Dave Bautista has revealed that he was behind one of the most emotional moments in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, changing up the script to pack more of a punch.
The Guardians of the Galaxy actor leads the cast of the Netflix zombie thriller as Scott Ward, whose family falls apart when he is forced to kill his wife after she turns into a zombie.
While the heartbreaking moment sets the tone for much of the movie, and for Scott’s relationship with his daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), it was originally completely different.
‘The way it was originally written and the way it was choreographed out with the stunt team, is he really just walked in, he saw his wife was a zombie and he went to town on his wife, without any emotion or anything, just killed his wife,’ Dave explained to Metro.co.uk.
‘I had a conversation with Zack – I was like, “This isn’t right”. Not only is this guy walking in and realising his wife is dead, now he’s got to put a knife in her head.
‘Imagine the struggle emotionally if someone actually had to do that. He was all up for it, he was like, “You’re absolutely right”. So, we did it, it just turned out to be such an emotional moment.
‘Zack wanted to cover it, and cover it some more, and he wanted to get in and get a different angle. So Zack literally had the camera on his shoulder and was squeezing himself into this tight little space to make sure that he could get this coverage of my performance and, as an actor, it doesn’t get any better.
‘You pray for directors like that who really want to get the most detailed nuances of your performance.’
Dave pointed out that it wasn’t rare for him and Zack to have such a collaborative approach, explaining that the Justice League filmmaker encouraged it.
‘Zack had written another part for me in the film and it was a much smaller part,’ the actor recalled. ‘The script was written and when he started reading it, when he thought about casting, who could play Scott Ward, he thought of me, and he called me up.
‘We started having a conversation and I did start asking him those questions – will I be able to contribute? Can I collaborate? Can I put my own twist? And he said, “Absolutely”. I had so much freedom from Zack.
‘He gave me so much freedom and he even captured things in my performance that I wasn’t even asking for. There were certain little nuanced things that he thought was very interesting that I was doing that he always made sure he got coverage of.
‘It just helps because it helps me show off my range and it was something that I wanted to do to prove myself as an actor, prove my worth as an actor. And he gave me the opportunity to do that.’
Army of the Dead is released on Netflix on May 21.
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