Authors: James Haydock
Having established that he was not looking for big lead names to fill the roles of the warring brothers, what was it that Gavin O’Connor needed to bring the story from the pages of his script and to breathe life into his leading characters?
When Tom first read the script, the film was a very different
beast from the final version. Initially, Tom felt he was physically too far away from the character of Tommy he was reading on the page, who was originally, according to the actor: ‘Hispanic. He had long hair and a ponytail and went swimming every morning with rocks in a rucksack.’ The script was re-drafted many times and, as part of that process, the character changed – as did the understanding of what was the central theme of the film. ‘It started to add up to me that
Warrior
wasn’t a kung fu martial arts kind of movie at all. This was actually a kind of family drama with a backdrop of the world of mixed martial arts,’ Tom told Canada’s
National
Post
.
Tom was one of the last actors O’Connor met when looking for the right person to play Tommy. He needed to find an actor who could portray the complexity of the character, someone who understood the light and shade of the kind of human being who is outwardly aggressive but inwardly susceptible. ‘I needed someone who had a very tough exterior and yet had a deep vulnerability. The character does a lot of bad things and the audience had to understand that what he was doing was coming from a place of pain,’ reflected the director.
Initially, Tom was unsure as to whether he could portray all the elements of Tommy and needed reassurance that he would be able to give a complete performance. To do this, he and O’Connor had to be in tune about who exactly Tommy was – something which came about in a slightly unconventional way. O’Connor has recounted how, rather than a usual style of audition, the actor in his characteristically intense fashion, turned up on his doorstep late one Sunday night to speak to him. ‘He was supposed to go to a hotel,’ O’Connor said in an
interview with
Wales on Sunday
, ‘but instead stayed at my house for five days. He never left, so I got to know him very well. And the qualities he has as a human being are just right for the character.’
Indeed, who would be better able to inhabit the skin of a character like Tommy than Tom Hardy? On an emotional level, he is nothing less than a perfect fit for the role. He has referred to the character of Tommy as having ‘no skin’, which is also how he has referred to his own younger self. In the same interview, he said of Tommy: ‘He’s running from everything. He can’t sit still …’, which again sounds rather like the Tom of a decade earlier. There were other personal experiences he could draw on too, enabling him to get inside the head of the man he needed to become on screen. He had first-hand experience of the immense strain that addiction can place on a family as well as the experience of recovery.
‘I felt very much at home with the sadder side of Tommy, but it’s not a territory I need to dwell in,’ he told the
Daily Telegraph
. He went on to explain that, as well as finding the process of playing Tommy a cathartic one, he also felt that, by using his experiences to bring authenticity to the character, he might just be able to give audiences an insight, via Tommy, of the pain of this world that he himself had inhabited.
Edgerton’s character, Brendan, while having his own issues with his family’s ruptured past and undergoing his own personal crises, is a stark contrast to Tommy. While Tommy escaped his past life by joining the armed services, Brendan has chosen instead the path of suburban domesticity and has created the kind of family that his own never was. Brendan has a responsibility to his new family, both emotionally and
financially. The actor proved a fit with the role and, according to O’Connor, he has ‘integrity in spades. Joel, as a person, is a dynamic actor and you root for him and you like him.’
So far, so good – two actors had been found who could each turn in a performance which would highlight the divide between the two men who Tom Hardy has referred to as ‘very different brothers. Cut from the same cloth, but very different.’
The next challenge was to get the two actors looking completely credible as MMA fighters – anything less would have done the film a disservice and been a distraction from the story. They both had to set about transforming their bodies and undertook rigorous training so that they would look authentic when sparring in the cage. This was no mean feat and required a great deal of dedication, determination and energy from the pair.
Originally, the characters in the film were to have been heavyweight fighters but it would have taken too long to get the actors bulked up to a degree where they would look like genuine heavyweights. Instead, they were cast as middleweights and had to increase their bodyweight to a mere 84kg!
Tom is no stranger to transformation and much had been made of the extreme change he had undergone when switching between the roles of Stuart Shorter and Charles Bronson. As we know, Tom didn’t find bulking up for
Bronson
too difficult but attaining the right kind of shape for
Warrior
was to be a very different prospect. Tom has made no secret of the fact that he found it a tough part of the preparation. ‘Getting into a gym is something I’m not comfortable with at all, to be honest, so I was quite concerned by the whole thing. I was alarmed at the amount of exercise
this demanded, and athleticism and discipline and structure. It wasn’t up my alley at all,’ he told ITN.
The process started 10 weeks before the cameras rolled, and to say it was demanding would be a huge understatement. Training was a full-time occupation and took place six or seven times a week. A typical day would consist of fight training at the gym from 7am until mid-afternoon; after lunch, there would be training in boxing, ju-jitsu as well as weights work and choreography – all of which would continue late into the night.
The actors have stated that they were ‘side by side always’ while they were in training and, as ever, Tom also had his great friend and personal trainer Pnut to assist him. It was Pnut who had helped Hardy to bulk up for
Bronson
and he now had an even greater task on his hands. ‘Pnut had to pick me up off the floor after I finished
Bronson
and I had to strip away a load of fat and pack on muscle as fast as possible,’ Tom told
Men’s Fitness
magazine. True to form, Pnut was just the man Tom needed in his corner – he knew exactly what was required not only to get Tom physically in shape, but also to give him authenticity on screen. ‘I didn’t want to train Tom to look like he could fight – I wanted to train him to fight.’
Indeed, one of the key elements to the success of the film was that the fighting was as realistic as it possibly could be. To this end, training was also undertaken with MMA coach Greg Jackson and some UFC fighters too. Edgerton spent a good deal of time with Jackson and has credited him with being ‘a real advisor for the integrity and detail of the sport’.
The stunt team, too, were a vital part of the operation and
have been described by Tom as ‘the glue for the fighting scenes of the film’. Martial artist JJ Perry, renowned for his work on a host of films including
Iron Man
and
Avatar
, was the stunt co-ordinator. Also on the team was fighter and stuntman Fernando Chien, who Tom states was ‘responsible for the authenticity of the interactions that we had’.
Just as the two screen brothers have contrasting lives and personalities, so they have different fighting styles, which seem to reflect how they are as people. Tommy’s fighting style is out-and-out aggressive and he often flattens opponents in just a few moves. Brendan, on the other hand, has to work harder for his victories and consequently spends a lot more time in the cage. This being the case, Edgerton was required to take on quite a bit more ju-jitsu and choreography training than Tom was.
Once on set, things proved no less exhausting. Long days of filming required just as much – if not more – energy and focus. It would apparently take about two days to film one of the rounds of fighting, so as well as having to dig deep physically, they also had to focus on maintaining the appearance of the aggression during the fight. At this point, the actors were also carb-depleted, sticking to a regime of eating chicken and broccoli every few hours, something which Tom has admitted wreaked havoc with his mood. Between takes, instead of resting, they had to get themselves in gear for the next round of fighting and could be found doing press ups, hitting pads or running up and down the stairs. And, while the rest of the crew broke for lunch, there was no such luxury for the two leads: you guessed it, lunchtime equalled another workout. There’s no denying that
the fighting was tough and took its toll. During the course of making the film, Tom broke a toe, two ribs and tore the ligaments in his right hand.
Did such an intense and testosterone-fuelled atmosphere on set lead to any kind of competitiveness off set? It would appear that quite the opposite happened and the two lead actors seemed to enjoy a happy working relationship and developed a mutual respect. They claimed, too, that due to the combative nature of the scenes they were filming, any negative emotion could be channelled into the fight, rather than displaying itself in other ways. ‘There was no peacocking in the gym,’ said Tom. In the inevitable press junkets the pair were subsequently required to undertake together, they appear totally at ease with each other and share a laddish, knockabout sense of humour. Edgerton has also generously described Tom as ‘an exceptional actor’.
2011 marked the first annual Cinema Con exhibition in Las Vegas. The purpose of the event is to bring together cinema owners and operators from around the world and, with so many industry high-fliers together in one place, is the perfect opportunity to promote your film and get a buzz going around it. It was at CinemaCon that
Warrior
had its first public screening and it certainly initiated a flurry of activity on film websites and blogs. It wasn’t yet the finished film that was screened but that didn’t prevent it from causing a stir.
Firstshowing.net
called it ‘incredible’, while
slashfilm
gushed that it was one of the best films that they had seen that year. In the UK, meanwhile, where Tom had been recognised as a rising star for quite some time and was hardly lacking in a female fan base, excitement was growing at the sight of
Warrior
promo posters featuring the actor sporting a
well-sculpted
torso and looking menacing.
It helped that, by the time that promotion began apace, both actors were becoming names on Hollywood’s lips. Tom in particular seemed to fascinate fans and critics across the pond – people wanted to know more about this Brit actor with the intriguing past who directors seemed to be clamouring to sign up for their films. Everyone wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
With this positive buzz behind them, Lionsgate went all out to get their film talked about amongst cinema-goers in the USA. The studio set up a nationwide series of free screenings of the movie, with tickets being made available from 12 August. The promotion was deemed a success and the cinemas involved in the screenings reported good attendance rates, with the film being seen by over 17,000 people as a result of the scheme.
Warrior
has firm ties to the US military because of the character Tommy’s history as a US Marine, and the script had in fact been vetted by a Marine Corps liaison officer. In addition, though, the military were directly involved in the shooting of the film, and 200 real uniformed Marines appeared as spectators to Tommy’s fights, backing their boy. In the summer months of 2011, prior to the film’s release, Camp Pendleton in California hosted a screening of the film for the Marines based there. Tom was in attendance at the screening and took the time to sign autographs and meet some of the Marines at the base. He has spoken of how the presence of the real Marines in the crowd of spectators while filming the fight scenes helped him to get fired up for the scene ahead.
It’s fair to say that the film had a mixed reception. Most agreed that, in plot and structure, it was somewhat flawed. It was definitely a film that was split down the middle, with the first half committed to painting the characters and their relationships; the second half committed to the unfolding of the brothers making their respective ways to the MMA tournament. Nicholas Barber wrote in his review in the
Independent on Sunday
that: ‘For the first half of
Warrior
, you might be fooled into thinking that it’s a gritty, blue-collar drama in the musclebound mould of
The Wrestler
, but once its heroes start their obligatory work-out sessions, it’s clear that you’re watching the most formulaic of Hollywood sports movies.’ Indeed, once the contest in Atlantic City got under way, there was a strong sense of inevitability about how the second half of the film would play out.
There was one thing, though, on which critics were all agreed: barring any criticism of the film itself, the actors in it all turned in fantastic performances which were, arguably, its saving grace. Tom in particular was singled out for his outstanding portrayal of Tommy. It was widely agreed that he had succeeded in creating a character who, despite his out and out aggression, never loses the sympathy of the audience because we can see that underneath the hostile exterior lies a fragility. Barber referred to Tom as ‘sensational’ while
Screen
described him as ‘arrestingly intense’.
Some critics went even further than that. The performance prompted several to compare him to a young Marlon Brando – and he had certainly shown he shared some of the brooding intensity and depth of Brando. When asked to respond to such comparisons, Tom was typically self-effacing and
grounded about it all. Speaking to
Inquirer Entertainment
website he said, ‘You’re going to hate me. I’ve never watched
On the Waterfront
. I’ve seen
Apocalypse
Now
. I thought he was wonderful in that. I feel a bit embarrassed when I’m compared to him. Marlon Brando is Marlon Brando. It’s a tremendous honour to be compared to him. But I don’t think I’m very good at what I do. I want to work harder at it.’