War Machine director on crafting visceral '80s-style action sequences

Netflix’s sci-fi film War Machine leans into old-school spectacle. Director and co-writer Patrick Hughes drew openly from films like Aliens, War of the Worlds and 1987’s Predator, and set out to shoot like an ’80s movie — on location, using the actual environment and relying on practical stunts.

Reacher star Alan Ritchson plays “81,” an Army Ranger applicant whose squad is in the final search-and-destroy simulation when an extraterrestrial attacker starts picking them off. Hughes used a startling early moment to set the tone. “That was day one, take one, shot one, I kid you not.

I've got the video evidence,” he says of the sequence that explodes 12 actors off a cliff with wire gags and rubble. Ritchson recalls that his stunt double, Ryan Tarran, “took his clothes off [later in the shoot, and] it looked like somebody had spray‑painted him in one even coat of purple,” and adds that the bumps and bruises from the sequence were real.

war machine, patrick hughes, alan ritchson, reacher, aliens, predator, war of, practical stunts, wire gags, ryan tarran