The Protector
Difficult Protector Fight Sequences
In one fight, Jaa faces off against X-gamers on roller blades, motorcycles and even bigger machinery. “In that scene there’s a lot of moves that are really difficult, but the one move is kind of like the lizard move where I have to flip and stick to the wall on my hands. If I don’t do that correctly, I can fall down on my head. That’s the most difficult one. I did it five times and I could only hang on in three. For that, we did stacks first and tried to do it, then took one out of the stack and did it again, until there were no stacks so I could do it sticking to the wall.”
In another, Jaa takes out several stories of a building full of bad guys in one continuous take. “For the long scene it took, preparation and everything, about one month for everything and about eight takes to do it. So there was a lot of difficulty in this take because we had to change the cameraman because the first cameraman couldn’t catch up with Tony Jaa. So we changed to someone more fit. And one scene, when they got to the third level, we were going to throw out one of the bad guys but the safety crew wasn’t there, so they had to cut. And there was another scene that everything was perfect but the film ran out. So that was a really frustrating take for Tony Jaa. And for one day, Tony can take two takes because there are so many preparations. And I have to do it within four minutes. I feel like I’m in the Olympics.”
Climbing around on elephants may have been some of the simpler choreography. “Actually, we needed to find an elephant that is most used to people around them, so we chose the one that was most used to people and did mostly other movies. I had to be around, hang around the elephant for a week so that they’re more familiar with my scents, my presences, my body being on them. Actually, for myself, it’s really familiar because I have two elephants at home because my family owns a lot of elephants from my ancestors.”
The Protector opens this Friday, September 8th.
For the trailers, poster, stills and more movie info, go to The Protector Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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