It was “full on” according to Wilson.
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“That was crazy. I’m not gonna lie,” 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.”
In the sequence, Wilson’s disgraced astronaut is meeting with Bradley’s character who is billed as a conspiracy theorist with wild solutions on how to solve Earth’s problem of the impending collision with the moon. As Los Angeles is getting pummeled by waves of water, the two and a few others find themselves soaked in their first encounter. This, of course, comes before the two jet off into space which called offered a very different experience for the cast.ย
“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!”ย
Fortunately for the cast and crew, it is “easier,” to create the various apocalyptic sequences for Moonfallย now than it was for Emmerich nearly 30 years ago when he was making titles such as 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.”
Watch ComicBook.com’s full Moonfall interview with Patrick Wilson in the video above. Are you excited to see Moonfall? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram! Moonfall hits theaters on February 4.ย
