Warfare is not a typical war movie. It's based on true events (the memories of co-director Ray Mendoza), and it foregoes traditional cinematic expectations to present as realistic a portrayal as possible of the titular experience. As I write about in my four-star review for CinemaBlend, it's a unique film to take in – and it was special enough to attract the interest of star Will Poulter despite the actor's complete lack of interest in contributing to the war genre.
As captured in the video above, Will Poulter spoke about his first time meeting with co-director Alex Garland during the press day for Warfare last month, and the story is not what you'd typically expect from a junket interview. He explained that he was a fan of the filmmaker prior to their meeting, but his experience talking to him about his latest project was a roller coaster.
As captured in the video above, Will Poulter spoke about his first time meeting with co-director Alex Garland during the press day for Warfare last month, and the story is not what you'd typically expect from a junket interview. He explained that he was a fan of the filmmaker prior to their meeting, but his experience talking to him about his latest project was a roller coaster.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00When I first got the opportunity to meet with Alex, I was so excited.
00:04And initially, when I heard it was a war film, my heart slightly sunk.
00:08Just because I wasn't necessarily that motivated to be part of a war film.
00:13Then when I heard the objective, which was to try and contribute to the canon of war films
00:19with something that was made devoid of Hollywood grammar, no score, no fictionalization,
00:24like a very literal, apolitical and objective recreation of real events, I was all in.
00:32And yeah, I should have known better.
00:34I should have known that Alex Garland was too clever to do otherwise.
00:37When you see your legs, or lack thereof, for the first time, it was pretty intense.
00:41How did you prepare for that?
00:43And what was it like on that day?
00:46It was...
00:47What was that day like?
00:50They all kind of merge into one, if I'm honest.
00:52I think because of the nature of the film itself, it was all very contained within this building.
00:59So the working days themselves kind of felt very similar.
01:03How did we prepare for that?
01:05We rehearsed a lot in the three weeks prior to the shooting days.
01:09So we had three weeks of boot camp where we were rehearsing.
01:14We rehearsed it like a play, actually.
01:16So we were kind of pretty prepared, calm shooting days, to kind of get through the work that we'd already rehearsed.
01:23Obviously, as you mentioned, it was kind of an intense moment.
01:27But there was an intensity that kind of prevailed throughout the film after this event.
01:31So I think it was up to all of us to kind of maintain that energy throughout the rest of the film
01:39and to give off-camera support as much as we could, because otherwise the film wouldn't really cut together.
01:44So we wanted to kind of maintain this sense of shock, this sense of chaos,
01:50and this sense of these young men trying to make sense of a really challenging situation
01:56and to get out of there, really.