Captain Marvel's Directors Break Down the Train Fight Scene

Hi, I'm Ryan Fleck.

And I'm Anna Boden.

And we co-directed the movie, Captain Marvel.

And we're gonna do a one scene breakdown

of our train fight scene.

[suspenseful music]

[punch whacking]

Ooo

The inspiration for this scene really

came out of a movie called The French Connection,

which was basically this awesome train chase

where Gene Hackman is chasing an above ground train

while trying to capture somebody on that train.

In this sequence, we have Nick Fury chasing this train

as Captain Marvel's on the train,

also chasing a Skrull, which is a shape shifting alien race.

When we were, like, really early on in the writing

of the movie, before we had a script or anything,

we were watching movies that really excited us

and we were watching The French Connection scene

and there's, like, a moment where Gene Hackman he,

like, gets out of his car and he runs up

on the elevated train station and he looks around

and he's looking across the train trying to find the guy

and we were like how interesting would that be

if you were chasing a Skrull

and it could literally be anybody because

Skrull's can shape shift into anybody.

That was the inspiration for, you know,

Captain Marvel getting on this train, checking people out,

but not knowing exactly who she's looking for.

[train rattling]

These extras are awesome, I mean,

these extras are really terrific.

They weren't overacting, they were reacting just

as they would to this situation.

And so props to the extras. Which, and this situation

being that, like, somebody wearing

a cosmic space warrior outfit is getting on the train.

Ah, she's noticing somebody.

This is a woman who she bumped into before

she got on the train so she looks familiar.

This is actress, Marilyn Brett,

who does a fantastic job here.

This guy's doing a good job as well.

We knew that we wanted to have a,

a fight between Captain Marvel and whoever the Skrull

was hiding in the skin of on the train.

You know, initially we thought what if it's a little kid,

like, wouldn't that be funny to see her fight a little kid

and then we thought, no but what if it's like

the sweetest, nicest looking grandma.

The most innocent person you could imagine,

kind of grandma sweater, and the dress, and the stockings.

Um, and giving her glasses, just an added plus

because you're really never supposed to hit somebody

with glasses or so I'm told which is why I wear glasses.

[Ryan] And the dimples, I mean come on.

Look at those dimples.

[punch whacking]

Oh I just want to pause it there because this is,

actually, this is the actress Marilyn who basically did,

she had to whip her head 15 times to get this take right

because her glasses had to fly off in the right way.

[Anna] I don't know, you might have to kinda pause it

very carefully to see those

glasses fly off but Oh yeah, there they are

[Anna] Here they are.

[Ryan] Those are glasses. And look at this expression,

she's fantastic,

and then Brie is just so fierce here. [growls]

[punch whacking]

And this is one of our favorite extras.

When, when we played this for test audiences

it's, like, so shocking to see your hero punch,

like, a grandma in the face

that people aren't, like, ready to laugh yet and

it's, like, when this guy is like, Ooo!

That they really start to laugh.

[Ryan] This is very period accurate LA Metro,

I mean there's really one line in 1995.

That was one of the really fun things about this,

we actually got to shoot on a real moving metro train.

They had shut down, like, two or three stops

near El Segundo at the time

and we just happened to be lucky enough

and so they let us have it all to ourselves.

We had our own metro car that we had been able to kind of

prepare for stunts and we shot this entire fight scene

just old school, on a moving metro car

with like a couple cameras kind of hidden

in different places and a couple handheld cameras

and it was kind of an amazing way to start

this big VFX driven movie

because this was something that Ryan and I knew

how to do very well which is just

practical shooting in tight places with real actors and, uh,

and also felt very appropriate since it was inspired by

The French Connection, which was shot at a time

when everything was practical.

And for this particular moment we were getting

audience reactions so the camera was right where it is

here it's on the camera operator's shoulder.

But you're right we probably had,

like, a camera here

and then we probably had a camera hidden on this side

like right outside of frame here

that was getting other people's reactions

and something that was more, like, straight down the middle

that was getting like a wider shot of

a bigger group of passenger reactions.

[epic music]

[crashing]

These are the Monkeymaker sisters,

these are legends in the, the stunt world, basically.

This is Heidi Moneymaker and this is Renae Moneymaker.

So, these are two sisters who are fighting

each other in this moment.

They had so much fun shooting this.

They've often worked alongside each other

but they don't often get to fight each other in this way.

They're on wires for this stunt

so that was part of the beauty of having a train

that we could own and we could also adapt.

You know, she's got wires that are kind of attached up here

to this bar for her flip.

And she has some kind of pad back here

that she's kind of landing into.

[epic music]

[pole clang]

Oh man. These guys,

more great extras.

Our amazing fight coordinator, who I love,

Walter Garcia, he suggested having her dentures

pop out when her head hit the [laughs] hit the thing

so there is an alternate version of this movie

that could have existed where her dentures

would have popped out at this exact moment.

And this, we put in a different pole here so

that it could bend and it was soft.

Production design was working on the actual interior

of the train for weeks

along with our stunt team to make sure

it was safe for all of the stunts.

We are New Yorkers and there's uh, there's something

that all New Yorkers know about,

when you're on the train, when you're riding the subway,

every now and then some break dancers will get on

and say, Ladies and gentlemen, it's showtime!

Which people actually do on a moving subway

full of normal, non-stunty passengers

and I remember when we were talking about shooting this film

and we were suggesting that we shoot on

an actual moving train people were like,

I don't know, I don't know if we can do that,

with like all the stunts and the fighting

and we're like look, if these ordinary people can do this

on a moving train in New York for real

then certainly our stunt people can do it

and so they took that as a challenge.

[pole crashing]

[epic music]

And again I just, like, can't stress the

importance of having good extras.

They're not people who you get to cast beforehand

and have read for you so you really rely

on your extras casting and getting lucky on the day,

having your AD move around the people

who aren't quite nailing it

because they add some much life to a scene like this.

We shot a bunch of this on a moving train

and then a week later we picked up a couple little moments

that we didn't get and this is one of those moments,

we really wanted to have more kind of closeups.

Everything's moving so fast in an action scene like this

and one of the things that we learned having not,

honestly, shot a lot of action shots before is just,

like, having the moments of pause are so important

so we wanted this kind of moment of pause where you get,

like, a closeup on Captain Marvel

and really get to see what she's doing

rather than everything whipping so quickly by

but we couldn't get back, the,

this is, like, a very secret thing,

so those of you watching this, Yeah, don't tell anyone.

Don't tell anybody!

But we couldn't get back the extra that you would've

just seen in the previous shot

and this is Walter Garcia, our fight coordinator

making a little appearance.

He is dressed like the other guy but

he is not the other guy.

Brie had a really hard time elbowing him in the chest

because, you know, she liked him so much

and he was basically her sensei.

But he typically has a lot more facial hair,

he shaved for us to do this

and we were very appreciative of that.

[grunts]

[epic music]

And this is another one of those moments,

just having the moment of pause when,

after she kicks her back where it's kind of like,

a moment of, it's on,

before they go at each other again.

It just sort of sets a nice sort of pacing and rhythm

so it's not just fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.

It's fight, fight, fight [growls]

[growls]

Fight, fight, fight.

[Skrull growls]

I don't know if you noticed that but there was a growl,

there was a Skrull growl that occurs right here.

[Anna] Skrull growl, right there.

Growl. How do you animate the growl

[Ryan] It's like [growls]

[slamming bodies]

[punch whacking]

That was for sure Heidi getting punched in the face there.

There was no elder abuse happening during

the filming of this movie.

We promise.

Part of the reason we were attracted to doing this movie

is because Brie Larson was in it.

She was cast before we were brought on as directors

and she was the draw.

The idea of her as Captain Marvel,

an actor who's shown she, kind of,

has this dynamic range of emotion that's,

that's so close to the surface, that's so palpable.

You, know, she's just, kind of, arrived on Earth

and is very single-minded in her mission

to track down the Skrulls.

What was fun for us about this movie

and that journey is that, you know,

that is kind of the A plot line in a way

but it's completely intertwined and entangled

with her own journey of discovery about her own past

because what the Skrulls are looking for

is intimately tied to who she used to be.

And so, as she kind of tracks down the Skrulls

she finds herself kind of secondarily on this

investigation into her own past and her own life.

And it's really that journey over the course of the film

to finding her own humanity,

discovering more about who she really is and that kind of

opens her up and complicates her relationship

to, you know, what this mission is right here.