Anna Daniels
“6 Underground looks the most legit of any movie I’ve seen before, because the stuff’s really happening,” Segar says. “The jumps are real.”
Yes, the crew took safety precautions. The Storror members wore cables during dangerous jumps, and there were boxes off-camera to help break their falls if something went wrong. However, none of those affected the actual movements. “The wires aren’t influencing the movement,” Segar says. “Gaps aren’t being made double the size with a computer. They’re really happening how you see it.”
In fact, Segar estimates that about 90% of the jumps and stunts in 6 Underground were untouched by CGI. For the most part, when computers were used, they enhanced the action, but didn’t create it. “CGI put [some] jumps higher up in the air,” Segar explains, but the stunts still happened — they just weren’t quite as dangerous in real life.
As an example, Segar calls out a sequence set in Hong Kong, when Four runs down a skyscraper to escape approaching goons. That sequence was handled by Storror’s Drew Taylor, who served as one of Ben Hardy’s two stunt doubles alongside fellow Storror member Benj Cave.
“Four is trying to escape and doing some jumps across the tops of really big I-beams,” Segar says. “Drew was doing those plyos 30, 40 feet up in the air… Those little pads that he was jumping to are super thin, super small, and technical. There’s a foley explosion going off behind him.”
To Segar’s expert eyes, it’s the most challenging sequence in the film. “There was no true danger at any point,” Segar says, but “keeping your cool at that height, doing take after take, with explosions and guns firing blanks all around you” takes quite a bit of effort.
Segar credits Bay’s faithful editing with helping make 6 Underground‘s parkour scenes feel realistic, too. “It’s just so awesome for us… to not see the movement butchered in post-production,” Segar explains. “It’s one of the first times that’s happened for us. It’s just absolutely awesome.”
Written by: Looper
