‘Extraction 2’ Director Breaks Down That 21-Minute, “One Take” Action Scene, From The 400-Person Prison Fight To Landing A Helicopter on a Train

The Train and Helicopter

Though some of the interiors were filmed on a soundstage, you better believe that train was real, with seven compartments, going 50 miles per hour, down a 36-mile-long stretch of track in the Czech Republic. So yes, Chris Hemsworth really was fighting on top of a train—in freezing weather, no less. Even more unbelievably, Extraction 2 landed a real helicopter on top of that real, moving train—a stunt that has never before been pulled off. (Well, it doesn’t quite land—but it does hover mere feet from the train, and allow the men on board to hop off.)

“I gotta give credit to Fred North,” Hargrave told Decider, referring to the aerial pilot who pulled off the stunt. “That was his idea.” Originally, Hargrave said, the script called for stunt performers to repel from the helicopter using rope, onto the roof of the moving train. “Fred was like, ‘You know, I’ve seen that before. What if we land the helicopter on the train and the guys just step off?’  My eyes got bigger saucers. I said, ‘You can do that?’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I don’t know, but I’d like to try.’”

The team rehearsed the stunt by first landing the helicopter on a flatbed truck. “We started stationary with a semi-truck, and then the truck moving in a large open parking lot, and got to the speed we wanted to show that he could consistently do it. It took a couple of days,” Hargrave said. But beyond North learning the stunt, Hargrave had to figure out how to film it. “I was up on the top of the train, handheld, and as [the helicopter] came in my biggest concern was not getting in the way of those moving blades,” the director said with a laugh. “I had to wait for just the right moment, as he flares out, and then I run towards. It kind of felt like running into a hurricane, because the downdraft of that helicopter is very strong. So I have to run through that. I was as close as three feet, maybe four feet— I could reach out and touch Fred if I wanted to.”

On the day of filming, North performed the stunt a total of five times, and, Hargrave said, did such a great job on the fifth and final take, the edit team felt it looked fake. “Fred did such a great job landing it, that we ended up using tape three, because it was a little messier and it looked real. Because we looked at take five when we got back in edit and it was so perfect that it looked fake. The last thing I want is people to go, ‘Oh, it’s fake, it’s all blue screen.’”

Overall, it’s safe to say that this 21-minute oner raised the bar for all future action movies to come. And that includes Extraction 3, which is not yet greenlit, but Hargrave says will likely happen if the sequel is as popular as the first movie. If it does happen, can fans expect an even longer “one take” action set-piece than this one?

“We’ve set the bar pretty high with these last two films,” Hargrave replied. “If that one gets the green light, we’d have to gather around and say, ‘What’s going to be the best version of an action set piece that will blow people away?’ Maybe it’s a 44-minute oner, or maybe it’s a start-to-finish one-shot. Or maybe there’s not one at all—because the last thing I want to do is just keep using it because it’s a gimmick, or because we feel like we have to. It needs to be organic to the storytelling.”