LOS ANGELES -- There’s only one “Rocky” and Gavin O’Connor didn’t set out to create another. But if people dare make the comparison after viewing “Warrior,” a feature-length drama heavily immersed in the world of mixed martial arts, the director wouldn’t mind.
“Rocky’ is one of the great movies,” O’Connor said Friday during a media junket for “Warrior,” which begins a wide theatrical release on Sept. 9. “It was a huge part of my youth, that film. I came home and I drank eggs and I did one-handed pushups.”
Heretofore, MMA on the big screen hasn’t approached the level of “Rocky V” let alone the Academy Award-winning 1976 original. Yet “Warrior,” which features emerging stars Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy, appears capable of earning distinction that comes with critical acclaim and box office success.
"We really hope that this is one that the fans and people in the sport get behind, as in feel proud of,” said Edgerton, whose character, Brendan Conlon, competes against his younger brother Tommy, played by Hardy, in the finals of a $5 million grand prix tournament during the film’s high-paced, well-shot climax.
In preparation for production, which included a six-week stretch of filming just fighting action, Edgerton and Hardy lived and trained like pro mixed martial artists. And, not surprisingly, they paid the appropriate tolls.
"I liked the idea of it,” Hardy said. “The idea of it was exciting. The actual doing of it was terrifying."
Though Hardy couldn’t claim to know what goes on inside fighters’ heads, the Londoner felt he managed to emulate their mannerisms.
"When you sit in the company of people who do it, you pick up a look,” he said. “There's a look in their eyes. That's about as much as I could gather."
Hardy battled through torn ligaments, a broken foot and busted ribs. Edgerton suffered a grade-three sprain of his medial collateral ligament in his right knee that jeopardized the shooting schedule.
"I couldn't stand up and I was so upset,” said the Australian, who was injured after being slammed to the canvas. “We had only just started climbing the mountain. For insurance reasons I wasn't able to even pretend to be fighting from the waist up, so I had to shoot regular scenes. I was training from the waist up, like weight training and in the pool. I had six weeks to recover and came back. That was tough, very emotionally tough."
"They took a beating,” admitted O’Connor, who earned praise for his handling of “Miracle,” an inspirational story based on the 1980 U.S. Men’s hockey Olympic team that defeated the Soviet Union and went on to win the gold medal in Lake Placid, NY. “I can't pretend I wasn't hard on them. I was. And I would say to them all the time, guys, this isn't a movie about badminton. We're making a fight movie. We gotta get this right guys. My mantra, I kept going, look when it's over, you'll be glad. You gotta suck it up. You gotta suck it up. It's called ‘Warrior.’ It's called ‘Warrior.”"
The fighters spent time in Albuquerque with Greg Jackson, whose presence as an advisor was “very special to the progression of whole film,” Edgerton said.
O’Connor set out to write, direct and produce a project that was true to MMA. Having been involved in the financing and editing of “The Smashing Machine” -- an important documentary featured on HBO in 2002 that focused on the lives of Mark Kerr and Mark Coleman as they managed their way through life and the Pride Grand Prix 2000 -- it occurred to him that the tournament format was an important device to explore.
"I really liked that idea, cinematically, taking a page out of the NCAA tournament that people get so emotionally caught up in, these sort of brackets,” he said
O’Connor, who grew close to Tapout founder Charles “Mask” Lewis before he passed away in 2009, set several ground rules in order to ensure the film was as authentic as possible:
1. No Hong Kong style high-wire fighting; everything portrayed in the film had to have actually happened in an MMA contest at some point (there’s a scene in a gym when Hardy’s character mimics Wanderlei Silva’s epic knockout of Quinton Jackson, which left “Rampage” dangling between the ropes).
2. The story and action had to be palatable and understandable for an audience that knew nothing about MMA, had no interest in the sport, or may hold preconceived ideas about what actually happens at the pro level.
3. He needed to satisfy the wants of hardcore fans, who always seem to attempt to tear down anything that impugns MMA in a negative way. For that reason, Jackson and other MMA experts were counted on for regular input. (O’Connor asked Jackson to watch fights and between rounds act as if he was working the corner, offering sentences over the phone or into a flip cam that were catalogued and incorporated into the shooting and script.)
"As opposed to Gavin choosing to get some cage fighters and get them to act, he chose to get some actors and see if he could make us convincing in any way, shape, form as a cagefighter,” said Hardy, who packed on 28 pounds of muscle for the role and is again focused on adding mass as he plays the villain "Bane" in next summer’s anticipated Batman blockbuster, “The Dark Night Rises.” “It was shocking for me, personally.”
"It got a little testy at times, which is understandable,” O’Connor said.
Edgerton added 20 pounds and described playing Brendan Conlon, a physics teacher forced through circumstances to restart his mediocre MMA career, as “definitely the hardest I’ve ever worked. I don’t think I’ve ever been given a challenge like that.”
“As actors, I think as people we're like puppy dogs,” he continued. “You throw the bone and I'll fetch it. Throw the stick and I'll bring it back as fast and as well as I can. ... I'm going to get as big as you want me to get. I'm going to eat as many chickens as you throw at me. And I'm going to learn the skills. You also don't want to look like a fool when your head is 40-foot high on the screen.”
Edgerton shouldn’t have to worry about that -- his fight sequences with Hardy come off well under the cinematography of Masanobu Takayanagi. Unlike the sweeping exchanges between Rocky and Apollo, Tommy and Brendan Conlon offer a frenetic fight, the kind that’s driven MMA to unprecedented heights in 10 years and raised expectations that “Warrior” can become a word-of-mouth success.