Director Patrick Hughes on Why ‘War Machine’ is Secretly a Slasher Movie in Disguise

War Machine was born out of a nightmare. Stalked in the woods by a giant machine with lasers, coming after him in the rain — that’s the dark, action-packed dream that led filmmaker Patrick Hughes to make the hit Netflix film. The horror in the action film remains, as a metallic beast from space chases rangers through woods and mountains.

Leading the resistance is Alan Ritchson, known for Jack Reacher, who plays a soldier dubbed 81. He believably stands toe-to-toe with the giant machine. Few action heroes today have that guy’s personal and physical gravitas in action.

As for Hughes, he’s no stranger to shooting big, unabashed R-rated action. The filmmaker behind The Hitman’s Bodyguard and Red Hill sought to make a giant popcorn movie for the small screen. “I just wanted to make a big bombastic kick-ass action movie,” he told What’s On Netflix. “And I really wanted to make a movie where you press play, it grabs you by the jugular, and it doesn’t let up until the end.”

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You wrote an early draft of the script where 81 was a more silent protagonist. As his role and the story grew, were there any elements that always stayed?

I knew from the very beginning, as much as it is this big action and sci-fi movie, the fundamental principle of it is that it’s a survival movie. It’s probably more in line with horror in terms of it being a slasher picture. When we think about the slasher genre, they’re always essentially a chase movie. I wanted to create a movie that was nonstop, on the move.

The setting alone became one of the biggest conflicts in the drama. Not only am I trying to survive against this unknown beast, but to make matters worse, now I’m dealing with terrain that’s incredibly dangerous. And that’s where we have cliffs and waterfalls and jagged rock edges and snowcapped mountains.

What was the biggest appeal in making a survival film?

I absolutely love survival movies because they’re just inherently so visceral and the storytelling is so pure. I think all the best survival movies, you should be able to switch the audio off and watch these characters make decisions on the fly about, how do I survive? It’s always those false victories that I love crafting in stories. Okay, I survived this cliff fall, but now I’m stuck on a cliff and I’ve got to get down the remainder of it and we don’t have enough ropes and there’s no time. It’s that compounding of conflict that layers in there.

What layers did you want for 81?

With 81, with his wound from the very beginning, I wanted a movie about shame. I think it really is one of the most brutal sufferings because it’s internalized and it lives in the shadows, and that’s how it festers. It always comes down to the fact that a hero doesn’t have the vulnerability to open up to others around them. 

And that’s why we see when people have to overcome shame, that it’s always based on a network. It’s called group therapy for a reason. The human connection is what saves us all. It’s the role of 7 (Stephan James) — that human connection that enabled Alan’s character to look within and forgive himself to a certain degree.

Alan is probably the closest thing we have to Arnold or Stallone as far as action heroes go. What do you really appreciate about what he brings to a project?

I’ve worked with a lot of big action movie stars. I’ve never seen someone work so hard and relentlessly. He is one of the most disciplined people I’ve ever worked with. He has a very, very strict regime because making films is incredibly difficult.

Alan — he’s a gym junkie. I remember there were days where he’s up at 5:00 AM going for a jog, then goes and shoots an incredibly sophisticated, detailed action set piece that was grueling for him. He’s got energy for days. I think he’s incredibly passionate about making movies and telling stories that really land with viewers, to bring that entertaining experience.

Before we started, I warned him. I think I warned him like seven times. It got to the point where he said, “Patrick, if you say that again, I’m going to fucking put your head through a wall.” [Laughs] And I said, “Listen, I have to tell you that this film is going to be really, really difficult. It’s going to be grueling.” And from day one, he just said, “I am in.”

With a film like ours, it is so physically and emotionally grueling. It’s 2:00 AM and you’ve got to then get back up, it’s raining sideways, and we’ve got to get these shots. You need someone that’s always got that fire inside them to get back up and go into the game. He is a machine.

It makes sense that you mentioned slasher films in regards to War Machine. They’re often running from a monster in the woods, but not only that, there’s a lot of body horror. How important was horror for the action in the film?

100%. The best survival films inherently do actually feel like horror films in the sense of you’ve got these characters that are trapped in isolation and you can’t call for help. That sense of isolation always feels like horror. I mean, it goes back to Alien. Again, it’s the isolation. You could say, “Well, it’s sci-fi, but no, that’s a fucking slasher horror film set on a spaceship.”

After all these years of making action movies, what are the rules you have for capturing action? What are you always looking for in War Machine’s action?

I’m always looking for the energy of the scene. From the outset, I do a lot of planning in the structure of an action set piece. It has to be carefully structured in the sense that it’s got those arcing moments that we have in storytelling. The biggest thing that I’m always looking at is what is the positive charge and what is the negative charge and then what is the object of desire? They’re the three fundamentals.

To take a sequence like the Guardian chase sequence, which is quite a long, elaborate one [take], is that you want to build it like a story that’s increasing the conflicts and the stakes are rising.

What’s the positive charge?

Oh, the character’s got hold of a vehicle and now it looks like they’ve gotten away. Then how do we reverse that and become the negative charge? Well, now that the machine’s pulled out this new weapon we didn’t see before and now it’s carpet bombing them. Okay, boom. The explosion’s gone up, positive charge. We survived the explosion. It looks like we’ve gotten away. Holy shit, now the machine’s leaping off a cliff in front of negative charge. Holy shit, we’re going to fucking…

[Laughs] Highs and lows.

I love playing with audiences like that. To me, they’re my favorite action set pieces. It’s the object of desire. I think about my hero, George Miller. If I look at Mad Max: Fury Road, that’s one of the best examples of the objective desire where there is always something that the heroes want or need in that challenging moment.

What did you want to achieve with the machine itself?

I told Alan that the horror of this film is that the machine is the embodiment of 81. It is shame. It is a shadow, and that’s why I wanted it to move slowly. I wanted it to be this lumbering beast that feels like it’s a character trying to outrun their shadow.

You can keep running, mate, and you can keep pushing and suppressing everything, but eventually, that shadow catches up with you. When we talk about it in psychological terms, it’s called integration and it’s the most important step and that, again, comes from human connection. 

We worked a lot on the silhouette of it, the shape of it. I remember early on when I would pitch friends when writing, they would be like, “Oh, so how does the machine move? Is it delicate?” I’m like, “No, it’s just this big hulking beast.” I saw it as a beast, more animalistic.

You can hear that in the sound design.

It’s slow, and I love it. It’s, like, you’re in a trench and you hear a tank coming. Tanks aren’t that fast – especially in World War II, they weren’t – but I hear that fucking thing and the earth is rumbling and I’ve got — what? Oh, you’ve got a gun, do you? Go ahead, try and shoot that tank. What the fuck do I do? You run, you run and run for the hills as far as you can. Ultimately, that’s the story. 81 had to face his shame and he ultimately faced the machine.

Let’s talk about a very, very good action scene in the movie: the chase sequence from the machine and the well-stitched-together one take in the armored vehicle. Where do you begin in planning, shooting, and editing that action sequence?

I’ve done a few [one takes]. They take a tremendous amount of work. I remember Alan and I, we always have the same feeling on set, which is when it gets really technical and really grueling and you’re just like, “Oh fuck, I just want to shoot this thing,” then we keep thinking about the audience. 

We’re like, “Listen, it’s incredibly hard now and it’s a painful process, but none of us are going to remember any of this when we stitch this whole fucking thing together and we put it on the screen with the big sound mix and the score.” That’s where it pays off. 

With the Guardian, it was about confined space. We wanted to use the M1117. Now, the reality of those vehicles is once you’re inside, they’re incredibly confined, especially for someone like Alan. I’m six four, so that also doesn’t help. Me and Alan couldn’t fit in it together because there was no room, so I had to be on the outside.

How’d you deal with the space?

We built the Guardian, but then we expanded the interior. I think it was 22% that we expanded the interior. Audiences don’t notice. There is a tipping point where you would notice, you’d be like, “Wait, how come the inside of that thing looks way too big?”

It’s a movie magic technique. We built boxes of that interior, and then, that way we were able to rehearse over and over again. We would go over the camera movement and say, “Well, what is motivating my camera to then move here?” Well, what would help that is if 81 screaming at 109 and throwing him a weapon, which gets me to 109.

And then 109 saying something to 60, which means I can turn around to 60. 60 saying, “You need to go faster,” which means I can push into 44 who’s driving. Then it’s back to 109, he’s kicking the door open and using the mirrors as well. We stitched it [all] together. All in, I think it was around 22 shots or something.

It moves smoothly.

And then when I say stunt or effect, it might sound small, but it’s, “Oh yeah, I want sparks showering at that moment.” Well, you’ve got to rig those sparks and it’s got to get timed right. Sometimes you do 15 takes of just a small moment.

I’ll have an editor with me on set and when we’re just stitching together the footage as we’re shooting it. We know that editorially we’re maintaining the energy. The big thing when you do stop-start approach is sometimes I’m constantly telling actors, especially with action, “Get your breathing up, guys, you’re fucking cooked. You got to remind people. You’ve just been sitting down for the last 30 minutes while I’ve been prepping this shot, but before that, you got thrown off a fucking cliff.”

I’ll just end with, for all our readers, to check out your directorial debut, Red Hill, if they haven’t yet. Congratulations on all your success since it came out, Patrick. 

Oh, dude, thank you so much. I mortgaged my house to make that movie. Here we are. You know what’s a funny story is we shot in Bright, and on the other side of the mountain is a town called Omeo where we shot Red Hill. When I made day one of War Machine, I was back in the High Country of Victoria making a movie, and that’s where my film career really took off.

I went and made a movie without a distributor and I got into Berlin and we had a bidding war with Sony and stuff like that. Thank God. I was making that movie just to get an agent. To be back there in the high country, but now with all the bells and whistles and toys and all the big crew and support, it was something that hit home. 

I was telling Alan about it and he agreed. He was like, “Dude, I think we’re just making Red Hill again, but with a massive budget this time, because Red Hill‘s a slasher film. I mean, there is a dark force out there that’s hunting us down. I don’t know why or who or what it is, and I need to get the fuck out of here.” Instead of horses, we now have military trucks and vehicles.