With 6 Underground, Ryan Reynolds shifts gears from overtly humorous characters to a more conventional action movie. This is, after all, a Michael Bay movie. Reynolds plays One, a billionaire who's faked his death and leads a team of fellow "ghosts" to right the wrongs of the world. Two of the the team are Three and Five, played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Adria Arjona respectively.
Screen Rant recently sat down with Reynolds, Garcia-Rulfo and Arjona to discuss working with Bay and where the 6 Underground series can go from him.
This movie has a lot of banter, a lot of humor - which you would expect from Wernick and Reese, and of course Michael Bay. How much opportunity was there on set for you guys to improvise, to define the characters in your own way?
Ryan Reynolds: Quite a bit. I mean, the set was like... I don't say this is critique, but we genuinely had no idea what we were shooting each day. Michael has a kind of chaotic style that I don't think any of us have ever experienced or even heard about really, so you're kind of forced to be really present which as an actor is nice. It's actually really quite lovely. So there is a lot of, "here's what we're doing right now... and go." So you don't really rely on the script and the pages as much. Although Reese and Wernick killed it on the page, there was a lot of that stuff either wasn't shot or changed on the day.
Manuel Garcia-Rulfo: You're amazing. To come up with that stuff.
Adria Arjona: I don't understand how this man's brain works. It's so impressive.
RR: I have three older brothers. I wasn't gonna get by on my muscles.
How much of the script was changed compared to what's in the finished film?
RR: I could never quantify that. I have no idea. So many things would change. Michael would see a hilltop in the distance and be like, "This is what we're shooting today." Snd you see it and just be like, "I don't remember hilltop in the distance in the script, but OK let's go." So you don't you know, it was a wild kind of riot.
So what was Michael like on set? Because this is obviously a return to his old style. He's away from like a lot of CGI, there's a lot of practical, a lot of... still explosions. What was he like on the set of this?
AA: Chaotic. It was chaos. Michael is like a little kid who desperately wants to be creating at all moments, so it has this energy to him that is... He never stops. You never see him sitting down. You never see him at monitors just lounging. He's always up and about and you never know what you're quite filming like Ryan said. But it's contagious. It gives you that energy and you're kind of just like, "OK, I'm gonna go for it." and you have to be on the tip of your toes.
RR: And he's also really hands-on. I mean, he's filming a lot of the stuff. I'd say that half the movie it was just by his hand - he's handling the camera and throwing it in these weird places and doing all kinds of stuff. I mean, it's wild. There's a reason that camera is called "The Bayhem." That's what it is. It is mayhem.
In the movie, there's nine files on the wall and you only yackle the first one in this. Do you see this running for nine whole films?
RR: [Laughs] No, I don't know about that. That's a lot of films.
MGR: You mean nine parts?
RR: You know, as an actor, we're always in that stage of where's our next meal coming, where's our next job coming? So for an actor to do a series of nine movies would be probably pretty great. That's a very uptown problem to happen. I don't know, they'd have to be completely reinvented each time.
What would you like to do in a direct sequel? 6 Underground 2?
RR: 6 Underground 2? I don't know, I think it'd be fun to just get some sort of Thomas Crowne vibes in there, like an old-school kind of heist. Like Eastern Europe kind of heist movie.